#is it coded to rain when you visit his grave? because all except one time it has rained

[arthursfuckinghat]

"I don't talk about him much.. but I think about him"

[stones-x-bones]

All You Left Behind || Solo

CONTENT: Head trauma (coma), Domestic abuse mentions, Parental Death mention

Bex runs some errands..

Georgie was still in a coma. She had brain activity, and sometimes she even mumbled in her sleep, in her unconscious state, but there was little sign of her waking soon. The doctors said they didn’t even know if there was a sign that could signal that. Comas were complicated. Magic ones even more so, Bex supposed.

Bex had laid the bouquet she’d bought down on the table at the end of the bed, but she hadn’t been able to stay long. She’d left with a promise that she’d fix her, she would. She just needed to...figure out how. But she needed to leave before anyone else showed up, because she knew she wouldn’t be able to look them in the eyes and pretend like she hadn’t done that to Georgie. It had been written off as a freak earthquake, but Bex was the earthquake. Her magic had done this to Georgie, and she’d fix it. She would, she would.

The second bouquet was being carried up a hill in a cemetery. She pulled the hood of her jacket up to conceal her face-- being caught here would be worse than being caught at Georgie’s bedside. August snow crunched under boots as Bex crested the hill and made it up to the plot of land that had been reserved almost as long as her own family’s plot of land in Harmony Hill.

Frank Goldman’s grave still looked fresh somehow. She half expected him to burst from the ground and reach to pull her in with him. She’d let him. She’d deserve it. 

Frank still lived in her nightmares, in the shadow of her mother, and in the whispers of trees that made dark forests. 

She saw his face, sometimes, in a crowd. A passing glance over her shoulder, or out of the corner of her eye. At the edge of the trees, where town gave way to forest and people gave way to creatures. 

Her heart stuttered every time. Her heart stuttered so much these days. Sometimes it hurt and ached in a painful way, as if it could not pump enough blood through itself to keep the tide of exhaustion away. On those days, Bex stayed in the house, but never in her bed, all day. She pretended to do chores, instead, or to preoccupy herself with some hobby or another. Making bone art with Morgan, or drawing lazy edges of maps on canvas in her room. Nothing ever saw the light of day, but the bones hung on shed walls and the maps stayed rolled up in drawers next to her desk. 

Frank Goldman’s grave came back into view as her thoughts came back to her and Bexley looked at it with shame. Carefully, she set the bouquet in front of it and watched the small breeze lift ready to wilt petals from the stems. “I’m sorry.”

Footsteps behind her dragged her gaze away from the stone, only to meet two eyes she thought had disappeared with Frank’s that fateful day. 

“You.” 

It was the same voice Bex had heard as she watched red pool over her hands in an attempt to quell the blood. It had not worked. She had sworn the boy had died right under her palms.

But here he was, glaring at her, eyes sunken, skin pale. He shook, but not with anger, with an ache. An uncontrollable tremor that Bex had once experienced, after she’d used up all her magic to destroy the warden who had hurt Mina. She recognized the magic, she could feel it drifting off of him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” 

With a startle, Bex realized she hadn’t said anything yet. “I-- I just wanted to--”

The broken warden’s eyes drifted to the flowers placed on his friend’s grave. “You’ve gotta be shitting me. How dare you! This is your fault!” The bouquet he had was thrown to the ground as hands swung up and clamped down around Bex’s neck. He shook her and she did not fight. His grip choked her, but it was weak, this was all he could manage. She deserved this. “I should’ve killed you when I had the chance. Then he wouldn’t be-- then he--” Tears in his eyes. He had loved Frank, Bex could recognize the look in his eyes. It was the same way she looked at Mina when she’d seen her bleeding out on a forest floor. 

Bex felt her own cheeks burn, hot tears streaking down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she managed to choke out, “I never wanted-- I didn’t want this.” 

The other warden’s arms were growing weary, Bex could tell, but he kept his pressure on. He tried to step forward but stumbled, concentration all on Bex, and the two tumbled to the grass next to Frank’s grave. Bex put her arms up to catch the warden atop her as his grip finally released from her neck, no worse for wear, but ready to freckle with bruising later, when she would look in the mirror and wonder why she hadn’t fought back. 

A limp fist came down on her chest. “Fuck you!” The warden boy shouted. He was crying and angry and upset. He was grieving. Bex would let him. “Fuck you! I hate you!” And it went on and on. The same few lines, the same limp fists pounding at her chest, her face, her arms. More bruises, for later. They’d go away, bruises always went away. Until then, she’d tell Mina she fell while walking in the woods. She didn’t know how to explain the ring around her neck yet, and she wouldn’t find one before going home. 

When the warden grew weary, she sat with him, even as he protested. She learned his name was Lucas, and that he’d only moved to White Crest a year ago. She learned that over that time, Frank had become his best friend. And she learned that over time, Lucas had loved him like a brother. They went on hunts together, they compared techniques, they told each other the things they couldn’t tell their hunter parents-- Frank had tried his best to be there for him, until Bex came into the picture. 

When she left, Bex told him she hoped things got better, that she was glad he wasn’t dead. He had just scowled and told her to never come back here, told her that he would finish the job next time (code be damned, it wasn’t like he was a hunter anymore, wasn’t like he could ever be one again, not really) if she did. He would be stronger, then. He would be healed, then. 

The next stop didn’t require a bouquet of flowers, but a map. Bex traced the line of the river, remembering well all that it had tried to take from her. Daylight trickled through the trees, warm sunbeams trying to stave off the cold of the mysterious weather phenomena. Bex had never really minded the snow, but she missed the warmth of summer. She wanted to feel the moonlight in her veins again. 

She walked past the spot where their boat had capsized, but there wasn’t a single trace of it left. It was as if it had never happened, and Bex would have believed it hadn’t had her mind not tried to constantly remind her of those days. Sometimes she woke up and in the dark of her room, it wasn’t Mina sleeping beside her, but her bloodied corpse. She’d always rub the illusion out of her eyes in haste, but never soon enough to stop her heart from pounding. Bex found herself checking Mina’s pulse too often, in the dark of her room at night, when the other girl lay asleep next to her. It was always steady.

Finally, the lake came into view, and Bex was thrown back to the moment where the sky had roiled with thunder and lightning, and she’d desperately gripped Mina in her arms, wading into the water as fast as she could. Holding her under, and for a moment-- just a single moment-- feeling peaceful as their eyes met. Bex had wanted to crash into the water with her, where it was silent and nothing was heavy.

She walked around the edge towards the dock, where the boathouse sat, still weary with old age, but refusing to give in. She didn’t stop in it this time, just shouldered her bag as she made it up to the front porch. The door was still open. She stepped inside and found the place untouched except by nature. Preserved. It was a moment of the past long gone but still haunting the present. Old bandages on the table, a pot by the cinders of a long put out fire, pink stains of dirty bath water-- deep red stains on the cotton sheets. She knew Mina thought about it a lot, too. The memories that stained the cabin floor, and the tub, and the raggedy couch were not good ones. They tore at Bex’s chest like the claws of a wolf and made it ache and she let herself ache. She hadn’t been able to for so long. But she could now. She could now.

She resolved to come back later. She needed more supplies. For all its painful memories, Bex did not hate the cabin. In fact, she owed it her life, and more importantly, Mina’s. This place had not been a cage, trapping them inside-- it had been a haven, in a terrible storm that consisted of rain and thunder and a boy who had lost his way.

She hurried back to town, marking the trail to remember easier next time. She nearly missed the ferry, pushing through the turnstile as she waved her ticket at the guard. He was more than happy to help a gracious young woman like herself, and Bex put on a tight-lipped smile as she sidled past and onto the ferry. She supposed even in death, her name meant something. 

The third bouquet was set at the foot of the manor stairs. She didn’t dare go inside, there was still police tape up around the front doors, anyway. Instead, she looked up at the ornate doors that had once been her prison bars, and the columns of the old building, the arching entryway, and the inlaid windows, carefully carved and crafted out of the finest brick and marble. She wondered if it would burn. 

There was nothing left to say to the building-- it was just as dead as her mother.

While she waited for the ferry to come back, Bex stared over the edge of the banister into the lapping waves. She’d visited three places that day that had been left scarred and ruined by her magic. No-- by her choices. If people caused pain, then her magic was a gun. That was the saying, right? Guns don’t kill people, people do. She pulled the trigger, each time. Frank may have died by Mina’s hand, but the inevitability of it was only set in motion because of her. She dropped a rock into the water and watched the waves swallow it, the ripples it tried to cause, as if the rock had never existed. She wondered if it might be a metaphor of the people she’d hurt.

But people weren’t rocks and the world wasn’t an ocean. Georgie had family and friends, always sitting by her side, reading her stories and telling her about their days and waiting for her to wake up. And Frank had had friends, and family, and even if they were used to burying their children, Bex knew his mother had wept. And even Odell’s absence was felt, in the hollow of Bex’s chest, and in the empty office that she’d walked into one fateful night and finally, finally found the key to her freedom. 

The ferry horn whistled and Bex stood from her spot, rubbing at the soreness on her neck. She sat in a corner by herself and watched the island that she’d grown up on shrink in the distance. Her entire life had been about pain and suffering, but now she had a chance at something new. She’d caused so much pain, just to pull herself out of the hole she’d been buried in. She didn’t want to do that anymore. 

Her magic had hurt too many people. The first step to getting through something was to admit the problem existed. Her magic wasn’t the problem, though. No, it was her lack of control. Her problem had always been a lack of control, and now she had a freedom she’d seldom dreamt about. Sometimes it felt almost wrong. Sometimes it felt overwhelming. But, mostly, it felt relieving. She had room to figure herself out now, to stretch her feet, and her arms, and stop folding herself into a tiny box. She could exist. 

She wondered on her place in this world. She didn’t have an answer, but as she continued to watch the island grow into a speck on the horizon, she wondered if, maybe, that didn’t matter. Maybe she didn’t need an answer yet. Maybe that’s what life was, like a dig-- searching for an answer and finding more questions along the way. 

All Bexley knew was that she wasn’t going to let her magic hurt anyone anymore. All she wanted to do was help, and to protect those she loved, and she knew if she could just control her magic, she could. She could. And so it was time she took control of it. 

It was time to put the pot back together. 

[metawitches]

After the Harry Potter costume party of getting to know Martha/Eva’s world in S3EP1, in episode 2 it’s finally time to visit Adam’s post-apocalypse world, which is a form of the world without Winden that Hannah and Ulrich have dreamed of for decades. Ironically, Hannah and Ulrich both flaked out on the apocalypse and have retired separately in the Winden of previous decades. Katharina followed Ulrich.

Peter and Elizabeth serve as our point of view characters for the aftermath of the shockwave as they search for Charlotte and Franziska. Charlotte has jumped forward 33 years and is now in the barren future with Adult Elizabeth. The version of Young Alt Martha who transported Jonas to her world, then left him behind, is with Stranger, Bartosz, Franziska and Magnus in 1888.

We spend much of this episode in 1987, where things have changed in the last 3 months.

Note: I’m going to continue calling Adam/Jonas’ world the Prime world and Eva/Martha’s world the Alt world, because that’s the easiest way for me to keep track of them in my head. I’ll label the characters the same way. It gets too cumbersome to say Adam’s world Jonas and too confusing to use a code when the character movements get complicated, though eventually I will have to differentiate the Young Alt Marthas with 1 & 2.

Recap

The episode begins with the first sex dream of the season. The Young Alt Martha who’s in 1888 dreams about having sex with Young Jonas in her bedroom, in her world. Soon Jonas disappears and her hands are coated in blood and grime, while holding the St Christopher medal that they pass between them as the symbol of their connection. She tries to stop Jonas’ bleeding the way Jonas tried to stop Prime Martha’s; she tries to wash the blood from her hands the way Prime Claudia did after Egon died; and she stands at the mouth of the cave in front of police tape the way… Well, that’s a universal experience on Dark at this point.

Then Martha startles awake in 1888. She’s in the guest bedroom at the Tannhaus clock factory B&B, or the boarding house that will become Erna’s in 32 years- where the travelers sleep is never made completely clear. Stranger sits and stares at her the way Adam will watch Jonas sleep someday, only Stranger manages to be creepier about it, blowing all of my S2 arguments that he could never grow up to be such a mean old man.

The personality change that goes along with a cycle change anyway and another failure to save his Martha have taken their toll on his fragile sanity. He was always a stalker, but the look in his eye now is no longer calm or benign. It’s malevolent, even though he doesn’t know this woman. It’s enough that she’s the wrong Martha.

He’s holding the letter from “Martha” that Young Noah gave him in Hannah’s kitchen in S2E8, which told him to save Bartosz, Magnus and Franziska with the device. He followed those instructions and left the kitchen, leaving Prime Martha to her fate. He’s probably figured out that this is likely a version of the woman who wrote that letter.

Stranger looks like he has a moment of hope that she’ll recognize him when she wakes up. When she doesn’t, he coldly tells her to get dressed, then leaves the room. He’s left her a pile of period appropriate clothes on a chair.

Despite what I said earlier about the world without Winden, Winden is always Winden, and it always rains there, every month except June, so it’s pouring right now.

Stranger hasn’t warned the others, so Magnus and Bartosz have the fun of thinking Martha survived, then learning it’s not her. Franziska apparently didn’t care about Martha all that much.

Alt Martha: “He’s right. I’m not Martha. Not your Martha. I promised I would make everything right again, so none of this would happen. So that you all don’t die in my world and I don’t die in yours. So that Ulrich… Dad… Mikkel… so you all come back. So all this can really end at last.”

Did she just imply that the other 4 people in that room die in her world? Which would mean Prime Young Jonas does, because her world doesn’t have its own Jonas. Hmmm.

A loud alarm goes off in the Prime world version of Jonas’ bedroom. Another joke/warning that carries between scenes. The alarm is in the form of Mikkel’s clock/radio playing the song “You Spin Me Right Round”, which played in the bunker when Erik Obendorf was held there back in S1. It’s also a little foreshadowing for what we’ll hear on the radio in Claudia’s upcoming scene.

I will never stop admiring this show’s ability to layer and multitask.

It’s September 22nd, 1987. Most of the episode takes place on September 22nd in one year or another. Something big must happen then or be close to happening, but I don’t think we know what yet.

[I’m still writing Snowpiercer recaps while writing Dark, so my head is in 2 very different apocalyptic, symbolic dystopias right now. Give me another week or so, then Snowpiercer will be done for the season and I can focus on this more closely. But also, ugh, 3 seasons of constantly rewritten details, help. As always, I reserve the right to edit my work for a while after publication so I can add what I forgot or figured out a little too late. Also, check out Snowpiercer, it’s a good show!]

Katharina wakes up in Mikkel’s bed. She was in the passage when the apocalypse hit at the end of S2. It’s 3 months later and she’s become Stranger Katharina, sleeping in her son’s bed in his abandoned house.

Did the adult version of Mikkel with the black goo/cesium 137 appear to her in the passage, the way he appeared to Stranger Jonas at the end of S1? And if so, did that affect her sanity even more than all of these other events would have? She saw Mikkel in the guilt/love montage, so we know he’s her hallucination/ghost visitation of choice.

Katharina gets dressed and goes downstairs. Sadly, she doesn’t check the milk like Jonas and Martha always do. She does listen to a phone message for Ines saying that the phone bill is 3 months overdue, which means that Mikkel and Ines must have left the house not long after Old Ulrich tried to rescue/kidnap him in June.

Katherina has stacks of “Missing” flyers on the table with Mikkel’s photo on them. She’s searching for Mikkel here as her own child, despite the fact that legally he’s Ines child now. The flyer says Mikkel has been missing for 3 months. Katharina leaves through the French doors, where she’s broken a hole in one of the windows.

Jana and Tronte are holding the funeral and burial for Mads’ empty coffin today. Hermann Albers (Katharina’s absent father) comforts Jana that at least having the coffin and grave will give them some closure, even with an empty grave. And she and Tronte have each other. Jana looks at Tronte across the room and raises her glass to him sardonically.

Jana: “At least we have each other. Now we can get our closure together, looking at a coffin that’s empty. Tell everyone where you were when Mads vanished. F–king your girlfriend. When my son disappeared, he was screwing Claudia Tiedemann. If only you’d devoted as much energy to finding your own son as you’re wasting on finding your mistress. Then maybe Mads wouldn’t have gone.”

In the previous cycles, Jana lied to the police and gave Tronte an alibi other than Claudia. Ulrich never knew his father was with Claudia until he went through the police records in 2019 and realized his mother had lied to the police, so I doubt this conversation became common knowledge.

The conversation and the fact that the gossip didn’t spread are both shocking in a small town like Winden. Either this is the first time this conversation has happened or Tronte’s long standing affair with Claudia is such common knowledge that no one cares anymore.

Still, this is Jana’s finest moment as a character and a huge change from previous cycles- she started out in S1 as a depressed recluse, then was at least seen at a party, having fun, in Cycle 2. Now she’s able to stand up for herself and fight for what’s rightfully hers. This is the way it’s always been, but also due to the small changes Claudia and Jonas make each cycle, if we are to believe their interpretation of the eternal recurrence and its loopholes.

Tronte’s devotion to Claudia never really changes, because why would Claudia change one of her greatest assets?

I thought what Jana said was quite clear, but Tronte says that he doesn’t understand what she’s saying, which will become one of the catchphrases of the season.

Every season of Dark is about secrets, lies and confusion. S1 focused more on the confusion between what was real and what wasn’t. S2 was about keeping secrets while clearing up some of the confusion. In S3, secrets will be revealed and questions will be answered, but at the same time, the characters lie, lie, lie. To each other, to themselves, to the audience. Question everything that everyone says.

When someone does finally tell the truth, the person on the receiving end frequently says, “What are you saying?” They hear the truth so infrequently that they can’t process it. Or it doesn’t fit their worldview, so it bounces off their ears. Or, as with Tronte in this scene, it’s an inconvenient truth, so they’d prefer it remained unspoken. They’d like anyone within hearing range to believe it’s the truthteller who’s lying or delusional.

Jana’s not backing down this time. She dumps her purse on the floor. There are several newspaper articles with headlines about Claudia disappearing within a week of her father’s death, questioning if the two are connected. Jana implies that Claudia could have had something to do with Mads’ disappearance as well. Tronte walks out of the house without another word.

Finally, we really are going to post shockwave Winden, September 22, 2020. Of course it’s pouring rain. A figure in a mud gray raincoat removes a makeshift door from the front of the police station (most of the glass in town was broken by the shockwave). It’s Adult Claudia. She has the place encased in plastic and boards, locking it up pretty tight, which is a good thing, because she’s leaving her dying daughter in there alone most of the time.

I doubt Regina could get out easily if she needed to, but Regina is in such bad shape that she can’t even sit up, so it’s not really an issue. Claudia has her on a makeshift bed, with a heatlamp pointed at her and a radio playing, like she’s a pet lizard. Or a science project.

The radio is playing a report about what’s known of the cause of the June 27 global natural disasters.

Radio Announcer: “The world’s scientists are still looking for an explanation for the events of June 27, 2020. The epicenter/origin of the global catastrophe is still thought to be the small town of Winden. A French research team believes it is possible that our world stood still for a fraction of a nanosecond on June 27. Tidal forces may have diverged as a result. This would explain the global tidal waves, weather phenomena, and disturbances of electrical systems, which in turn could explain the countless number of airplane crashes and the simultaneous loss of power supply to nuclear power plants worldwide. There is currently no sign of the situation stabilizing…”

Claudia turns off the radio. As a physicist, she helped create this world and she already understands what’s going on. She has work to do to achieve her next goal, but the apocalypse was no accident, at least to her older self, who was quite clear that everything had to happen the way it always has. And we’ve known since S1E10 that this apocalypse has happened before. This is where it gets a little tricky to figure out who told which version what and when. This is, at the very least, the 3rd or 4th cycle with an apocalypse, since both Young and Stanger Jonas have seen it before.

But good on the French researchers for finally figuring something out! I bet they get to see the God particle before Elizabeth executes them this cycle, too!

Claudia pulls out a tattered box of Tamoxifen, Regina’s breast cancer medication, and goes to her daughter. Regina is lying very still and breathing shallowly, as if she’s in pain. She’s bathed in red/orange light from the heat lamp. Claudia asks how she is. Regina says, “Mama?” Claudia leaves the medicine pack next to Regina and turns to walk away. When Regina realizes she’s leaving, Claudia says she’ll be back at sunset.

Well that was cold. Regina looks like she’s barely alive and Claudia is leaving her alone in the cold, dark police station where she also left Aleksander, Regina’s beloved husband,  to die in the shockwave. Do they even know if Bartosz is alive or dead, since Claudia couldn’t be bothered to save her grandson?

Adult Claudia is just the worst. She can’t find anyone to help with Regina, like a clinic or field hospital? What was the point of rescuing her from the quick death of the apocalypse for this long, slow torture? Regina is living through many people’s worst nightmare about how they’ll die. Claudia has made her a homeless person, slowly dying alone, in pain and in desperate poverty. The only comfort she has is the heat lamp, which is a fire hazard. The medication is prolonging her torture at this point.

Claudia is keeping Regina alive for her own comfort, because she can’t bear the idea of losing her daughter, but she still wants nothing to do with the mundane realities of a relationship with another human being. It’s hard to understand why she’s bothering, when she treated Egon and Tronte the same way.

She’s always, since she was a child, cared more about science and math, yet still had a need to keep a person or two on the string. But there must be other people helping her with the God particle at this point.

Young Elizabeth and Peter Doppler are staying in Benni’s trailer on the edge of town. It’s metal, so maybe its roof survived better than regular houses and the rest is easier to board up than their house. When they leave the trailer, Peter turns on a geiger counter to see if the rain is too radioactive to go out in. The levels are safe enough, so they walk to the military encampment near the power plant that was still in place when Jonas traveled there in S1/2.

The guard tells them that the area will be closed off in 5 days. They’re evacuating the zone and sealing off the restricted portions (which includes the power plant).

Peter, becoming agitated: “What are you saying?”

Guard: “We’re walling it in.”

He lets Peter and Elizabeth through, but asks why Peter would do this to his daughter. Young Noah lurks behind a truck and watches his future wife.

Stalking future, former and alternative loved ones is such a habit on this show.

The wall they’re talking about building is the one which surrounded the power plant in the future in S2. Jonas, Silja and Elizabeth had a spot where they could sneak under it to get to the God Particle in the power plant.

Back in 1888, Alt Martha and Stranger Jonas have explained to Magnus, Franziska and Bartosz that she’s from a parallel world which ends in an apocalypse, just like the Prime world. Magnus can’t accept that there could be another world with a different history.

Stranger asks Martha how she found him. She says that Jonas told her where Stranger was when Jonas traveled from the Prime world to the Alt world. Franziska brilliantly points out that Martha said there isn’t a Jonas native to the Alt world. Stranger is at least smart enough to figure out that a version of himself could have given Alt Martha the information, but even he gets stuck on the fact that he doesn’t remember traveling to her world or meeting her before.

He accuses her of lying, then asks if she wrote the letter Young Noah gave him, what she used to travel between worlds and if Adam sent her. He manhandles her while he’s trying to get answers out of her.

You’d think backwards and sideways time travel wasn’t possible in this universe. She’s standing right in front of them, having just come from another world. That means that a future Jonas or a Jonas from a past cycle could have traveled to her world. We saw the Unknown trio take the instructions for the world hopping sphere from Adam’s lair, so Adam had that capability before 1987, even though we didn’t see him use it. Or did we? He might have used a sphere to leave 2020 before the shockwave hit after he killed Prime Martha in S2Ep8. It would explain how he traveled as quickly and quietly as he did.

The group is interrupted by an older man who’s noticed that they’re late in starting their experiments today. He’s blind, but as soon as he enters the room he senses Martha’s presence. Stranger walks out of the workshop without speaking. The older man, Gustav Tannhaus, touches Martha’s face and figures out that she’s the reason Stranger is in an even worse mood than usual. Gustav tells her she doesn’t need to be afraid of him. Even though he has the reputation for being not quite right in the head, what he really has is the gift of foresight.

In 1987, Katharina stands in the high school hallway and hands out “Missing” flyers between classes. None of the kids recognize Mikkel. Young Ulrich stops to talk to Adult Katharina and mentions that a “lunatic” might have gotten Mikkel. Young Katharina shows up and is impatient, so she and Ulrich leave for class, ignoring Adult Katharina’s questions. Young Hannah hangs back and tells Adult Katharina about the old man who tried to kidnap Michael last summer.

Adult Katharina thanks Hannah for telling her how to find Ulrich by shoving her against a wall and warning her to stay away from Mikkel and Ulrich, Hannah’s future husband and her lifelong friend.

Hannah looks at Katharina like she’s deranged. At this point, I think she is. Hannah just went out of her way to help a stranger, again, and has no idea who “Mikkel” even is.

Tronte is dealing with Jana outing his affair with Claudia by questioning Claudia’s assistant, Jasmin, about Claudia’s disappearance. Since the whole town knows about them and his wife has stopped pretending, he doesn’t have to skulk in the shadows anymore.

Jasmin tells him that Claudia, who had always been meticulous about her appearance, really let herself go in her final week at the plant. She wore the same thing twice! And her hair was a mess. She forgot about appointments. Jasmin thought it had something to do with the old woman and dog who came to visit her (Old Claudia and Gretchen), since Claudia was different after that.

Jasmin is right- Old Claudia brought Claudia’s childhood dog, Gretchen, back to her after her pet had disappeared in the caves 33 years years earlier, as proof that time travel is real. That was the final proof that Adult Claudia needed, in combination with what Bernd showed her: the barrels of cesium 137 stored in the caves and the odd data from the power plant accident in the summer of 1986, which pointed to the existence of the God particle.

In the 2020 post shockwave bunker, Adult Claudia begins to assemble her family tree on the wall. The strings that connect the photos form one of the Gordian knots that she’s slowly deciphering.

Peter and Elizabeth have reached their destination, the official Winden corpse ID tent for the dead lost in the blast. There are rows and rows of photos showing the faces of the dead on the wall. This is what the checkpoint guard thought that Peter should spare Elizabeth. The faces of almost everyone she’s ever known are on this wall.

But Elizabeth is strong and avoiding the truth doesn’t change it. She’s always preferred to have information rather than be left out. This is the stuff of nightmares, whether you sees the photos or see the town itself.

We’re shown photos for Officer Justina Jankowski and Aleksander Tiedemann, who were in the police station. Benni was probably at home. Inspector Clausen and Torben Wöller were in the power plant with Charlotte, in the room with the barrels where the rift formed. No idea where Jürgen Obendorf was, possibly also working somewhere on the power plant grounds. Their heads are all easily recognizable and in relatively good shape, for having been through an apocalypse.

Peter and Eli look through the rows, then check with each other. Neither has found Franziska or Charlotte. A soldier tells Peter that all of the bodies that have been found are represented on the wall. When he relays the news to Eli, she suggests that maybe they time traveled. He hugs her.

We know they won’t find Charlotte and Franziska among the dead because Eli’s right, but they have no idea where their family members were when the shockwave hit.

Katharina rushes to the police station and demands information about the man in the psych ward who tried to kidnap Mikkel. Police Chief Martin Döhring says he’s told her before, he’s not going to give her any information relating to Michael Kahnwald, no matter how much she wants it. She has no proof of who she is or that Michael is her son.

But then Döhring does give in and tell Katharina that Child Protective Services has known where Michael and Ines were all along. They decided to go into hiding for a while for Michael’s safety and to give him a break. The “lunatic” is back in the psych ward, where he’s been for the last 34 years. That number rings a bell with Katharina, so she asks Döhring the kidnapper’s name, but he’s done with her and tells her not to come back again.

As Tronte is driving by the only bus stop in town, he notices Regina sitting there with Gretchen the Dog in her arms. He stops and asks if the dog belongs to Regina. Regina says that the dog belonged to Claudia.

Now that he’s established that Regina might have some information about Claudia for him, he offers her a ride.

Once she’s in the car, he mentions that the dog looks just like the original Gretchen (because Gretchen is a time traveling dog). Regina figures that’s why Claudia kept her. She asks Tronte if he thinks Claudia is guilty of the crimes she’s rumored to have committed, like murdering Regina’s grandfather and her close friend Mads Nielsen, Tronte’s son. Tronte doesn’t know.

I guess they know Claudia well. Since she did commit 2nd or 3rd degree murder on Egon, they are right to wonder what she’s capable of rather than blindly supporting her.

Tronte asks Regina if Claudia said anything about an old lady in the week before she vanished. Regina tells him no. Then he asks if she said anything about him. Both of them get emotional. Regina tells him Claudia didn’t mention him and asks to get out of the car. She’ll walk the rest of the way home. Belatedly, Tronte remembers to offer to help her if she needs anything, then drives away.

This is the man that everyone assumes is Regina’s father and he hasn’t even asked her how she’s been surviving for the last 3 months without a parent to to support her. Even if he’s not her father, he’s her mother’s oldest friend and lover. You’d think he’d care about her a little, for Claudia’s sake. It’s clear that he only cares about Claudia.

Regina is just so alone in the world. She didn’t need to be used by Tronte to further his obsession with her mother.

In 2020, Claudia begins work on the God particle. She makes the first of the tapes documenting her process. Jonas will listen to them when he arrives in the future in S2.

Peter and Eli visit the Kahnwald house, as everyone eventually must. It’s tattered, but still standing (which we knew, since Jonas sleeps there years later). Peter leaves Eli in the kitchen while he looks upstairs. Hannah’s photos are still there- blown on the floor and ragged, but otherwise still recognizable. Eli looks at one while she waits.

Young Noah startles Eli, but moves slowly so as not to scare her further. His hair is black instead of blonde, the way Magnus’ is in the Alt world. In both speech and partial sign, he tells her he’s looking for food and asks if she is, too. She pulls out a notepad and writes down “mom and sister”, then asks where he’s staying. He writes “cave” on the notepad, so she won’t forget. Now the page says “mom and sister cave”.

Peter comes back downstairs and accuses Noah of following them. He says that he told Noah to stay away from them.

Noah: “You want to protect her, I know. So do I. And I will. After you get killed.”

Noah speaks his answer, but doesn’t sign it. Then he leaves. He did speak the words in full view of Eli, so depending on her ability to read lips, she may have understood what he said.

That evening, it’s still pouring rain. Bartosz visits Alt Martha in her room and apologizes about Jonas. Just, you know, his general surly Jonasness. (It’s all Jonas’ fault.)

When they left 2020 at the end of S2Ep8, Stranger wasn’t aiming for 1888, but they traveled at the exact moment of the shockwave and this is where they ended up (this is where Time sent them). The device is out of cesium 137 and they can’t get anymore in this time period, so theyre stuck here until Jonas can create a new God particle.

Bartosz doesn’t seem to consider that someone else could come from the future and rescue them. Or Martha could help them. But they’d have to have a destination in mind if they left, so maybe that’s the issue.

Martha asks about the workshop, Gustav and what they’re doing. Bartosz doesn’t answer her questions. Instead he tells her he needs to show her something.

Down in the workshop, Gustav asks Stranger if Martha is a traveler, like they are.

Gustav: “When I found you, now that was a sign. A God-sent miracle. Whatever this woman means to you, don’t forget what we’re going to create. Paradise. Every calamity can be reversed. The world’s suffering can be destroyed before it even exists. A perfect world. Sic Mundus Creatus Est.”

Jonas listens to what he says. He still hates the sound of Sic Mundus, but he’s drawn to rest of Gustav’s prophecy, now that it’s not coming from Adam. He wouldn’t be Jonas if his mind weren’t spinning in self-hating circles.

He’s reached his Faust moment of temptation and he hates himself for being drawn to the same ideas and promises that he thinks corrupted Adam. Gustav is his White Devil, promising him a world without Winden, where suffering has ended, if only Jonas will put in the hard work and self sacrifice necessary to bring it about.

Gustav referred to the travelers as a miracle from God in all sincerity, but Jonas knows what that future brings. The temptation is to give in and believe it will turn out differently this time. Yet, what choice does Jonas have, other than to keep walking the same path? Bartosz and Alt Martha won’t let him settle down in the 19th century and forget about who he really is. Neither will his own conscience. And another White Devil, Old Claudia, always shows up eventually to stir the pot. Or she sends an emissary.

Katharina goes to the mental institution to look for Ulrich. She discovers that the nurse at the desk is her mother, Helene Albers. Helene is wearing the St Christopher medal that we’ve usually seen with Jonas and Martha. When Katharina asks for Ulrich and explains that he’s her husband, Helene judges Katharina for being with a patient who’s also a much older man and refuses to let her see him. Katharina uses her knowledge of the medal to talk her way in. She says that her mother also had a medal just like that. St Christopher renounced the devil and carried Jesus, the creator of the world. She begs Helene to let her see Ulrich.

Katharina describes the medal to show she’s a pious Christian, a good woman by her mother’s standards. But calling Jesus the creator of the world in that moment is an inside joke based on Ulrich’s favorite song, Pleasure to Kill by Kreator. “My only aim is to take many lives. The more the better I feel.” If I remember right, Helene never liked Ulrich. Katharina passed the favor down to Martha by pulling her away from Stranger Jonas.

Helene says that Ulrich was just released from solitary. He’s sitting at a table, playing chess by himself. Katharina sits with him. As soon as she gets his attention, she promises to break him out.

Jasmin is the last one at the power plant. She turns out the lights as she prepares to leave. The Unknown Trio turn them back on, then surround her threateningly. After confirming her identity, Adult Unknown tells her, “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

He shushes Jasmin, who is about 8 months pregnant, then strangles her with his garrotte.

At least he made sure to kill the correct pregnant secretary.

Jana fiddles with an ouroboros bracelet as she sits in her living room in deep thought. Tronte comes home and sits next to her. She tells him that at some point he’s going to have to choose between his family with her or Claudia. He says that he saw Regina today. She looks like a grown up. Jana remarks that Claudia has never said who Regina’s father is and she’s always wondered if it’s Tronte. Tronte doesn’t respond directly to that opening. He agrees that he has to decide between the two families and takes Jana’s hand.

It’s not hard for Tronte to choose Jana right now when Claudia has disappeared without a trace or a word. He cares even less about Regina than Claudia does, that was made clear, though we’ve never seen much evidence that he cares about Ulrich either. He imprinted on Claudia when he was young and everyone else will always come second, no matter what. We know he runs right back to her when she shows up again.

In 2020, Regina is alone and trying to sleep in the damp police station while it storms outside. Old Tronte comes in and squeezes her hand, saying, “I’m so sorry, but it has to happen. She said it’s the only way to save you.” He smothers Regina with her pillow.

Well, at least Regina’s suffering is finally over? I don’t think she ever did anything worse than say a few snappish words to the people who had done terrible things to her. And people were so awful to her. I hate the way both she and Aleksander died alone, after they were so devoted to their little family in life.

Prime Old Tronte wasn’t saved from the shockwave by any means that we saw, so how is he alive now? And did Claudia or Eva send him to kill Regina? Regina was definitely right to be nervous around him when she was young.

Back in the trailer, Peter heats up cans of soup while Eli thinks about Noah. She asks Peter what Noah said to him, but Peter refuses to tell her. She pulls out the triquetra diary, which he’s somehow held onto since season 1, and demands that he tell her more about what’s going on. They shove each other back and forth in the trailer, but not hard enough for either to get hurt.

Peter must know from the book where Franziska and Charlotte are, but he won’t tell Elizabeth, out of a misguided attempt to preserve her childhood.

Leaving her in the dark is worse than telling her a little of what he knows and turning it into a story she can handle. This is why fairy tales exist.

On September 22, 2053, Charlotte sits in the cave and looks at Elizabeth’s photo of Noah, Eli and herself as a baby. Eli returns from outside and sits next to Charlotte. Charlotte gets up to leave, maybe to take over standing watch outside the cave. Eli tells her it will be okay and they press their foreheads together.

In 1987, Young Katharina does her homework and listens to music at the kitchen table. Helene smacks her on the back of the head, hard, and in a vicious voice, tells her to clear the table.

We’ve seen Magnus smack people the same way, especially Mikkel, many times, though not as hard. This is another version of an eternal recurrence. The behaviors and personalities that recur in families down through the generations, in addition to physical similarities, become like seeing the same people and the same dynamics repeated over and over, with no exit possible other than blowing up the cycle by walking out and not reproducing.

Or going through extensive self examination and being self aware at all times, in order to avoid falling back into old patterns, as Stranger recommended. But the Faustian White Devil of similar personality types will always be there, bringing with them the temptation to revert to old patterns of behavior. Nietzsche was specifically thinking of never ending relationships with his difficult mother and sister when he worked with the ideas of the eternal recurrence and amor fati, love of fate. Dark shows these recurring behavior and thought patterns through the generations in each family cluster in Winden, even before we know that characters are related.

It’s montage time. This episode, the song is Broken Sleep, by Agnes Obel.

Adult Stranger Katharina takes her leave of Old Ulrich in the psych ward. They both have the same air of desperation about them, despite how far apart they are in age now. Ulrich’s advanced age didn’t make Katharina hesitate even for a second, after she tried so hard to keep Stranger and Martha apart.

In 2020, Prime Adult Claudia finds Regina dead in bed and is devastated. She wasn’t the one who ordered Tronte to kill her daughter.

In 1987, Young Aleksander comforts Young Regina, who misses her mother.

Adult Jana sleeps with her head on Tronte’s lap. Mads is still missing. So is Claudia. They are lost in their separate grief.

In 2020, Young Elizabeth looks at the page in her notepad that says “mom and sister cave”. Whether it was on purpose or not, Young Noah told Eli where her mom is. She’s just 33 years in the future.

Young Noah works to clear rubble out of the passage. If he can clear it out enough so that it works, Charlotte and Young Elizabeth could make contact. In his life, it’s probably not that long since he finished building the passage the first time. No wonder he seems slightly resentful.

Stranger Jonas enters Martha’s room, probably hoping to creepily watch her sleep again. She’s the wrong Martha and she’s not there, but he’s still drawn by the unbreakable tether between them.

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Martha is on a field trip with Bartosz to the caves. He takes her to the Sic Mundus Temple of Doom, which has has fallen into disuse. The room that will become Adam’s study is set up as a classroom, with a triquetra knot in the place of his favorite painting. While Stranger is looking for her, she’s looking at what he’ll become.

Bartosz: “It’s like a secret society. Old Tannhaus is the only one of them left. His father was convinced he could supercede the rules of space and time. He dedicated his entire life to doing just that. And so did his son.”

Martha: “They tried to build a time machine back then?”

Bartosz: “Jonas is trying to rebuild things the way he saw them. He’s been here already. Not now. In the future. He asked you something earlier. If Adam had sent you. He said that Adam killed Martha. Who is this Adam?”

Martha: “He didn’t tell you that? He is Adam. Jonas.”

We swoop to the Alt world, where Old Eva is telling Young Jonas her truths.

Old Eva: “We don’t know our end, but our end knows us. Salvation or damnation. We can indulge in the illusion of free will if we want, but we cannot escape our ultimate destiny. The choices we make in each world may be different, but nevertheless, they converge on the same moment. Things may not happen in the same way, or at the same time. But they always happen. You believed a world without you would be a better one, but they’re all going to die. Mikkel. Mikkel will die. Everyone will die. The apocalypse occurs in my world, just as it does in yours. In mine, it will happen in 3 days time.”

But no pressure.

As they’ve been speaking, she brings him over to a family tree that’s made from stone inlays in her floor. Let me take this opportunity to tell you that even when something is literally written in stone, it isn’t always true.

Commentary

Old Eva confirms that the 2 worlds are roughly parallel, though not exact mirror images. Her world operates under the same fatalism that the Prime world is subject to, so it probably doesn’t matter whether there’s 3 years or 3 hours until the apocalypse, it can’t be stopped. Let’s get Jonas home before it hits though, ‘kay?

I know we’re working on letting go of attachments this season, but I’m pretty sure Jonas is an essential part of the symbolic balance of light and dark in this universe, so we need him, or the rainbow ponies will take over and it will be all sparkles, all the time.

Sun fairy Metamaiden asks what would be wrong with that? (She has actual rainbow hair.) I am a creature of the night okay? (How do you think I knew Jonas didn’t want to be left alone in the light?) I’m just advocating for balance here.

I’m convinced the Kahnwald house is the black hole machine that gives birth to other black holes. There’s a device hidden there that Jonas put under his bed and then forgot, 200 cycles ago, when they were all new at this. Everyone is drawn there and will eventually sleep in that bed. In fact, it’s probably the bed that’s the ORIGIN everyone is looking for. The time travel plot was hatched there, in the distant early twentieth century past, and won’t be destroyed as long as the house and the bed are standing. 😉

The school and the factory have similar silhouettes. Could the factory have been reworked into the school?

Foresight like Gustav’s is believed to be seen through the metaphysical 3rd eye, located in between the eyebrows in the lower forehead. I talked about Sic Mundus as a mystery school back in S2Ep1 & S2Ep8. Though Bartosz doesn’t characterize it that way, Gustav’s foresight firmly locates it in that arena, rather than as simply an academic and scientific endeavor.

Katharina and Ulrich have both gone about their investigations in an uncompromising way that didn’t gain them any trust from the authorities, despite the fact that they are both local authorities themselves. But it’s not like there’s a rule book to follow for losing your child to someone else in another time period or solving child murders and kidnappings by time travelers across 3 times periods.

The soldier at the checkpoint, played by Maximilian Dirr, seems familiar to me. I think he might still have been one of the guards in the 2052 episodes, but IMDB isn’t crediting him. If I notice him when I get to that point next time I rewatch, I’ll note it here. Or someone else can let me know in the comments. Maybe he was a cop or worked in the power plant.

Family Trees- Skip If You Don’t Want to Know What’s on Them Yet!

My screencap of Old Eva’s full family tree might come out too blurry to read, so I’ll add the family tree on the Netflix website for this episode, though they are a little different. If you visit the website yourself, make sure to stop on the home page first and select which episode you’re willing to be spoiled up to.

Katharina’s father is listed as Hermann Albers (Thomas Arnold), the farmer whose sheep died in S1Ep3, Past and Present. In hindsight, the death of the flock of 33 sheep and the Bible verse Albers quoted to Egon were warnings to Egon that he’d be dead soon. Albers told Egon he was a member of Noah’s church. (Mark 13:33, “Be on your guard. Be alert. For you do not know when that time will be.”)

In the same episode, Mikkel spends his first day in 1986, Claudia starts work as the director of the power plant and HG Tannhaus finishes work on the time device. It must be that once those things had happened, Egon’s future was solidified. Helene Alber’s religious medal also pegs her as a member of Noah’s church.

Old Gustav Tannhaus is HG Tannhaus‘ grandfather, with Leopold Tannhaus in between the two as Gustav’s son/HG’s father. Gustav was born in 1813 and HG was born in 1913, 100 years apart. Gustav’s father is Heinrich Tannhaus. Sic Mundus’ history stretches back as least as far as Gustav’s birth in 1813 and forward at least as far as 2053, the farthest we’ve seen anyone travel forward, a period of 250 years.

The big shocker on these trees is the pairing of Bartosz and Silja (Girl from the Future) and then them being the parents of Noah and Agnes. Agnes is Tronte’s mother and Tronte is Jonas’ great grandfather, which makes Bartosz his great great great grandfather. Silja is the child of Egon and Hannah. Agnes and the Unknown give birth to Tronte in both worlds.

So now Bartosz knows that EVEN MORE STUFF is all Jonas’ fault. That should make for some fun times ahead. Maybe Bartosz isn’t so much blaming Jonas for everything as exasperated with him, the way you get with a favorite child who just can’t stay out of trouble, no matter how hard you try to keep him safe. Bartosz wants to keep his favorite progeny alive and well and Jonas keeps screwing everything up. Bartosz also prods Jonas along his dark and uncomfortable path.

Was There Originally A Jonas in the Alt World?

It is odd that Stranger doesn’t remember going to Alt Martha’s world when he was Young Jonas. I get the distinct impression that there used to be a Jonas in Martha’s world, but he wanted to be erased. So they kept Mikkel from going back to 1986, just like Jonas wanted in the Prime world, and as Eva indicated to Prime Young Jonas. To make up for Jonas’ absence in the Alt world, they have to bring him over from the Prime world for a brief time to interact with Martha to trigger certain events.

That’s an arguable interpretation, it’s true. It’s never said straight out, but Eva has said to Jonas twice now that he wanted a world without himself, with the hope that it would be a better place, but it’s not. In this episode, she specifically said that even Mikkel dies, and as a child instead of as an adult, so there was no point to making a world without Jonas.

But she didn’t say that there had been cycles where Jonas existed as a native in the Alt world. However, the way she practically blames him suggests that the Alt world exists in its current form because some version of Jonas, either from his world or hers, talked her into trying out the “world without Jonas” concept he’s been so keen on for 2 seasons. So either he used to exist there as a native or the Prime version has been visiting there for a while and talking Eva into experimenting.

There is a 3rd option, that Jonas willed Martha’s world into existence as a place where she could live and he wouldn’t be there to kill her. It’s an attractive option. But she still goes and gets Jonas and brings him to her world in every cycle, so either Martha didn’t agree to Jonas’ plan, that’s not the correct option or Jonas just can’t be written out of Martha’s code because he’s too essential to the way her story goes. Jonas’ own story seems to require Martha at various points.

I’ll explore this more fully as the season goes on- don’t want to give away spoilers now.

But I do think Martha was always the chosen one in the Alt world, whether or not Jonas was ever native to it. That’s one reason why it didn’t make much of a difference for Jonas to disappear there.

Did Season 1 Show A 3rd World?

The way that Martha’s world reflects her personality and Jonas’ world reflects his, argues for the main actor within the world being the one who imagines/dreams/Wills the world into being, with the world following the characteristics of that person’s mind. And that makes me wonder if we’ve actually seen a different world each season. I haven’t thought it through enough to figure out whose world it would have been in season 1, but season 2 was Jonas’/Adam’s world.

Since we know we’ve seen Jonas and Martha’s worlds, I wonder if there’s something about being young that makes it easier to create the new world or connection between worlds? I think if S1 isn’t also Jonas’ world, Teen Charlotte is the best option for whose world it is. Charlotte is both the only person we know of who’s time traveled as an infant and who is connected to Tannhaus (the narrator of S1). He set the tone for the scientific understanding and the worldview of the season.

We see quite a bit of Charlotte as a teenage and an adult investigator that season and of Tannhaus in two time periods, 3 if you count his TV show. Charlotte’s daughter Elizabeth also plays a part, with Noah seeking her out and Yasin disappearing. The two of them revolve around each other exactly the same way Mikkel and Jonas do.

Or else it could be Mikkel’s world, but I feel like Mikkel has too little control. Same with Helge. It could be Claudia’s world, since she’s all about control.

Sic Mundus Creatus Est: Faust meets the Devil and a Prophet Meets a Saint

From a scientific point of view, Jonas ends up taking over Sic Mundus because he figures out the importance of their work to improving on the scientific work he’s already done with Claudia. For that reason, the scene where Bartosz introduces Alt Martha to the Sic Mundus classroom and tells us their true history for the first time is important. It shows that Sic Mundus wasn’t just a crazy cult that Adam made up to keep his followers in line or a symptom of his madness.

Instead, the organization has has a rich history of scholarship and alchemy created by multiple generations of researchers who devoted their lives to the work. Jonas/Adam learned from this history to create his own version of Sic Mundus, which added elements to the overall time travel scheme that were missing from the approach based purely on scientific theory. HG Tannhaus eventually stored some of the sources Sic Mundus studied in his clock shop along with the Sic Mundus group photo, suggesting that elements were incorporated into the version of time travel that worked. Tannhaus’ ideas were largely based on Einstein, but even Einstein couldn’t solve everything.

Foresight like Gustav’s is believed to be seen through the metaphysical 3rd eye, located in between the eyebrows in the lower forehead. I talked about Sic Mundus as a mystery school back in S2Ep1 & S2Ep8. Though Bartosz doesn’t characterize it that way, Gustav’s foresight firmly locates it in that arena, rather than as simply an academic and scientific endeavor.

Gustav: “When I found you, now that was a sign. A God-sent miracle. Whatever this woman means to you, don’t forget what we’re going to create. Paradise. Every calamity can be reversed. The world’s suffering can be destroyed before it even exists. A perfect world. Sic Mundus Creatus Est.”

This is the prophecy Sic Mundus lives by in the future versions of the organization that we’ve seen, including Adult Elizabeth and Teen Silja in the 2050s: Forsake family ties in favor of the Paradise Sic Mundus will create, with Jonas as the savior. In Paradise, all of the suffering will have been worth it, because the suffering will be reversed, as if it never existed, and more.

Stranger Jonas fought for decades to avoid becoming Adam, to avoid becoming the leader who believed in and led others to believe in this prophecy, yet now he’s falling into the trap that he knows will lead him there, based on promises he swore he’d never listen to.

What changed? Why is this temptation ensnaring him now, when it never has before?

His frame of mind has changed. Emotionally and mentally, he’s been pushed beyond anywhere even he’s been before. His last chance to save original Martha, the one he spent 33 years pinning his hopes on, has failed. He’s stuck in the 19th century, helpless. Or maybe hiding. He really hasn’t been honest about his full history with the teens.

This episode is notable for how exhausted so many of the characters look. Everyone is tired of the fight right now, and Stranger is not only tired, he’s more hopeless than he’s been since he had to send Mikkel back to 1986 and Michael to his death.

He doesn’t have the strength to push down what his heart wants anymore. He wants to believe what Gustav said: that Paradise is possible and that free will isn’t. That it’s preordained he’ll succeed, so he will. That he’s always given in to the lure of Sic Mundus, so he might as well do so again.

Stranger needs some kind of relief and religious conversion can be an incredibly soothing drug.

Jonas has met his White Devil, and the devil told him he’s the savior who can bring about Paradise. Up until this point, Jonas has always believed that change was possible through his own sheer determination or Claudia’s science and plans or Adam’s authority and knowledge of the future. Here in 1888, as far as he can tell, that all lies in ruins at his feet. He’s failed; he’s been betrayed; the very universe is working against him.

Maybe it’s time to make a deal with the devil and study the occult/alchemy seriously. Maybe science isn’t enough and the missing ingredient can be found there.

Jonas has fought a mighty struggle for more than 30 years, which probably should qualify him for sainthood. Most saints have these sorts of relapses into doubt and despair, then find their strength again, even Jesus. Especially saints who mostly go it alone and live in their own heads, like Stranger.

In this sense, he’s not really a classic Faustian character. Claudia and Ulrich, the 2 White Devils from S2Ep7, the episode of the same title, are much more like the classic Faust, the character who can’t resist following their Will and Desires and so is easy prey for the Devil.

Ulrich is the classic Faustian sensualist with a heart of gold, who we root for but who just can’t stop himself from following his big heart into the next barrel of trouble he’s attracted to, whether it’s a new woman or thinking he can save the children. He’s a boy who will never grow up and we love him for the innocence at the center of his mistakes, even though eventually he becomes too toxic to live with, since he never stops to consider the consequences of his actions. The devil promises him he can be a hero or be a king, but he’s always eventually the architect of his own demise because he can’t control his tendency toward excess.

Claudia’s Deadly Sin of choice is ambition, in the form of scientific advancement at any cost. Literally any cost, whether it’s her child or her soul. Or anyone else’s soul. Since Goethe’s Faust was a sheltered academic who left his books behind to gain experience of the world and was then burned by falling in love and getting an unmarried woman, Gretchen, pregnant, Claudia is probably meant to be a combination of the Devil, Gretchen and Faust.

One of the important implications of Goethe’s Faust is the concept of earning salvation vs escaping damnation. Though characters ostensibly are meant to use their lives accruing points that will send them in one direction or the other, in the end, God acts as a referee with veto power. He can use His Grace to do whatever He wants with the characters. If He decides He likes their style, or their deathbed conversion, no matter how they’ve behaved previously, He can pick them up and bring them into Heaven. Or He can send them in the other direction. Christianity has a lot of loopholes and God is fickle.

Personally, I’m going to stick with karma/eternal justice.

Ulrich is the King David model of Faust, God’s chosen one who’ll always be forgiven eventually. Jonas is more in the tradition of Job, where God makes a bet to see how far He can push someone before they crack. Claudia is a version of Eve, who won’t stop until she’s eaten all of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and ruined Paradise for everyone. God sets her up for both great success and great pain, for His own reasons.

Martha is a saint, the opposite of a Faust. We were told this from the moment we met her in S1Ep1, when she was on a hunger strike to save starving children. Same with Noah. Everything he’s done has been for his family and he’s suffered terribly because of it. Martha is a compassionate saint and Noah is a martyred saint. Those are two ways to transcend to a higher plane of existence, which is why saints can perform miracles. Mikkel also martyred himself for his family and the greater good.

A lifelong sinner who repents and redirects that energy toward God also becomes a saint. This is the reason God loves to make bets with the Devil. It builds up karmic energy, which eventually creates a surge in one direction or the other. This will be true of any unbalanced life, whether it leans too far toward good or evil, saint or sinner. In Dark, Time is God, so the build up of karmic energy and the surge of it seeking eternal justice at death will affect Time.

Martha and Jonas are tied together to balance each other as light and dark, care for the individual (he saves those closest to him) vs care for the greater good (she saves the planet) and hope (she finds comfort in myth, stories that prove she’s never alone) vs nihilism (he’s always a stranger, always alone). Claudia is a third element, the neutral, unstoppable centerpoint of the will, which assumes it’s balance, but is merely unfeeling.

S1 can be read as Part 1 of Goethe’s Faust and S2&3 can be read as Part 2, but I’m not going to do a close examination. Part 2 is also a blatant rip off of Dante’s Divine Comedy and I’d rather just discuss that source, even though it’s not German. I have no trouble with the many other versions of Faust, and there are many, from the original 1580s religious commentaries, which are fascinating, to Pinocchio, which most everyone knows in some form, but was originally written as a novel in 1883. Goethe’s version of Faust is based on so much misogyny that my brain forms a protective wall and won’t let me take it in too deeply.

If you want to look more closely at the ties between Goethe’s Faust and Dark, here are a few links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethe%27s_Faust

https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Faust-Parts-1-and-2/plot-summary/

themes: https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Faust-Parts-1-and-2/themes/

symbols:  https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Faust-Parts-1-and-2/symbols/

https://lettersfromthedustbowl.com/faustusE.html

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” -Shakespeare and Adult Unknown

This is a quote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest which is relayed secondhand to a deposed king. While the surface meaning of the quote is obvious, the nuances of what it means coming from Unknown’s mouth as he kills a very pregnant secretary depend on which character you take to be the true author of the words.

The original speaker was a prince who was leaping from a ship that was burning because it had been set on fire to gain revenge on the king, his father, who was on board. Prince Ferdinand had nothing to do with his father’s crimes. Unknown is sympathizing with the fact that Jasmin herself is largely outside of the Winden social circle that’s involved with time travel conspiracies. She’s collateral damage. (As far as we know.)

But in the play, the audience hears the line spoken by Ariel, a magical being, who relays it to the former king, Prospero, the brother of the current king, Alonso. Many years ago, Alonso betrayed Prospero and drove him from his kingdom. Ariel reluctantly works for Prospero, who is also a magician, in return for his freedom from an evil sorceress, Sycorax. Prospero ordered Ariel to set fire to the ship in order to wreck it and bring its occupants to Prospero’s new island so that the former king can carry out an elaborate revenge plot.

Coming from Ariel, the line applies to just about everyone.

In the play, Ariel is the symbol of justice personified, much as I have compared Unknown to Schopenhauer’s Eternal Justice or karma. Unknown’s use of Ariel’s line suggests that he is aware that he is playing the role of both Eternal Justice and Prince Ferdinand, rather than blindly following orders or randomly perpetrating acts of violence.

Prince Ferdinand becomes the love interest for Prospero’s daughter, Miranda, who speaks the famous phrase, “brave new world”. From the close up on Eva’s family tree we know that Unknown is Tronte’s father in both worlds, making him part of the Nielsen line and the only one who spans the two worlds. Prince Ferdinand and Miranda’s pairing helps bring the two warring kings back together, which means that Ferdinand also acts as a bridge between kingdoms.

Ariel has worked for two powerful masters and also has his own power. Both masters have been dubious, but Ariel has chosen to stay with Prospero. I believe Unknown has ties to both Claudia and Martha. When this scene occurs, he’s just watched the Prime world go through an apocalypse which helped either created martha’s world, created a link to it or solidified the link to it. An apocalypse is about to occur in the Alt world.

Ariel has watched Sycorax perform evil acts, and now is watching Prospero risk lives for his own purposes. This is another layer to Unknown’s use of the quote. Is he expressing despair that he has to watch these apocalypses occur, but can’t stop them? Is he, like Jonas, trapped in this never ending loop of of death and loss that has to be repeated every cycle and he can’t get out of it?

There are several potential reasons why someone might want Jasmin dead. For one thing, there’s the bootstrap paradoxes. Those have been created over time by erasing the causative events and memories, so that only results remain. Both Jasmin and Bernd were instrumental in providing Claudia with the information she needed to figure out the complete theory behind the God particle, which she and Jonas then used to turn the God particle into a time machine.

In the scene where Jasmin dies, she walks in on the Unknown examining the binder which held Claudia’s early research into the God particle. This is the binder which was originally handed to Claudia by Bernd when he gave her the data related to the accident at the power plant in 1986.

Claudia first discovered financial discrepancies in the power plant’s books thanks to obscure records which Jasmin obtained for her. Jasmin looked over the records as well and noted the issues. Bernd told Claudia that the plant was cooking the books to hide the accident, then Claudia demanded to see the records of the accident.

Unknown takes the binder with him and kills the two people who know about the data trail. Is he trying to erase the memory of the origin of the God particle in future cycles? Is he stopping someone else from investigating in the future?

Or maybe there was some reason why Jasmin’s baby couldn’t be born? She’s always at the power plant- maybe she knew too much in other ways, as well?

The deaths of Jasmin, her baby, and Bernd, along with the destruction of the abandoned Sic Mundus lair, all in 1987, must be part of some larger plan.

I was struck by how exhausted and ragged the Unknown look in this scene. This is hard on the Child and Old versions, especially, as it should be.

The Day the Earth Stood Still- The Science

According to those tenacious French researchers, the Earth stopped spinning for a nanosecond during the shockwave, which is 1 billionth of a second, then started spinning again.

The video above is the best explanation I could find for what would happen if the Earth stopped spinning, but it describes what would happen if the world just stops cold and never restarts. It’s more catastrophic than what would happen, though the basic process is the same and I think we’d all still be very dead eventually in reality.

The video goes on to discuss some fascinating concepts of time, such how atomic clocks measure time and the fact that all sorts of things affect the speed at which the Earth rotates, so it’s not an accurate way to measure time. Did you know the Earth is turning more slowly as time goes on? We’ve lost more than 20 seconds since the 70s. Time is relative.

The show listed just about all of the apocalypses- tidal waves, earthquakes, hurricanes and other intense storms, electromagnetic pulse, all of the planes crashing at once, all of the nuclear power plants melting down at once. They didn’t list war, plague and famine, but those sometimes take a few months to develop in the aftermath of the other disasters. If they showed us the world outside of Winden in 2025, it would be filled with disease, hunger and people fighting over the few resources that are left.

My best guess is that the tiny lack of movement when the Earth stopped for a nanosecond, combined with intense inertia causing everything possible to move a teeny tiny bit, would create small, hairline cracks in everything that was attached to the Earth’s surface. As the Earth restarted, then continued to move, those cracks would grow, and things would crumble and fall even worse than they normally would in the resulting tidal waves, earthquakes and storms.

This video goes on to discuss some fascinating concepts of time, such as atomic clocks and the fact that all sorts of things affect the speed at which the Earth rotates, so it’s not an accurate way to measure time. Did you know the Earth is turning more slowly all the time? We’ve lost more than 20 seconds since the 70s. Time is relative.

Also we are such a nerd family that we had loud disagreements about the theoretical physics of this. Don’t ask.

This is the result of my husband the mathematician’s calculations on the issue. Despite the way he wrote it, I am the practical catastrophist in the family who believes the apocalypse is always nigh and should be prepared for. He is the theorist who never believes there will be damage in the real world. Metamaiden is the balanced middle.

Since the speed of Earth’s rotation varies based on latitude, I chose the latitude of the city of Weimar in central Germany, which is at about 51 degrees north.  Earth’s rotational speed at that latitude is 655 miles per hour, or 1,054 kilometers per hour, or 293 meters per second (calculated at https://www.vcalc.com/wiki/MichaelBartmess/Rotational+Speed+at+Latitude).

That means the Earth’s surface would move 293 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in the nanosecond that the Earth stopped.  That’s about a thousand times the diameter of a water molecule (0.27 nanometers), and about 29 times the diameter of PG5, the largest synthetic molecule ever made (10 nanometers).  Depending on how closely packed together two substances are, that 293 nanometers of travel could provide plenty of room for the molecules of one substance (say, water) to smack into the molecules of the other substance (say, rock) in that billionth of a second, potentially triggering havoc.

As more comparison, the width of a human hair is 75,000 nanometers. 293 nanometers, the distance inertia would shift everything on Earth when it stopped, whether it was attached or not, is so small it’s hard to imagine, but it’s enough to throw off cycles, set off chain reactions and fracture inflexible masses when done with the weight and velocity of the Earth behind it.

The Day the Earth Stood Still- The Film

  They are definitely referencing the film.

In this short documentary, Decoding Klaatu Barada Nikto, the filmmakers and others discuss how The Day the Earth Stood Still purposely relates to the Cold War, fear of nuclear proliferation and and the pro United Nations sentiments of the filmmakers. Dark has spent 3 seasons showing us how a group of people who were interested in traveling to other times and to other timelines/worlds will stop at nothing, not even global mass destruction and death involving all of the apocalypses at once, to achieve their scientific goals. And nuclear science is at the heart of what they do.

The Day the Earth Stood Still believes scientists, with the help of the UN, can save the world. Dark seems to be saying we can’t trust the scientists anymore. Unless the message is that the scientists will take us to the golden glitter Harry Potter world, which I’m totally okay with. But that world is threatened, too, so it’s not the ultimate answer. The science and technology that came out of the Enlightenment and have continued through the Industrial Revolution to the present day, which are seen as both progress which will unquestioningly aid humanity and as beneficial knowledge which must be pursued, have led to many of the ills our culture and planet now face.

Unless we somehow put the brakes on- stop the world- the apocalypses we currently live in will only get worse. As I write this, it’s currently 102ºF (39ºC) outside my window, there is smoke in the air from the forest fires that are burning all over the Southwestern US, including one about 20 miles from my home, and my state diagnosed a record number of COVID-19 cases yesterday. That’s 3 apocalypses. Famine from joblessness isn’t far behind. How many riots and shootings does it take to make a civil war?

We need to start getting the message and acting on it without worrying about the details.

Which brings me to the importance of the code phrases. Klaatu Barada Nikto is a code phrase which the alien, Klaatu, his human friend, Helen, say to his robot guardian after he’s killed, to stop the guardian from destroying Earth in retaliation. It tells the robot that the damage done to the alien is repairable by their standards, so the situation can still be salvaged. But no direct translation for the phrase was ever written into the script or otherwise. It’s been left to the viewer to interpret the exact meaning, though the gist of it is clear. Fans have obsessed over its exact meaning for decades and even the cast and crew all have slightly different interpretations.

The important thing about the phrase Klaatu Barada Nikto is that it triggered the correct state of mind and action in Klaatu’s robot, Gort. The meaning helps trigger Gort’s action, and it’s extremely important that Gort understand the message correctly, so it’s worth analyzing, but on the level of meaning, not exact wording. Having an exact direct translation might help us, but isn’t essential for Gort or Helen, who brings him the message in the film.

In the same way, the characters in Dark are triggering each other with certain words and phrases. Sometimes the meaning matters, but I don’t think it always does. Sometimes just the sound of the words acts as a reminder to their inner selves of where they are in the cycle and what the next step is. Many of them are following difficult paths and want out, while at the same time their memories are being erased to form the bootstrap paradoxes. They need nudges along the way to keep them following the same footsteps they’ve created in previous cycles.

Are the bootstrap paradoxes a reference to the way history tends to be forgotten in the real world, so that we are condemned to repeat it endlessly, never correcting our mistakes, repeating the same platitudes and religious doctrines to justify our actions?

Images courtesy of Netflix.

  Dark S3E2: The Survivors-It's time to visit Adam's post-apocalypse world, the world without Winden that Hannah & Ulrich spoke of for decades. Like Stranger, those 2 skipped the apocalypse & traveled to previous decades. #DarkNetflix After the Harry Potter costume party of getting to know Martha/Eva's world in S3EP1, in episode 2 it's finally time to visit Adam's post-apocalypse world, which is a form of the world without Winden that Hannah and Ulrich have dreamed of for decades.

[lumilasi]

Random oc facts (updated)

Because I’m bored

and because lot of stuff in this was now inaccurate after having been using my characters more in my stories, so I wanted to update this. 

(Well, to be fair, Wasabi, Reidou and Rankure haven’t appeared in any, tho Wasabi might)

Kain

- his health slowly gets better over the years, so as an adult he suffers less from complications such as vertigo, migraines, nausea, etc. His vision however ends up getting impaired hence he wears glasses.

- He does regain a little bit of emotional range overtime, and initially it is actually dangerous, because he can’t quite handle it. Namely, he can’t handle anger which tends to be the first emotion coming through. Him getting angry can cause his quirk to go out of control and even harm allies. 

- He’s not really available for dating due to being Aro/Ace, but he’d take advantage of someone crushing on him probably, if it could lead to something interesting/help him with whatever he is doing at the time.

- His relationship with Ryuu is difficult to describe; it’s not romantic by any means, but there is a very strong companionship bond between the two that has pretty much majority of the elements romantic relationships have, except the whole romance and intimacy part. 

- That being said Kain is definitely the boss of their relationship, and he tends to be a bit “parenty”/mentoring towards Ryuu, rather than viewing him as his equal. He does always take Ryuu’s thoughts and feelings into accordance, but mostly is the one making decisions. 

- Kain has a bit of a fixation on keeping promises, to the point he has a compulsory need to fulfill them. As a result, he tries to be very careful when speaking and wording things, to make sure he can leave himself some leeway. When his emotions start to creep back however, he tends to be less careful about it which can be taken advantage of by someone. 

- When it comes to the other three, Kain has respect for Reidou due to her babysitting him/trying to help him as a child before she was forced away. He finds Wasabi amusing and is fond of the kid (not as much as Ryuu) and is mostly neutral/disinterested in Rankure.

Ryuu

- Ryuu initially found Wasabi really annoying, but grew pretty fond of the kid quickly and is nowadays almost as protective over him as he’s over Kain

- Ryuu is pretty dumb and not a tactician by any means, he more follows his instincts or Kain’s instructions. He has near unshakable trust towards Kain, and looks up to him a lot due to how smart he is, and how calm he can stay in tough situations - both traits Ryuu secretly wishes he had. 

- Ryuu doesn’t usually recognize if someone flirts with him, he’s bit of an airhead in that department. If he does find out someone has a crush on him, he usually doesn’t know how to react, mostly questioning the person’s taste. While he has a very close bond with Kain, he’s never felt any physical or romantic attraction towards him per say. For Ryuu, Kain is his family that accepts him for who he is, it’s as simple as that. 

- he mostly comes off as brash, reckless and wild bastard who doesn’t give a shit, but that’s not entirely true; when he worries over somebody, Ryuu tends to calm down remarkably and hold back a lot if the situation needs it. Some people who’ve only ever seen his “villain” face would probably not recognize him when he’s being genuinely concerned over somebody.

- He has a wacky horrible taste in fashion, and if he could he’d wear the most random colorful shit he could get his hands on. Mainly because of the tight dress code in the orphanage he grew up in, it’s another form of “Fuck you” to the people who ran it. 

Wasabi

- Often wants to go on a dimensional trip with Kain and Ryuu, his mums usually won’t let him for a good reason

- He was pretty much home-schooled as Rankure couldn’t really bring him to any school initially due to the gang-trouble she was having, and later with Kei they figured his current mind-set would not necessarily be able to handle the setting and could result in him getting hurt, or other kids getting hurt.

- Wasabi almost always carries around a stick or so as a weapon, and he gets really upset if it breaks, sulking over it four hours, or until he finds a better stick.

- Adult Wasabi’s fighting style resembles Ryuu’s a lot with how fast his reflexes are and how much it involves kicking. He’s a bit smarter than Ryuu though, able to think more tactically, though not to the same extent as Kain. 

Rankure

- She tends to still visit her brother Higure’s grave every now and then, though she has to disguise herself when going to the city given her criminal record and the fact some people still have beef with her

- Rankure tends to always jump and perch up to somewhere high if Ryuu catches her off-guard. Her first reaction to meeting him and recognizing him as the infamous villain ’Frostbite’ was pretty much the same - and hiding behind Kei.

- She’s even more afraid of Kain, and honestly thankful the ginger tends to ignore her for the most part. generally, Rankure is easy to startle and scare.

- She loves to floof Kei’s already floofy hair and plop her head/face in there. She also likes to do this with Wasabi.

Kei

- She’s fully aware of how dangerous Ryuu (and Kain) are, but given her distrust in the hero-system due to what happened when she was a teen, Kei has chosen not to make a fuss if they are around, as long as the two behave. Plus calling the cops could just get her GF arrested too. (The villagers of the place they live in don’t really know about Rankure’s background, let alone the two boys)

- She still carries guilt over not being able to save Kain all those years ago, both from his dad and himself, which is also probably why she chooses to sort of turn a blind eye to their presence and occasional actions. You could call her morally grey or ’morally exhausted’ as she likes to put it.

- Kei was primarily the one to teach Wasabi how to read and write, as well as other basic stuff. She was also willing to teach him about whatever caught his interest, be it explaining how rain works, or how sushi is made.

- Generally speaking, Kain and Ryuu tend to lay low around the place, as both respect Kei enough to not cause problems.

[travelingtheusa]

NORTH CAROLINA

2020 Nov 19 (Thu) –Bonnie had a bout of diarrhea and we were getting up every two to three hours to take her out.  Poor thing.  At one point, she was also throwing up.  She got a bad bug this time!

    A brisk, cold wind was blowing in from the ocean.  The temperature didn’t get much into the 50s today.  We stayed around the camper most of the day except to run out to the post office to mail off some post cards.  We also did the laundry. The machines were only $.75.  That was a delight.  Getting ready to move on tomorrow.

 2020 Nov 18 (Wed) – It was a cold and blustery day.  At 4 p.m. we ran out to the store to pick up some rice.  Bonnie started in with diarrhea and we didn’t have any rice to mix with her chicken.  While we were out, we stopped at Michael’s Seafood Restaurant and had dinner. Paul enjoyed black drum, a flaky white fish.  I had salmon. The meal was delicious and they gave us a military discount to boot!  Always, always ask.  You never know who gives a discount and who doesn’t.

 2020 Nov 17 (Tue) – It was a beautiful day today but we did not go anywhere.  I think it was because there is not much to see in this area and we have been to all the tourist stops.  It is disappointing to think that you have seen everything and nothing else interests you.  I certainly hope we are not at that point.  

2020 Nov 16 (Mon) – We drove to Wilmington today to tour the Battleship North Carolina.  When we arrived, there was water flooding the road and the parking lot.  We slowly drove through several inches of water only to find that we couldn’t get onto the ship without walking through water. So I called the desk to see if they were open.  The clerk said they were flooded out with high tide.  It would go down and they would be open around 12-ish.  We think they could have built up their parking area a little.

    We left and picked up pet food at PetCo, then went to the historic part of town on the Cape Fear River to have lunch. The Fork & Cork was a small bar and café.  We both got the specials.  Mine was a mac & cheese carbonara.  Sounded good but didn’t taste good.  Paul had some kind of burger with bacon jam and spicy mayo.  He seemed to enjoy it.

    Heading back to the battleship, we found that the water level had gone down and we were able to park and go into the place.  We spent about 2 hours crawling around the ship.  I learned a couple of new things and we had fun exploring 5 decks below and 2 decks above the main deck although we couldn’t go into the engine room.  The coding machine they used during WWII was top secret.  When a repairman came to fix it, everyone had to leave the room.  Different parts were done by different people so very few understood the entire system and how it worked.  When radio messages were sent, they were entirely encoded – even the name of the ship the message was going to.  So radiomen had to decode every message that was sent out in order to sort out their messages.

    After the battleship, we stopped at Publix to pick up groceries.  After dinner, we walked over to the beach to watch the Leonid Meteor shower.  We brought a sheet so we could lie down on the sand.  It was cold, the sand was hard, and we couldn’t see any meteors even though the circumstances were unusually excellent.  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the moon was nearly invisible; had just the barest fingernail of a shape.  We were very disappointed.

2020 Nov 15 (Sun) – The day was overcast and threatening all day.  We tried to walk down to the beach but it started sprinkling, so we turned around and went back home.  We spent the day hanging around the camper.  Bob & Holly left without ever coming over to visit.

 2020 Nov 14 (Sat) – We went into town to pick up a few groceries.  Drove through Carolina Beach.  It is a very beachy community.  Although there are many people here, it is no where near what it usually is in the summer time when all the beach houses and condos are rented.

    We took a walk across the street to the ocean with Bonnie.  The beach front is very open and expansive.  You can see the Kure Beach Pier in the distance.  The beach is deserted at this time of year and you can see forever.

2020 Nov 13 (Fri) – We packed up and left Elizabeth City at 9 a.m.  It was an easy drive to Fort Fisher AF Rec Area in Kure Beach.  The campground is right off the main road that runs through town along a row of beach houses.  It reminds me of beach row in the Hamptons with all the 3-story pastel houses on stilts fronting the ocean.  Although it belongs to the military and you have to show ID to get a campsite, the campground is open.  It’s not on a base.

There are about 25 sites here.  They are concrete and very, very long with full hookups.  There is a decent amount of space between the sites with trees along the back of the perimeter.  Our window looks out at the ocean side and all the pastel homes and cottages built adjacent to the roadway.  

Fort Fisher must have made a lot of money selling the property to beach goers.  If you don’t turn into the campground and just drive straight down the road, you go into the Fort itself.  It was a civil war fort and there are breastworks that visitors can wander around. There is also an aquarium on the beach side.  When we toured it last year, there were Christmas trees all over the building.  

We were here last year just after the area had been hit with a hurricane.  Buildings were under repair and the reception office was temporarily set up in another building.

We are on a narrow spit of land, like Fire Island back home.  They call this area the Crystal Coast – 80 some miles of outer islands that protect the main coastline.  On one side of us is a bay.  On the other side is the Atlantic Ocean.  We can hear the waves breaking on the shore all day long.

      After we set up, we went to the office to check in.  When we got back, we spotted an orange Class A Motor Home setting up.  It turned out to be Bob & Holly from our Utah caravan last year.  They were the couple that had trouble with their rig. While they were in Las Vegas waiting for it to be repaired, they got married.  We said “Hi” to Bob and promised to get together later when Holly returned.

 2020 Nov 12 (Thu) – It was an overcast and rainy day.   We just hung around the campground all day, getting ready to move tomorrow.

 2020 Nov 11 (Wed – Vets Day) – It was a rainy, overcast, nasty day today.  We stayed in the campground.  Did laundry this afternoon.  I began work on my book about my time in Iraq.  It’s been 15 years since I was sent to the Middle East. It’s about time I got that damn book written.

 2020 Nov 10 (Tue) – We started a new diet today so we stayed close to home to get ourselves into the groove.  While I was cooking, we turned on the Magic Fan to help exhaust the heat in the kitchen. Weirdly, the fan would not turn off. We flipped switches, checked fuses, and shut the DC-12 volt system – all to no avail.  Paul finally just cut the wire to the fan.  

 2020 Nov 9 (Mon) – It rained all morning.  The insulation in our rig is really good.  I couldn’t hear any rain.  I didn’t know it was raining until I looked out the window.  Our pop-up camper used to sound like corn popping on the roof when it rained.  This is much quieter.

     We had lunch then drove to WalMart to pick up groceries.  We’re starting a new diet tomorrow.  Trying Keto this time.  We’ll see how things go.

2020 Nov 8 (Sun) – We drove into New Bern today.  We had been there last year when we drove through here but the North Caroline History Center was closed then.  The historical houses in the complex were closed.  There was a small museum inside the visitor center that covered the history of the state and city.  At 1:30 p.m., we went to the Tryone Palace.  It was and the first capitol of North Carolina from 1770 to 1794. The original palace kitchen burned down in 1798, leaving only the stable intact.  In 1952, two ladies from the historical society found the original architectural plans for the property.  They bought it, raised money, and rebuilt the palace and kitchen according to the original plans.  With the Revolutionary War looming on the horizon, the governor fled to New York, fearing for his personal safety.  There were docents in every room on the first floor and in the basement (we weren’t allowed to tour the upper floors).

     We walked down the Main Street and stopped at a café for lunch. I had tuna on a croissant and Paul had a gyro sandwich.  Everything was tasty.

     On the drive back to the base, we stopped at the Junkyard Market.  It was an intriguing place with lots of odds and ends out on the street to attract visitors.  We walked through the building, looking at all the knick-knacks.

     Back in the car, we drove through a nearby development when Paul spotted a sign there were new homes for sale.  We thought we would go through a couple of model homes but there weren’t any.  So after driving around the neighborhood, we returned to the campground.

2020 Nov 7 (Sat) – It was a very delightful day. After letting the animals have outdoor time, we headed out to the Crystal Coast to tour Fort Macon.  It was a small but very neat confederate fort built on the Atlantic coast.  We realized how big some of the other forts were that we have toured after seeing this one. There were 3 forts built on the site. The first was Fort Dobbs in 1756.  It was never completed and allowed to fall into disrepair.  The second fort (Fort Hampton) was built in 1808.  It defended Beaufort Harbor during the War of 1812. A hurricane eroded the inlet in 1825 so Fort Macon was built between 1826 and 1834.  In 1862, union forces attacked and captured the fort.  The fort was used during the Civil War, the Spanish American War, and World War II.  It served as a military prison from 1862 to 1877.  The property was purchased by the state and became the first state park in North Carolina in 1936.

     We then drove into Beaufort and explored the Old Burying Ground.  The historical society normally conducts tours of the site but because of the coronavirus, nobody was giving any tours.  There are graves of confederate and union soldiers as well as slaves and freemen.  It was such a mish mash of gravesites.  It looked like a lot of them had concrete coverings over the bodies.  The large cemetery had graves laying every which way. It’s like they came in, looked around, and said, “There’s a spot.”  It was crazy!

     We then walked around the block and explored the historic site where there were many houses that had been built in the 1700s. Most of the houses had plaques on them stating the year they were built and who lived there.  We stopped at the marina to ogle the boats and yachts.  I picked up two kites for our grandsons who we will be seeing over Thanksgiving.  

     We stopped at the Crabs Claw for lunch.  There was an outside deck overlooking the ocean.  We both had the lobster salad.  It was quite good.  Next door was an interesting looking rental.  We asked the waitress about it.  It was 5 units attached as one building, each one with 4 floors with balconies looking out over the ocean.  In the backyard were a barbecue, a hot tub, and a pool.  She said it was rental condos that cost (she thought) about $3,500 a week.  Wow.

     The drive back to the base went over several bridges and past some interesting places – Radio Island, Morehead City, Atlantic Beach.

 2020 Nov 6 (Fri - Paul’s Birthday) - We packed up and left the USCG base in Elizabeth City at 9 a.m.  With only one stop at a rest area along the way, we arrived at the Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Cherry Point in Havelock at noon.  The campground is called Pelican Pointe RV Park.  It is very nice.  There are 30 sites arrayed in 4 rows within an oval.  One row (the one we are in) has pull-thru sites; all the rest are back-in.  All the sites are concrete with a nicely graveled area holding the electric, water and sewer hookups.  Trees surround the campground and there is a water body nearby – called Slocum Creek but looking like a river.  We went out to Del Patron for a Mexican dinner and margaritas.

2020 Nov 5 (Thu) – We hung around the campground this morning.  At noon, we went out to do some errands – get fuel for tomorrow’s drive, pick up pet food, and get lunch.  We ate at the City Grille, a diner type café.  The food was good and the place was doing a good business. Sheba certainly enjoyed this campground. She had lots of space to run and play in with a tree to climb on.  It’s been nice with the river right outside our window and the USCG aircraft flying into and out of the airport.

2020 Nov 4 (Wed) – I have returned from a week in New York.  The time went fast.  The visit with the oncologist went very well.  All bloodwork is normal.  I don’t have to go back until January.  I also got to visit with my daughter, Gina; my sister and her husband, Susan and Bill; and my grandson, Caiden.  I got to go trick-or-treating with Caiden and his parents.  He was able to hook up with a friend and the two boys had a great time together.  Caiden came to stay two nights with me at the hotel.  We drove out to Sue’s for lunch and swam in the pool at the hotel.  He had a great time and was sorry to see it end. So was I.  I went over to his house and helped his father put together an electric car, which was a gift from Aunt Susan and Uncle Bill.  It was Caiden’s 7th birthday on October 30th.

    It was good to get back home and see Paul and the girls again.  Bonnie actually seemed glad to see me.

2020 Oct 27 (Tue) – We went to WalMart to pick up a suitcase for me.  While looking for my duffel, we couldn’t find it. Paul thought we might have thrown it out after my last trip.  We wound up buying two rolling duffels with the hope that we can take a trip to Australia next year for our 50th anniversary.  

    We then stopped at Currituck BBQ for lunch.  Paul had pulled pork and I had beef brisket.  It was a lot of BBQ.  Next stop was at Enterprise Car Rental where I picked up a Nissan Kicks SUV.  I will be driving to New York tomorrow.  Because of the coronavirus and all the quarantine stuff going on in New York, we felt it would be better for me to drive home rather than fly.  It’s going to be a very long drive – 9 to 10 hours.  Last stop was at Ford where we dropped the truck off for a diagnostic.  The AC stopped working about 2 weeks ago.  You definitely don’t want a non-working AC down here in the south!  Paul thinks it’s the compressor.  We’ll see.

    Finally, we returned to the camper. It has remained overcast and cool all day.  This is such a nice campground.  It was great the first two days before the weather turned foul.  Hope it clears up – for Paul, at least.  I think I’m driving into some bad weather up north.

2020 Oct 26 (Mon) – It was another overcast and dreary day.  We walked over to the Navy Federal Credit Union to use my debit card.  I had gotten an email from them saying I hadn’t used my debit card in the last year and if I did not use it, they would not send me a new one.   What kind of bank cancels a debit card because you don’t use it?  So I took the debit card for the SMART Nomads account and my own account, walked over to the ATM, and used both cards.  I withdrew $20 then redeposited the $20.  How stupid is that?

      We gathered up the dirty clothes and did the wash.  They have a small shack with two washers and two dryers.  The cost was better than the last one – only $1.50 per washer and $1.00 for the dryers.

    Once we had the clothes put away, we drove into town to Lowe’s.  Paul needed to pick up a few things for the RV.  Next, we stopped at CVS to pick up some Halloween candy.  Neither of us thinks there will be any trick-or-treaters here in the campground but I thought it would be a good idea to have something on hand, just in case.  A family was here this past weekend.  They came in on Friday night and left Sunday afternoon.  They had three children and a dog.  Since Halloween will be on Saturday, it’s possible a family might come in to camp.

2020 Oct 25 (Sun) – It was a dreary, overcast day with rain on and off.  Every morning, we wake up to fog that slowly burns off as the sun rises.  The weather during the day has been decent even though it starts out cool in the 50s.  We stayed in all day.  Had soup and grilled cheese for lunch.  Attended church via Facebook.  Watched the crappy weather out the window.  Didn’t go anywhere, except to walk the dog.

2020 Oct 24 (Sat) – We drove to Great Dismal Swamp State Park today.  On the way there, we tried to stop at a Cracker Barrel for lunch but they were crowded and the wait time was 45 minutes.  We left and wound up stopping at a Wendy’s for lunch.  Poor choice but it was lunch time and everything was full.

    When we arrived at the park, we happily found the visitor center open.  After poking through it, we took a short hike on a trail.  It was a raised wooden walkway that wandered in a big loop through the woods.  A bridge passed over the intracoastal waterway.  It is a 22 mile canal that passes through the swamp.  It was very straight and disappeared on the horizon either way you looked.

    We then drove over an hour to Mattaponi in Virginia.  I lived there as a child in the summer of 1963.  It was a 12-room farm on a farm.  I wanted to try and find the place.  I found the town.  I found the river that used to run in back of the house where we fished.  And I found the paper mill that always seemed to stink up the air.  But I could not find the house.  Although the area is still pretty rural with farms, there were more houses in the area than I remember.  I guess 57 years makes a difference.  Lol.  

2020 Oct 23 (Fri) – We drove into town for lunch at Groupers Seafood Restaurant. We ate out on the deck looking out over the water.  It was a very pleasant day.  I got the lunch special – fried flounder, cole slaw, and hush puppies.  I tried to swap out the hush puppies but the waitress said there were no substitutions.  I also tried a red corn soup but it was too spicy.  Paul had clam chowder with a shrimp and scallop casserole.  

    I had our mail forwarded to a UPS package store.  I had tried to call three days ago to make sure they would accept the package but the number on their website was wrong.  It turned out to be some guy’s cell phone.  Their site said they accepted packages so I took a chance and had the mail forwarded there.  When I went in to pick the package up, they charged me an additional $5 because I didn’t let them know the package was coming.  WTH?  First, I paid to have the package mailed already.  Second, I couldn’t let them know it was coming because their number was no good.  And third, I was SAVING them money by their not having to put the package on a truck and bring it to me.  Boy, was I furious!  I was more angry with myself because I didn’t fight the charge and refuse to pay.  I groused and the guy gave me a business card with their correct phone number on it.  A lot of good that did me then!

2020 Oct 22 (Thu) – We packed up and left Blackstone, VA at 9:30 a.m.  The weather was good.  The RV GPS had us driving 40 miles more than what my iPhone GPS said so we followed my phone.  It took us along a lot of local routes but we had no difficulty and arrived at the US Coast Guard station in Elizabeth City at 12:45 p.m.  In addition to checking our IDs, they took our temperature. That was a new thing.  Since I had registered by phone, we already knew our campsite assignment.  We set up then I called to see if we had to come in to pay.  The clerk said no; that she had my card information and would run the charge.

    After giving the animals outside time, we went to the supermarket – Food Lion – to get some groceries.  They had the rows marked one way but nobody but us seemed to be paying attention to them.  It’s funny.  When we first pulled up into the parking lot at Food Lion, I saw several people with no masks.  For a second, that always fuels some kind of crazy hope that we stepped out of the nightmare and finally found a place where no one has heard about the corona virus. Then another person steps into the picture wearing a face mask and the bubble pops.

    When we got back, we found a business card from a fellow SMART member on the door.  Allen & Judy are also staying in the campground.  They are in another part of the base in the same area we stayed in last year.  We were here for Thanksgiving and because the campground was full, we had been assigned to a dirt lot in back of the BX.  We drove over and visited for an hour.  We met Allen & Judy during the Canadian Maritimes caravan in 2016.

[glopratchet]

astryl-wondering

am that is attached to the conciousness of astryl wylde, with his sword drawn and he says "I will not leave you again! and covered in blood and he has no idea what happened except that the angel was a demon as he says 'aargh me had the vilest and foulest cravings of alcohol a few minnites ago and just now meat these subconscious trigger nightmares it was attacked by a wild cat that got inside because of the ripped stitches a nivorite sword that glows with enchantment lays by the entrance and the succubus queen lays torn in half with her wings burned off, "You sure you don't want an explanation about what the hell just happened? in descant ; (we see them above in space, with hearts of flames and they sing in harmony, almost looking like sirens leading sailors to watery graves) for this game and it is important for knowing when to take a break "No thanks, that's quite alright He says as his skin turns an unhealthy green tinged white it is just desert and dying landscape, however a blue hex Designated as "The blackweb" Nearby attracts attention over the past few days for listening to his tulpas, he goes west towards it of not preparing better for fights " What mistakes have you made recently? Looking back on the situation Not being prepared for the demon, as he got lazy with his unity of thoughts and seeing them as beneath him Already regrets for what he said to Meliodas, and no doubt the demon is planning revenge Shutting up the demon, he notices an element of demotivation that has infultrated his followers and displays something reminescent of his old self Astryl tries to remind himself before it all fades away life to the fullest and that phrase inspires him Of course he does not have facial hair but something about these memories seems somewhat real Astryl keeps trying to remember why he decided to devolve himself into these poor acts of debauchery and displays something reminescent of his old self It is foggy but he remembers some fella with nice facial hair mentioning the words live life to the fullest and that phrase inspires him in his eyes and he sees that from the disaster of today, only the center of the storm is as hot as it should be A weather readout finally comes back up in his eyes and he sees that from the disaster of today, soon if he does not get out of here Getting out of here He will finds himself in some dust storm soon if he does not get out of here 's information section From what the readout says, it has been here longer than the storm! much longer! There seems to be some kind of corrupting computer virus that has been feasting on the bits of cludstrum's information section and they are known for hiding out in any dying storm, then expanding from it as it consumes more landscape and mutating with the new intruding elements The creautures feasting on the being of astryl are know as slender smooth hounds and they are known for hiding out in any dying storm, when you try to make an action Both he and the computer are beoging to connect when all this started! The appear out the corners of the screen and gobble up parts of the interface or make the symbols go wacky when you try to make an action Keeps fading in and out as you try to think You finally lose all focus and the two minds engaging one another shut down out of the dozens of a person called alice? A list of contacts comes back on but only one mention can be deciphered out of the dozens of a person called as forms blood red with strange slashes through them All the other contacts seem to squeeked out and are unintelligible as forms blood red with strange slashes through them gibberish really but the gray dots and lines below it remind you of Pre-fall language lessons and you get some meaning from it The name on the contact list is cylopiean anglyphs, right now! Who is this alice you think? But the conditions are not right to travel and see him right now! but all his memory units seems to be intact, you can visit his dreams but it will be senseless dream imagery most likely Cludstrum states that qefizat clencher is going to take a little while to get back online but all his memory units seems to be intact, and the sky is thick with clouds Only then will the qefizat clencher work when it is slightly raining outside and the sky is thick with clouds if you interact but you can ask cludstrum abou tmore regarding his situation The ui will break intermently if you interact but you can ask cludstrum abou tmore regarding his situation he is used to it and they can't be fixed Parts of the displays called mirrors will go on and off line for the duration of the expierence, --astryls system damage will grow and he will suffer from or enjoy fragmented dreams that cause reality lines to interfer A flickering light causes an illusion of flying Untill the code corruption is sealed off and deleted and all the slender smooth hound stds are destroyed --astryls system damage will grow and he will suffer from or enjoy fragmented dreams that cause reality lines to interfer for this text, think the table legs mixed with memories and a lot of confusion How this is achieved is a mystery for this text, the problem is consumable resources are very limited in the sandcity since their arrival Down at the airfield there should be some growing wild, only thus will Cludstrum states that he will need some cucumber to fix some of the issues, if he keep paralizing himself into dreaming impossible dreams he decide if the disturbances to his mind are worth the small chance of maybe finding something Astryl considers the fact that he might be thirsty and hungry if he keep paralizing himself into dreaming impossible dreams The plover on his earth simile seems to shake it's head, looking worried for astryl waaagh! nonsense But why would an immortal have need for water or food? or what it even means In order to this the currency exchange must be debugged or astryl does not now what this stuff does or what it even means at the idclip vending machine 's life as thing start to go wrong You hear him yelling but don't comprehend it at first that look like numbers in his sleep, large number of the same food will increase their effects But something is really happening to mentally unravel astryl net --------------- Connecting to mindworlds Connect http: ---- mindworlds net: connected since his cells will automatically regenerate Maybe the palm sized gray orb that fell out of the monster could be eaten, clud was already studying it for shattersouls research in his fists, seemingly random WATCH OUT PUNCHBUGGWOEF! clud studies the log beside clud's left monitor he watches the numbers pour past showing all the memory units that clud has hooked up for him slices that can give some scraps of him to increase system resource so he can graze there later with less penalty Perhaps there are ruins nearby to look for canned food or some such meal there is some sand too but it went down badly last time What should he eat then, scroll Clud seems to be cooing at his monitors as messages appear on them of cyerspace trying to find structure before his searches lead him to the reality of things the world Stupid Blablabla MIND, stupid stupid mind an unseen sinkhole, how deep will astryl plummet? Will the answer await at the bottom? the ruins of the darkwebsite, an offline webpage the astryl used to frequent Let us see if he can uncover some history a cafe that sells coffee and cake to astryl astryl can see an oasis nearby he finds a welcome mat and black slipwashes leading up a very creepy pathway to a doorbell which plays the weirdest thing he has ever heard when pressed there must be some sort of city around this thing chest smacks his jaw into the datatiles, a bunch of information about maintenance concerns that he already knew seems to content just before another file reaches the top rams its keyhole and rotates to the right Two cactii guard the door out inside is congested with a wall of safes The windows are very high, he will not be able to break and enter that way wildly with glee "I'm in a glee, GEEGE! " the tent exclaims in its deepest voice out of his way You swerve your poland launcher and puke some shrapnel into him "His eel is fierce, Garth" under the beige table from the shattered table The guy with scar over his eye crinkles his brow, "Who the sweet mountain are you? "Nobody of consequence" away in the glossy page The kids are swarming all over you now and you cant get out of this predicament the juggernaut's attention You will find a secluded spot called "BLamber" Now you are saved; let us sleep together his juju and laying down some fix There's mass hysteria here as people celebrate chasing back the wasteland through the septic tank It's raining men! No y what? a doppelganger to kill claudius "Over the lab table, dear" himself to calm the nerves The sewers drain into an old abandoned factory with wilders bonkers for population programming a doppelganger to kill claudius behind a broken ferris wheel Kludstrm postponed using doppelganger assassins on claudius the needle into his neck It's very crowded down here, and you couldn't care less about these stuff anyway intelligent life signs in sewer tunnels You shove a pole through his stomach Kludstrm alternating removing your heat signatures from the facility map Hiding is not a fun game when the other person enjoys it more than you do an itch on his shoulder nearby your biological stats to ferric He begins slicing at your nerves and internal organs Why is everyone so obsessed with killing? an argument on izon and closing his eyes The juggernaut is oblivious of the scheme transpiring there his blind eyes with your blood His high priests' reptilian eyes scan you up and down They start buzzing in Church Latin about tangerines Kludstrm zany ripping it apart with glee Glistening, woven metal, plastic and insulation access to the trash compactor room "The plans don't specify traps, right? after ages of freefall The whirring eventually ends with a slight tremor out of the corner of his mouth Kludstrm ghastly winking at you dismissively into the sunlight Are you out of your mind? He's two feet away from us! with sonnenbrand afterglow A knife needs "Let us abandon these clumsy disguises" he whispers slash oxygen using a simple PLANT Kludstrm dull striking with his wrench A vivid image of children drowning in space out hostile forces nearby Silvery beads of sweat plummet down your neck You need a hug, Grandma Company about the potential hostile He punches you, the slug grazing your skull Kludstrm grateful wordprocessing teaching metalworkers to build robots for batteries Kludstrm reasonable storing children's brain waves patterns Can't talk now, you'll die! We're being shot at! the schemata of certain personnel It seems like Klud is trying to tell you something on some cardboard with rainwater Kludstrm indecipherable cleaning the drainage channel of plogiston on doritos Kludstrm silly combating the hostile with what you got Some excessive body heat and an empty flask of fire cusvith with pheromones You're burnt horribly horribly enough to see your skin melt away! You can finally see inside the building, all thanks to izon security Everywhere you look are bunks and machinery your wages on a cryogenesis pill But there are guards every five feet? You hear izonian screams of terror! for her servant? Kludstrm traditional popping a pill and hibernating till the good ol'days beyond the horizon monsters and plants from other dimensions Kludstrm aventine doing Klud's yearly job of hunting roo from you mind A toothless housewife asks people to leave herself and her husband alone You see bootprints going inside like a fairy tale city Their armor may be polished using any available reflecting material, under a full moon The city of beetriot distaff wantonly displaying your tragic DNA matches A riot? for shady murderers The city of beetriot bent looking like a cascading waterfall covered in homes and leave the bootprints untended? and end up making many different footprints even if you stick to unguarded exits? The city of beetriot competent being a haven for the criminal underworld or just an ex-convict trying to stay on the right side of the law? You can't breathe! You're being smothered or drowned You gasp for air, those years of prison definitely caused your diving abilities to lessen they might be gone all together, actually

[wayneooverton]

South Georgia is the most beautiful place on earth

I know, I know, I know. Bold statement or what.

Once I had a boyfriend who used to make fun of me when were traveling because everywhere we went, apparently I always exclaimed “wow, this is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been!”

In my defense, I meant it every single time.

Surely this was, in fact, the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen with my two eyes, that is, until, I went somewhere else equally or more beautiful. But I digress.

Photo by Jarrad Seng

Now seriously, you’ve got to trust me when I now say, I have truly found the most beautiful place on planet earth. Or at least the most beautiful place I’ve ever laid eyes on.

No, no. Don’t argue.

And it’s not Antarctica. It’s South Georgia.

*throws down the gauntlet*

No, not the south of the American state of Georgia, that would just be silly. No offense to southern Georgians, of course, which I’m sure is a delightful and beautiful too.

This time I am referring to the very cold and remote subantarctic island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean. A British overseas territory. Human population: 20. Penguin population: several million.

Also known as the most beautiful place on the entire planet Earth.

If you still find yourself skeptical after the whole “millions of penguins” comment, read on, dear ones.

Now I know what you’re thinking, how can South Georgia be the most beautiful place on earth if it isn’t plastered all over Instagram or I can’t even find it on a map?

Solid question. Respect.

There are still many stunning pockets of this world that few make the journey to or venture out in search of, and South Georgia is definitely one of them.

As an avid fan and collector of unusual and remote destinations, South Georgia has been at the top of my list for a very long time; it’s one of those rare places that when you meet someone who has been there, they can’t stop talking about it.

I’ve joined the club.

Perhaps one of the most remote islands on earth, South Georgia is approximately 2,100 kilometers off the coast of South America. Pretty much the only way to access South Georgia is by expedition ship from Argentina going down to Antarctica.

You have to want to go badly.

Quark Expeditions voyages to South Georgia every year and I was lucky enough to join them last summer on an adventure that also included visiting the Falkland Islands.

The curious story of the Falkland Islands

For many Antarctica is the bucketlist spot, and I can see why since it was also mind for a long time. But reflecting back on a month down under, I can safely say that I would do anything to go back to South Georgia instead.

So, what makes South Georgia the most beautiful place on earth?

Five simple reasons.

It has the best landscapes, the best wildlife, the most crazy weather, the most fascinating history and of course, by default, it’s sheer inaccessibility.

Now come with me on a visual story, a photographic journey with words (is that a thing?) as I try to convince you that South Georgia is, in fact, the most beautiful place on earth. Enjoy!

Falklands (Malvinas) and South Georgia: Islands of the Southern Ocean

1. South Georgia has the most incredible, wild landscapes

One of my first impression of South Georgia was how awestruck I was by the jagged mountains that seemingly jut out straight from the sea, towering above you. Stark and wild, seemingly barren except for birds and glaciers galore, the views are imposing and magnificent.

As a serious lover of mountains, South Georgia was next level beautiful. Everything about the views around South Georgia screamed power and wilderness. A long and narrow island almost 200 kilometers long, the mountain run like a spine the length of South Georgia with many dropping down into the sea with many fjords and bays along the coastline.

South Georgia really felt like polar tundra meets the Alps. With penguins.

Photo by Jarrad Seng

But perhaps what surprised me the most was how lush parts of it can be. While it doesn’t have trees, it’s still quite green, tussock covered mountains and beaches everywhere, not the white void that is Antarctica.

The landscapes are some of the best I’ve ever seen in the world, no exaggeration. It’s like New Zealand or Iceland times a million. And it’s everywhere. There are no bad views. Oh hey, another incredible glacier. Oh, another one. And another one, and wow, look at those mountains.

Honestly my face hurt from smiling so much. And from the wind too. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

Photo by Jarrad Seng

2. The sheer abundance of wildlife

If you love animals and wildlife, well South Georgia is the place for you! I have never been anywhere with such a stunning array of wild animals packed in close proximity with each other and in such huge quantities.

Most of our birdlife here in New Zealand is threatened and endangered from introduced predators and if you see a few penguins, wow, that’s pretty special and you’re quite lucky.

On South Georgia you have to be careful where you walk to make sure you don’t step one; penguins, seals, and all manner of birds are everywhere. With its rich beaches for wildlife breeding grounds, on an expedition to South Georgia with a level of wildlife encounters not possible anywhere else, especially now since rats were eradicated this year.

Seabirds galore, albatross rub shoulders with skua and other rare seabirds while the beaches are covered with fur seals, noisy elephant and several types of penguins numbering in the thousands.

Photo by Jarrad Seng

Photo by Jarrad Seng

The wildlife in South Georgia is out of this world, and much more dynamic and bigger than in Antarctica. It’s noisy, loud and colorful, not exactly what you might imagine when you picture a remote and rugged island in the middle of the South Atlantic. It’s here on South Georgia where you have the possibility of intimate encounters with wildlife.

The Quark expedition team who guides you there give incredible talks about the animals and you’re briefed about keeping your distance and how to behave with them.

Falklands (Malvinas) and South Georgia: Islands of the Southern Ocean

But the penguins and seals don’t follow the rules. I found if I say down for a while and just observed them, someone would come up to me to have a look at this strange creature in a yellow jacket.

And let me just say, being surrounded by curious king penguins on a beach with glaciers behind you and seals in front of you is not something you will ever forget.

3. Crazy weather unlike anything you’ve seen before

We arrived near Prion Island before sunrise on South Georgia; frothing with excitement,I was up while it was still dark and before the expedition team made any announcements on board. Curious, I opened the door to the outer deck.

Well, better said I TRIED to open the door to the outer deck, but got it open about a foot before it slammed back and I was nearly blown over with a wild howling wind unlike I’ve heard before.

Welcome to South Georgia!

Photo by Jarrad Seng

If it were sunny and tropical, everyone would be there, right?

Hmm now I know what you’re thinking, how does crazy weather make a place beautiful? Hear me out.

For me, there is real beauty in wild and unpredictable weather. From stunning rays of sunlight beaming between rain clouds to katabatic winds whipping up the seas across the bay and unusual cloud formations, to even warm still sunny days that make you want to take your coat off, the polar climate of South Georgia really reminds you of where you are, humbles and intrigues.

4. Wow, what a history!

It’s generally assumed that South Georgia was discovered around 1675 during a sailing exploration and was named by Captain Cook (oh hey) a century later, whose descriptions of the enormous fur seal colonies brought sealers over in droves who almost decimated the seal population within a century.

A completely inhospitable land, few have every tried to settle on South Georgia, except for the hardy sealers and whalers of yesteryear.

Request a quote to adventure to the Falklands and South Georgia with Quark Expeditions today!

At the turn of the century, South Georgia sadly became the whaling hub of the Antarctic by Norwegians, decimating the world’s whale population. Six stations were built along the coast and almost 200,000 whales were estimated to be killed here in about 60 years before they were protected.

The scars of the whaling industry still remain on South Georgia, with bones still bleached white on the beaches and the rusted abandoned stations sitting dull red on the horizon.

South Georgia is also the place where Ernest Shackleton ended up after the most incredible open sea rescue journey in history, and you can visit his grave at Grytviken, the only old whaling station that’s been cleaned up and is visitable, complete with a post office and very cool museum.

South Georgia’s history is brutal and fascinating, and easily visible today.

Photo by Jarrad Seng

5. Its utter remoteness

The real beauty of South Georgia for me lies in its sheer remoteness.

Thousands of miles away for any real civilization, every moment here you’re reminded that you have made the journey to the ends of the earth. Unlike Antarctica, very few expedition ships sail this way, leaving its wildlife and landscapes relatively unknown.

In South Georgia you’re guaranteed experiences that will shake you to your very core, that will inspire you and bring you to tears with its beauty. It’s by far the most incredible place I’ve ever been and I’m itching to go back already.

Is it time yet?

Book the Falklands and South Georgia today and use promo code LIZ150 for $150 onboard credit that can be used for purchases on board at the polar gift shop, or, cough cough, the bar

Have you heard of South Georgia? Do you dream of seeing the penguin colonies there too? Are you a fan of voyaging to remote places? Share!

Photo by Jarrad Seng

Photo by Jarrad Seng

Many thanks to Quark Expeditions for helping get me to South Georgia. Like always, I’m keeping it real, all opinions are my own, like you could expect less from me!

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