#charlie does not have heart disease (the actual shock here)

[sidetongue]

the spaniel takeover

[alice-beaumont-ravenclaw]

Feliz Ano Novo!

A/N #1: Finally! Fic #4 of my Brazil series! In this story, the gang celebrate New Year’s Eve in Rio. 

Brazil series: Hottest Spot South of Havana (Part 1) | Hottest Spot South of Havana (Part 2) | A Wonderful Surprise | História

Word count: 3688

Alice’s outfit | Playlist (The last songs (starting with Carioca) are mostly bossa nova, except for the very last ones, while the ones at the beginning have more of a samba beat)

“Have you seen Alice?” 

Andre had just barged into the boys’ suite, looking slightly panicked.

“Isn’t it more likely she would be in the girls’ room?” pointed out Diego.

“I come from there! I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Charlie, do you know where your girlfriend is?”

“Last I saw her, we were all by the pool this afternoon when the concierge called her over, and she said she had to go fetch something. Haven’t seen her since,” replied Charlie.

“Ugh! I’m supposed to get her ready for the reception this evening,” said Andre, raising his hand to his forehead in desperation.

“Alice needs help to get dressed? Is she sick?” asked Barnaby, raising an eyebrow as he looked toward Andre.

“What? No! It’s just that I am in charge of the way she looks, and if it’s not perfect, it will look bad on me. My reputation will be ruined!” exclaimed Andre, falling on a nearby sofa.

“Don’t you mean you made yourself in charge of the way I look?” asked a voice coming from the doorway. “Not to mention no one in Rio knows that you are in charge of my look.”

“Alice!” exclaimed all four boys when they saw the Ravenclaw standing there, her arms crossed as a smile played on her lips.

“I thought you had a deadly disease!” said Barnaby.

“Where were you?” asked Charlie, noticing the plastic bag she was holding.

“Will I have a dance with you this evening?” chimed in Diego, ignoring Charlie’s glare.

But before Alice could say anything, Andre took her arm and started pulling her toward the girls’ suite. “No time for that! You can answer them all later. Time to get you ready for the reception!” he said before his head popped back into the doorway. “That also goes for you, gentlemen. Stop messing about and get ready!”

As the boys started to get dressed in their room, the girls’ room looked as if a hurricane had passed through it. Clothes were all over the living room as if Tulip’s and Tonks’ luggage had exploded. Which, in fact, they had.

“What happened?” exclaimed Andre and Alice, looking at the scene before noticing Penny. She stood silent in a corner, her eyes wide.

“Tulip brought magical firecrackers with her, and they exploded,” said Tonks, pointing her finger at Tulip.

“Jae Kim is untrustworthy. He sold me defective firecrackers!” grumbled Tulip. 

“That does not explain why Tonks’ suitcase also seems to have exploded,” said Andre as he picked up a charred t-shirt, wrinkling his nose before letting it drop to the floor.

“I may have hidden some in her suitcase…” said Tulip, looking away, her lips pursed.

“My autographed Weird Sisters t-shirt!” exclaimed Tonks, holding up the remnants of a t-shirt.

“Why does Penny look shell-shocked?” whispered Andre.

“Exploding pillow incident?” wondered Alice, though she had her doubts. 

“No,” said Penny as she walked over to Alice and Andre. “It just hit me that my vacation would be way better without these two.”

“Come on… They’re not that bad,” said Alice just as Tonks turned Tulip’s hair purple.

“You were saying?” said Andre.

“Ugh… Alright. Andre, close the door,” said Alice as she dropped her bag on a chair and took out her wand. “Silencio!” she said, pointing her wand at both Tonks and Tulip. She then cast a spell on all the clothes in the room to put them back in the suitcase. “Good thing Flitwick taught us that packing charm two years ago,” she said as she watched the pieces of clothing neatly get inside the bags.

“I love watching that spell at work,” said Andre as he turned Tulip’s hair back to its bright red colour.

“Honestly, I’d rather if we didn’t have to use any of these spells. Can’t you two ever be quiet?” said Penny as she sat on the sofa, glaring at the currently mute girls.

“Well, they currently are…” pointed out Alice.

“That’s because you used the Silencing Charm on them. As soon as it wears off, Tonks will scream bloody murder about her Weird Sisters t-shirt. Tulip will just say how boring we are for preventing her from destroying the hotel,” said Penny, massaging her temples.

Alice turned to her two silent friends, who were both looking down at the floor. “Look… I know your definition of fun may differ from mine or Penny’s,” she started saying, “but I think we can find a way to compromise so that we can all enjoy our vacation. But first, let’s deal with the situation at hand. Tulip, if you have anything else that goes BOOM, let me know so that we can dispose of them without creating a mess. Tonks, I’m pretty sure we can repair your Weird Sisters t-shirt, and worst-case scenario, I’m pretty sure that getting another one won’t be too hard considering they are all still at Hogwarts. Now, apologize to Penny.”

“Alice… they can’t speak,” whispered Andre before making his way to the bedroom.

“Oops, sorry, forgot about that. Finite Incantatem,” said Alice, flicking her wand.

“Sorry, Penny,” said Tonks and Tulip.

“Great! Now that that’s over, time to get ready for the party. Alice, I placed your outfit on the bed. I’ll go back to my room to get changed and come back for your hair and makeup. Chop chop!” said Andre as he left the girls’ suite.

All four girls looked at the door closing behind Andre when Tulip turned towards Alice. “Alice Beaumont?” she asked. “Why is Andre Egwu always planning your outfits?”

“I… don’t know, actually. I think it all started with the Celestial Ball. I asked him to create an outfit for Rowan and Ben, and he then wanted to take care of my look.”

“Wait… he actually planned one of your outfits before that. Remember when we went to the Proms?” said Penny.

“You’re right! Either way, beats being thrown fashion magazines at,” said Alice, rubbing her head.

“And if we don’t want him to throw the magazines he brought for this trip at our heads, we should get ready before he comes back,” pointed out Tonks.

About 40 minutes later, the girls came out of their room, preceded by Andre. Tonks was wearing golden flared pants with a black off-the-shoulder top, along with sneakers, to Andre’s chagrin. Tulip wore a short halter-neck dark blue dress with a raven motif on it and bronze flat sandals. Penny had a yellow midi-length dress with a cowl neck that was a little form-fitting, paired with black sandals with stiletto heels. 

Finally came Alice in a green A-line dress made from layers of floaty silk organza with a draped bodice. Her feet wear adorned with a pair of high-heel golden sandals with a golden sequin rose on the side of the ankle. Her accessories remained simple, with a vintage gold necklace with a charm in the shape of a heart around her neck, a gold ring with a beautiful indigo blue quartz stone on her finger, and a golden headband of overlapping hoops in her softly curled hair. The look was completed by a small clutch embellished with golden mirrored beaded embroidery. 

“Are these… the colour of the Brazilian flag?” asked Alanza, who was waiting in the corridor with the other boys in a simple white dress and silver gladiator sandals.

“Oh, Merlin, you think it’s tacky, right? I told Andre…” started saying Alice, ready to head back in her room.

“What? Oh! No! It actually looks lovely! I mean, it’s usually reserved for football matches here; otherwise, we don’t really wear our flag’s colour, but it’s very subtle in your outfit,” tried reassuring Alanza.

Unfortunately, both Andre and Alice looked mortified and ready to crawl under a rock. 

“Alanza just said Alice looks great,” said Charlie, as he wrapped his arms around his girlfriend’s waist from behind. “So let’s go have some fun and celebrate New Year’s Eve before the party ends.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear! Let’s go have some fun!” exclaimed Tonks, running to the elevators.

“By the way, what’s the drinking age in Brazil?” asked Tulip.

“TULIP!” yelled all her Hogwarts friends before Alanza could answer.

As they entered the Copacabana Palace’s reception room, they were dazzled by the decor, fellow attendees, and the live music. After being shown to their table, the girls headed straight to the dance floor, attracted by the lively music. The boys chatted about various topics, until someone caught Diego’s attention.

“How is Tonks dancing?” asked Diego as he observed the girls.

Tonks was squatting, swaying her hips as she gyrated her fist above her head.

“She looks like she’s about to throw an invisible lasso,” said Andre. “And… yup, Tulip just decided to join her.”

“At least neither seem to care about the looks they are getting,” commented Diego.

“Alanza really seems to be enjoying herself,” remarked Barnaby.

“Indeed. She and Penny are really graceful on the dancefloor. As for Alice,” added Diego, glancing toward Charlie, “her dancing skills have really improved since I first taught you two how to waltz for the Celestial Ball.”

“I honestly never thought we’d get through that without falling flat on our faces,” said Charlie, sighing as he remembered that evening.

“I heard you two nearly kissed that night…” said Diego, smirking.

“Good thing they didn’t, or we might never have had that kiss on the Quidditch pitch. If it wasn’t for that kiss, I wouldn’t even be certain these two were dating,” said Andre.

“Don’t forget the glow they both had coming out of that field last summer,” said Penny as she sat down. “That’s more evidence they are an item.”

“Penny...” said Alice through gritted teeth, daggers shooting out of her eyes as the other girls sat down and Charlie’s face turned a bright shade of red.

“Sorry, sorry. But Andre’s right. It’s not like you two act like a couple around Hogwarts,” pointed out Penny.

“It’s called being discreet,” replied Alice.

“Jae Kim did tell me he once caught them asleep on a sofa in the Gryffindor common room,” said Tulip.

“Did he?” said Penny, a glimmer in her eyes as they fell on Alice and Charlie.

“Oh, look! Our food is coming!” exclaimed Alice, ignoring Penny as Charlie took a big gulp of his champagne.

As the waiters placed the plates in front of them, Penny’s gaze remained on Alice, the corner of her mouth quirking up.

As they started to eat, Penny cleared her throat, “So―”

“We were studying and fell asleep,” interrupted Alice, not looking up from her plate. “Nothing worth alerting the press. On the other hand, Beatrice mentioned something about you snogging a certain someone instead of helping him study potion.” Alice’s eyes looked in Diego’s direction before slowly looking up at Penny’s face.

Penny’s cheek turned a light shade of pink as she stared at Alice, ignoring everyone’s gaze on her. She wouldn’t, would she? Then again, when push comes to shove, Alice wasn’t the kind to necessarily take the high road. No one could know Diego Caplan had once successfully seduced her. “The food really is delicious,” she finally said. 

“Talk about a segue,” pointed out Tonks as she looked between Penny and Alice.

From then, the conversation took different direction, from Alanza’s time at Hogwarts to last summer’s Quidditch World Cup. Diego tried discussing samba techniques with Alanza, who revealed she had no idea how to dance a proper samba. She just danced to the beat of the music. Alanza seemed to enjoy listening to Barnaby talk about magical creatures. Andre was looking around at the other guests’ outfits, relieved they weren’t the only one in colourful clothes. Tulip and Tonks were whispering to one another, which made Penny down her champagne flute.

“By the way… How come we have a champagne bottle on our table? I thought Alanza said we had to be 18 to get alcohol,” said Alice, finally noticing the golden liquid in the flute next to her glass of water.

“Ah! I only said the legal drinking age was 18. But it’s not hard for teens to buy it,” corrected Alanza.

“Not to mention we do have someone who is 18 at our table,” said Andre, looking at Charlie.

“Oh! That’s right! Charlie Weasley is the oldest one here! Thanks for the booze, dear elder!” exclaimed Tulip from across the table, raising near-empty her glass.

“Don’t overdo it, Tulip. Champagne gets you drunk faster than you think, not to mention the hungover...” warned Alice.

“You got drunk on champagne?” asked Barnaby, taking a sip from his glass.

“No, it’s just something I heard my parents say,” Alice said, shrugging.

“Come to think of it… I never saw you drink alcohol. Not even firewhiskey at parties,” noted Tonks.

“That’s because she got sick as a kid because there was alcohol in a cake she ate,” explained Charlie.

Everyone stared at him.

“You… remembered that story I told you?” asked Alice, her hand over her chest, her eyes blinking quickly.

“How adorable!” said Penny, clapping her hands together before resting her cheek on them.

“It’s sickening,” said Tonks and Tulip.

Charlie’s face grew hotter as everyone was looking at him. Why was it so impressive that he remembered something Alice told him? He didn’t like everyone looking at him like he had discovered a new species of dragons when all he had done was remember a story. Taking Alice’s hand, he said, “Let’s go dance,” pulling her out of her chair.

“But… dessert?” said Alice as she followed him.

“Not really hungry anymore.”

As the couple made their way to the dance floor, everyone else at the table looked at them.

“They are so cute together,” gushed Penny.

“How long before he proposes?” asked Tonks, smirking.

“Well, according to Jae Kim, many have bet that―” started saying Tulip. She realized all eyes were on her and said eyes were all wide. “It was a rhetorical question, wasn’t it?”

Tonks nodded.

As everyone else shook their heads in dismay, Barnaby looked confused. “Who’s betting on what?”

“Come,” said Alanza, gently taking his hand, “let’s go dance.”

Back on the dance floor, Charlie and Alice were swaying to the bossa nova music playing. Alice’s mind seemed elsewhere, as she kept frowning as she looked at something over his shoulder.

“Is everything alright?” asked Charlie.

“Mmm? Oh! Yes! Sorry… It’s just that I’ve been thinking about what Alanza said,” replied Alice.

“What Alanza said?” echoed Charlie, his eyebrow quirking up.

“About my outfit’s… colour palette,” said Alice, looking back at whatever was behind Charlie.

“Alice, I already told you. You look amazing in your dress.”

“I know, but look around. I’m the only one wearing all the colours of the Brazilian flag.”

Charlie did as Alice asked. He noticed that many were wearing white like Alanza, while others were wearing various colours. Alice was right. She was the only one wearing the colours of the national flag. 

“Maybe if I removed the ring…” muttered Alice, removing her hand from Charlie’s shoulder.

“What ring?” asked Charlie, returning his attention to his girlfriend.

“That ring!” said Alice as she stopped dancing, trying to pull the ring off of her finger. When she finally did, she looked around. “Left my clutch at the table, be right back,” she said as she started to walk away.

Charlie grabbed her wrist. “Wait. I can put your ring in my pocket,” he said, pointing to his pocket.

“You don’t mind?”

“Of course not. Unless your ring weighs a ton, I’ll barely notice it.”

Alice chuckled and gave him the ring. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” he said, tucking the ring in his pocket before placing his hand back on the small of her back while the other took her hand. “You know I’ll always be there for you, right?”

Alice raised her brows. “It’s just a ring, Charlie.”

Charlie shook his head.“Yeah, no, I meant in general,” he said, looking into her green eyes, “I’ll stand by you, no matter what.”

Alice stared back at him, looking into his warm brown eyes. “Charlie…” She started to lean forward when―

“And I'll never desert you,” sang Tonks in a whisper as she stood next to them with Tulip. The couple hadn’t noticed them dancing nearby, too focused on one another.

“I’ll stand by you,” completed Tulip, before they ran off.

“Tonks! Tulip!” exclaimed Alice, ready to run after them, but Charlie pulled her closer to him.

“Let them. My own fault for sounding so cheesy,” said Charlie, a corner of his mouth quirking up as he rolled his eyes.

“It wasn’t―” started saying Alice, only to notice Charlie raising an eyebrow at her. “Ok, maybe it was a little, but most romantic things could be considered cheesy in some way.”

“You thought it was romantic?”

 Alice nodded. “I was actually about to kiss you when these two interrupted,” she said, her face becoming slightly red as she looked down.

Charlie let go of her hand and used his finger to gently lift her chin up. “Were you?” he said, leaning forward to close the distance between them.

As their lips were about to meet, Alanza arrived beside them, pulling Barnaby behind her. “Come on, you two! People are making their way to the beach for the countdown,” she said before disappearing into the crowd with Barnaby.

“And people wonder why they never saw us kiss in public,” grumbled Charlie as he took Alice’s hand.

“We keep getting interrupted,” said Alice with a little laugh escaping her lips as she took her clutch from the table.

They made their way through the crowd toward the doors that led outside. The horde was getting denser, and Alice could feel her pulse quicken and her shoulders getting tense. She needed to get out of that crowd. Now.

She let go of Charlie’s hand. “I… I think I forgot something in my room. Be right back,” she said before she started walking in the opposite direction.

Charlie looked at her silhouette disappear into the crowd, puzzled until he remembered her running out of the Celestial Ball. And her taking his hand after that concert. And at the Quidditch World Cup…

He spotted Andre and shouted, “I’ll just go back to the room with Alice. I think she’s not feeling well.” After Andre nodded to indicate he had heard him, Charlie made his way through the crowd to the elevators. 

There were a few people around the elevators, but Alice wasn’t there. She must already be upstairs, thought Charlie to himself. He got onto an elevator, and when he arrived at the Penthouse floor, he went straight to the door of her suite and knocked. No answers. He knocked again. Still nothing. Maybe she was on the balcony. He got into his room and made his way to the balcony. He turned to look over at the girls’ suite’s balcony. There she was, quietly sitting in a chair, looking down at the crowd on the beach.

“There you are,” said Charlie, smiling.

Alice looked up, her eyes wide. “Oh! Charlie? You startled me.”

“I’ll come and join you,” he said, making his way toward the balustrade that stood between their two balconies.

“I’ll go and open the―” started saying Alice as she got up from her chair.

“No need,” said Charlie, jumping over the railing. As he landed, they heard something metallic fall to the ground.

“What was that?” asked Alice, looking around.

“Your ring!” said Charlie, a look of realization in his eyes. “Don’t move. It probably didn’t fall too far.” He looked around until he saw something glint on the floor. “There it is!” he exclaimed, raising the ring from the floor.

His eyes suddenly widened as he realized the position he was in. He was on one knee with a ring in his hand while Alice was standing in front of him. He blushed, but the darkness of the evening prevented Alice from seeing it. She simply stared at him, blinking. Did she realize what this scene looked like? Charlie decided to try something.

“May I?” he asked, taking her left hand. He slid the ring on her ring finger before looking up to see her reaction.

Alice raised her hand, looking at the ring on her finger. “I think,” she started, staring at the ring,” I was wearing it on my right hand.”

“What?” said Charlie, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes… see, it’s a bit loose on that finger, but I think it fits snugly on the other hand. See, fingers are…” started explaining Alice.

Charlie couldn’t help but chuckle. Of course, Alice had not realized what the situation had looked like. Romantic gestures usually flew right over her head unless they were obvious. That was part of her charm, really. Lost in those thoughts, as Alice explained the difference between fingers, he suddenly realized the music on the beach had stopped and that the DJ was saying something that got the crowd excited.

“Alice,” he said, interrupting her monologue.

“Yes?”

“I think they are about to start the countdown.”

“You think?” she asked.

Before he could answer, they heard the crowd on the beach shout, “DEZ!”

“I think you're right,” said Alice as she walked to the railing to get a better view.

“NOVE!”

Charlie got up from the floor and walked over to Alice, hugging her from behind.

“OITO!”

Alice looked up at Charlie, smiling softly.

“SETE!”

“I love you,” she said.

“SEIS!”

Charlie looked down at her, his eyes wide with surprise. It was the first time she had ever said this to him.

“CINCO!”

Seeing the tenderness in her eyes, he smiled back.

“QUATRO!”

“I love you too,” he said.

“TRÊS!”

He leaned down.

“DOIS!”

She closed her eyes.

“UM!”

Their lips were about to touch.

“FELIZ ANO NOVO!”

“Happy New Year,” he whispered before his lips covered hers.

As he felt Alice melt into his kiss, Charlie couldn’t help to think back at that moment when he had slipped that ring on her finger and the warmth he felt as he did so.

A/N #2: I hope you enjoyed this fic! Next up: Ipanema!

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG165! X_X

- I really wasn’t expecting to hear the calliope music again one day! That took me back to the end of season 3 – it felt like another (successful) Unknowing, a glimpse of what would have happened if the Circus had pulled through in MAG118/MAG119?

Also, confirmation that Tim definitely got his revenge and blew up the Circus to pieces, including Grimaldi/Nikola:

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: [LOW] I’m hoping if we’re quick, we can avoid her notice. MARTIN: “Her”? [SILENCE] J–Jon, please, don’t tell me there’s an evil clown doll down there– ARCHIVIST: No– MARTIN: –because… ARCHIVIST: N–no, Nikola died with The Unknowing; it’s, uh… [INHALE] An old friend.

At least, Tim got that T__T

- The pattern of beginning the statement with “There is…” already got broken with this one:

(MAG162) ARCHIVIST: … Wha…? [STATIC REACHING A PEAK] … “There is a place, deep in the heart of Fear, where you trap yourself and claim that it is safety. [STATIC DECREASES] It was once a cabin, and professes still to be such, but as with all in this new world that promises respite… it is a trap.”

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: … Alright, then. [INHALE] [SIGH] [STATIC RISES] “There is a wound in the earth. [STATIC DECREASES] A bayonet gouge, scored through the soft and sodden mud for uncounted miles. A trench that marks the front line of a war that has no name. It has always been raging, deep in the hearts of the powerful and those that thirst to see bodies piled high in their name.”

(MAG164) ARCHIVIST: “There is a sickness in this village. Perhaps you would not see it from a distance and the faint sting of rot on the breeze is easy enough to dismiss; but as you get closer, that infectious feeling of wrongness is harder and harder to shake. The grass is not the green of nature, the buildings are warped by more than age, and the voices that come from behind the inhabitants’ masks… are hoarse, and wet. They move with exaggerated casualness, a parody of idyllic village life.”

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] … Right. [STATIC RISES] “Your face is not your face is not your face [STATIC DECREASES AND FADES] around the curling carousel, it twists in place to take from you and all the tattered stolen souls whose sense of ‘me’ is swollen and distended into nothing.

Could be because The Stranger (/the Circus/identity thieves/I-Do-Not-Know-You) is Like That and can’t conform to little boxes, or could be because there isn’t really a “pattern” to begin with, we’ll see with the next nightmare pockets.

Consistency-wise: the use of “you” (as a way to include/pull the listeners in?) went through the roof, but was understandable – “you” is “something/someone who isn’t me, in front of me”, and doesn’t need to be as personified as third person. Jon once again used “End recording” at the end of the ~statement~, which is… a reminder that 1°) these aren’t really statements as we knew them (Jon has never labelled them as such; actually, the only times characters have mentioned “statement(s)” this season were dead people mentioning them in the tapes Jon was listening to in the first two episodes); 2°) there is still that recording/pouring-into-the-tapes thing going on, that Jon is aware of, even if the tapes weren’t relevant in this episode for themselves. Unclear whether Jon had any influence on the tape recorder clicking on both times in the episode, or whether it autonomously reacted to stuff (Jon&Martin approaching the Merry-Go-Round, Jon&Martin walking along the edge of it while the Not!Them was coming close… or just because Jon&Martin were chatting about personal things?).

Still *squint* at what the heck is happening thanks to/through the tape recorders at the moment – it still reminds me of Albrecht von Closen pouring out his stories to Jonathan Fanshawe, there is still the possibility that Jon is feeding the tapes themselves to create something even worse, and mmmmm… (New kinds of Leitner books?)

- I’ve already forgotten almost everything I used to know about English poetry, but lots of iambic constructions (up and down) combined with lots of ternary syntactic structures (round, circularity)? My references are mostly French, but the work on sounds really reminded me of Antonin Artaud’s – though way faster, fittingly, since it was also a relentless chase in which selves kept getting stolen and lost (and so was my attention). Beautiful piece, but ooft did it keep losing me before I was picked back up and forced to run with the words again.

Lots of themes that we had seen with the Circus in previous manifestations:

(MAG119) ARCHIVIST: Yes… Yes, I s… I see the sad clown, b–bitter and hateful. I see him finding his way into a ci–circus where nobody knew him. I see him torn apart, becoming the mask, remade by a… a cruel ringmaster. Sometimes a doll, sometimes a mannequin, always hiding in somebody else’s skin. Somebody else’s name. NIKOLA: Not always, and it’s far too late for any of that. Nothing you see can help you. […] Tim… TIM: … Grimaldi. NIKOLA: Once, a long time ago, before Orsinov made me. And sometimes, even now, on special occasions. Like your brother!

(MAG128, Breekon) “When we left our destination, the mule whining at the new weight behind it, he would reach behind us and find a face, sagging, sloughing off its skull, and would pull it to him. He’d place it over the one he wore already, and he would laugh, and laugh, and laugh. Sometimes it fell off. Sometimes it stayed for weeks. I kept the face we chose, but I loved him for our levity, and the corpses piled ever higher. […] But with the Circus we were amongst our own kind at last. They all had names, true enough, but none would dare pretend that names were real. Faces changed more often than clothes, and nobody truly knew who anybody was, save for their function within the show. […] We didn’t like the puppet, when Orsinov began to carve it. It seemed wrong to us to try and bring one like us about; to create or remake it in such a solid, static shape. We were wrong, of course. When Orsinov carved into the thing that had once called itself Grimaldi, and fed the pieces they didn’t need to the shuddering organist, even we found ourselves impressed. And when the faceless puppet peeled its creator and moved itself with their tendon strings, he looked at me… and laughed… and laughed…”

Identity loss, the loss of self, permutability. But it’s interesting that it fit so well to the other Circus members we had encountered and… still was incredibly Hunt-y, with the premise of an ongoing chase where the victims become the new mob of predators (who may become victims once again if they are successful, etc.), taking place in a circular space, where things can never truly end. Really reminiscent of the concept of The Everchase, I feel? Fears bleeding into each other, etc.

(There could be something about a “(word) chain” of Fears, since MAG163 was mostly Slaughter/War and had bits of Corruption with the medical malpractices, then MAG164 was Corruption with what was identified as “strangers” being targeted more heavily, then MAG165 being Stranger with very a Hunt logic, which would lead to MAG166 going for Hunt… But I’m not really feeling it.)

- It wasn’t clear in MAG164, but this one also made explicit that people in the nightmares can’t really die-die – either they seem to respawn (or get stuck in a nightmare inside of a nightmare inside of a nightmare etc.?), either they just… can’t:

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: “There is a rumbling in the earth around him, as a tank speeds along its unstoppable path, and Charlie is immediately pulled under its tread. He has a moment of shocked horror, before being reduced to a smear in the mud. […] Next to his bleeding corpse, Charlie wakes from what passes for sleep in this place. A sergeant is yelling at him, screaming for him to take his gun and get into the waiting transport.”

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: “And so they fall to frantic terror and conflict, just as vicious as it was when it was bearing down on you. You lie there in the fugue of vivid pain and feel that gentle rain from violence overhead, as some fall dead or close as this place lets you lie, for truly thus to die would be too eager an escape; and listen to the ebb and swell of slow, melodic wail that well you know conducts the flowing rhythm laced into this endless, faceless dance.”

Does The End feel cheated, or is the fear of dying (or the fear of not being allowed to die) enough to feed it? Will we meet a pocket mostly dominated by a facet of The End…?

- I wonder if we’ll meet people not yet taken by a “place” since we got a couple mentions of an outside/inside and people still coming in…

(MAG164) ARCHIVIST: “And people do still come to the village, for however thick the paranoia, however terrible the disease, there are worse things beyond.”

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: “But no, for all the dreams of bounding, leaping off into the great Unknown, you see the ring of broken mewling wretches who have shown the sting that comes with such rejection of the truth, so seldom spoken yet inside you all, that there is no – way – off the merry-go-round. […] It’s not the same as what you had when first you climbed the brightly painted stairs, but not the worst “who” you have been.”

Are the places making people feel like they could leave/that there are newcomers, when they’ve actually been stuck here forever? Or are there people who are still “free” until they’re taken by one of the places? (I mean, outside of main characters: we already know that Daisy is tearing through these places, and that Basira is following her (though that… sounds like a Hunt nightmare in itself), and Jon was unable to tell where Melanie&Georgie were – so unless they’ve been taken by a Dark nightmare, they’re probably outside of the boxes somehow.)

- I’m still trying to narrow down what is making me feel uneasy this season so far, and it’s sadly not something that will be warned for in the content warnings: it’s… about the whole ideology regarding free-will, agency, guilt and responsibility.

So far, all the “nightmares” we have encountered made it clear that it was, yes, people prisoners of a nightmare tailored to make them suffer, but also in which… most of the violence was committed by people against people:

(MAG162) ARCHIVIST: “Something moves outside, struggling to crawl upon a hundred reaching grasping hands. It shudders, and grips the earth, pulling itself along as nails rip free and skin scrapes loose. It is afraid of what it has become, and where it might be going. […] Outside, it is raining. Heavy drops fall, ice-cold and laced with salt; tears of voyeuristic delight from The Eyes that see and drink in all – it sinks into the dry cracked ground, and from the mud faces struggle to push themselves free and breathe. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] They cannot breach the surface, as the slick soil flows down their throats.

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: “Ishaan had been afraid, terrified that they were going to strap him to it, pin him to the Goliath’s hull like all the other flayed flags of war, striking fear into the hearts of the enemy. But instead they fed him to it, tossed him into its burning innards and sealed the hatch behind him. Now, his body has contorted itself to fit, his fingers clutched around the firing lever; pulling it frantically is the only thing that will reduce the impossible heat even for a moment. From the tiny slit in the metal, he can see other soldiers: baby-faced friends and the monstrous, pig-faced enemy, both falling beneath his iron coffin’s advance. He tries to cry, but his tears turn to steam. […] Hasanna’s eyes fall on the entrance to the tent, and she sees the line of civilians, stretching away into the distance. They are no less maimed, their agonies no more bearable; but there is simply no room. She tries to apologise – but instead, she closes the tent. […] Far in the distance, she sees Alexei look out over the battlefield, and her stomach turns at the detestable wrongness of his face. Alexei in turn looks out from deep in the trench. He catches sight of the enemy, their shrivelled rat-like heads causing the bile to rise in his throat.”

(MAG164) ARCHIVIST: “It is, alas, those who are unblemished that suffer worst. So incomprehensible is it that any from outside could be clean, that there might be another source or vector, the inspectors devise another theory: an invisible infection. A hundred Typhoid Marys spreading mildew and decay. […] For no one would speak up if Gillian Smith were to mark you infected, or declare you foreign. No one would lift a finger as they dragged you to the green. […] What Mrs Kim is… is scared. Scared of her neighbours, scared of her friends, scared of the moment when someone will smell the spreading patch of darkness on her back and decide she is infected, or remember she has only been in the village since her grandfather’s day, and judge her to be an outsider. Should she accuse someone else? Send them to the village green? Perhaps she might petition to join the council, though that would invite their attention as much as anything might. Even through the masks, Mrs Kim knows the looks she gets in the pub; but what can she do? When she hears the shouts outside and sees the smoke pouring from the thatched roof, she knows it is too late.”

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: “The world in which the carousel will twirl is not the hollow hell you fear; it is the world. Just the world. A world where if you’d wish to have a name, it must be stolen, carved and pulled full-bloody from the frame of others who would wish in vain to hold their selfness close. You want a face? Take it. There are so many here; and those who cannot hold them, well, whoever chose to give them such a gift must take the blame, knowing they could never keep it in a world of so much thieving strangeness. […] You feel the last of names and “who” you might have been be torn away and borne towards new bodies. New pages, blank; determined to be people. […] then comes the briefest flash that surely now it’s done, so much, perhaps… the pain will be somewhat lessened. There’s no way it could hurt as much as you remember. But it does. And so of course, you scream, and scream; and curses, foul, obscene will tumble garbled over where there once sat other people’s lips or yours now gone, and teeth that once shone yellowed ivory a crimson in the flowing sanguine flood. And as you lie in agonies and fading dreams of personhood, of knowing who you were and what that might have meant, you hear the bitter whisper of recriminating seekers, who have found the treasure of their eager dreams, but see, it seems there’s not enough… for all. And so they fall to frantic terror and conflict, just as vicious as it was when it was bearing down on you. […] You are, of course, a faceless thing as well, and so should quickly match the pace of those who chase the self-same prey. But now, it is too late, they’ve gone. Their chase will not abate until their former friend is ripped apart in turn. And you have learned to wait. For there are many faces out upon the carousel, and many names that you might be. So bide your time a while and wait the coming of another one whose fate and face might sit upon your grinning carmine skull.

And I feel like there has been a shift compared to statements in previous seasons: it used to be monsters or eldritch things going after people, but we also got people trapped in these oppressive systems, who could have chosen their survival over others’… and still said “no”. Is that even possible in the nightmares? Are we assuming that people are constantly remade in order to keep the circles of violence going (in order to serve them) and that it’s going past a mere influence, that it’s erasing any responsibility in their actions? Or is it still an individual choice and are we heading towards the idea that anyone (or 99.99% of people) would choose to inflict direct violence against others if it means lessening their own pain? (I’m honestly super uncomfy about the latter idea, because it feels bleak and edgy to me, because it’s hard to forget that in this reasoning, marginalised people would always have it worse, and because it narratively feels like “cheating” to have Jon&Martin on the frontline, who are super fluffy and obviously wouldn’t push the other under a bus for their survival… while other people would just be eh, people. ;;) In summary: can people currently be held accountable for their actions, in the same way Daisy took responsibility for her Hunt-influenced actions, or are they deprived of any choice?

Interesting, though, is that in these nightmares, we… have never seen families or groups of friends, so far (Charlie had one, who seemed to exist just to get killed? The fungus village had neighbours who didn’t seem to know much about each other?). It feels like in rewriting reality, the Fears have also isolated people, fractured their previous social links to impose new “societies” with their own rules and mechanisms? Jon, at least, still labels them as “victims” even when aware of what is happening:

(MAG165) MARTIN: Because, uh… [LOWER] I really don’t like the look of those riders. ARCHIVIST: Would you believe me if I said they were the victims? MARTIN: … At this point, I’m not even surprised.

But I’m kind of wary and expecting an argument to be made about how Human Nature Is Fundamentally Selfish or something like this, precisely when The Web is lurking around and had such a knack for the theme of free will… ;;

- What does Jon know that he’s not sharing with Martin? He confirmed that they needed to “experience” these places to reach the Panopticon:

(MAG162) ARCHIVIST: Martin… It’s going to be a hard journey. MARTIN: [RELIEVED EXHALE] ARCHIVIST: One– MARTIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah– ARCHIVIST: –in which we… MARTIN: –so, I’ve actually had a couple of bags packed for a while, now! [HEAVY ITEM DROPPED] ARCHIVIST: Oh! MARTIN: And, I found some rope in the attic, and I packed that with the maps.

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: And if you walk towards it, eventually you’ll get there. But you have to go through everything in-between. […] Nightmares. [BANG IN THE DISTANCE] Come on – that trench is our first. […] MARTIN: Jon… I’m scared. ARCHIVIST: … Yes… That’s the idea…!

(MAG164) ARCHIVIST: We’re fine. MARTIN: A–are we? I mean, that place is– … I don’t, I don’t feel fine, okay, and you were there a long time doing your… y–you–your guidebook, which, you know, I get it, but that place is… I–it’s–it’s infectious, and, I don’t– ARCHIVIST: We’re not infected, Martin, that place, it– … It isn’t for us.

(MAG165) MARTIN: But. You said we needed to go through these places. … Is that even going to work here? ARCHIVIST: Uh… [EXHALE] We need to go through them… metaphorically. MARTIN: Mm… ! ARCHIVIST: Psychologically, we need to… “experience” them. MARTIN: Hm! [SILENCE] D’you think we could get that experience just… walking along the edge?

And his explanation of what they need to do is getting a bit more precise every time.

* It’s not only about Jon experiencing the places, it’s about them experiencing the places. Makes sense since they’re on a journey to the Panopticon, but still interesting: Jon gets overwhelmed by the places to the point of needing to do his “guidebook”; Martin doesn’t, past his discomfort/casual fears, but it’s working anyway. What is happening with Jon…?

* Fear.jpg because “experiencing” them had been mentioned by Elias/Jonah as a way to prepare Jon towards his goals:

(MAG092) ELIAS: [SIGH] What are you? ARCHIVIST: I… The Archivist. ELIAS: Precisely. It is your job to chronicle these things, to experience them, whether first-hand or through the eyes of others. To simply be told, well… ARCHIVIST: It doesn’t please your master? ELIAS: Our master, Jon.

(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “Because the thing about the Archivist is that… well: it’s a bit of a misnomer. It might, perhaps, be better named “the Archive”. Because you do not administer and preserve the records of fear, Jon – you are a record of fear. Both in mind, as you walk the shuddering dread of each statement; and in body, as the Powers each leave their mark upon you. You are a living chronicle of terror.”

So what is happening exactly…? Is it because Jon simply needs to “experience” the various layers of the new world before reaching the centre of the storm? Are these steps actually “undoing” — or furthering — something…?

- Also confirmation that Martin&Jon seem immune to what is happening, as long as they don’t push their luck:

(MAG161) MARTIN: … Are we still safe? ARCHIVIST: Y–yes, it… it doesn’t want to harm me. MARTIN: And me? ARCHIVIST: I won’t let it.

(MAG163) MARTIN: Good. Good. [SILENCE PUNCTUATED BY PANTING] … J–J–Jon, Jon, w–we’re not alone. ARCHIVIST: I–ignore them, they’re not… Just ignore them. MARTIN: … They’re not… real? [VOICES SHOUTING IN THE DISTANCE] ARCHIVIST: [MIRTHLESS CHUCKLING] No…! They’re real; they were… normal people before the– … Before me. But now they’re here, meat for the grinder. I just mean there’s no point… talking to them. MARTIN: Don’t be a prick, Jon. Hey! I’m, I’m sorry about him. He’s–he’s going through a lot – well… we all are, I suppose, but well… “Hi”, I guess. [SILENCE] Hello? ARCHIVIST: They won’t hear you, Martin, they’re all… too busy waiting to die.

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: Either way, best not to actually climb onto the thing, if we could help it. […] MARTIN: You, you sure? [CHUCKLING] I could speak to an attendant! ARCHIVIST: [CAUTIOUS] I would advise against doing that. […] MARTIN: Jon, do we– do we need to run? NOT!SASHA: Oh, yes, Martin, you very much do. I’ll even give you a head start! ARCHIVIST: [CHUCKLE] MARTIN: … Jon? ARCHIVIST: You’re bold! [FOOTSTEPS] I’ll give you that. NOT!SASHA: [HISSING] Last chance…! ARCHIVIST: Desperate for one last morsel of terror from us? NOT!SASHA: [HISSES] ARCHIVIST: [CHUCKLE] A final sip, and then we’re gone! Somehow we manage to keep just ahead of you and get away. NOT!SASHA: [SNARLS] ARCHIVIST: God forbid you actually catch us. NOT!SASHA: [FURIOUS SNARLS] ARCHIVIST: Doesn’t bear thinking about…! MARTIN: Jon, what are you talking about? NOT!SASHA: [FURIOUS SNARLS] ARCHIVIST: She can’t touch us. We’re so far beyond her now. NOT!SASHA: [FURIOUS SNARLS] ARCHIVIST: She’s just like everything else here, ruled by The Eye. [CHUCKLING] And she hates it…!

Is it only because Jon is the Archivist, is it thanks to their connection to the Institute/the Eye (… after all, Basira apparently wasn’t taken)? What would happen to Martin if he were to be separated from Jon?

Also curious that both the Not!Them and The Distortion are what I would label “monsters” (as Martin&Simon did in MAG151), and yet the Not!Them was shown trapped… and Helen is roaming free. Did The Distortion lie about its own contentment in the new world? Did it get a better seat thanks to its connection to the Institute, since its Door had often appeared in the tunnels? (Helen had told Jon that this is how she knew a bit more about the tunnels, back in season 4.)

- Martin’s poetry is back as a theme! (Not included: Tim recording over one of Martin’s poems in MAG079.)

(MAG042) ARCHIVIST: I’m glad [Martin]’s moved out of the Archives, as it gives me a chance to work here without his constant presence. Also because he managed to leave some of his possessions behind. For the most part it’s just a few books of… relatively awful poetry… There are a few pieces I feel could almost have been affecting if his style wasn’t so obviously enamoured with Keats […].

(MAG124) MARTIN: Uh, yeah. Yeah, no, I’m… I’m alright, uh… Everything’s… fine. ARCHIVIST: … Right. Hum. … H–how’s… How–how’s the poetry? MARTIN: Oh, uh– Well, I haven’t… exactly had a lot of time recently, so… ARCHIVIST: Yes, uh… Of course… MARTIN: Hm. ARCHIVIST: You’ve been busy. MARTIN: Yeah. ARCHIVIST: …

(MAG165) MARTIN: So was it any good? ARCHIVIST: U–uh… What do you mean? MARTIN: Was it a good poem? ARCHIVIST: I don’t know! “No”? You’re the poetry expert, Martin, not me…! MARTIN: Well, did it stir any feeling in you? ARCHIVIST: Yes! “Nausea”. Because of the horrible things in it! MARTIN: That’s not quite what I meant. ARCHIVIST: Then I don’t know what you mean, Martin, I’m not a poetry person, I don’t… “get it”. I never have. MARTIN: That’s… That’s fine, I understand…! ARCHIVIST: Look. I’m better than I was; I used to think all poetry was bad. MARTIN: Sorry, what?! ARCHIVIST: I mean, I just thought of… [SIGH] I sort of thought it was pointless! Just… write some prose and stop… wasting everyone’s time! MARTIN: Hm! What changed? ARCHIVIST: I don’t know, I just… mellowed on it, I suppose. MARTIN: That’s… kind of weird. ARCHIVIST: In my defence, there is a lot of bad poetry out there.

* With this new information: it’s actually BIG from Jon that he had qualified Martin’s poetry as “almost affecting” given his personal feelings about poetry in general.

* Obviously, I want to tease Jon mercilessly about the idea that he began to mellow down on poetry since someone he was developing a crush on liked it so much… But also, just simply, people’s tastes change.

* … Okay, so if Jon managed to survive uni without getting poetry at all, either he did really well besides that, either it rules out that his degree might have been in literature. (History could fit him well?)

* … I find it interesting how Martin somehow managed to… not say anything about himself in this episode? We learned a few things about Jon – that he had fond memories of the London Zoo carousel, that he was in a bad mental space at a point before the Institute (break-up with Georgie? Being thrown in a new city for his academic studies, leaving Bournemouth? “Regular” student stress?), that he doesn’t get poetry but that his opinion has changed on it a bit.

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: Either way, best not to actually climb onto the thing, if we could help it. MARTIN: Fine – by – me, eh! Never really liked merry-go-rounds anyway. ARCHIVIST: No? You… gone on any recently? MARTIN: What? Uh– No, I don’t think so, not since I was a kid. ARCHIVIST: Hm! I actually, uh… There’s one at London Zoo – uh, was one at London Zoo. Big old thing. Went quite fast, actually, su–… [CHUCKLE] Surprisingly thrilling. MARTIN: [BURSTS OUT LAUGHING] ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: Seriously? ARCHIVIST: It was years back, before the Institute, I… I was in a weird place. Had a good time, though! MARTIN: [CHUCKLES] Well! ARCHIVIST: I mean, obviously I wouldn’t want to ride this one, we’ve got… quite enough thrills already. MARTIN: You, you sure? [CHUCKLING] I could speak to an attendant! ARCHIVIST: [CAUTIOUS] I would advise against doing that. [SILENCE]

But Martin? Asked questions for Jon to answer, but managed to avoid having to tell anything about his own past. It’s not really surprising, it’s kinda fitting – Martin has probably got into the habit of not telling much about himself because of his fake credentials and his fake age? But still, I wonder if he will talk about himself at some point… (I still feel like we’re missing his own perspective on his mother or Tim, for example, since these subjects were mostly mentioned by other people and Martin only even mentioned his mother’s death when he poured his heart out at Peter&Elias in MAG158).

- I randomly really really love Martin’s nasal “Fine by me”:

(MAG102) ARCHIVIST: What about Daisy? MARTIN: Don’t see her much. Which is fine by me. [UNCOMFORTABLE SILENCE]

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: Either way, best not to actually climb onto the thing, if we could help it. MARTIN: Fine – by – me, eh! Never really liked merry-go-rounds anyway.

Martin…

- … So, hearing Not!Sasha like this confirms that she didn’t “take” Julia or Trevor! (I guess that one of them could have died from her attack or Daisy’s, but… at the very least, the Not!Them didn’t take on a new identity through them.)

- There are various ways of interpreting what the Not!Them said about Martin:

(MAG165) NOT!SASHA: And what if I let you choose this time, which one of you would I wear next? Martin looks very comfortable, positively roomy; oh, wouldn’t you agree, Archivist~?

… and my favourites are either that Martin indeed big, either she was making a tease about them (aND THEY’VE BEEN ROOMMATES).

- Jon Has Upgraded – the Not!Them used to call him “Jon” as a taunt, and now…

(MAG078) NOT!SASHA (HEAVILY DISTORTED, DISTANT): Jooooonnnn… ARCHIVIST: Er… I… [SOUND OF A CREAKY DOOR OPENING] MICHAEL: You – need – a door.

(MAG079) NOT!SASHA (DISTANT): Jooooonnnn… ARCHIVIST: Oh Christ. […] NOT!SASHA (DISTANT): Jooooon… Jooooon… Come out, come out, wherever you are. ARCHIVIST: [SCARED BREATHING] NOT!SASHA (DISTANT): It’s okay Jon; it’s Sasha. Reliable old Sasha. Nothing to be afraid of. … You seem stressed, Jon. You’ve been under a lot of pressure. You should talk about it. Have a real good chat. You like talking, don’t you, Jon? … I’m going to wear you, Jon. […] I’m glad we got a chance to run, Jon. It makes it so much more satisfying.

(MAG158) NOT!SASHA: [MUFFLED, HEAVILY DISTORTED] Jooo–ooon~! [SOUND OF STONE AND BRICK SHIFTING, LOUDER, THEN GRADUALLY STOPPING] NOT!SASHA: [HEAVILY DISTORTED] [PANTS] So you finally decided to let me out, Jon! Joooo–oooon~! … Who’s there? MARTIN: [PANICKED BREATHING] NOT!SASHA: Who let me out? [SILENCE] Don’t be shy. I just want to say thank you. [SILENCE] All right, have it your way. Now, if you’ll excuse me: I have some unfinished business. [MENACING SATISFIED LAUGHTER] […] [CRASHING SOUND] NOT!SASHA: Hello, Jon. DAISY: Oh, shit! ARCHIVIST: You gotta be fucking kidding m–

(MAG165) NOT!SASHA: Eh! My dearest colleagues…! MARTIN: Just get back! [THUMP] NOT!SASHA: I can’t believe you’d decide to pass through my neighbourhood and not say hello, to – dear – old – Sasha. ARCHIVIST: Just ignore it, Martin. NOT!SASHA: Oh, you wound me, Archivist. And we used to be so close! […] And what if I let you choose this time, which one of you would I wear next? Martin looks very comfortable, positively roomy; oh, wouldn’t you agree, Archivist~?

… it’s “Archivist”. He’s really had a special status/power-up, uh?

- So, The Distortion is having a blast in the new world (MAG164), or so it says… but it’s not fundamentally the case for all monsters/avatars out there. It makes sense for The Stranger since it had been presented as opposed to The Eye:

(MAG079) NOT!SASHA: So the monster got its friends to carry the table all around, and it still got to take faces and scare people. Then one day it was sent to the house of its enemy, which had the biggest eyes you ever did see. The monster was sent there to steal all its secrets, but it was sad because it couldn't scare anyone any more.

(MAG092) ELIAS: The Stranger is antithetical to us. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH HEAVILY] ELIAS: We thrive on ceaseless watching, on knowing too much. What we face is the hidden, the uncanny, and the unknown. If you are to stop them, you need to get better at seeing. And my explaining things is simply not enough.

(MAG119) SARAH: You… idiot! Do you really think the world will fare any better under the Watcher? You think you’re saving anyone?

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: She’s just like everything else here, ruled by The Eye. [CHUCKLING] And she hates it…! NOT!SASHA: Well, of course you want to wallow in my shame like your voyeur master! Do you know how it feels? To be… anonymous, and yet known? To have all the sweetest dread I can create tainted by the relentless gaze of that damned Eye! I’ve suffered enough!

So people from the (survivors of the) cult of the Divine Host probably won’t be extremely happy about it either – we know that some were still roaming around, Jon had mentioned seeing people with the pendant at the beginning of season 4. Martin mentioned their lack of allies in MAG164, are we heading towards them getting some “help” from unsatisfied avatars…?

- ;; I said I would put the Not!Them amongst the “monsters”, but technically… the victims in the carousel felt like proto-Not!Them themselves? And Not!Sasha had enough reasoning to try to go into denial – pretending that it could still catch and hurt Jon&Martin, while it knew that it couldn’t anyway, but ready to create the illusion that it could. That’s some very human mental structure…

- Sob, but also:

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: Pathetic. [SHRILL SCREAMS] Martin, let’s go. NOT!SASHA: Not as pathetic as your little friend when I ate her life…!

… I really like the description of what she did as “eating Sasha’s life”: it was not only that it killed her; it’s that it erased and reshaped her whole life as a memory and a possible influence on others…

- ;; I’m even happier that we got Sasha’s tapes at the beginning of season 5, because it brought her back as a presence, as an existence, and not only as the concept of “the friend we lost but can’t really remember”. The Not!Them getting killed closes a very long chapter: Sasha’s murder at the end of season 1, which was a wound that kept being reopened (Jon realising that she had died long ago, then Martin&Tim having to learn about it; Nikola teasing Jon about her during The Unknowing; the Not!Them getting freed during the season 4 climax), the fact that the Not!Them had been spotted and described as soon as in MAG003, and also… the first time we heard of Adelard Dekker was when he imprisoned it within the Web table?

I’m especially ;; that The Stranger regularly used Sasha’s murder against Jon, and that it has always been a sore spot… until he snapped:

(MAG079) NOT!SASHA (DISTANT): … I’m going to wear you, Jon. I’m going to wear everything you are. Like you never existed. Noone will even know. And it will hurt. Oh, yes, it will hurt. It hurt Sasha. ARCHIVIST: Shut up! NOT!SASHA (CLOSE AND DISTORTED): There you are. […] ARCHIVIST: [WHISPERING] I’m sorry. Martin, Tim… Sasha. I’m so sorry. I should have… I didn’t… I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.

(MAG096) ARCHIVIST: He was a–a tax inspector. He came here, and Daniel Rawlings, or his replacement, showed him something he claimed to be the oldest piece of taxidermy in the world. Gorilla skin from Carthage. SARAH: Heh, was this when you sent your “Sasha” to interrogate us? ARCHIVIST: Don’t you dare talk about– DAISY: Sims. Sims. Shut up and focus.

(MAG119) ARCHIVIST: Who are you?! NIKOLA: Who am I? Tim, of course! Who else would I be! ARCHIVIST: You’re not– you’re not… Tim. NIKOLA: Oh, you caught me~ I’m… Sasha! ARCHIVIST: Shut up! NIKOLA: No~! Really, it’s me! Sasha– whatever her name was! Back from the dead, just like you wanted~! ARCHIVIST: Get away from me, or, or I swear I’ll… I’ll…

I mean. Yes, if Jon had to lose his temper and go terrifying due to feelings, it would be about Sasha’s murder ;;

- It’s also jarring how Jon used to be terrorised and victimised by monsters, and took the upper hand this time: the dynamic between him and the Not!Them in this episode was an extreme reversal of what had happened at the end of season 2. I’m also curious about how “Jon using his powers against other monsters” has felt more and more threatening over time:

(MAG091) ARCHIVIST: What, I? I–I didn’t– [RUSTLING NOISES] Plea– Please don’t shoot me… [SOUNDS OF PANIC] [STATIC] W–why are you doing this? Tell me! [GURGLES MORE AS DAISY GRABS HIM ROUND THE THROAT] DAISY: Stop – asking – questions.

(MAG101) MICHAEL: I had hoped that you would stop the Unknowing first, destroy the workings of I-Do-Not-Know-You. But instead you are here, and may bring it about faster. So better your death happens now…! ARCHIVIST: I… [STATIC] Is there anything I can do to stop you from killing me? MICHAEL: [LAUGHS] If you scream loud enough the Circus may take notice of me, but… I promise you will die far more pleasantly with me than with them. [MORE LAUGHTER]

(MAG119) NIKOLA&GERTRUDE: A terrible new world and it’s all your fault. GERTRUDE&LEITNER: Though I suppose you never really had a chance ARCHIVIST: … I see you. NIKOLA: Do you, now? ARCHIVIST: Yes… Yes, I s… I see the sad clown, b–bitter and hateful. I see him finding his way into a ci–circus where nobody knew him. I see him torn apart, becoming the mask, remade by a… a cruel ringmaster. Sometimes a doll, sometimes a mannequin, always hiding in somebody else’s skin. Somebody else’s name. NIKOLA: Not always, and it’s far too late for any of that. Nothing you see can help you.

(MAG128) BASIRA: Get. Out. [STATIC RISES] BREEKON: Make. Me. [RATTLING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: Stop. [HIGH-PITCHED BUZZING SOUND OVER STATIC] BREEKON: What’re you doing? BASIRA: … Jon…? What are you doing? BREEKON: What’re you– Stop it… Stop it! ARCHIVIST: [ECHOING] No. BREEKON: [STRUGGLING, BUZZING INCREASES] Enough! Stop… looking at me! [SCREAMS] [DOOR SLAMMED OPEN, FLEEING FOOTSTEPS WHILE BREEKON IS STILL SCREAMING, DOOR SLAMMING SHUT] ARCHIVIST: [PANTS] [HIGH-PITCHED BUZZING SOUND FADES] BASIRA: Jon…? ARCHIVIST: It’s fine…!

(MAG159) ARCHIVIST: … I, I don’t understand. PETER: And you won’t. Not from me. I’m done. ARCHIVIST: Tell me. [STATIC RISES] PETER: I’m. Not saying. Another. Word. [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: Tell me, or I will rip it out of you! [STATIC INCREASES] PETER: [STRUGGLING] No…! ARCHIVIST: Answer. My question! PETER: NO! Leave – me – ALONE! [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: TELL ME! PETER: [GROANING SCREAM] [RIPPING, EXPLODING SOUND] [STATIC FADES] ARCHIVIST: … Stubborn fool…

(MAG162) ARCHIVIST: “This place wishes to be our tomb. But The Eye does not wish that. No. [STATIC INCREASES] The Eye wishes instead that it be my chrysalis. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] It is time that I emerge…” [STATIC REACHING A PEAK] […] I, I–I was listening, and I–I was filled with this… hatred. This anger; I–I wanted to leave, and hunt down Elias, a–and…! MARTIN: W–wow, okay… ARCHIVIST: But, when I thought it… the–there was… [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] There was something else. Th–this place, it… it didn’t want me, it… [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] didn’t want us to go.

(MAG165) NOT!SASHA: Not as pathetic as your little friend when I ate her life…! [RUMBLING SOUND] [THE CALLIOPE MUSIC DERAILS, TAKES A HIGHER PITCH] ARCHIVIST: … What did you say? [STATIC RISING: LOW AND SPIRALLING, PRESSURING] NOT!SASHA: [SHAKY BREATHES] I’m–I’m sorry… MARTIN: Jon? ARCHIVIST: You were wrong, you know. NOT!SASHA: [GASPS] [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: There is more suffering than you can ever experience, so much more. The horror of your victims… NOT!SASHA: [CRIES OF PAIN] ARCHIVIST: Their constant, senseless agony… NOT!SASHA: [CRIES OF PAIN] [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: Feel it now. Understand it. You have drawn out so much despair, and now finally, it’s your turn. [STATIC INCREASES] [DIGITAL GLITCHING SOUNDS] Ceaseless Watcher, turn your gaze upon this wretched thing! [STATIC INCREASES, WITH MORE PRESSURE] NOT!SASHA: No! No, please, no…! [DIGITAL BURSTING, RIPPING SOUNDS] NOT!SASHA: [FADING] No…! [STATIC DECREASES AND FADES] ARCHIVIST: [PANTS]

Jon used to rely on compulsion to try to struggle his way out (when it was his only weapon), in a panic. But since MAG119, it has begun to feel as if something was coming out from it, as if he were possessed? It really feels like something is trying to come out (and we precisely began the season with The Eye wanting the cabin to be his “chrysalis” and Jon announcing that “he” would emerge…). There also had been a clear escalation in his use of his powers: from giving Tim the tools to prevent Nikola from achieving The Unknowing, to stopping Breekon when he was ready to fight Basira, to compelling Peter to death while Peter was resisting, to… an execution, triggered by his anger. Jon had made a point to tell Martin that the Not!Them couldn’t harm them; it was a murder purely motivated by anger. The Not!Them had it coming, and it’s really interesting that Jon weaponised the suffering of the Not!Them’s victims to force it to feel pain (so, a case of… forcing empathy on it?), but… still a murder, still scary, still concerning that Jon did that when Martin and him weren’t threatened, and that it happened when Jon’s feelings got out of hand.

(Jon, you’re just a shounen anime protagonist gdi.)

- And Jon did nooooooot feel fine with it:

(MAG165) MARTIN: … Whoa–oh–oh! ARCHIVIST: I, uh… MARTIN: What was that?! ARCHIVIST: … I–I destroyed it. [ECHOING CREAKING SOUNDS] Ki–killed her. MARTIN: Are you kidding me, you–you obliterated her! You… you smote her! [ECHOING CREAKING SOUNDS] ARCHIVIST: We, we should go. MARTIN: What about the merry-go-round? With her gone, is it, is it still th– ARCHIVIST: I–I don’t know! MARTIN: [CHUCKLING] Yes you do! ARCHIVIST: I–I don’t… want to know, plea– We need to go. [SHUFFLING] Please. MARTIN: Oh, oh, okay. A–alright. Alright. Lead on. [CREAKING SOUNDS]

* Martin sounded… kinda very very into it (mARTIN), not surprised – Martin was already ready to use whatever he can even if it means compromising himself. Jon sounded more upset, so I’m half-expecting them to discuss this at some point?

* It had already felt a bit like it with Peter (when Jon mentioned the powers of The Eye in relation to The Lonely), but it was way worse here: … Jon really felt like an actual priest of Beholding when he obliterated the Not!Them. As if he was accepting it as a god, and himself as its agent, able to channel its powers.

* It was also SO CLOSE to what Elias did to Melanie and Martin, with the whole implanting memories/truths in someone’s head to make them suffer… oofffft ;;

* ;; I’m. Also very concerned about the fact that the end of the episode seems to imply that Jon made it worse for the victims in the carousel, since we can hear it creaking. Has he just condemned these people to an actual death, or to worse doom? If it turns out that Jon has powers allowing him to have an effect on these nightmares, the fact he chooses to remain an observer and only “uses” the place to experience them will feel iffier and iffier… ;;

- Welp, it does clear up right away why The Web hasn’t tried to contact Jon directly. On a scale from calling his partner while Jon himself is further away to directly taunting him, how much self-preservation instinct do you have?

  MAG166’s title is… interesting, because?? Corruption?? But it also feels too easy?? (And would be the biggest Middle Finger at something Smirke mentioned in MAG138.) I see a way in which it could potentially be Hunt, or Flesh, or Vast, or Buried, or End, or Web (well… it’s more like there’s an existing connection for that one + RQ’s teasing about Web stuff this week), but, wow. Bold move.

[panickedpansexualprincess]

I don't dislike Tilde per se. I liked her a lot in TSS. She was strong and took ownership of her sexuality. But in TGC I think she was unneeded and unbelievable. She turned Eggsy into a prince/kept boy, forced him out of a career he loved, was a drug user, and manipulated him to propose/marry her. Not the signs of a good person or a healthy relationship. Still I'd never post hate for her in any of the tags. I just wish everyone would tag for her and her relationships so blacklist can catch it.

I appreciate that you don’t intend to post any hate for Tilde. I can also see why you might feel the way you do about her. I don’t think it’s near that cut and dry, though, to be perfectly honest. And, since you messaged me about it, I assume that you’re open to talking about it all, so I’ll be frank.

Although, haha, before I start the frank part, I’ll say that while I don’t tag individual characters, that’s not part of my tagging system, I do tag my Kingsman ships, so I can rec that if you want to block them, you might want to block ‘Royal Eggs,’ ‘Royal Hartwin,’ ‘Royal Merwin,’ and ‘Royal Merhartwin.’ Those are the ship names I’m using and the ones I’ve seen others use.

Okay. The frank, thoughtful bits now.

I was mildly unsure about Tilde on my first watch through. Mostly because yeah, okay, the most likely reason they wrote her in was to give Eggsy a heterosexual relationship, in an attempt to try and avoid slash ships. Which, is kind of funny, because good lord the Hartwin overtones are insane in TGC, far more so than I ever picked up from TSS. It’s like, they wrote Eggsy into a het relationship, and then ramped up the gay to about five thousand. And I’m saying that as someone who doesn’t ship Hartwin as my main ship, cause my main ship is Merwin, but lord in heaven was the Hartwin strong in this movie. So, uh. Guys, guys, mixed signals here. XD

(Which is why I just figure he’s bi. Or pan. Or somewhere around there in the inbetween. XD)

That said, I didn’t stay unsure for long. Mostly because, well, A. the idiots already fridged one of our strong ladies because wtf (and she’s not dead, dammit, I refuse), so I am going to happily embrace Tilde for the wonderful lady she is- and she is a strong woman in her own right, as we know from TSS. B. I was insanely happy that if they were going to pair Eggsy off with a lady, at least it wasn’t Roxy, because good lord no please no. By which I mean, with no disrespect towards people who ship Roxy/Eggsy, they are my NOTP/BROTP, and I just. No. Let Roxy and Eggsy have their broship, pls. C. I was actually really happy to see her back as more than just a sex joke. Which I know a lot of people tried to reduce her to one in TSS, and just. No. D. Poly ships. I love me some poly ships, because I wholeheartedly believe the human heart can love more than one person, so yeah, okay Eggsy loves Tilde. Got it. Doesn’t mean he can’t still love Harry, or Merlin, or anyone else. Embrace the poly ships! I do!

So. My doubts were soothed, and I dived happily into accepting Tilde and her relationship with Eggsy. Which brings me to your concerns.

I’m going to hit the ‘drug user’ bit first. Which is a big issue, and a sticky one. Now I say this as someone who, until this year, had never touched any drugs ever. Which, I broke my record this year, once, because it’s one possible treatment for some of my health issues, and when I tried it, I just went. Eh, this does nothing, whatever, I’m good, thanks anyway. So I have no connection to drugs, or affinity for them. But I’m a firm believer in the freedom of choice, especially when it comes to a person’s own body, and one of my beliefs is that the government really needs to butt out of trying to control what people do with their own bodies. Which means I’m actually pro legalization of drugs. Which was really kind of odd/funny, because I agreed with some of the things Poppy said in the movie. Which sounds a lot worse than I mean, haha.

It’s. Kind of a point, in the movie. Poppy is, of course, a psychopath and completely in the wrong with everything she was doing, but. She wasn’t wrong about some of the things she said. Like, the commentary she makes to Charlie, re: sugar vs cocaine. It’s also kind of a big thing if you look at Fox: she argues with Not!Trump about how not all drug users are the bad criminal types people stereotypically associate with drugs. Fox makes the rather poignant point that she uses whatever it is she uses to help her get through life, because frankly, working for Not!Trump is a nightmare I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Champ makes the point too, and Ginger, when they talk about Tequila; he’s a good man, a good Statesman, he just has a bit of a wild side. Additionally, if you read the book, it very poignantly hits on the people who use drugs medicinally, to deal with things like cancer and mental health issues, but who are affected by the Blue Rash because of where they got their medicine from. And let me tell you, that was a point that hit kind of hard in my house, because none of us are neurotypical, and if our doctor prescribed it to use, marijuana could actually be a medicine for some of us. And we are, ironically, in Kentucky, not even two hours away from Louisville where the Statesman are based, and bills to legalize medicinal marijuana have been proposed here as recently as January of this year.

So what I mean by that long ass paragraph is. Being a drug user isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And that’s a point that is specifically raised in the narrative in the movie. Because yeah, Poppy is fucking batshit crazy, but her end goal of legalizing drugs? Isn’t batshit crazy. Which is why Not!Trump and Whiskey end up firmly in the Bad Guy camp, because they’re willing to condemn billions of people to death for something that’s not necessarily bad.

So does Tilde use drugs in TGC? Yes, of course, she gets the blue rash. We see her light up. Am I going to condemn her for that? No. She smokes something in a moment when she is under extreme stress and upset. That’s her choice, for her body. And that single use isn’t enough to show us if she uses it irresponsibly, or if she’s out of control with it. I’d actually assume that if she was out of control in her drug usage, Eggsy wouldn’t be with her. As he points out, he grew up in a place where drugs destroyed lives; I highly doubt he would be with someone who was destroying their life with drugs. I’ll also point out that he doesn’t actually seem concerned with her usage. He’s scared as hell that she has the disease, but he never condemns her usage or seems against it.

Alright. So the manipulating him into proposing bit. Hoo boy. I understand where you’re coming from. It was a thought I had in the theatre myself, while watching the first time. However, after a lot of thought, I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.

I’ll say flat out; I think that bit is a bit of shoddy writing. I think it was unnecessary, and that it should have logically been something Eggsy and Tilde would have already discussed, considering that honeypots are something they were trained on during training. They were told to get to know Lady Sophie biblically, remember? Which, yeah, turned out to be a ruse for the train test, but it was definitely something they were trained for.

But, the fact that I think it’s shoddy writing aside; it has been pointed out to me, when I was pondering it, that it could very likely be something they hadn’t discussed yet because their relationship, while almost a year along in TGC, had kind of a jump start with both of them suffering from. Issues. You know, being held captive, having just lost his mentor, and they kind of jumped into it headlong, and probably missed some big discussions that they should have had, but didn’t. So we’re looking at this as;

Tilde doesn’t know that honeypots are a thing Eggsy might be expected to do. Clearly, they haven’t talked about it. All she knows is that, this man that she loves, who clearly loves her, is suddenly telling her that he needs to sleep with another woman. And that’s a Big Thing to have suddenly thrown on your plate, especially when it’s a situation of “I need an answer right this moment, fate of the world depends on it.��� So it’s pretty damn understandable that Tilde is thrown for a huge loop by it all. She’s shocked, surprised, and definitely feeling hurt. And here’s Eggsy, telling her he wants to spend the rest of his life with her- which in any other situation could easily be a proposal. And, in the confused, hurried, disarray of emotions she’s dealing with- she’s not pressuring him to propose, I think it’s pretty clear that she thinks that might actually be what’s happening.

So here you’ve got both of them super stressed and freaked out and confused. Eggsy’s stressed as fuck about it, doesn’t want to have sex with Clara, but is asking anyway, cause the world is kind of at stake, and he kind of accidentally almost proposes. Tilde is stressed as fuck, and hurt by this sudden request, and confused, and she thinks he might have just proposed, but she’s not sure, because wtf, and. And then Eggsy’s backpedaling, because shit, shit, shit, public figure, and fuck. (And, one of the things that I liked in the book, is that you get more of Tilde’s POV here, because she’s struggled with being the Crown Princess all her life, and now it feels like Eggsy is rejecting her because of her being the Crown Princess.) Confusion and hurt abounds on both sides of that conversation. And if you pay attention.

Eggsy says they need to sit down and Talk about this. Later. Tilde is upset, but gives a (somewhat understandably bitter) okay, and walks away for the moment. And it’s pretty clear that they’ve both made mistakes here. And that they both greatly care for each other, because otherwise they wouldn’t be that hurt.

And. Yeah. It’s this whole huge convoluted ball of fucked up emotions and mistakes and they should have talked about this already, but because writing, they hadn’t, so it all comes out fucked up and misunderstood. But I don’t see any of it as Tilde forcing Eggsy to propose. She’s thinks he has, and then surprise, no, not really, and where do they go from a misunderstanding like that?

Which leads into Tilde forcing him to be a prince/kept boy, and forcing him out of a career he loves. And. I’mma say one thing here, first off, because. Kingsman.

There ain’t no way, ‘prince’ or not, that Eggsy’s going to stop being a Kingsman. That’s definitely not the way things work in the Kingsman world. And I think Vaughn is smart enough to know we would freaking riot if he even tried that. XD I mean. We talked Harry back to life from a headshot, we can talk Eggsy into still being a spy even while being a prince, haha.

That out of the way- Tilde in no way forces Eggsy to become a prince, or a ‘kept boy.’ Let’s give Eggsy more credit than that. If he didn’t want to marry Tilde, if he didn’t want to be with her, he wouldn’t. Eggsy very clearly loves her, tells her flat out that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her. And yeah, okay, becoming the future queen’s consort is probably going to cause some issues with Kingsman- but he makes that choice. Saying that Tilde forces him into it just… makes me think of the people who tried to say that Eggsy forced her to have sex with him at the end of TSS. Which, frankly, is ludicrous. At the end of TSS, Tilde is clearly very happy to propose sex with him. And at the end of TGC, Eggsy is clearly very happy to be marrying Tilde.

And that. Was a lot of tl;dr, haha. Hopefully tl;dr that makes sense, and isn’t too rambly. But. I have a hella lot of feels about this, and have put a lot of thought into it. I really love Tilde, and I have come to love her relationship with Eggsy. (And I love my poly ships that include her.) And I really would love to see more of fandom embrace her and it, but that’s of course going to be up to individual preferences. It might be some people’s NOTP, and that’s alright. I have my own NOTPs in this fandom. And you know what? I co-exist with them. I block tags and posts if I need to, and I just try not to comment on them, because live and let live. This fandom is such an open and welcoming one, and I hope it stays that way.

[gamerszone2019-blog]

How League of Legends Connected Me To The World in the Face of Heart Disease

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/how-league-of-legends-connected-me-to-the-world-in-the-face-of-heart-disease/

How League of Legends Connected Me To The World in the Face of Heart Disease

I always imagine the jersey: its colors, the logo. The team’s name, Vape Treatment, wraps around the emblem on the front, all caps. The font’s something reasonable… Helvetica, maybe. The logo is a little abstract, a rendering of the breathing exercise apparatus I was gifted at the hospital. Two handles, like ears, frame the main tube, which acts as a game—you blow into a separate tube to keep the ball raised at a certain level. It’s called an incentive spirometer, and it’s supposed to keep your lungs healthy during recovery. My name’s on the back of the jersey, of course, though I’m not exactly part of my League of Legends fantasy team—just the illustrious owner.

The League of Legends fantasy draft for the North American Championship Series is just a few days before the summer season. I know the names of the teams, a few of the players’ handles, but I’m not a League of Legends fan. I don’t actually understand the genre—the MOBA, or multiplayer online battle arena. It’s a five-on-five game that takes place in a virtual area called the rift. League of Legends has nearly 150 playable characters, though only 10 different ones can play in a single game. It’s a free game, one that I’ve tried and failed to play. At a very base level, it’s a simple premise: the first to destroy the other team’s base wins. The challenge is in attacking the other team’s base while protecting your own, and in facing the unique obstacles that League of Legends’ different characters add to the game’s complexity.

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Teams crash into each other, like miniature hockey fights, across the map. Sometimes it’s big, crushing battles—five-on-five—that leave one team totally overrun. Other times, the moments are smaller but just as significant, with one team sending out a single player, like a sniper, to take out the other team’s most essential player.

I don’t have very long before the draft begins to choose a name for my League of Legends team. I don’t have very much time to research the players, learn about the roles. A nurse knocks on the door, but comes in before I can answer. It’s not like I have privacy, anyway; my mom and dad are here, both sitting on the cot outstretched in the corner. (We’re lucky to get a cot, a hospital volunteer told us earlier, since they go quick on this floor.) My fiancé is there, too, tucked away in another corner. By then, we’d been engaged for just a few days, and still getting used to the titles.

The nurse is here with my vape treatment, sorry, the nebulizer, that’s become a staple in my care since I stopped being able to breathe.

Passing Out in Walgreens

There are two pages to my first hospital bill, the one from the hospital itself and not the doctors that work there. Each day is defined by the price—you can map my health by the way the numbers rise and fall. My first day, the emergency room visit, is not the most expensive of the visit, despite an extra charge for being a “high severity” patient with a “threat to life function.” The most extravagant day was a couple later, after I thought I’d stabilized, when I woke up unable to breathe normally. The oxygen levels in my blood dropped too low due to acute pulmonary edema, a side effect of the damage myocarditis did to my heart. I’d needed critical care, apparently, for 74 minutes, which added an extra $500 to my bill for the day.

I don’t know exactly how much the total bill cost; it hurt too much to tally up the total of all the charges I would eventually receive. I do know that I drained my savings account entirely, around $8,000, before I started to use my credit card. The rest of the amount was covered by my insurance, which, ironically, had been given to me by my employer, a competitive gaming news website, and switched on only days before I got sick.

My husband—then boyfriend-turned-fiancé—and I can joke about it now. We wouldn’t have gone on such an expensive vacation if we knew this was about to happen! Of course, it’s probably that expensive vacation, particularly the plane ride home, that’s to thank for my descent into sickness. A few hours before arriving home, the airline served breakfast. I chose porridge. He had something different, but I don’t know what. We can’t know for sure if that’s the moment I came in contact with the salmonella that would later infect my heart, though. We also ate at a local diner once we returned home to Somerville. There, I had pancakes and he had eggs.

I was fine for half a day home before the sickness hit. Then it was all shivers and sweats, vomiting and diarrhea—sometimes both! I passed out in Walgreens, somewhere between getting my medication and asking for the bathroom key, to the shock and horror of everyone in the store. I went to the walk-in clinic and then to the emergency room—for the first time—to get poked with an IV and rehydrated before I was sent home. Back to the bathroom floor, alternating between shivers and sweats.

C/o Nicole Carpenter

The AD Carry

A League of Legends draft works the same way one for the NFL does. Participants pick in rounds until everyone’s filled out a roster of 10 players. There’s some strategy involved, of course—what roles to fill first, how to get all your desired players. But for me, largely unfamiliar with the competitive scene, it’s about the best names and stealing my colleagues’ top picks.

The nurse starts my nebulizer treatment just as we’re scheduled to start the draft. I’m already in a video call with my fellow drafters. All of them know I’m sick. Clearly, they can see I’m in the hospital. Most of them don’t know how bad. The nebulizer is the easiest part of my treatment, it just looks worse than it is—a turtle shell suctioned to my face—on top of the wires, tubes, and cords hanging behind me.

Someone pushes “Go” on the draft once the mask is strapped to my face. Puffs of smoke dramatically plume out of the nebulizer when I breathe. Someone makes a Darth Vader joke—maybe it’s me. We move on with the draft; the good thing about a timer is that you can’t focus on your sick coworker. When the draft starts, it can’t stop. Each participant has one minute for each pick. My first instinct is to choose a full team of players with animal names, so my first round pick is Jason “WildTurtle” Tran. WildTurtle plays a role called “AD carry” for a team named FlyQuest. I didn’t know what an AD carry was then, but I do now. (What else was I supposed to do during my six-month recovery?) AD stands for “attack damage,” which means the AD carry is playing offensively. The “carry” part of the role is a nod to its importance—the AD carry starts off fairly weak but will become so strong over the course of the match that they’ll hopefully be able to carry your team to victory.

League of Legends’ virtual arena, the rift, is split in two. Both sides are nearly identical, with three lanes each leading to the center of the map. One side is controlled by your team, the other by the enemy’s. The AD carry typically plays in the bottom lane—shortened to bot in League of Legends speak—with a support character assigned to protect the carry at all costs. The rest of the players on each team are assigned to roles according to their places on the map, too: top, mid, and jungler.

But the role that can change games? That’s the AD carry. And that’s why I like it so much.

The Diagnosis

I woke up early on Labor Day Monday still shivering and sweating, but now with additional pain in my chest. The pain was more like pressure, though, an anvil and not a knife. The force was so heavy I was sure my ribs would give way to the weight, and with a crack and squish my heart would pop.

The thing about chest pain is that it fast-tracks you in the emergency room—an un-fun version of Walt Disney World’s FastPass, a magical hospital band that propels you to the front of the line. Here’s the special treatment I got: an EKG, a portable ultrasound, multiple blood draws, a cheese sandwich, and two IV lines. The doctor said a lot of words, but once he started talking about my heart, I stopped listening.

He was the teacher and I was Charlie Brown.

Troponin. Wahwah wah, wah wah. Heart damage. Wahwahwah, wah. Wah, wahwah wah.

I didn’t ask if I was going to die, but I wanted to. My fiancé asked if the doctor could call my mom. He explained to her what troponin was (a protein in the blood) and what high levels meant (heart injury). And yes, she should drive up to Massachusetts immediately.

C/o Nicole Carpenter

WildTurtle

In 2013, WildTurtle joined one of North America’s best League of Legends teams, TSM. Playing against compLexity Gaming during the League of Legends Championship Series 2013 spring event, WildTurtle’s debut on the team, TSM was coming off a stagnant season. WildTurtle was a new addition to the team, a replacement for another AD carry who didn’t work with the roster. WildTurtle had always been known as an aggressive player, one who won’t settle back into complacency. Sometimes it’s gotten him into trouble, as he’s wandered out into mid-field without his support, looking to make a big play, only to get ganked—that’s League of Legends speak for a surprise attack—by an enemy player.

That wasn’t the case in his first big game, the one that shot him into contention as one of League of Legends’ most prominent players. More than 30 minutes into the match, TSM and compLexity are near equal in points and kills, each only one potential fight away from winning the game. It’s TSM that makes the first break, through the bottom lane, to compLexity’s base. Both teams have all their ultimates—the big, flashy power moves that can turn games around in an instant—when they collide. The screen is a mess of colors and numbers, spells flying and characters slashing away with virtual weapons.

But there’s WildTurtle at the back, tap-tap-tapping away on his mouse to unleash ranged shots at the enemy. With the compLexity players low on health thanks to assistance from the rest of TSM, WildTurtle is able to eliminate each of his enemies one-by-one, all five wiped off the map by a click of his mouse. It’s called a pentakill, and yes, it’s very impressive.

TSM’s match against compLexity was a turning point for the team that struggled to get itself out of third place in the overall standings. They’d always been good, but they hadn’t been able to unseat the teams above them in the rankings. Each subsequent week after WildTurtle’s arrival on TSM, the team had marginally better results—until the 10th week, where they shot to the top with a 21-7 record.

No one Choose Piglet

I’ve announced my intention to create a League of Legends fantasy team that purely consists of players with animal names. As I’m scrolling through the list, another nurse arrives, the one who comes in every few hours to poke my belly with a needle. I turn the laptop away from me, but not before giving a warning: No one choose Piglet! Chae “Piglet” Gwang-jin, then playing for an organization called Team Liquid, is a bot laner like WildTurtle. I certainly didn’t need another AD carry at this point, but there are barely enough North American League of Legends players with animal names to fill my team.

Almost immediately, someone else chooses Piglet.

The nurse pinches my belly and pulls up as much skin as she can find. She’s dodging the bruises that already dot my skin. She gives me these shots of heparin, a blood thinner, every few hours to prevent blood clots; anyone that’s in the hospital and laying down for an extended stay is given the medication.

My computer makes a sound. Not a beep or a ring, but a sound like a sword hitting steel. I think you’re up, the nurse laughed. (She’s right.) But you’ve got to go for a walk first. (Dang it.) Before I could turn the laptop back towards me, she was disconnecting the wires that kept me tangled to the bed. It’s useless to argue with the nurse, so auto-draft it is. With the auto-drafting system, if you don’t pick within a minute, the drafting system will choose the next best player, points-wise, for you.

My walk is more like a shuffle. Each breath in is a little easier because of the nebulizer. I wonder who’ll be on my team when I return.

C/o Nicole Carpenter

The Next Six Months

The League of Legends Championship Series’ 2017 summer event begins a day after I leave the hospital, but FlyQuest—WildTurtle’s team—doesn’t play until the next day. I’m happy with my team, a mix of players chosen for me and those I ended up randomly plucking from the list: guys named Ssumday, Trashy, Hai, Doublelift, and Olleh. But only one of them’s got an animal name, and that’s WildTurtle.

My mom moves up to Massachusetts for a week or two to care for me outside of the hospital. There’s a laundry list of things I’m urged not to do until my six-month recovery is up, but at this point, I’m not exactly up to trying any of them anyway. I can hardly walk to the bathroom without losing my breath. And so I watch League of Legends. My mom does, too. It’s impossible to watch all the matches in a week, because there are 10, so we watch WildTurtle. We watch him lose twice in week one and once more in week two before my mom’s got to go home. Neither of us can really parse the action.

The League of Legends Championship Series continues its regular summer season for eight weeks. Each week, something gets knocked off my “Don’t” list. FlyQuest and WildTurtle win only six of their 18 games and don’t make it through to the next stage.

Vape Treatment, my fantasy team, fared worse: we won no games. Most of the time, it wasn’t even close. But League of Legends became something of a constant in my life, a life that now had limitations. I read online after the fact that the 2017 summer season was the first time that WildTurtle didn’t make the event’s playoffs since he joined the league. I learned it was his first event with the team; he joined FlyQuest only days before the League of Legends Championship Series’ summer event began. He’s still on FlyQuest now, a staple in a mostly-new roster.

He told an interviewer last year, I think struggling on FlyQuest really opened my eyes. He’s trying not to look back at the past with fear or contempt. I’m trying to do that, too.

Nicole Carpenter is a writer and reporter based in Massachusetts. Follow her on Twitter @sweetpotatoes.

Source : IGN

[diary4]

11/6/18

I want to pick up on yesterdays ‘to be continued’ and finish filling you in on the ‘major breakthrough’, but first, quick catch up. I couldn’t finish telling you about it yesterday because I’d been cooped up (locked in the bathroom, sat on the floor, leaning against the shower door, crying etc) for a long time and thought I ought to go downstairs and be with Dad. When I came down Amrit and Manjeet were there, sitting outside with Dad and Uncle Johnny and Tony and Angie on the patio. They had olives and salami and tapasy things out and people were chuckling and talking about Brexit (Manjeet’s in the cabinet office now – friends in high. Really should enquire about experience). It was strange because it felt like everything was back to normal and I kept catching myself looking around the table and wondering where Mum was or which seat Mum would sit in. Strange. Anyway Anne-Marie and Harriet and Chrissy came round (intrigue – really must find out how the marriage broke up) and then Max arrived, and it all started to feel nice. The tone was not happy necessarily but somehow celebratory – maybe it was something to do with everyone keep banging on about how Mum had lived her life exactly how she wanted to and really had had the best life she ever could have, which gets truer the more I think about it. She never went without, she never knew great pain, she never had to come to terms with significant loss (Larry keeps saying how, because Grandma and Grandad were so estranged from their families, they’ve never been through death and funerals before). She travelled widely, she lived well, anything she wanted she got and she never had to kill herself working for it, but rather kept busy with a job that she loved. People mention such facts with the tossed around label ‘small mercies’, but really they’re very big. At the end of the day, everyone has a limited time on the planet, and the only consolation we get for it isn’t a decade or two tacked on at the end, but the quality of the time you’ve had. For how much better it makes me feel, I reckon that’s a pretty big mercy.

Another small mercy that’s actually pretty fucking girthy – Chrissy parroted month younger me when he said about how the whole thing feels unjust and unfair and why me. Dad answered for me, saying that you get over that, because really it’s a nonsensical way of looking at things. There are babies, children who haven’t even learnt to walk yet who get diagnosed with the very same thing. Against eighteen months Mum’s fifty five years look pretty bloody kushty. And it’s not just that. There are people who lose their whole village in wars or get born into abusive families. What about that bitch that got chained up in the basement and raped by her Dad for twenty years? Where’s the justice in that? Fact is we live in an unfair world and you’ll go mad trying to right all the wrongs in it so all you can do is try and stick a big fuck you up to the whole lot of it by being very very happy.

I know it sounds like I’m really really okay with everything and even happy about some things, and I suppose that in a sense I am because in a way, there’s a great sense of relief, that now the suffering is over and were on the upwards slope. We’ve got past the halfway nadir and now its back on the up – bizarrely, things are looking up. That’s not to say I’m not devastated and I don’t miss Mum every minute of the day and that whenever the doorbell rings I don’t have a moment of wild hope that she’ll come shuffling through the door. But what it is is that I’ve gotten used to being devastated, and I can’t really remember what it feels like not having a hole in your heart. Maybe that’s just growing up – learning to live with pain is symptomatic of living itself. Life is a disease an incurable disease of which pain is a primary symptom (others include happiness, joy – expand the metaphor).

Anyway. Yesterday panned out pretty much as expected. Had a mish mash buffet for dinner. Made pesto to have pesto pasta then didn’t fancy it so jarred it and fridged it (even better the morning after – will have tonight). Did some shooting with Max and Harriet. Watched Love Island then, when everyone except me and Dad and Ellie had trickled away watched the end of Pulp Fiction. Front room felt empty without Mum. Anyway, was suddenly knackered and kept falling asleep – what is it about that final scene of Pulp that I can never seem to make it through without falling sleep? Still don’t know really understand what happens with Tim Roth.

Went to bed. Dad came woke me up in the morning coming in for a hug. One thing I will say – I was very worried things would be difficult and awkward between us and Dad, but I’ve been happily surprised. Yes, it’s a little awkward because we’re all having to adjust and he’s heartbroken and we’re all very sad – but I think we’ll be okay. We’ve been speaking very freely, and I keep going over and hugging him or holding his hand – not just to make a point, I’m glad to say, but because when I see him looking heartbroken across the table my whole being yearns to cuddle up. He’s the only parent I’ve got left.

I started writing this entry this morning when Janet and Chris, and then a little later Sarah, we’re around and Dad was out arranging the funeral. Made awkward chat with Chris and Janet, then, to my pleasant surprise, had a very enjoyable and ‘free-flowing’ chat with Sarah when she came over (look here, her daughter is closer to my age than she is yet she clearly views me as her equal as opposed to Paris’s – symptomatic of our biological relationship ‘cousins’?). Chatted about driving instructors and stuff, then Dad came back with Uncle Tony and John and Johnny and we all sat outside and sorted through lists of people to come and stuff. Its odd but I take a strange joy in funerals. I thoroughly enjoyed Nanny and Grandad’s (apart from that horrid bit with Dad crying), was thrilled by Aunt Lizzie’s and rather excited for Auntie Mary’s. I thought it would be different this time and that I would absolutely fucking hate it – my position for much of the past few months has actually been that I would ask to be excused from the whole thing. And while there’s still a lot of apprehension, it was nice planning it today – made me feel like we had a purpose, maybe like there was a reason for the whole thing. My mood towards the funeral in general has shifted since yesterday, and I’m now viewing it exclusively as a celebration of Mum rather than a lament. After all, why must death be a sorrowful occasion? Why must we mourn loss? Isn’t life’s ephemeral nature what makes it so beautiful after all? I don’t know. Maybe I can only say all these things coming from a perspective of having already been in mourning for a month – or, more terrifyingly, from still being in shock and unable to process the death. Maybe I just like feeling like part of a big family, and feeling like everyone is around to look after us – maybe I just like seeing how much better Uncle Johnny is doing these days (really, really – glowing, I have to say. An act put on for our benefit?). Or perhaps (more cynical) I just can’t wait to be the attention, to see all my friends, to get pissed and finally be the punter rather than the waiter, to sit outside and bask in an open bar. Who knows. Even if it does seem a bit irreverent, I think Mum would rather I enjoyed it than dreaded it.

Anyway that turned into a fucking long recap but it does cover the whole of today/ yesterday afternoon so.

But back to the breakthrough:

I think it may be partially responsible for the good relationship with Smarl we’ve enjoyed over the past 24 hrs. Truth is that the next thing I found in Mum’s manila memories envelope told me more about him that anyone else. They were three letters to Mum from Dad, which he scrawled on hotel stationary in the early 90s. So the first thing that struck me about them was that Mum and Dad’s relationship as presented in these private, pre-parenthood letters was exactly the same as the relationship I’ve known them to have my whole life. The jokes were the same (Toady, ‘A Toad Abroad’) – the bloody syntax and lexicon were the same. I don’t know, I feel like all children suspect their parents are putting on a show for them, and that really there’s something strange that they never see. Of course, the suspicion tends that this hidden je ne sais quas is of a *sexual* nature, and I was steeled for mention of this as I tiptoed through the letters. And, of course, it did rear its head when halfway through one letter, which takes the form of a lodged complaint about Mum not spending time with Dad even though he took the morning off work to be with her, he mentions a lack of ‘The Naughties’. I paused there. So that’s what they called it. I suppose every couple has a codeword – Charlie and I have ‘sexy time’, don’t we. Not going to lie, it felt pretty perverted prying on my parents sex life like that. Anyway, I was grateful to Dad for encoding the thing because it made me feel comfortable enough to read on. Cue the phrase that’s still kind of doing my head in because it’s so achingly beautiful and beyond anything I thought my parents were capable off, especially my mid twenties father. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a hell of a lot of affection in the letters – Dad is clearly smitten, he talks about keeping a photo of Mum with him on his travels and about always wanting to be with her and talk to her and missing her constantly and I mean ffs no boy has ever written me a bloody letter despite my constant requests so he obviously had it bad. But the tone of the relationship was banterous, friendly – again, don’t get me wrong, in a good way. In places Dad is just downright hilarious – one of the letters is addressed as being from ‘Paul Murphy, International Businessman, The World’. They sound like relationship goals tbf – jokes guy, beautiful woman he’s head over heals with, comfortable friendly rapport (at one point he calls for more naughties with the parenthesised ‘Better effort next time Boyce!’). But while there’s clearly an incredible amount of love and affection, there isn’t a lot of room besides all this for morbid sexual passion. They aren’t thrusting hips and craving lips etc (thank god). Except for this one place, this one line, which stands out like, idk, like a graveyard in a flowerbed, like a bullet in a plate of pee, like a human heart in pile of heart shaped pillows. Dad writes how much he’s been missing Mum, and how it’s tough for him to have not seen her for five weeks because ‘every time I see you I want to jump on your bones’. ‘Jump on your bones’. God, I fucking wish I’d come up with that. I had to reread it twice over to make sure I had it right but there’s no mistake, that’s what it says, the handwriting is clear. What is that, a quote. What does that even mean? Jump on your bones… God, what an expression of absolute longing for another person.

The sexual references did get more explicit. On the page after the bones Dad writes ‘have a nice time on holiday, bring me back some porn films’ which I actually laughed at but which was also something of a ‘caution: danger ahead sign’, because at the bottom of the page was a drawing of a dick with an arrow and caption of something like ‘he needs attention’- but I slammed the thing shut before I could read more. No one needs to know their parents that well.

So yeah. That was revealing. I think the main thing I got from it was, like I said, an insight into Dad rather than Mum, and an insight into just how much she meant to him. This was more than just the love of his life – it was one of the greatest loves of any life. He’s a generous and caring person with an excellent capacity for loving other people, but what she brought out in him was special even for that. That relationship, those early days of dreaming and just wanting to be together all the time. He must be fucking dying. I wish there was more I could do. My first thought was to return those letters to the drawer so that he could find them and have them, but now I’m not sure. I’m afraid they’ll make him really sad. Don’t know if it’s my decision to make. Need to talk to someone. Don’t fancy talking to Charlie about it – if I’m honest, the whole situation has made me rather cool towards him. There I was thinking we had something akin to Mum and Dad. I don’t think it’s even half of that. And honestly, I don’t think it’s me, I think it’s him. Maybe I’m just being harsh, maybe he’s just not as good as Dad at expressing his emotions. Even so. I think it’s my right to be picky, having something like that to hold boys up against – the bar is very high. Touche Paulie – the bar is very very high.

This morning before anyone arrived Dad, Ellie and I sat out on the patio and had our respective breakfasts in the sun. Felt strange again. Empty chair staring at me across the table. What it felt like exactly was the end scene of a film, which has been cut to suddenly after some great dramatic fight. And what you see in the scene is three characters that you knew were safe talking around a table, but really you’re just sitting on the edge of your seat waiting to see if the person who was badly injured in the fight made it out alive. And all the characters except this one person are just sitting around, and you can see them all but you don’t care you’re just waiting and waiting, and they drag it out right up until the final frame of the film when at last you get to let out that sigh of relief and leave the cinema on a high – they made it! Except, obviously, without getting morose, this isn’t one of those films this one ends poignant and sad and you don’t leave on a hip hop high you leave on a slow mow low.

[fathersonholygore]

Netflix’s Black Mirror Season 4, Episode 6: “Black Museum” Directed by Colm McCarthy Written by Charlie Brooker

* For a recap & review of the penultimate Season 4 episode, “Metalhead” – click here Open on “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me” by Dionne Warwick. A woman named Nish (Letitia Wright) drives through a lonely stretch of mountains and desert. She gets to a BRB Connect station, though it’s obviously rundown. Nish hauls out the solar charger, and it’s going to be three hours before she’s fully charged again. Thus, her eyes wander to the Black Museum in the lot next door. It’s owned by a man called Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge). She meets him outside. There are no other tour goers, it’s just Rolo and Nish. He advises the place isn’t for the faint of heart. Yet in they go. They start heading through the museum. It’s a high-tech place, containing technology gone awry. We even see the lollipop from “U.S.S. Callister” among other things. Rolo used to work for a medical technology company. He first met a Dr. Dawson (Daniel Lapaine) going around hawking the latest gadgets. He shows Dawson some of the research they’ve been doing with rats. One rat, without actual physical pain, was able to feel the other rat’s pain through sensation. They’ve made a “neural implant” to help with diagnosing patients and their symptoms. A doctor can feel “exactly what a patient feels minus the physical consequences, like reading their minds.” So, Dawson starts testing out an implant. The patient wears a sort of neural mapping cap, and it’s linked to the implant. He feels everything the patient does. It helps everything from the basics, to serious diseases the doctor catches using this system. Rolo tells Nish that the doc and his girlfriend threw on the device to bang, as well. But all wasn’t perfect. No. Dawson hooked up to an important patient, and it’s a brutal experience. Something he’s “never known.” The patient dies. So what exactly happens to the doc? He blacks out. He goes through death without actually dying. And this really fucked up the implant. Pain became pleasure. Dawson got off on the things he felt at work, then his love life got a bit more dangerous, very destructive. Dr. Dawson developed a habit. Hooked on the sensuality of pain. He couldn’t get enough, lurking around the hospital hoping for a something really “juicy.” He’s a junkie, going so far as to let a woman die on the table because he’s getting off on her heart attack. This means Rolo and the hospital have to take him off duty, away from patients. What would the doc do then to find his fix? Start harming himself. Until it gets to extreme lengths, he’s full of cuts, he’s missing teeth. “None of it was enough,” though. He needed fear to get him off. Only pain didn’t do it for him. “You can inflict pain on yourself, but not terror. For that, you need a volunteer.” This sent Dr. Dawson out into the streets at night, finding a homeless person to wear the neural map while he drills into him. The cops found him, of course. Put him in a mental hospital. He has a permanent smile long into his psychotic coma.

Nish looks more around the Black Museum. She finds a stuffed monkey. We hear a story about Carrie (Alexandra Roach). We see her partying, getting pregnant with Jack’s (Aldis Hodge) baby. Then one day she’s hit by a vehicle in the road. She’s checked into St. Juniper’s Hospital. Jack visits every day while Carrie lies in a coma. They start using technology which allows basic yes or no communication, nothing overly special. Rolo went to see Jack about another new technology; “digitally extracting” consciousness and transferring it to another host. That means putting her consciousness into Jack’s mind, in the extra spaces the mind doesn’t use already. The couple go through with the procedure. Then, Carrie can feel, taste, sense all kinds of things again, all through her husband Jack’s consciousness. But this means they’ve got to spend every moment together. Even if it means him taking a piss, every last little second. “No privacy for him, no agency for her.” What happens when he’s got to start moving on and living his life again? Could get ugly. Jack goes to see Rolo, who says he can upgrade his “privileges.” They do that, meaning he can start putting his wife on a pause when he feels is necessary. Not long before he tries it out. Later, he un-pauses her back home; later as in months later, when Halloween comes around. Oh, shit. Things went a little better after the treated things like a separation. During the week, Jack paused their shared consciousness. On the weekend, Carrie got to come out and see their child. Things were better, at least until a woman named Emily (Yasha Jackson) moved in next door. This progressed into more than a neighbourly relationship. New problems for Jack to handle. Hard to spend time with a new woman when Carrie’s in there, “judging, bitching.” Jack and Emily go to see Rolo, who suggests “permanent erasure.” However, the widower refuses. Rolo has one more suggestion: they can transfer Carrie’s consciousness over to a stuffed monkey. Cute, right? Now, Carrie’s trapped in a place that was just like her coma, only two responses. No different than being dead yet still awake in that hospital bed. Emily makes clear to Carrie she must be a “good toy” to stay and not be deleted forever. A sad, sad existence. Finally, Rolo brings Nish to see a hologram, a “fully conscious upload” of a killer named Clayton (Babs Olusanmokun). Basically it’s the concept of holograms playing concerts we know today amplified, to a more real status. Rolo was trying to get into the business of celebrity consciousnesses. He went to see Clayton in jail, to snatch up rights to his digital self. All profits, he claimed, would go to the man’s family. After Clayton was executed, his consciousness was transferred. Born again in a new cell. A horrific afterlife. Particularly after they simulate his execution, over and over, for the paying customers, y’know. Quite disturbing. We didn’t know everything about Nish in the beginning. She’s come to the Black Museum for a reason, purposefully. To exact revenge on Rolo, for his capitalist use of the pain of others, specifically Clayton; Nish’s father. The water Nish gave Rolo earlier was drugged. This gives her time to do her own extracting of his consciousness, right before he succumbs to the poison. Nish has put Rolo into her father’s virtual consciousness, where he can’t say shit, and he’s unprotected against however long a shock she decides on giving him. She says goodbye to her father, then throws the lever, long past the limit, and watches as Rolo dies with the hologram of Clayton. Nish takes the monkey with Carrie inside, she lights the Black Museum up in slow flames, and drives off in her charged car on the road again. The whole time, her mother’s watching, her consciousness in Nish’s head. A real family road trip. Okay, I loved this episode! But Charlie Brooker owes Karl Pilkington a little credit, because the premises of the first couple stories are straight out of rambling Karl did on The Ricky Gervais Show. Check it out, I was blown away by the huge similarities, and I dig that Brooker, intentionally or not, played them out in this episode. Season 4 has been wild. Really hope we get more. Black Mirror – Season 4, Episode 6: “Black Museum” Netflix's Black Mirror Season 4, Episode 6: "Black Museum" Directed by Colm McCarthy…

[corvwase]

First College Essay from 2012

This is the first essay I wrote in college. My opinions since then have drastically changed. I’m not a liberal blindly following the crowd. As this was my first essay you can expect it to be quite bad. So there.

Today I challenged a man known by the name of Lars Larson.

You can either cringe at the name, or smile and wait for his debating to start. He is a talk show host, and a man in favor of the death penalty, or capital punishment. I am not. I challenged his remarks with respect, requesting that he read an essay I wrote on the corrupt system of the court, and how many have been convicted of wrongdoing when they were quite innocent. Thus, the real criminal runs scot-free. I asked him to take into account what I had written, and in a way, backed him into a corner; stating that either he could read it on-air, or not. If he didn't, he would be seen as afraid for his own opinion and such. Very interesting. He is well-known, famous, and one of the most listened to talk show hosts. We'll see how this turns out. But first, I will show what my in-class presentation/debate looked like.

In short, it looked like this. This is not a paper, it is just dialogue to depict what I stated in the beginning of the debate.

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My topic for Essay Four is capital punishment, or CP. My position: I do not support, or approve, of the death sentence. I could go on and on just like anyone else who doesn’t support CP, but I will just focus on two issues that I find with CP, and argue their points.

My two arguments are: False Eyewitness Testimony, and Inhumane Methods.

I’ll first say a couple of things about mistaken eyewitness testimony.

One, there is a natural phenomenon that occurs within the human brain called ‘change blindness’. Summed up, this basically means that an eyewitness to, say, murder, can be completely wrong in their case. And to think that an innocent human being can have their life snuffed out based on eyewitness testimony. There have been numerous cases where people were sentenced to fifty or more years in prison, or even the death sentence, based solely on eyewitness testimony.

In June of 2010, not two years ago, the British Psychological Society published a study, stating, “Change blindness can cause mistaken eyewitness identification.”

What were they researching?

They were studying the effects of change blindness and crime severity on eyewitness identification accuracy.

How was it done?

They performed a simulated criminal act and examined change blindness’ effect on subjects’ accuracy for identifying the perpetrator in a photo spread.

What did they find?

Well, that in itself is a little unnerving.

Subjects who viewed videos designed to induce change blindness were more likely to falsely identify the innocent actor relative to those who viewed control videos, meaning videos with no actor and the actual criminal actor.

Crime severity did not influence detection of change (change in actors portraying perpetrators); however, it did have an effect on eyewitness accuracy. Subjects who viewed a more severe crime ($500 theft) made fewer errors in perpetrator identification than those who viewed a less severe crime ($5).

You might be wondering what change blindness and unconscious transference really are. Unconscious transference occurs when an eyewitness mistakenly identifies a person as having committed a crime, but actually has encountered that person in a different context.

Example: Suspect seems familiar in a lineup because he/she was previously seen in a mug shot. That’s a bit scary.

Change blindness: a phenomenon that occurs when a person fails to detect large changes between one viewed scene and another.

Example: This is a study that happened for real. An experimenter asks a pedestrian for directions. Two people pass between them carrying a door. The first experimenter changes place with a second one and continues to talk to the pedestrian as if nothing unusual occurred, regardless of the fact that the second one looks completely different, is clothed differently, and is a different race. One half of the people failed to notice the change.

Another example: #1 approaches worker behind counter; asks to participate in study. After signing a paper and handing it back, #1 crouches down behind counter and #2 takes his place. Seventy-five percent of people failed to notice the change.

Although only 17 people detected a change in actors  in the actor change groups (5% people exposed) more than 1/3 of subjects  in these groups I.D. ed the second actor. This indicates unconscious transference. (change out is after crime is committed.) In a situation where a witness does not notice that an innocent person has replaced a perpetrator in a visual scene, he/she is likely to wrongly i.d. the innocent person.

95% of subjects experienced change blindness (almost everyone thought the second actor was the perpetrator, when he was an innocent).

The Center For Wrongful Convictions identified and analyzed the cases of 86 defendants (84 men, two women) who had been sentenced to death but legally exonerated.

Eyewitness testimony was the only evidence used against 33% of them. (38.4%).

Not cool.

Inhumane methods:

The electric chair, last used in 1976

The first person to be executed by the electric chair was William Kemmler in New York's Auburn Prison on August 6, 1890; the "state electrician" was Edwin F. Davis. The first 17-second passage of current through Kemmler caused unconsciousness, but failed to stop his heart and breathing. The attending physicians, Edward Charles Spitzka and Charles F. Macdonald, came forward to examine Kemmler. After confirming Kemmler was still alive, Spitzka reportedly called out, "Have the current turned on again, quick, no delay." The generator needed time to re-charge, however. In the second attempt, Kemmler was shocked with 2,000 volts. Blood vessels under the skin ruptured and bled, and the areas around the electrodes singed. The entire execution took about eight minutes. George Westinghouse later commented that "they would have done better using an axe,"[7] and a witnessing reporter claimed that it was "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging."[8    ]

Pedro Medina was convicted of murder and grand larceny.

Blue and orange flames up to a foot long shot from the right side of Mr. Medina's head and flickered for 6 to 10 seconds, filling the execution chamber with smoke.

The most common now: lethal injection

On December 13, 2006, Angel Nieves Diaz was not executed successfully in Florida using a standard lethal injection dose. Diaz was 55 years old, and had been sentenced to death for murder. Diaz did not succumb to the lethal dose even after 35 minutes, necessitating a second dose of drugs to complete the execution. At first, a prison spokesman denied Diaz had suffered pain, and claimed the second dose was needed because Diaz had some sort of liver disease.[51] After performing an autopsy, the Medical Examiner, Dr. William Hamilton, stated that Diaz’s liver appeared normal, but that the needle had been pierced through Diaz’s vein into his flesh. The deadly chemicals had subsequently been injected into soft tissue, rather than into the vein.[52] Two days after the execution, then-Governor Jeb Bush suspended all executions in the state and appointed a commission “to consider the humanity and constitutionality of lethal injections.”[53] The ban was lifted by Governor Charlie Crist when he signed the death warrant for Mark Dean Schwab on July 18, 2007.[54] On November 1, 2007 the Florida Supreme Court unanimously upheld the state's lethal injection procedures.[55]

A study published in 2007 in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS Medicine suggested that "the conventional view of lethal injection leading to an invariably peaceful and painless death is questionable".[56]

The execution of Romell Broom was abandoned in Ohio on September 15, 2009, after prison officials failed to find a vein after 2 hours of trying on his arms, legs, hands and ankle. This has stirred up intense debate in the United States about lethal injection

That’s sick. Poor man.

I could go on. But I wont. There is too much to talk about and too little time.

I’d like you to make your own opinion, your own position, even if you have had one previously. Just rethink. Expand on what it really is. Do you believe torture should be legal? Well, here it is. I don’t think you would enjoy that. Some people are on death row for thirty years before they're executed. That’s a long time to think about your prolonged death sentence. In prison forever, then killed when you're old and tired.

Thank you .

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And so a couple of students had their views of the sentence do a 180-degree turn, and I was also met with an upset colleague. They fired a few accusations and questions, to which I fired back with equal vigor, answering and holding their accusations to the ground. I cannot say I did not enjoy it, but it gave me strength to debate in a respectful manner; to argue with appreciation for the other party, and to give capital sentencing a whole new aspect.

This text below is my essay that I wrote. I hope you enjoy. Or not.

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Jesse Maes

Matt Schumacher

WR 121

December 11th, 2012

The Reality of Misguided Trials, and the Victims of Capital Punishment

Your Eye Assists Murder

------------------------------

His hands tremble madly, and his body writhes inside of his black and grey suit. Clean and proper, but knowing the inevitable. His eyes cloud with tears as he hears the dreaded words from the judge behind the big maple desk.

“The jury has reached the verdict. You are hereby sentenced to death by lethal injection at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Texas.”

He is led away by two officers, sobbing quietly.

This is what the end of a murder trial looks like in Texas. Many other states have a death penalty policy, as well. This man was just convicted of murder and rape, but the little evidence such as eyewitness testimony was enough to sentence him to death.

My position on capital punishment; I do not support, or approve, of the death sentence. I could go on and on just like anyone else who doesn’t support CP, but I will just focus on two issues that I find with CP, and argue their points.

My two arguments are false eyewitness testimony and inhumane methods.

I’ll first say a few things about mistaken eyewitness testimony.

One, there is a natural phenomenon that occurs within the human brain called ‘change blindness’. Summed up, this basically means that an eyewitness to, say, murder, can be completely wrong in their case. And to think that an innocent human being can have their life snuffed out based on eyewitness testimony. There have been numerous cases where people were sentenced to fifty or more years in prison, or even the death sentence, based solely on eyewitness testimony.

In June of 2010, not two years ago, the British Psychological Society published a study, stating, “Change blindness can cause mistaken eyewitness identification.”

What were they researching?

They were studying the effects of change blindness and crime severity on eyewitness identification accuracy.

How was it done?

They performed a simulated criminal act and examined change blindness’ effect on subjects’ accuracy for identifying the perpetrator in a photo spread.

What did they find?

Well, that in itself is a little unnerving.

Subjects who viewed videos designed to induce change blindness were more likely to falsely identify the innocent actor relative to those who viewed control videos, meaning videos with no actor and the actual criminal actor.

Crime severity did not influence detection of change (change in actors portraying perpetrators); however, it did have an effect on eyewitness accuracy. Subjects who viewed a more severe crime ($500 theft) made fewer errors in perpetrator identification than those who viewed a less severe crime ($5).

You might be wondering what change blindness and unconscious transference really are. Unconscious transference occurs when an eyewitness mistakenly identifies a person as having committed a crime, but actually has encountered that person in a different context.

Example: Suspect seems familiar in a lineup because he/she was previously seen in a mug shot. That’s a bit scary.

Change blindness: a phenomenon that occurs when a person fails to detect large changes between one viewed scene and another.

Example: This is a study that happened for real. An experimenter asks a pedestrian for directions. Two people pass between them carrying a door. The first experimenter changes place with a second one and continues to talk to the pedestrian as if nothing unusual occurred, regardless of the fact that the second one looks completely different, is clothed differently, and is a different race. One half of the people failed to notice the change.

Another example: #1 approaches worker behind counter; asks to participate in study. After signing a paper and handing it back, #1 crouches down behind counter and #2 takes his place. Seventy-five percent of people failed to notice the change.

Although only 17 people detected a change in actors in the actor change groups (5% people exposed) more than 1/3 of subjects in these groups I.D. ed the second actor. This indicates unconscious transference. (Change out is after crime is committed.) In a situation where a witness does not notice that an innocent person has replaced a perpetrator in a visual scene, he/she is likely to wrongly i.d. the innocent person.

95% of subjects experienced change blindness (almost everyone thought the second actor was the perpetrator, when he was an innocent).

The Center For Wrongful Convictions identified and analyzed the cases of 86 defendants (84 men, two women) who had been sentenced to death but legally exonerated.

Eyewitness testimony was the only evidence used against 33% of them. (38.4%).

If this particular evidence is all that is used to convict someone of a crime, and they are put on Death Row, then what’s the difference between that and outright stabbing them to death?

Change blindness is often used in pranks; to confuse a passerby, or startle a store manager. But when it comes down to reality, even for rape or lesser crimes, there should be no eyewitness testimony that is depended on. Sure, it can be taken into account, but it should not be the sole piece of evidence against them.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, forty-five out of eighty-six executions were wrongfully caused by eyewitness testimony.

Capital punishment is absolutely wrong because it is extremely difficult to completely and one-hundred percent identify someone as a killer. Methods are unreliable, and even DNA has been shown to be a faulty way of testing. According to the Council For Responsible Genetics,

“Although generally quite reliable (particularly in comparison with other forms of evidence often used in criminal trials), DNA tests are not now and have never been infallible.  Errors in DNA testing occur regularly. DNA evidence has caused false incriminations and false convictions, and will continue to do so. Although DNA tests incriminate the correct person in the great majority of cases, the risk of false incrimination is high enough to deserve serious consideration in debates about expansion of DNA databases. The risk of false incrimination is borne primarily by individuals whose profiles are included in government databases (and perhaps by their relatives). Because there are racial, ethnic and class disparities in the composition of databases, the risk of false incrimination will fall disproportionately on members of the included groups.”

Since deoxyribonucleic acid testing in trials can be faulty, why is it still responsible for the vast majority of criminal cases’ testing methods? This leaves a minute possibility for error in this specific field. Therefore, should there be room for a man to be convicted of a murder based on DNA testing? This means that, setting eyewitness and all other evidence types, a person could be executed for nothing, and the real criminal getting away scot-free. No human life is worth being ended because one simply thinks that they are guilty.

The number of executions since 1976 is 1,317. Over a thousand killed convicts. Many were the actual criminals, but there have been over 10 inmates on Death Row that have been wrongfully convicted---just in the last 22 years.

Inhumane methods:

The electric chair, last used in 1976

The first person to be executed by the electric chair was William Kemmler in New York's Auburn Prison on August 6, 1890; the "state electrician" was Edwin F. Davis. The first 17-second passage of current through Kemmler caused unconsciousness, but failed to stop his heart and breathing. The attending physicians, Edward Charles Spitzka and Charles F. Macdonald, came forward to examine Kemmler. After confirming Kemmler was still alive, Spitzka reportedly called out, "Have the current turned on again, quick, no delay." The generator needed time to re-charge, however. In the second attempt, Kemmler was shocked with 2,000 volts. Blood vessels under the skin ruptured and bled, and the areas around the electrodes singed. The entire execution took about eight minutes. George Westinghouse later commented that "they would have done better using an axe," and a witnessing reporter claimed that it was "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging."

Pedro Medina was convicted of murder and grand larceny.

“Blue and orange flames up to a foot long shot from the right side of Mr. Medina's head and flickered for 6 to 10 seconds, filling the execution chamber with smoke.”

Jesse Joseph Tafero

“A particularly appalling instance of this took place on May 4th, 1990, in the case of Jesse Joseph Tafero in Florida. According to witnesses, when the executioner flipped the switch, flames and smoke came out of Tafero's head, which was covered by a mask and cap. Twelve-inch blue and orange flames sprouted from both sides of the mask. The power was stopped, and Tafero took several deep breaths. The superintendent ordered the executioner to halt the current, and then try it again. And again!

Apparently a synthetic sponge, soaked in brine, had been substituted for a natural one. This reduced the flow of electricity to as little as 100 volts, and ended up torturing the prisoner to death. According to the state prison medical director, Frank Kligo, who attended, it was "less than aesthetically attractive."

Another electrocution in Florida went seriously wrong in 1997 when Pedro Medina was executed on the 25th of March. Witnesses saw a blue and orange flame shoot 6-10 inches out of the helmet covering Medina's head. It burned for about 10 seconds, filling the chamber with acrid smoke and the smell of burning flesh.

An investigation by prison officials blamed the flare-up on a corroded brass screen used in the helmet.

Michael Morse and Jay Wiechart, both experienced in electric chair design and operation, blamed the malfunction on a dry sponge used in conjunction with a wet sponge in the helmet.

Electrocution was challenged through the Florida courts, by death row inmate Leo Jones as a "cruel and unusual" punishment, something which is banned under the American constitution.”

The most common now: lethal injection

“On December 13, 2006, Angel Nieves Diaz was not executed successfully in Florida using a standard lethal injection dose. Diaz was 55 years old, and had been sentenced to death for murder. Diaz did not succumb to the lethal dose even after 35 minutes, necessitating a second dose of drugs to complete the execution. At first, a prison spokesman denied Diaz had suffered pain, and claimed the second dose was needed because Diaz had some sort of liver disease. After performing an autopsy, the Medical Examiner, Dr. William Hamilton, stated that Diaz’s liver appeared normal, but that the needle had been pierced through Diaz’s vein into his flesh. The deadly chemicals had subsequently been injected into soft tissue, rather than into the vein. Two days after the execution, then-Governor Jeb Bush suspended all executions in the state and appointed a commission “to consider the humanity and constitutionality of lethal injections.” The ban was lifted by Governor Charlie Crist when he signed the death warrant for Mark Dean Schwab on July 18, 2007. On November 1, 2007 the Florida Supreme Court unanimously upheld the state's lethal injection procedures.

A study published in 2007 in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS Medicine suggested that "the conventional view of lethal injection leading to an invariably peaceful and painless death is questionable".

The execution of Romell Broom was abandoned in Ohio on September 15, 2009, after prison officials failed to find a vein after 2 hours of trying on his arms, legs, hands and ankle. This has stirred up intense debate in the United States about lethal injection.”

I could go on. But I won’t. There is too much to talk about and too little time.

I’d like you to make your own opinion, your own position, even if you have had one previously. Just rethink. Expand on what it really is. Do you believe torture should be legal? Well, here it is. I don’t think you would enjoy that. Some people are on death row for thirty years before they’re executed. That’s a long time to think about your prolonged death sentence. In prison forever, then killed when you’re old and tired.

I believe it is as wrong as the legal system can get. It should be no one’s decision to end another person’s life. That is not up to us; it is not for us to carry out.

SOURCES CITED:

Agora. "Stanford Journal of Legal Studies- Stanford Law School." 5 april 1999. agorastanford. 2012. 11 december 2012.

capital punishment uk. "The Electric Chair." unknown unknown unknown. capitalpunishmentuk. article. 11 december 2012.

DPIC Reporter. "Descriptions of Execution Methods." 13 november 2011. DPIC. document. 11 december 2012.

Northwestern Law Pritxker Legal Rsearch Center. Northwestern Law Pritxker Legal Rsearch Center. 23 august 2012. document. 11 january 2012.

Radelet, Prof. Michael L. "Some Examples Post Furman Botched Execution." 1 october 2010. DPIC. report. 11 december 2012.

Reporter, AmnestyUSA. "Death Penalty Facts." 1 january 2012. Amnesty USA. document. 11 december 2012.

Unknown. "Death Penalty Sites." 1 January 2012. Death Penalty Information Center. Document. 11 December 2012.

—. "Innoncence and the death penalty." 1 january 2012. DPIC. document. 11 december 2012.

wikipedia. "Capital Punishment." unknown Unknown 2012. Wikipedia. article. 11 december 2012.

Wikipedia. "Change Blindness." 19 march 2012. Wikipedia. 2012. 11 december 2012.

—. "Lethal Injection." 12 february 2012. Wikipedia. article. 11 december 2012.