#but this warranted its own post since no other tech he has is like it

[trouticecream]

Okay so, I was re-reading my own character info pages--because I haven't looked at them in over a year and didn't want to misremember information about my own muse (lol)--and felt inspired enough to elaborate a little more (relative to what I did briefly mention on the history page) on why Giegue/Gregory has reassembled with less power and in turn, introduce one of the many pieces of tech that he has at his disposal.

Shorthand answer to the why, is that this ended up being part of the reassembly process itself in limbo and the last part of it involved confronting the manifestation of all his corruption whereby ultimately he decided to destroy it and as a result, destroyed the more immediate route of regaining his full set of powers as Giygas.

In a bit more depth, this corruption was an amalgamation of all his corrupted fragments that he could not reintegrate back into himself; the Giygas part of him. But, it wouldn't exactly fade away either if he did nothing. Left alone, it could eventually find its way back into reality like poison seeping through something awfully thing and wreak havoc on temporal-spatial level --warping, corrupting, and destroying until everything has effectively been eroded away to nothingness. So in the interest of fulfilling what he believes Maria would want for him to do (i.e be a good person basically), he only has two choices as leaving it be isn't an option to him: to absorb it back in anyways and deal with the fallout of that, full powers and form reinstated; or to destroy it.

But, the corruption amalgamation is his powers. Powers which, at this phase of his limbo-journey, he lacks as a result. And so, in terms of actual power? he's too weak to actually destroy it. But, he wants to do so and so, in a last resort kinda desperate action before the corruption amalgamation can swallow him up (a response to sensing his intent to destroy it), he starts to pray the same way that the people of Earth did when supporting the Chosen Ones in the fight against his Giygas form.

Now, what someone can achieve while praying can be influenced by psionic powers, but more so than anything else, it has a lot to do with feeling, willpower, and one's actual role within the greater cosmic scheme of things and thus impact upon its story. Giegue already had an important role as the villain to be defeated by the Chosen Ones in that particular subset of the greater story, but through his efforts to avoid being destroyed entirely--and achieving not just that, but briefly overturning it and thus, creating the future that Buzz Buzz ended up coming from--he effectively elevated his role to something far more. Fate was not his arbitrator anymore, but he was its arbitrator and as a result, the fate of the universe became almost exclusively centered around his choices and actions.

And so, at that point in time (but not after) literally anything he prays for could happen, no matter how absurd or nonsensical. In this case, his deepest wish was to have the ability to not just destroy the corruption amalgamation, but to have the power to destroy anything like it if it were to appear in the future so that others would never be endangered like that again. In turn, all that potential encapsulated by his extremely elevated importance in the cosmic scheme of things, condensed down and manifested in the form of a handgun, thin and a very pale silver in colour. One shot and down went the corruption amalgamation, completely nullified and destroyed by the specific type of bullet shot at the time.

By this very action, he should have finished reassembly without any of his powers at all, but amidst the fading remains of the corruption amalgamation, an unexpected bit of untainted power remerged from within it and reunited with him, in part due to his wish. Upon subsequently exiting limbo-space and properly manifesting back into lived reality, the gun came with him albeit reverted to a small ovoid rock-like structure pale blue in colour and twinkling like billions of stars, as if it were the cosmos itself. This 'core' would eventually be placed into a real-life version of the handgun from the limbo-space, constructed by Giegue (now known as 'Gregory') himself.

The resultant weapon is one which--due to the nature that which powers and strengthens it--possesses the following characteristics: only Gregory can utilize (it will be useless in anyone else's hands) it; the bullets fired cannot be stopped by PSI or any other energy-related sort of technique and rather need to be plainly dodged instead; the bullets mainly aim to cause varying levels of damage depending on what 'mode' Gregory sets them to and can change firing pattern from simple to more complex, depending on what he wants exactly; the gun can change format to accommodate different forms of combat and distances involved in its utilization; and it's a weapon that changes in accordance with its user's personal growth and emotional state and so, sometimes unexpected things can happen (or fail to happen) whenever he fires it.

[mikiib]

The Magnus Archives: ALIEN AU (Part 1)

     So in short I had come up with an AU where the cast of TMA characters are set in the universe of ALIEN. They’re both my FAVORITE pieces of horror media I’ve consumed and so my brain figured- WHY NOT? So I have 13 pages and scenes in my brain that would take place in this AU. If this or the following posts that I’ll make inspire anyone I would LOVE to see what you come up with! In short this story has a mostly good ending.    

 Here’s a list of the things that ARE and AREN’T in this universe. 

- 14 Fears aren’t in this world. It’s fully immersed in the universe of the movie ALIEN/ALIENS. - The xenomorphs however have more powers- they can shape shift into anyone they ‘kill’. So if the alien hatches from the host but somehow the host survives then that creature can pretend to be that person. If they kill someone they can pretend to be them.  They still however take the main biological forms of the hosts they came from in regular form. - Queens are born when there is no other queen in near vicinity detected by the unhatched egg.  - The hatching of an egg takes a lot longer after implantation rather than a few hours like the original movie.  - The aliens acidic blood is still STRONG but not nearly as much. I nerfed that to a slower burn- if left on the surface for more than a few minutes it can still be JUST AS BAD as the movies version. - Cyborgs are a thing in this world- who is and isn’t a cyborg is up in the air- however you’ll find out if you follow the posts. - The aliens are weak to extreme heat and extreme cold. The younger they are the more vulnerable to both. Fire extinguishers and flamethrowers will be a big weapon in both firepower and as a melee weapons. - The technology is slightly more up to date compared to ALIEN’s 80′s tech, as there are in short video calls that can be held. -Mother (MU-TH-UR 4900) is the ships computer mainframe, and can connect directly to Elias with his acceptance of the transmission. Mother also monitors the crew and their vitals when they are under cyosleep. - They can quit. No bindings to ‘The Eye’ here. 

ARTIFACT RETRIEVAL VEHICLE: THE COEUS CREW: SEVEN

Captain and Scrivener (Archivist): Jonathan Sims (Age: 31)

  Executive Officer: Sasha James (Age: 35)

  Warrant Officer: Georgie Barker  (Age: 29)

  Navigator: Melanie King (Age: 27)

  Engineers: Tim Stocker (Age 33) & Martin Blackwood (Age: 27)

  Science Officer: Nikola Orsinov (Age: 30)

CARGO: OTHER WORLDLY ARTIFACTS UNDER STUDY COURSE: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY MOON BASE: THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES 

-Everyone shares the role of being a Scribal (Archival) Assistants to Jon- no exceptions.  -The Magnus Archives is a space station on the Moon orbiting Earth.  -The cargo they carry is found from the ships that collect samples from uninhabited planets as well as statements from those who report to them their findings to investigate.  -The Admiral is the ships designated therapy cat to help the crew cope with isolation brought on by Georgie. -Elias Bouchard is the head of The Magnus Archives.

STORYLINE: 

     The story starts after they’ve collected the last of the artifacts required on the list to retrieve. They’ve been in cryosleep for over 6 months and only need 3 more months of it till they’d arrive to their destination. Everyone wakes up on their own time, Georgie first, along with Melanie and Martin. Followed by Tim, Sasha, Jon, and Nikola, they gather at the dining table of the living quarters. Martin makes everyone their preferred meals, seemingly the most nervous. This has been Martins first time aboard THE COEUS, and his banter with Sasha and Tim prove while not the best at his job there, he makes a mean meal out of the ‘rubbish space food’ provided. Melanie comes back after taking a look at their current location frowning, letting the others know they aren’t even close to Earth yet- not even in their solar system anymore. In surprise they turn to Jon, who himself has only been Captain on ship for only just before this crew was assigned to him. He gets up to check out whats going on, many of the others follow him, much to his disgruntlement as they basically fill the small room. Mother has intercepted a transmission of unknown origins and under contract of their jobs they must check it out. Curious to know more about their new course Jon calls Elias, who informs them it will be a 2 week set back on their schedules course. Jons not exactly excited about this but Tim’s quite happy to be informed it does give them quite a large bonus since it does seem confirmed of unknown (non-human) origins. 

     Once they arrive to their destination, Melanie sets the ship into motion for landing. She reads off all planet signs to the crew on. It’s a nearly isolated dwarf planet of 600 kilometers in diameter (372.823 miles). The surface on landing will be 23 degrees celsius- much warmer than expected but it does seem to be orbiting a sun fairly closely. They prepare for landing and Martin and Tim are set to get the ship in position. Martin and Tim talk together as they prep and make sure the landing legs will be fine against the surface of the planet. While they do so Sasha pops in announcing she gets to go with Jon and Melanie to investigate the source of the spooky transmission on foot. Meaning also she gets a bigger cut in the bonus than them. Tim and Sasha razz at each other but stop when sparks are spat in Martins face for wiring something wrong. He curses and Sasha comes over to help see what's wrong, pulling on gloves. She laughs a bit and gently teases him to choose a different degree to lie about next time he wants a new job as she fixes the wiring for him. Martin shushes her, claiming he didn’t expect them not to do background checks, nor did he expect to be given a position on one of the biggest damned cargo retrieval ships known. While he worked originally as a simple warehouse organizer at The Magnus Archives sister base on earth he had needed cash to help support himself after his Mother had moved out. Tim wraps an arm around Martin, claiming he’ll shield Martin from Jons prying eyes if anything goes wrong on this detour. They laugh a bit before the radio goes off from Jons office room. He’s complaining about the lights not turning on in there and would be thrilled if someone did their job correctly when fixing it before he gets back on the ship. Tim radios him that they’re on it before they tease Martin more on his obvious crush on Jon before Sasha is then called up to suit up. 

     Georgie is helping the 3 suit up properly, making sure their heart monitors are secure and attached to their neck to get an accurate pulse. Jon seems to be struggling most with the suit up, this unlike the other two, being his first time in a suit outside of the initial training. Sasha after having her camera feed double checked helps Jon out. And while Jon doesn’t say anything about it, it’s obvious Sasha should’ve gotten the job as Captain. Melanie the entire time rattling on about how excited she is to document her findings of a foreign transmission. 

     They land with ease, nothing going wrong as the planet, while rocky with a constant rain, is also somewhat flat. They make their way to the source of the transmission. Tim and the others are now watching from the ship- cameras live feed and audio coming to them as Georgie talks with Melanie about all the kind of things they could find on the ship to study. Nikola reminds everyone that without the items and everyone following the procedures for quarantine, no one is touching the items that may be brought back. The conversation dies out into aww when they see the space ship the signal is coming from appear on camera. Melanie is excited as Sasha and Jon start to look for a way in. Jon reminds them to stay close to him at all times as they enter the ship- its obvious he’d rather none of them go in here due to how degraded the place looks. Everything seems to have been heavily melted in random patches, but the ship itself seems to be made of a biological element of some sort- comparing it to a ribcage almost as they walk through it.

     As they traverse the ship they stumble across multiple dead alien bodies. They aren’t fresh but they also don’t look years old. Melanie goes to take a closer look at them but Jon quickly pulls her back from them, yelling about how obviously unsafe it is as well as the fact that she just broke formation rushing off into a different room. They both get into an argument about what should be done with the bodies, and how far their investigations should go. At this point the feed is hardly coming through via camera, but the audio makes it back to the the ship roughly. Sasha goes on without them as she’s getting closer to decode the transmission. it’s a warning of sorts is what she can gather. Looking at the bodies it may have been an illness of some type, each of them dead from some type of acid but she finds one with an open chest- like an explosion. she gets closer to one, that seems to shift out of the corner of her eye. She tries to let the others know but she realizes that they can’t hear her over their arguing, and she’s almost certain she’s lost on the foreign ship. So instead she brings herself closer to the alien body before something crashes behind her and she stumbles back, tripping over something, and screams as she bashes her head on the back of her helmet. She gets up and looks around and sees the shadow of the creature run off and she chases after it.

     That got the attention of the others as not only with the scream but Tim tells them her heart rate is spiking drastically. Jon and Melanie cry out for Sasha and she stops after meeting a dead end. She sighs and tells them she’s fine, she just fell and admittedly was just chasing after shadows. She turns around however and suddenly her heart monitor on the ship starts to read dead.  PART 2 

[darkpoisonouslove]

Riven x Musa

Ok, so I keep seeing posts everywhere that basically badmouth S8 and after seeing ten seconds of the trailer (YIKES to the animation, what’s wrong with the industry that they are making everything anime? Powerpuff Gen Z, I’m looking at you – obs: I didn’t watch it fully yet) I can see where some of the criticism is coming from but anyways…

My favorite Winx!couple EVER has always been Musa x Riven since I was kid and first watched the show (Netflix is not helping ‘cause I ship them even there).

I remember yawning at Bloom/Sky, rolling my eyes at Stella/Brandom and making a completely incredulous expression that I could literally feel forming on my face at Helia/Flora (can anyone say ‘unrealistic’?). Timmy/Tecna are a second favorite.

And why my Winx OTP are Riven x Musa followed after Timmy x Tecna? Because it reflects real life. In real life you’re not gonna stumble into people whose real and deep relationship problems are solved in twenty four minutes (not even that considering that some episodes present the “problem” half-way through said 24 minute-episode).

The breakup between Riven and Musa in S6 (spoilers everywhere after all) was one of the most mature breakups in the history of breakups with the hope for the future (yes, I’m completely ignoring S7, sue me, the whole thing was one huge filler anyways). And, after reading a lot of opinions on both ends (defending Musa/attacking Riven and defending Riven/attacking Musa) and watching the episodes in question (reuniting through reconciling) I think I can give my own analysis.

Since Musa AND Riven (individually and as couple) are my favorite characters in Winx, I think I CAN give a fairly unbiased view (hopefully).

*clears throat*

Ok, keep in mind that I’m defending BOTH of them, because I ship them too hard not to.

Musa Being OC (sometimes being called ‘brat’): C'mon, people! Musa and Tecna are OC since S4 anyways, where are the tomboy and the nerd? With the sneakers, T-shirt and comfortable-looking clothes? Noooo, now they all need neat skirts and hot pink high heels and long, glamorous hair. Do they look good? Of course, but and I would totally be less pissed if there was ANY indication on the reason for the change. Are they just maturing? Expressing themselves differently? Crowd mentality? Tune and Stella finally broke Musa down and Tecna followed soon after? Was it just to please Riven and Timmy? ANYTHING (even the 'pleasing a boy’ would at least be A reason - a ridiculous one that would piss me off, but A reason none the less), was just a sudden impulse that took?

Sure, we can talk about “character growth” until we are blue in the face, but the matter of the fact is that there was none.

The changes we see in Musa and Tecna are basically the creators making them more like the rest of the Winx (I’m including Aisha in this too, where is the sporty girl that matched the boy’s interest in extreme sports? C'mon! Even Bloom and her Girl Next Door looks are replaced with Bratz and Clueless-level of outfits).

Is anyone really going to look me in the eye and say Stella wasn’t a shallow (if friendly and good-natured) Mean Girl? She got better, but as I re-watch the show (currently in S3, meaning almost half-way through the content), Stella still worries more about her hair than anything else even while under literal fire.

More and more, Musa, Tecna and Aisha are losing their identities and what made them, IMO, the more badass Winx.

How did the two on the left went from this…

… to this:

Yeah, yeah, Musa still sings, Tecna still technobabble and Aisha is still a Warrior Princess but Aisha was the first one to go Bloom and Stella on us with Musa and then Tecna following soon after. It’s not just their clothing style, it’s the way they carried themselves too.

Right now? The only thing keeping them apart is their BF blues (different kind of blues) and some personal interests (singing, shopping, tech, the whole drama with Domino/Sparks, etc). But that’s IT, their personalities are going down the drain!

Sorry for the long-winded text, but the reason I’m expressing my disappointment at their change is because Musa’s reaction fits it. S6 we have such an AMAZING breakup (didn’t even think that was possible, WTH, right? Amazing breakup?) only for her to be mad as hell at Riven at S8? Bad writing, that has been dragging her (and the rest of the Winx) down to becoming just one unilateral, shallow character (the Specialists are also falling into that pit, what in the world did they do Helia in S8? He sounds like Thor telling about his “brave exploits” there, yikes). And continuity what? What continuity? Do they even remember how the breakup was written?

But ok, let’s put the Audience View aside for a moment and focus only on the In-Universe terms.

S6: You’ll always be my hero.

S8: What on EARTH are you doing here. 

I laughed a bit, the contrast just got to me but instead of getting mad at one or the other like most of the fandom, I laughed.

Musa followed that by saying that Riven has not maintained contact and just in that I would be beyond pissed as well and giving my support to Musa. WTH, Riven? I think that each season is more less six months to a year? Sort of? Still, zero contact for so long even after ending on amicable terms and wanting to stay friends? And he went off on his own! A text now going, “I’m not dead” would be the bare basics for Musa not to worry herself bald!

BUT then I also read comments about how this was a two-way street, why didn’t Musa call either? That’s unfortunately something that I very much doubt will ever be explained. One of those: did it or didn’t it? Musa could have called and went straight to voicemail with no signs of life from Riven or she might not have called and just expected him to call as if feminism were dead and all initiative must come from the guy (which doesn’t even fit because they parted as friends).

Since we have no info on the above, I put it on both of them. It’s not fair to say, “HE should have called!” or “Why didn’t SHE call?” because we don’t have fricking context. So the only thing we can take is: no contact.

BECAUSE I put the lack of contact on both of them, Musa’s reaction was a little too much, however, Riven shows up all smirks and leaning against a tree with his arms crossed and I would have flashbacks to S1 if it wasn’t for the animation style that made all the guys look like girls. Dude! Not the time for that kind of posture. Not saying that he should be all sheepish and rubbing his arm as if he had done something horrible (again: we don’t have context on the no contact) but a more neutral approach was warranted here. Nobody does themselves any favors with that kind of attitude no matter what how high of a horse they may be (rightly or not) riding on, if anything I would react like Musa solely on that one.

Next episode we have that Riven convinced the guys to follow the girls in some mission and Musa was angry. Again: I would be too. WTH? Yes, yes, they helped and if it wasn’t for them, the Winx would gotten seriously injured but Musa did have a point saying that this demonstrated that they had no trust in them and need their hand held, it was no sanctioned mission like on Earth after all. BUT, Riven does something that I would never expect from in S1-4: he explains, he reasons it, he puts it in all the words that he does trust Musa and co and that he only wanted to show that he’d be there for her (you know? One of the main issues in S6 that made them breakup in the first place? His inability to conciliate Specialist work with supporting his girlfriend and ultimately failing or feeling like failing in both?) and Musa still pouts, crosses her arms, and turns around. Geez. I expected that one from Stella, not Musa. I think the closest Musa has ever come to THIS was back in S2 when Jared explains that Riven was the one to recommend that he interview Musa and yada yada yada and she got mad and stomped off on the poor guy that didn’t even understand what was going on (only to immediately apologize to Jared and recognizing that it wasn’t him that she was mad at… like I said: what character growth?).

Riven then goes to show that he indeed grew when he asked for advice from Sky and Brandon (WTH, right? Can we picture that happening back in S1-3? He very grudgingly would LISTEN to UNSOLICITED advice from Nabu and Helia in S4-6). And does a very, very goofy and embarrassing show of affection. Yeah… again… I can picture Stella loving the light show with her face for IDK how many people to see but not Musa (although can we really blame the guy after the series went out of its way to make Musa all Stella-like? Clothes, attitude, the only thing missing is making Riven carry her shopping bags around and call him “Shnookums” (although the mental image is already enough for me to fall over laughing, just for the face Riven would make). Still, I have to count that one against Riven if only because (as much as the show gives only lip service to it) Musa isn’t Stella.

Riven being mind controlled (again) aside, those two are back together. And on the overall? Riven showed more growth than any other character in the show COMBINED (he is the Zuko of the show), that doesn’t go to say that he didn’t make mistakes since coming back in S8 (but that was more a guy trying to win back a girl than… betraying his friends for a pair of nice legs or… IDEK like in S1 – where, mind control or not the show itself made sure to make it clear that he had free will) or that he is now the one out of Musa’s league. I think that NOW it can actually work… if the show allows him to keep the progress, Musa is the next to see her flaws and work on them (which she showed to be able to do since S2) and put effort in the relationship. The difference between them is that Musa can actually work on herself and the relationship at the same time. That’s not me saying she is better than Riven in any way, everybody has their own pace and their own way to cope, to improve and to self-reflect.

I still root for them.

~*~

PS-IDK why, but I read posts about how Riven changed so much and posts about how all his progress disappeared and he is now back to his S1 attitude and I’m just cofused. Yeah, different of opinions and so on, but such opposite opinions on the subject of a guy whose relationship was focused on three episodes? 

[ckret2]

Unpopular opinion: I absolutely hated Mechagodzilla's portrayal in GvK. He was downright ugly design wise and uninteresting to look at, as one anon previously said he looks just like the Terminator, which I don't see as a good thing. Bland, unoriginal and really just there to force a team-up, which could instead be filled by literally any other monster instead of severely twisting a pre-existing one to fit Hollywood standards of "realistic edginess".

I didn’t really like the design—less because of the Terminator-ness than just because, like, the body proportions look kinda wonky to me—but otherwise it seems like a perfectly respectable and fitting usage of MechaG and one well-grounded in existent MechaG lore. Continues with the “derived from Ghidorah” and “necessitates teamwork to beat” and “humans mess with what they ought not (kaiju corpses) and get fucked over when their creation reasserts its own freedom” themes already established in MechaG—I won’t restate my whole long post about all the points GVK MechaG parallels earlier MechaGs lol.

Honestly, MechaG is one of the few kaiju it really makes sense to fill the role of “enemy that forces them to team up”? There’s only a few kaiju that have historically been portrayed as a big enough threat to warrant teamwork to take them down. MechaG is one. Ghidorah is another (but has already been dispatched, and it wouldn’t make sense to pull out Keizer Ghid or Desghid to make a Ghidorah the big bad two movies in a row). The heroes tend to team up when Gigan rolls into town, but generally because Gigan is fighting with a partner too.

Destoroyah is the only other viable established kaiju who’s a big enough threat to reasonably make Godzilla team up with the guy he was just fighting. Since they used the oxygen destroyer in KOTM they certainly had an opening to make Destoroyah if they wanted... but like, that’d take at least as much justification as MechaG to introduce to Monsterverse, if not more. Monsterverse has already established “the folks tracking titans have big futuristic tech,” you don’t need any explanation to go “oh now people are making robots”—Destoroyah would take a lot more explanation, much of which would be retreading of what we already got in 1995.

Doable? Sure. They could have a compelling movie where the final enemy G & K have to fight is Destoroyah, build on KOTM’s themes of environmentalism and messing with nature and whatnot. Better? Entirely subjective.

The only thing I really woulda changed about MechaG is maybe tweak the proportions on his body a bit, and spend more time developing the villains who built him. Either to make the villains’ motives less shallow, or to lean into the shallowness as a commentary on the kinds of powerful people who want to pick senseless fights and play god.

[revasnaslan]

I'll be honest about Annilis, I love him and his sympathetic background AS well as his awful approach to keeping Hec-tor safe, because he's probably in some legitimate danger but he took it too far. I love HP, but I also wanna beat his ass too. Just grab him by the ears and yell, "What are you doing you idiot sandwich?!" I just wanna ask him "Are you even happy? And no getting pegged by a Shade isn't happiness." Don't want him to die though, only because it's a cop-out for actual punishment.1/2

2/2 That's what kinda bummed me on HP in-show, he did so much horrible shit, was an arrogant living "God", and he was just killed? That easy? HP's hubris was grotesque and he deserved a worse punishment than just a lightshow to the face. HP was also a non character in the end and whatever characterization he did have was lost quickly, gonna admit. But, an arrogant jerk dying that quickly is too easy a punishment, he has to suffer the consequences of his actions and experience his loss in detail.

sorry I'm sending you so many asks about HP. But dear God did the show drop the ball on Horde "supposedly endgame villain who was woefully underutilized until the last minute and even then was handed the villain ball to make sure what credibility he did have was lost" Prime. Could have been great, his story was there, but Crew-ra wasted time on frivolous characters(star siblings might have been cool but s5 needed to work on its existing characters, not introduce new ones)and wasted plot points.

I actually have done a ton of analysis on why prime just doesn’t work as a villain for pretty much six months now. Like I started doing this pretty much the day that the finale dropped cause I never liked S5 at all. There’s just much wrong with it, strictly from a narrative prospective than I cannot get over it, which I why I’ve kind of retreated into doing Fuck Canon aus. And I don’t think the major problems plaguing prime is that he’s a bad person or a cult leader or whatever, that would be fine. This is a matter of set up and pay off. This is a matter of narrative structure. Those are my major problems with everything about this.

Anyway, I guess we’ll try a flaccid attempt at positivity, just to make it clear that I am not coming strictly from a point of view of hate… the one thing I remember liking about prime is that creepy dinner scene. Loved that scene, I was so giddy when they dropped it as a teaser clip, and I got to enjoy it in peace for like a day and a half before my love for the show went crumbling. Prime is absolutely on his game in that scene, I can very clearly see his mind working, because my interpretation of the scene is that he’s trying to bait glimmer into giving him information. Did he actually intend to harm adora? Who knows! Does it matter? Not really, considering he got the information he wanted, which was what was needed to work the heart. I can feel the tension in that scene, that is how he should have been for the rest of the season.

So what the fuck happened? *cracks knuckles* well let’s see shall we.

Foreshadowing It’s Fun Cause It’s A Thing I’ve Heard Of

So I think we all remember just how shocking it was when prime actually showed up, and he wasn’t anything like we’d all come to assume he’d be based on what had been said about him up until that point. What we had been fed was essentially that he was cold, calculating, and didn’t look upon “defects” well. He saw the clones as disposable. And they set up that aspect of his character just fine, and I don’t have a problem with how that was set up.

What they utterly failed to properly set up (and even contradicted themselves on) was the cult thing, and how prime is essentially this messiah figure to the clones. I highly suspect this occurred because they were writing the show as they went along, and hadn’t fully fleshed out prime’s whole deal until he actually appeared at the end of S4, but that’s just my own speculation given some of the things that had been said in interviews regarding other aspects of the writing (namely that micah was apparently not supposed to be alive in the first place and that happened because of a miscommunication between noelle and one of the other writers).

Regardless, there are a number of things that should probably have been done differently in order to properly foreshadow prime’s cult leader status, that actually would have heightened hordak’s characterization as well. For one thing, there’s a reason we all assumed that the galactic horde was merely a military program and it’s because of how hordak acts throughout the first four seasons. We can talk in circles about headcanons until we’re blue in the face (i.e., he might have memory problems), but the fact of the matter is that those are headcanons and that hordak’s entire narrative changes from one of an ableist family to one of a religious trauma seemingly on a dime come the very end of S4 when prime shows up.

imagine how satisfying the foreshadowing would have been if hordak had actually been spouting dogma the entire show (i.e., “cast out the shadows” and “all beings must suffer to become pure”) only for it peter off once he’s befriended entrapta, if he had been calling those who he respected brother/sister instead of force captains (which is a far more militarized word to use, and judging by the galactic horde isn’t even a term they use), if he had still been dressed in his uniform and only actually started dressing differently after entrapta had helped him? Hell, he never even so much as implies that entrapta is leading him astray before he’s back with prime, he doesn’t even seem particularly distressed about being around her most of the time, and the only reason he even gets persnickety with her is because of his medical condition.

One point I’m going to expand on for a moment is the whole “brother” thing, because that is actually a very good way of explaining what I mean. Now, hordak doesn’t actually mention any other clones at all from what I remember. This is contrary to all of the clones in S5 referring to each other as “brother” pretty openly and it being seen as a term of respect. However, the only person that hordak actually calls “brother” up until S5 is prime, and this inadvertently ended up making the word seem far more neutral than it should have been considering the context of S5. The word “brother” is actually a control tool, and if they had wanted to establish that sooner, hordak should have been calling anybody he respected that.

So, either the writers hadn’t actually thought of that part of the narrative yet, or they’re just that bad at foreshadowing.

There are also three instances of the narrative contradicting itself with regards to prime, one in S3, one in S4, and one in S5. The first is that hordak wanted to make a new body for himself. While one could argue that this was meant to be foreshadowing that prime takes new bodies whenever his old one failed (which is fine, that works as foreshadowing), the act of hordak admitting that he was intending to do that is what actually creates the snag. With the context of S5, we learn that becoming a vessel is meant to be a place of honor, but this comes with the caveat that it seems like only prime is allowed to take new bodies. So why the ever living fuck would someone as “pious” and “unworthy” as hordak think that was something he could ever be allowed to do, much less that prime would welcome him back with open arms if he did it. But there’s zero hesitation on hordak’s part, he doesn’t even mention that this is something usually only reserved for prime.

The second is that prime literally looked at the heart of etheria and said it was “unlike anything [he had] ever seen” despite canonically fighting the first ones, so he’d presumably have recognized the energy signature that first one’s tech gives off and be like Oh Shit. This one in particular drives me absolutely nuts because if I was writing a villain who had lived long enough to fight the people this mystical weapon was created by I would never write them saying that what the actual fuck. My gripe here is not that prime is ancient, that’s fine, I could’ve vibed with that. But the fact that he not only fought the first ones but also recognized mara is really egregious in a way that borders on parody for me. Like what a flimsy excuse for him to be connected to adora (and we’ll get to that!)

The third and final one is that hordak was allegedly thrown out for his defects. That’s what we were told, that’s what a major facet of hordak’s trauma is centered around. However, at the same times, prime seems like… oddly fixated on hordak in a way that usually implies something deeper is going on here. That was why I was so convinced that hordak wasn’t remembering something clearly, because why would prime spare him instead of killing him immediately after returning if he was defective enough to warrant being thrown out? Come S5, prime seems to have forgotten about the pesky little plot detail that is hordak’s defects, since they never come up again! Nope! Hordak is not only completely healed of his ailments (which Can I Get A Yikes?) but he’s also been welcomed back to his original position as prime’s right hand by the mid-point of the season, and he stays there until the finale unless the plot demands he be elsewhere to interact with entrapta cause hordak was added in post. You can’t even argue that he was keeping hordak alive because eThErIaN kNoWlEdGe because he has those fucking mind chips. Literally every single person he’s chipped is connected to the hivemind because of that. He’d have every single bit of knowledge that he could possibly want right there at his fingertips. He doesn’t need hordak alive at all.

Which brings us to…

It’s Almost Like He Wasn’t A Villain To The Proper People

The thing about villains is that, in order for them to not feel out of place, in order for their defeat to actually give a true feeling of satisfaction, you kind of have to put them up against the right people. The reason that prime ultimately fails in this respect is that he is not adora and catra’s villain, despite the narrative pushing him as that…

I actually once joked on twitter that if the rise of skywalker had come out when S5 was being written, then prime would have likely ended up being revealed as adora’s long lost grandfather in some attempt to make his fixation on her seem warranted. That’s the level we’re at in terms of how connected the two of them appear to be for the villain and hero thing. They just are not connected, and prime has absolutely no reason to be this fixated on her. They tried to explain it with she ra and prime being old enemies, but that’s equally as confusing because a) mara hadn’t mentioned him up until that point, b) this inclusion actually makes the first ones creating a superweapon look justified since prime is such a huge threat, and c) she ra is explicitly stated to have been on etheria long before the first ones even colonized it, so why the fuck is she just gallivanting around the cosmos fighting cult leaders?

And to be clear, if this whole prime versus she ra had actually been hinted at, I would not be taking so much issue with this. But as there was absolutely zero mention of him, it just comes off as egregious and very, very sloppy on their parts.

Prime also should not be as fixated on catra as he is, that doesn’t make sense at all. I know why this happened in particular, though, and it’s because the writing team was so in love with her that they just had to give her this arc. That just makes its inclusion all the worse to be honest. Why does he go to such great lengths to use catra to torture adora, why does he go into a total breakdown after catra escapes? He isn’t connected to either of them…

… because he is hordak and entrapta’s villain.

that prime didn’t immediately want entrapta dead continues to confuse me to this day, nearly seven months after the fact. Like you mean to tell me that this cult leader, who is presumably used to complete obedience from his followers, finds one of the wayward members of his proverbial flock lost on some backwater, who didn’t want to be found, and he knows exactly who is responsible for sewing those seeds of discord in this poor lamb’s head. And he doesn’t immediately want entrapta dead?

Not only does prime never mention her, despite it being very easy to push a plotline about how it’s necessary because she’s perceived as a danger to the rest, and especially to the poor lost soul who was ultimately returned to him. Instead, prime just doesn’t seem to realize entrapta exists. He doesn’t know who she is despite literally reading hordak’s mind. He doesn’t even seem to interpret her as threat considering he wasn’t worried about putting her and hordak right next to each other in the finale. He should have been using hordak to torture entrapta, and he should have had his break because hordak escaped him. That whole scene where catra is under mind control and adora was trying to snap her out of it was textbook entrapdak. Hordak should have been the one to delve into the hivemind to help adora. It was his story and it was taken from him when he was sacrificed on catra’s narrative arc altar.

And this is ultimately completely fixable. Because they had a villain they could have been using for adora and catra the whole time. Shadow Weaver. Y’know, their mutual abuser who was the main cause of strife between the two of them, and the person who kind of set the plot in motion since she’s the reason catra is the way that she is?

He Blew It. Super Hard. Complete Buffoonery.

Ultimately one of the biggest writing fumbles with prime is that he is just really fucking dumb as the plot demands, and it doesn’t make any kind of narrative sense for him to be that way, it is literally just him being at the mercy of the writers who need him to do something stupid so they can push the plot forward since they made him too overpowered for it to happen any other way.

There’s numerous instances of this across the season, including him bringing entrapta aboard the velvet glove when the very person he would have had very good reason to not let her near is standing right there, and him deciding to give catra pretty much free reign of the velvet glove and seeming to decide to trust her despite him knowing damn well that she’s likely to betray him the second he does something she doesn’t like, and the time he literally left adora to be beaten by catra instead of just killing her outright when she couldn’t even activate she ra. And in all these cases he had the fucking nerve to seem surprised when it happened?

However, there is one plot point that I feel illustrates how goddamn stupid he is to move the plot forward, and it’s the mind chips.

I mean one of the reasons I dislike it is going back to how little foreshadowing the writers actually seem capable of committing to. There is nothing to indicate in the narrative that prime actually employs mind control on anybody besides the clones, and this becomes especially egregious when we later meet the star siblings, and we find out that there are large swathes of the universe that are seemingly not chipped? It just screams like they needed some type of angst plot point for catra, so they had to find a way to make it work.

But the very inclusion of the mind chips as a plot point makes prime look so ridiculously dumb, because we are told those chips connect people to the hivemind, we are explicitly shown this for catra angst. So a) why does he need hordak around at all, because the excuse he needs to know about etheria doesn’t work since he literally chips like half of the etherian population later on anyway, b) if he needed information on the heart of etheria, why didn’t he just chip glimmer outright, it would have saved him a lot of time and hassle, and c) if he knew damn well that catra had betrayed hordak numerous times and was likely to do the same to him, why didn’t he just immediately chip her so he could mitigate two problems. If he had chipped catra immediately, he wouldn’t have lost glimmer, and it would have been next to impossible for adora and bow to storm the velvet glove through the means that they did.

When your main villain is that fucking stupid, the tension is completely sapped out of your narrative, and prime doesn’t have enough character unto himself to continue holding up his own arc. He is a sexy lamp cardboard cutout that just happens to be brought onto the scene when they were in need of someone to throw the idiot ball at. Prime is supposed to be this thousand year old body hopper who has the wisdom of the ages, and yet he was defeat by a group of teenagers driving a clown card held together by nothing but duct tape and prayers.

Anyway!

Guess Who Just Got Murdered!

Anon, I completely agree that the way prime got taken out was just… hm. Well, it was a choice, given how they had written the rest of the season.

I’ve said this before, but I really wish I could actually enjoy hordak yeeting him, but I just don’t feel anything. That scene is a culmination of an arc that never happened because hordak was barely on screen for S5. It feels like we’re missing this whole season-long arc about how hordak managed to break free of prime and was actively working against him, and that scene is the lowest point, right before the greater scope villain is ultimately defeated by the protagonist. Which just furthers my point that prime is really hordak’s villain, because hordak reads more like a protagonist than I think the writers actually intended for him to.

Since you mentioned anillis, I feel the need to comment on him as well, because I do know exactly what happens to him at the end of my au, because I actually planned for his ending from the beginning and built his arc towards that point. The very bare bones spoilers is that he isn’t going to die, because a) he needs to live with the consequences of his actions and b) him dying would affect hec-tor horribly, especially since if anybody had to deal the killing blow it would be hec-tor. And hec-tor doesn’t deserve to be forced to do that. He wants freedom, he doesn’t want his brother dead by his own hand.

So, I completely agree that just killing prime off feels a little… like a cop out? I’m not going to get into a discussion of how he was defeated by the power of (romantic) love because my issue there is not with the trope itself, but ultimately how it was handled, and that also has to do more with my grievances with how catradora was ultimately handled than my grievances with prime. However, him being like… exorcised…

Well it sure does clean up some loose ends that we don’t want to discuss huh?

[zhenyakatava]

[ long road trips, worn down friendship bracelets, walking in the front door without knocking and sitting down at dinner with your family, riding carts through empty grocery store aisles at 3am, skipping all the friday nights lights to hang out together, rocks thrown at windows, that favorite diner where you know all the employees intimately, shared clothes and drinks and ex-boyfriends, crying at grad parties ]

tw: suicide attempt

no one is really sure when they all became friends, but after it happened they were rarely apart, rarely seen with anyone else. walking down some backroad in a horde, driving down the freeway at 100 miles an hour, manning the pong table at the parties they were known for throwing in high school. in truth, they’ve been close since elementary school, all living in the same neighborhood, when one summer the girls and boys crossed paths and decided to consolidate friend groups. 

obviously, being the mixed group that it was, they had to make sure that no one altered the dynamics of the friendship by getting romantically involved. so, they all made a pact that nothing would happen between them. 

still, they experienced everything else together. they were all close by when they had their first kisses, their first joint, their first heartbreak, and for all manner of things good or bad. the friendship wasn’t exactly forged by fire, but with time -- mostly.

boy 2 was always the one holding them all together. he was hardly the parent of the group, but he was the one always willing to just be there. every time someone needed him. what none of them really knew was that he needed all that help themselves.

in their freshman year of high school, he made an attempt to kill himself, and several members of the group walked in to find him unconscious. they effectively saved his life, but none of them were equipped to deal with the knowledge that the person who seemed the strongest and stablest of them all was in fact the most vulnerable.

the event galvanized an already-strong bond and forced them to re-pledge themselves to the group and the promises they had made to each other. that’s why it felt like such a betrayal when tj and boy 1 slept together at the end of senior year, ending tj’s friendship with the rest of the group, more on her own terms than anything.

the group hasn’t been quite the same since then, always feeling sort of empty. now, though, the sixth piece is back in town and only time will tell whether time has been able to heal their old wounds and stitch the found-family back together.

SO, below the cut i have some aesthetics and little blurbs for the other five characters, but i don’t want to dictate everything! i want to work out dynamics, create a timeline for them throughout the years, and ultimately figure out where the next step for them is! whether the rest of them stayed friends or not, whether they left orlando or not, whatever! my only stipulation is they should be the same year as tj because they grew up together. if you have any questions, comments, concerns, pls don’t hesitate to hit me up here or on discord (🗣 morgan 🗣#3278)!

[ TJ COPSEY ]  the goody-two-shoes | 22, haley lu richardson, morgan

// no one ever really believed that tj was really friends with the rest of them. straight-a student, parents at every PTA meeting, and top-tier brownnoser, she never really fit in with the rest of them. she didn’t even truly live within the bounds of their neighborhood, but right outside of it with its crystal-clear pool and trimmed hedges and perfect family unit inside. the mom of the group, she stayed sober and watched after all of her friends at every party. the one party she did drink at, the night of graduation, she ended up sleeping with boy 1 and breaking the pact they’d worked so carefully to keep up through their ten years of friendship. needless to say, it didn’t go over well and she spent the year before freshman year of college by herself. even when the rest of them tried to reach out later, before she went several hours away to georgia tech, her pride got in the way and she’s been avoiding every phone call and text, every visit on breaks. now, though, she’s back in orlando post-grad and trying to navigate the situation.

[ BOY 1 ] the angst machine, reserved for jenn

 // the boy with the Traumatic Past, boy 1 cycled through several foster homes before finding himself in the little cul-de-sac where he’d call home. the family wasn’t perfect, but they were better than the ones he’d had in the preceding eight years. he fell in quickly with the neighbor boys, and although he was absolutely a bad influence, their families too. he’s always had a bad rep and a bad attitude, but to say that the group had a soft spot for him would be the understatement of the century. he could get away with bloody murder and, honestly, he kind of did when it turned out that tj got kicked out of the group for doing the same thing he got off scot free for. still, like everything else in his life, it’s something he’s been quite opportunistic about moping about. really, he’s not a chip on his shoulder and a woe-is-me attitude about life, and only like 50% of it is warranted. 

[ GIRL 2 ] the manic pixie dream girl, reserved for maddie

// girl 2 had always been rebellious, but she wasn’t always like that. honestly, she read books about girls that got every guy and made everyone’s head turn when she was young, and she ate that shit up. she’s wildly smart and always has been, but not many people would know because she hardly opened her mouth in high school. always acted like she was a guy’s girl, latching onto the boys in the group, but in truth she would’ve given her life for anyone in the group. she was the one that really spearheaded the oust tj campaign, not because she hated her or wanted boy 1 to herself, but because she took any betrayal of the group incredibly seriously.

[ BOY 2 ] the glue

// grew up in an average family (divorced parents, naturally), in an average suburban home with beige carpet and beige walls, with average grades and average talent and average everything -- or so he thought. becoming friends with these people was probably the best thing that ever happened to him and he’d say it, but that didn’t help in his struggles with mental health. after his attempt, he hated the way everyone started to walk on eggshells around him. in response, he did something with his life: he did whatever the fuck he wanted. more than likely, he has spent the past four years backpacking europe or #vanlifing or doing shrooms in a field in the middle of idaho. who knows, but he’s living, at least.

[ GIRL 3 ] the prom queen, reserved for alex

// she’s beauty, she’s grace, she’ll literally spit in your face. probably the poorest of them all; she grew up living with her mom and siblings in the basement apartment of some creepy old guy in the neighborhood. mom had awful boyfriends, worked late, you know the drill. but girl 3 hated the life she was living, so she changed it. she was never book smart, but she was people smart. she knew how to win people over and, more importantly, how to make people simultaneously fear and love her. she was the regina george of their high school, the only one that really had a separate friend group outside of theirs, but the other five were home to her. she spent most of her nights at someone else’s house, became all of their parents’ adopted child. wildly independent, yet always trying to find comfort in someone else.

[ BOY 3 ] the class clown president, reserved for emily

// probably never been serious a day in his life, and can’t lead a group for shit, but someone became the class president in high school despite it. he has a way with people, between his charming demeanor, sense of humor and good looks, but he doesn’t really know what to do with it. could probably be president of the united states of america if he tried, but he literally never has. 

[anotheruserwithnoname]

(Belated) thoughts on Picard S1

Due to a mixture of (pre-lockdown) travel and other things, I didn’t get a chance to finish watching the second half of Star Trek Picard Season 1 till this weekend. I have some thoughts, but I’ll put a break here first as I’ll be doing spoilers.

In brief, though: for the most part I liked it and I don’t get a lot of the hate being thrown its way.

Looking at online reviews of Star Trek Picard, both by professionals and amateur YouTubers, you’d think it was the biggest abomination since Enterprise. I mean, I’ve seen hate thrown its way that even exceeds that directed toward Star Trek: Discovery.

I’m not going to turn this into a commentary on Discovery. I’ll just say that I agree with 99% of the criticisms about it and I have no plans on watching Season 3, nor do I intend to watch any of the Short Treks moving forward after being turned off permanently by the awful The Trouble with Edward.

Picard, however, renewed my faith that it’s still possible for good Trek to be made for TV.

Picard is being criticized for a number of things, like violating canon. Yet I didn’t see it. First, the show is the first Trek series set in “the future” of the Trek franchise since Nemesis back in 2002. So anything it establishes about Starfleet, Picard himself, and the fates of characters like Riker and Troi - there is no canon to violate because we’re moving forward. There is nothing in Picard that is of the same magnitude of, say, what recently happened with Doctor Who. We didn’t have them rewrite established history by suddenly finding out Jean-Luc was a Romulan spy, or that he wasn’t really the captain of the Enterprise, or anything to cause decades of storytelling to collapse into irrelevance or be contradicted. Nearly everything I saw was consistent with what I knew and remembered from TNG. They didn’t even try to retcon the appearance of the 1701-D like Discovery did to the original Enterprise.

That’s not to say everything that was done to the characters post-Nemesis was great. I didn’t care or how Seven of Nine was treated, and they did a few things with her that I think were in the “because we can, not because we should” category. So criticism is warranted there. I also felt a few characters were underserved - including Narissa, who is (or was, RIP) arguably the show’s best character next to Picard. She was a classic Trek villain - yet towards the end we started to wonder if she actually WAS a villain, or basically the Romulan equivalent of Jack Bauer from 24. She commits acts of outright savagery to pursue her ends, definitely - but the same can be said of other “ends justify the means” heroes and anti-heroes. I would have liked to have seen her developed more. (Mind you, the way she is killed off by Seven does leave an opening for a return - that was a long way down, with plenty of time to pull some macguffin out of her hat.)

Probably the main thing that I liked about this show is I cared about the characters. I can even remember their names - something Discovery failed to impress upon me. Rios and his crew of holograms were great and in Season 2 I hope they do another meeting sequence where they all interact with each other. Yes, I know Orphan Black did it first and probably did it better - but it ain’t Star Trek.

One of the biggest criticisms others levy on Picard is that Picard was a supporting character in his own show. First, that’s nonsense. Second, Picard is supposed to be a dying man throughout and in his 90s to boot. This is why I think the idea of bringing Shatner back as Kirk isn’t going to work because he won’t be running around with phasers blasting either! Stewart is not the same man he was when he made Nemesis - and they don’t make the mistake of trying to pretend otherwise. Even at the end where they basically make him a nuBSG-style Cylon to keep him alive, they didn’t turn around and make him 50 years old again. If Trek wasn’t a TV show, sure they probably would have, but the reality is the actor turns 80 this summer, and who knows when Season 2 will be filmed.

The big condemnation is about how Starfleet went dark post-Nemesis. People seem to think that Starfleet is always about goodness and light. They forget about the high command plotting the assassination of the Federation president in Star Trek VI. They forget about the black ops division Section 31 established in DS9 - or some of the things Sisko does during the Dominion War. Apparently, one of Picard’s showrunners says the original plan was to make it clear the “darkening” was part of the aftermath of the Dominion War, but this was cut. Yet they don’t need any excuse - the show clearly establishes that Romulans infiltrated the highest levels of Starfleet Command (if you think that can’t happen, go watch the final few episodes of TNG Season 1 when it happens) and were responsible for the Mars attack that set everything in motion.

And the show clearly establishes that there are till bastions of “goodness and light” in Starfleet - starting with Picard himself. And the season ends with the synthetic lifeform ban removed, signifying that Starfleet is returning to its old standards. It works. There were also people concerned that Picard was going to somehow tie-in with Discovery (due apparently to some of the cast members of both shows posing for photos together). Other than a few small references to things established on Discovery, Picard doesn’t go there.

Is Picard perfect? Hell no. Although I appreciated the “slow burn” style of storytelling, which has been adopted by a lot of other shows, it is a tough fit for Star Trek. But I didn’t mind because it was interesting. But I can see others’ points when they say the first few episodes drag a bit.

The show also suffers from the usual “continuity lockout” facing any newcomer to Trek. In this case, you need to know a fair amount about Seven of Nine’s story arc from Voyager, the Hugh story arc from the later seasons of TNG, the movie Star Trek: Nemesis, and have a working knowledge of the Picard-Data relationship from TNG. It also doesn’t hurt to know that Bruce Maddox appeared in one of the key “Data is a person” episodes of TNG as well. Unfortunately, knowing TNG may also result in one of the few major continuity issues of Picard, and that’s the fact Data already had a daughter, Lal, in “The Offspring”. The fact she’s never referenced is puzzling.

Other issue I had: I am not a fan of the use of F-bombs in Star Trek. While I concede they were better handled than the juvenile “because we can” attitude of Discovery, it added nothing other than to justify the TV-MA rating (without the F-bombs the show - eye-gouging included - would have fit under TV-14), which some has interpreted as an intentional attempt at alienating younger viewers (Torchwood ran into the same criticism). I already touched on the mishandling of Seven of Nine (which added in some unnecessary storytelling cliches, especially at the end), and I thought Narek could have been better handled - he vanishes without explanation in the finale and no one seems to care.

They also missed a few bets. I would have loved for the mysterious tech-alien species to have had some connection to Vger from Star Trek the Motion Picture (it makes more sense than Vger being found by the Borg, which is a longstanding theory). And while it was just a destination in the show, and never seen, rather than invoking the name of Deep Space 12, would it have killed them to say Deep Space 9? There was already a visual reference to Quark in one of the episodes, but mentioning DS9 by name, along with Seven’s presence, would have allowed Picard to have connected the three “future” Trek spinoffs.

But I enjoyed Picard, and if they still make DVDs after all the madness currently in the world, I look forward to buying the complete series when it comes out, and I hope they make a second season (it’s been renewed, but these days there is no guarantee when or if renewed shows will resume production and too long a delay risks 80+-year-old Patrick Stewart not being up to it). All in all, quite pleased, yet still puzzled at why so many people hate it. But then I know there are people who cannot understand why I cannot abide by certain shows, so I guess it evens up.

[lovemesomerafael]

No One Else                                           Chapter 5:  The Hunt

Chapter 1  Chapter 2  Chapter 3  Chapter 4  Read it on AO3

“Where the fuck is Kate, you freakin’ lunatic?”  Sonny screams into Mary’s face.

Olivia Benson rolls her eyes and stands, pulling Sonny by the arm from the interrogation room.  “Yeah, so much for that,” she says as she pulls the door closed behind them.

Sonny paces in front of the one-way glass, gesturing at his former assistant, sitting quietly crying at the table in the room.  “Look, I’m sorry, Liv, but she has Kate!  We don’t know where she is, we don’t know what she’s done to her… she could by dying right now.  I know she knows where Kate is, and so do you.”

“Yes, Carisi, I believe you, and we will get her to talk.  But having you here isn’t helping.  You’ve tried sweet-talking her, that didn’t work.  And you just saw how well losing your mind went.”

The pacing is getting to Olivia.  She wishes Sonny had been able to get Mary Duderon to talk, but he hadn’t, which means that at least she doesn’t have to watch him pace the interrogation room any more.

“Look, I don’t know what to tell you.  I’d be as upset as you are right now.  But I can’t let you back in there.  You asked us to take this case, now you need to let us handle it.  You want to help Kate, that’s what you need to do.”

Sonny looks at her for a few beats, knowing she’s right, but wanting to beat the information out of Mary.  Kate has been missing since last night, almost eighteen hours now, and Sonny is frantic. All his fear and anger is focused on the mousy, chubby woman sitting looking around the box, dabbing her eyes occasionally and looking for all the world like the least likely kidnapper ever. But Sonny knows different.  She hasn’t shown her crazy to the SVU detectives yet, but she will.  

At that moment, Scott Lam comes around the corner with a folded paper in his hand.  

“Thank God,” Sonny says, snatching the search warrant from him.  “I’m takin’ Fin and Amanda.”

“You can take Fin.  But I need Rollins for this interrogation,” Olivia says, waving him toward the squad room.    

 *********

Sonny isn’t surprised to see that Mary’s apartment is sparkling clean and perfectly organized.  He is surprised to see a large, framed copy of his ID photo from the DA’s office. The presence of the picture itself is creepy enough, but its prominent placement in her living room is also troubling.

“Just be glad it ain’t next to her bed,” Fin says, laying a comforting hand on Sonny’s shoulder.

He doesn’t really expect Kate to be held in Mary’s apartment; somehow that seems too easy.  But he still tears through the small flat calling Kate’s name until it’s clear she isn’t there.  Kate’s partner, Tom Hensler, meets them at the apartment and, after a quick introduction to Fin, goes in search of the Building Manager or Superintendent, or whoever might be able to give him access to any other places in the building that Mary might possibly be holding Kate.   After that, he’ll begin to knock on the neighbors’ doors, hoping to learn something helpful.  

Sonny and Fin turn up several disturbing things during their search of Mary’s apartment. One is the picture of Sonny and Kate at Forlini’s, or what’s left of it.  Mary has burned Kate out of the picture.  

Sonny and Fin share a look of horror at that, after which Fin says quietly, “Let’s just keep on lookin’.  We don’t know anything yet.”

In Mary’s bedroom, they find a sort of macabre shrine where she has photos from the press conference following the trial, as well as pictures from the party afterward at Maxwell’s that she appears to have downloaded from social media sites.  They are candid photos taken by various people, which Sonny recognizes because he’s in all of them.  He can remember posing for most of them, although there are a few where he’d simply been caught in a shot.  Many have been blown up to a large size, and most other people cut out so that only Sonny remains, then framed.  Sonny feels icy chills creep up his spine looking at them.  

There is one picture, larger than the rest, among the framed photos.  Sonny remembers posing for this one, as well.  It’s of him and Mary at the Maxwell’s after-trial party.  The picture is a simple posed shot of some of the people they work with, in which Sonny is standing behind Mary.  She’s cut everyone else from the picture and blown it up so that it looks as though it’s a photo of just the two of them.  

As it turns out, there is a picture of Sonny next to the bed. Several, in fact.  These are the most disturbing of all.  They’re pictures Sonny recognizes, which Kate must have posted on social media, because they’re all pictures of Sonny and Kate.  But Kate has been removed from the photos.  Mary has very skillfully used Photoshop or some other program to substitute herself in each of the pictures.  It’s all Sonny can do not to smash them to pieces.

Besides the pictures, they find a shirt Sonny discarded at work after a cartridge of printer ink exploded on it, and a number of napkins he apparently used at one time or another.  He can feel his stomach churn at the evidence of Mary’s obsession with him.  

What they don’t find is anything obvious that will lead them to wherever Kate is.  

After a careful search, they find that Kate is nowhere in the building where Mary lives.  They haven’t found any receipts or other evidence that Mary rents a storage unit or some other place she could be holding Kate.  And none of the neighbors have seen or heard anything to indicate Mary’s had any visitors – ever.  Certainly not one who was there against her will.  

Sonny is beside himself.  Not only have they proven that Mary is dangerously obsessed with him, but they’ve found nothing to indicate that she is holding Kate somewhere.  Which leaves one horrible possibility.  

 ***************

Amanda Rollins needs to proceed very, very carefully.  She wonders why Mary Duderon hasn’t lawyered up – she works for ADAs, she has to know better – but she has a suspicion that, in Mary’s twisted mind, being here will result in more attention from Sonny.  

“This is where Sonny worked before the DA’s office, did you know that?”

Mary sniffles.  “Yeah, I knew that.”

“I was his partner for more than five years.  I know him pretty well.”

Mary just looks at her, saying nothing but betraying just the slightest bit of… something.  Amanda hopes she knows what it is.

“He ate dinner at my house more than at his own.  Practically helped me raise my daughters.”

“When is Sonny coming back?”  Mary asks.

Amanda continues as though she hasn’t spoken.  “Of course, it all changed when he went to the DA’s office.  He still came over sometimes, but I hardly get to work with him anymore.  And then when Kate came along, no more dinners.  Do you know Kate?”

“I’ve met her.”  

“He’s crazy about Kate.”

Nothing.

“Sonny, he always had a thing for her.  They were together in Brooklyn, you know, before he came to Manhattan.”

“Whatever.”

“Yeah, and he always used to talk about her.  He would tell me how much he missed her, how great things were between them, that kind of thing.  It was so cute, how it was just always Kate, Kate, Kate.”

“That’s ridiculous.  She wasn’t even his girlfriend then.  She let him go.”  

Amanda definitely has Mary’s attention now, if the malevolence in her comments is any indication.  

“Maybe.  But the minute they saw each other again, they were back together.  I think they’re soulmates.”

Mary doesn’t like that assertion at all.  But she says nothing more.

 *************

Tom Hensler is having no luck checking Mary Duderon’s social media accounts, because she has none.  That seems right, if she’s as insular as she appears, but they also haven’t seen anything around her apartment that indicates any hobbies, other than her cats.  And how much time can you spend hanging out with cats?  She doesn’t appear to be a reader, she doesn’t have a collection of movies, there are no crafts in her apartment, and as far as he can tell, she has no friends.  Can she really spend all her time watching TV? Or surfing the internet but making no connections?  

He hopes TARU will hurry up with the forensics on her computer.  He had personally brought it to them, making sure to let them know that the vic was a missing cop.  A couple of techs there know her, and said they’d do their best.  Although they’ve only been partners for a few months, he and Kinsella are starting to form a solid partnership.  He likes Carisi, too, and he can see the guy’s a wreck. He imagines what he’d be like if it was his wife, Kelly, who was missing, and actually has to admire Carisi for remaining as controlled as he is.  

 ************

Sonny returns to SVU, simply because it feels right to be investigating Kate’s disappearance from there.  So far, with the apartment yielding nothing but shudders of disgust, the only possible leads are Mary’s computer, and Mary herself.  But even if she has no friends, she has to have family, right?  That’s something to check out.  He gets on the phone with the DA’s office, demanding Mary’s personnel file, and hoping they wouldn’t make him bother to get a warrant.  He’ll get it if he has to, but it would take time. And all he really wants to know is Mary’s emergency contact.  

While he badgers the HR Director on the phone, he works the computer.  It feels oddly comfortable to be back in detective mode, sitting at his old desk.  He may be a new lawyer, but this, he knows how to do.  

“Hey, Carisi,” Fin calls over from his desk when Sonny hangs up the phone.  “This is interesting.  Your friend’s got a record.”

“Seriously?”  Sonny gets up and goes over to Fin’s desk.  

“Yeah.  You ready for this?  Three different guys have taken out restraining orders against her, and she’s got a conviction for Second Degree Stalking.”

“Second degree?  That’s not easy to get.  That’s stalking behavior plus the victim has a reasonable fear of harm and either a weapon is involved it’s a repeat conviction within 5 years.  What’d she do?”

The crimes of which Mary has been convicted look very much like her behavior toward Sonny and Kate. This is something they can work with. It’s also encouraging, in that she has frightened people, and destroyed some property, but she’s never actually hurt anyone.  She’s pled to stalking, so some of the property crime charges were dropped, but she’s been violent before, at least towards her victims’ homes and cars.

“We need to talk to these vics.  See if they know anything that can help.”

“What I wanna know is, how’d she get a job in the DA’s office with a Class E felony on her record?”  

“Let’s worry about that when we have Kate back, huh?  You try to find the family, I’ll see if I can track down these vics.”

Sonny tries to focus on his work.  He ignores the part of his mind that wants to scream with terror and frustration, focusing all his attention on the immediate task at hand.  He’ll have plenty of time to freak out later, and it will do no good to imagine nightmare scenarios of where she might be.  Right now, he has to find the woman he loves.  He closes his eyes briefly in prayer, thinking that he’s been praying so much God might return Kate just to shut him up about her, and picks up the phone.

Within an hour, Sonny and Fin have a list of people to go see.  

 ************

Amanda sits looking at Mary, who fumbles almost continuously with the edges of her oversized pink sweatshirt, the seams of her jeans, or her hair.  Amanda hopes it’s more than just nervousness about being questioned.  

“So, Mary, why don’t you tell me about you and ADA Carisi?”

Mary looks at Amanda, eyes wary.  “I was his assistant.”

“Yeah, I know.  What was that like?”

“I don’t know.  It was OK.”

“What’s he like to work with? As an assistant, I mean.  Was he nice to you?”

“He was OK.”

“Really, Mary?  Just OK?  Not good?  Not bad?”

“Good, I guess.”

“Me, I liked working with him.  We talked to people right here in this room, in fact.  Right here at this table.  All the time.”

Mary seems not to react, but after a few moments of silence, Amanda notices her put her hand flat on the table and move her fingertips ever so slightly, as if stroking the table Sonny touched.  

“When is he coming back? I really want to see Sonny.”  

“I don’t know, Mary.  He’s out trying to find Kate.  He’ll probably keep going until he finds her.”

Mary looks straight at Amanda for the first time all day.  Amanda smiles a little wistfully at her.  “I wish somebody loved me like that, y’know?”

“He doesn’t love her.”

“Of course he does. You must’ve seen it.  Heard it in his voice.”

Mary shrugs, but there’s a definite change in her posture.  She stiffens a bit and lifts her chin.  

“But now she left.  Now he’s with me.”  Mary quickly adds, “At the DA’s office, I mean.  We work together.”

“Yeah.  I guess.”

“I do everything for him. He depends on me.”  An element of defensiveness, possessiveness colors Mary’s speech.  

“I’m sure he does, hon. But it’s not the same.”

“She left.  Now he’s mine.”  

Amanda injects a sympathetic note into her voice.  “I don’t think so, Mary.  He’s Kate’s.”

“Kate.”  

Amanda allows herself to react to the acid tone with which Mary hisses the name, but only a bit.  “You don’t like Kate?”

“Don’t know her.”

“C’mon.  There’s nothing wrong with admitting you don’t like her. I don’t.”

“You don’t?”  Mary sounds genuinely surprised.

“I don’t think she’s right for him.”

“She’s not.”

“Right.  But I guess it doesn’t make any difference, since he’s in love with her.”

“No, he isn’t,” Mary snaps.

“I suppose he talks about Kate all the time, though, doesn’t he?”

“Not that much.  He doesn’t care about her.  Not really.”

“No?”  

“No.  He’ll get over her now that she’s gone.”

This is the delicate moment Amanda’s been working toward.  “You think so?”

The superior look Mary gives her isn’t what bothers her.  It’s the malice.  “Of course he will.  He has me now.”

“Are you…”  Amanda hopes she gets the inflection right.  It’s crucial.

“Sonny and I love each other.”

“You do?”  Amanda acts surprised, but also as though she believes her.

“Well, we can’t talk about it yet.  First we had to stop working together.  That’s why he got reassigned, you know.”

“Oh.  So now that he’s reassigned, you can go public?”  

“He’ll have to pretend to be sad about Kate for a while, of course…”

“Sad?”

“Yeah.  You know.  Because she’s gone.”

“You said that before. What makes you think she’s gone?”

“I know she is.  That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?  Because she left him?”

“Sonny doesn’t think she left him.  He’s afraid something happened to her, Mary.”

“Nothing happened to her. She just left him.  I know he’ll be sad for a while, or he’ll pretend to be. But I’m here to comfort him.”

“He seems kind of mad at you.”

“I know, but he isn’t. He’s just upset because Kate left him. We’ll be fine.”

“How do you know Kate left him?  Maybe she’s just, I don’t know, visiting a friend or something.”

“She isn’t.”

“How do you know?”  

“I just… know.”

“But, Mary, how do you know?”

“I just know.”

Amanda Rollins isn’t giving up.

 **************

“That bitch is cray-cray.”

The man standing in the doorway of his house is clearly disgusted by the whole topic of Mary Duderon, and annoyed that he has to talk about this yet again.  

“We’ve read the police reports, and your statement to the court in support of your request for a restraining order.  So we know what she did.  What we’re wondering is whether there’s anything else you can tell us,” Sonny says.  

“Like what?”

“A woman is missing. We think Mary Duderon had something to do with her disappearance,” Fin explains.  “Can you think of anywhere Mary might go, anyplace she might have access to?”

“Look, I haven’t seen her in years, and I don’t want to.  I barely knew her!  She just… latched onto me and when I told her to get lost, she got mad and trashed my car. That was it.  She got fired, and I moved so she couldn’t find me.  End of story.”

“OK, well anything you can think of could help,” Sonny says, handing the man his card.  “Give it some thought.  Call us if you think of anything.  Please.  A woman is in danger.”

  The next person Sonny and Fin go to see is a man who employed Mary for about six months.  During that time, he had a drunken one-night stand with her, which he barely remembers, except that he thinks it was she who came on to him.  After that, however, she made his life a living hell.  She told him she was pregnant.  When he demanded proof, and proof of paternity, she went off the rails. Although the man’s wife had thrown him out of their house, Mary went there and harassed his wife and sons, shrieking tearful demands.  She called and texted his cell phone at all hours of the day and night, and eventually took a baseball bat to the windows of his business.  When he fired her and reported her activities to the police, she’d tried to set his car on fire, but didn’t know what she was doing and had done no real damage.

The man doesn’t want to talk to them.  He’s back with his wife, and really just wants to forget the whole thing.  He claims not to know anything about her, and is no help.

“Listen,” he says.  “Whoever this woman is, I feel sorry for her.  ‘Cause Mary Duderon is a psycho, and the more she hears ‘no’, the crazier she gets.  I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

That information does nothing for Sonny’s nerves.  

 ***********

Tom Hensler gets a call from TARU.  They’ve found some searches on Mary’s computer and want him to take a look.  He calls Sonny.

“Hey, Carisi, I got a call from TARU.  They’re in Mary’s computer.  They called me, but you know her, I don’t.  You wanna meet me down there?  Take a look?”

Sonny looks at Fin, who is driving them toward the boarding house where Mary’s mother lives.  “Where are you now?”

“Station house.”

“Look, we’re way uptown, so you go ahead.  Take a look and then call me.  We’ll see if there’s anything there.”

“Will do.  You holdin’ up?”

“I’m tired and I’m pissed. Not payin’ any attention to anything else right now.  You?”

“That bitch disappeared my partner.  I’m thinkin’ if there’s nothin’ but cat videos on her computer, I’m goin’ down to SVU and we’re gonna have a talk.  Off the record.”

“Yeah, I heard that, but you don’t know Captain Benson.  She’s not likely to cooperate.”  

“Then this damn computer better give me somethin’.”

“Amen to that.”

 **************

“So, Mary,” Amanda begins, handing her a cup of coffee.  “Where do you think Kate went?”

“How should I know?”

“Well, I mean, if you had to guess.  Where would someone like Kate go, if they left Sonny?”

“I really don’t know. I don’t care, either.”

So much for that tactic.

“You know what I think?” Amanda asks.  “I think she’s coming back.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because you’d have to be crazy to leave a man like Sonny.  Right?”

“I would never leave him.”

“Exactly.  That’s why I think she’s coming back.  When Sonny gets back here, I’m going to tell him that.  So he doesn’t give up hope.”

“No.  She’s not coming back.  He should just forget about her.  He’s mine now.”

“You don’t know that, Mary. And Sonny, he’s so handsome, and so nice, it’s like you said.  You’d never leave him.  So Kate didn’t, either.  I’m going to tell him that.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s not coming back.  She’s such a…”

“A what?”

“Nothing.”

“C’mon, Mary.  I told you how I feel.  Tell me.”

“Her apartment burned. And she made Sonny let her live with him after that.  She’s a whore.”

Amanda tries to look fascinated but says nothing, hoping that Mary will take the invitation.  But she doesn’t go on.  Amanda tries again.

“Kate’s apartment burned?”

“Not bad.  Nobody got hurt or anything.  But she stayed at Sonny’s after that.  She wasn’t supposed to do that.  But he was just too nice to say no.”

“Maybe he wanted her there.”

“No, he didn’t!  Anyway, she’s gone now, she… left him.  And she’s not coming back.”

“I think she is.”

“She’s not.”

“Tell me why.”

“Because she’s not. She’s gone.  And Sonny is mine now.”

“I don’t think so.  I think she’s coming back, and when I tell him that, he’ll wait for her.”

“You don’t know anything.”

Finally, Mary is beginning to forget to hide her anger.  

“Neither do you.”

“Yes, I do.”

“What do you know?  Why shouldn’t Sonny wait for Kate to come back?”

“Because she can’t.”

The most delicate moment of all.

“Why can’t she, Mary?”

But Mary has realized what she said.  “Because… Because  he’s mine now.  That’s all I meant.”

 *************

Mary’s mother lives in an old-fashioned boarding house, where she rents a room and meals are served communally by the landlady.  It’s a surprisingly nice place.  It’s clean and comfortable and, although Mary’s mother is in her eighties, she looks healthy, if a little frail.  But she’s not happy to see that the police have come to ask her about Mary again.  She’s especially not happy that one of them is Mr. Carisi, the man Mary has been so focused on recently.

Eleanor Duderon knows that her daughter gets a little… overly attached sometimes.  Mary’s always been reserved in public, but there’s a lot more going on under the surface than people think.  And she has been known to overreact when the real world doesn’t cooperate with the complex, detailed worlds she builds in her head.  

“Mrs. Duderon,” Sonny begins, “We need to ask you some questions about your daughter, Mary.”

“All right.  Is she in any trouble?”  Her voice is scratchy, but strong.

“A woman is missing, and we think Mary may have something to do with her disappearance.”

“Oh, I don’t…  Mary’s not the kind of girl who would ever hurt anyone.  She’s gotten a little carried away in the past, I know, but she just has deep feelings.”

“Ma’am,” Fin tries, “This woman is a police officer.  If your daughter’s done something to her, she’s in a lot of trouble.  You understand that?”

“But she doesn’t usually hurt anyone.”

Sonny and Fin both clearly hear the “usually”.  

“But she has hurt someone in the past?”  Sonny asks, leaning far forward, his forearms on his thighs, peering intently into Eleanor Duderon’s troubled face.

“I can’t really talk about that.”

“Mrs. Duderon, I work with Mary.  She was my assistant, did you know that?”

“Yes, I know.  She’s mentioned you.  I’m afraid she’s developed a bit of a crush on you, Mr. Carisi.”

“Ma’am, it’s more than a crush.  I think you know that ‘deep feelings’ is an understatement for what Mary can be like. Don’t you?”

“Well, I suppose you know she has been in trouble before, when things didn’t work out for her and a man she likes.”

Sonny turns the charm up as far as he can, given his exhaustion and frayed nerves.  “So, here’s the thing, Ma’am.  The woman who’s missing?  She’s my girlfriend.  And your daughter, she set her bed on fire, along with all the pictures she had of the two of us together.”

“Oh, no…”

“Things at work have become strained, and Mary’s not happy about it.  She blames Kate.  She has this idea that the only thing standing between her and me is Kate.”

“Oh, so that’s who Kate is.”

“She’s talked about her?” Sonny and Fin exchange looks.

Mrs. Duderon’s face takes on a hint of confusion, tinged with what Sonny thinks might be fear.  “She doesn’t like her, this Kate.  But she told me that Kate was gone.  That she’d left you, and now the two of you would be, I don’t know, dating or something.”

“When did she tell you this?” Fin asks, on alert.

“Three days ago.”

Kate has only been missing for one day.

Fin is standing now.  “Did she say where Kate went?”

“No, only that she was gone, and she wouldn’t be back.”

[shewantsthed-ana]

Limetown Lineage Theories

The following is a comprehensive theory on the lineage of two of the most important characters in the podcast Limetown, Lia Haddock and Sylvia. I am not known for being brief or succinct, so if you would prefer a TLDR, one will be included at the bottom of this post. Otherwise, be prepared to do some reading. Please stay with us.

Emil is actually Lia’s father

This is by no means a ground-breaking thought, but I wanted to compile all the information I could find to support this theory in one place. In addition, it helps to support my other claim, which is a little harder to swallow. My evidence for this theory is as follows.

Lia’s father is not in the picture

As far as I know, we’ve never had any mention of Lia’s father in the series besides the fact that he is Emil’s brother. He is never even given a name. He is not mentioned to be in any of the pictures in Lia’s house. Lia does not attempt to contact him when she knows her family is being targeted. We know for a fact that he does not live with Lia’s mother based on the threatening call Lia receives from her mother’s house. To begin with, Lia says “my mom is calling”, but we know that the call is from a landline based on her mother saying the phone was left off the hook. This would be coming from her mother’s house, but Lia is confident that no other person would be calling from that number other than her mother, implying her mother lives alone with no husband or other children. When the phone is left off the hook and Lia is trying to get her mother’s attention, she only yells out her mother’s name. If Lia was just trying to get anyone to pick up the phone, would she not yell out other names to try to get their attention? When Lia tells her mother to get out of the house, she only gives very specific directions that are only for one person. At one point her mother says “Where are we supposed to go?” but I believe this is a red herring, possibly referring to a dog or other pet. Otherwise Lia would have given different instructions, “you and dad have to pack a bag”, “take ___ out of school”, etc. And of course, the most helpful evidence is from S2E1, where we are told that Emil has no one else he’s close to besides Lia’s mom that isn’t dead or missing. Clearly if Lia’s dad was in the picture, as Emil’s brother, he certainly would have qualified to be questioned as well.

Emil’s connection to Lia

Emil has a much stronger connection to Lia than is warranted by her simply being his niece that he hasn’t seen in probably 20 years. Why would she be the only “apple of his eye”, whom he clearly discussed often enough that other people knew he referred to her this way? In fact, immediately after Lenore refers to Lia as such, she launches into the story about how she always wanted children and her ex-husband had daughters with someone else. “I see pictures and… can’t help but feel some connection,” she laments. “Some part of me, some memory. The dream could be mine. Emil… related to that.” Does it make sense for Emil to relate to this story because he has a distant niece he’s spent very little time with? No! Does it make sense he feels this way because she is actually his daughter, because he does have pictures of her as mentioned by Lia, because they have a connection through their gift (more on that later)? Yes. There are several other small details that, on their own, don’t inherently prove this theory but do support the other evidence in this claim. The “I have heard the future” pin, something given to Lia to remember her father. The spelling of Lia itself, which others have suggested could be a shortened version of Emilia. Sure, her parents could have named her after her father’s brother, but again, it is more likely the name would be connected to her parents, specifically if they knew he would not be able to be a big part of her life (more on that later as well). Looking deeper into their names, Emil is a name that means excellent, and is the masculine form of Emily, which comes from, wait for it, Aemilia. Again, nothing definitive, but it shows a strong connection between the two.

Lia also has the gift

Again, this should surprise no one. But it does support the theory that she has a very strong connection to Emil that I believe would make the most sense if he was her father. All of the mentions of “you’re part of this”, “you’re not a mistake”, “we all have a part to play and this is yours”, everyone knows that Lia is deeply related to this project and that connection has to be deeper than her uncle simply being involved. I’ve seen many great observations from others indicating that Lia has the gift. After Lia is threatened in her motel room, the Reverend has an interesting perspective on it. “I bet you didn't know you had it in ya to back him down like that, huh? [exhales] Oh, my. Of course not. How could ya?” He claims she backed the threat down herself, not that she stood up to him, or that he backed down. She did something to influence him backing down and leaving. The follow-up is the Reverend realizing no, of course she couldn’t have known that she could do that. The Reverend knows Lia has the gift, she does not. Others have suggested that the reason Lia cried after speaking with him was because she knew, from some corner of her gift that she did not understand, that he was going to be dead soon. After Winona is influenced by the tech/gift to go to Sylvia she says “I understand. You have what you need to understand…I’m sure”. Her “understanding” is acknowledging the connection between brains as she reaches this understanding after Emil calms her down. Winona is sure that Lia also has the ability to make these connections. Winona, who is unsure of so much, is sure of this. When Lia is kidnapped in the season finale, she suddenly stops yelling and Lenore says “You can feel him, can’t you?” An overwhelming association is made in this series between use of the gift/tech and a sense of calm. Lenore sees that Lia has stopped yelling, Emil has therefore made his connection. Bouncing off of that, another potential explanation for the name Lia is that its origin means “relaxed”, again relating to the tech. Another large indication of her gift is her mother’s response to Lia’s panicky phone call, “it’s happening, isn’t it?” Lia’s mother knows Lia is connected to Limetown strongly, that there is danger present, and that Lia’s involvement is inevitable. This response makes no sense if Lia just happens to be following the story because he uncle is involved. Her mother is tuned into some secret which, again, makes more sense that she would be privy to this information if Emil was her husband, not brother-in-law. There are other details that support this point without confirming it, such as Lia always feeling a strong connection to this story without knowing why and her need to find the pin despite not knowing what she’s looking for. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, why on earth haven’t the Hummingbirds killed her already? Sure, they are clearly using her to get to Emil in S2E1. But why didn’t they get rid of her as soon as she talked to Winona? When it was clear that others would be contacted and information would continue to come out? Because they know that she also has the potential to be an extremely valuable asset, especially since Emil has slipped away, because she also contains the gift.

How did Lia and Emil get separated?

I don’t have enough information to truly answer this question, but there are some possibilities I’ve considered. I’ve complied them into one theory, though I don’t have strong evidence that the entire thing is true, only that some of the elements in this story would make sense with what we’ve been presented. Emil’s brother passed away when they were going to start working on Limetown. Lenore mentions that Oscar and Emil worked together for a few years before everything got set up, so this would be about 15 years ago, when Lia was probably younger than 10. Perhaps Emil’s brother also contained the gift and was maybe even an early casualty of early Limetown experiments. Perhaps Lia was starting to show evidence of possessing the gift, and it was probably strongest around Emil. So Emil and Lia’s mother decided it was best for her to be apart from Emil, maybe seeing how the gift could be dangerous because of the death of Lia’s real uncle. So Emil decides to adopt his brother’s personality and fake his own death instead in order to gain an understanding of his gift so that he may reconnect with his daughter.  

But hold on a second….

Can’t this could be true while Lia is still Emil’s niece? Sure, and would explain what happened with Lia’s father. They would both have had the gift and that could explain why the father is not in the picture, either being killed or killing himself in another conspiracy. But I believe the strength of Emil and Lia’s connection, from the “apple of his eye” to Lenore’s story about children to the names all point to a parental connection.

Why would Emil leave his family if he cared for them so much? He may have seen a greater duty to help society through the research. Maybe he knew it was dangerous, based on an experience with his brother or connections with Lia. Or maybe Lia’s mom wanted him out of the picture. Lots of possibilities, no answers.

Sylvia is Oscar Totem’s daughter

I know, I know. But I truly believe this is correct, even stronger than I believe Lia and Emil’s relationship.

Oscar is Winona’s husband

There is an incredible amount of evidence to support this throughout the series. First of all, Winona never mentions her husband by name, only as “the man”, “my husband”, “the man who lived in my house”. This opens him up to be anyone. Winona has a great aversion to discussing Oscar at all in her interview. When Winona mentions that “we’ve all got a role to play”, she says “that was the slogan”, when most others referred to Oscar saying this line. Winona also gets extremely upset twice during her conversation with Lia, once throwing a plate, and both are after direct questions about Oscar. The first time Winona snaps is after this very carefully worded line of questioning by Lia: “Was that your husband? Or was it The Man That You Were All There For? Was that man Oscar Totem?” Lia thinks she asking if Oscar Totem was The Man That You Were All There For, but listening closely, she is inadvertently asking if Oscar Totem is Winona’s husband, which results in Winona’s outburst. Winona also drops several smaller hints about her connection with Oscar. “I was there because of the man”, implying her husband was important in the town. She refers to Emil as “the one my husband and his friends are all here for”, suggesting her husband was directly related to the research team by referring to him and his friends as opposed to everyone. Lia asks if Winona can tell her about her husband’s work, she says no. Winona says her work was demeaning, but will not say why or what her previous work was. Is this because she was also in the neuroscience field, and revealing this information would connect her and Oscar? Not unlike Deirdre and Max’s meeting through college, would revealing her background reveal a connection with Oscar? In addition, why is she using a fake name at all? Is it because Oscar’s wife was likely listed in the Limetown manifesto? When Winona tells her husband what she’s seen at the lab, he immediately gets scared and says she will be reassigned to another job. Who else would be privy to enough information to not only be aware of everything Winona was saying, but to know it was concerning that she was aware of it? Who else would be so involved in the research team, but still have enough influence over the town to be able to get her reassigned right away? Oscar Totem. Not to mention the fact that he of course had the greatest amount of access to the tech, which he could have installed in Winona in order to, as I refer to it, scramble her eggs. Winona often rubs the front of her head, despite all others having the implant put in above their ear. Did she get an early version of the tech, maybe to help her forget what she saw?

Sylvia is actually Lenore’s daughter

So I definitively believe that Oscar and Winona are married. However, I think there is a possibility that Sylvia is actually the daughter of Lenore. First of all, as others have mentioned, Winona never calls Sylvia her daughter. She refers to her as a little girl that she lived with. Even when Lia starts to ask about Sylvia, ostensibly inquiring as to whether Sylvia is Winona’s daughter, Winona cuts her off before Lia can say the word. It is mentioned by Lenore that she and Oscar Totem were “close”. An interesting choice of words that can certainly hold the connotation of lovers. Also, does Lenore seem to be the type to get close to many people, period? They must have had a strong connection. Perhaps Oscar got Lenore pregnant a few years before Limetown. This could give even more significance to Lenore’s speech about feeling a lost connection to a child that wasn’t hers. Maybe this is even another reason that Oscar scrambled Winona’s eggs, to try to get her to forget that her daughter wasn’t hers. If Sylvia is Lenore’s daughter, this would explain why they still have a connection now, 10 years later. It could partially explain Lenore’s message in the season 1 finale, “Sylvia, it’s time. They know”. She connected with her daughter post-Limetown and they have some hand in taking down the Hummingbirds. If Lenore had just saved Sylvia for no reason, why would she still be involved after all this time? And that last point is what I consider the most damning piece of evidence. Why on earth would Lenore save Sylvia? Lenore, the most calculating, objective, pragmatic character on the show. A true utilitarian. Why would she spare one person? Sylvia is not the only child in the town, evidenced by the presence of a school and the fact that the work day coordinated with school so that parents could walk their children home. Sure, maybe because she was “close” with Oscar, she would have sympathy for his kid. But is Limetown-era Lenore Dougal a person you associate with sympathy? No. And then why wouldn’t she save others, Winona for example? The only thing I could possibly believe that would cause Lenore to have a moment of weakness is that if it were her, albeit secret, child on the line.

Questions I still can’t answer

So clearly I have a lot of thoughts here. But with any good mystery, there are still several aspects of this story that I don’t have explanations for.

Why exactly did Emil leave his family if he is Lia’s father?

Why does Winona have memories of Limetown that would be the most prudent to erase if her memory is messed with on purpose? Seeing Emil, the fact that so many others are dead, etc.

Why did Emil save Winona?? I definitely believe it was Emil that sent Winona out of the gates, not Oscar. Winona says she doesn’t know why “he” saved her, if it was her husband, it would make sense. In addition, Oscar didn’t know that things were getting so bad before the Panic or he would have saved himself and his child. But when Emil does save her, why doesn’t he have her take Sylvia as well?

What is Emil’s connection to Sylvia, why does he send Winona to care for her? I don’t believe she is also his daughter. Lia is called THE apple of Emil’s eye, which I don’t think would be the case if he had another child. Who would the mother be? Lia would have remembered if she had a sibling considering she would have been about 8 when Sylvia was born. Is Winona’s code name a hint to her significance? Winona means “first born daughter”. Is this telling us that the most important parts of her story are her information on/connection to Sylvia? Then Sylvia definitely couldn’t be Emil’s first-born daughter as Lia is older.

How do so many (Winona, Reverend) know of Lia’s gift when she doesn’t?

Why was Winona able to just walk out and leave? What happens to her after that? She must have been relocated like the rest of the survivors, there’s no way the Hummingbirds would have just left a loose end like that. They must have found her and put her somewhere. But how did they know? Why did Emil send her out if she was just going to be found anyway? How does she KNOW that so many others are dead? What did Winona see that Emil needed her to see?

TLDR;

Emil is Lia’s father because of their deep connection and the fact that Lia has the gift. Sylvia is the daughter of Oscar Totem, whom is certainly Winona’s husband, and possibly Lenore Dougal, which resulted in Lenore sparing her after the Panic. There are still multiple questions to answer, but I believe these theories can provide a new way to experience the show.

[anneapocalypse]

On Carolina, Epsilon, and Mutual Isolation

@blaze-edge​​ asked:

Okay, Anne, question abt your 'AIs always isolate their hosts' post. I've kind of been thinking abt it on and off since I read it, but was it Epsilon that really isolated Carolina from the Reds and Blues? I could totally be missing smth here bc my memory is bad but wasn't she the one that convinced him to go out and find the missing Freelancer tech? I know you said that Carolina didn't stop to get to know everybody until after Epsilon was gone but that was also after everything on Chorus was all wrapped up. No more mercs with Freelancer gear they shouldn’t have, no more Hargrove, no more civil war. Say, if after s10 they’d all actually gone back to Blood Gulch, do you think Carolina would’ve stayed isolated? Genuinely curious abt your thoughts here.

This is a good question and it’s going to be a complex answer, and a long one.

First, I feel like I can’t really answer this without addressing that elephant in the room, the authorial decision to leave Carolina out of the first half of the trilogy. I mean, I could but I’m not going to. Carolina’s isolation from the Reds and Blues during the first half of the Chorus trilogy can be discussed without addressing the decision to keep her offscreen almost entirely during that time, and I realize that they are two separate discussions; I just want to address both of them.

So, let’s get the Doylist side of things out of the way first. If you’re not here for that please feel free to just skip ahead to the Watsonian section, which will be loudly delineated for your convenience below!

Authorial Decisions and the Problem of the Epilogue

It’s entirely possible we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all if not for the season 10 epilogue. Watched in isolation, it’s incredibly obvious that the epilogue was written with no idea what season 11 would be about. The dialogue that leads into the epilogue suggests not that the Reds and Blues are stranded on a strange planet, but that they have gone home to Blood Gulch.

Carolina: What about your teams? What will happen to them? 

Church: Well there’s still one place we haven’t visited. Somewhere we can make a home. 

Carolina: Show me.

And when next we cut back Epsilon and Carolina, it’s the epilogue, now shot in Halo 4, in which Carolina and Epsilon are overlooking a vaguely Blood Gulchy looking canyon as the Reds and Blues run around below.

Carolina: Seems like they’re getting settled. 

Church: Yup. 

Carolina: So I guess everything is finally getting back to normal. 

Church: What passes for normal around here, sure. What can I tell ya? We’re home. I mean, they’re home.

So anyway, this didn’t happen.

There’s no plausible continuity in which this conversation actually takes place on Chorus after a devastating ship crash in which the Reds and Blues are the only survivors out of thousands, on a planet they know nothing about. The above dialogue has been retconned to the point that there is no way to reconcile it with the canon that followed. This scene was clearly supposed to indicate that the Reds and Blues had returned to Blood Gulch, and Carolina and Epsilon were about to leave on a new mission of their own, knowing that the Reds and Blues were home and safe.

It’s not a question of “Is this action in-character,” it’s a matter of “Outside of its intended context, a context that no longer exists, this dialogue straight up does not make any sense.” I am that obnoxious person who will go to just about any lengths to reconcile continuity for the purposes of my own writing, and I am saying here and now: as of season 12 canon, the above conversation did not happen. Like we’re past Recovery One and into season 9 trailer levels of did not happen.

So to answer one of your questions from an out-of-universe perspective: Yes, if the Reds and Blues had actually returned to Blood Gulch, Carolina and Epsilon would still have left--because that was the original intent. The Reds and Blues were going to be back in Blood Gulch, and Carolina and Epsilon were going to leave.

In spite of retconning all the content of that conversation that established the obviously-intended setting, tone, and context of that epilogue, the decision was made to keep the point of Epsilon and Carolina taking off and leaving the Reds and Blues without saying goodbye. (Without saying a word, and yet somehow Wash and everyone else seem to be aware they just ran off on their own, instead of being worried they might be, you know, in trouble, or dead.)

And thus we have a season and a half where Carolina and Epsilon are not only shoved offscreen and denied further character development, but the one piece of characterization we can draw from their actions paints them both in what is almost certainly a much worse light than that epilogue originally intended.

When they do return--well, we’ll get to that, but I think it bears remembering that Carolina on Chorus is so detached from the Reds and Blues onscreen that we have discussion spanning years in this fandom over which team she is actually on, because while blocking fairly clearly aligns her with Blue Team (yes, even on Chorus), she has so few meaningful interactions with other members of Blue Team that in the minds of a lot of viewers, she might as well not be there. And it’s no coincidence that Carolina’s season 13 subplot is almost entirely isolated from the rest of the main cast, and has very little to do with Chorus directly.

And by the time we get to season 13 and Miles starts consciously trying to give Carolina character development, he’s dropping things that, while Feels™-inducing, have not been properly planted throughout the trilogy. Carolina thinking of the Reds and Blues as family is planted very hastily in the beginning of season 13. Her physical gesture of comfort toward Kimball strongly suggests familiarity between them, yet this has not been set up at all, as they have barely shared screentime or even spoken one on one. And because these elements have not been properly planted, their payoffs are confusing, and become difficult to interpret in-universe, which we’ll get to in a minute.

Even Carolina fighting side-by-side with Wash in “Great Destroyers” comes very much out of the blue, when there has been almost zero interaction between them for most of the three seasons. And this, I think, highlights the greatest narrative tragedy for these characters, which is that neither Epsilon nor Carolina ever get any real resolution with Wash. There is no conversation about their histories, no sharing of their pain, no acknowledgment of the ways they have been hurt and hurt one another. Wash and Epsilon never discuss what happened between them in Freelancer, to the point that we, the viewers, still don’t really know--and Epsilon dies without the show ever giving them that closure. We don’t get to see Wash’s initial reaction to Carolina being alive, and so we don’t really know how he feels about it at the time. We see them fight together with near-seamless cohesion at the end of 13, but their relationship lacks a kind of emotional continuity that can only come from letting them acknowledge their shared history directly.

So all of that is why we are where are. From an in-universe perspective, then, what can we take from this mess?

ALL ABOARD THE WATSONIAN TRAIN, PLEASE MIND THE GAP.

Here’s what this post is actually about:

Carolina and Epsilon’s relationship during season 10 and the Chorus trilogy, and how, while they are positive forces in one another’s lives in some ways, they also keep one another isolated.

I say “keep one another isolated.” Two critical points here:

It goes both ways.

They’re both already isolated when they meet.

To expand on point 2, by the time Carolina meets Epsilon, she has been isolated for a long time. She watched her team fall apart around her in Freelancer, was betrayed and attacked by multiple teammates, was left for dead by her own father, and spent several years in hiding before resurfacing to find closure. Carolina’s relationship with Epsilon by no means creates her isolation. What it does is prolong it, by delaying the formation and reconciliation of other meaningful relationships in her life.

Equally important is Epsilon’s own isolation, though it’s a bit more subtle. @epsilontucker pointed out once that Epsilon coming to identify as “Church” following his reactivation by Caboose didn’t just happen--it was a process. Epsilon’s struggle is that he both is and is not Church. He takes on the Church identity as bestowed upon him by Caboose. He accepts Caboose’s stories as if they were his own memories (which creates its own problems, notably passing on Caboose’s dislike of Tucker and causing significant friction between Tucker and Epsilon). But he is not Alpha. Nor does he have Alpha’s attachment to the rest of the Reds and Blues, not right away. Epsilon spends most of season 8 figuring out his own identity and pursuing his own goals--most notably, recreating Tex from his memories--and as recently as the end of season 8, Epsilon says of the others, “You know, they’re not really my friends.” His time in the memory unit, while surrounded by facsimiles of the Reds and Blues, is devoting to resolving his relationship with Tex. And when the Reds and Blues pull him out of the memory unit, he’s not terribly pleased. He only really makes an effort to connect with the others in 10 out of a mistrust of Carolina and Wash, and that connection, as we will discuss, is tenuous.

I want to make it clear here that I don’t believe either of them at any point do anything deliberately to hurt one another. Epsilon loves Carolina. In fact I think he loves her as dearly as he has ever loved anyone--yes, including Tex. And I think Carolina cares deeply for him too. Relationships can have unhealthy elements without warranting that a-word. This is not an abusive relationship; I wouldn’t even go so far as to call it a toxic one necessarily, though it might have toxic elements at times.

I would characterize it as an intense and insular relationship, of the sort in which two people may both mirror and intensify some of each other’s bad habits--and in their case, these habits have an isolating effect on both of them. I’ll stress again that I think the effect in their case (and probably in the case of other human-AI partnerships too, but that’s another post) is reflexive. It’s not just one of them doing it to the other, consciously or otherwise; it’s the effect of their partnership on both of them.

It’s true that a lot happens on Chorus, and all the characters are kept busy. But that doesn’t prevent, for example, Wash from having significant moments with Caboose and Tucker, or the Reds having moments with one another. Carolina and Epsilon’s isolation is somewhat unique to them. And it begins long before Chorus.

Present-Day Season 10

Carolina and Epsilon first connect mid-season 10, when Epsilon, concerned about her plans for the Reds and Blues, covertly follows her to the site of York’s death in hopes of learning more. His plan backfires when he reveals himself accidentally and incurs Carolina’s very justified anger for invading her privacy at a deeply personal moment. But by sharing York’s salvaged logs, Epsilon is able to get Carolina to open up.

This encounter changes both of them. Carolina decides that Epsilon can be trusted, and starts making him her first point of contact. While her relationship with Wash is already rocky, this certainly uh, exacerbates it.

Once Epsilon gets close to Carolina, he discards the connection he’d begun to build with the Reds and Blues almost immediately. He starts riding around in Carolina’s armor and withholding information from the others just as she does. Far from bridging the gulf between Carolina and the Reds and Blues, Epsilon exacerbates the situation by simply jumping over to her side, becoming impatient with the others for not blindly following along. This culminates in the disastrous attempt at a mission briefing in the holochamber, where Carolina resorts to threats of violence to maintain control of the situation, and Epsilon viciously lashes out at the Reds and Blues, alienating everyone, even Caboose.

In this scene we see both Carolina and Epsilon react to a situation that brings up past trauma for both of them. The Reds and Blues rejecting her authority is reminiscent of Carolina’s old Freelancer team fragmenting, losing cohesion, becoming insubordinate, and in a few cases outright betraying her. His companions walking away from something so important to him clearly brings up something painful for Epsilon too, evident especially in the way he lashes out at Wash.

I do want to note a difference in how they react: Carolina threatens, but she’s straightforward. Epsilon fights dirty. When he’s angry at his friends, he dredges up whatever he can think of to hurt them, and I think this is again, a side effect of the fact that he both is and is not Church. He has the knowledge of their history, but doesn’t yet have the affection that comes with time and familiarity, and that can be a very ugly combination. Though Carolina is stunned to see Wash turn on her, it isn’t Carolina who drags up painful history to hurt him back. It’s Epsilon. Though we’re missing a lot of context for what exactly happened, we know that his removal from Wash wasn’t Wash’s choice, and so there’s a sense of something distinctly unfair about what he says.

“So that's it, you're just gonna turn your back on us? No, no, you're right. You know, I guess I should've seen that one coming. It's not exactly like you're new to the concept, is it?”

Carolina and Epsilon’s past traumas resurface in this scene, and they both react very badly, and hurt the people they care about and who care about them. This is the paradox, perhaps, of this kind of intense and insular relationship. Carolina and Epsilon find that they relate to each other deeply, as they uncover the shared pain of their histories with Project Freelancer and how those histories intersect. And in a very real sense, they do need each other--Epsilon needs a friend he chooses for himself rather than one attempting to mold him into the perfect best friend they want him to be. Carolina needs someone who will go to bat for her even when she is far from being her best self.

But neither of them, at this point, are healed enough or self-aware enough to recognize the harm they are doing others. Rather than balancing each other, they amplify each other’s pain and also each other’s displacement of that pain. They’re both Churches. They share some of the same bad habits. Like shutting people out emotionally, and like lashing out at people close to them when they’re hurt.

And so they lash out at their companions, including the one person in the best position to understand and sympathize with both of them, the one person who has been supporting both of them even when they’re hurting him, who does not object until he feels he has no other choice: Wash.

Wash understands what both Epsilon and Carolina have been through in a way the Reds and Blues simply cannot. Whatever he went through with Epsilon, we can only imagine it was deeply traumatic for both of them. Whatever his emotions about Carolina being alive after he thought she was dead for so long, it’s enough that it drives him to want to help her, right up until he simply can’t go along anymore, and we shouldn’t discount what it probably costs him to stand up to her. Wash needs resolution with both of them, desperately. But neither of them will allow that resolution to happen, because in clinging so close to each other, they shut everyone else out, including Wash.

Of course, it doesn’t end there. The Reds and Blues show up after all, and help Carolina and Epsilon make it to the Director. It’s made clear, though, that they’re doing this for Church, not for Carolina. It’s Caboose’s sadness over losing his best friend all over again that prompts Tucker’s change of heart, and then one by one the others follow. Even Wash, it’s pretty clear, goes along not for Carolina or for Church, but for the Reds and Blues. After all, they gave him a second chance, and if they’ve decided to make this their fight, then he’ll be at their side.

And though no one says it to her directly, Carolina surely knows this. She knows they didn’t come for her.

In some ways, Wash was lucky. The worst things he did were worse than what Carolina did--Wash, after all, actually pulled the trigger. Twice. But what he did was witnessed only by the Reds and Doc. And it’s Caboose who forcibly adopts Wash into Blue Team--Caboose who knows nothing of what Wash has done, and simply longs for a surrogate best friend. He puts Wash in Church’s armor and calls him Church. Who Wash is and what he’s done is basically incidental.

But everyone gets to see Carolina at her worst, and so she doesn’t get the kind of forceful adoption Wash does. And season 10 ends, not with Carolina having become one of the Reds and Blues, but with Carolina and Epsilon standing alone--and then deciding to leave.

I start from season 10 because I want to make the point that Carolina and Epsilon are not isolated on Chorus because they leave at the end of season 10. They leave because they are already isolated--because neither of them feel like they belong.

It’s true that it’s Carolina who suggests hunting down stolen Freelancer tech. However, I think what Epsilon says before she ever makes that suggestion is equally important. Even though practically speaking this conversation has been mostly retconned out of existence, it’s still worth paying attention to because it shows where both Carolina and Church are emotionally following season 10.

“What can I tell you,” Church says. “We're home. I mean, they're home.”

Even the blocking of the shot reinforces this sentiment. Carolina and Epsilon are standing alone at the cliff’s edge, watching the Reds and Blues from a distance, commenting on how things are getting back to normal for them. And however we might reinterpret or overwrite this dialogue to make it fit with Chorus canon, one thing is clear: neither Carolina nor Epsilon believe that this is their home, that they belong.

With Carolina, it’s easy to see why: she has not been a friend to them and she knows that even in the end they did not come for her. Epsilon is bit more complicated. Why, after his friends risked so much to come back for him, twice, does he decide to leave them? I think Epsilon, at this point, still feels that his position on Blue Team has been usurped by Wash. And after the way he treated his friends, I think he still feels a certain amount of shame. He’s not sure he belongs.

And so the two of them hang back. Neither of them so much as speak to any of the others after the confrontation with the Director. We hear them thank each other for what they’ve come through together, but not the others. They have a conversation in which they reinforce each other’s sense of not belonging, of being unwanted by anyone but each other. And then they leave, and don’t say goodbye--almost as if they don’t really believe they’ll be missed.

Which, as we later learn, is not true.

But I think the ways things end in season 10 leaves both Carolina and Epsilon feeling like they only really have each other. And this begins a pattern of them sticking to each other while keeping everyone else at a distance.

Season 12

We get a brief snippet of Carolina and Epsilon’s time wandering Chorus alone, and from these flashbacks we can gain a few insights about their relationship as well as how they’re doing individually. Epsilon’s bullet time sequence, in particular, tells us a lot. We learn that Carolina does not sleep well and has nightmares about Sigma--whose memory is still a part of Epsilon, with whom Carolina shares brainspace. We see Epsilon himself eager to brush off these difficulties, insisting to himself, “She’s fine, don’t worry about it.” We see that he can’t fully control the manifestations of his own fragments, as seen when he has to push away Omega. We see that he gets flustered by the many voices talking at once, even though they’re all him.

And we hear him say that he gets lonely sometimes.

Incidentally, there’s never any clear indication that Carolina knows Epsilon talks to his own fragments this way, or that she can hear him doing it. It’s also worth noting that she doesn’t actually take all of his advice in the ensuing fight (she vaults over the door and uses it as a weapon, rather than staying in cover behind it) but this might be just because they briefly lost connection.

All of this lays the groundwork for the cracks that will start to show in Carolina and Epsilon’s bond in season 13.

It is when Carolina and Epsilon return to the story, and to the Reds and Blues, that we see the continued effects of their prolonged isolation.

It’s clear they still do care about the Reds and Blues. The minute their intel leads them to believe their friends are in danger, Epsilon says, “We have to go back,” and Carolina doesn’t disagree. Yet as soon as they are reunited, Epsilon is calling Tucker a “whiny bitch” for being upset about being left alone and kidnapped by mercenaries.

Initially Carolina largely stays out of their bickering. Soon after they all reunite, she runs off with Epsilon to study the new weapons, rebuffing offers of help. She barely says anything in season 12 that isn’t tactical. The rest of Blue Team’s beef seems to be with Church, and Carolina largely seems to agree, not speaking up to take sides, and no one directs their anger toward her even though she left them just as much as Epsilon did. No one seems to have any feelings about Carolina, positive or negative; emotionally, it’s almost like she’s not even there.

But this is where we come back to Epsilon’s staggering lack of empathy toward his supposed friends. His behavior toward Tucker in particular is shitty in a way that Tucker absolutely does not deserve. The data transfer disaster at Crash Site Alpha brings the tension between Tucker and Epsilon to a head, when Tucker aborts the transfer early out of fear for all of their lives, and Epsilon explodes at him--insisting he knew that they only needed a few more seconds, even though a minute before, he said he didn’t know how long it would take.

(Tangent: Tucker’s comment about how Church couldn’t find the zoom on the sniper rifle could only be about Alpha, therefore Tucker is still trying to apply what he knows about Alpha to Epsilon, and he hasn’t fully grasped the fact that Epsilon has different capabilities than Alpha because Epsilon actually knows he’s an AI.)

It’s not just that Epsilon doesn’t know what Tucker’s been through while he and Carolina have been gone. It’s that he doesn’t care. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t try to understand, and when Tucker tries to explain, Epsilon insults and belittles him. Once again, Epsilon consistently hits below the belt when he’s angry, lashing out at people who care about him using whatever he knows will hurt them. And as soon as he realizes his behavior is making things uncomfortable with the whole group, he declares that “shit’s getting weird” and runs off with Carolina to avoid dealing with it. Even Carolina sounds exhausted when she announces they’re going to check the perimeter.

Tucker is then guilt-tripped by Caboose into apologizing for basically nothing, because Caboose always takes Church’s side (and the codependent nature of Caboose’s relationships with his best friends could be an essay in itself).

This is the first time (and the only time in season 12) that we see Carolina bring up Epsilon’s behavior. She doesn’t quite call him out, but she does express incredulity that Epsilon never actually apologizes to Tucker, despite his own conscience (in the form of Theta) telling him he should. Epsilon deflects this super hard with the whole “We’re dudes” thing, which Tucker then goes along with. Playing his refusal to apologize as a sign of masculinity is, intentionally or not, really manipulative and really effective against Tucker who is struggling hard with his own insecurities in season 12.

It’s really no surprise that Tucker has already started leaning on Wash as an emotional support as soon as they’re reunited--despite the tension between Tucker and Wash back at the crash site, and despite how he has missed Church. Tucker misses Church right up until he remembers what the present Church is actually like.

Which brings us back to Wash, whose distance from both Carolina and Epsilon is perhaps the most glaring of any character. Of course there’s no guarantee that he would have a real conversation with either of them even if they weren’t joined at the brain--he is, after all, not great at “emotional stuff.” But it certainly makes it more difficult.

When Carolina chastises Wash for accepting Freckles from Locus, Epsilon joins in, neither of them quite understanding what Freckles means to Caboose, and what getting him back for Caboose meant to Wash. There’s no question that Carolina and Epsilon care about Caboose; we see this in the way Carolina (and presumably Epsilon since he runs her armor mods) springs into action on a wounded leg to save Caboose from a pirate. It’s not a lack of caring. But there’s a disconnect there all the same.

In episode 17, Carolina and Epsilon lay out three options for their next step with both armies converging on the capital for a final fight to the death. It’s Wash who comes up with the fourth option of putting the Reds and Blues on the ship home while he and Carolina stay behind, an option Epsilon and Carolina hadn’t yet heard, suggesting the three of them didn’t discuss these plans all together.

Carolina and Wash seem to have no problem working together, and Wash doesn’t even particularly seem to avoid Epsilon (note how he follows Carolina off to patrol the perimeter after Epsilon’s outburst in 12.16, knowing full well Epsilon is with her). They just don’t talk. And we see firsthand with Tucker just how impossible it is for anyone to talk to either Carolina or Epsilon privately.

There’s an additional significance to the option Wash presents, in that it very likely represents a worst-case scenario for everyone. While we can’t know for sure, this option seems incredibly likely to get everyone killed--the Reds and Blues by walking straight into a trap, the Freelancers and Epsilon by simply being outnumbered and outgunned. I think there’s a really important message we can take from the fact that they consider that option, and reject it. “Never split the party” is an adventure game truism for a reason. The first half of the Chorus trilogy involves the party being split into multiple pieces and while we get some great character development out of that for the Reds and Blues, ultimately the goal is to get everyone back together because together they are the strongest. This is an important theme, and comes up even more prominently in season 13.

The cooperation between Tucker and Epsilon to entrap Felix at the end of 12 is a high point, and shows that, however incomplete their reconciliation might have been, their teamwork is vital to their success. It’s the first time Epsilon rides with anyone other than Carolina since season 10. And I think it’s worth noting that it was Tucker who reached out to smooth things over, not Epsilon--and if Tucker hadn’t done it, it probably wouldn’t have happened at all.

Still, season 12 closes with Epsilon and Carolina celebrating their victory alone, down at Kimball’s thinking spot and away from the others, for no apparent reason.

It’s clear that Carolina has developed some positive feelings toward the Reds and Blues, but it’s also clear she’s still holding them at a distance--that she still doesn’t really believe herself to be one of them. As for Epsilon, he really seems to consider her his team, even more than the Blues. Both of them seem to believe, genuinely, that they mostly work better on their own.

It isn’t inherently a bad thing that they’re close. But it also make it very easy for them to emotionally shut everyone else out--after all, they always have each other. They are literally in each other’s heads. Carolina struggles to open up as it is--why should she make the effort to express her feelings to anyone else, when Epsilon already knows what she’s thinking? And Epsilon seems to feel the same, remaining so closed off in his conversation with Tucker that even Carolina notices.

But even if they do only open up to each other, is that really a problem? Well… yeah. For both of them, and for the rest of their team. Epsilon’s friction with Tucker has real consequences. Perhaps if he and Carolina were actually communicating to the others what the two of them pass back and forth automatically in their shared brainspace, Tucker wouldn’t have panicked and aborted the data transfer early. What they’ve missed and what they do not share creates a rift between them and the rest of the team, and that affects how they all work together.

We see even more why it’s a problem in season 13.

Season 13

Early in 13 we finally do see Carolina forming some connections with the Reds and Blues--not just running missions, but laughing and joking with them. (It’s also worth noting that this is the first time since the reunion that we see them form squads for missions not based on their Red and Blue teams; Carolina’s out working with Sarge and Tucker.)

This scene shows us that Carolina is getting more comfortable with the group but still has a long way to go--particularly evident when her attempt at a joke goes over like a lead balloon. All this time since season 10 and she hasn’t actually been around the Reds and Blues long enough at a stretch to have picked up on the fact that “bow chicka bow wow” is Tucker’s personal catchphrase. Her sense of humor and desire to be playful is emerging, but she hasn’t worked out all the social dynamics of this group yet.

We can see right from the beginning of this season that something is eating at Carolina. That she’s still pushing herself hard in training might not be particularly noteworthy, but there’s more than just her usual perfectionism behind it. In season 12, she doesn’t really let on just how rattled she is by Felix getting the jump on her; it’s in 13 that we start to see that it’s still really bothering her. She sounds uneasy when Wash talks about them taking care of the mercs, and at the portal she’s eager for a rematch even with a construct of Felix. She needs to find her confidence again.

It’s Carolina’s experience inside the portal that highlights just why she’s so rattled. Separated even from Epsilon and forced to watch all of her friends new and old die, Carolina is forced to face her greatest fear, and face it alone. It’s not just a fear of failure. It’s a fear of letting everyone down, losing everyone she loves.

That fear closes Carolina off. From everyone, including Epsilon. When pressed about what she saw, she responds with her primary defense mechanism, anger. Though she and Epsilon share a certain amount of brainspace, it’s clear they don’t share everything, because it’s not until much later that Carolina tells him what she saw.

Epsilon is able to keep things from her, too--despite everything we, the audience, learned about him from his bullet time sequence in 12, Carolina herself does not seem to realize Epsilon is having processing issues until late in 13.

And it’s these things, the things they have kept both from each other and from everyone else, that cause problems for Carolina and Epsilon at a critical point. The intense, insular partnership that has allowed them to shut everyone else out has also allowed both of them to avoid introspection--to avoid being honest even with themselves and with each other. The portal fractures Carolina’s already shaken confidence, and it takes only a few strategic words for Sharkface to seed doubt in her mind. While she and Epsilon argue over strategy, it’s Dr. Grey who comes up with the plan that saves them.

This tension culminates in the disastrous confrontation with Sharkface on the mountain, when Carolina takes his bait and leaves her team behind. I want to recall their season 12 dynamic here--both in the flashback episode and directly following the fight with Felix. In both cases, Carolina and Epsilon both blame each other for what goes wrong. There’s a playful, teasing element to that, of course. But we can hear a similar tone in their smug banter after Carolina knocks Sharkface down the first time, when Epsilon chides her for stroking her ego and Carolina retorts, “Oh please, like you’re one to talk.” Neither of them are particularly wrong there, either. But they’re both so busy ribbing each other that neither of them notice Sharkface rising out of the snow--and he gets the jump on both of them.

And as the tide of the battle turns, Carolina panics. I don’t think there’s any other way to interpret her calling for all of her armor mods at once--especially since some of them, like the adaptive camo, don’t really do her any good in this situation. She overestimates Epsilon’s raw processing power, and yes, she absolutely pushes him too hard. Certainly no harder than she pushes herself. But being made out of numbers means Epsilon can’t push through the pain of an injury and deal with the consequences later. When his memory space is gone, it’s just gone.

And thus their teamwork breaks down, Epsilon fails at a critical moment, and Carolina falls off a cliff.

This, a near-death experience, is what it takes to get them to share their deepest struggles even with each other.

To Carolina’s credit, she’s the one who pushes for a serious talk, and even then, she has to pry it out of Epsilon. He puts up one hell of an effort to avoid the subject and deflect with humor, something Carolina has never appreciated at tense moments. (You see the same thing with York during the Freelancer seasons.) There’s something heartbreaking about how difficult they both find it to open up like this, because when you come down to it, what’s holding them both back is the very same thing.

They’re scared. That’s what it comes down to for both of them, just fear. They won’t be able to protect the people they care about at the critical moments. They’ll fail. Everyone they love will die, and it will be their fault. Carolina still can’t let herself be emotionally vulnerable in front of the Reds and Blues or even Wash, yet she is so terrified of losing them that instead of standing with them and fighting alongside them, she throws herself at danger like a human shield.

Carolina’s always been a doer and not a talker. There’s not a lot of setup for her calling the Reds and Blues family. But from another angle, we might say it’s been there in her actions, in her almost reckless protectiveness of them. The only way she knows, perhaps, to show that she cares.

And Epsilon’s not so different. But his terror, I think, is of losing her. Carolina isn’t really anything like the Meta, nor did Epsilon really know much about either the Meta or Maine. But underneath that comparison is simply his fear of losing her--of being unable to keep up, unable to protect her. And this fear makes a lot of things about Epsilon fall into place--his defensiveness, his fudging numbers, his pushing his friends away--even the abandonment issues we hear in his outburst at Wash all the way back in season 10. Epsilon was created by loss. It is woven into the very fabric of who he is. He can’t lose Carolina too, and he can’t admit how scared he is of exactly that--not even to himself.

This scene is, without a doubt, a huge step forward for both of them. It’s a harsh wake-up call, a sign of how much growing they both still have to do.

And it doesn’t fix things all at once, either. Here’s a hot take: Carolina’s entire second fight with Sharkface is tactically unnecessary. Hear me out. When Sharkface finds her in the city, Carolina is flanked by Wash and Kimball. It’s true they’re in a hurry. But if we look at what happens in the very next episode, we get a perfect demonstration of the fact that Kimball and Wash could take down Sharkface on the spot with a few seconds of concentrated rifle fire. He’s well within range. Instead, Carolina deliberately sends them off, choosing to confront Sharkface alone.

I think the real reason for this is less a need to defeat him on her own, and more a desire to apologize and offer mercy. But this also suggests that she doesn’t think Wash will go along with that. A chance to confront their past together could be really powerful for Wash and Carolina, especially if they could agree to try and end it without killing him. After all, both of them fought Sharkface and his grudge is ostensibly against both of them. But Carolina still believes she has to face him alone.

So Carolina and Wash don’t get to share that moment, don’t get to face their past together, and ultimately Sharkface doesn’t accept her mercy and dies anyway.

There’s something really sad about that.

The ride out of Armonia to escape the nuclear blast serves as sort of a do-over for their stalemate at the portal site. It demands a moment of seamless teamwork from Carolina and Epsilon, in order to save themselves and their friends. They succeed, but not without cost, as Epsilon crashes after performing the maneuver.

In a way, this scene also validates Carolina’s feelings as expressed earlier--they cannot afford not to push themselves, not with so much at stake. Just as Carolina saved Caboose without hesitation even at the cost of reopening her leg wound, Epsilon helps her use the bubble shield to save all of them, even though it pushes him past his own limits. It’s complex moment, one that validates their worst fears, but also their capabilities. And of course, it foreshadows the ending to come.

“Great Destroyers” is a turning point. At long last, Carolina and Wash fight side by side, and their teamwork is near seamless. Though we haven’t seen them talk, or demonstrate much emotional vulnerability to each other, there’s a deep sense of camaraderie and trust in the way they move together as a team, proving themselves a match for the mercenaries. It’s significant, I think, that Carolina doesn’t rely too heavily on her armor enhancements during this fight--though Epsilon is with her, his presence is understated, taking a backseat to her connection with Wash.

It’s a powerful demonstration of the value of teamwork and trust over high-tech equipment, one of the major recurring themes of Red vs. Blue.

Following the destruction of the Purge Temple, Carolina sends Epsilon with the Reds and Blues to the Communication Tower. It’s the last time she ever sees him.

It matters that Epsilon’s sacrifice is not to save Carolina, but to save the Reds and Blues. I think if push came to shove he absolutely would have done the same for Carolina alone, and that’s not in itself a bad thing. But Epsilon, like every iteration of Church, has a tendency to hyperfixate on one person. Like I said above, his greatest fear isn’t losing everyone. It’s losing Carolina. And probably his greatest flaw throughout his arc, in season 10 and in the trilogy, is the way he treats his friends, especially Tucker. That’s why his ultimate resolution comes not from saving Carolina, but from saving Tucker and the rest of his friends--while trusting Carolina to be okay on her own.

The victory at the end of season 13 comes not from Epsilon and Carolina working alone, but from both of them connecting with their other teammates--Carolina with Wash, Epsilon with Tucker. They win not by working as an isolated pair, but by working with their team. That victory comes at great cost, as all their victories do. But it is still a victory.

Conclusions

Overall I think the biggest thing to be taken from from Carolina and Epsilon’s whole arc is that as strong as their bond is, shutting everyone else out actually weakens it, and weakens both of them in turn. They are at their best when they don’t isolate themselves, but form and maintain connections with their whole team.

Season 13 sees both Epsilon and Carolina confront their worst fear, one they share: failing to protect the people they love. And so it’s important that the season closes with both of them overcoming their fear, and successfully protecting the Reds and Blues. But it’s also important that their biggest obstacle in doing so--both facing their fears, and protecting their friends--has been the way they have allowed their relationship to isolate them from their friends in the first place.

Epsilon finds his resolution in sacrifice. Carolina’s isolation does not yet fully resolve in the Chorus trilogy--which is okay, because her story isn’t over. It took us until season 15 to really see Carolina acting like family with the Reds and Blues, and to see her share a moment of emotional closeness with Wash. But she does get there.

Her relationship with Epsilon is important, and no doubt has affected her profoundly. But it’s not the only important relationship in her life, and shutting everyone else out has limited her growth. Taken as a whole, I think Carolina’s emotional journal from season 10 to season 15 shows us that her healing cannot be complete without her opening herself up to genuine connection with others as well.

[e350tb]

Steven Universe: Marooned Together - Chapter Six

(with thanks to @real-fakedoors for proofreading!)

Chapter Six

“Let's build a house!”

Lapis tilted her head, confused. She hadn’t at all expected Stevonnie’s sudden outburst.

“But... we have a house,” she said, waving her hand around the command post, ‘We’re sitting in it right now.”

“Yeah,” nodded Stevonnie, “But we could build our own!”

They gasped.

“...Lapis, what if we made it a treehouse?!”

It had now been a little over a year since Stevonnie’s arrival. The small command post was filled by strange trinkets Stevonnie had found while exploring the island - old gem tech, branches and rocks, even a few old objects from the barn that they’d found along the beach. A detailed map was now hung from the wall - it wasn’t exactly perfect, as it was difficult to cartograph exact distances, but it was as good as they could possibly have made.

For all the homely sensibilities Stevonnie’s collection gave to the command post, it  had become very cluttered, and if they carried on like this, they’d run out of space to actually live in. Even now it was becoming cramped - they would soon need to do something to clear space if they wanted to keep living here.

Lapis scratched her chin, thinking it over. She had been missing the barn lately - perhaps this was an opportunity…

“We could try to rebuild the barn,” she mused, “I mean, I’m pretty sure all the pieces would still be on the seafloor around here…”

“Rebuild the barn and put it in a tree!” exclaimed Stevonnie, “Tree-barn!”

They grinned, and Lapis couldn’t help but smile back.

“Okay,” she said, “Sure. Let’s... let’s make a tree-barn.”

Rebuilding the barn was turning out to be a lot harder than Lapis had anticipated.

They found most of the barn’s remains a few hundred metres out to sea, where a school of strange, eel-like fish played in the wreckage. The basic frame of the building, which had been made of steel, had survived quite well, with only a few beams rusted into complete uselessness - but the wood had mostly rotted away. That would need to be replaced.

Worse, the water tower that had once stuck out of the side of the barn was now a nest for a species of small but very aggressive shark-like creatures. Lapis would have been quite happy to move them, but Stevonnie refused - this was the sharks’ home now, and in any case, they’d rather not have their arms bitten off or anything.

Lapis didn’t like this - the silo had been part of the barn. It was a puzzle long abandoned, a fractured dream from another planet. And now, after so long, the final piece was sitting before her, ripe for the taking, and she was being told to live with and accept that imperfection. She couldn’t complete the image, even with all the pieces before her; the site would forever be be marked by absence, of what if and what could have been. Lapis grew increasingly anxious, the longer she thought on that festering sense of deficiency, so she tried to bury the instinct.  She told herself it would be fine - everything else would be the same.

It took three weeks to set up the foundations of the barn, though it likely would have been faster had it not been for  trial and error. Connie had been good at mathematics, so Stevonnie could work out the area needed quite easily - but actually clearing that space was no small task. They chose a spot just at the treeline, so that the barn door would be overlooking the sea, elevated on stilts so that they wouldn’t have to dig a foundation (and so that it would, in fact, be a tree-barn). This foundation collapsed twice before they finally got it right.

The frame didn’t take quite as long - it took about two weeks to be finished. Some parts needed to be replaced, but there were plenty of steel beams (or at least they thought they were steel) lying around the mining tower. Once convinced that their structure wasn’t going to fall on top of them mid-construction, Stevonnie and Lapis continued working, setting themselves to task on the walls.

Lapis frowned as Stevonnie finished piling up some slats of wood, gathered from some of the wild forestry in the surrounding area. Cut from logs, the panels were thick and spotted-red, their texture rough and wild. On one side they round, like a log - on the other they were flat - or at least they were vaguely flat, in a very lumpy sense of the word.

“What’s wrong?” they asked.

“The wall panels didn’t look like those,” replied Lapis, “They were... flatter.”

Stevonnie paused, frowning, but shrugged and began to busy themself by counting the slats.

“It’s okay if they look a bit different, right?” they asked offhandedly.

“But we’re supposed to be rebuilding the barn,” said Lapis testily, “Not building a new barn.”

Stevonnie glanced from her to the logs and then back again.

“Lapis, I... we don’t the tools for that,” they explained, “We’d need a power saw or something. And then we’d need electricity for the power saw. It’s just... I can’t do that.”

Lapis shook her head.

“Look, I’m sorry, Lapis,” said Stevonnie, “But we can’t.”

“Yeah,” Lapis grumbled, looking away, “Fine.”

It wasn’t fine. The whole thing just wasn’t... right. It was wrong. All wrong.

Perhaps she was being unfair, but as far as Lapis was concerned, there was a big difference between a barn and The Barn. They were deviating so much from that image that they might as well be building a totally new one (which, technically, they were, but that wasn’t the point.)

She’d have to accept the new walls, but she couldn’t deny that it put her in a foul mood.

Her mood grew increasingly sour as construction continued.

Many of the things in the barn that had not been saved in the cave had rotted or rusted away at the bottom of the sea. This included the truck in which Peridot and Lapis had once watched TV - it was a rusty shell of itself, half-buried in sand. Stevonnie suggested cutting the lid off the escape pod and using that instead, but the blowtorch they found in Lapis’ stuff didn't work on the advanced Homeworld material.

Not that it particularly mattered, because the TV was ruined too. True, it would have been useless without power anyway, but it had sentimental value - it was supposed to be there. Still, Lapis reluctantly accepted its absence.

Then, after two months of building walls, they came to the roof. Again, the old materials were gone, but from Connie’s memories of high school, Stevonnie had a vague idea of how to make a canopy. They could gather leaves from the nearby trees and use those - not only would it be effective, they thought, but the green leaves would look fairly nice as well.

Lapis put her foot down.

“No,” she snapped, “It’s not supposed to look like that.”

Stevonnie pinched the bridge of their nose. They were carrying a toolbox under their other arm.

“I know, Lapis,” they replied, “But we can't get the old tiles back. This is the best we can do.”

Lapis shook her head. Again, she knew she was probably being unfair, but the changes were making her very uncomfortable - after all, they were supposed to be rebuilding the barn; what was the point if it wasn’t how she remembered it? Surely, she thought, there was something that could be done?

“But you're a human,” she said pointedly, “You should be able to build a human roof.”

“I'm not an architect,” Stevonnie replied, lips pursed. “I don't know how to tile a roof like that.”

“Well, maybe you'd be able to if you didn't have to deal with two people in your head,” muttered Lapis.

“What was that?”

Stevonnie’s brow was furrowed and their free fist clenched. Part of Lapis warned her to back down; this was too far, the barn being different didn’t warrant going there, but she was too worked up to heed it.

“I said maybe,” Lapis replied, raising her voice, “Steven would be able to build that roof if he wasn't too busy being subsumed into you!”

“Lapis, we talked about this,” snapped Stevonnie, “You know he wants…”

“But does he really?” demanded Lapis, “Or has he just lost himself, huh?”

“Lapis, I need you to back off,” warned Stevonnie, “Steven doesn't need-”

“I'll tell you what he doesn't need!” Lapis thundered, “He doesn't need to have his identity drowned just because Connie doesn't wanna let him go!”

“What? Connie is not holding him in!” Stevonnie explained angrily, “Why - why the heck would you accuse her of that! Why would you even think-”

“Because that's what I did to Jasper!”

Lapis’ voice echoed in the silence that followed. Slowly, Stevonnie’s hold on the toolbox slackened and it crashed to the floor.

Lapis covered her mouth with her hands. An instant flood of shame and regret doused her anger.

She'd gone too far.

This was it. She’d ruined everything. Again. She hadn’t meant what she’d said, not really, but that didn’t matter - she’d said it, and now Stevonnie probably hated her for it.

“Lapis…”

Stevonnie's voice was soft and shaken.

Lapis extended her wings and flew into the sky, unable to look the fusion in the eye.

A week passed.

Stevonnie walked carefully down the beach, about two kilometres from the command post. Lapis sat just ahead of them, looking forlornly at the sea - she had been here ever since she fled the barn, and Stevonnie hadn't quite worked up the will to approach her since. They wanted to help her - but they'd still been offended by what Lapis had said.

They'd needed to cool off, just as Lapis had. Now they were ready.

Gently, Stevonnie sat down next to their friend.

“Lapis?”

Lapis didn’t look up, instead gazing intently at the gentle surf.

“It was torture, Stevonnie,” she said hollowly, “Every minute, every second, for months.”

Stevonnie said nothing, allowing her to continue.

“We fought so hard,” she continued, “Everything that made us us ended up… I saw everything she was and everything she had ever been - and I used it against her. And so did she.”

Lapis looked at Stevonnie. Her gaze was dark and haunted.

“And then it stopped being us and started being me.”

“Malachite,” whispered Stevonnie.

“Malachite came from how much we hated each other,” continued Lapis, “So I guess that's all she knew. She hated the Crystal Gems. She hated the watermelons. She hated you. I hated you.”

“So being in her head was like a world without love,” said Stevonnie.

They shook their head.

“Ah, geez, that sounded less corny in my head.”

Lapis snorted bitterly.

“It's not far off the mark,” she said. “But it’s even more complicated than that. It’s like… not being in a world without love, because I - she… there was things that were… nice. Or I guess, beneficial, at least.”

She sighed, leaning back and looking up at the clouds. “Malachite didn’t get lonely. Malachite didn’t ever feel like they lost control. I never felt so in control of anything in my entire life, like I had all the pieces together for once, like I - we - she could do anything. Power. It was power, and control, and Malachite loved that.”

Visibly shaking, Lapis looked down at the edge of the ocean, where it came so close to meeting their toes. It didn’t, but it was mere inches away.

“I guess I've… I’ve always been afraid,” she continued, voice dropping to a whisper. “That that's what it's like for you. That... that Steven and Connie are trapped like I was, and they can't escape... that they're being hurt, and they don’t even realize it. And I know that’s probably not what’s happening, but I…”

Stevonnie nodded.

“Lapis,” they said, “Can I show you something?”

“I... guess?”

Stevonnie crossed their legs, motioning for Lapis to do the same. Slowly, she did so.

“Okay,” said Stevonnie, “Breathe in... count to four... breathe out... now close your eyes…”

Lapis did as she was bid, and when she re-opened her eyes, she was sitting in a sprawling plane of blank blue space, still across from Stevonnie. They were humming quietly to themself - Lapis recognised the tune.

Here comes a thought…

Stevonnie motioned for Lapis to look to her left. Her eyes widened as Steven and Connie approached her - they were holding hands, and Steven offered her a kind smile.

“But… but…” Lapis looked from them to Stevonnie and back.

Steven sat down in front of her, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Is this… but it can’t be!” exclaimed Lapis, “It’s supposed to be dark! It’s supposed to be crushing! It’s… it’s…”

She swallowed.

“...it’s not like that at all, is it?” She breathed in, shaking her head. “I… Connie, I am so sorry…”

Connie smiled, shook her head and pointed up.

Lapis looked up. She gasped - the sky was filled with white butterflies. They wafted gently overhead, almost like snowflakes, swirling in opalescent flickers of emotion. As she watched them go by, her racing mind began to calm down.

Returning her attention forward, Lapis realized Connie and Steven had joined her on the ground, but they were both now completely prone. All smiles, the two laid inches apart, studying the expanse of pale butterflies flutter above their heads. Lapis allowed herself another deep breath and slowly reclined beside them, stretching out on her back. Contentedly, Lapis watched the skies above for a time, enjoying her company and the momentary peace, without fear or confusion anchoring her to reality.

Eventually, Lapis blinked and found herself back on the beach, looking into Stevonnie’s eyes.

“You see now, Lapis?” asked Stevonnie.

A few stray tears fell from Lapis’ eyes as she looked up at her friend.

“I... that wasn’t Malachite at all,” she replied.

“What was it?” asked Stevonnie nervously, “Was it… was it okay?”

Lapis smiled, more tears beginning to fall.

“It was beautiful.”

In the end, despite the liberties taken, it was still the barn.

Lapis stood inside, looking up at the green canopy, largely made from the local plants and trees. The walls underneath looked more like a log cabin than an old farm building, and a lot of the strange human junk was still gone. It was certainly not the place she remembered sharing with Peridot.

But now she was standing inside, maybe it wasn't so bad.

Stevonnie finished climbing the ladder up to the barn entrance (the door had not been replaced, so it was permanently open), carrying a mattress on their back. They grinned.

“Can I put this down next to your hammock, barnmate?” they asked cheerfully.

Lapis nodded.

“Stevonnie?” she said, “I... uh... I'm sorry I got angry about not building this place right.”

“No prob, Bob,” shrugged Stevonnie, carting the mattress over to Lapis’ hammock.

“Lapis,” Lapis corrected, “And it was a problem. I was being unreasonable. I just wanted things the way they were when I was with Peridot. But it's never gonna be like that again, and…”

Stevonnie put down the mattress.

“...and I think I'm starting to accept that that's okay,” finished Lapis.

Stevonnie smiled.

“Okay then,” they said, “Apology accepted.”

They walked over and hugged their friend before turning back to the door.

“You know,” they said, “We could put some torches up over the door…”

Lapis smiled.

“Maybe we could…”

[shirlleycoyle]

We Built a Database of Over 500 iPhones Cops Have Tried to Unlock

With research support from Izzie Ramirez.

Law enforcement around the country have had varying degrees of success in trying to access evidence from locked iPhones seized from criminal suspects, Motherboard has learned as part of the most comprehensive analysis yet of iPhone search warrants.

Though some law enforcement agencies have accessed evidence on iPhones in the last year, many officials were unable to do so, adding nuance to the debate over whether the Department of Justice should continue its attempts to force Apple to create some form of backdoor in its products that law enforcement agencies could use to more reliably unlock devices.

The analysis found that federal authorities including the FBI, DEA, and DHS have extracted evidence from iPhones in crimes ranging from drug trafficking, to fraud, to child exploitation.

The data adds specifics to the so-called Going Dark debate, a phenomenon where law enforcement agencies say they are unable to access evidence stored on phones or read peoples' encrypted messages even if they have a warrant to do so. Apple and privacy experts say that having encryption enabled on phones and messaging services by default makes everyone safer, and that building a backdoor would make encrypted technology inherently weaker.

In the absence of a backdoor, forensic companies which focus on unlocking or extracting data from iPhones continue to offer their tools, with the price of such tools decreasing dramatically in recent years to tens of thousands of dollars.

"I think efforts like this are important to try to help the public and policy makers understand what is going on," Jim Baker, former general counsel of the FBI and now director of national security and cybersecurity at thinktank the R Street Institute, told Motherboard in a phone call.

Baker was the FBI's head lawyer during the San Bernardino case, where the Department of Justice tried to legally compel Apple to introduce a flaw into a version of its operating system to make it easier for law enforcement to unlock an iPhone. He has since said that public safety officials have to learn to live with encryption because the alternative of introducing a backdoor creates more vulnerabilities in devices that everybody uses.

For all the public bluster on both sides of the Going Dark issue, neither tells the full story. On one side, the Department of Justice has repeatedly advocated for a new method of access, perhaps where Apple would retain encryption keys for devices that law enforcement could then use themselves. When the Department of Justice discusses the issue publicly, they almost never mention that tools do exist which can unlock iPhones in some circumstances, including the latest models. On the other, an overwhelming number of technologists and the tech giants themselves say that creating a backdoor would further expose users to hackers and other threats.

But this debate is most often discussed with anecdotes and not data, and never data that is publicly available, until now. Motherboard collected and analyzed over 500 iPhone search warrants and related documents filed throughout 2019 to build a database of cases in which law enforcement attempted to get information from an iPhone.

One of the top level findings of Motherboard's dataset is that many law enforcement agencies and officials can not reliably access data stored on iPhones. Whether that's due to a device having too strong a passcode, the phone being damaged, an unlocking capability not being available at that specific point in time, or a particular agency not having access to advanced forensic technology itself, Motherboard found many cases where investigators were not able to extract data from iPhones, at least according to the search warrants.

But in some cases officials were able to obtain data from a variety of devices, including some of the latest models of iPhones offered at the time. Multiple federal agencies and local police departments have access to tools from companies such as Grayshift and Cellebrite, which can, depending on a variety of factors, unlock and obtain data from iPhones.

When state authorities couldn't access an iPhone in a child exploitation case, an official from Homeland Security Investigations, part of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), filed for a warrant on their behalf to use more advanced techniques. When a Border Patrol official couldn't get into an iPhone, the agency sent the device to a Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory (RCFL), an FBI-controlled facility with access to phone cracking technology, for extraction.

A screenshot of a section of Motherboard's database. Image: Motherboard

Most of all, the records compiled by Motherboard show that the capability to unlock iPhones is a fluid issue, with an ebb and flow of law enforcement sometimes being able to access devices and others not. The data solidifies that some law enforcement officials do have trouble accessing data stored on iPhones. But ultimately, our findings lead experts to circle back to the fundamental policy question: should law enforcement have guaranteed access to iPhones, with the trade-offs in iPhone security that come with that?

"That there are a number of variables involved here does not sound unique to the context of encrypted devices. Law enforcement does not operate in a perfect world," Riana Pfefferkorn, associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, told Motherboard in an email. "Entropy happens. Witnesses can be difficult to locate and reluctant to speak to investigators. Memories and bruises fade over time; other physical evidence may be damaged or incomplete. Different agencies have different budgets, and when it comes to digital forensics, they don't all have equal access to specialized personnel and equipment."

"Law enforcement has never been guaranteed that its job will be quick and easy and efficient," she added. "I do not believe law enforcement deserves some guaranteed-reliable means of accessing data on phones."

An FBI spokesperson wrote in an email, "There is a wide disparity of capabilities that exists across the American law enforcement landscape. We must restore and maintain the constitutional balance regarding lawful access to evidence in order to ensure the continued ability of our local and state law enforcement agencies to protect their citizens by investigating local crime and to collect evidence while respecting the privacy of law-abiding citizens. Local, state and federal law enforcement each must be able to exercise their intended mission to protect the American public. Those unique law enforcement jurisdictions should continue to be prescribed by the Constitution, courts and our elected officials, not based upon what a particular industry, company or individual believes is most appropriate." (Lawmakers previously asked FBI Director Christopher Wray to answer questions about the issue, calling the Bureau's Going Dark narrative "highly questionable" after Motherboard revealed that some local police had bought modern iPhone unlocking tools).

Government departments have their own datasets on encrypted devices. FBI Director Christopher Wray repeatedly said that the FBI was unable to gain access to the content of 7,775 devices during the 2017 fiscal year. But The Washington Post found the Bureau grossly inflated those statistics, with the correct number being between 1,000 and 2,000. In February USA Today reported that the Manhattan District Attorney's Office is unable to access 2,500 devices in its possession. Neither the FBI or Manhattan District Attorney's Office datasets are available to the public.

Do you have access to data on unlocking cellphones? Do you know anything else about it? We’d love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on+44 20 8133 5190 , Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

"This was something that frustrated me tremendously when I was in the government," Baker said. "It was very hard to get good data that we could rely on to make a strong case about how bad the problem was."

Baker said one reason it was difficult to obtain good data was due to how some law enforcement officials don't even bother to go through the process of obtaining a warrant and trying to unlock a phone because they already know that the device is encrypted and they likely won't get any useful information.

"How do you count that?" when there is no search warrant or application available, Baker asked.

To be clear, the data compiled by Motherboard has several limitations that are vital to keep in mind. It does not include every iPhone-related case in 2019: PACER, the court records system Motherboard used to construct the database, is focused on federal warrants, so the data does not include many other cases of local police departments applying for warrants to unlock iPhones that exist. Although Motherboard did create a relatively large dataset, we likely did not obtain every iPhone unlocking case from PACER, due to inconsistencies and variations in how law enforcement officials name such cases, meaning some are filed under obscure titles making them harder to discover.

Sometimes court records can be missing details for no disclosed reason. In some cases, the sheet laying out what specific information investigators obtained was blank or vague. Officials can also make mistakes in their filings. And although in some cases a court docket says the search warrant has been "executed"—that is, acted upon—there is some inconsistency in whether that means whether an investigator was actually able to unlock an iPhone or not. One warrant the ATF executed in an escaped prisoner case said the agency "Attempted forensic examination;" another one the DEA executed said that "Brute force process was attempted." In some cases, suspects provided consent for their device to be searched, but officials sought a warrant in case this consent was later revoked. Law enforcement being locked out of phones is also not limited to Apple's iPhones; law enforcement can have issues with some Android devices as well.

With those caveats, the dataset still presents a snapshot of the Going Dark issue. Out of 516 analyzed cases, 295 were marked as executed. Officials from the FBI, DEA, DHS, Homeland Security and Investigations, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were able to extract data from iPhones in investigations ranging from arson, to child exploitation, to drug trafficking. And investigators executed warrants against modern iPhones, not just older models.

A screenshot of a case where investigators were unable to access an iPhone. Image: Screenshot

In some cases, investigators obtained photos, text messages, call records, browsing data, cookies, and location data from seized iPhones. Some executed search warrants explicitly mention the type of extraction performed, such as so-called "Logical" or "Advanced Logical" extraction. The latter is a term with a meaning that varies between different phone data extraction companies, but generally it relates to creating a device backup as iTunes does normally and obtaining some more data on top of that, Vladimir Katalov, the CEO of iOS forensics firm Elcomsoft, told Motherboard. Katalov said those backups can contain the sorts of pieces of data that investigators obtained, and is available to all models of iPhone.

"The other methods (such as full system extraction) are much more complex to use; they cannot be implemented as [a] 'one button' solution. But return much more data (including conversations in secure messengers such as Telegram, Signal, Wickr etc, not available in backups)," Katalov said.

In one case Motherboard analyzed involving an iPhone, an FBI official wrote they obtained "full extraction," and another from the ATF mentioned the agency obtained "App Data." Obtaining a full system extraction sometimes requires unlocking and jailbreaking, essentially hacking, the device. Forbes previously reported on one case where the FBI explicitly said it unlocked an iPhone 11 Pro Max, one of Apple's most recent and secure iPhones at the time of writing, with a GrayKey, the phone cracking product sold by Grayshift.

Apple told Motherboard that the company has responded to over 127,000 requests from U.S. law enforcement agencies over the past 7 years, and that the number of requests has increased over 100%, which Apple says indicates the information the company provides is useful. iPhones often backup certain pieces of data to iCloud, which law enforcement can then access via legal requests to Apple.

In prepared testimony for a December 2019 hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Erik Neuenschwander, Apple's director of user privacy, wrote "Given the pace of innovation and the growth of data in recent years, we understand that one of the biggest challenges facing law enforcement is a lack of clear information about what data are available, where they are stored, and how they can be obtained. That is why we publish a comprehensive law enforcement guide that provides this information, and our team has trained law enforcement officers in the United States and around the world on these processes. We will continue to increase our training offerings in the future, including by deploying online training to reach smaller law enforcement departments."

A screenshot of a case where investigators sent iPhones to a specialist FBI lab for data extraction. Image: Screenshot

The current dynamic is that forensic companies find the right vulnerabilities to unlock iPhones, Apple reacts with its own improvements, and then the firms look for other workarounds.

Motherboard previously reported on one flashpoint in the ever-evolving combat between Apple and unlocking firms. In 2018, former Apple engineer Braden Thomas, who went on to work at Grayshift, emailed Grayshift customers warning of an upcoming feature addition to iOS called "USB Restricted Mode." Although the tweak wouldn't defeat the company's GrayKey product entirely, it could mean that law enforcement would need to try and unlock iPhones within a week of them being last unlocked. In future iOS versions Apple made the restrictions on communicating with iPhones over USB stronger too.

Multiple security experts said that Apple will likely make it even harder to unlock its iPhones. That circular dynamic may not be sustainable.

"I think it's going to get harder and harder to find these kinds of unlocking flaws, because Apple does control the entire stack," Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and former Facebook chief security officer, told Motherboard. Apple designs and implements everything from the hardware to the operating system itself, which gives it a tighter ecosystem and allows it to push security updates to phones more easily. Android devices, on the other hand, end up having large variations in the security of devices from different manufacturers, which may have their own vulnerabilities or may have difficulty distributing security and Android operating system updates to phones quickly. This means Apple can more easily make sweeping design changes to its phones to thwart any attacks.

A source who works for a company that makes phone hacking tools for governments said that "definitely local access is getting harder due to USB lockdown and similar features." Motherboard granted the source anonymity to speak more openly about sensitive techniques.

Grayshift's CEO David Miles and Cellebrite's press contact did not respond to a request for comment.

"It is the world we are in today, and so have to deal with it."

Apple's improvement of the security of its devices is not purely a technical discussion. It leads directly into the DOJ's demands for another approach.

"I think a couple more hardware revisions of understanding the ways that these unlocks are happening and [Apple is] going to make it extremely difficult. Which then will bring this debate back," Stamos said. Rather than relying on cases that have not been wholly persuasive, such as those involving the locked phone of an already dead terrorist, law enforcement may have stronger anecdotes to draw from if iPhones become even harder to unlock, Stamos said. In the latest attempt in January, Attorney General William Barr called on Apple to help unlock two iPhones belonging to a terrorist who attacked a Naval base.

In the December hearing, Senator Lindsey Graham told representatives of tech giants, including Apple's Neuenschwander, "My advice to you is to get on with it, because this time next year, if we haven’t found a way that you can live with, we will impose our will on you." (Graham, along with Senator Richard Blumenthal, recently introduced a bill called the EARN IT Act that is designed to combat online child sexual exploitation, but may have ramifications for end-to-end messaging encryption.)

The fundamentals of that debate—what trade-offs is society willing to make around whether officials cannot unlock some iPhones and gather evidence, but every user's general cybersecurity is improved—will likely remain the same.

"Right now, there is no known mechanism to do what DOJ wants to do without introducing substantial cybersecurity risk into the system beyond that which already exists, which is also substantial," Baker, the former FBI general counsel, said. "It makes the cybersecurity posture of the United States even worse." Instead, public safety officials need to rethink not only their approach to encryption, but how they investigate crimes too, Baker added.

"There will be costs in certain types of investigations, but encryption is something that can protect everybody and shouldn't be undermined," Baker said.

He added, "It is the world we are in today, and so have to deal with it."

You can find the database here, and the related documents here.

We Built a Database of Over 500 iPhones Cops Have Tried to Unlock syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[chateaumarmont-summer]

08/11/2019

I know it’s been some time and may I say, my life is incredibly different than when I last wrote on a tumblr. 

first of all, I got into grad school. I know I was in the midst of applying when I was writing in my last tumblr last but I’ve actually committed to a school and will be attending one in the fall. I leave for the University of Edinburgh in 17 days actually. 17 days. wow.

secondly, I’m currently sitting in my friend’s, Law, computer chair in his apartment in SF. I’ve been here for the last 7 days and will be leaving on Tuesday, August 13. my time here has been quite interesting in ways I am not quite sure I comprehend yet and that’s why I’m writing in you. I’ve been in SF since Monday, August 5. before this, I was at Lollapalooza 2019 in Chicago, IL with some amazing people: Lawrence (Law) Luk, Stephanie Cho, Kirstie Llanllio, and Ryan A. (don’t quite know his last name by memory but I assure you, we’re friends). Lolla, for one thing, was incredibly but that in itself warrants its own post, so stay tuned.

I decided to spend the summer before grad school with the people I care about. that meant coming to SF for an extended period of time to hang out with the boys who’ve oddly become some of the most important people in my life—at least right now. I think proper introductions are in order:

Joshua Anatalio: Joshua, “Josh”, is a software engineer at Apple. he’s what started this whole SF friendship in the first place. we met at Hotel Garuda in Seattle, November 2017, because we decided to both go that show by ourselves and met up as complete strangers. he lives on one of the main streets in SF proper and is dating a lovely gem named Caydie Tran. that didn’t always used to be the case though and the Josh I knew when we first met was very different than the Josh I’m friends with now. it’s been a long time coming but he’s in a good place now.

Lawrence Luk: Lawrence, but we call him “Law”, is a technical product manager at Uber. I met him through Josh Anatalio who is his best friend from when they were at UCSD for undergrad. Law is roommates with Josh’s girlfriend, Caydie. boy, was that a whole story on how that relationship came about and Law played a crucial role, I think. out of all the boys, I think it’s safe to say that Law and I are the closest. we’ve definitely spent the most time together but besides that, we take care of each other and support each other in ways I’m not sure many people do.

Tony Huang: Tony is a software engineer at NextDoor. he moved to SF from Boston last September 2018 and now lives deep in SF—Pacific Heights is the neighborhood. Tony was Josh’s roommate during one summer internship and that’s how he ended up in this friend group after moving here. (we really have Josh to thank for all of us coming together.) Tony is an interesting one. he does a lot of stuff that I otherwise shouldn’t (and typically don’t) agree nor stand for but, weirdly, I relate to his thought processes. he has a bit of a reputation amongst the others in this group but hey, he owns it and I respect that...maybe even attracted to it.

carrying on: I’ve been staying with Law in south SF, which is about 15-20 minutes away from what most people understand to be “SF proper”.

08/12/2019 [CONTINUATION]:

good morning! this is me continuing my story the next morning. well, it’s definitely 1112 on Monday, August 12. Law, Steph and I are all on our laptops doing various things. of course there’s Steph on a conference call ruling the world/stressing herself the fuck out. Law is sorta working, sorta not but hey, that’s tech for ya. here I am not really being an overly productive adult because I have no real responsibilities right now but I’m doing the best I can.

let me continue what I was saying last night: I’ve been staying with Law in south SF which is generally a 15-25 minute drive away from the main part of the city. I went with him into work for...3 days last week, which happen to be the only days he actually went into the office anyway. TECH, AMIRITE?! but I at least got to see his office which is really cool. on Thursday last week, I went in but Law had meetings pretty much all day and didn’t really want to leave me to my own devices (literally. I would have literally been on my computer by myself in the cafeteria.) and hung out with Tony instead.

so Tony works at NextDoor, like I mentioned earlier in the introduction section of this post. NextDoor just happens to be the building next to Uber downtown. they share an office with Twitter, except NextDoor really only operates one floor, so they’re mostly Twitter buildings. anyway, it was easy to meet Tony for lunch on Thursday because he works so close to Law’s building. we ended up getting Pho in a neighborhood called Tenderloin, which is apparently where a lot of homeless people are. the smell of the streets was quite.....lovely....yeah...but after that, we walked around a bit. we made it to Hayes Valley and sat at a park for a while just talking about a bunch of stuff. afterwards, we got boba from Boba Guys and he went back to work. it sounds like we didn’t spend a lot of time together, which would make sense given that it was a work day but we hung out for almost 3 hours. like, he literally left work for 3 hours in the middle of the day....tech, amirite?

disclaimer: I’m talking about Thursday because that’s when a lot of stuff started to happen. Thursday-Sunday were the most eventful because mostly people were at work/recovering from Lolla the week before. understandable, right?

[nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany]

Links 7/24/19

Digital Elixir Links 7/24/19

For Wolves, Grooming Helps Strengthen Family Bonds Wolf Conservation Center

Study suggests much more water on the moon than thought Phys.org. Great! Maybe now we won’t have to invade Canada!

IMF lowers global growth forecasts amid trade, Brexit uncertainties Reuters

Eurozone manufacturing activity worst in almost seven years — PMI FT

Nissan to post 90% plunge in operating profit Asian Nikkei Review

Is Politics Getting to the Fed? Robert Barro, Project Syndicate

Air pollution may have killed 30,000 people in a single year, study says CNN (original).

Marine heatwaves in a changing climate Nature

Bad governance: How privatization increases corruption in the developing world (PDF) Regulation and Governance

Brexit

Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan shot down by EU within moments of him becoming Tory leader Independent. A hearty welcome from Michel Barnier:

We look forward to working constructively w/ PM @BorisJohnson when he takes office, to facilitate the ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement and achieve an orderly #Brexit. We are ready also to rework the agreed Declaration on a new partnership in line with #EUCO guidelines.

— Michel Barnier (@MichelBarnier) July 23, 2019

Is this Boris’s first cabinet? As Johnson prepares to meet the Queen and be crowned PM TODAY names emerge of the Brexiteer-heavy, ethnically diverse top team tipped to help him deliver Brexit in 100 days Daily Mail

My Boris Johnson story The Spectator. An amazing anecdote. Read all the way to the end.

What happened to post-Brexit free-trade nirvana? BBC

Ukraine Election – Voters Defeat Second Color Revolution Moon of Alabama

Syraqistan

How The U.S. Lost Its Game Of Chicken With Turkey Lobelog

Docs Show US To Massively Expand Footprint At Jordanian Air Base Amid Spats With Turkey, Iraq The Drive

Iran’s two armies Le Monde Diplomatique

China?

Chinese military can be deployed at Hong Kong’s request to contain protests, Beijing says SCMP

Who are the men in white behind Hong Kong’s mob attack? AP

Hong Kong anti-government protesters warned of risk of further violence in Yuen Long demonstration this weekend at site of mob attacks South China Morning Post. From the story, if true, protesters desecrating village graves could have problems with optics. But the sheer density of local symbolism, like the canes — said to be for “caning children” — used by the white-shirted attackers (“mob”*) in Yuen Long MTR station, is a bit daunting. NOTE * A little constructive ambiguity there from SCMP?

* * *

Former Chinese Premier Li Peng, known for Tiananmen crackdown, dies at 90 Straits Times

China’s $40 Trillion Banking System Learns a Lesson on Risk Bloomberg

China’s credit push to small firms falters in factory heartland Reuters

The painful path to curing Japan of its cash addiction FT. Just because cash is easier, quicker, Jackpot-Ready

, and doesn’t allow tracking, it’s an addiction?

India

India is failing to reap the benefits of China-US trade war FT

Mid-Day Meal Workers Protest in AP; Demand Termination of Contract With Akshaya Patra News Click

Skill India | Govt to spend Rs 5,000 crore to skill unorganised sector workers Money Control

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico Governor Set to Quit After Protests, Papers Say Bloomberg. “Set to,” but has not yet.

Sens. Warren and Sanders introduce bill that would slash Puerto Rico’s debt CNBC

These journalists exposed the corruption that led to Puerto Rico’s mass protests CNN

Venezuela

Nationwide Blackout in Venezuela, Third since March – VA’s on the Ground Coverage Affected Venezuelanalysis

RussiaGate

‘A lack of urgency’: Democrats frustrated as House investigators struggle to unearth major revelations about Trump WaPo, lol.

Mueller on Trump: Everything the Special Counsel’s Report Says the President Did, Said or Knew Lawfare

Trump Transition

Justice Department Opens Antitrust Review of Big Tech Companies NYT

House passes bill opposing BDS, exposing divide among Democrats The Hill. It’s all about the benjamins

!

House Democrats unveil more ‘realistic’ climate change plan Reuters

Under Trump, 26% of Climate Change References Have Vanished From .Gov Sites Vice

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

Your Data Were ‘Anonymized’? These Scientists Can Still Identify You NYT

Parents who won’t vaccinate their kids turning to home-schooling in California, data show Los Angeles Times

Search Warrant Alleges Embezzlement, Use of ‘Ghost Students’ by Epic Schools Oklahoma Watch

Redlining in the Lap Lane Longreads

Key findings about U.S. immigrants Pew Researchd

Class Warfare

Brightly Shows How Worker-Owned Cooperatives Can Scale Up Triple Pundit

My 300 Mile Lyft Ride From Chicago to Bradford Whatever

How a data detective exposed suspicious medical trials Nature. Citizen science!

Are we happier when we spend more time with others? Our World In Data. On the Harvard Study of Adult Development.

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

Links 7/24/19

from WordPress https://ift.tt/30VzV90 via IFTTT

[tinseltine]

What'd Ya Think of This Flick? BLACK PANTHER

Tinsel & Tine's Look at

BLACK PANTHER

By Le Anne Lindsay, Editor I don’t follow comic books, but I do consider myself a “Blerd” (Black Nerd). I’m all about superhero movies, Sci-Fi Flicks, Game of Thrones, totally love Fantasy, so I see every MCU & D.C. movie that comes out, but the excitement for BLACK PANTHER starring Chadwick Boseman was palpable, building since Captain America: Civil War. Whenever I’d get depressed about something, I'd console myself by saying, but Black Panther is coming out soon! I took a day off from work to see the press screening, I bought a T-shirt, I even bought a comic book during the @AmalgamPhilly Black Panther panel discussion and party! It’s a major event to have Disney & Marvel provide an A-List Hollywood marketing roll out for a movie starring a mainly black cast, written and directed by a black man (Ryan Coogler) who I got to interview way back in 2013 when his first film came out Fruitvale Station and I’m ashamed to say it, but he seemed so uncomfortable with the attention that movie was receiving at the time, that I didn’t think he’d amount to anything. So I was blown away when he wrote & directed the Rocky movie Creed, but this… Wow, he’s really arrived. And the black community came out to support him. Of course you can’t talk about Black Panther without talking about the strength of the female characters – Tech Genius. Warrior General. Activist Spy. Queen Mother. None of them are fighting over a guy, being catty or needing to be saved. They are fierce, proud, intelligent and capable. How are you not gonna love the all bald female warrior army “the Dora Milage”. Can’t help but wonder who would win in a fight between them and the Amazon’s of Themyscira? It might be the Dora Milage because when Gen Okoya (Danai Gurira) stops that charging armor plated Rhino in its tracks, just by her mere presence, I mean that’s cool! Not to mention, a female Production designer, Hannah Beachler and Costume designer Ruth E. Carter and Oscar nominated (Mudbound) Rachel Morrison as cinematographer. I’ve seen Letitia Wright (Shuri) in that famous episode of Black Mirror with the Black Museum, but didn’t pay the actress as much attention as the show. But she’s got my attention now as the “Q” of Wakanda. I've added to my Netflix queue the movie Urban Hymn (2015) which she starred in about a troubled girl in the system who’s encouraged by a social worker to find herself through singing. From the trailer it looks like Letitia has a great voice too. And Oscar winner (12 Years a Slave) and fashion icon Lupita Nyong'o (Nakia) gets to be the object of affection and desire, while at the same time being all about her mission, which T’Challa totally respects despite obviously wanting her to be his queen. To be fair, I was also excited last year with Hidden Figures portrayal of super intelligent black females at NASA. That movie took pride in encouraging women to enter the STEM fields of (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and now these women in "Black Panther" have taken it all to a new level. As a black woman, my heart almost burst with pride and excitement. Thank you Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole for writing this story and thank you MCU for allowing them the freedom. These guys understand the tropes of good storytelling. They borrow themes we’re familiar with like from James Bond & The Lion King but use them effectively, so as not to feel copied, but a shorthand. I’m also not taking anything away from Anthony Mackie as The Falcon or Don Cheadle in Iron Man, but of course we all know they are sidekicks and really would never warrant their own movie. What I like about Chadwick Boseman’s portrayal of Black Panther is his lack of ego. He’s really there to be King first, Black Panther second and accepts the fact that it literally takes a village to protect Wakanda and their way of life.

After the screening a whole mess of Black Tribbles stayed to tape an episode of SPOILED TRIBBLES which you can listen to below:

which will also get embedded here soon as it posts. And my 2.20.18 live segment on That's Show Biz w/ Chuck Darrow (WWDB-Talk-869) will feature Black Panther, which I'll link to podcast. Which brings us to the simplistic yet inspired storyline of Wakanda itself, which is a wonderfully expressed dilemma; a big part of me feels like a sure fire way of turning a Utopia into a Dystopia is to let in outsiders. On the other hand, if your way of life, technology, funds can help the rest of the world, do you have a duty to share? Coogler says he based aspects of his version of Wakanda on Lesotho, which were able to resist both the Zulus and the Boers, and was only lightly colonized by the British. Which reminds me - love when Shuri calls Martin Freeman’s character “Colonizer” this term for the white race, kinda makes me think of "Muggles" in Harry Potter - those without magic.

I also guested on THE LAMBcast BLACK PANTHER Podcast

On this week's @lambcast we're talking Black Panther with @TryingToBeDJV @jeanette_y_ward @SmallMind @tinseltine & @LifeVsFilm: https://t.co/cozrvUEp51 #BlackPanther #MCU #killmongerdidnothingwrong #Killmonger #FrasierDreams

— The LAMB (@LambThe)

February 23, 2018

Totally didn’t see two villains coming in this movie. I assumed Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) would be a henchman to Klaue/Klaw (Andy Serkis) who is great fun; however, I feel we don’t really get the full sense of his long standing villainy with Wakanda, they talk about never having captured him before, but he doesn’t seem to possess as much power as I understand Klaw does in the comics. I think they down played him a bit because you also have Killmonger, with a great backstory, who truly at times is hard to see as a villain, except when he demands they burn all the purple flowers which gives the Black Panther his power. Which makes me wonder, why don’t they all just drink of the flower and become super human? It takes a lot of loyalty for the people to refrain and agree it’s only for the Black Panther/King to drink.

The first challenger M’Baku (Winston Duke) the leader of the White Gorilla tribe, who have lived separately from the rest of Wakandian society, is also a well-written side character. I understand in the comics he’s called Man-Ape and this is why this movie had to be written and directed by a person of color, because otherwise he might still be referred to as such in the movie, and that would have created a bad backlash. M'Baku is fierce and sexy, but also provides a couple of very humorous moments, telling Ross (Martin Freeman) to be quiet or they’ll eat him, cracks himself up, and then admits they're vegetarians! Gorgeous world building, love the opening sequence explaining the Vibranium meteor that hit this part of Africa and how that created their way of life. I was expecting a slightly more pronounced visual opening of the city. When T’Challa, Nakia and Okoya first fly into Wakanda, we go from seeing the treetops to just being inside the Capital City. However, the Virtual Reality car chase and flight battle - leading-edge! When the Wakandans aren't speaking English they're actually speaking Xhosa, a language spoken by the Bantu in South Africa. South African actor John Kani, who plays T’Challa’s father, T’Chaka, suggested using it while filming Captain America: Civil War and taught it to Chadwick Boseman. Now I just wonder with the success of Black Panther is the D.C. Movie Universe going to move up the Cyborg movie with Ray Fisher which isn’t scheduled until April of 2020.

2.20.18 T&T Weekly Movie Segment on THAT'S SHOW BIZ WITH CHUCK DARROW also featured Black Panther start at 45:40

T & T's LAMB (movie bloggers association) Score: 5 outta 5 #WakandaForever! (Note: all above links take you to the T&T post for that subject) click to COMMENT Share :)

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[nothingman]

Click here for reuse options!

How to keep yourself safe in a barrage of threats to free speech.

We’ve entered a new era with the election of Donald Trump, and activists, intellectuals, and scientists will need to become more aware over the coming months of the safety and security of their electronic communications. Trump has made no secret, after all, of his willingness and ability to lash out against those who criticize him or his policies, and this threat could become more serious, widespread, and dangerous now that he’s taken office.

In some ways, protecting ourselves digitally in the Trump era will be the same as protecting ourselves in any other era, since good digital practices are important no matter who’s in power or what’s happening in the larger political sphere. The free speech threats under Trump, however, could well be greater than anything we’ve experienced in the past. Whether he’s shouting down CNN’s Jim Acosta or tweeting retaliatory falsehoods about a truth-speaking union leader, Trump is eager to use whatever means are at his disposal to attack those who dare speak against him. And as president, he’ll have plenty of methods of attacking everyday citizens — including an FBI that seems bent on supporting him and his policies, no matter how unconstitutional they may be.

For many of us, the more Trump tries to shut us down, the more forcefully we’ll want to speak up, but there might also be times when we want to be a little more under-the-radar, for the protection of our careers, families, and lives. It can’t hurt, therefore, to be aware of ways to secure our digital communications.

With all of that in mind, here are three tips for protecting yourself digitally in the Trump era.

1. Use Social Media Wisely

Social media platforms are great for organizing and communicating, giving us the ability to share news, petitions, and ideas with people far and wide. Facebook groups, for instance, have been key to mobilizing people in the aftermath of the election, and we’ll need to keep using these platforms to connect with others and amplify our own voices.

“It’s imperative to keep multiple loud, accessible channels of resistance and political organizing going,” said Hadassah Damien, a nonprofit and grassroots technologist with the Participatory Budgeting Project.

At the same time, however, we must understand that social media is designed to track and monitor its users. And while until now those tracking and monitoring features have been employed primarily by social media companies to target ads, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how they could be wielded more widely by governmental agencies gathering data about citizens.

Marking posts as private and only joining private groups is one way to protect yourself, and it makes sense to take at least these steps. Even if the groups you join on Facebook are marked “private,” however, Facebook knows you’re in them. And Facebook could be called upon to release that information.

“Facebook has an interest in keeping the data on their servers safe from hackers,” said Damien. “However, they are also known to comply with data requests from the federal government.”

All of this shouldn’t necessarily have a chilling effect on what we do on social media. We must, however, be conscious of how and where and when we use these platforms, and we need to understand that everything we do on them is open and visible — even when it feels private. We have to weigh the real, tangible benefits of belonging to public groups and liking political pages on Facebook, for instance, against the likely possibility that people and agencies — including the federal government — are tracking our involvement.

One option is to use alternative, decentralized, and encrypted social media platforms, such as Diaspora and GNU Social, which can work well for small groups of friends or activists who want to have a relatively secure platform for communicating, sharing information, and making plans.

With whatever platforms we use, experts emphasize that we need to understand what data the platforms are gathering and how they’re using it, and that might mean paying attention to the fine print.

“For any communication medium, I would look into the organization’s data security terms of service,” said Damien. “How will they share data? Will they share data if there is a subpoena? Do they use end-to-end encryption? Do they keep logs? If there is no use log or IP address logs, there’s nothing to turn over or record that kind of activity.”

In its data policy, for instance, Facebook explicitly states that it “may access, preserve and share your information in response to a legal request (like a search warrant, court order or subpoena) if we have a good faith belief that the law requires us to do so.” It also makes clear that it will release personal data at the request of the government: “Information we receive about you, including financial transaction data related to purchases made with Facebook, may be accessed, processed and retained for an extended period of time when it is the subject of a legal request or obligation, governmental investigation, or investigations concerning possible violations of our terms or policies, or otherwise to prevent harm.” Twitter’s privacy policy, too, says that the company will release private information and data to the government, if asked: “We may preserve or disclose your information if we believe that it is reasonably necessary to comply with a law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request.”

Until recently we’ve tended to trust that our government would only request such information if it were truly warranted. Now, though, we have a federal government that can’t be trusted to act ethically or within reason, and we need to manage our data and information accordingly. This doesn’t necessarily mean not using social media. It just means we need to understand that we’re probably being watched, and the people watching us might not have our best interests — or the interests of democracy — at heart.

2. Secure Your Calls And Texts

If you’re looking to secure your phone calls and text messages, you could use a “burner” or prepaid phone to protect your communications, or you might consider using an app like Open Whisper Systems’ Signal. This is a free service, available for both iOS and Android, that offers end-to-end encryption of voice and text communications. Unlike traditional voice and text applications, Signal encrypts all data, so that no one — even Open Whisper Systems itself — can overhear your conversations.

Signal is supported by volunteers who value safety and security. As organization’s site says, “Open Whisper Systems is both a large community of volunteer Open Source contributors, as well as a small team of dedicated grant-funded developers. Together, we’re working to advance the state of the art for secure communication, while simultaneously making it easy for everyone to use.”

Whether you’re talking with other activists to organize a protest or texting with friends about what you’re doing on a Friday night, Signal is a good option to prevent others from listening in.

For Signal to be truly effective, though, the people you’re communicating with also need to use the service. It’s essentially useless unless your friends are also on board. So talk with people you know, or even send them a link to this article. Discuss the value of using Signal at political meetings or protests. A little benevolent peer pressure, after all, can go a long way towards making communications more secure for all of us.

3. Employ a VPN

One of the most important ways to protect the privacy and security of your digital communications is to use a virtual private network, or VPN. A VPN allows for sending and receiving data across shared and public networks as if you’re using a private network. It’s a more secure way to access the internet, both at home and in the broader world.

If you’re tech-savvy, you can run your own VPN service with open-source software like OpenVPN, or you can subscribe to one of many commercial services, such as Hotspot Shield, Nord VPN, PureVPN, or IPVanish. I’ve been using TunnelBear, and I’ve found that it’s especially easy to use and set up. After you purchase a subscription and download the app onto your devices, it runs quietly in the background. You don’t need to think about it at all.

The benefit of using a VPN is that it encrypts your browsing and other internet activity from anyone who might want to monitor it. This kind of encryption is particularly important when using public wifi, but it can also be useful when using your own home wifi network.

When choosing a VPN, you’ll want to examine the safety and security of the network you’re using, and make sure that you’re comfortable with what you’re sharing with the VPN provider.

As the Electronic Freedom Foundation notes on its Surveillance Self-Defense site, most commercial VPNs require you to pay using a credit card, “which includes information about you that you may not want to divulge to your VPN provider. If you would like to keep your credit card number from your commercial VPN provider, you may wish to use a VPN provider that accepts Bitcoin, or use temporary or disposable credit card numbers. Also, please note that the VPN provider may still collect your IP address when you use their service, which can be used to identify you, even if you use an alternative payment method. If you would like to hide your IP address from your VPN provider, you may wish to use Tor when connecting to your VPN.”

Employing a VPN offers another layer of safety and security to your communications, and it makes it that much less likely that anyone will be able to spy on what you’re doing, thinking, saying, and planning.

It might seem paranoid to worry so much about the safety and security of communications under a Trump administration, but we live in a WikiLeaks world, and we’ve all seen what hackers can do when they put their minds to it. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that the FBI surveillance of the McCarthy era could soon be multiplied a hundredfold for us, here at the 21st-century intersection of digital technology and dictatorial government.

Ultimately, protecting speech is a deeply political act, and it’s something we’ll want to do if we value our freedom. Clear and unfettered communication is vital to a functioning democracy, after all, and protecting our personal privacy is just one way to make sure that those lines of communication stay open.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

For more tips and advice about secure communications, check out the following sites:

Electronic Freedom Foundation

The Electronic Freedom Foundation provides a wealth of support, information, and help for people wanting to protect the privacy of their communications. Check out its Surveillance Self-Defense site for quick and easy digital privacy tips.

A DIY Guide to Feminist Cybersecurity

This site has a range of cybersecurity tips and information, all of it intended, as the site says, to help you “take control of your digital spaces.”

Click here for reuse options!

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