#he's sacrificial lamb coded anyway

[befuddled-calico-whump]

I've had virtually zero creative energy this week but I thought of this in the morning and couldn't get it out of my head

Lambder

[inchidentally]

please… i am bewitched by your vestal virgins au tag… i would love to hear any other thoughts you have about them… something about landoscar being so creepily in sync yet sacred and coveted yet used for the glory of the team all at the same time makes me go crazy

anon thank you bc this au has been my obsession and I know it’s out of nowhere and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense so I’m glad someone else likes it <3

I wrote this post I’m not sure if you saw w a verrrry loose historical superstructure bc in my head Zak had a simmering idea after reading the da Vinci Code books (prob the movies) and was like hmmmm is there some element of classical history I could use to bring McLaren to glory once more? he beats everyone to getting Lando, being assured of his purity and generational talent as a start. then padre Andrea (and somehow working in that his last name means ‘star’) is enlisted to help under the guise of team principal and something something Italian connections something Mark something the pale beautiful and dangerous Oscar is spirited away under cover of preliminary contract from an unworthy Alpine to McLaren. where padre Andrea joins their soft hands in the bowels of MTC and by their youthful sacrament the flame of Vesta is lit once more and imbues the two boys with uncanny power allure and telepathic ability. it operates through them largely outside their control but when they are together against the Coarse Men of Formula 1 they become a terrifying force. Max having some remnant of sacred to him sensed it when the two creatures almost crushed his life out at the first turn in Suzuka (i think or was it Qatar ajabsjdbj). from then on he warned that McLaren would be the sneak attack on him.

I’ve got Charles as sacrificial lamb in the church of Ferrari who feels like he should belong to the vestals but never will. Lewis who has helped forged the divine feminine in the sport looks upon the vestals with pride. the rest are The Men and every now and then a glimpse or a trick of light will show the slim young McLaren creatures transformed into a unified being, lit from within and smilingly wishing a swift destruction on their opponents.

and then like we catch them drawing matching sigils in the air and communicating with their eyes when confronted with the media

anyway it’s so badly constructed and I’m so in love with it and they’re so naturally creepy and strange at times it’s just perfect

[teecupangel]

Just binge watched Lucifer on Netflix and now I present to you:

Desmond Miles survives 2012 (Desmond Miles Lives truthers, where ya at?), gets the hell outta dodge from the temple with new POE powers, and gets hired to work at Lux in LA. Meets his new boss and both of them are like, "!"

Lucifer instantly knows this boy is hella special because, damn does his soul reek of Isu Bullfuckery. (Headcanoned God and his Angels are sort of a rival interdimensional species to Isu, and God is the one who supposedly gave humans free will... idk I never paid attention to bible study anyway.)

Does the whole, "what do you desire?" schtick and Desmond, due to POE powers and Isu Bullshittery, wonders 'why the fuck is actual Satan here in LA?'

I imagine a platonic bromance relationship between these two. Y'know? 'Cause on the one hand we have the Reluctant Ruler of Hell and on the other hand the Reluctant Savior/Sacrificial Lamb of Humankind.

Lucifer could offer safety and protection from whoever Desmond is hiding from, while Des can be his bartender/bouncer/very much-needed BFF. And come on, I betcha good ole Lucy boy (and Maze) would absolutely enjoy dragging a couple a lot of Abstergo people Vidic down to Hell for multiple crimes against humanity(i.e. kidnapping and unethical human experimentation which results in mental instability.)

I’m all in for this idea. Desmond and Lucifer being bash brothers, yes please. Just imagine the chaos these two would get to because they're both morally dubious? XD

Also, just imagine how much faster Chloe would be finishing her cases with Desmond’s Eagle Vision? She would have two cheat codes with her this time.

Anyway, I’m going to focus on how we can integrate Lucifer into AC more in this one.

Before anything, just a sorta fun trivia: Lucifer has a little cameo in Crisis on Infinite Earths and he talks to John Constantine, implying they have some sort of history together. John Constantine is played by Matt Ryan who voiced and mocap’ed Edward Kenway XD

We will be keeping this contained to Lucifer though but you can totally add a John Constantine cameo and set it during the time Desmond is working in Lux (and you can totally add Desmond feeling some sort of longing and sorrow because John Constantine sounds and looks familiar to his Bleed of Haytham Kenway)

Alright, with that little trivia out of my system, let’s talk about how we can push Lucifer into AC canon.

(You might not have paid attention to bible study but my religion teacher was so boring he had to implement a rule that there should be no other notebook/books related to other subjects on our table during class because we kept doing other subjects when he’s lecturing us soooooo I was bored enough to read the bible he made us bring every class. I'm sure he'll be proud I'm using what I learned in his class for fic related things XD)

Let’s talk about God in Lucifer’s show. He’s obviously based on the Judeo-Christian God. Now, we have no confirmation if that said God does exist as an Isu in Assassin’s Creed BUT we do have a leeway we can use to make it easier to integrate the characters from Lucifer into Assassin’s Creed.

The Templar Order uses the phrase “May the Father of Understanding guide you”. Now, this is based on the Isu triad that pops up a bit.

The one we’re more familiar with is the Capitoline Triad where Tinia is known as the “Father of Understanding”.

However, there is an earlier iteration of this triad.

The Isus who created humans.

And the one to hold the title of ‘Father of Understanding’ during that time is Yaldabaoth.

From Wikipedia

Gnosticism presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable God, and the Demiurge, "creator" of the material universe.

Gnostic Christians considered the Hebrew God of the Old Testament as the evil, false god and creator of the material universe, and the Unknown God of the Gospel, the father of Jesus Christ and creator of the spiritual world, as the true, good God.

If we use the statements above and the fact that Yaldabaoth is considered one of the creators of mankind, we can set up God as another Isu scientist who had an alternate idea of a workforce but his idea was pushed aside and Yaldabaoth’s project with the other two Isu scientists moved forward.

God, in anger, created his ‘children’ together with the Goddess. And, to complete the triad, we’ll add Lilith as an Isu as well instead of Adam’s first wife. The three of them (although Lilith has a more advisory role to this entire thing and is actually working on her own workforce idea) created the ‘Angels’, trying to one-up all the data they could get from Yaldabaoth’s project to make them better than humans.

They are. Unfortunately, that meant they were also… shall we say… ‘freer’ than humans as well. God knew that the Isus would see them as defective and, not only that, many would find what they have done as some form of betrayal and being stripped of their rank and status would be the lightest sentence the Isu would give them. So God and Goddess kept the Angels a secret, and passed them off as human slaves while Lilith went her merry way and continued to work on her personal workforce.

And now we come to the whole ‘gave mankind freewill’.

So many like to point at Lucifer as being the serpent that gave Eve the forbidden fruit. Let’s use it. Lucifer, being one of God’s first children, takes an Apple of Eden and presented it to Eve who used it to start the Human-Isu war. Lucifer takes up arms to join the humans.

Things get super messy when they find out about the impending Solar Flare and God and Goddess decided to add their consciousness to a device called ‘Heaven’. (In this setup, Goddess!Charlotte would be like a more ‘questionable’ setup of an Isu consciousness overwriting a human’s consciousness). Their children (who did have the kind of body that would survive a solar flare and were more or less immortal) were tasked with guarding ‘Heaven’.

Except Lucifer who, as punishment for starting the whole Human-Isu war, was tasked to guard a device called ‘Hell’. He guarded it together with Lilith’s ‘children’, the demons.

What these two devices do will be a mystery but they are connected to the Gray in some way and to the Calculations. Perhaps it’s even the actual database of all the Calculations and, by that very definition, it housed all the knowledge, memories and emotions of every living thing in the world.

What defines them as a person.

What defines their soul.

And, from there, we can just integrate all Celestial things in the show as this entirely more advanced workforce’s ‘code words’. (And the devices are connected and that’s why God could boot the Goddess into hell)

By the time 2013 rolls around, Lucifer already owned Lux for a few years now and Desmond applies as a bartender as he’s had enough of all these Assassin-Templar BS to last him a lifetime. He saved the world, this is his damn retirement plan.

Lucifer sees him and goes ‘how interesting, an actual human-POE hybrid.’ while Desmond sees him and goes ‘why does he feel… familiar?’ because his Isu genes and POE-hybridness is giving him signals that Lucifer is definitely not human BUT he ain’t an Isu too.

He’s… Isu-adjacent.

Like Maze.

So Desmond continues to work there and Lucifer finds the perfect time to do the whole “what do you desire?” and Desmond’s POE-hybridness just kicked in.

We’ll make it in this fic that all the Apples are connected to one another and they have a ‘shared memory space’ so Desmond ‘remembers’ that this is the smug bastard who gave the Apple to Eve.

And, because of his limited knowledge of religion, he goes “Why the fuck is actual Satan here in LA?!”

(side note: some count Satan and Lucifer as two different beings but, in this case, we’ll just make Satan another name for Lucifer)

So now they both showed their hands. Lucifer just blatantly showed he wasn’t human and Desmond just showed he has Isu-related knowledge.

Cue an entire night of trying to get drunk while talking about what the fuck happened to them (with special mention to their daddy issues and the whole reluctant ruler of hell and the ‘more-or-less pushed into it’ savior/sacrifice)

At the end of their heart-to-heart, Desmond becomes Lucifer’s main confidant and slowly becomes his BFF. Lucifer uses his mojos to keep Desmond hidden from both Assassins and Templars.

Also… it’s not just Abstergo’s that in his shitlist. William Miles is there as well, that’s for damn sure.

Another subplot we can add is that Lucifer ‘asking’ Chloe to look into Abstergo just so he can, you know… ask them… what they desire?

Other unorganized notes:

What do we do with Juno? I set it to 2013 so Desmond dealt with Juno before peacing out to be a random bartender. Hey, if Ubisoft can do it in the comics, we can take out Juno with one paragraph… maybe even one sentence.

Desmond could see through Maze’s shapeshifting. Whenever he uses Eagle Vision, he sees Maze’s true form.

Actually, Desmond’s Eagle Vision has been powered up by his POE-hybridness that he sees EVERYONE’s true form. His only description of Lucifer’s form? “Bright as fuck.” (this also means Desmond knows Michael by 'sight')

Also, Amenadiel? He looovvveess Desmond’s Shirley Templars.

Lucifer’s deals? He has a connection to Hell and, because of that connection, he’s connected to the Calculations as well. In this case, any deal he makes impacts the Calculations slightly so the person making the deal would get what they want.

Also, this:

[theundeadmetalheadapolagia]

So the thing about vampire bats is that they collect blood by digging shallow trenches in their...prey? Host creature? Anyway, shallow enough that they're not generally fatal, aside from The Rabies & Diseases.

Now. The demobats are bigger, they have more teeth. But, judging by the way Steve was able to walk it off & what we saw of Eddie's wounds behind the scenes, I think it's safe to say that unless he died of Turbo Rabies, him having a final speech was like. Why.

All that to say, I think the death was cheap. My three solutions:

1. Waaaaayyyy more bloodloss route. Evil Dead Remake levels bloodloss. He's too fucking delirious for final words.

2. Already dead route. Poor thing strangled to death. F in the chat. No more final words he doesn't have the voice for them.

3. Don't fucking kill him route??? I know Eddie's the most Sacrificial Lamb coded character of all time, but like. Idk, maybe it could've been cool to have him live, esp if they're hunting at bringing him back next season, anyway?

[nooooooooooooo00000000]

The Pillar of the Earl pt. 2

I’m going to keep this title, sorry not sorry.

In case you’ve missed the previous entry, this is a collection of every fishy moment / thing no one understood yet about the Earl (Mana, Neah and everything in between). I’m doing my best to collect everything but in case I forgot something, just tell me. It would be useful to have all the information together.

(Part one here)

Nice symbolism

———

Volumes 9-10

After Allen wakes up CC for the first time, the LVL3 gives him the ark to go to Edo, because “the Noah said so”. Fishy. The Earl will be later pissed off that Allen was there.

It is said that the Noah were born inside the ark, and that head-looking machinery that the Earl uses to create akumas, is the birthplace of Noahs, and that is ONLY now used to make akumas. From, this, and from the fact that akumas evolution has just started (the first level two is the one that killed Kanda and Alma in their previous lives), we can assume that akumas are a relatively new thing. In the same scene, Devit states that it is hilarious that humans and akumas were born in the same place and the earl giggles.

As anticipated in part one, the only ones who are supposed to move the ark are currently the earl and road.

The 14th was “the other one”, who’s now dead. Except he left his power to a human, whose name we now know (it’s Allen lol). I mean, not just his power, but his whole self. He’s now living inside Allen. But at that point of the story we didn’t know yet. Friendly reminder Neah has no Noah memory, so he’s not supposed to reincarnate like the others.

It is interesting that Neah bothered to break the ark before dying.

Volumes 11-12-13-14.

The following volumes feature less relevant information, as they’re duels, for the most. There are some hints about the 14th, but they all pointed at Allen being the actual 14th, and that’s a story we know already.

It could be mentioned that, when Allen evokates the Sword for the first time, Road has a vision of the Earl, maybe a flashback? No one knows. It’s in volume 12 anyway, toward the end.

Another interesting thing is how Tyki VS Allen reached a different ending, compared to Skinn VS Kanda. Kanda killed the human AND the Noah. Allen has a weapon that doesn’t kill the human, but the Noah only. Except that the Noahs become stronger, when triggered by innocence. Fishy. Unless you kill the human, it seems that it is impossibile to kill them. A bit like parasite type. Again, fishy.

Edit: I should have not overlooked the flashback in which Skinn awake as a Noah.

First of all, he had a dream about the end of everything, before turning definitely into a Noah

Second, the Earl states that he’s one of the 13 apostoles God created. This is false, just a volume before we learnt that the Noahs were created by Noah himself inside the ark. Unless the Noah is God (their God?) then there’s something fishy here.

Anyway, let’s go on.

I’ll overlook the whole Piano thing. The score was written with the secret code Mana taught Allen. This is not a mystery anymore. The rest is a build up for the “revelation” that will take place in volume 17. I’ll save this space for the upcoming volumes.

The 14th melody lyrics, just in case:

“Then the boy went to sleep

And one or two embers, alive in the ashes

Flared up in the shape of your beloved face

Thousands of dreams spread over the land

Stars like silver eyes twinkling in the night...

You shining ones fell to Earth

Even though the eons turn many prayers to dust

I will keep praying

Fire slowly burns as the boy is drifting off to sleep

Red embers flame in the ashes of our memories

Breathing in, then out again

There I see the face of my precious boy appearing

And every dream that I had for him is falling

To the ground, to the ground

Within the darkness you’re the one who’s always shining

Born in the night with eyes gray and trembling, yet so bright

Even if every word of my endless praying fell to Earth, not to be heard

Forgotten and turning to dust

I will still pray endlessly for this young boy to one day find love unconditional

And that he may be kissed on his hand”

The Earl was sad when the ark disappeared. We can guess it was because of the love Mana had for Neah.

After the Ark arc.

This is when the story starts to become tricky.

One thing I noticed is that the way the Order refers to exorcists is “sacrificial apostoles”, kinda like the Noahs are the “sacrificial lambs”. I don’t know what it means but it is interesting anyway.

Other three interesting things surfaced in that scene:

- Lvellie knew Cross was linked to the 14th, but Cross didn’t know Lvellie knew about him. This is even stranger because we learnt that Lvellie is part of the third side.

- Lvellie knew about the 14th because an old man came to the order for protection, fearing the Earl might find him.

- Lvellie also knew that the 14th after his death left his will to “cretain humans” (plural), who were people who supported him. One of these people seems to be the old man at the order. The other confirmed ones are Cross and Bookman (yup, Sheryl said that)

Done with part two. Again, if I’m missing something, just tell me.

(Part three)

[unicorns-and-whiskey]

This isn’t really an essay. It’s more like a rambling string of thoughts about Valentine Campbell.

Or, if you like, Baal.

(Spoilers under the cut.)

Baal has arguably had the wildest character arc in the series. We see a lot of him, both literally (as a performer and later a spokes-god for the Pantheon after the events of Rising Action) and figuratively (the emotional revelations that come with Inanna's death). We see much of Baal, and many sides of Baal's personality, from the brash and arrogant storm god to the simply vulnerable emotional man he is later on.

And yet, there is so much to unpack with him as the series goes on.

He starts off, in his first appearance way back in Issue 2, in a TV interview, offering his two cents on Lucifer's attempted murder. His belief that she went to jail for people trying to shoot her is pretty fair, though the newscaster seems to think he glorifies violence. His first display of arrogance is walking off of the interview, saying he think he's "better than you [the interviewer]".

Add in his grand mural in Valhalla, and on the surface, Baal seems very much like his archetype. But that's the entire point, isn't it?

Anyways.

Flash-forward to the start of Commercial Suicide. yes, we see Baal at his most violent, thrashing Morrigan to a pulp for supposedly hiding Baphomet, believed to be Inanna's murderer. But we also see his true self emerge here; the ever-so mused-over fire/lightning tears at the idea that if not for the goths, Inanna might still be alive (a false belief, but we all have a moment of sympathy for the lightning god).

The next time we see Baal, he's his usual cool self, but we see his sibling-like dynamic with Minerva. She wants to see Morrigan; he wants Mini to keep a safe distance from "Eyeliner Made Of Eyes". Understandable, especially given the capabilities we see of her war-goddess side, Badb, later on in the series. Another breath of relief; maybe Baal isn't so bad after all if he can be Minerva's big brother figure.

His emotions are on full display in Rising Action, especially in Issue 21 during the god battle. By the time the fight is over, he starts to show trust to Persephone and Co. because maybe, just fucking maybe, if Laura is alive and a goddess, then maybe Ananke is lying. Maybe.

Of course she is, we all find out, as she's carving Minerva up on a murder machine. And Baal throws himself full-throttle at Ananke to stop her and save the "li'l flower" of the Pantheon. All for nothing, of course, but the attempt and the desire to keep Minerva safe is what sells us: Baal, for all his performative masculinity and displayed arrogance, isn't so bad. He's a jerk with a heart of gold, not entirely like Baphomet/Nergal.

Imperial Phase shows more of this side of Baal. Yes, he's doing what he's doing and we get the first few glimpses at it, albeit with no real context. Yes, he's still acting the arrogant fucklord in the public eye, but we have a sense of why now: with Ananke dead, someone has to be the leader, so why not the first god to come back? He's already Minerva's legal guardian, he knows enough of Ananke's plans to be in control, he's a natural spokesman, he has the strength to put down anyone who steps out of line... all necessary traits to be the de facto leader.

Naturally, he's not much use as a leader when Sakhmet hands him his ass on a silver platter in Persephone's underground hideaway. But the fear in his eyes as Minerva tells him that Persephone found a secret room in Valhalla (with no other context, of course) tells us everything: Baal is hiding something.

And what he's hiding just about disintegrates any hope or love we as a fandom had for Baal. I'm fairly sure I don't have to get into that. A quick search of Ba'al Hammon will tell you everything.

And yet, despite it all, there's still emotional vulnerability throughout the whole affair of Mothering Invention and the first half of "Okay". He sheds tears at the idea of killing twenty thousand people to save the other eight billion or so. He immediately tosses the idea of killing any more children, possibly because of Persephone's confession or because he's simply sick of doing what he's done ritually every four months for the last two years. It almost makes his scenes in the Christmas Annual mocking; seeing him so loving towards Inanna and yet doing all of that makes us wonder what else he's capable of lying about.

And yet, when everything goes to hell, he is determined to get even with Laura for fucking up his ritual to off the Great Darkness. That is, until he finds out the truth of the Great Darkness.

And in that moment, the exact moment of realizing he's been played for a pawn in Ananke's game, that everything he's done was just to get him to play his part and ultimately keep the myth of the Great Darkness fueled...

... his face says it all. This is a man who’s not been played and played hard, but it’s a man who’s just had the gravity all of his past actions hit him at once. His words immediately after drive it home.

"You're a machine that kills people? Kill me."

To make this even harsher on himself (and us, as fans), his confession at the height of Valhalla after Minerva's revelation that godhood is, essentially, a cheat code for the power they already had. Finding out that none of his actions were necessary, that his entire identity was a lie, and that he says nothing about what his godhood meant to him while everyone else ranges from their godhood meaning they could be themselves, be better, be special, be a saviour, be alive despite it all...

... Baal says nothing. He doesn't have to.

His actions in the most recent issue only make things more complicated, one last twist of the emotional dagger in our collective side.

"I would love to live with you... but that would mean living with me. I wish I was the person you deserved, but I threw that away.

"I spent my whole life trying to be a big man. And if this is what being a man means?

"It's not worth it."

And just like that, I have no idea how to feel about Baal. His character arc has been fucking wild. Whereas some gods got better as people (Baphomet giving his life for Dionysus), got worse for their godhood (Morrigan's increasingly abusive control of her "King") or simply revealed their inner shittiness (Woden), Baal has been a roller-coaster of emotions.

From arrogant fucklord to emotional big brother to utter monster to suicidal sacrificial lamb, Valentine Campbell is a complex man. Love him, hate him, consider him brilliant, consider him beastly, he is what he is.

[geekade]

Some Thoughts About Suicide Squad

Hi Geekade readers! I’m not taking to coding as quickly as I’d hoped, and find myself making the hard decision between using my Pi to learn and code or to install Retropie and play games, so I thought I’d take a brief departure from my normal tech talk to discuss another passion of mine: Harley Quinn.

She’s possibly one of the best, most tragic female characters in literature. There’s no one on earth in a better position to be fully lucid while they go insane than she is, nobody who consistently and knowingly chooses her own imprisonment and torture more frequently. It’s like if Jack Sparrow had a law enforcement degree and still made all the same decisions while pirate hunters repeatedly and desperately offered him help and companionship. I could go on, but I have an actual point, so I’ll spare you. As you can imagine, I was both fearful and thrilled as I awaited the Suicide Squad release, rightly imagining Margot Robbie to be absolutely perfect for the part, and wholly unconcerned with the building, meme-fied humiliation of Jared Leto’s Joker. (The Joker, arguably, is inessential to Harley’s transformation‑PLEASE ask me about this, I’d love to tell you.)

Suicide Squad was fine. It was nowhere near the let-down of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (which I’d awaited for 4 years by the time it was regrettably released in theaters instead of burned in the dead of night in ditches somewhere), but nowhere close to as satisfying and funny-while-successfully-introducing-otherwise-unknown-characters-to-mainstream-audiences as Guardians of the Galaxy had been. However, if you’d like to watch Suicide Squad, but also would kind of like to watch a good movie, I’ve got news for you.

Suicide Squad is essentially a DCCU remake of the DCU movie Assault on Arkham, which was released a few years beforehand. It’s, honest to goodness, basically the same movie but instead of being potentially a waste of $9-14 dollars, it’s GREAT and a totally appropriate use of maybe $4 to rent on Amazon Prime. (I know, no smarthome stuff and I still manage to be a shill for Amazon. They’re not even paying me.)

Assault on Arkham is a part of a set of movies and shows that I don’t feel could possibly get enough attention - the Batman Animated Universe, encompassing everything from Batman: The Animated Series (arguably the definitive Batman) to the more recent The Killing Joke, and the upcoming Batman and Harley Quinn (which, AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH). In Assault on Arkham, Mark Hamill returns as the voice of the Joker facing Kevin Conroy as Batman, and Hynden Walch as Harley (Princess Bubblegum/Starfire/Penny from Chalkzone.)

I highly suggest that you go watch Assault on Arkham, but just a warning, there are spoilers ahead.

Assault on Arkham takes place at a time after the Suicide Squad had already been formed, so it saves us the trouble of a full origin tale, but it also begins with a bit of a changeup in the team - both from the Suicide Squad movie gang, and from the formation of the squad in the animated universe. We’re treated to the more characterized and strangely sympathetic King Shark in place of Killer Croc, who in the Suicide Squad movie is bold and violent, but not much else. We’re also introduced to Killer Frost, who is an icy villainess a-la Livewire from B:TAS. She’s sassy and has what appear to be magical ice powers; like Elsa, but mean. Black Spider, a bloodthirsty, crime-hating vigilante also joins the team, apparently only grudgingly in the company of everyone else. We keep Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, and Harley Quinn herself, but the dynamics of the team are the same. One hulk, one killer-killer, one elemental, one nutty Australian robber, one entrepreneurial dad, and one crazy former therapist.

Oh - and one sacrificial lamb. Both movies kick off with a “proof of concept”‑someone nobody particularly cares about to prove that Waller will actually blow their heads off. In Assault on Arkham, it’s a raging Red bull called “The KGBeast” who nobody would ever mourn, and in Suicide Squad, it’s “Slipknot,” the man who can climb anything.  This proves for us how cruel Waller really is‑and in both movies, Waller gets called out as the devil. This is a reference to the comics, as well as simply a fact. Waller is probably actually Satan.

See‑in each movie‑not only is Task Force X Waller’s vanity project (which is entirely unnecessary and completely inhumane, not to mention a complete violation of the constitutional rights of the prisoners involved), but the main conflict faced by our hostage heroes is a mishap of Waller’s own making. In Assault on Arkham, Waller had slipped a Suicide Seed into the Riddler’s neck to test her prototype, and he figured out how to disarm it, so, she created a fistfull more, stuffed them into some other criminals, and sent them to murder the Riddler. And also, the Joker has supposedly hidden a dirty bomb somewhere in Gotham and Batman is tearing the city apart to find it. (SEE DC? You still could have shoehorned Batman into this movie too.)

But all the plot-relevant stuff aside, the meat of Assault on Arkham is Harley and the Joker. They start the movie out broken up, which, if you follow their relationship as obsessively as I do, you’ll know is not actually an uncommon thing for them. Harley and Mister J are currently canonically canned. She’s even been out with Bruce Wayne on a legitimate and mutually enjoyable date. Heck, she only lives about 40 minutes from me, in Coney Island in a shabby apartment with her pets and pals and her primary non-monogamous partner, Pamela Isley (Ivy). But in Assault on Arkham, Ivy is is still incarcerated, and H&J are on the rocks.

It’s heavily implied, in Assault on Arkham, that Joker had thrown Harley out of a moving car and left her for dead, which might sound familiar because it’s almost exactly what they did in Suicide Squad‑but that’s hardly the only thing he’s done to her, and it’s hard to tell if Dr. Quinzel’s rage in the confrontation in Arkham comes from that particular assault or from his complete and utter destruction of her legitimate career, social abilities, criminal record, and sanity. Let’s say both. Harley starts Assault on Arkham out confidently and unconvincingly unattached and reinforces her apparent split by banging Deadshot.

Ok this part, I see why they didn’t snag for Suicide Squad. Will Smith is 48, and Margot Robbie is 26, and while she’s “Daddy’s Little Monster,” I personally don’t want to see her have a fling with someone who was already on Season 3 of Fresh Prince the year she was born. (Yes, Jared Leto is 45 and no, I don’t want to see her with him either.)

When, in Assault on Arkham, Harley (spoiler) breaks into Arkham with Deadshot, she (spoiler) runs into the Joker in his bulletproof cell and (spoiler): it doesn’t go well. He taunts her as only Mark Hamill’s Joker can, in the seductive and deranged varying pitch of a madman, and she is...triggered. (I got puns.)

She manages to keep it together while firing to help Deadshot with the task they’re there for; planting a small hacking device‑Batman-y technology that allows everyone else to sneak in past security, and here is where I pause to rant about Harley Quinn some more.

She knows that his cell is bulletproof and fires at it anyway. This convinces all of the onlooking guards that she’s currently deranged, and convinces Deadshot that she’s (oh, spoiler) not thrilled with the Joker. Her rampage allows Deadshot to complete their first mission, but it also helps the Joker to escape.

It takes Joker what seems like an hour to realize what she’s done for him, what she later confirms she did on purpose for him. This is one of my favorite pieces of evidence that Harley Quinn is the real criminal mastermind behind Joker’s modern accomplishments. For the other, watch “Mad Love,” Season 4 Episode 21 of Batman: The Animated Series, which Suicide Squad also clipped a bit, free on Amazon Prime. Harley has full knowledge of the entire schematics of Arkham Asylum, because, you know, she worked there, and throughout the movie uses passcodes and shortcuts that move the whole team forward, and she chooses to let her puddin loose in the halls, so she can catch up later. Yes, spoiler, she was faking the whole time, and is more than happy to be daddy’s little monster again. She’s even been hiding the dirty bomb.

Ask me what she gets for it.

So, you might at this point be thinking: Gabbie, you’re bizarrely passionate about this clearly unhealthy couple, but also, this movie sounds nothing like Suicide Squad.

Well, you’re wrong. About the second part, at least. Let me take you through it.

Amanda Waller wakes up one morning and decides to randomly create a huge problem‑murdering the Riddler (or releasing the Enchantress, in Suicide Squad). Granted, nerdy Nigma isn’t nearly as frightening as Cara Delevigne slowly building one of the mechanical space worms from Avengers in downtown Chicago, but both are problematic, and both are entirely Waller’s fault.

She pulls together her team of criminals, puts them through a suit-up montage, kills one of them, then drops their helicopter literally out of the sky into a situation that she does not explain to them fully. The Joker and Harley have some sort of private understanding between one another, as could probably have been expected. In both movies, Harley has a camaraderie with Deadshot. Harley also notably does a Matrix” lean in both movies for no discernable reason.

Inevitably, our villain-heroes are actually the patsies. Also inevitably, both the elemental and the tank are killed in explosions of the neck-bomb or fiery variety. And in both movies, the Joker appears to die in a helicopter crash, though in Suicide Squad, we actually get to see the happy couple reunited, whereas in Assault on Arkham, we’re merely told the body wasn’t found, which, for the Joker, is as good as proof that he’s alive.

To be totally honest with you, my main conclusion is that I’d have killed to see Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn in this Suicide Squad movie instead of the one that we got. She was the one part of Suicide Squad that makes watching it worth it, and while Princess Bubblegum did an amazing job in Assault on Arkham, I’d really like to see a live-action portrayal of Harley having her own hidden agenda, but giving us a full range of emotions and a tiny taste of her‑hate?‑for the Joker.

The Suicide Squad Harleen transformation was painfully unfulfilling, but the canonical story of their mad love is actually very interesting. While Suicide Squad paints Quinn as the Joker’s dupe‑tortured to madness and turned to a crime queen‑the older story is a little more compelling. Over multiple sessions, Harleen realizes that the Joker is able to make her laugh again after years of unwavering, humorless professionalism and ambition. Their sessions become discussions, and she falls in love. This not only makes the Joker seem more dangerous, capable of corrupting a psychiatrist with only his words like a genial, gentlemanly, green-haired Charles Manson, but tells us a lot about the good doctor. And it really makes Harley’s blow-up in Assault on Arkham an incredible moment, especially considering that it’s a dupe. How self-aware is Harley? How actively, and independently, is she choosing the Joker again and again? I for one would have enjoyed seeing that explored in Suicide Squad, just a bit more than I enjoyed the pin-up show we got instead.

I hope I’ve convinced you to check out Assault on Arkham. It’s really an amazing movie. And I hope I get a little bit better at Python, so that next month I can get back to writing about technology instead of rambling justifications of clown-on-criminal romance.