#i've been thinking also about survival cannibalism

[haikirii]

Thinking about q!Cellbit's life: before, during and after the war

Recently, q!Cellbit talked a bit more about his wartime background alongside q!Badboyhalo - let's pretend I'm not freaking out about my hcs being canonized - and I wanted to reflect a little bit on everything he said. Mainly, reflecting on how tragic q!Cellbit's life is and how he can only have a normal routine after arriving on the island.

First of all, I would like to remind you of a rather sad fact that gives us some clues about your childhood that is still a mystery. One day, q!Cellbit was having a picnic with Richarlyson and he says "Did you know I've never been on a picnic before on this island?", which made me think about something so simple never having happened even in his childhood. Maybe I'm making a simple sentence a lot deeper than it should be, but when q!Cellbit confirmed that he entered the war at just 14/15 years old, my mind can't help but wander to that sentence and that day.

Come on, from what little q!Cellbit elaborated from the war for Richarlyson - which I'll talk more about later - leads me to believe that at the very least you'd have to have some heavy training to survive in it as an average soldier. However, q!Cellbit was not just any soldier, he was one of the best of his time at just 14 years old. How long did he train? Who trained his? How intense and cruel does training have to be for a 14-year-old teenager to be a killing machine amidst the chaos of the battlefield? What all this makes me think is that he was specifically trained from childhood to be a soldier. Sure, the training might not have been able to erase his teenage recklessness and rebelliousness, but it's still the only thing I can think of for him to have been such a good fighter. q!Cellbit didn't have comfort, he didn't rest, he never did normal child things and maybe that's why he values so much that Richarlyson lives like a normal child even with all the dangers of the island. Even though Richarlyson would also have to have been raised as a warrior to protect himself, q!Cellbit still doesn't want him to have the same fate as him.

And then we go to war and that's when q!Badboyhalo enters. He confirmed, once again, that the demon was with him and that they fought side by side. Of the things that q!Cellbit told him, one of them was that he was an Endergage - outside of roleplay: one of hg's classes. With that, I can only think of a scene where a hyperactive teenager goes around teleporting everyone close to him and killing them with impressive skill while an ancient demon screams at him to be careful and stop cursing while delivering blows. Because killing is OK, but swearing was the limit - and of course q!Cellbit was terrified of q!Badboyhalo cleaning his mouth with soap after battles.

He also mentioned a little bit of how the war worked, which was literally the hg: they were thrown into the arena, without resources and either you were the last one to survive or you would die. q!Cellbit told how there were cowards - his words - who hid in block towers. He seems to hate Stompers quite a bit, citing how he hunted them and how they didn't expect him to be so good with his teleportation power.

And then q!Cellbit tells Richarlyson that "These were simpler times, where I had to fight for my life every day." How troubled does your life have to have been for THIS to have been simpler times? Fight for your life in a cruel battle of life and death every day. He said it was fun days even with fear plaguing his skin, his fun time was on the battlefield.

After that, he says "Then I went to jail […] it has more or less to do (with the war)". And that's what intrigues me the most: even in Fuga Impossível, we never found out why he was arrested. This information is completely new, which leads me to believe in two things: war crime or that he is too strong to let him free in society. I think a lot about the possibility of war crime due to cannibalism, but he himself said he didn't actually commit that much - I just honestly don't know how much we can trust q!Cellbit's words on this because of how unreliable he is when it comes to some prison stuff, tending to smooth things over to his side. Aside from cannibalism, which we're not sure he actually committed in the war as only q!Pac's bites and leg have been confirmed, I think about how he was a good enough killing machine to have a special government interest in leaving him in jail.

Think with me: he entered the war at 14/15 years old, but a lot of things lead me to believe that he was arrested at about 18 years old. He talks about how he and q!Badboyhalo broke up after the war was over and after that the arrest occurred. Maybe that break after the war has made him even more mentally unstable? q!Cellbit still spent a few years in Alcatraz, but we don't know if he was already unstable when he arrived in prison or if the prison messed with his head over the years. His behavior may have been generated as a defense mechanism against other more aggressive inmates along with a reflection of the traumas of battles, he barely had time to process all the years he lived there.

q!Cellbit emphasizes the "kill or die" a lot, it hurts to imagine what that did to his mind. On how after parting with q!Badboyhalo, he was alone and with no one to trust again. He dominated the prison alone, made protection pacts with other gangs alone without being able to really trust them. I've already talked about how important trust is to q!Cellbit, and now it just makes me think that he only had one person to really trust before his arrest.

Quoting myself:

"In Fuga Impossível, the only thing he asked f!Tazercraft was "Don't break my trust". I mean, we can't judge them because f!Cellbit wasn't the sanest person to have a relationship with inside the jail - considering the events that followed and the consequences like f!Felps killed in a riot, f!Pac having his leg eaten, f!Jvnq murdered and f!Celbit abandoned on an island.

However, he still tried to trust in f!Tazercrat. he tried to take a chance, even if you can't see that chance with the best of intentions."

Trust is the central point of this character, it's something essential for him. And he eventually escapes from this other hell he got himself into, alone and with no one to trust after being betrayed and also doing horrible things to his fellow escapees because q!Cellbit is no saint. And once again he has to get back on his own.

And a great deal of time has passed since then. He does some miraculous therapy and gets better, q!Cellbit finds the q!Tazercraft on the ship but they still maintain that distrust from years ago. He also has q!Felps to rely on now and is introduced to q!Forever, nothing is the same as years before.

q!Cellbit finds q!Badboyhalo, his war buddy. Two wounded veterans who've been through life's hell before and after everything, who've split up. Where q!Badboyhalo sees that already grown teenager, full of scars, dark circles and trauma and thinks "What happened to you all this time?".

And it hurts me a lot to think that only now q!Cellbit has found the happiness and confidence he's always been looking for. That being forced onto this island where he was tortured, tricked by the federation several times; kidnapped; had parts of his memories erased from the time he worked there; he suffered for having broken his family at the time of the betrayal; it was only on this damn island that he managed to find people to love and trust.

q!Cellbit loves his family and would do anything for them. He loves his son to the point of considering giving up everything just so he can have a better future than he had; he loves his Guapito, who has his full trust and unconditional love to the point of almost having a relapse when their relationship was threatened.

His Guapito, who was your anchor. The one who trusted and defended him when everyone was against him, the one who supported him in everything he did. The one with whom q!Cellbit made a mistake, but was forgiven and tries to be someone better every day so as not to fail anymore.

q!Forever, who trusts him SO MUCH to the point of not even being interested in knowing information if that put his family at risk. The one who even after hearing so much shit coming out of q!Cellbit's mouth, still had a glimmer of hope that it was all a lie for trusting him.

q!Tazercraft, who forgave him even after everything he'd done. After he killed his friend, who help him because they know that family is all they have.

q!Felps, who is the person he knows best. His best friend who made him go through hell just to find him.

It is on this island, with codes, with a cruel organization that manipulates everyone, with unbelievable entities and mysteries, that he can finally have a normal life. He can finally wake up and have coffee with his son and husband, q!Cellbit can finally just build his castle and do things he never could like a simple picnic with the other eggs on the island.

And when he told q!Forever that "I don't have anyone off this island, everyone I love is here" he was right. Even if he was pretending to infiltrate, that sentence was totally true. q!Cellbit has no one outside Quesadilla Island, he has no reason to want to leave it.

But even so, all he wants is for the people he loves the most to be free. And that's what I love most about this character. I love how he suffered so much, how he saw the worst in people and still wants the best for them.

I love how flawed he is, how he fucks up and acknowledges it. And even when he doesn't recognize it and tries to smooth it over, to me that just makes him even more real. q!Cellbit is full of flaws and full of love, he understands others, he takes care of what is his.

q!Cellbit is human.

tradução pt-br

Recentemente, q!Cellbit falou um pouco mais sobre o seu passado na guerra junto de q!Badboyhalo - vamos fingir que eu não estou surtando pelos meus hcs serem canonizados - e eu queria refletir um pouco sobre tudo o que ele falou. Principalmente, refletir sobre o quão trágica é a vida de q!Cellbit e sobre como ele só pode ter uma rotina normal depois de chegar na ilha.

Primeiro tudo, gostaria de relembrar um fato meio triste que nos dá um pouco de pistas sobre a sua infância que ainda é um mistério. Um dia, q!Cellbit estava fazendo um piquenique com Richarlyson e ele fala "Sabia que eu nunca fui em um piquenique antes dessa ilha?", o que já tinha me despertado uma pulga atrás da orelha sobre uma coisa tão simples nunca ter acontecido nem em sua infância. Talvez eu esteja tornando uma frase simples muito mais profunda do que deveria, mas quando o q!Cellbit confirmou que ele entrou na guerra com apenas 14/15 anos de idade, minha mente não pode deixar de vagar para essa frase e esse dia.

Vamos lá, pelo pouco que o q!Cellbit elaborou da guerra para Richarlyson - que vou falar mais sobre depois - me leva a acreditar que no mínimo você teria que ter um treinamento pesado para sobreviver nela como um soldado mediano. Porém, q!Cellbit não era qualquer soldado, ele era um dos melhores da sua época com apenas 14 anos de idade. Por quanto tempo ele treinou? Quem o treinou? O quão intenso e cruel um treinamento tem que ser para um adolescente de apenas 14 anos de idade ser uma máquina de matar em meio ao caos do campo de batalha? O que tudo isso me faz pensar é que ele foi específicamente treinado desde a infância para ser um soldado. Claro, o treinamento pode não ter sido capaz de apagar a imprudência e rebeldia adolescente, mas ainda assim é a única coisa que eu consigo pensar para ele ter sido um lutador tão bom. q!Cellbit não teve aconchego, não teve descanso, nunca fez coisas normais de uma criança e talvez seja por isso que ele preze tanto para que Richarlyson viva como uma criança normal mesmo com todos os perigos da ilha. Mesmo que Richarlyson tenha que também ter sido criado como um guerreiro para se proteger, ainda assim q!Cellbit não quer que ele tenha o mesmo destino que ele.

E aí vamos para a guerra e é nesse momento que q!Badboyhalo entra. Ele confirmou, mais uma vez, que o demônio estava com ele e que eles lutaram lado a ladoDas coisas que q!Cellbit contou, uma delas era que ele era um Endermage - fora de roleplay: uma das classes de hg. Com isso, eu só consigo pensar em uma cena onde uma adolescente hiperativo saindo por aí teleportando todo mundo para perto de si e matando eles com uma habilidade impressionante enquanto um demônio milenar gritava para ele tomar cuidado e parar de falar palavrão enquanto desferia os golpes. Porque matar? Ok, mas palavrão era o limite - e claro que q!Cellbit morria de medo de q!Badboyhalo limpar sua boca com sabão depois das batalhas.

Ele também citou um pouquinho de como funcionava a guerra, que era literalmente o hg: eles eram jogados na arena, sem recursos e ou você era último a sobreviver ou você morreria. q!Cellbit contou como existiam covardes - palavras dele - que se escondiam em torres de blocos. Ele parece odiar bastante Stompers na real, citando como ele os caçava e como eles não esperava que ele fosse tão bom com seu poder de teleporte.

E então q!Cellbit fala para Richarlyson que "Eram tempos mais simples, onde eu tinha que lutar pela minha vida todos os dias." O quão conturbada a sua vida tem que ter sido para ISSO terem sido tempos mais simples? Lutar por sua vida em uma batalha cruel de vida ou morte todos os dias. Ele ter dito que era dias divertidos mesmo com o medo assolando sua pele, seu momento de diversão era no campo de batalha.

Depois disso, ele diz "Depois eu fui pra cadeia [...] tem mais ou menos relação (com a guerra)". E isso é o que mais me intriga: mesmo em Fuga Impossível, a gente nunca descobriu o porquê de ele ter sido preso. Essa informação é totalmente nova, o que me leva a crer em duas coisas: crime de guerra ou ele ser muito forte para deixar ele livre em sociedade. Eu penso muito sobre a possibilidade do crime de guerra por conta do canibalismo, mas ele mesmo disse que não chegou a cometer tanto assim - só que sinceramente não sei o quanto podemos confiar nas palavras de q!Cellbit sobre isso por conta do quão pouco confiável ele é quando se trata de algumas coisas da prisão, tendendo a amenizar situações para o seu lado. Fora o canibalismo, que não temos certeza se ele chegou a cometer na guerra já que apenas foram confirmados mordidas e a perna de q!Pac, penso em como ele era uma máquina de matar boa o suficiente para ter um interesse especial do governo em deixá-lo preso.

Pensa comigo: ele entrou na guerra com 14/15 anos, mas muita coisa me leva a crer que ele foi preso com uns 18 anos. Ele fala sobre como ele e q!Badboyhalo se separaram depois que a guerra acabou e depois disso ocorreu a prisão. Talvez essa quebra depois da guerra tenha tornado ele ainda mais mentalmente instável? q!Cellbit ainda ficou alguns anos em Alcatraz, mas não sabemos se ele já era instável quando chegou na prisão ou se a cadeia mexeu com a cabeça dele durante os anos. O seu comportamento pode ter sido gerado como um mecanismo de defesa contra outros presos mais agressivos junto de um reflexo dos traumas das batalhas, ele mal pôde ter tempo de processar todos os anos que ele viveu ali.

q!Cellbit frisa muito o "era matar ou morrer", dói muito imaginar o que isso fez com a mente dele. Em como ao se separar de q!Badboyhalo, ele estava sozinho e sem ninguém para confiar de novo. Ele dominou a prisão sozinho, fez pactos de proteção com outras gangues sozinho sem poder realmente confiar neles. Já falei sobre como confiança é importante para q!Cellbit, e agora isso só me faz pensar que ele apenas teve uma pessoa para realmente confiar antes da prisão.

Citando eu mesmo:

"Em Fuga Impossível, a única coisa que ele pediu para os moços foi "Não quebrem a minha confiança". Quero dizer, não podemos julgá-los pois f!Cellbit não era a pessoa mais sã de se ter uma relação dentro da cadeia - considerando nos fatos que se sucederam e nas consequências de um f!Felps morto em uma rebelião, f!Pac tendo sua perna comida, f!Jvnq assassinado e f!Cellbit abandonado em uma ilha.

Porém, ainda assim ele tentou confiar nos moços. Ele tentou dar uma chance, mesmo que você não possa ver essa chance com a melhores das intenções."

Confiança é o ponto central desse personagem, é algo essencial para ele. E ele eventualmente foge desse outro inferno que ele se meteu, sozinho e sem ninguém para confiar depois de ter sido traído e também ter feito coisas horríveis para seus companheiros de fuga porque q!Cellbit não é nenhum santo. E mais uma vez ele tem que dar a volta por cima sozinho.

E um grande espaço de tempo se passa desde então. Ele faz alguma terapia milagrosa e melhora, q!Cellbit reencontra os q!Tazercraft no navio mas eles ainda mantém essa relação de desconfiança de anos atrás. Ele também tem q!Felps para confiar agora e conhece q!Forever, nada é o mesmo que anos antes.

q!Cellbit reencontra q!Badboyhalo, seu companheiro de guerra. Dois veteranos machucados que passaram pelo inferno na vida antes e depois de tudo, que se separaram. Onde q!Badboyhalo vê aquele adolescente já crescido, cheio de cicatrizes, olheiras e traumas e pensa "O que aconteceu com você durante todo esse tempo?".

E me dói muito pensar que apenas agora q!Cellbit encontrou a felicidade e confiança que sempre procurou. Que sendo enfiado a força nessa ilha onde ele foi torturado, enganado pela federação várias vezes; sequestrado; teve partes das suas memórias apagadas do tempo que ele trabalhou ali; sofreu por ter quebrado a sua família na época da traição; foi só nessa maldita ilha que ele conseguiu encontrar pessoas para amar e confiar.

q!Cellbit ama a sua família e faria de tudo por ela. Ele ama o seu filho ao ponto de cogitar desistir de tudo só para que ele tenha um futuro melhor do que ele mesmo teve; ama seu Guapito, que tem sua plena confiança e amor incondicional ao ponto de quase ter uma recaída quando seu relacionamento foi ameaçado.

Seu Guapito, que foi sua âncora. Aquele que confiou e defendeu ele quando todos estavam contra, aquele que lhe deu suporte para tudo o que fizesse. Aquele que q!Cellbit errou, mas foi perdoado e tenta ser alguém melhor todos os dias para não falhar mais.

q!Forever, que confia TANTO nele ao ponto de nem ter interesse de saber uma informação se aquilo por sua família em risco. Aquele que mesmo depois de ouvir tanta merda saindo da boca de q!Cellbit, ainda assim tinha uma ponta de esperança de que era tudo mentira por confiar nele.

q!Tazercraft, que o perdoou mesmo depois de tudo o que ele fez. Depois de ele ter matado o seu amigo, que ajudam ele pois sabem que família é tudo que eles tem.

q!Felps, que é a pessoa que ele mais conhece. Seu melhor amigo, que fez ele ir ao inferno só para achá-lo.

É nessa ilha, com códigos, com uma organização cruel que manipula a todos, com entidades e mistérios inacreditáveis, que ele pode finalmente ter uma vida normal. Ele finalmente pode acordar e tomar um café com seu filho e seu marido, q!Cellbit finalmente pode apenas ficar construindo seu castelo e fazer coisas que ele nunca pôde como um piquenique simples com os outros ovos da ilha.

E quando ele falou para o q!Forever que "Eu não tenho ninguém fora dessa ilha, todo mundo que eu amo está aqui" ele estava certo. Mesmo que estivesse fingindo para se infiltrar, essa frase era totalmente verdade. q!Cellbit não tem ninguém fora da Ilha Quesadilha, ele não tem para quê querer sair dela.

Mas mesmo assim, tudo o que ele quer é que as pessoas que ele mais ama sejam livres. E é isso que eu mais amo nesse personagem. Eu amo como ele sofreu tanto, como ele viu o pior das pessoas e mesmo assim quer o melhor para elas.

Eu amo como ele é falho, como ele faz merda e reconhece. E mesmo quando ele não reconhece e tenta amenizar, para mim isso só faz dele ainda mais real. q!Cellbit é cheio de falhas e cheio de amor, é compreensível, é preocupado com os seus.

q!Cellbit é humano.

[dyns33]

Strange way of life

No, it's not about my sweet Pedro (I'll let Silva be happy with his cowbow), it's a new Cooper Howard story, yaaaaaay !

Her cousins ​​had gently teased her when the name had appeared on her wrist on her eighteenth birthday.

It was nothing unusual, it happened to everyone, even if what was once a joy was now the memory of a lost world. It was very rare for two soulmates to be in the same vault, very rare indeed. Legends.

And unfortunately for Y/N, she was no exception.

If Lucy and Norman were snickering, it was because of her reaction when they read the name.

"… Cooper Howard ? My soulmate is the actor Cooper Howard ?! The famous Cooper Howard ?!"

"Uh, no, I don't think so."

"He would be over two hundred years old. Sorry, Y/N, but he's long dead. Maybe he's his descendant, or a guy with the same name."

"But I love Cooper Howard ! I've seen all his movies ! That would make sense !"

"Not really, no." Norm said, visibly a little sad at his cousin's excitement.

Sure, maybe the great Cooper Howard was still alive, in a hibernation chamber, in another vault, and waiting for her.

But even if that was the case, there was little chance that they would ever meet. There was no indication that it would be possible to come out soon, and so the rule was to ignore names when choosing a partner.

If not, humanity would have died out long ago.

Unfortunately for Vault 33, most of the young people were quite romantic. Her brother could try to be reasonable, Lucy stopped mocking to hug her cousin, saying that it was wonderful that she was destined for such a wonderful man.

They had been fans of the cowboy since childhood. At the same time, there weren't many other movies to watch.

A few years later, Lucy had her name, which wasn't that of an actor. At least, not a known actor in the vault, even if it was special. Titus Maximus.

Norman noted that it sounded like a name from Ancient Rome. He joked that his sister and cousin probably had soulmates who could travel through time.

While Y/N wanted to wait as long as possible before making a decision about her love life, Lucy sadly accepted that she would probably never meet Maximus, asking to meet a man from Vault 32 to get married. This pleased neither young Norman, for security reasons, nor Y/N, for emotional reasons. Besides the fact that he could be a dangerous cannibal, ugly and mean, there was nothing to say that Lucy and him would love each other. She could wait for her Titus.

"No, I don't want to wait anymore. I want love, real love. I can't keep dreaming and having fun with Chet…"

"Chet ? Your other cousin ? That's disgusting, Lucy !"

"I know ! That's why I need a husband. And if I ever meet Maximus, I could always divorce him. You can wait for your Cooper if you want, cowboy or whatever. I understand and I don't judge you. So don't judge me either."

That wasn't enough to prevent the massacre that followed. It was only because she had retreated to her room that Y/N escaped death, not seeing Overseer MacLean being kidnapped either.

More than this idea of ​​marriage, she found that leaving the shelter to go looking for him was very bad. She had never really loved her uncle, finding him strange. Her parents had also always been wary of him, even more so after the death of her mother's sister who they followed here before the plague.

But Y/N loved her cousins, both Norm and Lucy, and so there was no way she was going to let her go alone.

The poor widow drugged Chet because he would have been a burden, she already knew that her little brother would only help her get out, and when her cousin insisted on coming, she couldn't say no.

They were probably among the smartest, bravest and most skilled people in the vault. Together, they had a better chance of surviving outside.

However, nothing could prepare them for this devastated world. It was nothing like what their teachers had said. The sun was hot, the air full of dust, the earth barren, and the people rude.

The worst was that mercenary in the city of Philly, who started shooting at everyone while laughing, ready to kill Lucy because she was defending the poor man whose leg he had blown off.

Y/N didn't really want to get involved. She admitted that the treatment inflicted on the one who seemed to be a doctor and his dog was not normal, and that in other circumstances she would have intervened.

But they were not there for that, and if they wanted to find Lucy's father, it was probably better to avoid trouble.

This misadventure was not in vain, however. Because not only were they saved by a man named Titus Maximus wearing a huge sparkling armor, but they also recovered the doctor's head which could be used as a bargaining chip against Henry MacLean.

And above all, they had crossed paths with this ghoul dressed as a cowboy, exactly like in Cooper Howard's films, who spoke exactly like in Cooper Howard's films.

Since the atomization, meetings between soulmates were very rare. So double meetings ? Impossible.

Until a monster ate the head, Lucy kept jumping up and down like a child, terribly happy, immediately forgetting her failed marriage and a little bit about the reason for their presence near this radioactive lake. Even if she hadn't had time to give Maximus her name, there was little risk in saying that their savior was made for her.

"It's him ! I know it's him ! I only saw his face for a few seconds, but he's so handsome, so brave ! Did you see how he didn't hesitate for a second to jump in front of us and take the bullet for us ?"

"Yes, I did."

"I wonder why that horrible mercenary wanted to take that poor man, and what he was going to do to him. Do you think he has a soulmate ? Oh, do you think the doctor had a soulmate ?!"

"I don't know." Y/N sighed, trying to convince herself that it wasn't because the mercenary looked and talked like Cooper Howard that he was the actor, or her soulmate.

She could have asked him the question, when he caught up with them without too much difficulty, while they were wondering how to get the head back. Because without the head, there was no way to save Lucy's father.

Her poor cousin tried to explain it to the Ghoul, while he plunged her again and again into the water, while Y/N could only watch and beg, tied to a pole.

The plan he had put in place to attract the beast worked well, too well, and in the end, in addition to losing what he was looking for, the mercenary had his bag snatched, which obviously contained important things.

"Fuck… Fuck !" he yelled, pointing his gun at Lucy, as if the poor girl was responsible.

He didn't shoot. Visibly changing his mind, he took them both, forcing them to walk without water or food for days, to an unknown destination.

Several times, Y/N hesitated to give her name, to see his reaction. When he asked them after putting a bullet in Roger's head, her cousin answered first and he jumped, not giving Y/N time to speak.

He had understood that they were cousins. He must have thought that they had the same name, MacLean. Not Y/L/N.

She could have said it. Several times. But saying it was getting an answer, and she didn't know which one she wanted.

Either this man wasn't her soulmate and they were going to die. Or they were destined. And Y/N couldn't believe that this abomination, this heartless monster, could be for her. Even less that he could be Cooper Howard, the good sheriff who punished the bad guys and saved damsels in distress.

No, it couldn't be him. She was almost certain of it when he cut off Lucy's finger with a smile.

Arriving in front of the Super Duper Market, it was a surprise to be untied. Then he announced that he was taking two women in more or less good condition, in exchange for vials.

He hadn't killed them, just sold them.

No, he couldn't be her Cooper.

It was totally impossible.

But as Lucy walked through the store trying to stay dignified, holding back her tears, Y/N couldn't help but turn to the Ghoul. If she was going to die, she had to know.

He frowned, waiting to see what she would say, probably in an attempt to gain his pity.

"Are you Cooper Howard ?"

The question surprised him for a moment. Something flashed in his eyes, indicating that it had been a long time since he had heard that name. But he quickly resumed his closed demeanor.

"Not anymore, sweetie."

"I'm Y/N Y/L/N."

The doors of the Super Dupper automatically closed before Y/N could say anything else or see his face. It probably wouldn't have made much difference anyway.

[artbyblastweave]

hello. I am in the middle of doing My Take on vampires and would appreciate your thoughts on Them in fiction. they don't seem to pop up more than occasionally in superhero media, but also you are pretty widely read & they have noticeable Eras/Tendencies that I can see.

I'm definitely not as much of a vampire guy as I'm a Superhero guy, so all my opinions on vampires should be taken with a grain of salt, and with the knowledge that a lot of this is stuff I've picked up through Osmosis and the occasional lit-review for that one class in college. But here goes-

One of my potentially more controversial takes about Vampires is that I think Vampires (and adjacent creatures like werewolves) are great at capturing the emotional truth of being part of a marginalized group, or sometimes just for being subaltern- the world against you, people make you feel like you're wrong for existing, that you're dangerous, etc.- and this is why they go gangbusters both on this website and in general. But the narrative often faceplants for me if it tries to portray vampires as a literal marginalized group because all of that stuff is often objectively true within the fiction in a way that it isn't true of real-life marginalized groups. It's a souped-up version of the X-men problem, because most of the X-Men aren't obligate cannibals! The result of this is that there have been several times I'm consuming something vampire-related that wants me to primarily sympathize with the vampires, and meanwhile I'm going "geez, that's a rough deal, but I think you all need to be killed on purely utilitarian grounds, sorry."

(I do also get the sense as well, right, that this is inextricably tangled up in the fact that a lot of foundational vampire literature was kind of just taking a lot of the horrible lies people tell about the scapegoat group du jour to justify their oppression and then making a guy of whom these things were objectively true. I get the impression, at a distance, that Dracula demonstrates like fourteen different flavors of "Those Depraved Easterners Are Coming For Our Women," although to truly lock in that Take I'm gonna have to read the thing instead of just absorbing it through Tumblr Osmosis whenever Dracula Daily is running.) There are ways to thread this needle, the big one of which is to just sand down the negative externalities of vampirism. Have them feed on animals or voluntary donors or make the human predation thing an in-universe slanderous fiction to begin with. Have them feed on exclusively on quote-unquote "criminals," if you have the right unexamined assumptions about the validity of the death penalty. Go the Elder Scrolls route, where drinking blood isn't necessary to survive but is necessary to maintain a human appearance, thus ensuring that the most morally conscientious vampires are the ones most likely to be identified as vampires and scapegoated by the angry mob. The issue I sometimes take with this is that the act of implementing a "fix" of any kind can sort of broadcast that you're trying to have your cake and eat it too- that you're cutting away the ideatic core of what makes vampires interesting when divorced from metaphor, taken objectively- that they're living trolley problems. As others have said, if you sand them down too much, what are you getting out of a vampire story that you couldn't get from a Tolkien Elf, or from Batman?

A fictional group which I've never really had this issue with, though, is Zombies, in the Romero tradition. When a work wants to construct Zombies as a primarily sympathetic group, it's much easier for me to get on board with that without feeling like the core Vibe has been compromised. This is because there's actually a fairly recent source text for zombies in the form of Romero's Living Dead films, and a major component of the Living Dead films is how much it sucks without recourse to become a zombie.

I was working on a post once, which I never finished, about how there are like, three-to-four vectors of horror that zombies can embody, which different works play up to different extents. While obviously one of the big straightforward ones is the fear that your entire community starts trying to kill you and eat you one day for basically no reason, a major anxiety on display in the original Living Dead trilogy- Dawn in particular- is that in the face of a weird but manageable problem human society would act as its own condemnation, totally failing to rise to the challenge-the horror is that we would let something as inept as a zombie be dangerous to us! Also present in those films? The horror of the idea that your daily routine is so rote and conformist that you wouldn't need to be sentient to continue to carry it out- that the biggest difference between you and them is that you can occasionally be evil in more interesting and evolved ways. And there's this fear of physically and mental degradation with zombies, which for a host of reasons I find extremely fucking relatable. The sense that your body is falling apart piecemeal, bits of you sloughing off when you turn the wrong way or turn your head too quickly. There's this fog over your thinking. The bone-deep knowledge that you used to be more, and are now fundamentally less capable- that there's just enough of you left to understand something is missing. (Read into my personal circumstances whatever you want from this.) Being a zombie is foundationally, fundamentally gross in a way that being a vampire isn't; when people try to do "sexy zombies" half the joke is the pairing of those two words. There's this horror comic Kieth Giffen did once called Tag which is basically entirely about the horror of being a corpse that could feel it; I think about that comic a lot. Anyway, because so much of the horror of zombism is external to whether they're actually attacking and killing people or not, you can totally sell me on zombies as an unfairly-maligned demographic in a way that's much harder for me to buy with Vampires- dropping the danger they pose to other people allows you to maintain so much more of the core of the thing than it does with Vampires, where it feels much more like you're tip-toeing around the tensions between Wanting To Have Fun and the moral horror inherent to what you're trying to have fun with.

[raayllum]

Re these prior musings / promises but speculation regarding the secret scene possibly being Claudia murdering Sir Sparklepuff got me wondering, so... let's talk about Rayla, Claudia, and symbolic to non symbolic notions of suicide.

Tw because this will mention / does talk about cannibalism, suicidal ideation, and suicide in passing. If you're not comfortable reading about those things in more detail but you still want the gist of this meta, scroll down to the TLDR that will have a couple sentence summary of the idea.

With that out of the way, let's get into it.

For a while now, I've been interested in the metaphorical mechanics regarding Rayla murdering Viren in 3x09. As we all know (even if Aaravos 'pretends' otherwise in 4x04), Rayla did successfully kill the man, retroactively achieving her earlier mission of killing a king of Katolis because he was responsible for both the death of the Dragon King and because he'd killed Zym (which Viren was in the process of doing).

However, Rayla kills Viren in the most Rayla-y of ways, as she does so without her assassin blades, while acting as the Last Dragonguard, and in a way that means killing Viren is not just an act of protection or revenge, but also something that meant sacrificing (killing) herself.

And this felt notable to me, since unlike either of the brothers, Rayla hasn't killed anyone else. Ezran would've burned people alive with dragon fire if not for immunity spell, and Callum blasted plenty of people off the side of the mountain and presumably to the Storm Spire. But Viren was the sole blood on Rayla's hands, even if the narrative has Claudia (and we'll get to her in a minute) resurrect him. Her one act of murder being something that also, as stated, required her to sacrifice her whole person, and is also in line with her assassin training: "I am already dead."

When Rayla rebuttals Ezran's assertion that "[You spared him] because you knew he was a person, just like you," you can read Rayla's assertion of "That shouldn't have mattered, I had a job to do," solely as her talking about the guard's personhood... but you can also read it, I think, as her dehumanizing her own personhood. She is a weapon and he is the target and that's all that should've mattered.

We can tether this thread all the way up to season four with Rayla's refusal to murder Callum, but put a pin in that, cause now I want to talk about Claudia.

Much like we can read Rayla's attempted dehumanization as twofold, I also think we can read Sir Sparklepuff's mimicry of Claudia as something with multiple layers. The first and likely most obvious one of course is that Sir Sparklepuff mimicking Claudia in earlier episodes is to setup later that he is her (magical, technical?) half-brother and one of Viren's children. Kind of like how we had Ezran and Zym mimicking each other in mid-S2 to set up their mental/emotional bond later that season.

And this implied connection likewise loops back around in the finale when Viren simultaneously refuses to sacrifice Sir Sparklepuff for his own survival while also lamenting that he's led (sacrificed?) his own daughter down a dark path (and perhaps regret that he sacrificed his son once, too).

Arc 2 has also ramped up Claudia's willingness to destroy herself further for the "good of her family" (and her own desires that often steamroll over theirs) in having her take on more and more animalistic forms when doing dark magic, blurring the lines between her de-personalization of magical creatures and also herself.

This reflects dark magic's cannibalism motif quite well, as Claudia carries on metaphorically cannibalizing her own body throughout most of s4 and especially s5: refusing to rest from Terry, using her own blood in spells, etc.

This all reinforces that while dehumanization was something Rayla struggled with for both her target(s) and to a lesser degree herself, it's something that Claudia has only continually excelled at. And we know, thanks to S4 with Rayla walking away from the drake in the woods ("We can't save everyone") that she's gotten better at it as well.

But what does this all have to do with symbolic suicide? Well...

If the secret scene is what a good deal of us have been speculating / that Claudia is covered in Sir Sparklepuff's blood in the teaser trailer, then: if Sir Sparklepuff is a stand in for Viren's innocent, made to be an asset, processing learned behaviour child - if he is a stand in for Claudia - then through killing him, Claudia is symbolically killing herself.

Now, there's no doubt in my mind that Claudia isn't viewing things that way, but we also know just how much she's willing to ruin herself for the people around her first hand, and how persistent that characterization has been: "Are you okay?" "You're going to be better now. That's all that matters." While Claudia also has some selfish, twisted self-preservation in there as well (she cannot or will not cope with the fracturing of her family, even when she really probably should), the self-destructive tendency that's led to her S6 spiral is well established.

This attitude of "it doesn't matter what happens to me, so long as other people are okay/safe" is something we see for many characters, of course, but I think is best embodied in Rayla's continual, emphasized thread of sacrifice / her tendency towards subtle but consistent passive suicidal ideation regarding her own safety and her own wants/desires.

R: Don't worry about my hand. The egg is all that matters. / It doesn't matter what happens to me. / I have to go after [Viren]. / It's agonizing, but I know our mission comes first.

This is important regarding her and Callum in regards to the possession plot line. As long as Callum is Callum (not possessed, or she has reason to believe he's still in there), Rayla likely won't be able to bring herself to kill him. This is from an emotional / characterization standpoint, of course, but from a thematic standpoint, we can see where it stems from Callum and Rayla continually being each other's main connection to their sense of identity.

As long as Callum is Callum ("you're the destiny is a book you write yourself guy"), he's worth saving. As long as Callum is Callum, she can be Rayla ("Rayla's brave. She saves people" / "Rayla. My name is Rayla, and I'm going home"). As long as she's Rayla, he can be Callum. Because if Callum isn't Callum, then he's dead, and if he's dead, she can kill him. And if Rayla kills him, if Callum is dead, then she won't be Rayla anymore. Because to literally kill Callum would be to simultaneously symbolically/emotionally kill herself.

Now of course, some of this is already differing wildly.

If Claudia is going to kill Sir Sparklepuff, it makes the most sense for it to have already come to pass in 6x01, whereas Callum and Rayla's plot line would only come later on in the season. Claudia will presumably succeed at her symbolic suicide, but that doesn't mean she's not still worth saving / unable to be saved in the future (perhaps by her family). Rayla will probably fail at her symbolic suicide and succeed at sparing herself through sparing/saving Callum.

However, it's an interesting symbolic thread and potential foil contrast, and I thought it was worth pointing out. I hope you think so too!

TLDR below:

Due to Claudia's parallels to Sir Sparklepuff, if she kills him it holds a layer of her symbolically killing herself. In contrast, Rayla's symbolic suicide would be in killing Callum, as that would destroy her own sense of identity/life. For Claudia, this means likely being saved later by her family, and for Rayla, this means likely sparing Callum and herself simultaneously, thereby saving and sparing both of them.

[emblemcest]

The thematic link between cannibalism and incest in The Coffin of Andy and Leyley

Something I've been thinking about is. The huge emphasis on cannibalism in the marketing of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley. And the way people talk about it: like, 'of course these siblings aren't normal, they literally ate their neighbour!'

And I think it has some very interesting parallels with the incest that happens later on.

Because. All things considered? The cannibalism in act 1 is sincerely one of the least fucked up things these characters do, morality-wise.

They didn't murder the guy. In fact, they had nothing whatsoever to do with his death: if they hadn't been there at all, it would've all turned out exactly the same way, and you can't even accuse them of inaction, because a) it all happened so quickly and unexpectedly, and b) it's not like calling for help would have done anything anyway. In material terms, they did no harm at all to the guy.

On the other hand, they were literally starving to death. Ashley sincerely wasn't sure they'd even last a few days more the way they were going. What they did to the guy wasn't for fun, or revenge, or even a lack of concern for him as a person, but survival. It was an emergency!! In a lot of ways, it could be seen as comparable to self-defence.

So is cannibalism so strongly associated with the game, and with the horror genre in general? The taboo.

Regardless of the circumstances, regardless of the level of harm done, cannibalism is a no-go. It's a line that must not ever be crossed. Even if we can understand and sympathise with the people involved - even in cases of literal life and death - there is a wrongness to it that we can't easily move past. In an increasingly secular world, it's one of the few really spiritual crimes that still resonates as much as ever.

And, yeah, sure, you can talk about the health risks of ingesting brain matter, or the practical issues with not making cannibalism a crime, but those aren't the reasons we shy away from it. It's instinctive; philosophical. Cannibalism is simply wrong.

Much in the same way we react to incest.

Again: this is not claiming that incest is always totally okay, just like the point of this post isn't to be all 'yay, cannibalism!' There are practical reasons to disallow it, and there are potential health issues here, too (albeit for the children rather than the subjects).

But that's not why we wince at incest. Even if everything was okay - a consensual relationship between two twins of the same sex where nobody else would ever see - it would still elicit strong reactions. Incest is simply unnatural - simply wrong.

The incest in TCOAAL isn't quite so straightforwardly defensible as the cannibalism. The relationship itself is unhealthy, and adding sex to the mix is very unlikely to make it less so, as well as the fact that sex is literally the exact place where 'consent issues' tend to get REALLY important.

But also... the relationship was already unhealthy. The two were already isolated and excessively dependant on one another, and most importantly, they had already enabled one another into cold-blooded murder. It's sorta... hard to get much worse than that.

By contrast, the incest vision itself? Seems entirely consensual. Pleasurable, even. The two are uncharacteristically happy, once Andrew gets over his moral anguish (or, rather, until he gets distracted away from it). And the 'Not Sane' route portrays them as closer and happier and kinder than any other.

It doesn't matter. Even if the results are entirely positive - like with getting food into the mouths of two starving people - it's still wrong. By its very nature. It's 'disgusting.'

I know I'm not the first person to comment on the willingness of some antis to whole-heartedly accept murder and cannibalism in fiction but then draw the line at incest. But I think this comparison of taboos illustrates a really big thematic link between the cannibalism and incest specifically, and in doing so, just one way that the incest really is important to the themes of the work, rather than just gratuitous shock shlock.

...in fact, if you wanted to really stretch the metaphor... You could ask: 'are things good or bad inherently, or due to the surrounding context?' Which, honestly, is a pretty good question about our titular two characters themselves. Are Andy and/or Leyley inherently bad people? Should we judge them based on the circumstances of their upbringing or the world in which they find themselves? Or does none of that matter, and they would have turned out this sort of way regardless?

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

now that I've had some time to think about Book Three's cover/description, here are some bullet-point thoughts

The art style has vastly improved from Book One. It feels like Tillie's finally comfortable with style, and the characters here don't have same face syndrome here. Also the color palette here is my favorite of the three covers. From everything that I've read from Tillie, the way she works with color is a strong point of her work... which again, makes me wish the entire comic was in color but nooooo...

It looks like Ricca has her own cane now, which makes sense given a bit point of her character through the series is her worsening vision like... even with her glasses, she's practically blind.

Clementine has a new hat. Y'know... because her iconic hat got left with AJ... y'all still remember AJ, right? The comics don't.

Dr. Barnwell the cat made it onto the cover.... you know I'm in too deep with these damn comics when I see some random person be like "Clementine's getting a new cat" and I say, out loud, "That's Dr. Barnwell, you dingus, he's been around since the end of Book One." AS IF ANYONE ELSE CARES!

I know too much about this series, y'all

In my defense, I'm a little snappy about stuff like that after Book Two came out and people were just making shit up about what happens, going as far as to fake screenshots, and tell people it's "just like fifty shades of grey" when uh NO? it's not? People were deliberately trying to deceive others over certain elements and it still makes me mad whenever I think about it.... ANYWAY

We also see Fen and Olivia featured here, too. Fen's one of the more interesting side characters we've gotten, and I'm glad she survived Book Two, and Olivia.... I notice the way she's drawn with the front of her body hidden. I know that's probably to not show spoilers for Book Two since that reveal's a big deal, but still.

"Clementine finally has it all–a safe place to live, a girlfriend, and even a cat…but nothing lasts forever. And when Clementine suffers a loss unlike anything she’s ever faced, a new mentor called The Gardener offers her a new family, and a new way of living… but at what cost?" This is the description we were given.

First of all, Clementine had it all at Ericson, and it didn't make her happy. In fact, it made her so miserable that she left... I kinda hope this book does something with that by giving her everything she wants [as in, the safe home, a romantic partner, friends, a cat, etc] and she's STILL unhappy...? And it ends with her leaving again? But something tells me it won't.

Clementine's going to suffer a loss "unlike anything she's ever faced"? Ehhhh, press X to doubt. I played the games, I lived through all of her losses. I don't think anything will ever top seeing her parents as walkers and then losing Lee right after.

I mentioned before that the obvious direction here would be for Olivia to lose her baby, or for Olivia to die after giving birth, but uh... Clementine's been through both of those things with Christa and Rebecca... but we have to keep in mind that we're so far removed from the games at this point that it's never going to bring those up, y'know?

Real talk though? I'm very intrigued by the idea of a new mentor character called The Gardener who is apparently offering her a new family and a new way of life... but at a cost. What cost? What new way of life? What new family? Are we joining a cult now?

Listen, we missed out on the opportunity for a cannibalism plot in Book One, and Miss Morro left a lot to be desired in Book Two, so like... go extra dark this time. C'mon, Tillie, do it.

Also, Amos is definitely coming back as a twist villain, I feel it in my bones. We didn't see a body at the end of Book One okay!

I'm mostly joking but also NOT JOKING AT ALL!

My offer still stands, if Amos comes back, the book is an automatic 5/5 stars, no questions asked.

Anyway, I'll keep y'all updated on this, and when it releases next year, I'll write my in-depth review... "I read it so you don't have to" and all that.

Just as a final reminder, and allow me to make it extra big so that everyone can see it:

Leave Tillie Walden alone. I don't care if you hate the comics or think they're an insult to the game or whatever else. You want to express that, then do it on your blog. Don't send it to Tillie. We have enough pricks harassing her as is, and you're the bigger asshole here if you think it's okay to send her shit like that, so don't.

Seriously, it's the last book and then Tillie's done with the series, and I doubt they're gonna sign her on to make more. The games still exist, you can still go play them, these comics aren't taking that away from you... and if you feel like they are, then don't engage with them, period. It's not hard.

I cover the comics in-depth for people who don't want to read them but are curious about what happens. They don't bother me in that "they ruined the games" way that they used to, so I can handle it. If you can't, then do yourself a favor and just don't. Just don't!

[ar3s-r4t-qu33n]

Johnny's Bluffing

CW for discussion of potential sexual assault, toxic/unhealthy relationships, stalking, obsession, and, of course, murder and cannibalism. Nothing like, too crazy I think? But especially this one section on sexual assault, it's brief but separated out so it's quite easy to skip if that makes folks uncomfortable.

Hi I am currently in a really bad insomnia cycle and as such haven't slept so I'm sure I'm gonna have missed something that immediately prove me wrong, but here we go:

I don't think that certain members of the Family know that Maria is alive, and especially Nancy. This theory sort of delves into a lot of different stuff, I wrote and rewrote this a fair bit and idk, this is what I ended up with. It's a lot of my personal interpretation of both the written text and the way lines are delivered, as well as my own analyses on characters and how I personally think the timeline of events went (Danny and Virginia dying before the gang even show up in Newt, Maria being the 'Definitive Final Girl' and surviving to the very end, but never getting to escape the Slaughters/Johnny. That isn't to say that she dies, but Sally is the first and only person to escape until Stretch if she is canon to this timeline now that Choptop is on his way) so idk, I hope you like what I've been thinking about I guess?

Nancy and Drayton both have several voice lines that refer to Maria being in the past tense. So does Johnny, but my theory here is that he is playing into this line of thought so they don’t realise that he is still keeping her.

I will source my way of hearing all of the voice lines at the end.

Starting with Nancy, she has several;

‘It didn’t have to be this way, you know? You just had to come looking for that floosy of yours, didn’t you?’

‘Your little friend had it coming. Looking at my Johnny that way- he’s a sweet boy!’

‘You ever hear the saying murder starts in the heart? … I think my Johnny liked that girl…’

The first two are obviously extremely defensive over Johnny and are meant to taunt the other Victims over Maria’s ‘death’. The last one, however, feels almost like a realisation. This line has confused me for a long time, because it sounds like two different once spliced together, but they are, in fact, connected. This is the only time that Nancy ever speaks about Maria in any other way than pure disgust and defensiveness. Another interesting thing about Nancy is that she does not hate her husbands. She murdered all three of them, none of them were able to give her a baby of her own, and yet she defends them from Sissy, she keeps them all in her basement man cave, and even when talking to Hands, she’s apologetic about Harold to him. She still holds a fondness for them, it seems, and I feel like maybe this is what makes her finally realise that Johnny actually, truly loves Maria. For Nancy, she loves people to death, and that type of love extends to Johnny, too. Sure, he’s still alive, and could easily kill her now, but she permanently scarred his face when he tried to leave her. I don’t believe that Nancy isn’t above murdering Johnny to keep him with her, and I think this admittance leads to her realising that Johnny actually did love Maria. Of course, she can’t say ‘love’, that’s a bit too far, but at the very least, she will acknowledge that he likes her, and these days, Johnny doesn’t seem to like anyone, not even her. It’s also interesting to note that she says this after losing sight of a victim she was chasing. She says herself that she hasn’t hunted like this in a while, it seems as if physically chasing people down to kill them is making her reminisce on her feelings about murder and love in a way.

But all of that to say, she believes Maria is dead. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, she’s dead now, and maybe she plans to talk to Johnny about it later, maybe not apologise, but try and make it easier on him now that she’s realised just how much she meant to him.

Then we’ve got Cookie.

‘Look, I’m sorry about your friend… but… I’m afraid you done landed square dab in the shithouse!’

‘We didn’t have much choice! Couldn’t let Johnny spring no lovechild around here. It ain’t personal! Now get back here!’

There is obviously a lot less here, the former being Cook or Drayton’s more humble, car salesman type approach to everything, apologising sincerely that their friend had to die… but now so do they, so how sorry can he be, really?

The second is far more interesting. I’m still sort of working out the kinks with what I think on all this, but it implies not only that the whole family knew about Johnny’s feelings for Maria, but that there was a worry about something more than just his feelings. A genuine attachment, the possibility for a child.

Now, one thing I wanna throw in real quick is that a lot of people think Johnny assaulted Maria once he kidnapped her. And I personally don’t think that that is true. And it’s more than just ‘noooo not my pookie he would never!’, I feel as though Johnny’s feelings for Maria are beyond sexual, or beyond purely sexual. I’m not gonna get super into it because I wanna make a whole post about just their relationship, but in short, Johnny knows he’s hot shit. He knows women love him and men do too, and he uses that all the time to lure people to their deaths. Maybe he fucks them first, then kills them, who knows. But this is a man who is used to being sexualised and uses it to his advantage, like a reverse femme fatale, almost. A lot of his lines are sexually charged and he speaks seductively low at times, even flirting on the odd occasion. However, Maria is in love with Danny and is a sweet girl in the seventies. There is no way she’s heading off to knock boots with the pretty boy at the bar no matter how charming, persistent, helpful… always somehow exactly where she needs him to be… is. She’s kind, she’s sweet, she brings out the best in people, we know this about her. And when there’s no sex, when it’s not about fucking them and killing them… Johnny has no choice but to fall completely head over heels for her. It’s no surprise that the day she’s heading out of town, maybe to go back to see her boyfriend, that is when her car breaks down. Johnny’s oil stained gloves, the fact that he’s designed to look like he helps at a gas station, his friendship with Uncle Hands, the fact he lives in a junk yard? This man knows mechanics. He knows cars. And he is definitely not above tampering with an already busted old car to ensure it stops before she can get away from him. It’s just his luck that she happens to break down by his family’s land. All this to say, I don’t think Johnny assaults Maria once he has her. Not only because that would be a lot, like, in general, for this game to go from goofy cannibals to sexual assault by one of the game’s most beloved characters to one of the game’s most beloved characters, but because I don’t think Johnny is the type. He’s pretty and charming enough that people want him, he doesn’t have to take it, he earns it. And he wants Maria to give it to him, for him to earn it because she wants him. He likely spends his time down there with her trying to get her to fall for him and forget about Danny. He wants her to want him. Or at least, this is my personal interpretation.

Maybe she does begin to fall or maybe Drayton’s complete lack of any and all sexual knowledge just makes him think they’re already going to pound town, but he was worried about a baby. That’s something I wanna explore in the future, why he’s so worried about Johnny and Maria having a baby, but moving on; again, Drayton is seemingly fully convinced that Maria is dead.

For Johnny I wanna take his lines one at a time, but it is important to note that I think some of these lines are referring to someone else and not Maria, but also some of these are in present tense, he either slips up or sometimes on purpose mentions things that could hint to her being alive to the Victims.

‘You wanna know how your friend died!? … I can show you!’

‘Your little friend put up a better fight than this… come on! Make it interesting, will you!?”

Pure just bluffing to get them angry and scared. It could also be referring to Danny but more on that a different time.

‘That’s what I get for taking it easy on them. Time for them to join that little friend of theirs…’

‘You’re gonna look real nice next to that friend of yours…’

Again, if my belief that Danny not only went to Nancy’s a lot earlier than the others is true and that he has been dead for a good few days before the gang shows up, then this is absolutely about him, not Maria.

‘You kinda remind me of your little friend’

To Ana about Maria, obviously, and comes across as quite flirtatious. He’s figured out that not only does Maria have a sister (if she never told him), but that Ana has no intentions of leaving there without her. I interpret this as Johnny taunting her, making her his new priority to get rid of. I said he loved Maria, I never said he loved her in a healthy way, alight? This is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, not the Notebook (never seen that movie)

‘You should have never came here looking for that girl!’

I don’t need to explain. Pure possessive Johnny in his raw form.

And finally, the infamous;

‘You know… I was actually kinda fond of that girl, I-I didn’t really wanna hurt her… but… family first, you know?’

Johnny is an agitator. Almost all of his lines are trying to fuck with the victims, playing with his food. Egging them on to hit him, teasing them about being too slow, the way he calls after them as he hunts them down, he wants to see them upset and charged, he wants a good fight, he wants to feel something. The main part of this line is just that, I think; he wants them to believe that even though he cared about Maria, he fucking killed her. He wants them to be angry, to fight him, to hurt him. The end is guilty. Incredibly guilty sounding, and I don’t think that’s out of a guilt for killing her, since… well, Maria is alive and kicking. But more a guilt about his family in general. ‘Family first, you know?’ he’s almost saying it so himself, as if that’s what he should think, what he should be doing. But he is actively betraying them and knows that once everything blows over, he’s going to keep on betraying them for every day he keeps Maria alive. And he also knows that even if he feels all of this guilt, he will do it anyway because he loves her, and he can’t let his family have her. She is the only person who is truly his, who represents what life could have given him. I have another analysis I made on TikTok that I’ll repost here soon, but it essentially goes like this; Johnny and Danny really aren’t too different. Scrappy orphans who are good with mechanics. Except Danny got to go to college, travel freely, meet the girl of his dreams, and Johnny is forced to be someone he doesn’t want to be. He isn’t not a killer, but he also could have not been a killer. Maria is everything he has not been allowed to have; naivety, kindness, softness. And now that he has her, and once everyone else is out of the way, he has no intentions of letting that go.

So he is pretending that she is dead. And for now, it is working. I have a feeling in the canon story of the game, the victims stumble upon her somewhere once they’ve already caused enough trouble for the family, and then all bets are off. Once they find out she’s still alive, it’s a new game for Johnny, a choice; does he kill her, make his mother proud and live the only life he knows because even if he leaves, he knows he can’t be any better? Or does he take her away and try, try to be a different man in the softness of her love?

Rush Week could be the result of either of those. Either he kills her, and becomes an even worse, even colder killer, now able to handle a situation like in the game completely on his own, or he takes her away to start a new life and just couldn’t stop the urges; the Bad Man needs to feed. He stays late after work or pretends he has a night shift and gets his fill on blood and chaos before stumbling home, washing it all off, and returning to Maria’s (definitely traumatised at this point from seeing her friends and sister murdered (don’t worry about Danny I’ve got thoughts on him shhh) in front of her and ‘rescued’ by Johnny) arms.

That was a lot... Please tell me what y'all think on this, again, a lot of my personal interpretation on a lot of things, but isn't that what art is for?

Sources for the voice lines:

Texas Chain Saw Massacre Game - Johnny All Voice Lines (youtube.com)

Texas Chain Saw Massacre Game - Black Nancy All Voice Lines - YouTube

Texas Chain Saw Massacre Game - Johnny All Voice Lines (youtube.com)

Promised I'd tag @bloodfeeder when I finished this so here ya go!! :)

[kuroshika]

the idea of hannibal continuing to cannibalize people after his younger sister is something i think about a lot. i like to think that it's out of honor - mischa was just a little girl. she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she was such a sweetheart. and she was just taken from him, in front of his eyes. just think about it.

he was eight years old. his parents had just been killed, and he and his younger sister abducted. he watched his captors murder and eat his little sister, then feed some of her remains to him.

so why would he keep doing it? wouldn't that be a disgrace to her memory?

i think his way of honoring her memory is by doing it willingly. by killing and eating those he finds rude or unworthy of the life they'd been given, he's avenging mischa's death. taking from the people who don't deserve it to avenge someone who had their whole life ahead of them.

that's why, i think, he's torn between wanting will alive and wanting to eat him.

mischa was one of the few people in hannibal's life who knew him inside and out. he let her see him, know him, and she was lost to him. he'd honored her body, in the least, by eating her.

when bedelia says "could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you, and feel nourishment at the sight of you?" i think that ties in here.

he's fighting with himself. he wants to honor will the same way he honored mischa - not because he doesn't deserve the life he has, but because hannibal thinks the world isn't worthy of having him. he hungers for will because he wants to honor him - he wants to honor his god. he feels that hunger whenever he sees him, that's the "daily stab of hunger". but "having nourishment at the sight of you" means that hannibal is sated by seeing that he's still alive, still fighting - the visage he never got for his little sister. he aches to honor will, to protect him, but has his hunger curbed by the knowledge that will is still alive.

and when he realizes how attached he is to will, after bedelia tells him he's unhealthily obsessed, that's why his response is "i have to eat him". because he won't survive the loss of will, and being so close to him is already a strain on his self control. he let will see him, know him, and now that obsession comes with a certain sense of fear - what if he fails to keep will safe? what if his involvement in his life leads to his death? that's why he's so desperate to alienate him at first - remove any threats that will may surround himself with so that hannibal can keep him safe. and not even that works. so then he moves on to murder - bedelia, tobias, abigail - anyone who poses a threat to keeping will alive and safe. still doesn't work. when that doesn't work, he opts to get him arrested - to forcibly make sure that no harm can befall him. no result.

so then he turns to getting himself locked up. in removing himself from will's life, he assuages the chances of damage being done, and lessens the possibility of losing him. that's why he says "i wanted you to know where i was, and what i was doing", because he wanted will to understand that this decision was for will's sake, not his own.

and it doesn't work, because will comes back for him.

"can't live with him, can't live without him". can't live with him because there's always the underlying urge to devour him, to carve a place inside of hannibal for him. can't live without him, because will's loss would be the tipping point for hannibal's restraint.

"i feel like i've dragged you into my world" - "i got here on my own" can also be a pretty solid quote for hannibal accepting that he's let all of this madness into his carefully crafted life all for will. he let himself grow close to will, and is content in reaping the consequences of his actions.

@lesbian-hannibal @craqueluring

[nerdlingmerchling]

So, I've watched Out of Darkness (2022) starring Mr Kit Young himself. 🎬 🎞

Full disclaimer, I hate horror movies, but I watched it anyway cause Kit (yes, it's a good reason). My verdict is that it's more of a thriller than a horror movie, and to my delight, it didn't rely heavily on jump scares.

It's rare to see movies set in the paleolithic era, and I think that's where the true originality of this movie lies. The costumes and props look overall pretty authentic, up to the stitching of the clothes, which I was happy about. It shows that there had been some anthropological research done beforehand.

The made-up Tola language was such an interesting, fascinating aspect to the movie, and all of the actors sounded exactly as if they had spoken it all their lives. They adopted such unique intonation that I even had a hard time recognizing Kit's voice at first. Acting was incredible, from everyone, and from start to finish.

Also, very glad to see an ethnically diverse group of prehistoric humans. Some recent studies tend to show that paleolithic groups were more complex in terms of origins than we might think.  So, props to the casting direction for that.

I also loved how this movie was much more than a slasher and had a true reflexion on what it is, and what it means to be human.  The movie was efficient in presenting the characters and their individual motivations. Each of the six main characters represented different angles of human nature : ego, ruthlessness, innocence, kindness, religious zeal, and determination/weakness. I thought it was such a great way to explore that theme.

It's also a beautifully-shot movie, which shows its Scottish Highlands setting in all its gloomy glory : making it both breathtaking and menacing. No green screen in sight, and you can feel the harshness of the elements piercing through the screen.

Overall, I had a good time, but I'm a sensitive creature, and I was still affected by the movie hours after I was done watching it. Much of it has to do with the character played by Kit.

Character analysis and SPOILERS under the cut :

Kit plays Geirr, a young hunter and the most sympathetic character overall. To no one's surprise, Kit plays him with a lot of nuance.

Geirr is a hunter and a warrior by necessity. He's a gentle, sensitive, artistic soul and the stark opposite to his older brother Adem, the leader of the group, who's proud, selfish, and prone to violent outbursts.

Geirr has a special bond with Beyah, a teenage girl the group picked up "en route". The others still treat her as a stray and an outsider. Geirr, though, accepts her and sees her as being part of their little tribe. He vows to protect and take care of her.

Very few people smile in that movie, but when someone does, it's usually Geirr, and he's smiling at Beyah.

You might think at first that their attachment is a brother-sister or friends type of bond, but something happens that make the viewer understand Geirr's feelings for her extend further than that. While the group is resting after a day of walking the treacherous terrain, Geirr realizes his friend's pants are stained in blood, and he looks alarmed. She's having her first periods ; she's a woman now, and that means leader Adem can get to have a claim on her as he pleases.

Well aware of that fact, Geirr is devastated, and you understand at once that he was hoping to make Beyah his own companion.

You also understand that he's not going to fight for her. He's going to suffer in silence, accept the situation and accept his brother's authority. Because that's the thing with Geirr ; he's not a fighter. And throughout the movie, Beyah is going to prove that she has a lot more fight in her than he does.

Geirr is someone who has principles, and he's going to follow those principles even when it leads him to suffering or even be at risk of dying. He refuses to kill someone, even out of mercy, or to resort to cannibalism, even when it's the sole way to survive.

By the end of the movie, he has given up, and it becomes clear he's not destined to make it. It makes his death even more devastating, because you're still hoping against hope that he's going to live.

I'm still mourning that sweet prehistoric cinnamon bun, and I blame Kit's acting (and his face) for my emotional turmoil.

[somestorythoughts]

Eldritch Echo - Part 7

I return. There are explanations here! The kind that answer the what and not the why, but explanations nonetheless. Someone also asks if they can eat the Chancellor, but I promise he doesn't actually want to eat him. That much corruption definitely tastes nasty. Also @mezmatch I'm not sure if I've been tagging correctly but hope this is visible.

In Coruscant, CMO Blood ignores the way the wall across from him peels away from the emerging face with stone eyes and needle-long fangs. He’s stitching a gash in the leg of one of his Corries and isn’t about to pause to look at a dramatic ARC.

“Sitrep?”

“I’ve finished with the Guard. The slicers developed something, but they were debating how to send it out last night. I don’t know if they’ve decided yet. And you?”

“I’ve got the files. Three copies with me, three with the medics you directed me to on Kamino. You sure we can’t-”

“I didn’t know you wanted to be a cannibal so badly.”

“I don’t, I’m just saying that if we ate him we’d be extra sure he wouldn’t survive.”

“A beheading is just as effective and less gross.” Blood replied, leaving the unconscious vod so he could wash his hands. “Give me one of those copies and then keep yourself busy for the next two hours. The meeting is in two and a half, and we need you to play your part in this plan.”

ARC Trooper Fives grins, eager and angry. “Don’t worry Blood. I’ll be there.”

…

In the Marauder, Wrecker approaches Echo, who’s been reading for the past hour. “We’re gonna talk about what we know about your thing. I thought you’d want to know, and since you’d probably listen in anyway I should just invite you?”

“Thanks Wrecker.” Echo replies. He’d been listening to their conversations as much to know if they wanted to kick him out as to see how their investigation was going. As a twin he’s used to looking strange from time to time, but there’s strange and there’s forcibly and painfully altered before being used to kill vod. He’s growing comfortable with his new limbs and his new team, but he hasn’t fully reached comfortable yet. And he thinks it’s mutual, maybe especially now that he’s been messing with them.

But hiding it isn’t a long-term solution, not on a ship this small. The Bad Batch says they like weird. If they’re honest about that, his tendency to occasionally grow claws and turn blue shouldn’t be a problem.

He catches Hunter’s eye when he follows Wrecker in and the Sergent shrugs. Crosshair gives Echo his usual scowl, which he uses for everything from inconvenient terrain to burned coffee, so that’s probably not too bad. “Any chance you’ll just give us an answer?”

“It’s payback.” Echo grins, needle-sharp for all of a second. “For those two times you forgot I hadn’t memorized your plans yet. And the smell of the ship. It’s also entertaining.”

“Your plans are the same kind of crazy don’t deny it.” Hunter sighs. “Can you at least agree not to lie if we ask?”

“I never lied. Not for these questions.” And it’s true. Crosshair may have gotten nowhere with his questions, but every answer Echo had given had been either blatantly ridiculous or true but vague. He’d gotten a lot of entertainment out of it this week.

“We should start by reviewing what we know.” Tech states. “Echo has some form of deviancy from the Prime that expresses itself in multiple ways. They mostly appear to be physical but has also included using his shadow to eavesdrop and talk to us when he was in another room.” He paused, then glanced up. “Incidentally, could you use that to scout ahead?”

Echo made a so-so gesture. “Depends on the terrain. I wouldn’t recommend it over someone scouting ahead in person, but it’s helped before. And I’m not separate from my shadow, I can’t pay attention to what’s in front of me and what’s in front of my shadow at the same time.”

“That is good to know.” Tech replied. “We have seen multiple examples of your shape changing in small ways, not enough to indicate your limits, though from your comment about your prosthetics I believe you either cannot alter them or are still learning how to. Is that correct?”

“Yeah.”

“Could you elaborate?”

Echo tilts his head back, frowning. He’s tried to put words to this before, he likes words, and he’s trying to remember what he’d thought then. “The changing is a bit like a reflex. You can stop it – we all did our best too while we were on Kamino – but it’s also partly automatic. My body’s still adjusting to the prosthetics so they don’t change as much on their own, and I’m still adjusting mentally, so it takes a little more effort to do something like this.”

He raised his right arm. The scomp end split apart into something like a flower, Torrent blue with red stripes.

“There are more of you then.” Hunter states.

Echo smiled, bittersweet. The sweet glowed under his irises, the bitter ached in his throat and bruised his skin as if it was trying to do more than metaphorically suffocate him. “It’s never a good idea to assume you’re entirely alone in the universe. The first pair were decommissioned within their first year. The Kaminoans like uniformity, and from what Ninety-Nine told me that first pair was way off the mark. He said it was as if all of us that came later got the message somehow, our differences were quieter as tubies. But we’ve never adhered to uniformity well.”

Echo, who found comfort in the kind of quiet minute detail-work that was essential but considered boring, who had been threatened a time too many with decommissioning, and who was often overshadowed by his louder twin, had been an exception to that norm. Not anymore.

“And who’s we?” Crosshair asked.

As fun as this game has been, he might as well wrap it up. “We’re twins Crosshair. Myself and Fives, Cobalt and Cerulean, you know that absurdly cheerful medic in the 212th? He’s another.”

“But what is a twin when we’re all clones?”

Echo shrugged. “We just are. You know how you know how to reassemble a blaster, effortlessly and thoughtlessly? It’s like that but without the endless drills. Or the way most batches pick oldest and youngest by vibes. Each twin in a set was decanted on the same day, and when we find each other, we know. Fives I, I don’t remember meeting him and if he says he does he’s lying but, we’ve always known. Someone suggested there was Force stuff involved and it’s as good an explanation as any, but I don’t think any of us knows the why of it.”

Tech and Crosshair shared a glance before Tech said, almost hesitantly, “I read the report of ARC trooper Fives’ death. But you always talk about him in the present.”

Echo’s next breath shudders. “I, I would know. He’s the other half of my soul and I would know if he was truly gone. There was this shiny in Torrent a bit before the Citadel called Dogma. He’d lost his twin a few months before being sent out and I think the only thing keeping him going was his remaining batcher and his extreme loyalty to the Republic. He told him that he felt his twin die from all the way across Tipoca City. So I’d know.”

The squad glances at each other uncertainly and anything they might have said interrupted by a beeping from the console. Tech hurried to the pilot’s seat and Hunter sighed. “Mission time boys.”

Echo shoved up from the seat. Time to get to work.

[void-occupation]

hi! I'm trying to get other peoples opinion on this-

what do you think alastors human life was like?

sorry it took me so long to answer this one, I've been busy lol

are we talking about what I think for canon, or the headcanon backstory that exists purely for angst? Because those are two veeery different answers lol. I'll just answer the canon opinion, and maybe do another part about my headcanon if anyone's interested

As far as I know, it's been confirmed that Alastor's mother was colored, and at least hinted that she practiced voodoo. I think that his father is also confirmed to be white, and I know we're all pretty sure by now that he was abusive. We know Alastor likely became a radio host, and was a serial killer (obviously lol) who hung around Mimzy frequently enough. For simplicity's sake, I'll say that Alastor was born in the year 1900, making him 33 when he died

Now, for the speculation. I feel like his parents only married when his mother got pregnant, which resulted in her being outcasted from the Vodun community. I believe she still would have taught her beliefs to Alastor, which probably angered his father, who was most likely Catholic based on the most popular religions in the area at the time. I don't know if it would be ore likely that Alastor's father killed his mother and Alastor killed him because of it, or if Alastor killed his father because of the abuse and lived with his mother until she died of illness. Either way, his father ends up out of the picture. For this, I'll say that his mother lived.

Something I don't usually see people take into account is that the US got officially involved in WW1 in 1917, and started drafting 18yo boys in 1918 - ironically enough when Alastor was 18. The law that prevents "the only surviving son" from being drafted wasn't even thought of until 1964, so Alastor wouldn't have been spared from the draft. I believe draft contracts were about 2 years long, so unless he was injured, Alastor would have spent about that much time in combat. He likely had PTSD from that, but they didn't know what that was at the time, so it would have gone untreated.

He gets home when he's 20ish, and eventually becomes a radio host, befriending Mimzy in the process, but he struggles when he comes home. Nothing seems to alleviate the awful feeling building in him since he came back, and then his mother dies. He snaps. Based on that pre-canon comic, Alastor typically targets predators/abusers ("I do hate those who can't show a little more respect towards those of fairer means"), which makes it pretty ironic (or purposeful) that his name literally means "Avenger".

He hears a woman screaming late at night on his way home, and sees a man cornering her in an alley. Maybe the screams remind him of his mother, or the things he saw overseas, or maybe he's just angry, but he picks something up and bludgeons the man to death. Later, he can't stop thinking about how good it felt to end such a miserable creature, so he does it again. And again. Until eventually, he's killed dozens of men just like his father, and he's reporting his own murders on a news broadcast for the police.

I like to think he didn't practice cannibalism until he got to hell. But if he did practice while alive, it probably would have been during the Great Depression. Times have gotten hard, and while he still has his job, money is tight, and it would be so much easier if he just took a cut or two from the man he just murdered.

However, he still has to dispose of the less edible bits (clothes, hair, bones, etc), and he does so in the bayou behind his house. One day though, there was a hunter who for some reason thought he was a deer. Barking Alerts Alastor of his presence, and he takes off, dogs close behind and baying loudly. Then a gunshot cracks through the air, and Alastor feels a split second pain in his head before collapsing to the ground. The bullet somehow didn't kill him, but it did paralyze him, so there's nothing Alastor can do to fight when the dogs eventually begin tearing into him. In the end, it was the blood loss that killed him as he was mauled, and it seemed like an eternity before he finally succumbed to that. (this is what breeds Alastor's severe dislike (read: fear) of dogs

this is pretty rough, but I figured I'd probably better just get it all out at once lol. Let me know what you think!!

[lesbianlotties]

idk if you've talked or written abt this before, but what's your take on jackie's potential for cannibalism? i feel like most of the fandom parrots the "laura lee and jackie had to die first bc they would never have done cannibalism" , which kinda tracks but also kinda feels simplistic (and boring). like i don't think any of the girls would've even considered it until they were in such a fucked up situation, so if you put her through the right circumstances i feel like jackie could've gotten there (and im sure laura lee would've, even easier than jackie)

like i think a lot about how easy it could've been for jackie&shauna's fates to have been reversed, and if it were shauna who froze and jackie who went two more months without food while trying to live with the grief of losing shauna by talking to her corpse, i could absolutely see jackie starting to eat her. biggest difference being jackie would definitely not end up sharing bc she'd be very possessive abt being the only one to get to consume shauna

THAT'S 👏 SIMPLISTIC 👏 AND 👏 BORING 👏

thank you so much for asking because that's seriously such a good question. i've thought and talked and written a lot about laura lee going down the cannibalism rabbit hole, and even making the most of it (for catholiscism reasons!) but we should all be talking more about the endless possibilities of jackie's cannibalism era <3

the thing is these are all just fun possibilities to think about! there's no right answer! sure, it makes sense that jackie (and laura lee) died before the cannibalism because as characters they represents things that would go against it. but aren't we playing with dolls here? can't we consider all the possibilities? even if they aren't so likely?? because isn't the thing about cannibalism for survival that all of them would do it if it came down to it? and asking what would be the extreme circumstance that would push them there?

for jackie the obvious answer is shauna, always, for all questions tbh. her downfall wasn't the rejection of cannibalism not even the rejection of the wilderness stuff, it was shauna. at least mostly. it was shauna's betrayal and the fight with shauna which took away her will to live. at least mostly! but what if instead shauna had continued to be jackie's reason or at least escouragement to stay alive

i'm not the first one to say that jackie would've gone all out as step father to that baby (if somehow idk it wasn't jeffs or they got over it). she would've done everything to secure shauna and the baby's survival, and yeah i think that includes cannibalism!!

and let's even be generous to jackie and say shauna wasn't her entire world (she was but if there's space for an extra 1%) she was also a very commited team captain! along with shauna, the group also kinda betrayed her, discarded her, move on and away from her. but!! what if that hadn't happened? what if by some miracle instead of losing everything, jackie had come through as team captain in the wilderness, commited to keeping them all alive no matter what, used the influence she thought she had or at least used to have back home? she would lead, organize, talk them through it, make sure that all of them participated to stay alive

and who knows! girly might have even come up with more uh civilized ways of choosing a meal i mean victim. jackie taylor might have revolutionized survival and started an ethical cannibalism business in the wilderness! let's all give her the benifit of the doubt and a little credit as team captain and let her thrive a little!

also yeah 100% agree with you on her being too possessive of shauna's corpse to share lmao do you think that girl would've let anyone get a bite of shauna shipma??? be real. she was violently jealous of every person that laid eyes on shauna

[historia-vitae-magistras]

This is a little different from your usual content. But you have so much niche information that just I love to hear about. Do you have any podcast recommendations?

WHOO okay so I'm doing my nonfiction podcast recs and leaving out my horror or audio dramas but without further ado:

It's been out of production for years, but Caustic Soda is probably my favourite of all time. It's a small Canadian production of tons and tons of episodes on everything from shark attacks to murder to warfare to bugs and anthropology. It's so fucking funny and pretty well-researched as time goes on. Honestly, I was so young listening to this that it formed part of the lens through which I view the world.

Stuff You Missed in History Class: Often corny, wee bit lame, occasionally hilarious, always solid; this one is probably the one that has taught me the most. It's been on the air forever now, and it's really fucking great. They have also used sources that I actually dug out and made public for the first time and I'm quite proud of that. Its the favourite sweater of podcasts.

Time to Eat the Dogs is about the history of science and exploration. I highly recommend it if you like any of those things. I really like the host's interview style; all the guests are academics and authors. It's very conversational and feels like having a lovely sit-down with good friends, but those friends have Ph. Ds.

Casting Lots: Two really, really funny Brits discuss survival cannibalism across time and space. This podcast informed me that a story i heard as a fireside tale was based on true events. It somehow manages to mention Canada in every other episode and then some. I love the first three seasons in particular. They have truly done some incredible work in the course of their series and pulled from some primary sources that surprised even me, an actual archivist. They're shockingly respectful for how funny they are and how disturbing the content is and really take into consideration things like culture, empire, sex and racism as they discuss cannibalism, and it's just. I love it so much, truly.

Big Old Boats: It's not technically a podcast, but I've never once in my life actually watched the video as he discusses various maritime disasters, and I don't think I've ever missed anything by doing so. This is an absolute must-listen if you enjoy maritime history, missing ships, ghost ships, or just anything weird related to a boat. Archival work I did is actually mentioned in a couple of episodes!

Not What You Thought You Knew: Another podcast I really love that was, unfortunately, a very short run but academics and actual historians debunking popular historical myths. I am very, very fond of the episodes on The Night Witches in particular.

The Midnight Library: Last but not least my favourite fucking podcast currently running. It's a nonfiction podcast framed as a fictional witch/librarian in her cursed library telling (mostly) true stories around a particular theme, human vice, or any number of stories. And the way it's framed is so fucking great. Like they're talking about real history, witchcraft and folklore in so many of these, but you get little glimpses of world-building that have honestly started to bleed into the way I write. Even the ads are for fake magical businesses like 'the League of Lady Grave Diggers, the Broom and Fang pub. The library assistant/bouncer is a werewolf. The Witch's on-again and off-again boyfriend is a spring-heel jack. It's just so fucking clever a way to frame a nonfiction podcast in a spooky atmosphere while being historical, terrifying and funny in turns.

Anywho, if you listen to any of them let me know! And sorry if that went overboard!

[devouringbodies]

Hi there! Love your blog, love your tag system, and was wondering if you could share a bit about #mylimacore and your version of Mischa? I'm so intrigued! (Sorry, of course, if this has already been asked and I simply missed the post. Oops) 🦌

I was so excited to get an ask like this you have no idea. Please if anyone has questions about my tags or actually bothers to look through them ever please tell me cause I could talk about them all day haha. So thank you! I'm sorry in advance for the incoming essay 😂.

cw: cannibalism(obvs), familial abuse and incest

So the vague concept of my AU Mischa has all practically been built off this post originally, some aesthetics and ideas I've brewed on since then, as well as an Amazing conversation I had with @mortuaryboyfriend

A few key things to keep in mind to justify my thought process:

i. How would Mischa, if she lived, go on to process her trauma that she shares with Hannibal?

ii. "No one who survives Hannibal remains morally pure" - thank you to Peter for this statement it has lived in my head rent free since 🖤

Mischa has no characterization, in the novel, nor the film Hannibal rising, she is a faceless, blonde little plot devise that drives Hannibal's motives, but she also, in every sense of the word, haunts Hannibal's entire narrative. So she is basically a blank slate as far as characterization goes, but that's where the fun can happen, as we only have Hannibal to compare to, and the theories on how the experience they share would impact them if they had each other to lean on.

Hannibal has said that he "forgave" Mischa her influence on him. What "influence"? Well, in the novel, Mischa is the only thing Hannibal ever loves, he knew he was different since he was young and she was the first thing to make him feel literally anything. Bedelia in the show references the association Hannibal has with love, comparing both Will and Mischa, how it's an influence and its connotation is it makes him feel betrayed by himself, as if these feelings are a burden. So I imagine Mischa and Hannibal growing up together, with Hannibal having this ever growing resentment, but simultaneous unconditional love for Mischa. On the flip side, I imagine Mischa, a child praised and adored and perceived perfect in every way, who would grow and eventually sense her brother's torment. I see them forming an extremely codependent relationship in the wake of their trauma, and Mischa, so desperate to keep her brother, would quite possibly forgive him all his trespasses, actions, and love him for his inner monster all the more, cause he's hers, he protected her.

It's in this vein that we grow her character from here. I see her ultimately as morally grey/teetering towards evil. I'm unsure if she would ever have Hannibal's appetite, but she would love and support him regardless, I see her as being bemused by his games, but viciously protective and vengeful over him. Hannibal loves to play his games with everyone, and she would go along of course, but I think she would have difficulty with restraint if anyone got too close, and would lash out and murder without hesitation if Hannibal was threatened. Hannibal often says she's "ruining his fun". But there's a degree of spoiledness she can't help, she's his doting little sister after all.

It's also in this vein of fierce protectiveness of each other combined with their trauma-born codependency that I truly think they would spiral into something incestuous eventually. They would never, ever let another person get close to the other, and they would fulfill all of each other's needs I think. They both would be capable of living without romance or sex for their entire lives I'm sure, specifically and especially Hannibal, but I can't see them having that moral boundary personally, so for them I imagine it would just be an inevitable step.

Now diving into some of my own personal headcanon's for Mischa.

I think she would share Hannibal's love for the arts, though she would grow bored of the historic gab about it Hannibal favors quickly. I think she'd be more physical. I see her as a dancer, particularly Ballet, or into high theater arts, Shakespeare and classical tragedies.

I see her as this almost dual pointed sword of a character. She is so perfectly revered as a child forever in canon-Hannibal's mind, so I love the idea of this juxtaposition of her as this pure, innocent beauty, who often in reality is sensuous, cruel and violent. Hence my swan/black swan motifs. She lives in this spectrum of perceived innocence, but has brambles and thorns bubbling up inside her.

I made this post and decided that swans was my own personal visual motif for her, as black swans are mentioned on the Lecter estate and brought up a couple times throughout the book Hannibal Rising. The way that white swans represent innocence and purity vs the temptation and depravity of the black swan. It seemed fitting.

Also.

When thinking about Mischa in-canon narratively, as I mentioned, she seemed to haunt Hannibal's story. So when I stumbled across the concept of "black swan theory" - a metaphor that means "something that isn't supposed to exist, an impossibility," when applying that to my AU, where Mischa, who's character is a ghost in every sense, but made real against the odds, changing both everything and nothing, it felt extraordinarily apt.

Speaking of, as far as "how she survives" to quote Hannibal, I'm vague on those details lmao. BUT I know it involves cannibalism because it has to. It always has to. Whether some miracle sickness or woe befalls the brutal men who hold them captive and the children must eat them, or they get dispatched some other way and Hannibal has to start cutting his fingers off for Mischa and him to gnaw on (he starts with that extra one of course 😂) I know that it still involves cannibalism in some way.

So that's basically it! Again she's still mostly kinda just this vague blob idea in my head that has very specific Vibes. But hopefully this explains it a bit better. So sorry that this is way more than you asked for, but I get carried away lol ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thank you for the wonderful ask though! Have a great day 🖤

Also here are a few mood pieces from my Mischa Pinterest board too, just for funsies. Cause this post isn't long enough already, obviously.

Also linking my other previous posts that mention her cause tumblr has apparently ate my Mischa lecter tag </3

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for Banishing My Son for Asking Too Many Questions?

I (He/She NB) am the parent of many, many children. As such, we've become one of the most powerful factions within the city. This is good since the harsh wilderness outside the city walls and the more violent factions within could easily bring harm to my younger children.

However, one of my older sons - we'll call him G - has rocked the boat, shall we say. Apparently, he found some charts and maps of mine. He asked me about them and I flew into a panic. I thought at the time that he had figured out my darkest secret.

I must admit this here, in order for you to get a clear picture of why I did what I did. I've told my children that I am their biological parent, the sole person to sire and birth them all. This was a lie. In reality, I kidnapped all of my children from families in the countryside, replacing them with piglets. I know this is wrong, but I've been desperate to start a family of my own for decades. And since I've never been able to find a partner, this was my last option. Regardless, I love all of my children with all my heart.

So when G started to dig a little too deep, I felt it necessary to take drastic measures. I excommunicated him from the family and sent him to live in the nearby woods. Though I know he'd be able to handle himself - he's always been resourceful - I couldn't be sure if he would be able to survive. The forest is filled with people who doggedly focus on one single task. Some could be relatively harmless, like wanting to walk in a single direction without stopping, while others can be dangerous like cannibalism or clawing the eyes out of any nearby creature. Of course, there was also the chance that he might join these people, which while that would be a sad fate would also make sure that G would never return to the sprawl.

To my surprise though, G managed to find his way back into the city after some time. I thought he returned to try and kill me, but - as I found out - he had no idea what happened and just wanted to know why he was banished. I couldn't just tell him the truth now nor could I simply welcome him back into the fold. I told G that his new family was with the forest and that he should return there.

It hurt to do all this, but I have the family I've built up to think about. With four new babies and dozens of other children of varying ages, if word got out of my secret then it will all fall apart. The only people who my children could possibly turn to would likely use and abuse them. If losing G was the cost I'd have to pay to keep my family safe, then so be it.

AITA?

[childotkw]

Ahhh! I'm absolutely in love with your Lucemond fic snippets. The idea of Lucerys bonding with the Cannibal over their shared consumption of dragon flesh is just so *chef's kiss*. Also that line about Lucerys thinking about the way Arrax was still looking out for him even in death. My poor heart. I've seen a few people mention Lucerys surviving and bonding with him, but no one talked about how such a thing could come to pass when the dragon has a history of killing any who try to fly him.

A part of me can't help but think about the utterly dark and unhinged potential of their bond. Perhaps there is no real love and gentle affection between them, not like Lucerys' bond with Arrax, but they have a shared experience and an understanding of doing whatever it takes to survive. The Cannibal is always hungry for the flesh of his kin, and he can sense that same sort of hunger in his newly bonded. It resonates between them. It makes the ancient beast want to nuture that hunger, ensure that his feral little rider survives and grows stronger. The old dragon feeds Lucerys' need for revenge, and the human helps feed the beast's rage and cravings for battle and any spoils that he can claim. It creates a really beautiful and terrifying sort of symmetry.

And now for an utterly depraved idea...

Imagine the Cannibal swooping in and fighting an enemy dragon while Lucerys is involved in some skirmish on the ground and ripping off a chunk of flesh. The Blacks win the fight and the dragon lands and presents the lump to its rider like an offering.

Lucerys is quiet as he watches the great dragon lower its massive head and nudge the meat towards him. He can hear the whispers of onlookers calling his bonded a monster and how they should all fear for their lives. Through their bond he can feel Cannibal's quiet encouragement. Here. The flesh of your enemy. Eat. Be strong. With Cannibal's thoughts echoing in his head head, he opens his mouth and commands, "Dracarys."

The dragon's flames errupt forth, scorching the meat in a controlled burst of emerald fire. The gathered crowd watches on in shock and horror as the Prince draws out a knife and slices away a strip of seared meat. The Cannibal throws back his head with a proud roar as the boy accepts and his teeth sink into his gift.

(Tell me Aemond wouldn't go absolutely unhinged and feral over finding out Lucerys ended up eating Arrax in order to survive and may have just eaten a piece of one of the Green's dragons. It'd probably be worse if it was Vhagar that was injured too. Haha.)

I'm frothing at the mouth with this - it's like you're in my head.

When I thought up the whole symbolic cannibalism of Lucerys eating bits of Arrax to survive, I was so giddy. It happens rarely, but some of the things my brain comes up with honestly blow me away. I just immediately sat down and went yes YES this is what I need.

Poor boy is going to Go Through Some Things under my tender care. Just a dash more trauma and survivor guilt to make him extra spicy.

Lucerys will be walking a very fine line for most of this - and god am I excited to dive into his bond with Cannibal.

The unspoken understanding between them, that soul-deep connection, distorted reflections of each other…it'll be so good.

Lucerys' gradual shifts in personality, guided by Cannibal's own - it's like being caught in the tail of a comet. Cannibal is old, he has been around since the dawn of the Targaryen dynasty, and Lucerys is so young, too young to be able to keep himself grounded in the face of such a force of nature. Cannibal's hunger, that insatiable bloodlust - it'll start to bleed through, and Lucerys will be made into something new.

Especially in the beginning, when their bond is so fresh, Lucerys will feel the need to reinforce their connection. But once they've settled into their new dynamic, that will be when it becomes…routine for him. Normal. The disgust and shame mostly doused by the heady rush of power that comes from being a predator.

Once the war begins in earnest, and they are too valuable to leave wallowing on Dragonstone, Lucerys takes to eating his meals with Cannibal. He doesn't always partake in whatever prey Cannibal hauls in - sometimes it's enough for him to simply mime that act; but more often than not he'll return to camp with animal blood staining his mouth and hands.

The men are unnerved, Targaryens have always been…queer to outsiders, but who are they to question a dragon? Who are they to question Lucerys Velaryon, the rider of one of the largest dragons alive, and who is said to be unkillable?

No. They merely avert their eyes from the boy when he returns from visiting his beast, keeping their thoughts to themselves and praying that the day never comes when they are seen as prey.

(And as for Aemond? Well, when he hears the rumours surrounding Lucerys, when he hears how he drenches his pale skin in the blood of his kills, when he hears the way people speak of the boy with hushed fear instead of scorn…he can't help but laugh.

Because Lucerys had always been a violent, hungry little creature.

It's just now that everyone else sees the truth.)