#essentially it’s a misdirection

[rowanhoney]

I love behindthename . com cos it’s the only place that doesn’t straight up tell me my name is a diminutive of the Irish and means “pure” which never made sense to me and always bugged me. Turns out it’s much much cooler

[innocet]

anyone else up existing within larger systems of power that complicate your desires and identity

[tealvenetianmask]

Blitz and social class rage- because I have no chill and like to write about uncomfortable things.

We've seen a lot of hints (reactions to how Stolas addresses him as "little," confrontation with Striker in Harvest Moon), but I think that we see that rage at its most intense here and here.

The symbolism in both of these scenes has been analyzed a ton by now, and I don't think the parallels in subject matter are accidental- both are essentially Blitz going into a terrified rage (are fear and anger linked for him?) at the idea- an untrue one based in real social class problems- that Stolas could never respect him.

There's imagery of Blitz as a servant in both scenes. Sillhouettes of Blitz fan Stolas in his drug trip in Truth Seekers. He adjusts his bow tie and claims that Stolas treats him like one of his butler imps during his rant in Full Moon.

But the anger Blitz feels about this ALSO came out, more subtly, in my most replayed couple of minutes in Oops (seriously- when I clicked on Oops to find screenshots, I was already paused here).

It's the scene where Blitz won't stop talking about how little Stolas cares about him, and Fizz gets fed up with him denying the obvious. It leads into a back and forth with Striker about social class and relationships with royals. It's one of those shippy moments that I watched on repeat to reassure myself that stolitz is mutual while we waited for Full Moon. Because it's clear in that clip that he CARES deeply about Stolas as much as he denies it.

But wait. When he calls Stolas a "fake privileged asshole . . ."

There's real resentment (and fear? hurt?) there. I mean the guy is fucking furious- it's also the side view with the sharp teeth and narrowed eyes again. This is not the face of a man who's just upset because the guy he likes doesn't like him back. This is deep hurt, and yes, anger. It hurts to see him feeling resentful toward Stolas because I love Stolas and love the potential they have together.

So what gives? Why is this anger/fear so intense that he can't see that potential? I saw a lot of speculation before Full Moon that Blitz might have another royal ex who we have yet to learn about, or that he was devastatingly wronged by one of Hell's higher ups in the past.

I don't think that's necessary personally. I think Blitz is angry about a lifetime of micro-aggressions and racial slurs, at living in a world where people are surprised that he's an imp who runs a business, etc., and that's enough. He's angry because he was taught from childhood that he was dispensable (not me taking a dig at Cash again just because). He's angry at himself for having feelings for Stolas, for feeling comfortable cuddled up next to him when he snapped that one picture on his phone, for wanting what seems impossible.

Blitz has anger issues beyond this- there's no doubt about that. And I think A LOT of it comes down to his self-hatred and inability to process the hurt and fear that simmer underneath. But yeah, there's legitimate anger about race and class issues there too, maybe misdirected at Stolas, but absolutely reflecting a reality in the hellaverse.

[stacy-fakename]

I’m sorry, but my type-a ass cannot be against the Rat Grinders. They’re essentially the kids that couldn’t get the special treatment from teachers and get by on stumbling through tests and happening to get an A without studying. The Rat Grinders feel less like people who cheated the system, and more like the kids who aren’t naturally gifted or lucky, and have to spends hours on end studying, doing extra homework and extra credit, losing their social lives and free time to catch up with the kids who can just breeze through it. Fig never went to a single class or did any homework but gets away with it because the coach, lunch lad, and vice principal are her dads, Kristin and Riz did literally the worst thing their respective class can do, Gorgug actively works to avoid using the main feature of his class whenever possible, Adaine became the Oracle through seemingly happenstance, and Fabian’s rich family bought his way into the extra curricular he’s now the captain of, and all of them skipped half of freshman year! Obviously we, the audience, know that they worked their asses off to get through school each year and to get where the are today. We know they earned every little good thing they have! Fig has worked so hard to become the rockstar she is! Kristin literally brought back a god! Riz in a supergenius detective! Gorgug is an incredible barbarian and artificer! Adaine works so hard to help all of her friends survive a toxic system! Fabian slaved away to earn his achievements himself instead of letting his father’s legacy be his identity! But think of it from an outside perspective, without all the knowledge that only the audience has! These random kids stumbled into three adventures that let them skip grinding for XP, got to miss half a year with no consequence, get special privileges and quests because they are related to or friends with the faculty, never do their assignments or go to class, became popular because of their privileges, and now randomly start spouting micro aggressions towards halflings? If I was one of the Rat Grinders, I’d be pissed off too! I’ve been both the gifted kid, seemingly effortlessly breezing through classes and befriending the entire faculty while secretly going through terrible struggle and stress, and the kid desperately trying to game my way through a system built to harm me while being furious at those who seem to thrive in it, and I can’t help but feel empathy for both. I don’t think the Rat Grinders are evil, cheating monsters who plan to destroy the Bad Kids out of spite. I think they’re just kids in a harmful toxic school system that have a lot of righteous anger at their lot in life, that has sadly been misdirected. Idk if this ramble made sense, sorry for the wall of text!

Edit:Introducing Ivy Embra, the first Rat Grinder to actually be antagonistic to anyone in any way! Also introducing Oisin Hakivar, a super nice guy who’s willing to take advantage of his generational wealth in order to help a fellow student! So the first Rat Grinder to actively be nice to someone too! He likely did something with the ice mephits, but he still seemed genuinely sympathetic and helpful to Adaine!

[doriandrifting]

It’s still so crazy how the writers essentially “outed” Will’s feelings to the audience right at the start of the season in order to cover for Mike. Take away that little scene with the girl trying to play footsie with Will that confirmed/reminded the audience of him being gay, and what do you have? Mike wearing strange clothes, and not hugging Will back, and acting awkward about Will painting for a girl, and blowing up at him for ignoring El, only to admit he was actually being self-pitying, and that he missed Will because he sees him differently than his other friends, all the while he can’t tell his girlfriend he loves her. Like Will had his moment at Rink o Mania with the “What about us?” line, but he was acting so fucking normal in comparison to Mike. And them starting the season with El claiming Will’s been acting weird/has feelings for someone only to reveal he’s gay is the perfect misdirect, because no matter how “weird” things get between Will and Mike because of Mike’s behavior, Will ends up taking the fall.

[deedala]

My submission for the Gallavich Fanart Masquerade 2024

Doing this art was so strange, i tried really hard to go against all my instincts and habits!! It was kind of a fascinating and weird exercise in trying to pick apart all the little things that makes my art look like me...and then *not* do those things. I even tried to draw ian and mickey from an era and with the haircuts that I usually don't go for. this whole artwork is me trying to not do my own artwork, and yet it still came out like me in the end anyway i think. wild how that works!! The title on ao3: You Are Pure Beside Me as a Sleeping Amber, (from Pablo Neruda's Sonnet LXXXI), was another meager attempt at misdirection as i essentially dont know a single thing about poetry. ...and also im usually quite allergic to proper capitalization 🤪 Very interesting experience but super fun!! Thanks @gallavichthings for the event and thanks to everyone who played and commented and kudos'd!! <3

[ghostflowerdreams]

When Fatima tried to enter the Colony House, it seemed like the door was locked. She got distracted by the smell of rotten vegetables, but the other woman entered without any trouble. Looking back, it’s almost always Ellis or someone else opening the doors for her. Could this mean she’s turning into a monster, or that her baby is one? That feels like the obvious route to take with her story, but it could just be a regular pregnancy, like Marielle suggested. Maybe they're trying a bit of misdirection with the audience, eh?

What did Marielle say, that it's hyperemesis gravidarum? Apparently, it's a severe form of morning sickness characterized by extreme nausea, persistent vomiting, which can lead to significant weight loss, dehydration, and electrolyte imbalances. Repeated vomiting can wear down tooth enamel and increase the risk of decay—not exactly tooth loss, but her condition is likely worse than others due to the lack of access to a dentist and basic oral hygiene products like toothpaste, floss, and mouthwash.

The next question is: why is she eating rotten vegetables? This could be explained by pica, an eating disorder that can occur when the body is low on essential minerals and nutrients like iron and zinc. Pica can happen at any time, to anyone, and women can develop pica during pregnancy. Some people might eat substances like dirt, clay, cornstarch, or even other non-food items like stones, mothballs, and paint chips. Given that she hasn’t eaten anything in three days, it’s quite possible that she has developed pica.

Some people have suggested the food was intentionally rotted to provide her with something to eat. This could hint at her having a monster baby, but it may also be unrelated.

Whatever force controls the monsters and the town clearly operates under its own set of rules, which are always rigged in its favor. It takes something away while offering something in return.

A lot of people in the Colony House died, but then a bus full of people show up. Interestingly, I can't recall who it was, but someone expressed concern about not having enough food to feed everyone. Shortly after, we see that the crops they were growing have all rotted away. Now, they really don't have enough food to feed everyone.

Tian Chen remained hopeful, suggesting they could grow the food by planting the crops in different locations to find suitable soil. Then, Jim and Kenny discover a patch of cabbages growing amid the remnants of an old village. That location wasn't there before, but now they have enough food again and a new place for their crops to grow.

It feels as though something is listening; it knows what’s on their mind, and offers them hope (or makes their fear a reality), only to crush it later. The townspeople aren’t just a source of entertainment for it, they’re likely the very means by which it sustains itself. It's their fears and hopes that make their despair (or soul) all the sweeter to consume.

Why else would the radio in the dinner turn on when Kenny was grieving? It taunted him, but at the same time, that radio was the same one that gave Boyd a sign to explore the forest.

It's clear that some kind of overseer entity is listening and watching them all. I wonder how long it will take for them to realize they need to be more careful about what they say aloud, as their words seem to manifest into existence.

[maxwell-grant]

Didn't realize you've read Riddler: Year One, any thoughts on it ? Also, in a more general way, what are your thoughts on the Riddler ?

Someone sent me an ask the past week or so saying that The Penguin is everything that the Joker movies should have been, and I don't think I agree on that in regards to The Penguin specifically. But if we're talking about a "Batman-less Batman villain origin story about a lonely suicidal man struggling with poverty and mental illness exacerbated by child abuse, who is pushed down through the cracks of society deep into the pits of his own mind until he can only save himself by becoming a horrible force of social upheaval and political terrorism, finally discovering joy and a reason to live at the expense of everyone around him, and now he will be Batman's problem someday", well this just completely embarasses Joker (2019) on every level. Impressively drawn, impressively written, impressive on it's own and as a prequel to the movie, WAY better than a movie actor's comic book tie-in has any right to be, and one of the greatest Batman comics ever made. Issue #5 in particular is one of the best and most harrowing comic issues and format breaks I've ever seen in the medium, and even if it's entirely self-contained, it very much belongs in the exact same conversation and should be considered inseparable from The Batman and The Penguin.

We spens 4 issues boiling the frog over every painful corner of Edward's childhood and humanity and misery, taking us through painfully intimate views and perspectives inside his headspace, seeing how and why he justifies his worldview and how easy it even is to do so, feeling truly sorry for this hopeless wretch even though we know he's losing it bad bad baddy bad bad and is going to step off the deep end forever. And then Issue 5 happens and suddenly you are one of the people in Gotham City tasked with sifting through this serial killer's personal diary and you can hear that creep shouting with that distorted voice, you can feel the final death rattle of Edward Nashton's soul ending where The Riddler begins to scream in your head 'I NEVER KNEW I HAD A REASON TO BREATHE", and by Issue 6 you fully understand why and how nobody was prepared for him, and why what he is and does and embodies is going to drag the city into an abyss it may never recover from, and why this was never going to stop even after his arrest, even after his defeat and humiliation in the movie. Everything here adds layers of sympathy and tragedy and heartbreak to the character, while simultaneously making everything he is and does in the movie so much more harrowing and disturbing, holy shit he really staked EVERYTHING, everyone's lives included, on being noticed by his savior.

I was already very much on board with Dano Riddler in the movie, whose execution absolutely sold what should have been, on paper, a storm of unadvisable fandom pitches and uninspired trends and straight-up bad ideas ("What if The Ridder was the Zodiac Killer", "What if The Riddler was a 4chan mass-shooter type", "What if The Riddler was a political terrorist with legitimate grievances but whose final goal was to kill off scores of people for little reason", "What if The Riddler was a creepy fascist responsible for a QAnon cult that ends the movie by metaphorically storming the capitol", "What if The Riddler was really, really, really obsessed with Batman", "What if The Riddler was another Dark Opposite Batman", fucking "What if The Riddler was Hush" even) worked into just this miracle magic bullet of a new take on the guy, fully capturing a lot of the essential bullet points of what makes The Riddler tick as a character while spinning them into new and significant ways befitting this increased role he has in the movie. Rereading the story now, so much of the movie even feels like it's specifically referencing the first Riddler story - The Mayor of Gotham City as a target, Riddler misdirecting Batman with a big target while his real plan involved a flood, Edward putting on a costume and naming himself The Riddler specifically because he wants to get Batman's attention, the glass maze, the written letters to police headquarters, The Eagle's Nest that is a nightclub and also the home of a millionaire with a bird last name (Falcone), a driverless vehicle careening wildly into a public place, even how the very first thing we learn about this fucker is that he cheats to win.

The guy in the movie is a version that fully works on it's own, but it clicks SO much more strongly and cohesively when you read this comic and what it establishes for him. It's the scene in the movie where the section of his diary reads "I must become something more" while Bruce finds the panicked desperate bat rattling against a cage, the thematic parallel between them that is the scariest thing he finds in the entire movie, but developed across six issues. This even begins with Eddie living through his version of the Wayne murders, with the first time he's felt anything other than crushing despair and misery, in part because he's seen the first hint of the puzzle he needs to solve, and where he needs to go. The moment the world stopped making sense for Bruce is the moment that the world started to make sense for Edward.

We understand, around the same time he understands, the childish nightmare that must become the pattern of his entire life from that moment onwards, how Edward Nashton would have killed himself, and no one would have cared, had he not become The Riddler, and how the only alternative to "Hey Edward why don't you crawl into the black hole inside yourself" is to, in fact, find this black hole inside of you and shaped like you and push other people into it instead. Become the creature of the night who can punch crime forever, become the avenging force too great for the Falcones to handle, become the kingpin whose name alone will live forever, become someone that the entire city will never again ignore or forget.

We see how it's less that he's been planning for this for so long, and more that his entire life has been broken and hammered into a Riddler shaped hole, and then when Batman dropped into it, he could start to understand what it is and put a name in it, in the fact that he's been training his entire life for this without knowing. Getting comfortable with flushing rats and making bombs at the orphanage, getting intimately and painfully familiar with self-loathing and alienation and misanthropic contempt for this city and it's people who sit by and allow all of this to happen, surviving his suicide attempts without being able to explain why, searching for answers as to why it hurts so much to live broken and unfulfilled and miserable and why he even bothers to keep on doing so, having nothing to love in his life but numbers and puzzles, spending his entire life invisible while trying to get Thomas Wayne and then his boss to notice and praise him, and then being the wrong man at the right place to begin his campaign, a little nobody accountant who noticed an inconsistency in the numbers, put the pieces together, and then decided he was gonna do something about it because he knew it could be done, because there was someone out there who showed it could be done, and if Eddie joined in, maybe this someone would notice him, let him be his friend.

Batman and R, forever.

(People don't talk nearly enough about how this Riddler's entire life ambition was to recreate Tim Drake's origin story, and they should, it's pretty funny)

And to be honest, I think this is the first Riddler origin story I've ever really liked. Some of the others, particularly the first, have their charms, and this one certainly wouldn't fit most takes on the character, even most of the ones I like, but I've never really been fully sold on the idea of a Riddler origin story until this one, he's always been a very backstory-proof guy to me. This doesn't have any particularly obvious shorthand moment as to why Edward became The Riddler, so much as an entire life twisted and torn and abandoned and rotten in ways big and small until this is what came out of him. No immediately abusive fathers or test cheating scandals or major company backstabbings as defining tragedies, just life for a poor orphan in Gotham City who can't figure out the answer to what's missing from his life until he does.

Still a horrible nerd hopelessly trapped in a life of trying to intellectually one-up everyone as the only thing he lives for and, like every horrible nerd, knowing that one day he will be recognized for what he is and then they'll all see how wrong and stupid and savage these stupid savage idiots all were to look down on him. Still a man driven to impose order on the world the way he believes it has to be. Still a cheater who loves puzzles and answers and the thrill of intellectual stimulation and victory more than anything else (and in this case, having had absolutely nothing else to even love about his life), and still very much this guy at the end:

I do have a lot of thoughts on The Riddler, and I think part of why I might not talk about him as much is because he's not a character I tend to have really exclusive or particular preferences for. There are a LOT of Riddlers out there, maybe more so than there are Jokers out there, and there's not really with him the definitive must-be-like-this that the other Batman rogues have. Everybody approaches the puzzle differently if they do so at all, and I like a lot of these Riddlers! They connect with each other surprisingly well even, in spite of being incompatible as the same person.

He's gone through some real ups and downs over the decades: given stardom in the Adam West show that made him a definitive Batman villain and spread his modus operandi across all the others, sacrificed in the altar of camp insecurity along with fellow snooty oddball Penguin, defanged and turned into a parody of himself, refitted for joke status, re-refitted for surprise baddie status, given a whole new lease on life and his own gimmicks with the arrival of computer puzzles and the internet and given his fangs back and then amplified, pushed back to the big leagues more horrible and topical than ever before and exponentially increasing as such until his next big movie showing, torn in multitudes across multiverses of takes and ideas, almost too many to even consolidate them all.

I like the first Riddler of Bill Finger's original story in Tec #140, this curious satisfaction-seeking master cheater growing exponentially more dangerous and more varied and more assured the more he fades into his endless barrage of traps and toys and puzzles,. I love Frank Gorshin's Riddler, and everybody loves Frank Gorshin's Riddler, he is the reason The Riddler became an iconic Batman villain overnight. I like John Glover in TAS, and I like Robert Englund's cold ghostly showman in The Batman (2002) much more. I love the Arkham games version of Riddler, probably because I never actually played the games and had to collect his dumb trophies. I love Paul Dini's Detective Riddler, and I especially love Brent Spiner's take on the guy for Justice League Action. I LOVE the more classic take on Riddler as played by John Leguizamo in The Batman Audio Adventures, and I LOVE Paul Dano's Riddler in The Batman, and they couldn't be more incompatible with each other.

I love the Riddlers who continuously undermine themselves in the name of criminal artistry and who look down on the profit-seeking rubes who think any of this is about money, and I love the Riddlers who are ultimately con-men doing money heists because they want to be the only crooks in town smart enough to have something to show for all their work at the end of the day. I like Riddlers who are widely despised and regarded with annoyance and disdain by the city and their fellow rogues, and I like the Riddlers who have good professional relationships with the other rogues, and the Riddlers who managed to become darkly inspiring figures in their own right. I love the Riddlers who've subsumed themselves into the mysteries and horror they embody, and I love the pathological pattern-finders trying to find a way out of this weird pathetic life, even if their efforts will be doomed to failure - The Riddler couldn't out-think his way out of Batman's toybox no matter how much he tried, and he has no desire to - where would it leave him? Down there with all the troglodytes? Please.

I can get on board with very human, conversational Eddies, the Eddies that did stints as sideshow carnies, that can tell on some level that they should be doing better things than this, who'll do bored stick-em-ups to fund the attention-seeking tantrums they're actually passionate about, and I can get on board with Eddies who are truly uniquely vile and scary even compared to the other Rogues in the room, who uphold this terrifyingly cold perversion of fairness, imposing a stark and utilitarian worldview on the city by which the penalty for falling short of his games is murder, that sheer calculated murderous menace that Frank Gorshin brought when he ended his first episode leering on a helpless Robin strapped to an operating table. And if I ever thought I couldn't get on board with the Riddler as a major serious scary existential threat to life on Gotham, well, The Batman sure proved me wrong. I may not love him as passionately as I do The Penguin or Hugo Strange, but I love too many versions of this guy to ever be able to narrow them all down, and there are even more still to be discovered.

Endlessly adaptable, able to change and mutate with the times on the same kinds of grand orchestral shifts and minute beats that Batman does, a greater variety of personalities than the Joker if not quite the same versatility (and where would we be without these two always pissing each other off or making out or both, living in each other's respective negative spaces), always an enduring and entertaining opponent regardless of whether he's the most pathetic man alive or a malevolent genius beyond understanding who routinely puppeteers an entire city and it's greatest hero into putting on their greatest performances for him. Always an adapting puzzle box, always leading into the next version of himself, always beguiling, and always becoming the most frustrating thing that Batman has to deal with, whether he's systematically destroying Batman's rationale and will and ability to be Batman or just being naturally the worst guy to deal with at the most unfortunate possible moment, in itself another key to his endurance. The Joker can murder sidekicks and torch the city and routinely try and drive Batman to breaking points of rage and indignity and despair - but sometimes The Riddler can get Batman there just by being himself, as anyone who's had to deal with this asshole in the Arkham games can attest.

It is imperative to believe in and understand Batman's worldview that his villains can be saved because everyone can and must be saved, just as it is to understand that, out of everyone in his Rogues Gallery, if The Riddler was drowning, Bruce would be inclined to throw him a cinderblock, and The Riddler would be glad to receive it, so long as his last gasps of breath could be spent laughing at Batman's inability to match wits with him.

For a villain who is meant to be fixated on knowing the one correct answer to every riddle, he’s uniquely able to be reinterpreted in endless new ways. He’s gone from being a camp and colorful performance artist to one of the most sadistic and sinister villains Batman can ever go up against. There is no one way to write a Riddler. There’s no single solution! And writers will always like the challenge that presents.

Just when readers think they’ve seen everything the Riddler has left to offer us, and the character is finally exhausted… a new lime-green envelope pops through the door of Wayne Manor to challenge us all once again. It seems we’ll never get tired of trying to unravel the Riddler, and writers will never give up on unraveling the character’s fullest potential. It unites readers, writers, and caped crusaders alike: this time, surely, we’ll crack him. - Batman's Greatest Enemy is...The Riddler, by Steve Morris

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

By Kevin Kavanagh, MD

Finally, a masking initiative I can support. I’m not talking about the misdirected efforts of emerging mask bans, one the latest in my home state of Kentucky. Instead, we need to emulate the NIH, which, on November 4, initiated a masking requirement at all National Institutes of Health (NIH) patient care areas. Our nation needs to come to grips with the fact that the pandemic is NOT over; the virus is very dangerous and poses risks to everyone. NIH is masking up, and so should we.

COVID-19 and long COVID are not old people’s diseases. Recent studies paint a bleak picture of long COVID and its effect on adults and children. The Naval Medical Research Command reported that almost 25% of studied Marines, most of whom had asymptomatic or mild acute COVID-19, “reported physical, cognitive, or psychiatric long-term sequelae of (COVID-19) infection.”

The economic impact is profound. Public health reports from Australia estimated that long COVID has caused a 0.5% loss in GDP. In New Zealand, a country of 5.7 million people, it is estimated the loss is 1.23 billion US dollars per year. The best study from the United States is from 2022 by the Brookings Institute that estimated 2 to 4 million individuals in the United States are not working because of long COVID. Since then, we have essentially handled this problem by not counting. However, the health care sector has been hit especially hard. A recent study from the United Kingdom found 33% of healthcare workers suffer from long COVID.

Most disturbing is the lasting brain damage from the virus, causing a decrease in cognition and executive function, damage resulting in poor judgment, and risky behavior. I seldom see anyone wearing a mask, and too few are up to date with their COVID-19 boosters. We are ignoring the pandemic and nonchalantly spreading the virus.

This phenomenon is occurring nationally. Recently, the American Automobile Association reported a spike in risky behavior associated with the pandemic, behavior manifested by an increase in speeding, driving under the influence of alcohol, and a decrease in seatbelt use. And a study in the Journal of Neurology found those who have had COVID-19 have higher rates of auto accidents.

Patients who have experienced COVID-19 with changes in their sense of smell are at an increased risk of developing “behavioral, functional and structural brain alterations” in the portion of the brain that controls emotion. COVID-19 has been found to diminish executive function in over half of patients with cognitive complaints, such as brain fog, memory loss, and lower I.Q. In Sweden, the insurance company, IF, found that almost a third of young adults have “brain fog”. In the Netherlands, there has been a 40% increase in adults seeking medical care for cognitive difficulties.

One only needs to look at what is happening in our communities and around the world to realize that people have a short fuse, and societies have become powder kegs of confrontations and violence.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can also undergo transformation, allowing it to better infect the brain. Recently, Jacob Class and colleagues in Nature Microbiology demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 can lose its furin cleavage site, which is responsible for cellular entry (using the ACE2/TMPRSS2 receptor). This adaptation is hypothesized to optimize the virus’s ability to infect the brain using an alternate cellular entry pathway (Astrocytes or brain cells do not have observable ACE2 receptors).

Evolutionary pressure may be selected for viral mutations that allow SARS-CoV-2 to infect the brain, specifically the frontal lobes. In at least some individuals, this damage would increase risky and confrontational behavior, promoting the spread of this virus. This process would then repeat itself in the newly infected, further spreading the virus. This is not a pathogen to be taken lightly.

In Kentucky, we could possibly be seeing this scenario play out. A mask ban enacted in public venues will increase viral spread. Even outdoors, if you are within 6 feet of an infected person, large droplet spread can easily occur. Any proposed or enacted mask ban is anti-public health and will result in needless cases of long COVID, death, and disability. It will adversely impact our economy and the mental health of our citizens.

We must break this cycle of infections and disability. Clean indoor air, the wearing of N95 masks in public places, and vaccinations are keys to preventing new cases of acute COVID-19 and long COVID.

[otiksimr]

I hope if we ever get a Johto legends game we get Lanturn as essentially our version of Basculeigon. Big thang. it confuses early boats and ships because its lantern above the water misdirects them because it looks somewhat like the ambient light of an inhabited island or a lighthouse. I badly want a gender split where the females are massive and the males can be the human sized mounts.

The Abyssal Whale, legends say you sail too far out to sea and you start seeing lights in the distance. Tens of hundreds of thousands, faint outlines of fish in the waves. Wailords swimming among the lights, dwarfed by the creature they hail from.

A then a loud boom, a cry that forms waves and sinks ships. And when you and your crew submerges, you see it. A being too big to exist and yet here it is. May you return from your journey with a ruined ship and down half a crew, or die witnessing what can only be considered a wonder of the world.

[steveyockey]

Some would rebut that “Oppenheimer,” being a Hollywood blockbuster with serious global reach (whether it will play Japanese theaters remains uncertain), will be many audiences’ only exposure to the events in question and thus might “create a limit on public consciousness and concern,” as the poet, writer and professor Brandon Shimoda told The Times. A corollary of this argument: The crimes committed against the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were so unspeakable, so outsized in their impact, that Oppenheimer’s perspective does and should dwindle into insignificance by comparison. For Nolan to focus so exclusively on an American physicist’s story, some insist, ultimately diminishes history and humanity, even as it reinforces the Hollywood hegemony of the great-man biopic and of white men’s narratives in general.

I get those complaints. I also think they betray an inherent disrespect for the audience’s intelligence and curiosity, as well as a fundamental misunderstanding of how movies operate. It’s telling that few of these criticisms of perspective were leveled at “American Prometheus” when it was published in 2005, that no one begrudged Bird and Sherwin for offering a meticulously researched, morally ambivalent portrait of their subject’s life and consigning the destruction of two Japanese cities to a few pages. That’s because books are books, the argument goes, and movies are movies — and this perceived difference, it must be said, reveals a pernicious double standard.

Because they seldom achieve the narrative penetration and richness of detail of, say, a 700-page biography, movies, especially those about history, often are hailed as achievements of breadth over depth, emotion over intellect. They are assumed to be fundamentally shallow experiences, distillations of real life rather than sharply angled explorations of it, propelled by broad brushstrokes and easy expository shortcuts, and beholden to the audience’s presumably voracious appetite for thrilling, traumatizing spectacle. And because movies offer a visual immediacy and narrative immersion that books don’t, they are expected to be sweeping if not omniscient in their narrative scope, to reach for a comprehensive, even definitive vantage.

Movies that attempt something different, that recognize that less can indeed be more, are thus easily taken to task. “It’s so subjective!” and “It omits a crucial P.O.V.!” are assumed to be substantive criticisms rather than essentially value-neutral statements. We are sometimes told, in matters of art and storytelling, that depiction is not endorsement; we are not reminded nearly as often that omission is not erasure. But because viewers of course cannot be trusted to know any history or muster any empathy on their own — and if anything unites those who criticize “Oppenheimer” on representational grounds, it’s their reflexive assumption of the audience’s stupidity — anything that isn’t explicitly shown onscreen is denigrated as a dodge or an oversight, rather than a carefully considered decision.

A film like “Oppenheimer” offers a welcome challenge to these assumptions. Like nearly all Nolan’s movies, from “Memento” to “Dunkirk,” it’s a crafty exercise in radical subjectivity and narrative misdirection, in which the most significant subjects — lost memories, lost time, lost loves — often are invisible and all the more powerful for it. We can certainly imagine a version of “Oppenheimer” that tossed in a few startling but desultory minutes of Japanese destruction footage. Such a version might have flirted with kitsch, but it might well have satisfied the representational completists in the audience. It also would have reduced Hiroshima and Nagasaki to a piddling afterthought; Nolan treats them instead as a profound absence, an indictment by silence.

That’s true even in one of the movie’s most powerful and contested sequences. Not long after news of Hiroshima’s destruction arrives, Oppenheimer gives a would-be-triumphant speech to a euphoric Los Alamos crowd, only for his words to turn to dust in his mouth. For a moment, Nolan abandons realism altogether — but not, crucially, Oppenheimer’s perspective — to embrace a hallucinatory horror-movie expressionism. A piercing scream erupts in the crowd; a woman’s face crumples and flutters, like a paper mask about to disintegrate. The crowd is there and then suddenly, with much sonic rumbling, image blurring and an obliterating flash of white light, it is not.

For “Oppenheimer’s” detractors, this sequence constitutes its most grievous act of erasure: Even in the movie’s one evocation of nuclear disaster, the true victims have been obscured and whitewashed. The absence of Japanese faces and bodies in these visions is indeed striking. It’s also consistent with Nolan’s strict representational parameters, and it produces a tension, even a contradiction, that the movie wants us to recognize and wrestle with. Is Oppenheimer trying (and failing) to imagine the hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians murdered by the weapon he devised? Or is he envisioning some hypothetical doomsday scenario still to come?

I think the answer is a blur of both, and also something more: In this moment, one of the movie’s most abstract, Nolan advances a longer view of his protagonist’s history and his future. Oppenheimer’s blindness to Japanese victims and survivors foreshadows his own stubborn inability to confront the consequences of his actions in years to come. He will speak out against nuclear weaponry, but he will never apologize for the atomic bombings of Japan — not even when he visits Tokyo and Osaka in 1960 and is questioned by a reporter about his perspective now. “I do not think coming to Japan changed my sense of anguish about my part in this whole piece of history,” he will respond. “Nor has it fully made me regret my responsibility for the technical success of the enterprise.”

Talk about compartmentalization. That episode, by the way, doesn’t find its way into “Oppenheimer,” which knows better than to offer itself up as the last word on anything. To the end, Nolan trusts us to seek out and think about history for ourselves. If we elect not to, that’s on us.

[cardentist]

I just wrote up a more, emotional? reactive? take on this whole thing here [Link], but I wanted to try to say this in a way that's easier to parse.

people insist that trans mascs don't have any unique experiences (as Opposed to trans fems).

people insist that trans mascs Do Not face misogyny.

people insist that trans mascs Do Not face physical violence.

people insist that trans mascs Do Not face medical violence.

or if they Do, it's lesser than/misdirected from trans fems, to the point that it's presented as Wrong (if not active bigotry) to focus on/acknowledge them in conversations about these topics.

(even when, as we've established, people have actively invoked trans mascs to deny them these experiences).

in other words, trans mascs have been facing Active Erasure from within (and sometimes from Outside Of) the community, specifically intended to deny them their experiences and then Also frame any attempt from them to counter those claims as aggressive rather than defensive.

and this all hinges on an Extremely binary and gender-essentialist premise. both in denying trans-mascs their experiences based on their gender (asserting that there are innate properties to Being A Man that trans mascs invoke by being trans masc), AND by presenting trans fems and trans mascs as Opposites.

there is a seesaw, and if trans fems experience one thing then it must be presumed that trans mascs Don't, and so if trans masc try to insist that they experience these things Too then it Must Be that they're trying to take that experience away from trans fems.

and what's important to understand is that this framing is wrong. not just because of the harm that it causes to trans mascs, but because of the harm it causes To Everyone.

and I mean that on two fronts:

1: this is not a case of trans fems vs trans mascs, the seesaw Is Not Real. it's not trans women putting trans mascs down, it's Gender-Essentialists enforcing a gender binary within the trans and genderqueer communities. this rhetoric comes from all sorts of people, cis people, trans neutral people, trans masc people, and (yes) sometimes trans fem people.

and just the same, it's people who are Against gender-essentialism who speak up about the harm that this causes, and often those people are trans fem! and that Both means that nobody is served by directing negativity at trans fems AND that it is not appropriate to assume that trans mascs defending themselves and speaking on their experiences is causing harm to trans fems inherently.

2: this entire framing leaves trans neutral, genderqueer, and intersex people out in the cold. being an Inherently gender-essentialist and binary argument, these people who do not fit neatly into the binary are Heavily negatively impacted by it while Also being erased.

I have read someone (another trans masc, even), completely unironically, write the words "trans men have privilege over trans women because cis women have privilege over trans women." completely boiling trans mascs down to their agab and stripping them of their transness.

people are using tme (transmisogyny exempt) to refer to afab trans people (separating them Out from cis women), to deny these trans people experiences that they have had.

and this Does Not only affect binary trans men. there are afab intersex people who very actively experience transmisogyny, there are nonbinary people who are being boiled down to their agab, forcibly rebinarized and stripped of their transness, there are gnc people (cis and trans) who are treated as if they don't exist and actively attacked and erased if they try to speak up.

but the conversations is Framed like it's men vs women, the argument is presented as inherently binary.

and that makes it Incredibly difficult and frustrating to dismantle. just Look at this post, I had to very specifically go on an entire preamble about men and women just to begin unpacking the situation (and to undercut the ways that people try to actively silence people when they speak about it).

and even while actively Trying to be inclusive, trans neutral and genderqueer and intersex and gnc people read as a Footnote in the entire first half of this post that I wrote Specifically To Acknowledge Them. the very conversation itself Erases them, which is a Major Problem that's Incredibly frustrating and difficult to unpack.

to Say "trans people who I interpret as men/masculine are lesser than, and are harming trans people who I interpret as women/feminine" you Have to decide what Man and Woman and Masculine and Feminine mean. there is no trans inclusive way to do this, there is no way to do this without throwing people who challenge gender/sex binaries and gender norms under the bus.

(this even Actively Harms trans fems, whether those trans fems are gnc, genderqueer, intersex, pre transition, aren't able to/don't want to transition, or are just perceived as Too Masculine by these people vilifying queer masculinity. gender essentialism Is Inherently transphobic and harms All trans people.)

and in this case, it's Incredibly frustrating to talk about, because many people can't get past the idea that deciding that a gender is Innately Bad (just, the very definition of gender-essentialism) is Wrong.

trying to voice the harm that this causes to people Outside of the binary is bogged down by the first step. you can't unpack it without unpacking the essentialism being pointed at trans mascs, because people are Going to keep acting like this as long as they're convinced that they not only can but Should treat trans mascs this way.

and it needs to be said, that for as frustrating as it is to be put in this position we Have to acknowledge that the problem is with the situation, not with trans mascs trying to defend themselves.

I Do absolutely think that Everyone needs to make an active effort to think about and include All trans and genderqueer people in these conversations, to point out how incredibly exorsexist the conversation is Without just being a footnote or an aside or a gotcha. genderqueer people can't just be a tool we use to advocate for binary trans people.

but At The Same Time, the timeline of events cannot be

trans mascs are denied having unique lived experiences.

trans mascs are presented as not only lesser than, but actively privileged on the basis of their gender.

trans mascs assert their lived experiences and address the gendered violence they're experiencing.

trans mascs are criticized for framing their defense around the gendered violence that they're experiencing.

to say that The Reason trans mascs are in the wrong for discussing transandrophobia (or Whichever term you prefer) because there are no experiences unique to any gender or identity, while Not holding that same standard to transmisogyny or exorsexism, is very obviously singling trans mascs out and making it more difficult for them to combat their own erasure.

what's necessary here is Solidarity. Everyone needs to be put on the same playing field, to have All of their experiences matter. trans people need to be Equal.

and this means trans mascs and binary trans men making an active effort to include intersex, genderqueer, trans neutral, and gnc people in these conversations that affect them, and as More than just an afterthought.

and it Also means people recognizing that the conversation is inherently gender-essentialist, and that trans mascs have to be able to effectively advocate for themselves in the face of their own erasure and demonization. to blame them for the gendered violence they're experiencing isn't any more fair than the erasure genderqueer people are experiencing.

[about-faces]

Batman: Caped Crusader, Episodes 1-2 thoughts (SPOILERS)

First things first, Harvey is as bad as I’d expected. I honestly can’t tell whether this is worse than the version we got in the last Timm-produced animated Batman show, “Beware the Batman.” That Harvey was a humorless prick straight out of the William Atherton school of jerkasses, while this one is a smug sleazebag who would be someone you’d love to hate if he weren’t also a complete inversion of a great tragic hero turned villain.

I’m just so sick of people portraying Harvey as a politician first and foremost, performing for the cameras and thinking about his career ambitions. I’m sick of him being a corrupt asshole and even an authoritarian. I’m sick him being two-faced, when the irony of his character is that he himself never WAS. Now that that’s out of my system, I’ll move on, because I know he has an arc in store that may prove more interesting than the usual Asshole Harvey takes.

They tried several things with the Penguin, and I’m not sure they gelled into anything that worked for me this time out. Making her a woman, that’s no problem, and I appreciate her classic style and appearance in a time when everyone just wants to turn Cobblepot into a boring Tony Soprano knockoff.

Ultimately, though, it all just served to make her a standard “Ma Barker” archetype. You know, the alleged matriarchal crime boss who was killed by Hoover’s FBI, who may have dragged her name through the mud to excuse their killing of an old woman? There used to be several takes on her in pop culture, although nowadays the only famous one is probably Ma Beagle from “DuckTales.”

With that in mind, they should have just cast Margo Martindale. Excuse me, didn’t use her full name: Beloved Character Actress Margo Martindale. Minnie Driver is a fantastic actress (I’m still mad that “The Riches” was not only cancelled but totally forgotten), but it was a waste not to let her use her real accent. As it was, she was fine, but she didn’t bring anything special to match the physical design. As an actress, she deserved more to play with.

Also, “Oswalda” is a terrible fake name. Like come on guys, you can do better. That’s on par with Revolver Ocelot’s real Russian name being “Adamska.”

The biggest problem with this take on Penguin is that she’s set up as some kind of brilliant mastermind, only to act incredibly stupid, reckless, and gullible. She kills not one but two innocent goons, including her own son, without so much as an investigation or even keeping tabs on the suspected rats to use them as pawns against Thorne! To paraphrase Dijkstra from the “Witcher” books, you don’t kill spies, you USE them. You feed them misinformation! You blackmail them into being double agents! This Penguin is bad at her job, so no wonder she loses everything within hours. It’s amazing she was able to build a crime empire in the first place!

I also dislike Bullock being a corrupt cop in the mob’s pocket. That fits Flass perfectly, but Bullock? Fuck no. Bullock IS dirty, but he’s dirty in a very acceptable way to cops. He’s brutal, he cuts corners, he’s crass, and he’s probably not above planting or concealing evidence, but selling out to the mob? Hell no. That’s just wrong. Hate that choice. Unless it’s a misdirection. This show sure does love its misdirections from what I’ve seen so far.

Batman himself is… fine. He’s Batman. He’s not a bad Batman. He’s serviceable but unremarkable. But at least he wasn’t an irritating asshole, which is more than I can say for most Batman depictions these days. I liked Bruce trying his “falling off a boat” joke a second time, delivered verbatim after it flopped with Barbara.

Barbara being a defense attorney is a rather contrived choice, one that gets to put her at odds with Harvey while also giving her a professional in with both Batman and Gordon. Essentially, she’s in the role Harvey Dent is supposed to play. Except here she’s a defense attorney, which SHOULD put her at odds with her dad, since lawyers and cops don’t seem to like one another, for SOME reason!

And Harvey, even as District Attorney, can’t be in the role of legal ally to either Gordon, because the story is far more focused on making him a mayoral candidate who throws people under the bus for his own advancement! Feh.

Anyway, that was episode one. It was fine, I guess.

The screenplay is by novelist and DC veteran Greg Rucka, so of course Renee Montoya is the central focus. Seeing her interact with Sleazebag Harvey gave me war flashbacks to what Rucka did with Renee and Harvey in the comics: setting them up with a poignant dynamic of tenuous respect and kindness before dashing it all with “Gotham Central: Half a Life,” which solidified the perception of Harvey as a creepy, obsessive stalker for a generation of fans. That version of them was very much of display here. Sigh.

Also, Lucius Fox is Bruce’s lawyer now? Why? And also, what the hell? God, poor Lucius. He starts off in comics as the guy actually running Wayne Enterprises, then “Batman: The Animated Series” makes him Bruce’s right-hand-man, then Nolan and Goyer get the inspired idea to make him the Q to Bruce’s 007, while the comics don’t know what to do with him and even make him an authoritarian to cause friction with his vigilante son, and now this? It’s such a random choice. There’s no reason why this character should be Lucius. Hell, Lucius could have shown up there WITH the lawyer and that would have been fine. As it is, it’s just weird.

That said! I overall liked this episode an awful lot! For DECADES now, I’ve wanted to see someone remember that Basil Karlo was an older actor in the classic horror movie vein (his name is literally a combination of Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff), but ever since “Batman: The Animated Series,” everyone has just tried to make him BTAS’ Matt Hagen. Like, I really liked the “One Bad Day” issue for Clayface, where he gradually killed his way to the top of Hollywood stardom, but even that was still BTAS Hagen, the Serious Actor, not Karlo, the old horror ham actor.

But with this episode, someone finally drew on the old Hollywood horror roots of the character, and they found a way to combine his shape shifting abilities into the mix! I’m so happy!

Of course, this is me, so I still have criticisms. Like, I think it was unnecessary to frame it as a mystery, because that added unnecessary complications. I know the original Clayface story was a whodunnit and you can’t do that now that everyone knows that Karlo is Clayface. I was annoyed by the misdirection of Karlo’s “death,” in part because I feared this would be another Clever Subversion, just like how the animated adaptations of “Gotham By Gaslight,” “Hush,” and “The Long Halloween” purposely went against expectations from the source material in stupid ways. Hell, they’re doing the same thing now with Penguin (“But wait, there’s a twist: she’s a woman!”) and Harvey (“But wait, there’s a twist: he’s an asshole!”), so I was afraid this Clayface would end up being someone else entirely. I was okay with it in the end, but I’m annoyed at the cheap fakeout as a plot point.

Furthermore, I don’t get why Basil disguised himself as the doctor (whose name I don’t remember) for the benefit of the actress (whose name I don’t remember) he had chained up in his hideout. What benefit was there in making her think he was the doctor? She was already aware she was a prisoner and was scared, so why the facade? It served no purpose in context, only just to misdirect the viewers.

This is what happens when you try to make something a mystery when it would work better as a thriller. Stop trying to wow audiences with twists and surprises when you could just be focusing on telling a good story. So what if everyone figures out Karlo is Clayface? Who cares! Just go with it! Let them be in on it while Batman and Montoya figure it out themselves, that’s where the tension lies! Stop trying to be clever.

Regardless, I really liked this episode. I want this to now be the canon comics origin for Basil Karlo’s Clayface. Just explain that the treatments for his face gradually affected his whole body, and boom, you’ve successfully explained how classic Slasher Clayface became Mud Monster Clayface. This is how Karlo should always be written from now on. If you really want a sensitive, angsty lug Clayface, bring back Hagen. Let Karlo be the gloriously hammy monster with aspirations of stardom.

[novlr]

could you maybe do something on characters becoming serial killers? I’m was originally going to have some sort of characters going insane thing, but I think that the whole “insane people killing” is a little stupid and borderline dangerous (saying that insane people kill all the time) so could you give me some pointers?

How to Write a Serial Killer: A Quick Guide for Writers

Crafting a convincing serial killer requires a lot of research, imagination, and an understanding of the genre. Let’s dive into some quick tips to help you create a serial killer who is gripping, unique, and emotionally complex.

Develop their backstory

The key to crafting a convincing serial killer is in understanding their past to shape their present. Explore their backstory in detail — were they subjected to abuse or neglect? Did they endure a life-altering traumatic event that set them on this dark path? Developing a compelling backstory is essential, not only to justify their actions but also to cultivate a degree of empathy, allowing readers to connect with the character on a deeper level.

Give them unique motivations

Serial killers act based on what drives them; they commit their crimes for a reason. This reason could be a need for control, a hunger for power, or a wish to spread chaos. By connecting their reason for doing things with their unique personality traits and backstory, you can create a well-rounded and consistent character.

Include misdirection and plot twists

To maintain suspense, make use of narrative devices like red herrings designed to divert your reader's attention. The clever use of these diversions can delay the unmasking of the killer, increasing tension and anticipation. Additionally, unexpected plot twists that abruptly shift your story's trajectory can not only alter your reader's perception but can also reconfigure their theories keeping readers on their toes.

Draw parallels with your protagonist

Creating a unique perspective by establishing similarities between your serial killer and your protagonist can add multifaceted layers to your story. This might involve drawing connections in their backgrounds, aligning their motivations, or uncovering shared personal struggles. These parallels not only make the plot more engaging but also heighten the intensity of the conflict between the two characters.

Use foreshadowing

Foreshadowing serves as a powerful tool in constructing suspense and subtly hinting at future events in your story — carefully place clues that can suggest the identity of the killer or indicate their next victim. But remember to maintain an air of mystery by not unveiling too much prematurely. The goal is to keep readers engrossed, continually making and remaking their guesses about the unfolding plot.

Include an emotional subplot

Adding an emotional subplot in your narrative significantly enhances the relatability of your serial killer. This could range from them harbouring deep-seated love for someone, to grappling with a fear that surpasses the dread of getting caught. These contrasting aspects of their otherwise sinister nature serve to give the characters greater depth and dimension, thus enriching their complexity.

Did you know we have a Spotify account with lots of great playlists for writers? Here's one to inspire your next serial killer novel!

[secretmellowblog]

I do find it interesting how so many section of Les Mis’s convent digression are essentially Callout Posts for Jean Valjean.

There are times when I wonder how much Hugo wants us to see Jean Valjean’s self-isolating/self-harm behaviors as self-harm, and how much he wants us to see them as Noble Self-Martyrdom. (Ex: sleeping in a cold hut in the backyard while Cosette has the house, eating bad food while Cosette eats well, excising himself from Cosette’s life planning to die alone, exiling himself from humanity to live alone.) He recreates the patterns of the convent long after he’s left.

But these chapters make it clear that Hugo is criticizing that kind of behavior— obsessively doing penance via self-harm, while isolating yourself from the world. It’s a real stark criticism of Jean Valjean’s constant self-exile.

If you replace “convent” with “Jean Valjean,” a lot of this feels like a very pointed descriptions of Valjean’s self-destructive behavior at the end of the novel:

When one speaks of convents, those abodes of error, but of innocence, of aberration but of good-will, of ignorance but of devotion, of torture but of martyrdom, it always becomes necessary to say either yes or no.

A convent is a contradiction. Its object, salvation; its means thereto, sacrifice. The convent is supreme egoism having for its result supreme abnegation.

(…)

In the cloister, one suffers in order to enjoy. One draws a bill of exchange on death. One discounts in terrestrial gloom celestial light. In the cloister, hell is accepted in advance as a post obit on paradise.

(…)

Sacrifice that is misdirected is still sacrifice. There is something grand about making a serious mistake a duty.

[intuitive-revelations]

Retrospective notes and what to keep an eye on after The Legend of Ruby Sunday

I started writing this while watching through a second time. While my thoughts were still a bit random and out of order, I've edited them into something that makes a bit more sense to read through.

Susan:

A little bit weird at first that Ruby asks why the Doctor doesn't recognise his own granddaughter, given that she doesn't know about regeneration yet and Susan Twist is clearly not mixed race. After thinking for a second, I realised she probably just immediately reconciled this as an adoption scenario, especially with her own family and history.

I've posted seperately about my feelings on the retcon of Susan's origins, but I am still surprised we're going this direction. I also find the wording a little bit questionable, as the Doctor makes it sound like he hasn't had children before, when he 100% did.

A Susan misdirect being linked to the word TARDIS is excellent though, given that she claimed to have come up with the word. (People freak out about what this means for her origins, but I don't see why it can't just be that she's responsible for the English acronym translation convention, which then passed on to all of human history thanks to the Doctor's travels.)

We didn't get Susan this time round, but such a massive red herring implies that RTD is planning to build up to such a thing for real, right? I assume we'll also be talking more about her next episode / in Tales of the TARDIS.

I also mentioned this in my live notes, but I quite like the Doctor's justification for not going back to Susan. It makes sense on its own, but takes on a whole new meaning in light of what happens in Big Finish (even if you do need to slightly nudge the meaning to make sense, and admittedly it still clashes with her participation in the Time War).

The Time Window and Misdirections:

Slightly put off at 'time window' being used as terminology for UNIT's tech when that's been used for actual time portals in-universe before.

Liked all the mentions of chronons though. Need to combine that and "N-dimensional time" into an actual pseudoscientific theory of time physics in Doctor Who with artron energy etc.

The Time Window is also totally how we get the Memory TARDIS, right? I'm guessing that's why the Doctor sent Ruby there, so she can escape into it (though I don't know what that will look like given Tales of the TARDIS surely won't be essential viewing). I wonder if that means the Doctor we'll see in that won't be the real one?

Super sneaky making the time window the 'secret from the Third Doctor era' that is revealed that was teased. Not a lie, but really teases something different to what we got.

Actually, in general kinda mixed feelings about the sheer level of misdirection is this story. You've got the above, all the focus on Susan, maybe the 'Beast', literally playing the Saxon theme (The Master Vainglorious). Seemingly also the thing about where people were stood on Christmas Eve… though I am going to check to see if there's something about the TARDIS / Sutekh. That being said, I'm guessing we're coming back to this, as the pointing isn't really explained yet.

RTD also said the script opened "INT. COFFEE BAR, USA - DAY, 1947" but we clearly never got such a scene. :/

On the other hand, all the playing around and subversion with anagrams was a lot of fun. Very much riffing off of DW tropes. Very funny also that UNIT would immediately pick up on the S Triad thing, given their and the Doctor's history with the Master's own aliases.

Sutekh and the Pantheon

Super intrigued by everything regarding the Pantheon in this episode. So we've got members:

Sutekh: God of Death. The Oldest One / The One Who Waits, the Mother and Father and Other of them all. The Toymaker: God of Games. The Trickster: God of Traps. Maestro: God of Music Reprobate: God of Spite. The Mara: God of Beasts. The Three-Fold Deity of Malice, Mischief, and Misery. Gods of Skin, Shame, Secrets Incensor: Gold of Disaster Incensor's Children - Doubt and Dread. Harbinger(s)

I'm probably too EU-brained, but it feels crazy putting entities like the Toymaker and the Trickster below Sutekh? They're both Eternal/Guardian level, while Sutekh is just an Osiran, powerful but ultimately ephermal. How is he 'the oldest' and the 'mother/father/other' of them all? I guess age could be partially put down to Sutekh's fate in Pyramids of Mars, but actually originating before them doesn't really make sense. I guess he could be an incarnation of a much older being, a bit like the Doctor could be?

However, I also doubt Harbinger is entirely reliable. She's clearly hyping up Sutekh's dominion, so him being the 'god of gods' may not mean much in terms of their origin.

Speaking of which... a lot of allusions to the Devil here, as I mentioned above. Chidozie finds himself in 'hell' and Carla literally calls the shape in the Time Window "the Beast". The security camera is also 66m away (funnily enough, around 73 yards). Add in Gabriel Woolf also playing the Beast in series 2, and you really do have to wonder if there's a connection. If Sutekh and the other Gods really do see him as the same entity as the Beast, then maybe he really could be the oldest of them all.

Side note: "Mother, Father and Other of them all" is great. Connecting the word 'Other' to parentage is also interesting, given we've been talking about Susan...

Going back to the Pantheon - I am now 100% convinced, after theorising before, that we've been meeting members of the Pantheon of Discord.

While there are family connections between some of them, I doubt they really are all related. They're way too distinct for that. But as a loose coalition of malicious god-like beings across the multiverse, it works. Weirdly, it is also reminiscent of some plotlines from the Tenth Doctor Titan Comics. It also feels like the direct opposite of the 'Accord' from the Leftbridge-Stewart series, which was seemingly another coalition of more benevolent deities, including the Azure Guardian. I wonder if they oppose each other?

Some of the namedrops are super interesting too. As I mentioned in my live blog, the Three-Fold deity must be connected to the Six-Fold God, even if just an imitation. Some of the names (eg. Doubt and Dread), being directly named for concepts and emotions, also brings to mind the Menti Celesti.

I also strongly suspect we're going to meet the Trickster again. RTD even foreshadowed as much when he illustrated Now We Are Six Hundred.

Big question is... when did Sutekh become connected to the TARDIS? The latest it could have happened is Wild Blue Yonder, and that would be the simplest explanation... but dialogue implies he's been attached and waiting for longer.

Again, mentioned this in my live notes, but the connection of Sutekh hiding in the "Howling Void" and appearing on UNIT scanners with contradictory information like the Dalek Void ship is an excellent connection. Especially, again, with the possible Hell connection:

RAJESH: And what's the Void? DOCTOR: The space between dimensions. There's all sorts of realities around us, different dimensions, billions of parallel universes all stacked up against each other. The Void is the space in between, containing absolutely nothing. Imagine that. Nothing. No light, no dark, no up, no down, no life, no time. Without end. My people called it the Void. The Eternals call it the Howling. But some people call it Hell.

Does this imply he attached himself to the TARDIS while it traveled through the Void? If so... when was that? Again Wild Blue Yonder is a good candidate, as the TARDIS literally reaches the edge of the universe (at least in some sort of spacetime geometry), but this could technically harken back as far as Journey's End, when the TARDIS last visited Pete's World.

A bit of me is intrigued by the description of Sutekh "whispering, delighting and seducing" the TARDIS, but nothing else indicates the TARDIS was willingly carrying him. Again another sign that Harbinger's speech may not reliable.

Remaining Mysteries

No offence to the people who were all in on the theory, of course, but I'm pretty sure the 'TV' theory is nothing. Especially after this episode. I feel like people latched onto the promo shot for this episode which looked like a TV set and confirmation bias took on from there. That being said, I am ready to eat my words if it somehow comes back to that next week!

(TBF, the TV theory obviously does have some relevance to DW in general, what with the Weeping Angels, Doctor Who exisiting in-universe, fourth wall breaks etc. I just don't think it ever had anything to do with this story.)

So Mrs Flood is confirmed to be something alien or supernatural, after the ambiguity with the Christmas 4th wall break. Simplest answer is that she's also serving Sutekh / the Pantheon, but IDK... she seems different.

Still need to know what's up with Ruby's mum too. Annoyingly, the episode makes it kinda ambiguous if she was pointing at the past Doctor (as per the flashback earlier this series) or at the present one. If the prior, I assume she was actually pointing at the TARDIS / Sutekh?

That damn "worlds with orange skies" line. It's probably nothing, right? But why did we focus on it, complete with musical sting. RTD knows that's significant. Hell, it's specifically significant to Susan, with her talking about Gallifrey in The Sensorites, and Ten recalling it in Gridlock.

Also, unless the soundtrack was lying to us, which it doesn't usually (though I guess isn't unprecendented, with the Weeping Angel theme being used in Day of the Doctor when Osgood realises the statues are disguised Zygons), maybe a Master reveal coming up some point in the future? How though, I have no idea.