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n1kolaiz · 3 years

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The Six Realms

Okay, so I was pretty close to giving up on writing analyses but I'm back LMFAO plus I see we're close to 100 followers and I just want to thank you guys for being so very supportive <3

Alright, I'm not sure if anyone's ever written about this, but if an analysis like this exists, please do let me know because I'm kind of curious as to what other people think about this, too!

Remember that time Fukuchi spoke about bringing "about the five signs of an angel's death"?

I read a little bit more about it, and as a minor content warning: this analysis will focus on a few religious aspects (Buddhism + Hinduism). So if I get any of the facts wrong, firstly: I do not mean any disrespect to either religion, and secondly: please do correct me if I interpret anything in the wrong way.

Spoilers for BSD chapter 90 onwards + BEAST!AU under the cut!

So I'll start by talking about the Decay of Angels. As we all know, the members include Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Sigma, and Bram Stoker, and their leader, Fukuchi Ochi. After Fyodor's arrest, the Decay of Angels came into light with Nikolai murdering four government officials in a week. These murders symbolise the Buddhist cycle of existence, or otherwise known as samsara: the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

"We are the Decay of Angels—hiding here as terrorists, a 'murder association', five people who will announce the demise of the celestial world."

Nikolai Gogol, chapter 57

Samsara is described to be a concept beyond human understanding. According to Hinduism, samsara is the physical world where every being has its soul trapped into a physical vessel. The Hindus believe that everything has a soul, and due to a soul's attachment to desire, it is forced into a deathless cycle of being born, dying, and reincarnating into a different body. In Buddhism, the ultimate way to break free from this cycle is by obtaining nirvana.

Nirvana is a Sanskrit word for the goal of the Buddhist path: enlightenment or awakening. In Pali, the language of some of the earliest Buddhist texts, the word is nibbana; in both languages it means "extinction" (like a lamp or flame) or "cessation." It refers to the extinction of greed, ill will, and delusion in the mind, the three poisons that perpetuate suffering. Nirvana is what the Buddha achieved on the night of his enlightenment: he became completely free from the three poisons. Everything he taught for the rest of his life was aimed at helping others to arrive at that same freedom.

- TRICYCLE'S definition of nirvana

As Fukuchi mentions in the panel above, there are six different realms of existence. These realms represent every possible state of existence, but one cannot live in a specific realm forever. Depending on whether or not one's past actions were morally good or bad, an individual is born into one of these realms. Basically, the controlling factor of which realm a person is born into is dependent on their respective karma. The realms are separated into two categories: the hellish ones and the heavenly ones.

The Deva Realm: where beings are rewarded for the good deeds they have done. This realm is void of anything unpleasant. It is basically paradise— empty of unfulfilled desires, any form of suffering, and fears of every kind. Religious individuals, however, do not seek to be born into this realm since its attitude is more or less carefree.

The Asura Realm: where demigods are admitted. Asuras are driven by greed and envy, and may come in conflict with human beings since they are quite similar. They are powerful beings, but quarrel with each other quite a bit, making this realm quite undesirable to be reborn into.

The Animal Realm: where beings are given the form of an animal (you probably guessed that lol). Individuals here don't actually have good karma to take pride in, but rather, they are born into this realm to work off their bad karma (by being slaughtered, hunted, or forced to work, etc). Being born into this realm forces one to atone for their past sins by living out their life as an animal.

The Hell Realm: where one is punished for their evil actions. The most merciless of realms, where one pays for their transgressions through pure suffering, methods of which include: dismemberment, starvation, and psychological/physical torture. However, once a person's term is fulfilled in this realm, they are presumably promised to be reborn into a higher state.

The Preta Realm: similar to the hell realm, in which beings pay for their past sins (specifically: greed and stinginess) by having to survive through hunger and thirst. This realm is also known as the 'ghost realm,' because some pretas are psychologically tortured by being forced to live in places their past selves have lived in. They are invisible to human beings living at that time, which pushes them to face the depths of despair and loneliness. Your typical horror movie, really.

The Human Realm: the only realm where one's actions determine their future. The status (social ranking, physical wellbeing, and so on) of a human being in this realm is determined by their past actions, but due to the fact that a person has their own conscience to differentiate good morals from bad, the actions they commit in this realm have the power to determine which realm they are sent to next.

Okay, so now that I've got that out of the way, let's shift our focus to the Book. Very little is known about the Book, but the basic fundamentals of how it works is that whatever is written in the book will come into existence only if its contents follow the rules of karma. In addition to that, only a few sentences can be written into a single page of the Book, and it must follow the current narrative of the story.

If I'm not wrong, the first time the Book was mentioned was by Fitzgerald, who wanted it to resurrect his deceased daughter in hopes of restoring his wife's mental health. The next time the Book is brought up is when Fyodor's intentions to possess it are divulged; his goal was to decimate the global population of ability-users. And now, the current arc has the Book as its central focus, with a single page in Fukuchi's possession.

[ BEAST!AU spoilers ]

The Book acts as the central point of multiverses, with each character's lives differing from universe to universe.

Dazai committing suicide in this alternate universe stands in sharp contrast with how he decided to start up a new life in the main universe.

Oda staying alive to act as a mentor to Akutagawa in the ADA differs from how Oda uses his death to prompt Dazai to "be on the side that saves people."

And of course, the way Atsushi and Akutagawa have their positions switched in the two universes depicts how different their lives would be if they were given the chance to be mentored by different people— these are just a few examples of how the Book houses an endless amount of possibilities.

[ end of BEAST!AU spoilers ]

Hypothetically speaking, this kind of reminds me of the differing realms I mentioned before, where suffering is promised in some realms, and better things are granted in the rest, depending on one's karma, or the deeds they've done in their past lives. In this scenario, perhaps one's past life can be understood as one's current life in a different universe. That's just a personal opinion though. Take it as you will.

side note: Keep in mind that the person who is more or less impervious to the Book's effect is Dazai, with his nullification ability. I wouldn't want to propose any theories in this aspect (I don't believe I'm fully fact-checked ;_;), but I could use Dazai as a raw example of how your choices affect your future. If Dazai had decided to stay in the Port Mafia after Oda's death, or if he even decided to go through with his suicidal fixations, life would've been different for him in the root universe (obviously, ryley) I mean, you could basically understand that from how he ended up in the BEAST au, but imagine if he really did slip up in his decision-making in any of the universes.

Many analysts have proposed that he went MIA (early in his life) from the main universe for a while to figure out how the BEAST universe worked, whilst having the Book to his advantage. Perhaps his actions were guided? I'm not saying he's all-knowing, but he's sure as hell smart. I'm not sure if Kafka was trying to highlight the concept of karma when it comes to Dazai, but if he is, then I suppose you could say that Dazai is pretty much unaffected by the rules of karma, existing as the centerpiece of all the multiverses. No Longer Human is the namesake of his ability, but the book talks about disqualification from societal norms and generally, the world. I was talking about it with a friend, and they reminded me that Yozo (the main protagonist) was pretty strong in his views against society. Like he didn't speak out of total defeat, he spoke out of defense. If there was anything Dazai actually lost to, it was his guilt— "Living itself is a source of sin."

Then again, that's my personal interpretation since everyone has their unique perspective of his writings. In terms of the actual adaptation, you could translate the word 'disqualification' to 'insusceptibilty' when if it came to the Book's effects on Dazai? This side note is becoming really long lmao anyways I'll link a few theories which afflicted me with brainrot down below.

Another thing before I wrap up, the name 'Decay of Angels' stemmed from Yukio Mishima's book entitled 'The Decay of An Angel.' This is the final novel to the author's tetralogy: 'The Sea of Fertility.' The main protagonist, Honda, meets a person he believes to be a reincarnation of his friend, Kiyoaki, who takes the form of a young teenage boy named Tōru. The last novel of this series enhances Mishima's dominant themes of the series as a whole:

the decay of courtly tradition in Japan

the essence and value of Buddhist philosophy and aesthetics

Mishima’s apocalyptic vision of the modern era

Again, this could be referred to what Fukuchi goes on to say:

Some people view the concept of samsara optimistically, justifying it by saying that perhaps each individual is given a second (third, fourth, fifth, who knows) chance to refine their actions in order to be birthed into a better realm, with their karma being the independent variable.

On the other hand, other people, specifically the Hindus, view the cycle of existence as some sort of plague. To them, the flow of life and being forced to endure the suffering of mere existence in any form was somewhat frowned down upon. Some Hindus viewed samsara as a trap. Besides, having one's soul being limited to a physical body for the rest of eternity was not very appealing, especially since where they ended up at depended on the karmic value their past actions surmounted.

Even so, particular types of Buddhists don't seek nirvana, but instead, like the Hindus, they make an effort to be good people of society, building up their good deeds to increase the likelihood of being reborn into one of the better realms.

As mentioned before, the Deva Realm was the home of angels, the most carefree, gratified beings to exist. Fukuchi describes these angels as the people who don't get their hands dirty, the people who act as the puppeteers of society: politicians.

In terms of parallels, angels were the most fortunate and powerful, but they didn't have anyone ruling over them. A lack of supervision would lead to the abuse of power, which is what I believe Fukuchi was referring to. Deeming himself the Decay of Angels, he sought to prove himself as the 'sign of death that falls on the nation's greed.'

A few fun facts (okay, not really) about Yukio Mishima: he committed seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment) on the day he held a speech to voice out his unpopular political beliefs to the public. Mishima deeply treasured traditions and opposed the modern mindset the nation was advancing forward to adapt eventually. In his last book, The Decay of an Angel, he spoke about the five signs which complete the death of an angel:

Here are the five greater signs: the once-immaculate robes are soiled, the flowers in the flowery crown fade and fall, sweat pours from the armpits, a fetid stench envelops the body, the angel is no longer happy in its proper place.

The Decay of an Angel, p.53

The reviews about this series I've read so far describe Mishima's works to be quite complex; his writings demanded a lot of time to deconstruct and understand. They were highly symbolic, and he was pretty obsessed with death and the 'spiritual barrenness of the modern world.' I think you could attach a few strings from here to the mindsets of the DOA members. Of course, this parallel is completely abstract, but I'll go on rambling anyway:

He should have armed them with the foreknowledge that would keep them from flinging themselves after their destinies, take away their wings, keep them from soaring, make them march in step with the crowd. The world does not approve of flying. Wings are dangerous weapons. They invite self-destruction before they can be used. If he had brought Isao to terms with the fools, then he could have pretended that he knew nothing of wings.

The Decay of an Angel, p.113

I suppose you could resonate Nikolai with that excerpt. As much as Fukuchi takes the lead in this whole murder association, I'd like to believe that each member of the DOA plays an equally interesting part in whatever movement they're trying to execute. Fyodor feels it is his god-sent purpose to cleanse the world of its sins, his motto being, "Let the hand of God guide you." Sigma doesn't know where he belongs, since his origination comes from a page in the Book, and is fueled by the desperation to find a reason to live. Bram holds one of the most powerful abilities which is counted to be one of the "Top Ten Calamities to Destroy the World."

What I mean to say is that the DOA members are incredibly powerful, and they're not your ordinary antagonists (or I'm just biased). It's not just overthrowing authorities, mass genocide, and world domination— you could say that each individual is trying to utilize their purposes to their fullest expenditures, and the way they're trying to assert their plan into action is a little more passive-aggressive (framing the Agency, having a convo with a suicidal dude in jail, etc). They're the gray area between evil and good. As they framed the good guys for their own crimes, they're trying to conquer the bad guys for exploiting the innocent as they please.

This post would definitely age well if all hell breaks loose in the current arc (as if it didn't) and Kafka doesn't give us a happy ending.

That's all I have to say for now I guess! Thank you for reading, and once again, if anyone else something they wanna share, feel free to do so <3

sources (tryna follow Q's example ^_^) :

the six realms

samsara

the decay of angels

beast!au

the book

the sea of fertility

yukio mishima

theory: dazai’s emotional/mental state in beast!au

q’s theory: dazai being the protector of the book

theory: beast!dazai and the book

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glassessence · 3 years

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Elriel Hint and Analysis - includes analysis of Feysand & Nessian (ACOSF Spoilers)

I’m pretty new to the fandom, but I am currently obsessed with Elriel. This is my ship and I will go down with it until the day I die. As a fairly casual reader, I honestly had zero doubts the next book would be Elain’s and that the couple would be Elriel.

Then I discovered the existence of the extra POV chapters and Azriel’s threw me in for a bit of a loop. Especially with the ending (which I genuinely believe is a red herring. I lean very heavily into the lightsinger Gwyn theory).

However, stalking Tumblr made me come across this again:

Life and death and rebirth

Sun and moon and dark

Rot and bloom and bones

Hello, sweet thing. Hello, lady of night, princess of decay. Hello, fanged beast and trembling fawn.

Love me, touch me, sing me.

And then my brain accidentally vomited an essay on the symbolism in each sister’s journey...

Life and death and rebirth so clearly symbolise Feysand’s journey. Feyre leaves behind her life of poverty for a brand new one with Tamlin. She journeys Under the Mountain for love of him and ultimately succeeds in saving not just him, but all of them. In the process, she dies. Not just in the physical sense, but spiritually too. Feyre the human perishes, giving rise to Feyre the High Fae. In a purely physical sense, this is definitely a rebirth. But it’s stilted, incomplete. She’s the newly born phoenix - young, fragile and yet covered in the ashes of its fiery death. Her spiritual rebirth lags behind her newly changed body. Like a bird in a cage, she is trapped in Tamlin’s realm, unable to finish developing, to spread wings and fly.

That all changes when she is whisked away to the Night Court. She learns to read and some of the ash falls from her body. She makes friends and some more ash is brushed away by the Inner Circle. The final remnants of ash are blown away by the taste of freedom and the kiss of wind, and Feyre’s rebirth is finally complete. Spiritually and physically, she is changed. She becomes Feyre the High Lady. From life back to life, she is returned through the power of love. Take note that while love is important in all the sisters’ journeys, it is the focal point and highlight of Feyre’s. She is someone who has never been loved in that wholesome, selfless way Rhysand loves her. Tamlin was possessive and abusive; Nesta was barbed and sharp. Elain was fragile and ethereal. Love was something she had never really known and consequently something she desperately, desperately needed. That’s why the phrase that symbolises her is love me.

Sun and moon and dark refers very much to Nessian. Nesta is the sun and she is burning. Has been burning for a long, long time. She is aflame, nothing but ashes inside, and her words are fire. She scalds anyone who dares approach, just as everything melts before the sun. Like Feyre, she has had her physical rebirth, but not her spiritual one. She is trapped in her own head, locked behind her own self-hatred, her own raging inferno that yields to no one. Like Feyre, she is also a phoenix, but one whose fire never stopped. In that sense, she has never died. Her spiritual rebirth is not simply incomplete; it has never happened.

Until she starts training with Cassian. Until she starts befriending Emerie and Gwyn. This is what marks the death of Nesta the human and the emergence of Nesta the High Fae. (I use the term ‘human’ loosely here, mostly as a way of conveying my point about her spiritual journey rather than the state of her physical being). She loses her solar flare, that inner blaze that was killing her and blackening her soul. She mellows from unapproachable sun to a softer moon. It’s here that she stays a while, seeming to progress and regress in her healing journey as the moon waxes and wanes. It’s not until the hiking scene that she finally breaks. She weeps despite Cassian’s expectations to the contrary. Through her tears, she finally extinguishes the long-raging fire and hatred that has been destroying her. No more blazing sun, no more wavering moon. Only darkness to cradle her, and acceptance. Through Cassian’s ceaseless efforts and her friends, her journey reaches its apex. She finally becomes Nesta the Valkyrie.

Her journey hinges heavily upon the fact that nobody could reach her through the flames. Nobody had kept trying after getting burned again and again. Nobody except Cassian. He reaches out, time after time, even when she hurts him. Even when she burns him. Until he succeeds and touches her soul. That’s why the phrase that symbolises her is touch me.

Of course that leaves only the last line: rot and bloom and bones. I wonder who this could symbolise! Surely not the Archeron sister who is associated with roses and has a complicated romance dilemma with someone from the Autumn Court (rot) and someone else from the Night Court (bones)! Surely not!

Jokes aside, I strongly believe this line reveals Elain’s journey. If we continue thinking of the words as a progression, I think it makes a lot of sense. Keeping in mind the theme of life, death and rebirth, this is how I think of it:

Life / Rot / stagnation, the start of the journey

Death / Bloom / change, the start of healing

Rebirth / Bones / ascendance and acceptance, the start of the future

There are several interesting things to note about the sentence:

The word bloom is nestled among rot and bones

Elain’s two potential love interests both have strong associations with those words

I’ll address each point as we delve into Elain’s analysis.

Let’s start with Elain the human. As previously established, this is when the character is at their worst, blind in the dark before the dawn. I see this as Elain’s forced transformation by the Cauldron. Everything she knows is ripped away from her and her marriage crumbled to dust. She is thrust into a world both unknown and at war. She emerges changed and cursed with powers she cannot control and does not understand. Her life, once a slow-blooming flower, has just rotted into nothing. She is lost, confused and deeply depressed. Her physical rebirth may be complete, but her spiritual rebirth cannot begin until she gathers the shattered pieces of herself back together.

This happens slowly. So slowly, in fact, that it’s hard to notice and easy to dismiss. She befriends Nuala and Cerridwen. Begins gardening again. Talks to the Inner Circle and buys them gifts for Solstice. Slowly, so very slowly, she is starting to piece herself back together. Off-page, she quietly unravels Elain the human and emerges from her cocoon as Elain the High Fae. Like a wilted flower that has dropped its petals, a new season has come, bringing with it new buds. She is blooming, opening herself to new possibilities for companionship, love and for a new self to rise to the surface. But blooms are fragile, newly born things. Elain hasn’t dealt with the full force of her trauma, of her lifelong lack of choice (I’m not going to delve into this as there are so many amazing analyses out there!). She is a trembling fawn, still trying to learn how to walk.

But her spiritual rebirth will remake her. Bones. It’s so different from the previous two words that it really leaves an impact. Blooms rot and fade. Flesh breaks and dies. But bones are strong, the frame that holds up our entire beings. Bones are unyielding and solid, taking no other shape like blood nor bruising like flesh. I see this as Elain standing up for herself, unswayed by external forces that have always governed her life and breaking away from the fragile flower people have always thought she was. By cutting away the rotting flesh, she will reveal the backbone beneath and ascend as Elain the Kingslayer/Seer.

Of course, closely tied to each sister’s personal growth arc is her love interest. For me, I don’t see it going any other way than Azriel.

SJM chose rot not only to represent the ‘life’ section of Elain’s personal journey, but also to represent Lucien. He has connections to the Autumn Court, a season that is often associated with decay and rot, but also with harvest and bounty. Highlighting the negative aspects of autumn invokes a strong sense of wrongness. Lucien is not right for her. Not to say anything bad about his character; he’s just not right for Elain. His presence in the books eats away at her newfound boldness; he rots away the path she is trying to carve for herself.

On the other hand, Azriel is closely tied with death, with blood and bones and shadow. He’s not only Rhys’ spymaster, he’s also his torturer. His association is with bones, a word that invokes a sense of everlasting, of persevering beyond death. Bones is also used to describe the ‘rebirth’ section of Elain’s personal growth arc, the final aspect that leads to ascendance, and acceptance of one’s past and present. Meanwhile, bloom represents Elain herself and the ‘death’ portion of her story, the aspect that heralds change and healing.

Rot, bloom and bones represent both her personal journey and her love interests. It’s all intrinsically linked. Lucien is ‘life’ and stagnation, Elain is ‘death’ and change, and Azriel is ‘rebirth’ and acceptance. As a progression, this is how I interpret the sentence:

By rejecting the bond with Lucien, she is stepping into herself and forging something everlasting with Azriel.

Lastly, let’s not forget that the phrase symbolising her is sing me. This didn’t make much sense to me until I read Azriel’s bonus POV. In it, he confesses to Gwyn that he does sing. Why include this if it’s not a subtle callback to this prophetic paragraph in ACOMAF? It feels like a treat to hardcore fans who like finding all the little connections (since they’re the ones most likely to have read the bonus chapters). The fact that Gwyn also sings signals to me there’s an important plot point regarding song. Maybe homegirl Elain will be forced to throw a hardcore metal concert to save Az XD Wouldn’t that be a plot twist HAHAHA.

I don’t know when SJM started planting seeds for Elriel in any serious capacity, so perhaps I am reading WAY too much into this. Either way, I am super keen for the next book!

Please feel free to comment and let me know your thoughts! I am desperate for Elriel right now hahaha. Thanks for reading!

OH, BUT ONE MORE THING.

The greetings are really interesting. Sweet thing obviously refers to Feyre. Lady of night and princess of decay are clearly meant for Nesta.

Fanged beast and trembling fawn are left for Elain. It’s easy to write this off as being about her LI and herself, respectively, but I don’t know. The sentences build upon each other. A single moniker grows to two - the first separated by a comma, the second expanding to use an and. It’s something you see a lot in poetry, generally used to emphasise a point. I’m not entirely sure what the point is; it might just be a nice writing flourish, but wouldn’t it be interesting if both those statements were referring to Elain herself? Wouldn’t it just be juicy?

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shinydelirium · 3 years

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MLQC Season 2 Chapter 12 (Kiro) Part 8 [Lighthouse] & [Gaze of Time] Translation [CN]

***SPOILERS*** THIS POST CONTAINS HEAVY SPOILERS FOR CONTENT NOT YET RELEASED ON EN SERVER!!! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!***

For previous translations of Season 2 Chapter 12: Part 1/ Part 2/ Part 3/ Part 4/ Part 5/ Part 6/ Part 7

I combined two parts for this post. Enjoy~

[Lighthouse]

As we stood on the last step, we were only able to see some faint pictures.

The run-down walls looked extremely gloomy and terrible in the endless darkness.

It seems to be much bigger than we thought.

MC: Did we uncover a tomb that hasn’t been dug up? Those tomb raider novels are written like this… ***I’m getting Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider vibes***

Helios: Stay here.

With those few words, Helios walked towards the visible wall in the distance.

MC: Be careful.

I looked around cautiously, walked down the steps carefully and stepped on the ground where Helios was before.

At the same time, a thin golden thread lit up between the floor tiles. It stretched outward like an electric current.

Helios: What are you doing?!

MC: …Taking a step forward?

Helios came back to me in an instant, dragging me onto the transparent steps and looking around with cold eyes.

As the lines of light gradually brighten the building like a pulse, the mysterious symbols on the walls appeared like the eyes of a giant beast slowly opening in the dark.

??: We have been waiting for you for a long time.

??: Welcome to the lighthouse.

Lighthouse? Hearing this unfamiliar word, I froze.

The long synthetic sound came from far away. All the lines began to converge into a certain pattern and rearranged themselves. At the same time, some of the text on the wall gradually disappeared.

In this space constructed entirely of golden light, all the shadows connected with the outline of the sliding lines, forming a peculiar shadow on the dark background—

As if—there is an invisible person standing there.

Helios: It’s a trick.

??: This is a misunderstanding.

The lines swayed slightly with the sound. It looked like…it was politely bowing and I couldn’t help leaning against Helios’ back.

MC: ….Is there someone over there?

Helios: Visual dislocation.

MC: What do you mean?

Helios: It’s just a projection made up of lines of electric currents and light.

Helios: Nothing is there.

He even took out the knife in his hand, approached the “shadow figure”, arrogantly positioned the knife where the neck would be, and swiped vigorously.

However, the blade didn’t touch anything and the “human figure” flickered and transported onto another wall.

??: Signal upload, information has been updated.

??: Enable smart trigger mechanism to ensure information synchronization.

??: Data is uploading….update complete.

The mechanical language doesn’t carry any emotion and there was a “didi” sound at the end of the conversation.

??: Human beings will be full of hostility towards the unknown. This is understandable.

??: Don’t worry, there is nothing in the lighthouse that can hurt you.

??: Of course we will not hurt you, special people. ***It knows about Evolvers but its not referring to them as that term. So were they called something else?***

The amiable electronic voice reverberated in the entire space. At the end of the sentence, there was a completely unintelligible language. ***Like the same unintelligible language that was heard in part 6 of Behind the Curtain?***

The light continues to flow and reorganize, making the “human figure” look like it’s stretching out its hands, signaling to us that there is no threat.

Its outline slowly became bright and thick and the entire “shadow” became clearer.

The accentuated light dispersed into light patterns and text around the area, illuminating the interior of the whole lighthouse.***Changed the wording***

??: It seems that you wandered into the lighthouse by accident but it does not matter.

??: Once again, I welcome you and your companion. I am the lighthouse’s legacy—

??: 19.

I cautiously ran to Helios’ side and pulled his shoulders slightly to reach his ears.

MC: ….Why do I find this scary…

Helios: If you know, don’t mess around.

Helios’ fixed his eyes on the figure. His whole body is tense as if he didn’t believe it.

Helios: There is no value in trusting things that are so cryptic.

??: It does not matter. I have a lot of patience to prove to you that we are not malicious.

??: After all, compared to the time of waiting, this kind of time is nothing.

The “figure” stayed in place quietly. The lines on its body trembling slightly. It gave off the impression of a kind, old man.

I poked my head out from behind Helios.

Helios: You just said this is a lighthouse?

??: Yes.

??: Actually, I want to chat with that girl. Your attitude does not look very good.

MC: ….Pfft.

Seeing the swaying lines, I couldn’t help laughing.

MC: How should I address you as? Is 19 all right?

19: You are so polite and cute, of course you can. Where we are from, you will surely be liked by many people.

Helios: Do people there like to talk so much nonsense?

19: That won’t do.

The originally tense air immediately became alive, wafting with the laughter I tried to restrain.

MC: 19, what is a lighthouse? And you just said that you are the legacy here. What....are you again?

19: I am the residual intelligence waiting to meet you.

MC: ?!

19: As for the lighthouse….

19 slowly raised its hand and the floating patterns of light began to surge, turning into indistinguishable graphics and textures.

On the huge wall behind us, a magnificent and unfamiliar picture formed.

19: These are our remnants.

The pattern of light is constantly changing and evolving with different characters and designs that are completely incomprehensible.

It seems to be showing something but it’s so obscure.

As the lines jumped around, huge and unfamiliar buildings were built high and collapsed into nothingness.

A crowd of people gathered and scattered about as if they were roaring and struggling. Finally the images on the wall disappeared one by one.

MC: ….What was that?

19: That was our world.

19: Before your world came, the last civilization.

My brain stopped working for a while and I was stunned. I pinched myself hard and thought that everything in front of me was just a dream.

Residual intelligence? The last civilization?

I turned my head to look Helios. He also seemed to frown deeply at 19’s words.

I thought the restart of time was absurd enough, but I didn’t expect that the world seemed to prefer the moment when people were caught by surprise.

MC: ….Are you also “human beings”?

As soon as I asked, the question sounded a bit absurd even to me.

19: If you use your language and judgment criteria, yes. ***What, so they’re not human beings? Extra-terrestrials? Space aliens??? Istg, if the game introduces aliens into the story, I will lose it...in a good way.***

Helios: Can you prove it?

19: Nothing can be proved.

As it spoke, the sound of gears turned again and the stone slabs on the wall made a loose sound.

Helios immediately held me in his arms, took a step back, and carefully looked in 19’s direction.

While the wall vibrated, the stone slab was slowly opened.

The undisturbed dust rises in the long-lost light, as if waiting has exhausted all their once glory and splendor.

Now, it can only use this last touch of floating dust to meet this world again after a long absence.

Then, it fell silently, mixing with the ash that was already covering it.

Its appearance was hardly recognizable.

19: Can you see anything?

Neither Helios nor I spoke, but looked at 19 quietly.

19: Nothing at all, right?

19: We also know.

19 gently stretched out its hand. The line was deformed as if its palm stopped in the air.

In fact, it touched nothing. At that moment, its hollow shadow looked tired and relieved.

The lines are constantly deforming and flowing, as if with incomparable nostalgia, touching the most cherished traces that have been here.

19: Nothing can escape the erosion of time. The lighthouse is something we can keep in this world….***Their technology must be quite advanced to be able to make this lighthouse and survive all this time for it to be discovered. Something like this is definitely right up Kiro’s expertise.***

19: The greatest miracle.

Helios: If that’s the case…

Helios: With your technical ability, why would it disappear?

A long laugh echoed in the lighthouse with a hint of weariness.

19: We are not the first civilization to disappear in this world.

19: Likewise, it will not be the last one.

[Gaze of Time]

My brain went blank.

I don’t know whether I should believe in such a strange and ridiculous voice and to believe that this world was as prosperous as it was hundreds of millions of years ago.

There may be people who are similar to us, have landscapes, and have the same or different world. They have existed in a real and vivid way.

And there was more than one such world.

Helios: What was the reason for your destruction?

19: It was because we lacked the necessary conditions. ***CORE, the QUEEN gene perhaps....?***

Helios: What do you mean?

19’s body leaned towards me and in that shadow, I seemed to feel a certain kind of gaze coming from the ancient years.

19: It is not up to “me” to answer your question. But other than that, I have a gift for you.

The lines flickered, skipped along the wall, and turned into a passageway.

I subconsciously stepped forward, trying to follow it, but Helios held me back.

Helios: What are you doing?

MC: It seems it wants us to follow.

Helios: Are you so easily fooled?

MC: ….

I met Helios’ mocking gaze, looked back at the flickering symbols on the wall, pursed my lips together, and kept my gaze firm.

MC: Although I don’t quite believe what it says, I think it is very sincere.

Helios: Insincere disguise is only a joke.

MC: Are you talking about yourself?

Helios: ….

He squinted his eyes and raised his head arrogantly, as if he wanted to conceal the emotions.

MC: And I would love to see what the gift is.

Helios: Be careful that you don’t get killed by ignorant curiosity.

His hands weren’t actually too stiff. I stared at him and stretched out my fingers toward the electric light that ran between the two of us.

MC: Helios, do you know what will happen if you cross this line?

He didn’t say a word. He only glanced at the ground and then his gaze returned to my face.

I smiled, and then gently pulled his hand with some force. Helios unexpectedly didn’t resist so I stepped towards the line with my strength.

MC: It seems that nothing happened.

Helios: It’s just a line.

MC: Maybe many things are just a line. Only to be crossed over. ***Changed some wording***

Helios: And if it can’t?

MC: Then think of a way. Two people will always have a way. ***Can’t help but get Light Pursuit date vibes from this scene***

There seemed to be a tremor in Helios’ eyes, holding my hand. His fingertips slowly turning white from his grip.

At last, he laughed softly, with a bit of self-deprecation and helplessness.

Helios: (chuckles lightly) You really don’t know how to give up.

Helios: Then don’t let go.

Before I could reply, he took my hand and walked forward in front of me.

Turning around, we found that the figure had been waiting silently.

19: She is brave.

Helios: Just useless courage.

19: It is precisely because human beings are born with courage that we have to learn to avoid all unknowns and risks.

19 slowly moved along the wall. The mechanisms opened by the rotation of gears paved the way for us.

Looking at its figure, I felt like someone was walking beside me, telling me some age-old stories.

19: It allows you to greet the unknown even if you feel scared and to overcome all the pain for the sake of hope. ***Changed some wording***

19: It allows us to meet you at the end of departure. ***This line reminds me a lot of one of Kiro’s karma bylines from his karma “Stranger”: “I await you at the end of the opposite path.”***

As 19 talked, I found myself arriving in a wider space.

We seem to have come to a place closer to the ground, surrounded by ruins. It seems that someone has been here and there have been signs of explosions.

Unknowingly, it was nighttime. The faint moonlight came in, making me a little startled for a moment.

19’s hand “gracefully” raised, and the patterns of light crossed every fragment of the ruins along the ground and merged together.

Only this time, it’s better than the magnificent picture from before, more refined and more….real.

The entire ruins turned into a theater in a blink of an eye and it seemed to be identical to our current theater.

In the center of the empty stage, there are some small but peculiar instruments that looked like microphones.

19: People of the future, there are not many things in this world that have escaped time.

19: There are many more lighthouses like this one.

19: We try to keep all of civilization in the lighthouse, hoping to leave behind the stories, voices, predictions, and music we hear.

19: We want to fight against time and prove to the world….

19: We have existed.

19: However, only one in ten million can be left behind.

19 opened its hands gently, as if embracing something.

19: But even if one person believes it, we will be successful.

19: Thank you all.

A faint melody came from the empty stage, making me freeze for a moment.

MC: This is….

Helios: It’s a song.

Helios’ voice was soft, with some unnoticeable bewilderment and doubt in his words. His always-alert expression finally began to loosen.

I listened to this song quietly. I couldn’t tell what instruments were and the rhythm itself was very strange. The obscure language and timbre are so distant that I can’t figure out the pronunciation or the content.

I don’t know what is being sung, and I can’t even understand its sustenance or calling.

But I seem to be able to tell from this song that the remote and mysterious world is very real and alive at this moment.

This song is so desperate as if gathering all the hatred. Even if the world collapses, it will leave the last trace of unwilling cry.

But it is full of hope. Even if everything is dead, it still firmly believes that it can be done again.

It carries countless eyes, straddling the endless dark night, and breaking free from hundreds and millions of years.

Finally, reaching to us.

19: Thank you all.

The melody ended. Softly, 19 repeated the phrase again.

19: This is the last song we left in this world. Now it has completed its mission and it shall disappear with me.

Helios: Play it again.

Amidst the emotion of 19, on the empty ruins, Helios suddenly spoke up in a voice that seemed particularly indifferent.

19: I do not quite understand what you mean.

Helios: The song just now, play it again.

19 shook its head, not knowing what he was thinking.

After a period of silence, the same melody and singing was played again. I stared in confusion at Helios with his eyes closed, not knowing what he was going to do.

When the music ended, Helios slowly opened his eyes. He quietly looked at the empty stage like a frozen statue for a long time.

At last, he started walking towards the stage in the middle of the ruins, with some hesitation full of contradictions and some resoluteness that I didn’t understand.

When he stood on the stage, he glanced around, kneeling down reverently and touching the stage with his fingers gently.

Clearly, it was just a projection but at that moment, I suddenly felt as if he really touched the unreachable world.

Helios stood in front of the transparent microphone, his fingers trembling slightly. He lowered his head to watch the transparent phantom and gently covered his fingers.

The cold moonlight was shining down upon his head, as if the spotlight from this world was leaning on him without any cover.

The night sky was full of stars. The theater and stage reflected by the patterns of light flickered with specks of light, which merged into a sea of stars.

Helios closed his eyes and sang softly. The melody that had just circulated in the theater now became his sonata piece.

19: This is….

He almost perfectly restored all the pronunciation and inflection. The arcane and unfamiliar language seemed to be surging with fresh vitality.

All the hatred and love, hope and despair are deeply condensed in his singing.

Helios stands in the brightest place in the world.

His entire being is glowing.

At that moment, I knew that the person standing on the stage was Helios and even Kiro.

I’ve heard that when human beings create language, they make a voice of their own to the world.

As a result, human civilization emerged and it began to expand and pass on the basis of language.

This foreign language is so mysterious and difficult to understand that even now, it cannot be explained. It seems so fragile and meaningless.

But Kiro wrote it down completely. In endless silent times, the world once again heard the voice from that distant civilization.

He is in this world, using his voice to leave a song that only belongs to that era.

He used his method to let that far-off voice pass through the long and ancient night. For the first time, it reverberated.

Helios slowly opened his eyes and stood in front of 19.

Helios: All of you still exist.

The lines on 19’s body trembled and some rustling mechanical noises broke and rang, seeming to be on the verge of losing control.

It seemed to be shock beyond understanding and calculation. It seemed to be joy.

19: Th…thank, thank you. Thank you all.

In the distance, there seemed to be light patterns stretching out and spreading towards the darkness, slowly drawing the outline of a ship, as if it was setting sail.

19: We have always believed that there is one person who is the last piece of the puzzle to break the cycle. The future we cannot push towards, maybe you can reach it.

19: Go. Go to other lighthouses. There are countless people’s research, countless people’s attempts, and countless people’s hopes.

19: After you leave, everything will automatically be destroyed.

19: We…no, the civilization of generations will always bless you.

19: May our failure be a lighthouse to guide you to the future path.

19: Until the next lighthouse, farewell for now.

As the voice of 19 gradually faded into the air, there seemed to be some mechanical clicking sound echoing leisurely in the dark.

-End of Part 8-

***The introduction of the lighthouse has to be the most fascinating and interesting thing that has happened in the entirety of the MLQC story. Actually, I think it’s the ONLY interesting thing that has happened yet. So much info dump and my mind spinning. It took a whole season and 12 chapters of season 2 to finally get to the nitty-gritty stuff. There was definitely some references to Kiro’s R&S: Lonely like the sound of gears turning, countless civilizations, destruction. Plus the “roaring/crying” was mentioned before, vaguely, in season 1 chapter 17. Also, that infinity symbol (8) with all the thorns on it must represent this endless cycle of fate where these previous civilizations always seem to meet their end/destruction after reaching a certain high point and a new one is created in its place and the old one is forgotten or never existed. Hence the existence of the lighthouse- to preserve the civilization in some way and pass on its legacy to the next one. It begs the question of “why”. If anything, the world of season 2 might just suffer the same fate just like season 1. Does that mean MC will have to go back in time to save it and the guys will have to lose their memories once again? How many times will the world restart in order to prevent destruction? I don’t think I can deal with another round of that. The cycle has to end but how exactly? I’m very excited and anxious to find out more about what happens next. When is the next lighthouse?***

#spoilers #mlqc #mlqc spoilers #mlqc season 2 #mlqc season 2 spoilers #translations #mlqc translations #mlqc season 2 translations #kiro #kiro spoilers #helios #helios spoilers #love and producer #koi to producer #mr love queen's choice #mr love game #mr love dream date #mldd

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watarigarasu · 4 years

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October 23rd – Monster

13 Days of Spooky Writing Event

Pairing: Thranduil x Reader

Word count: 1,896

Warnings: Big sad, much emotion.

Author’s note: I really love Thranduil, okay?

During many years of your lone journey through the Middle Earth, you have heard many words describing the King of Mirkwood. Some of them revealed the hidden fear of the Elvenking, some included fascination and some said that he did not even exist in the first place, that he was a made up story for children, just like his whole kingdom. However, there was one term you could not so quickly forget, the one engraved in your memory for some peculiar reason—the one you repeated to yourself while crossing the borders of Mirkwood, wary of what you might encounter.

The rumour that the Elvenking was a heartless monster.

You were familiar with the infamous stories on how he paid no mind to those in need, how little did their lives mean to him, how his egoistic nature caused him to fight for what he believed was right only, how selfish was his attitude and how he considered his kin as above everyone else. Perhaps you would eventually believe in them all if you did not know better than to listen every rumour you hear along the way. Words spread faster than a diseases, every next one changed a little by the mouth they were spoken from and so, you wondered how much of a truth they actually contained.

Contrary to what you imagined to see, the Elvenking did not resemble any kind of monster in the slightest. His grace and pride was undeniable, his beauty outstanding and his voice deeply serene. The weight of his gaze upon you seemed to be enough to crash you to the ground but instead of that, you were invited to the feast as a guest. A storyteller, the one who could share the most recent news about the world outside of the kingdom.

He did not act like a monster when he shared his people’s food and wine with you, neither did he act like one when he was listening to you talking, lazy sight carefully picking out every single detail of your appearance. Firen was the only way he addressed you endlessly, no matter how many opportunities you took to remind him your real name.

You have lost the track of time soon after arriving to Mirkwood, all days melting together like one, the kingdom surrounding you so magical that you forgot about all the evil creeping outside. There was no flesh eating creatures under the magnificent roof with countless waterfalls flowing down the halls. There was no fear between the ancient pages of the books you were eventually allowed to look at. There was no tears during the evening feasts in the forests. There was no pain in dancing all night long in the pale starlight.

There was only calmness filling your soul, the steady rhythm of your beating heart and the utter peace of your soul where apparently nothing bad could reach you. Walking in a dream, you found yourself falling in love with the world you did not belong to and to your surprising notice, you could experience all of it simply because the Elvenking—Thranduil, as you learned—allowed you to.

Simply because his heart was not as cold as the rumours claimed it to be.

“Tell me about your ancestors, firen,” he ordered on one particularly warm day, when the first, vivid green leaves were poking their tips out from the thin branches. It was an early morning, the fog still not fading in the sunlight and it was an accident that you stumbled upon each other—the Elvenking attending his usual morning stroll and you, still not going to sleep after a truly interesting lecture you managed to find in the library, written in a language you understood.

“About my family?” you wondered. “With all due respect, I’m not sure if I can interest you with this kind of story, My Lord. They are no royalty.”

“If I wanted to listen about royalty, I would simply take a look upon the letters my father left me.” His voice was haughty yet soft, like a fresh rime. “I was wondering what kind of people could beget a woman willing to travel alone through the foreign lands.”

“Are you thinking about lunatics or heroes?”

He did not smile at your little joke, but something in his expression changed. Perhaps your words did amuse him, which might be the reason why he apparently enjoyed your company, or maybe it was just the small bullfinch sitting on a nearby branch which caught his attention.

“I suppose we are to find out about that,” he barely whispered, not taking his gaze off the bird.

And so, you started talking, carefully choosing what to say next so you would not bore him with this not so exciting story. Living for as long as all Elves did, you would be surprised if he thought of any part of your speech as even remotely interesting. He has seen it all and much more, already, he has witnessed war, loss and love, he had an adult son and once a wife also. Your history, no matter how much could it mean to you, would soon be nothing but a blink of an eye for him, just as fleeting the seasons were.

You were a whisper on the wind, made to be heard by his ear and eventually fade out.

“Give me your hand.” The command caused you to stop talking in a middle of the sentence and look at the Elvenking confused. A quick motion of his arm caused an expensive robes to move gracefully before he showed what he expected from you. “Like that.”

You did as you were told, slowly outstretching your arm and only then noticing how the bullfinch tilted its head to the right and jumped few times on the branch before opening wings and swiftly landing at Thranduil’s open palm. It was a breath-taking view to observe, the trust of the small creature completely unexpected. You stood in the same position, listening as the Elvenking started talking, while gently stroking the bird’s head with his index finger.

“There is beauty in simplicity, something a race of Men often tends to forget about. Ironically, since they are the ones who should cherish it the most, the gentle passing of time. I find your admiration to save as many moments as possible as equally pointless and fascinating. To know that one day your whole existence will turn into ashes brings out the most primal instincts—but only the wise can focus on the beauty of a fleeting moment. A single memory.”

Slowly, he reached to you and you held your breath when the bird cautiously jumped from his hand onto yours, it’s tiny feet gently tickling your skin and the smile appearing on your lips.

“Not many of the race of Men can find a beauty in evanescence.” Thranduil continued, watching you staring at the bullfinch as if it was the first time in your whole life that you experienced such a moment. “It is a rare ability among those who do not feel the impact of time and even rarer in those who are the most prone to it.”

The bird on your hand with its adorably red belly was fascinating enough that you did not notice the way the Elvenking looked at you, aware that he was going to savour this single image in his memory for many, many thousands of years in the future.

Thranduil was not a monster, although he understood why many were ready to address him as such. He was aware of his doings, of his regrets and faults but he also knew how much does it take to carry the weight of the necessity. Men were foolish, easily led by their own emotions which changed as quickly as the wind, and it was their doom they always brought upon themselves. Perspective makes history look different, the deeds appearing in a light nobody would expect them to centuries ago and it was the ability their kind lacked.

How could they possibly understand what was wise and what not, if they never truly lived to face the consequences of their own actions? If they had no idea what would their descendants have to endure?

The human he decided to invite to his kingdom was no less blind than the rest of her kind, nevertheless he found her presence and stories amusing. It was different; her point of view, the news she brought from the lands far on the east, and he found himself roaming through the halls of his kingdom with head full of the images of her face and the sound of her voice. She talked about the beauty of the lake she stayed by one night in a way which made him feel like a fool. As if it was him, who was blind for this whole time and could not see the world in the same way she did.

Ironically, it was his eyes which were used to seeing more, looking through darkness and illusions.

There was a reflection of the setting sun in her eyes when she spoke about it, a picture so clear that he could almost touch it, as if he was witnessing it for the first time in his whole life. There was a melody in her tone when she was repeating the legends she heard along the way and for some reason he grew fond of it, the excitement being something he has forgotten long ago. There were not many things which could still surprise him, after all, there was nothing to look for, nothing to long for.

Except, perhaps, for the gentle softness of her lips when he imagined how would they feel against his. Would it be different and refreshing, just like her stories were? Would he still be able to enjoy it? Would the kiss bring out new palette of unnecessary emotions from her fragile heart?

He was never a monster, he told himself. The real monsters were out there, in the world, ready to slay the weaker, the ones of her kind. He would be selfish if he did not offer his help to those in need, if he did not provide the food supplies and wine for people from the Laketown who needed it the most after the terrifying dragon attack. The great serpent was the worst monster walking upon this lands and suddenly Thranduil felt grudge for everyone who dared to compare him to the vicious beast.

The Elvenking was never heartless, not in the moment when he was trying to protect his people from the mindless slaughter the Dwarves suffered in Erebor dozens of years ago, nor when he was ready to fight until his last breath to reclaim the gems of his wife—the last physical memory of her that he could still own. But especially not when he was kneeling on the cold, hard ground on the battlefield, holding the body of the human storyteller to his chest and listening to the silence where once her heartbeat was, the echo of a sword slicing the air where he was supposed to stand still loud in his mind, just like her desperate scream and a pitiful attempt to shield him.

Thranduil was never a monster but he knew better than anyone that he was, instead, a fool.

#13daysofspookywritingevent #13 days of spooky writing event #thranduil x reader #thranduil #the hobbit

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travllingbunny · 4 years

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The 100: 7x05 Welcome to Bardo

Here’s finally my belated review of 7x05. I was too busy last week (with actual work) so I couldn’t write it before 7x06 aired. Then I got a bit distracted with my Dark rewatch and Dark season 3 dropping. But I’m taking a break from it to finally post this review and then, hopefully, 7x06 not long after. It’s good that I did a couple of rewatches because I could notice more details. (The review was already halfway over a week ago, so I added some remarks in italics that are things I only think now after seeing 7x06.)

This was an episode I was looking forward to and I enjoyed it, because it finally brought us to Bardo, in the belly of the beast so to speak (note: I wrote this sentence before I saw 7x06, and now I want to keep it because it’s just too funny that 7x06 put Clarke and co. in the literal belly of the beast), where the main action is likely to be, advanced the main plot of season 7 quite a lot, tied a few storylines and showed us Octavia in the present for the first time this season, and - not gonna lie - the highlight of the episode, 1 minute appearance of Bellamy, the first one since the first scenes of the season premiere.

However, I have to say that I wasn’t really impressed with the part of the episode that should have been the most interesting - Octavia’s flashbacks showing what happened to her when she was first taken to Bardo. It served its purpose by filling in the blanks, or rather confirming what I had already figured out, but for one thing, I didn’t get too much character focus in this episode, except for a touching Octavia-Hope scene and Echo’s disturbing actions in the end, which made for a pretty strong scene. And this time I was really bothered by the sloppiness of the details: from just how inconsistent the time dilation rules (rules? what rules?) seem at this point (already a problem before, but this episode made it even worse, especially since it focused on the timeline so much) to the messy selection of flashbacks in the Memory Capture scenes (while the timeline is the writers’ fault, this was obviously a case of the editor being really lazy). Maybe this is just nitpicking, but I find it really annoying when I can’t analyze details to come up theories because I have no idea which detail is a part of the plan and which is just a screw-up.

:Like everyone have some theories, including those about what really happened to Bellamy after his “death”. (At least they’re not even trying to make us believe Bellamy is dead on social media and in Inside the Episode features, like they tried last season with Clarke.)

This is why it ended up being an episode I liked less on rewatch, and I rank it behind 7x02, 7x04 and 7x01, although ahead of 7x03 (and, it turns out, 7x06). Even though the Sanctum portion of the episode was really strong and interesting this time.

Prepare for a lot of nitpicking of plot holes, and me about to incur the wrath of many t100 fans by explaining why I really dislike like the idea of an Octavia/Levitt endgame romance (it’s mostly because of their interactions in this episode).

This was the second episode this season where Marie said “Previously on” (I’m curious how many different cast members do it this season) and I think it’s the first time we saw the opening titles that were released before the S7 trailer, the ones that start with the Bardo Stone Room.

Sanctum

The deluded brainwashed folks in Sanctum who still worship the Primes have a name they have given themselves - the Faithful. And it seems that they call the people who aren’t brainwashed ‘the Fallen’. Has the show ever had such an annoying character as Trey, their leader?

I must say I related to Murphy when he suggested that maybe they should just let them burn themselves if that’s what they want, instead of letting them exert control that way. Yes, I know it’s bad. But that’s one of the things Murphy is good for, to sometimes say things that we all kind of think but would feel ashamed of saying aloud - at least if it was real life. However, Murphy - and I’m sure everyone - changed his mind when he saw they were going to burn children. And the father of the child who was about to be sacrificed (who we now know is called Jeremiah) looked confused and terrified. Maybe it’s just Trey and a couple of other fanatical people influencing and manipulating the others. Unfortunately, real life examples of people doing horrible things - even to their own children - in the name of what they believe in, to make me hesitate to call this too extreme to be plausible. But what is going on in the heads of these people? At least before, when the people of Sanctum were sacrificing their children or other loved ones or themselves, they believed it meant living forever and being one with the gods, but this?

Nelson is becoming quite a likable character even though he has only had a brief scene or two here and there. (And then the show goes and does... whatever the hell they’re doing with him in 7x06.) Like this time, when he was the only one who tried to save the Faithful woman who set herself on fire, explaining that the people of Sanctum are still their people, even the Faithful. (Now this is a much nicer face of the Children of Gabriel. Where was he when CoG were killing Nightblood people/potential hosts, even though that’s not the most efficient way to stop the Primes - as opposed to killing the Primes and destroying their mind drives?)

Great little character moment for Emori when she asked Nelson: “Even though they cast you out?” He probably doesn’t even know how much that resonates with her. Is this foreshadowing her storyline this season? Will she have to interact with or do something for the Grounders - or even specifically her clan, Sangedakru (which also happens to be the clan where Sheidheda was from - and the most likely to follow him if/when they find out who he is, since they seem to consider him their “greatest champion’)? (The latter seems slightly less likely now that Indra seems to have made them respect her authority... but I doubt it’s going to be that easy...)

BTW, speaking of Emori. let me just address the speculation that she’s pregnant - apparently based on the fact she threw up?! She threw up because she got radiation poisoning, FFS. If she were pregnant, the fetus would at least be in huge danger of not surviving. Maybe the writers of The 100 didn’t know or didn’t expect the audience to know about the effects of radiation, but come on, they must be aware that everyone has seen Chernobyl.) And Jackson, a doctor, examined her right there.

Murphy being snarky: “I’m tired of being a hero”. Hmm... when was the last time, Murphy, you were a hero without someone roping you in first, or without you following Emori’s lead or making a last moment decision? However, while Murphy likes to claim he doesn’t want to be a hero, Bellamy told him in 5x01 that Murphy’s problem on the Ring was that he actually wanted to be a hero and felt useless because he didn’t have the opportunity. Still, he’s come a long way since season 1, when he wasn’t exactly that protective of children.... Granted, Charlotte was not an innocent, but she was still a child. And he was 17 at the time, now he’s an adult.

I’m enjoying watching Indra in her new leadership role and her stand-offs with RussHeda. It’s very fortunate that Adina is not busy with AHS anymore, and JR Bourne makes for a fantastic villain - in a completely different way than Russell was. Russell was soft and emotional while also pompous and hypocritical and seemed to believe his own BS, which made him all the more annoying. Sheidheda is much smarter and has no delusions about being a good guy. He’s scary and dark but he also knows how to turn the situation to his benefit and has very rational remarks about how ridiculous the Faithful are with their tactic. He clearly has nothing but contempt for them. “My, my, what foolish little lambs you are.” (Which ties into this season’s themes of Shepherd and the flock.)

We learn more about Indra’s backstory, and this is the most I’ve been interested in Grounder history since... ever?

It’s also quite dark how she manipulates Jackson with his desire for revenge, by keeping the truth from him that RussHeda is not Russell. But Jackson’s dark side of his thirst for revenge for Abby has made him the most interesting that he’s ever been as a character.

I think that this storyline will eventually somehow tie with the main storyline. If nothing else then because Sheidheda and Madi are connected to the knowledge from the Flame, which is connected to Becca and ALIE and events from the prequel. Especially since it increasingly seems like the “great war” that’s being talked about may have something to do with AIs...

Bardo

Timeline and time dilation

Let me get this off my chest first... The timeline of this episode was confusing for some viewers in terms of the sequence of events. That isn’t the case for me - the problem is that the amount of time that was supposed to pass makes the time dilation seem really inconsistent.

So, chronologically, things happened like this:

in 6x08 (some 4 or 5 Sanctum days ago): Diyoza goes into the Anomaly; ends up on Skyring

Octavia goes into the Anomaly 6 seconds later, ends up on Skyring, 3 months (Skyring time) after Diyoza arrived. she gives birth.

Octavia and Diyoza spend 10 years there raising Hope.

Octavia sends a message to Bellamy in a bottle, not realizing the bottle ended up on Bardo (apparently, the default setting of the Anomaly, is: you go from Sanctum to Skyring and from Skyring to Bardo). Disciples capture her and Diyoza and take them to Bardo.

While Hope spends 10 more years on Skyring with Dev, before jumping to Bardo, Octavia is taken to Bardo, tried to run away, then is taken to Memory Capture. This is 45 (Bardo) days ago. She resists at first, but 34 Bardo days ago, she allows Levitt access to her memories and he starts watching them in a more coherent and chronological manner. 31 Bardo days ago, after he’s seen her memories up to the season 3 finale, Hope comes to rescue her.

Levitt helps them and Octavia is sent back to Sanctum, losing her memories, and runs back into Gabriel’s arms (no, I don’t mean it like that and I don’t ship them) - 10 Sanctum seconds after she ran into the Anomaly! (This is still 6x08)

7 Bardo days ago (which is some 2 days ago on Sanctum) or 6x13, Hope (who had probably been immediately captured when trying to save her mother - I guess she and the Disciples spent 24 days waiting for Octavia to enter Hope’s mind code into the Anomaly Stone...) is sucked into Sanctum, stabs Octavia with the tag which pulls her to Bardo. Octavia is brought to MCap again, and apparently Levitt talks to her and then she is brought to the Stone Room to talk Bellamy down. Something happens to Bellamy and Octavia is made to believe he’s dead.

in the present, Hope, Echo and Gabriel (after spending 5 years on Skyring, which was somehow 2 days on Sanctum (?)) jump to Bardo, kill some people, pretend to be DIsciples and listen to Anders’ speech, find Octavia, and see the memory of whatever happened or did not happen to Bellamy.

Now this means that the time differentials between planets have been like this:

Sanctum: 6 seconds = Skyring: 3 months

Sanctum:10 seconds = Skyring: over 20 years (because Hope spent 20 years on Skying and at least a few hours on Bardo, all in those 10 Sanctum seconds)

Sanctum: a few seconds (under 10 seconds, probably a lot less) = Bardo: 14 days (from “45 days ago” to “31 days ago”)

Sanctum: about 2 or 3 days = Bardo: 24 days

Sanctum: 2 days = Bardo: 7 days

Sanctum: a little over 1 day = Skyring: 5 years

See the problem here?

@justbecauseyoubelievesomething pointed out before that the time differentials may vary a lot because of planets orbiting their suns (and Sanctum orbiting its planet and the suns) in elliptic orbits, so distances from the black hole change. However, the problem with this is that 1) they haven’t said that on the show and instead keep talking about the time differentials as if they are at least roughly the same or similar all the time, and 2) these fluctuations vary way too much for it to make any sense? If it was just 1:3 and then 1:7, for instance, OK - but how the heck does the time differential between Sanctum and Bardo go from 1:200,000 to 1:3?

How is this supposed to work? Do people on Bardo go:

“We’re sending a team to Sanctum!”

“Understood! We will need just an hour to retrieve the target!” “But Sir... they’ll return in 20 years! We have to wait till next week, then an hour will be just 7 hours here!”

“All right, we have to wait for the next week then!”

And do these fluctuations happen just between Sanctum and Bardo or Sanctum and Skyring, or also between Bardo and Skyring? The latter would make their prison system quite complicated and tricky!

A couple of other pieces of info -

Levitt put the “Trust Bellamy” note in Hope’s arm during his MCap session (because he knew what Bellamy was to Octavia), but Anders apparently did not realize why Hope was bleeding or that it had something to do with Levitt, though he was the only one who could’ve had any contact with her?

One thing I don’t get is the part where Anders says: “it’s why you’re a prisoner dressed like a savage so you can get close to Aunty O”. Why did they have to dress Hope in Grounder-like clothes, exactly?

We also see that Meredith’s team was told to go to Sanctum and find Clarke - though it’s unclear why they waited so long to send them. Or why Meredith’s team waited about a day and a half to contact Clarke. We see Anders telling Meredith: “Because of the time dilation, no one will come for you if you fail” - and I have no idea that’s supposed to mean, especially since I don’t know what time differential it was supposed to be at the time.

Octavia in Memory Capture

...And I’m gonna nitpick some more.

Maybe it’s not a big deal that many of the scenes we saw as Octavia’s memories didn’t make sense, because they were either scenes she wasn’t present for or scenes from the future (relative to the moment when she was on Bardo the first time), but I expected better, after the wonderful attention to detail in last season’s Nevermind and Matryoshka, where neither the prop masters nor editors and sound editors made any mistakes with what we saw and heard of Clarke’s memories.

So, 45 days ago, when Octavia was first brought to Bardo, and Anders and Levitt were seeing random memories against her will, the first thing she’s told is to imagine someone holding out a hand to her to help her, and we see brief flashes of various memories (aka scenes from the previous seasons) before her mind settles of many different images of Bellamy:

Aurora with baby Octavia

Lincoln, just before his death

Indra - when Octavia finds her and talks to Clarke and Lexa (3x05) - of course this is there because of Indra, but I don’t know if Clarke is also supposed to be one of the people O thinks of: we see her quite clearly as she’s saying she must talk to Bellamy to save their people

and then a bunch of images of Bellamy - which is where things start not making sense, because while we see him

in the Pilot on the dropship (that makes sense)

in season 5 when he argued with Octavia (also makes sense)

but we also see him dressed Gabriel’s cardigan, which he only wore after reuniting with Octavia in 6x10, after she came back from Bardo, and one of the images is definitely from 6x13 when Hope came from the Anomaly (future scenes!)l

we also see the scene where Bellamy was looking for Octavia and talked to Clarke in 1x06 (where Octavia was obviously not present for! It’s also the scene right after the Aurora flashback - the editor were obviously being super lazy)

and Bellamy in an anti-radiation suit in 4x13 when he had to leave Clarke (the only way Octavia could remember that is if she had a telepathic link to her brother!)

Other memories include Murphy in Pike’s class (clearly just as a cool transition from a Murphy scene in Sanctum), but it was really funny how horrified Octavia seemed when Levitt asked her if he was her lover. ;) Levitt clearly got a bunch of images of her friends - including Raven, Clarke (from the Pilot!) and Indra, whose images we see on screen in addition to Bellamy - and he finally sees a bunch of memories of Hope on Skyring, which is what she was trying to hide the most.

At this point, Octavia desperately tries to make a deal with Levitt - he doesn’t mention Hope in his report, and lets her go later, and she’ll let him into her memories. Just before Levitt starts watching her memories in the chronological order, we hear some more of Octavia’s memories in her head (they aren’t showing on the screen, where the same flashbacks as before are playing):

banishing Echo in 4x11

Bellamy deciding to leave her in 6x03 (“Are you out of your mind? You didn’t need to kill anyone!”)

Miller saying “Blodreina gave that honor to me!”

Octavia yelling “You’re dead to me!” to Bellamy (in that disturbing scene in 3x10) and...

Hallucination!Pike telling her she caused a world to be destroyed and herself yelling she wanted “REDEMPTION!” - which is another inconsistency, because comes from a red toxin hallucination that she’ll only have after she returns to Sanctum (in 6x09)! At least you could say this was already in her subconsciousness, but these were supposed to her memories!

When she starts cooperating, Levitt basically binges the first 3 seasons of The 100 - or rather, a version of it where Octavia is the main character and everything is only from her POV - ending with 3x16, which is probably pretty significant, as they showed several moments right before Clarke destroyed the City of Light and the moments after she came back. We see Bellamy telling everyone what to do as they were fighting chipped people to protect Clarke, Clarke on the throne in the City of Light, Pike fighting chipped!Jaha, Pike saving Octavia, and, and after the destruction of the COL, Murphy and Emori hugging, and finally - Octavia stabbing Pike.

This is where Levitt goes “Yes!” - which makes me (and Octavia) feel real tonal dissonance. He reveals himself to be a true Octavia stan, the kind who thinks their favorite character simply cannot go wrong and who doesn’t just defend her and have an understanding and empathy for her motives and emotional states (which is great), but cheers even the bad things she did (which is not great). Now, if Levitt is meant to be a representation of a typical stan, that’s great. The show has, this season in particular (and even in S6 to a point - through Jordan) been dealing with the idea of Clarke, Octavia and other main characters as living legends. And a lot of t100 fans - including every single YouTube reactor I’ve seen - always cheers and says they’re happy when she kills Pike. I didn’t feel that way, so there’s that. And sure, some of that is because I didn’t hate Pike. But what’s more important is: that moment was never portrayed as a triumphant one. (It it was meant to be, it would have been Octavia killing Pike in a battle, or something similar to the scene where Lincoln killed Cage Wallace in 2x16, not Octavia stabbing Pike when he didn’t expect it, after they had fought together and right after he had saved her life. It wouldn’t have shown Bellamy and Clarke worried about Octavia, or made it her ‘start of darkness’ moment that led to her becoming a murder-obsessed assassin in season 4. And 6x09 made a point that Octavia herself saw this act as a wrong one - that she thinks she didn’t have the right to murder someone in cold blood even though she had legitimate reasons to hate him. The show generally doesn’t portray revenge-murder as a good thing. And that is true in this scene, too: we see flashbacks of Pike at his most heroic (fighting chipped Jaha and Pike right after he saved Octavia’s life) before the scene of her stabbing him, and while Levitt is like “YES!”, Octavia seems upset to see that moment again and a tear is falling from her eyes.

So why, then, is the show apparently portraying Levitt’s uncritical stanning of everything Octavia does as a great thing, and why are so many fans and reviewers convinced that Levitt is a great new love interest for Octavia, possibly her endgame love interest, because of his adoration of her and the praise her gives her? (And 7x06 has made me think that, yes, the show is definitely portraying him as a potential love interest.) Yes, I agree that Octavia needs someone to help boost her self-esteem and tell her she’s not a monster, that she’s a good person at heart, that she’s worthy of love. But it would mean so much more if it came from someone who was able to relate to her as an equal and also acknowledge her dark side and be critical of the bad things she did. “I understand why you did this and it doesn’t make you a terrible person” is different from “Everything you did is right and awesome.” I liked what he said about her as a child, how she was even then being responsible and protecting her mother and brother and not just herself by hiding. But it’s absurd to tell someone “You’re not a killer, you’re a warrior” right after you’ve seen them murder someone out of revenge in what most definitely wasn’t a battle or a fight. The fact is that Octavia is both a warrior and a killer. They all are - she, Clarke, Bellamy, all of them. Having a good heart and understandable motives doesn’t change that fact.

If Levitt is supposed to just be a Disciple with a crush that makes him help Octavia, fine, but I can’t see a potential romance there - it would be like a relationship between a celebrity and an obsessive fan.

World-building

This episode was full of world-building info, probably what I liked about it the most:

Levitt seemed particularly interested in Clarke and the fact she was in the City of Light, which makes me think that the reason why she is ‘the key’ in the eyes of the Disciples has something to do with Becca’s tech and ALIE in particular, and that the enemy they’re afraid of may be some sort of an AI.

We finally saw Bardo. Not that it was surprising since we already knew from the opening titles and 7x04 that the compound was underground and that it was a dome with artificial atmosphere and that it included an arboretum, Stone Room, which is on the way to the cells, etc. I checked to see if it matched the layout drawn by Orlando. I had assumed that the numbers were levels in the structure, but while Orlando put Arboretum as 1, it is on level 2.

It seems that all the Disciples were either black or white clothes. (Fits with the black and white way of thinking.) From what we’ve seen so far, it seems that the military, so to speak (fighters/those who jump to other planets) wear black, while the Stone Conductors, people who do the Memory Capture, other scientists, as well as other personnel (like janitors or gardeners/groundskeepers) wear white. Anders himself, the First Disciple, wears white, so I suppose he is one of the “civilians’.

Anders claims that the Disciples have risen above “lesser emotions” and learned to value the collective rather than the individuals. But from what we’ve seen of other Disciples, that’s BS. That may be their ideology, but in fact, they’re just the same as anyone else and just as prone to developing feelings of love and bonds of friendship as anyone else.

Levitt is Level 11! Which makes you wonder how hard the Disciples really check how ‘devout’ the Disciples are. But maybe he’s just too important as an expert,

We see the MCap technology at work. But we also see that it’s not easy to extract memories from an unwilling subject. Levitt has apparently mostly done this to the Disciples themselves (you’d think most of them would be willing, but obviously some were not, since they sound like they already have experience with unwilling subjects.) Levitt tries to get Octavia to comply because he’s a Good Cop by telling her that they may get his colleague instead, who will “burn right through” her brain. (But as we see from the Diyoza flashback in 7x06, that’s not true - the other guy, Kirsch, doesn’t do that when Diyoza is uncooperative. I don’t think they are actually able to do that.)

The Disciples usually send teams every 30 minutes (but these 30 minutes are drastically different on Sanctum and on Skyring!)

More about how the Anomaly Stones work: while Dev told Hope that all you need to do Is think where you want to go and the helmet will do the rest, it’s not actually that magical - in fact, you actually need someone (normally the Conductor) to push the buttons on the Anomaly Stone.

According to Levitt, pulling someone from another planet through the Anomaly is “ safe 8 out of 10 times". What happens the other 20% of times? Is it really being “turned inside out” as Hope said in 7x02?

It’s also confirmed that people lose their memories if they travel without the helmets from a faster to a slower time dilated planet (which I had already figured out based on the fact that the danger only seemed to exist when travelling from Skyring/Bardo to Sanctum and from Skyring to Bardo, but not the other way round).

When Hope was about to leave to save her mother, Levitt tried to tell her: “They have helmets, too, that means that…” – what? That they can see her? Meredith’s team didn’t see Raven, so it can’t be that. But do they have some other way of communicating? Do you have to be actively thinking for them to detect you? Whatever it is, she should’ve listened as she quickly got caught.

Eyes are important as it’s through them that the biometric signature/mind code is made. And the Disciples have a very quick way of painting/tattooing the code on someone’s back.

What exactly is the problem with the atmosphere on Bardo? There is a biohazard alert as Octavia is brought in and she’s checked for some sort of an infection (“she’s clean”). It seems that the problem is with some kind of a disease (especially with what we hear from Levitt in 7x06).

In the category of revelations that weren’t a surprise at all since the fandom has figured them out weeks ago, Gabriel realizes that there is a Stone on Earth (as we saw in 7x04 and in the opening titles - it’s the offline planet), by listening to Anders’ speech where he mentions that the Shepherd delivered them by a stone. (Confirming the theory that Disciples are Second Dawn even before that was technically confirmed in 7x06 and that Cadogan led them through the Anomaly some time after the Apocalypse and after burning Becca. I suppose they disconnected the Stone so unbelievers could not follow them.)

There’s a ton of new info about the history of Bardo. According to the Disciples, the compound was built by “Native Bardoans”, who went extinct before the Disciples got there. And they were supposedly giants, but were turned by something called “Gen9″ into “crystal giants”?! Levitt says that the whole min code could fit on a Bardoan’s arm? (How does he know that?) I call BS on that. The rooms and doors in the compound are tall, but wide enough just for a human-sized person to pass through. (And there are plenty of human buildings with very tall doors and ceilings.) The retinal scans are fitted to the human eye, all the technology is human-sized, and, most importantly, the keys on the Anomaly Stone are the size of a human finger. The whole thing reminds of many legends that various big ancient buildings were built by giants. I still think Eligius III people were the ones who built the compound. We still haven’t heard anything of them and where they fit. And with the time dilation, they could’ve been on Bardo for decades or centuries before Second Dawn arrived a few Earth years later.

What is Gen9? I assume it’s a disease (especially with all the mentions of the polluted atmosphere on the surface), but it’s also been suggested it may be a computer program, which would fit with the idea of the enemy being an AI or connected to AIs. I like the theory that it’s not short from “Generation 9″ but “Genesis 9″, which would fit with the religious themes (the Disciples mix and match a lot of pseudo-Christian and pseudo-Buddhist ideas). Genesis 9 is the chapter about God’s Covenant with Noah, where God tells him that humans should go and multiple and feed on plants and animals, but they mustn’t eat what has lifeblood in it still, and they mustn’t shed the blood of another human being. “I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.“

These are the transcripts of all the prayers and speeches of the Disciples from this episode, as much as I was able to hear them:

[prayer] “In the light of the Shepherd, for all mankind. He will save us from the war to end all wars”

[female speaker] "The Shepherd brings us wisdom. The Shepherd brings us love, for all mankind. (...) Humanity (...) (final days)… burned, (...) as bombs launched, your ancestors chose a different path. There will soon be time when we will be tested to a man, and we will be victorious. For all mankind!"

[male introducing Anders]“And now, it is my greatest honor to present the esteemed First Disciple, who will lead us through today’s lesson on the Book of Allness.”

Anders: “Thank you, Emilio. In the light of the Shepherd, for all mankind!

Let’s first take a moment to acknowledge our newest class of Level 9s. You’ve each demonstrated impressive devotion to the Shepherd. Our predecessors on this planet did not share that faith. Like our ancestors on Earth, they destroyed their world. Even before they were wiped out by Gen 9 and turned into crystal giants, their atmosphere was so polluted they were forced to build forests underground in order to breathe. Even the rain that should fall from the sky, falls instead by their technology. For that, we thank them. But where are they now? We know that by the time the Shepherd delivered us with the stone, the Bardoans were gone, extinct. Why is that? [Someone from the crowd: “They didn’t have the Shepherd!” Everyone laughs. Oh, Disciple humor... ] No, they didn’t, did they? They [unintelligible, Gabriel speaks over this part]… they lost their last great war. That same enemy is coming after us now. But, in the light of the Shepherd, we will not lose. [crowd cheers] We’re close now. We’ve located the key. After hundreds of years it has returned to us. Ours is the generation that will win the last war! Our Shepherd will rise [unintelligible] and we will win (?) this fight, for all mankind!”

Hi, Bellamy! Bye, Bellamy! See ya later!

And for the most important thing in this episode: yes, we were blessed with a rare and joyous moment,, a sighting of Bellamy Blake on screen (and not in MCap but in an actual new scene), as occurrence as rare this season as (probably) the Disciples seeing the Shepherd.

While absolutely no one is buying the fake-out death (about as convincing as Clarke’s in 6x04 or Octavia’s in 6x13, though I now wonder if leaving Bellamy out of the poster and Bob out of the Countdown was a part of the fake-out they committed to), there have been many different theories about what really happened there, if the whole scene was staged or if it even happened or was an implanted memory. (The glitch effects between scenes may have contributed to that theory, but the glitch effect occurred at random points, e.g. when Hope remembered her conversation with Anders, and I don’t see why that would be a false memory.)

For a moment, I even wondered if Levitt talking to Octavia was her hallucination (seeing a comforting figure) because it seemed quite implausible that Anders and the others had only then started to figure out that he got too close to her, and that they were still letting her come anywhere near her. But 7x06 proved I was wrong. Well, maybe Anders has realized Levitt had helped Octavia and Hope and it’s all some elaborate trap where he is using Levitt as an unwitting pawn, though that seems a bit convoluted... or maybe Anders just isn’t actually that smart as we assume he should be.

I’ve never believed in the ‘implanted memory’ theory, and people have since pointed out that there’s a sign of damage from the blast in the Stone Room.

The other prevalent theory is that the whole scene was staged by the Disciples and that Bellamy himself was in on it because he’s been brainwashed. The arguments are - it’s unlikely that Bellamy managed to overpower a few Disciples after being captured unconscious, and that there’s supposedly something “off” about him in that scene because he had been crying just before that. I don’t think there’s anything “off”, and he had learned that Octavia was alive, so why do people expect him to be crying rather than fighting to save her? As for it being unlikely that he killed a couple of Disciples immediately, overpowered another and captured the Conductor - I’m sorry, but have you seen the Disciples this season? They are being killed by pretty much every main character. And maybe some fans see Bellamy as a soft sweet teddy bear of a man and think that only women on t100 are allowed to be good fighters, but canon Bellamy is pretty damn badass and really good at fighting. What would be actually hard to believe is that Bellamy could get brainwashed over the course of a few hours. I’m sorry, but no.

People also said the fact that Bellamy asked what the heck Octavia was talking about when she used the opportunity to tell him that Disciples wanted Clarke (”I’ll tell them everything, even about Clarke”) was a sign he had lost his memories or been brainwashed and that he didn’t know who Clarke was - which is a really convoluted argument. The simplest and most obvious answer is that he was surprised and wanted to know what they wanted with Clarke.

There was actually something odd about that scene - but it was Anders’ behavior. after Octavia said that line about Clarke and after Bellamy reacted to it, he got a very strange look on his face, and the camera was focusing on him. The second odd thing is that the Conductor got very upset at that moment and started begging Anders: “Sir, please, no”, before Anders shut him up - which seemed like an overreaction to the possibility of... what? Letting a prisoner go? This makes me think that the Disciple on the floor detonating a grenade was a part of the ploy by Anders. He certainly was never going to send Bellamy to Sanctum - I have an idea where he actually sent him - but what if he was also signalling something to the Disciple - that he should detonate the grenade? Which would be a smoke screen so Octavia, Levitt and others wouldn’t know what really happened to Bellamy and would think he was dead.

But why would Anders want Octavia to think he was dead? It’s certainly not to make her cooperate, because that was only ever likely to have the opposite effect. But also - why would the Disciples focus on making Octavia tell them more about Clarke, when they could try to use Bellamy for the same purpose? From Octavia’s memories, they must have known how close Bellamy and Clarke are. (Or did Levitt tell Anders that? If he did not, that was an additional reason to suspect Levitt and hide information from him. If Anders was only starting to realize there’s a connection between Clarke and Bellamy, that could have changed his plans.) And they could do more with Bellamy than just try to get his memories. They could use him (his life, his safety) to draw in Clarke, the “key”. If Anders has sent Bellamy somewhere and wanted to hide his whereabouts and make people on Bardo think he’s dead for the time being, the blast could be a good distraction, before he plays that card. (All of this, of course, assuming Anders is actually smart.)

Now, where is Bellamy? He certainly wasn’t sent back to Sanctum, and Anders had no reason to send him to Skyring or Nakara (if he needs him alive and under his control, that would defeat the purpose), And there’s no indication that it’s possible for the Anomaly Stone to send a person to another location on the same planet. So, I believe Bellamy has been sent to Etherea. That would be the reason to finally go to the only planet of the 6 that we haven’t seen yet. I’ve also had the theory that Etherea is the slowest of all the planets - because, if you’re using time dilation as a plot point, why wouldn’t you milk it for its worth? And if that’s the case - good news is that Bellamy won’t get almost any older, but the bad news is that he’s lost all his memories. But not too bad of a news, since he’d get them back as soon as he gets to a faster planet.

This would open some juicy story possibilities...

An Echo of Finn (and Octavia?)

This episode continued the trend we’ve already seen in 7x04 - Hope is becoming more of a killer after her first kill on Skyring, Echo is reverting to her identity as as ruthless spy and killer (and occasionally murderer, as at the of this episode), in her 5-year single-minded mission to save Bellamy and now as a result of believing that Bellamy is dead and her mission was for nothing. And Gabriel is getting more and more frustrated with both of them, especially Echo, and constantly going “will you stop killing people, please?” (Well, not in those words.) (And I’m wondering how close he really got to the others, since they spent 5 years together and were preparing to jump to Bardo, but Hope never told Gabriel about Levitt?! )

There was some irony earlier in the episode when Hope seemed almost ready to attack Anders in front of hundreds of Disciples (she really hates him - I guess because she knew they were torturing her mother), and Echo told her to “pull herself together”, since it was Echo later that lost it, murdered Kirsch the memory capture guy in a particularly brutal way, and blew their chances of using him to get to Diyoza, which would’ve been a terrible blow to Hope if Diyoza hadn’t freed herself anyway, as we see in 7x06.

(Kudos to Tasya for being really good in that scene, she made Echo look genuinely scary. I’ve often criticized her acting, but this time she was really on point.)

So let’s talk about this moment and Echo’s arc this season.

Some people say that this is just a normal reaction to “losing the love of your life” and that everyone would react the same. But we’ve seen other characters lose people they deeply loved, and they did not react the same way. We’ve seen Bellamy react to Octavia’s “death” in S4 and Clarke’s “death” in S6. We’ve seen Clarke react to many of her loved ones’ deaths, most recently to her mother’s. Her grief over her mother was shown in detail over several episodes, and we saw her explode in the end, but while she beat up Russell, she stopped herself from killing him (and Russell was the actual person who murdered her mother and had previously tried to murder Clarke herself and stole her body for his daughter). In S6, Bellamy wanted to kill Russell (again, the actual person responsible for Clarke’s death) and burn the Sanctum down, but he stopped himself. In this very episode, we see Octavia react to her brother’s “death”. which she sees as very real, but she hasn’t started going around and killing anyone she gets her hands on.

Now, Octavia of the past, S3 Octavia, was different, far less mature, more violent, and she did react violently to Lincoln’s death, including becoming a murderer - now, the person she murdered was the one directly responsible for Lincoln’s death, but she also went on to become an assassin and became rather murder-happy, before stopping herself just as she was about to kill Ilian the same way Pike killed Lincoln.

Another obvious parallel is to Finn and the way he was losing control and becoming more violent, ruthless and selfish, from murdering a Grounder prisoner, to wanting to leave Mel literally hanging from a cliff because she was unimportant in his eyes compared to his goal of finding and “saving” Clarke (who, it turned out, didn’t even need saving and had saved herself), to completely losing it and killing a bunch of completely innocent people. The guy Echo killed here wasn’t really innocent, but he wasn’t responsible for Bellamy’s “death”, either, and Echo’s behavior on her quest to save Bellamy has been increasingly violent throughout the season. And, while we knew Clarke was alive and well, we don’t know where Bellamy is but he is still alive and will probably eventually meet Echo again, just like Clarke reunited with Finn.

(Mind you: I don’t think Echo’s killing spree is the reason why Becho will fall apart. The relationship was already disintegrating in S6, if you pay any attention. This is more about Echo herself and where she finds herself without that relationship. Finn’s killing spree wasn’t the reason why Flarke fell apart, either. Clarke still had feelings for Finn, but she had rejected him for other reasons, i.e. his earlier behavior. )

What do all these actions have in common? They weren’t romantic, they were f*cking unhealthy. When Finn told Clarke that he killed all those people for her, she was horrified, and I was really angry at him for telling her something that terrible.

In Finn’s case, he may have been suffering from PTSD, and his feelings for Clarke were turning into an obsession and made him look almost like a stalker. In Echo’s case, she has serious identity issues and her childhood trauma and conditioning by Queen Nia. But the show is, in this case, more open about the fact that, for Echo, it’s not all about romantic love. or love in general. She has lost her purpose. Bellamy is not just her boyfriend, he’s her King, like Nia and Roan before him. Echo’s own subconsciousness has been telling her that this is a problem, and that her relationship with Bellamy is very unbalanced. “Without Bellamy, who will you follow? Without someone to follow, who are you?” It also told her that she has remained the same as before she became a part of the Spacekru and his girlfriend: “Once a killer, always a killer.” ““The honorless spy who would do anything for her queen, even betray the man she now claims to love?” In S5 and S6, Bellamy was trying to not “make the same mistakes”, and “do better”, and was always rejecting Echo’s more ruthless suggestions of how to deal with any potential enemies, and she always fell in line as he was the leader/ Without him, she is reverting to her old patterns.

It’s not romantic or a sign of soulmate love to wrap your whole identity over one person. It’s really unhealthy. It was also unhealthy when Octavia said she didn’t have a home and didn’t belong anywhere after Lincoln’s death because he was “her home”. She had to grow out of that. Maybe she could offer some advice to Echo now. Will it work or not? I don’t know.

What I’m sure of is that Becho is doomed, but the writing on the wall has been there at least throughout season 6, if not already in season 5. What I don’t know is how Echo’s own arc this season will end. She will have to forge a new identity, but what will it be? Will she start following someone else? (That would be a pretty depressing arc.) Become independent, but still a ruthless killer? Will she start thinking about the morality of her actions as most other o the major characters do? Will she fail to find any solution and will die? Not every character on the show gets to have an uplifting arc where they solve their issues. Her arc is different from Finn’s because his dark arc was a completely new and shocking development, while Echo is reverting to who she used to be. But I think it’s more likely that she gets a more positive ending than Finn, because the show has been paralleling storylines in seasons 6-7 to storylines of early seasons (like Sanctum-Mount Weather) but with a more positive outcome.

Best moments/lines

While Bellamy’s 1-minute appearance was undoubtedly the highlight of the episode, my favorite scenes were Octavia’s reunion and goodbye with Hope (even with Hope being an adult now, Octavia talks to her as a surrogate aunt: “I love you, little one, don’t you ever forget it”), the scenes with Murphy and the kids and the battle of wills between Indra and Sheidheda.

The best line by far was Hope’s reply to Anders:

“This is what happens when you value individuals above the collective”

Hope: “It’s called love, you son of a bitch,”

Body count:

One Faithful burned herself.

another fanatical suicide: a Disciple who detonated the grenade (at Anders’ orders?) in the flashback scene with Bellamy

a bunch of Disciples killed, again. For a group that’s supposed to be so badass and scary, they really failing to be that, since they’re constantly getting their asses kicked. OK, they are not all Level 12, and Orlando was both Level 12 and a teacher of fighting skills. And yes, Echo and Hope (and Gabriel, who hasn’t killed anyone so far) have had almost 5 years of training by Orlando, while Octavia and Bellamy (and Diyoza, of course) are incredibly badass even without it. But you can’t keep them getting killed so easily and expect me to take them seriously. This time, Bellamy killed a couple in the flashback, and Hope and Echo killed a few, including a particularly sadistic murder of Kirsch the Memory Cap guy.

Rating: 7.5/10

#the 100 #the 100 season 7 #the 100 7x05 #welcome to bardo #octavia blake #bellamy blake #indra kom trikru #indra #sheidheda #john murphy #echo kom azgeda #hope diyoza #gabriel santiago #cadogan #the disciples #bardo #time dilation #the anomaly

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snicketstrange · 5 years

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The Great Unknown 2.0 - I was partly wrong

On May 24, I was eating an octopus at a themed seafood restaurant. All the waiters were wearing clothes by character, and I felt surrounded by an atmosphere of ASOUE. That's when I paid attention to the octopus suction cups on my plate. Then I had a revelation about the Great Unknown. Because of this revelation, I had to read again some texts, I had to consult a marine biologist, a mechanical engineer, and Laerte. Laerte is an English expert, who knew nothing about ASOUE, so his opinion was completely neutral. And after these considerations I came to the conclusion that I was wrong about the Great Unknown, at least in part.

To begin with: Lemony refers to the interrogation format seen in Queequeg's sonar with being an 'underwater craft' (TGG p 85).

Lemony wrote about the first appearance of the question mark:

"There was a third shape of glowing green light, this one the biggest of all, a huge curved tube with a small circle at the end of it, slithering toward the center of the screen like a snake. But this third underwater craft didn't look like a snake."

So ... There's a big difference between believing The Great Unknown is a submarine in 2007 and continuing to believe The Great Unknown is a submarine in 2019. The difference is the ATWQ series of books. ATWQ explains that there is a gigantic marine animal in the form of a question mark, which moves at high speeds, and is able to be controlled by sounds. So a person who continues to believe in 2019 that The Great Unknown is a submarine is consequently a person who believes there is this gigantic animal in the form of questioning, AND ALSO there is a submarine that was built in the form of a gigantic question mark. That is, whoever believes that the Great Unknowing is a submarine, do not fail to believe that there is also a gigantic question-mark animal in the oceans of the universe of ASOUE. And when I thought better of it, I realized that I have no real reason to disagree with it. In fact, it was I who created the theory called "Daniel Handler duplicates events to confuse you". So, from my lunch at the seafood restaurant, I came to believe that Daniel Handler doubled the Great Unknown to confuse us. And this is not just a non-canonical hypothesis. In fact, the Carmelita submarine explains everything.

The first correct question is: Who built the Carmelita submarine?

The second right question is: Why does the Carmelita submarine have no torpedoes?

The third right question is: Why the submarine Carmelita has the shape of a giant octopus?

The fourth correct question is: What did the sailors of the universe of ASOUE look at in the oceans in the shape of a question mark?

But before answering these questions, I need to confirm to explain what I have found about sonars and echolocation systems used by some animals. I believed that when Olaf spoke about the sonar that the huge question-mark entity possessed, he might be talking about a biosonar. But I was wrong. The functioning mechanism of the echolocation of some animals consists of the following: the animal emits a sound, the sound is reflected by the objects, then the animal hears the reflected sound. Even if the object in question does not emit any sound, it will be detected, for what the animal hears is the echo of the sound that it produced. On the other hand, there are artificial sonars of two types. One of them works using the same operating principle as the echolocation system. The other type works by listening for the sound produced by the objects that are detected.

The wikipedia explains thus:

"Two types of technology share the name" sonar ": passive sonar is essentially listening for the sound made by vessels, active sonar is emitting pulses of sounds and listening for echoes."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonar

Fiona explained which of the two types was the Sonar used at the time in the universe of ASOUE:

"We can tell if any other undersea craft are approaching us by detecting the sounds they make." TGG, chapter 4.

Olaf also did the favor of explaining the kind of sonar that he believed existed in the giant question mark format thing:

"I guess you'd better come with me," the count said wearily. "But no tap-dancing! We don't want to show up on their sonar!" (TGG capítulo 13)

Thus, Olaf certainly believed that the sound produced by the tap dance could cause the Queequeg or the Carmelita to be detected in their sonar. This means that Olaf was talking about a submarine with passive sonar, not a biosonar.

So who could have built that submarine in the form of a giant question mark? Certainly it was the same organization that built the sub in the form of giant octopus. In fact, when you come to that conclusion everything starts to make sense. There is an evil organization that is an enemy of both the firefighting side of the Schism and the incendiary side of Schism.

This evil organization has the habit of building submarines in the form of marine beasts. But the most interesting thing is to understand why this organization had this custom.

And to understand this you just have to understand why the Carmelita did not have torpedoes.

And the answer to that question is so cool ... I do not know if I was the first to realize it ... And if I went, I feel really proud of myself.

The answer is that there are no more firearms in the universe of ASOUE, or at least there are no more firearms in the region where the main story takes place.

But the firearms already existed, and were known. In the play "La Fuerza Del Destino" was portrayed a firearm. But at no time during the ASOUE events or during ATWQ, is a firearm portrayed, not even by villains. I'd rather believe that at some point VFD, by fighting against fire, managed to eliminate the technology of building firearms. So the villainous organization that built submarines of war, needed other mechanisms to destroy other submarines and ships, and even airplanes. Olaf explained how the Carmelita worked in this respect:

"This submarine is one of the greatest things I've ever stolen," he bragged. "It has everything I'll need to defeat V.F.D. once and for all. It has a sonar system, so I can rid the seas of V.F.D. submarines. It has an enormous flyswatter, so I can rid the skies of V.F.D. planes. It has a lifetime supply of matches, so I can rid the world of V.F.D. headquarters. It has several cases of wine that I plan to drink up myself, and a closet full of very stylish outfits for my girlfriend. And best of all, it has plenty of opportunities for children to do hard labor!” – TGG chapter 9.

The way the Carmelita attacked the Queequeg, using the tentacles, shows that the submarine was octopus shaped for functional reasons: in addition to allowing navigation, the tantacles were designed to be used as weapons.

But note the detail: Olaf had to steal the Carmelita. Did he steal from VFD? I think not. One reason is this excerpt from Chapter 9:

. "I'm going to lock all of you in the brig, which is the official seafaring term for Jail." "We know what the brig is," Klaus said. "Then you know it's not a very pleasant place," the villain said. "The previous owner used it to hold traitors captive, and I see no reason to break with tradition."

The idea I have about this dialogue is that the owner already owned a place intended for traitors ... As if that was already part of the submarine's design. It is unlikely that you will create a submarine already thinking there will be several uprisings in the crew, and already create a place to arrest those who revolt if the organization that you are part of is formed by volunteers. However, if your crew is made up of slave laborers, this is more likely. If you stop to think about the means of Carmelita propulsion, you will realize that it was designed to be moved to human labor. In fact, the whole scenario of children being rowing to move the submarine, is very reminiscent of a type of real vessel, called Galley. The wiki explains:

"A galley is a type of ship that is propelled mainly by rowing. The galley is characterized by its long, slender hull, shallow draft and low freeboard (clearance between sea and railing). Virtually all types of galleys had sails that could be used in favorable winds, but human strength was always the primary method of propulsion. Galleys were the warships used by the early Mediterranean naval powers, including the Greeks, Phoenicians and Romans.... It was only in the early 16th century that the modern idea of the galley slave became commonplace. Galley fleets as well as the size of individual vessels increase in size, which required more rowers. ... All major Mediterranean powers sentenced criminals to galley service, but initially only in time of war."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley

If you've already watched Ben Hur you must remember his scene in a Galley. Well then, the Carmelita was built like a Galley. VFD would not do that. Queequeg's propulsion does not require a large crew, only one captain and two crew members. Did the Carmelita come from the incendiary side of Schism? No. Olaf would not need to steal the Carmelita from the incendiary side. The Netiflix Series left those details aside. They showed that the Carmelita came from members of the incendiary side of Schism, but for this they needed to change the original story. In the books, the Carmelita was stolen by Olaf. He can only have stolen from another organization.

And then things get more interesting.

We come to realize that there is a relationship of cause and effect: Why was an entity in the form of a gigantic question mark chasing after the Carmelita? And why was Olaf so afraid of this entity? And why was Windershins so afraid? The answer is as follows: Olaf stole the Carmelita from a maligian organization, which builds war submachines and uses slave laborers. This organization sent an even larger submarine than the Carmelita, to be able to capture the Carmelita back. This even larger submarine had been built in the shape of a legendary monster: Bombinating Beast.

This explains this passage from Chapter 4 of TGG:

"What was that third shape?" Violet asked. The captain shook his head again. "Something very bad," he said. "Even worse than Olaf, probably. I told you Baudelaires that there is evil you can not even imagine."

The organization that controlled that submarine was a common enemy of Olaf and VFD.

And now is the time for me to refer to another movie. The Bugs Life, 1998. (In the Bugs Life, you should remember that the ants have built a mechanical device to simulate a bird. The mechanical passer should cut down the locusts. This bird had used several ant-children as a means of propulsion and control. In a way, this is very reminiscent of the Carmelite. But in The Bugs Life, the real bird arrives and kills the villain at the end. It was something that would happen at the hotel.

I still believe that within the sugar bowl there is a whistle capable of controlling the true beast. I still believe that Beatrice summoned the real beast shortly after picking up the sugar bowl, and who came to control it.

This explains why Windershins first feared the entity in the form of interrogation. He said it was probably worse than Olaf. The word "probably" indicates that he had doubts, whether it was the real beast, or whether it was the evil organization's submarine. If it was the submarine, it would really be worse than Olaf. But the beast was just an animal. Although it was mortal, the animal was not worse than Olaf. After the destruction of the Queequeg, Windershins bet that the question mark was the animal being controlled, and therefore went to meet the animal. And one of Quaqumire said the name "Violet", showing that they were right: Someone like Violet was in the beast's mouth. But if it was the submarine, they would be dead. The certainty of Windershins came from the fact that he had already been taken by the woman who owned the sugar bowl. She invoked the Great Unknown. And by the way, Lemony called this animal that way, because it came across him in his teens. The sailors had seen from time to time the gigantic question mark, because it was actually a submarine created to resemble a legendary monster. Hector went to investigate one of these submarine appearances in the ocean using his balloon. Ah, another interesting detail: by creating submarines in the form of animals, the evil organization made sailors not even suspect the existence of submarines. They thought they were giant animals.

But the right question is: has the animal known as Bombinating Beast been around for a long time, or was it a hangfire creation? Because the statuette that imitates the sound of the Bombinating Beast has been around for a long time, we can conclude that it had existed for a long time. However, Hangfire picked up a rare animal that already existed, and made experiments so that it would get much bigger and much more frightening. The original animal was supposed to be the size of a manatee, so many of Moxie's ancestors did not believe that their ancestor had actually captured a monster, just a manatee. In the same way that legends of giant octopuses arose, there were legends of the giant Bombinating Beast. These legends inspired the evil organization to create its submarines, and inspired Hangfire to come up with a scientific method to increase the size and ferocity of the true Bombinating Beast.

So that's all.

#asoue theory #asoue theories #the great unknown #beatrice baudelaire #windershins #tgg #atwq #bombinating beast

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meta-squash · 4 years

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Brick Club 1.2.7 “Profoundest Despair”

There’s just so much in this section, I’m just going to pick random bits that I’ve written down and go at them. I wrote a lot of notes in my February reread and even more this time.

In this section we start to really zoom in on Valjean. We go from his distant, unformed, sort of numb characterization in 1.2.6 to this deep, intense rage and injury. Hugo makes it clear that because Valjean was ignorant, but not stupid, he is able to think more about his situation and judge it (and others). It is interesting that he says this at the beginning of the chapter, and yet later on his also says that Valjean did not consciously think of any of this stuff or know what he was feeling. I’m not entirely sure how he can think things over and not think things over at the same time?

Valjean really goes for the extremes when he‘s thinking through his internal tribunal. First, he condemns his theft as extraordinary and reprehensible, then he decides that all humans should suffer greatly, then he decides that his punishment was excessive. He reaches the right answer, I think, but the machinations to get there swing wildly in terms of moral opinions.

“He asked himself whether human society could rightfully make its members submit equally, in the one case by its unreasonable carelessness and in the other by its pitiless care; and to hold a poor man forever between a lack and an excess, a lack of work, and an excess of punishment.”

This is such a good criticism of both capitalist society and the prison system. Not only is he frustrated and outraged by the extreme nature of the punishment for a rather minor crime, it’s also a condemnation of a society that, instead of helping it’s least fortunate, forces them into a bare life and a scarcity while expecting them to bootstrap themselves and survive “honestly” without giving them the ability or chance to even do so. They punish a person who desperate for being desperate due to poverty and lack of social/economic resources, but the punishment leaves them socially marked so that when they return to society, they’re stuck in the same cycle of deprivation, unable find work because no one wants to employ a former convict, so they’re left with stealing again.

There are some things that Hugo says that I just have to disagree with. “One may be wrongly irritated, but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is fundamentally right.” Like???? I think people just get angry when they think they’re right, but that doesn’t mean they’re fundamentally right. I’m sure Hugo got into at least one debate where the other person was fundamentally wrong and got angry? I can’t get behind this one, Hugo, sorry. People are angry all the time for stupid and wrong reasons, that doesn’t mean they’re fundamentally right.

It’s interesting, I think, that Valjean seems to have remained rather docile and neutral and empty of emotion or thought until he reaches the prison. Hugo says, “Through suffering upon suffering he gradually came to the conclusion that life was a war and that in that war he was the vanquished. He had no weapon but his hatred.” I think it’s interesting that it’s not just the suffering of poverty and hunger that makes him angry, and he doesn’t condemn society and everything until he reaches the prison. Suffering as a poor but “honest” peasant isn’t enough to reach the depths of hatred. It’s only when he reaches the prison and finds that he’s even deeper in the pit of despair and misfortune that he clings to hatred rather than numbness as a coping mechanism. It’s also not until he reaches this point that his “thoughtful” nature appears. As far as the narration is concerned for 1.2.6, he just kind of goes unthinkingly about his life, numbly doing what he has to in order to survive and for his family to survive. But when he suffers enough for his anger and hatred to flare, so too do his thoughts.

In prison Valjean has “an incomplete nature and a vanquished intelligence,” which I think is Hugo’s way of establishing him as moldable at this point. His mind “wakes up” when he reaches this point of intense suffering, but he’s still incomplete. He’s smart, but society and suffering have smothered his mind etc to the point where, in 1.2.6, he’s just going about life without much substance. Because of his intelligence, he’s able to feel that rage about his situation, and to use it as something to cling to. Hugo says it again when he’s talking about the “spark” in each soul. He really hammers home the fact that Valjean is someone who has goodness and intelligence inside him, but it’s been intensely suppressed and oppressed and needs kindness etc for it to blossom into something true.

Also, Valjean was in his late 20s when he went to prison; he doesn’t decide to go to school until he is 40. That means he’s most of his way through his sentence and extremely mired in hate before he gets an education and learns to read, etc. I think it’s interesting that he’s so mired in hate for so long, and yet when he encounters the bishop and is affected by him, it really doesn’t take very long for him to start to change. It shows the power of kindness, and really hammers home the fact that Valjean really never had felt any sort of kindness in his adult life and that “never since infancy, since his mother, since his sister, never had he been greeted with a friendly word or a kind look,” and that the bishop’s acts really had a huge impact on him.

“At times he did not even know exactly what he felt. Jean Valjean was in the dark, suffering in the dark, hating in the dark. He lived constantly in darkness, groping blindly, like a dreamer. Except, at times, there broke over him suddenly, from inside or out, a shockwave of anger, an overflow of suffering, a sudden white flash that lit up his whole soul and showed all around him in front and behind in the glare of a hideous light the fearful precipices and dark perspectives of his fate.”

Valjean’s anger seems very different from other characters in similar situations. It seems to have more light, more perspective. It seems much more self-righteous and self-preserving. Patron Minette and Valjean’s fellow inmates seem to simply accept their lot in life; they’re desperate but not angry. They don’t feel cheated by the system, they feel cheated by individuals. They do not feel they don’t belong there; they have long since accepted this is where they are, they seem frustrated or sullen, but not white-hot with rage like Valjean. Fantine is desperate and miserable but not angry; Patron Minette etc are violent and conniving but never seem to be outraged at their situation. They are “almost unconscious,” as Hugo says in 3.7.2, due to their “ignorance and misery.” Valjean, on the other hand, is still “incomplete,” I guess?

Valjean seems uniquely aware that his situation is caused by a corrupt system. Which I think is actually really interesting because of what Hugo says about about being outraged if you’re fundamentally right. In this case, the subconscious or unconscious awareness of his intrinsic goodness and “incorruptible element” makes Valjean more angry about his circumstances than someone who is not as introspective or perhaps who has totally given up and accepted their fate.

This chapter also establishes Valjean’s superhuman strength and basically describes him as a parkour master that can climb walls. I wish I could draw because reading the section describing that ability made me want a little animation of a bearded older Valjean leaping around on top of buildings.

“The peculiarity of punishment of this kind, in which the pitiless or brutalizing part predominates, is to transform gradually by a slow numbing process a man into an animal, sometimes into a wild beast.” There’s something about this sentence that is so intense and so descriptive. Again, another excellent criticism of the prison system. Only this time he straight up calls out the fact that pitiless, brutalizing punishment does nothing to help a person or rehabilitate them or do anything but totally break and dehumanize them. It feels vaguely connected to the line a page or so later, in which Valjean would look around him and say to himself “This is a dream.” The ongoing and almost inconceivable trauma of prison and galleys life making it impossible for Valjean and his fellow prisoners not to react to their circumstances in ways that either shut them down completely or make them reactionary due to ptsd.

“As motives, he had habitual indignation, bitterness, a deep sense of injury, a reaction even against the good, the innocent, and the upright, in the unlikely event he encountered them. The beginning and end of all his thoughts was hatred of human law; that hatred which, if not checked in it growth by some providential event, becomes in time a hatred of society, then hatred of the human race, then hatred of creation, revealing itself by a vague, incessant desire to injure some living being, no matter who.”

This paragraph almost seems to be Hugo foreshadowing Myriel’s kindness and the effect that has on Valjean. It makes me think of Petit Gervais, and the way Valjean’s own actions towards the innocent and unsuspecting Petit Gervais clash drastically with the effects of Myriel and start to break down all the walls and instincts Valjean built in prison.

Finally, I have a question that someone more historically inclined might be able to tell me. In the Argot section (4.7.2) Hugo describes the dungeons in the Chatelet de Paris, and says that “Men condemned to the galleys were put in this cellar until the day of their departure for Toulon.” Would Valjean have been subjected to this? Hugo doesn’t mention it in reference to Valjean, so I’m going to assume that isn’t the case, and perhaps it was an ancien regime thing that disappeared with the revolution? I just figured if Valjean had gone through that, it would have been mentioned in this section somewhere.

#les miserables #les miserables meta #brickclub #lm 1.2.7 #brick club #jean valjean #les mis #les mis meta #ugh sorry i'm very verbose #i've been away from the les mis fandom for so long i forgot that i always have lots to say

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nemetonisevilpassiton · 5 years

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Is Teen Wolf Lovecraftian?

Yes, very much so.

Why?

To understand if Teen Wolf is a Lovecraftian horror we need to start by defining our terms and providing comparisons. Lovecraft stories directly made into movies as a whole are just bad, and most video games too. However, using Lovecraftian ideas and tropes creates a successful narrative in most cases.

Several things define the Lovecraftian horror experience.

Isolation both mentally and physically

Lack of character information which is replaced by character reaction.

Lack of information about the world in which the protagonist finds themselves with a penalty for discovering that information.

The revelation that that which was formerly known is now revealed to be unknown and the consequences thereof

Fear of the unknown, specifically the previously thought known

Body Horror, specifically bodily transformation, from which there is no reversal

The insignificance of the subject in regards to the whole

These look specifically vague and you can apply them around a lot, and people do, but you might also notice a lack of tentacles there.

So before we turn this on Teen Wolf let’s present an example that you can understand the points in question

John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982)

A group of men in an Antarctic station inadvertantly let something other into their base.

Interestingly the least Lovecraftian thing in “The Thing” is the thing itself, and wasn’t that a fun sentence to write.

The Americans [as opposed to the late Norwegians] are already at breaking point, isolation - caused by the weather, their close proximity to each other, boredom and exhaustion have taken their toll, they are a brush fire just waiting for a spark, and that spark is the thing. It is not the spark because it’s hunting them down, because that seems almost incidental in it’s desire to just survive and hide despite it’s otherness, it’s the fact that any of them could BE the thing. I’m going to start calling it the alien - it sounds less like I’ve forgotten the word. This will probably cause problems when I move on to Alien (1979) in a minute.

Combined with that Carpenter uses long empty tracking shots (a technique he used in Halloween [1978] ) which creates a voyeuristic feeling which removes the safety of the base. The way that it works matches “The Strangers” (2008) which removes the feeling of being safe in your own home. The rich white affluent suburb with it’s white clapboard houses and wide green open spaces is invaded by “the shape” as he is called the in the credits, and those shots, in which nothing happen, makes the space unknown and terrifying for it. It removes the illusion of safety.

We know almost nothing about the men in the base, we become invested in them not because of what they are but who, they are charming, funny, tired, and very realistic but it becomes hard to remember their names because those things are ultimately irrelevant. Combined with the discovery of the space ship those men are irrelevant, what they undergo is irrelevant, no one is on the other end of the radio, they will not be saved and their deaths serve no purpose. They and their experience doesn’t matter.

In Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) does the same thing, a random ship encounters something vast and unknowable and is infected, the Xenomorph then picks off the crew for no other reason than to continue it’s own species, it doesn’t choose them for any other reason than they are there. The robot’s betrayal makes them even more meaningless, any ship that encountered alien life would do, it just happened to be that one.

The presence of the Xenomorph makes the ship unknown, it could be anywhere. At first they think it’s something small and don’t learn otherwise until face to face with it. They have to use technology they don’t quite understand and can’t really use to find it in their own safe space. A safe space surrounded on all sides by absence - space itself. All the things on the ship which previously gave them safety, the machines that allow them to exist on the ship, are now dark places for it to hide.

In Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) - the only film not to have aliens - Suzy goes to a place that is grotesquely beautiful and just happens to be in the next room to the girl who is investigating it, when that girl goes missing she looks for her and discovers the old witch and kills her to save her own life.

Yet Suspiria, which might be the most Lovecraftian film of them all, has no exposition, most of the characters aren’t introduced, and the movie is mostly experiential, maggots rain from the ceiling, but we don’t know why, the witches are killing the girls in the academy but we don’t know why, instead we have a lurid oversaturated nightmare of a narrative where the dance academy swerves from mundane to brightly lit Roger Corman-esque interior design fantasy. It is a building that if Ludwig II took acid he might design using only primary colours, art nouveau doors, blood red walls and corridors that seem to ooze menace without doing anything, overlaid with Goblin’s infamous soundtrack. Combined with that the actors filmed the dialogue in their own language and English was dubbed over so the characters are not really communicating.

Suspiria is as close to reading Lovecraft (without the racism) as it is possible to get. And it does also feature body horror when Sarah is resurrected by the witches to act as a weapon, despite her slit throat and the pins in her eyes. It is a nightmare on film.

It is also not a film you watch. It’s a film you experience. [The remake is good but very different and not so Lovecraftian, although most of the characters are played by Tilda Swinton, it’s really squinting are you Tilda Swinton too?]

So having given defintions and examples of what it is - does Teen Wolf fit.

Isolation both mentally and physically

It is impossible for the characters in the know to leave the town, and even if they do then they must return.

We see Scott try to leave twice, once in Motel California and again in Ghosted. Both times they enter a phantasmagoric town which is certainly not the outside world. Other characters are taken by the Wild Hunt. Derek Hale manages to leave, but only after “evolution”.

His trips to Mexico are also phantasmagoric in that it is hard to say that they are not dreams, the Calavera stronghold for example uses a lot of dream logic and wonky camera angles giving the idea that it’s not real. La Iglesia does this as well.

Within the town there are those who know and those who do not. Those who know flock together but have to keep their secret from those who don’t. So Scott doesn’t tell his mother until season 2, Stiles doesn’t tell his Father until 3b, Lydia is still trying to tell her mother in s5.

Characters unaware of the knowledge that others know are completely isolated, without anyone to go to, which usually ends in violence, often against themselves - the Chimera.

With as much as the main characters know it is clear that they know very little about the town, as shown by the family of wendigo who were part of the community.

2. Lack of character information which is replaced by character reaction.

We know almost nothing about any of the characters. We know how they react and how they interact, and how they change, but their histories are completely absent. This is as true of the main characters as it is the victims who only appear in one episode.

3. Lack of information about the world in which the protagonist finds themselves with a penalty for discovering that information.

People know nothing, research can present viable answers which are later proven wrong, characters guess in good faith and are wrong, characters lie, but ultimately they know very little about the world in which they’ve found themselves and those who do know often withhold or manipulate that information.

An easy example is Damnatio Memoriae in which Scott discovers what he believes to be the identity of the original Beast, a serial killer in France, who has nothing to do with the Beast at all. It’s a coincidence that the term has been applied. The knowledge is irrelevant and Scott is left with no more information about the Beast than he did at the start, then the person who does tell him, in Maid of Gevaudan, is Gerard and has every reason to lie, and that’s assuming his guess was correct.

The more characters know in Teen Wolf the more likely they are to end up in Eichen House, and Dr Fenris, in 6b, with the information he has, becomes a mass murderer.

4. The revelation that that which was formerly known is now revealed to be unknown and the consequences thereof

The town is a supernatural hotspot and the revelation of that is the entire plot. I think we can agree that that one certainly applies. Combined with that the use of “safe spaces” as battlegrounds, such as the school, the school bus, the sheriff’s station.

5. Fear of the unknown, specifically the previously thought known

Dr Fenris killed the monsters in his care, the Sheriff nearly has a nervous breakdown with the appearance of the chimera, the possession of Stiles and Scott’s reaction thereafter. These all very much apply, even Stiles fear when Scott attacks him in the locker room in pilot. The more people know the more scared they become.

Traditionally in horror the less people know the more they have to be scared of, but in Lovecraftian horror they know enough to fear it, but not much more, often the creature, by its very existence can induce fear (like the Anuk-Ite) because it is so outside the realms of what the human mind can comprehend.

6. Body Horror, specifically bodily transformation, from which there is no reversal

Werewolves. It is worth mentioning here however that there are anomalies in the transformations, almost all of the werewolves speak of pain during transformation, and Derek uses pain to help control it by overwhelming them with pain, but Scott does not. Just as the protagonist in “The Dunwich Horror” finds himself turned into a fishman there is an inevitability to the transformations in certain cases. Derek is on a path to his inevitable evolution. Scott’s natural evolution is subverted, this might be because he never transforms after his black eyed beast form in season 4. His fear of his transformation holds him back from his inevitable end form, yet there is no way he can be human again, no matter how much he wants it.

7. The insignificance of the subject in regards to the whole

Scott is not important because of who he is. He’s important because he happened to be the person in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is incidental to most of the story despite him being the focus character, the world doesn’t care about Scott McCall, it is interested in the True Alpha, but that could as easily be Chuck Norris. Scott isn’t even the true alpha by virtue but for reasons we do not know, Deucalion had no interest in it, Peter thought it was hilarious, Morell manipulated it to save her own life and Deaton worshipped it. Others use it as a target. When Scott says, “I’m a true alpha you don’t know what I’m capable of” it defines the character. Kincaid tells him he’s not as strong as a normal alpha. There are questions around his biting of Liam. Scott is not the Chosen One, he’s the one that was there and that’s ignoring his questionable behaviour and the very strong argument that he is a villain, and that his narrative was one of fallen messiah and not the hero’s journey.

Frodo was not the Chosen One, he was the guy who had the ring, and many of his successes are because of his party of companions, but Frodo’s quest, which he fails, is of world ending importance.

In Scott’s case, he again succeeds mostly because of his companions, though, unlike Frodo, he is unaware of this, he is not throwing the ring into Mount Doom to defeat Sauron, returning the ring to the jeweller because it needs resized, and might pick up some milk as well while he’s in the area.

So in conclusion is Teen Wolf Lovecraftian = yes

Does it fit the criteria laid out by works accepted to be Lovecraftian = yes

Does it follow the conventions of similar Lovecraftian works = yes

Is it the Lovecraftian conventions spread over such a large scope that cause so much dissatisfaction in the audience = yes

Almost every point in the list is something I’ve seen people complain about, we don’t know about this, we know nothing about that, that makes no sense, I think this episode would make more sense on hallucinogens etc

It is a well written Lovecraftian nightmare, it uses variant realities and isolation, suspicion and distrust well = but it tells us nothing, resolves very little and has a main character who could deliberately be replaced with a well meaning bag of sand.

But at least there were no tentacles.

#teen wolf meta #teen wolf and lovecraft #anti scott mccall

70 notes · View notes

sylleboi · 5 years

Text

𝕾𝖊𝖊𝖐𝖊𝖗𝖘 | 25/11/19

When I initially heard of the content for this brief, I couldn’t help but get excited. I have a soft spot for illustration and concept art, as well as world building and writing (especially fantasy). After reading through the brief for “Seekers”, I immediately thought of a short story I have been writing for around a year and a half at this point, the plot and context fitting perfectly with the challenge that the brief sets.

During the morning we briefly went through the good things and the things that “need improvement” from the past two briefs;

Good:

Responding to the workshop and technical skills. This includes how each person within the class have responded to the challenged on a technical level, being really good.

Developing ideas past the workshop activities and building technical skill through repetition and synthesis. This is purely based upon the development each individual have gone through and made thus far and exploring beyond what the brief asks to do, as well as using more primary reseach at a higher rate.

Understanding technical terms and their use within the specific subject. This describes how well we do at resiting all the terms thrown at us.

Need improvement:

Drawing & Repetition Make sure to draw often; ideally every day, but in general just as much as possible.

Drawing from observation- draw from primary research! We do this a little, but we have to keep at it and stick to it.

Evaluate and conclude It’s important to make sure to evaluate and conclude at the end of each blog post; “What have I learnt and what will I do?” Also try and be more conclusive and forward with the evaluations. It’s also important that we make sure to keep reflecting upon everything we go through each day that we work.

Visual language Our research needs to talk more about the visual language; more about what you can see and why this is important to you and the work you have done and will produce.

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𝕾𝖊𝖊𝖐𝖊𝖗𝖘

(2D problem solving)

Aims and objectives

Be able to analyse and research a 2D problem in art & design.

Be able to use an integrated approach to 2D problem-solving in art & design.

Be able to use evaluation to support solutions to problems in 2D in art & design.

Using an integrated approach means to apply what other things we have learnt as well as integrating all the ideas we have, to create a successful concept, story and narrative for this brief.

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What have I learnt, and what will I learn now?

I have learnt:

Rotoscoping

Character turnaround

Model sheet

Frame by Frame = sequence

Illusion of life

Digital programs (photoshop & illustrator)

I will learn:

Character narratives

Fantasy

Frame by Frame animation

Key poses

Primary observation and research

Concept art

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Are there different types of characters?

Protagonist

Antagonist

Sidekick

“Damsel in distress” & “Male hero”- try and subvert to be inclusive and original!

Ice breaker task - Key terms

Find the definition for the following terms (these need to be presented in your production file in your own words to establish the character design part of your project):

Who is the Protagonist?

This is the main character or one of the major characters in a play, film, novel, etc. It is not at all unheard of that the protagonist is a heroic figure for. They make the key decisions and experience the consequences of these decisions and actions. Protagonists usually go through a journey to learn and evolve upon themselves.

Who is the Antagonist?

They are the rival of the protag. A person who actively opposes or is hostile to someone or something; an adversary. They are often portrayed as characters with a dark background; an example of this could be an evil ruler that grew up in an abusive environment or something alike.

What is an Archetype?

This can be defined as a very typical example of a certain person or thing, often very generalising/stereotypes, but this is not how you would define archetypes in storytelling specifically. Archetypes can be defined as for example; the sidekick or comical release character (the jester), the mentor (wise), the innocent, the explorer, the hero, the lover, the ally, the trickster, the guardian, the shadow, the ruler, the friendly beast. Essentially, they are different roles.

The protagonist should:

Be someone the audience can identify with through empathy.

Go through changes/stages during the quest (emotionally or physically)

Break rules and makes mistakes but is always good at heart, putting others before themselves.

Quest:

A quest is a journey that someone takes, in order to achieve a goal or complete an important task. Accordingly, the term comes from the Medieval Latin “Questo”, meaning “search” or “inquire”.

Heroic protagonist (definition given from the brief):

The main character within a story and told a narrative that goes on a dangerous mission against all odds to save a group of people or a society. Sometimes, the hero sets out on a quest to find a symbolic object or person and bring it or them back to his/her/their home. They also have a particularly large presence in Medieval romance, folklore and Greek and Roman mythology, and have been playing an important role in fiction since the earliest examples of English literature.

What does the fantasy hero look like?

Artists to take inspiration from

Good/Hero/Protagonist:

Simon Bisley

Andrew Maclean

Luke Pearson

Bad/Villain/Antagonist:

Frank Frazetta

Pendleton Ward

Jeffrey Alan Love

Task:

Put together 2 similar “slides” in keynote (hero/villain) with 3 visual examples on each. We then printed them out and then answered the following questions in note form around the artists we chose;

Describe the visual language (line, texture, tone, colour, shape, form) using descriptive words & sentences

What does this visual language (the way it looks) communicate about the character/personality?

In your opinion, what visual characteristics of the artwork make the example particularly heroic or villainous?

Good/Hero/Protagonist:

“Hey, you.”

Describe the visual language (line, texture, tone, colour, shape, form) using descriptive words & sentences

Tony Zhou Shuo is a very inspiration artist in my eyes. In the majority of his artwork, he manages to convey shape and readability clearly by using minimal strokes. This is something I have learnt to understand is key for illustrating concept art or general illustrative work for stories. An example, different from the use of shape, is the texture of the brushes he uses. They are rough, creating a feel of sand moving across the rocky desert.

What does this visual language (the way it looks) communicate about the character/personality?

To me, it feels mischievous, but not necessarily in a villainous way; which is what drew me in to this piece in particular when attempting to find some inspiration for my own character/characters. The hooded figure in the foreground is the main subject, looking back towards the sound of the strangers, thinking the hooded person is just the same to them, a stranger. This automatically makes your eyes wander to the figures in the background, that then point back to the hooded figure. It’s a very smart approach for conveying storytelling within a still image. As an illustrator in particular, it is crucial that you can convey the wanted message or meaning without the use of motion or sound; this is much like in film-making or book writing; if you are vague or limited in the way you tell the story, the viewer automatically fills in the blanks.

In your opinion, what visual characteristics of the artwork make the example particularly heroic or villainous?

The fact that the overall mood of the painting is portrayed to be bright and warm gives me a feeling of the character in the foreground not actually being “bad”, just questioned (the title being “Hey, you”) and potentially unwanted. I suppose an example of this could be Assassins Creed. The main characters within this world are feared and unwanted by many since they are assassins sent to kill, yet they are not portrayed as being the villains of the story, but in fact the opposite. It all depends on how you choose to portray the character in a given scenario. It can very easily be altered, which is what I did to prove that this point stands. I did this very quickly by just adding a multiply layer and some stars and highlights (as if the hooded guy now is in the spotlight, caught off guard, now indicating that they are up to nothing good.):

“Viking Boy”

Describe the visual language (line, texture, tone, colour, shape, form) using descriptive words & sentences

I absolutely adore the art style of Tim Mcburnie. It is very stylistic, but it has its own unique flare to it with the use of brushwork and texturing. Primarily this is seen in the landscape. I think he uses different pictures of watercolour and setting the layer mode to something like overlay to create those moody and strong, gritty textures. With the art style being heavily stylised compared to Tony’s work, he uses line very efficiently. Despite the line work being relatively loose and messy, it still manages to make the subject/subjects (the boy and the Viking huts ((village?)) + smoke in the background) stand out without feeling as if they are completely out of place.

What does this visual language (the way it looks) communicate about the character/personality?

The visual language used for this painting in particular, manages to communicate the rough environment that was the Viking age (793–1066 AD). Back then things worked more primitively; death often being brutal and inevitable if either sick or on the wrong side of the border to enemy territory.

In your opinion, what visual characteristics of the artwork make the example particularly heroic or villainous?

The composition I find to be really appealing in this particular piece. The way that the boy feels as if he’s gone from his home in the village behind him to begin a journey. He looks young and his expression resting on his face communicates that he seems nervous and wary of his surroundings. To me, he seems innocent and not a person based upon anything evil; like a hero in the making.

“Night Trip”

Describe the visual language (line, texture, tone, colour, shape, form) using descriptive words & sentences

For context, Night Trip is a short comic story done by the artist Mi Dong. I chose this piece in particular (the cover for the story) for multiple reasons, with the main one being his use of line. The comic itself is only illustrated using line work, which isn’t uncommon in comics, but even the cover itself portrays what you can expect in a very clear way. This is what really drives the interest to this Mi Dong’s work in particular. The use of colour and value for this cover picture has clearly been thought about; For the values, it is easier seen when making the illustration black & white;

When looking at the desaturated version, the values already speak clearly by themselves, even without the aid of colour. The subjects base value is much brighter than the backgrounds base value. This makes sure that the viewer can differentiate the subject from the background without a struggle. It is also worth mentioning that the choice of line has also been used to create texture, which works very well as a stylistic approach since it matches all the other aspect of this illustration that I have gone over previously.

What does this visual language (the way it looks) communicate about the character/personality?

The overall feeling that I get personally is a mix of “overwhelmed”, “daunting” and “fear”. This I believe is based on the fact that the texture of the line work plays such a big role in making the piece come to life. If there were no texture and only flat colour, it wouldn’t portray emotion as strongly and confidently as it does with the texturing applied. The texturing used in this drawing also indicates some kind of “danger”. This is purely because of the way that Mi Dong has chosen not to use any texture on the main subject; in fact, there has only been used flats for the foreground subject- signalling a sense of purity compared to the looming figure in the background.

In your opinion, what visual characteristics of the artwork make the example particularly heroic or villainous?

I think that with everything mentioned about this piece of artwork, It definitely leans toward the feeling of “heroic” if you focus on the main subject, but I also definitely shares traits of “villainous” characteristics if focusing on the background subject. Without knowing the content of the comic itself, the figure seeming to be looming in the dark and behind the subject, the figure might be a distorted version of the main subjects; indicated by their eye colours being the same; infant, they share all the same colours. Weather that’s nothing but a stylistic choice, or of a deeper meaning, it works quite well, because it lets your mind wonder “What does this mean?”, “Why does the person look so afraid?”, “What are they afraid of?- Why are they looking at me? am I the monster?” That is why this cover is successful. It makes the reader want answers, therefore willingly indulging themselves into the story, narrative and plot-line, on their own quest for answers based upon their curiosity.

Bad/Villain/Antagonist:

“Dragon hunters”

Describe the visual language (line, texture, tone, colour, shape, form) using descriptive words & sentences

I chose this piece for several different reasons. The obvious being; the dragon. My entire plot is based upon the lore of dragons and how they are hunted down by men, so this was great inspiration! The other reason is how my “villain” is not actually anyone in particular, but instead, it is the society living in the universe I have created. People are the ones killing what isn’t actually there to cause harm, but everyone believes that the dragons are cold-blooded killers. Loosely, this is the basic premise of which I base the plot in reality; We kill the earth in ignorance with pollution and plastics choking life, even in a literal sense. - In my story, mankind does this, but with the dragons. They are in the way, and the quickest way to get rid of them is by eliminating them. The drawing is highly rendered, which is what initially (alongside the use of perspective and scale) drew me into it. This illustration doesn’t need words to explain what is happening. The storytelling is so clear and loud, which is absolute key when portraying story within a limited amount of frames (or often even just by using a single canvas).

What does this visual language (the way it looks) communicate about the character/personality?

This question can be interpreted in different ways depending on who you refer to; the dragon or the hunters. The dragon seems to be fleeing from the hunters, trying to take it down. For some reason, the overall perspective and scenario reminds me of when you go hunting for the air balloons with your parents in the car to see where they land; it almost in itself feels like a quest. In the painting, it can be argued as to who the bad guy is, the dragon or the hunters? This is where, once again, ones imagination comes into play to fill out the “gaps” and attempt to answer all the questions it sparks. “Why is the forest burnt down?”, “Did the dragon do that?” If so, then why did it do that?”, “Is it evil or did the hunters agitate it or scare it?”.

In your opinion, what visual characteristics of the artwork make the example particularly heroic or villainous?

I think that the fight between whether the dragon or the men are the villain in this is what makes it stand out so much. It tells the scenario clearly, but yet there are so many unanswered questions left to be looked into. You could write an entire story just from this premise alone.

“Dragon Hunter”

Describe the visual language (line, texture, tone, colour, shape, form) using descriptive words & sentences

I chose this piece of artwork done by Julian Calle for several different reasons; one of them being the use of colour and a potential underlying meaning hiding. The colours used in this illustration are all very desaturated, which works well when referring to the content and scenario of what's happening. It gives off a strong and moody feel without the use of a wide arrange of colours. The other reason to why I chose this piece of artwork in particular, is to do with the fact that it most definitely is based on the Viking age (Which my concept is as well). You can tell by the types of weapons, tattoos and the shield in the background, all being very typical for this time period; Even the shoes are common for this time period.

What does this visual language (the way it looks) communicate about the character/personality?

Because it feels so messy despite the fact that it’s highly rendered, it gives off the feeling of the aftermath of a long battle. You can almost imagine the characters chest rising and falling to even out their breathing, with the sound of the crows’ flapping wings, settling around the dead bodies of the battlefield. - What I found to be particularly interesting is how a deeper meaning of “a new beginning” after an “end” might be lurking within the sky; behind all the fog and the dark clouds is a blue sky slightly peaking through. In old folk lore, it is not at all unheard of to have used the idea of death being a new beginning, so I thought this was a really smart detail.

In your opinion, what visual characteristics of the artwork make the example particularly heroic or villainous?

I put this in the “villain” section due to the fact that I personally really like how the hunter almost looks barbaric; fearless and bloodthirsty in battle. This is definitely something I will be considering for the design aspect of a specific army in my concept, thought it could also be interesting to try and translate this very “barbaric” design into something that leans more towards the role of a blacksmith or craftsman.

“Swords”

Describe the visual language (line, texture, tone, colour, shape, form) using descriptive words & sentences

“Swords” by the talented concept artist Max Steksov is a small collection of illustrations that focus on a heated battlefield. I have known this guys work for a while, and I really enjoy looking at his work. His eye for doing composition and making every aspect of a drawing move, despite it actually being still, is impeccable. Each detail has a meaning to it. He uses texture, but compared to the other artists mentioned in this list, the texture he uses is very fine and less saturated. I find this to be a great way of levelling out the clean feel of his style, while still conveying the gritty and harsh reality that battles that shed blood are.

What does this visual language (the way it looks) communicate about the character/personality?

To me, I find it to be very successful in conveying a lot of aspects related to war; how morbid humanity can be over things that, in the bigger picture, seems pointless at times. Since I myself have a war integrated into the plot of my story, I found this incredibly inspiring.

In your opinion, what visual characteristics of the artwork make the example particularly heroic or villainous?

As mentioned: war. Even if it’s portrayed as a heroic thing to do (fight for your pride, land, country or/and freedom), there are also some more villainous underlying factors hidden within this; at the end of the day, all these men battling and killing each other are just like one another; normal men. There are countless stories from WWI and WWII that talk about how soldiers from the enemy have become friends when holding some captive for a little while, to then be forced to murder them a few days later. It’s a dark concept, but that is also just the reality of it.

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Once we had finished the task given, we went over all the different types of creatures and character roles that we could think of, dividing them up into the stereotypical “Good” and “Bad” and “Unsure”, as well as “Accessories” and “Historical inspiration”, all for the benefit of letting ourselves get inspired by the words listed below for our own concept;

𝕸𝖞𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖑 𝖈𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖚𝖗𝖊𝖘:

Good:

Fairies Unicorn Pegasus Dwarf

Sage (wise/medical) Cleric Paladin

Fawn/Faun Genie Gnomes Knight

Blacksmith Druid Monk

Griffin Hyppogriff Mermaid

Berserker Phoenix Whisp

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Bad:

Goblin Kelpie Boggart Minotaur Hydra

Pixie Krampus Medusa Banshee

The headless horseman Orges Orcs Nymph

Cyclops Triclops Cerberus Orthrus

Warlock Kraken Succubus Direwolf

Imp Manticore Cocotrice Gorgon

Basilisk Cthulhu Syrens Zombie

Ghoul Skeleton Wraith Gargoyle

Reaper Chimaera

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Unsure:

Dragon Familiar Witch Demons

Yokai Trolls Yeti Giants

Centaur Kings and Queens Elf Samurai

Gladiator Rogue Prince and princesses

Kaijo Werewolf Vampire/Vampyr

Elemental Jörmungandr

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Accessories:

Sword Dagger Katana Axe Wand

Shield Potion Spellbook

Crystal Cauldron Spear Broomstick

Crystal ball Scroll Flask Crossbow

Bow and arrow Hammer Witches hat/hats

Armour Helmet Jewellery Flail

Bottle Lantern Knife Torch

Cloak Sickle Sai Whip Pick

Scythe Nunchucks Chakram

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Historical research:

Greek mythology Nordic/Norse mythology

Local witch trials Irish folktales

Scandinavian folklore Japanese folklore

Egyptian mythology Biblical references

Roman mythology

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echoeternally · 5 years

Note

What do you do to get motivation? I have a fic that's been going on for years now. I have the whole thing drafted, I mostly know what I want to happen, though I sometimes get stuck on side details.

Motivation works differently for everyone. I wish I had one universal answer to simplify it, but it really depends on who you are and what drives you.

To help, I can give you some tools that I use to help inspire me, and maybe from that, you can find your answer as well.

Short version for that would be the following:

Books, Media, and Other Stories

Music and Art

Unexplored Territories

Rewinds: Re-read and Remind

Audience

Friends

Research

Creating Goals

Slightly longer blurbs will go under the cut to explain things.

Ok, let me explain some inspiration sources a little more. (And because each section is longer, this now is a very long post.)

Books, Media, and Other Stories: This is usually a good place to start, since you can help engage yourself to your work by getting into other things. Books get a particular special mention because writing and reading go hand-in-hand. This can be extended to comics and manga though. Media is the umbrella term for tv shows, movies, video games, and other forms that entertainment take to portray stories of different kinds. Other stories themselves are meant for the less conventional venues to explore, like articles or history, or even other fanfics as well. Each source has their own story to tell you, and by looking into things, you can find how storytelling flows from each of them.

It doesn’t have to all be good stuff either. Maybe you hated the latest episode of your favorite cartoon or tv series. There was a book you finished last week, and it just completely fumbled the ending into a mess. Perhaps history was duller than dirt. Think you can come up with something better to tell? Great! Then fire up and get into writing how you’d do it better.

Music and Art: Another good spot to rouse creativity. Music and art tend to help bring about some life into you that stoke your creative fires well. Both are broad to describe, but they each have a lot of forms to them, so you should go with what you like to delve into. For example, art doesn’t strictly have to be fan art for fanfics; maybe there was a cool painting you remember from a museum that you wanted to recapture or explore. That can be useful. Same goes for music, as maybe there’s a song’s lyrics that you want to elaborate on, or take into a story of your own.

Personally, I prefer music that doesn’t involve lyrics. Classical music and media soundtracks (movies, video games) are usually super helpful, because they can have dramatic flares to them, and don’t always have people singing with lyrics that you end up associating with the song, which becomes a story of its own. If you can get the right tune that you can relax to, it can then help you want to create a story that goes with the atmosphere. There are all kinds of feelings that songs can stir in you, so experiment and see what you like.

Unexplored Territories: Stories are mostly not quite groundbreaking in what they tell, but rather how they tell it. Nevertheless, there are numerous less explored resources that can be immensely helpful to get into. Most people go for realistic stuff, like cultures that aren’t as primed for media representation. It’s good when you’re doing grounded things that deal with people mostly. For those more engaged in fantasy, though, you’d want to get into stuff that’s not tied for cultures, or extract it from them. Maybe you look up a list of mythological creatures and want to write about something that isn’t the woefully tiring trend of wizards/witches, vampires, werewolves, or clowns. Even changing it up in simple ways, like establishing a difference between sorcerers and witches, or having werewovles, werecats, and werebears all in one story that operate differently.

But don’t be afraid to turn to real life stuff too, especially for less explored spots. I tend to use LGBTQ+ stuff (mostly gays) to both give representation to groups that I identify with, as well as use character dynamics that mainstream media is too afraid to touch. Those two main male characters that are best friends? Make them boyfriends. That lady who seems like she’s super sexy? She’s actually asexual. I’m not telling you to specifically use this stuff, mind you, but this is an example of less explored territories that you can have a little more flexibility with. Heck, it can even simplify the story you tell with minimal changes: Beauty and the Beast’s titular characters are both female. The rest of the story plays out as follows, but it now gains brand new angles to be explored by a small change. That’s part of why I also like shipping and going for “rare pairs” for romance stories: they’re not as explored, and therefore, prime for new content that can be exciting just by existing!

Rewinds (Re-read and Remind): A simple concept, but sometimes you can help stir some motivation by looking back over your old work. Checking back on things can help remind you of what’s going on, or can help create the desire to continue what was going to happen next. It’s basic, but sometimes just the smallest trick to help start some sparks you lost.

It doesn’t have to be a lot, either. Maybe you just wanted to write up this one scene, but you haven’t gotten there yet. Write it anyway, and then work on how you need to get there. While you’re reading over something you wrote, don’t focus on editing, but on the content. Maybe there’s this one line of dialogue that you really loved, and it’s this excellent one-liner that defines your character really well. And then that can make you want to give more to them. When you rewind and recall things you had ideas for, sometimes reviewing them can help you expand on them.

Audience: Has anyone read your stuff yet? If not, ask a few people to do so! An audience can help you immensely, because their reactions help gauge what works and what doesn’t. By giving them content to look over, and interacting with your readers as well, you can end up helping drive yourself to want to deliver more to them. It keeps things flowing nicely! (And this is why writers cry a lot about wanting feedback: it super seriously helps out in a great big way!)

Make sure to look for readers too, not just other writers. Sure, other writers can give you tips and tricks, but they’re looking at it from a similar perspective to yours: the creator’s. For readers, they’re specifically interested in consuming the content, and therefore, have different interpretations and interests for the story. They can give you opinions that other writers can’t quite so easily offer, because they can be more to the point of entertainment engagement. (Writers do typically double as readers, though, so it works out either way.)

Friends: I wanted to add a special distinction for friends as opposed to audience. Friends are nice, but are infinitely less likely to read your work. Online pals, irl friends, whichever you’re comfortable with talking to, they’re still not always the people you’ll go running to so you can grab a new reader. But that’s ok, because you have other ways they can help!

Sometimes, just telling a vague summary of things that are going on in your fic can help you get interested in telling more about it, and to others that might understand it more. Telling your friends puts you in a spot that helps you come up with ways to break down your story to its bare bones, and then what you want to do to help build it up. Another way to go about it would be to listen to stories that they have to tell you. Maybe they’re not writing, but sometimes just interacting with others can help you with developing dynamics that people can share in stories. Or events that are so out there, and you can come up with a way to create a related scenario. (No, I’m not telling you to write your friends…unless they make good characters, lol.) Even just being with friends to take your mind off of things and relax? That helps out too, more than you realize in the moment or immediately after.

Research: It kind of goes with some stuff above, because by viewing media, other stories, unexplored territories, music, and art, you’re doing a type of research. Each one presents a different medium that lets you get to know about them, and the more you look into it, the more you learn.

But the cool thing about research is that it takes you places. Websites like TVTropes and Wikipedia can take you to all kinds of weird places, but that’s what makes them great! You end up learning new topics and angles to explore, and they can help inspire new ideas by doing so, or help you restructure ideas you might think are too cliché or simply don’t work. Delving in deep can be time consuming, but also can lead to major payoffs.

Creating Goals: This one I’m not quite as sure about, because it depends on what you’re looking for out of stories. Still, it can be a helpful boost in its own way, so I’ll include it. Goal creating isn’t just something like, “Today I want to write a sentence.” That’s good to do in general, but I’m talking a little more along the competitive lines.

You’ve got a fic written up, but you’re looking to keep it rolling. Maybe you’re exploring two neglected characters from a movie and giving them a new life. But, guess what? Someone else tried something similar about two years ago. Heck. Are you going to let that stop you though? Heck no! What you do with that is see what that story nets for ratings, and plug away at trying to match them. Don’t overwhelm yourself by trying to outdo them entirely, especially the top ranking stuff. You don’t have to be the best. But you want to compare as well, so see how your content measures up. If they have bookmarked readers that stack to several hundreds, and you can net half after writing about the same characters? That’s pretty great stuff on your part! Even if you don’t have something specific to go up against? Tackle the archives or stories in general! See how highly rated you can get your stuff to be, and duke it out to be visible among everyone else’s content.

This one is really dependent on your personality type, so if you’re not competitive, don’t put stock into it. But if you get fired up about a challenge? Bring it on!

…

There’s a bunch of different avenues that you can look into, and different ways to help bring some motivation and inspiration into your creative mind. These are some suggestions based on angles that I’ve personally attempted, so they may or may not work for you. But that’s ok, because you might be able to come up with more ideas as well.

It just depends on what you like, what you want to do, and what stories you want to tell. From there, just let loose and explore.

But, please do keep in mind to keep yourself (yes, you) in check and feeling good. Tired? Get some rest! Hungry? Go eat! Overwhelmed? Decompress and relax. Know your five senses? Engage them all! Your mood definitely matters as well, and it’s little things that can sometimes hold you back in major ways. Take breaks, and when you come back, things might flow a little easier.

No matter what though, make sure you’re having fun! That’s what really counts in the end, above all else. Do stuff that’ll make you happy, and you’ll flourish in ways you might not even realize. These may be typical lines you’ve heard in countless places before, but they’re pretty helpful.

Again, go for it, and have some fun with the writing!

#askecho #echo's writing advice #writing tips #writing #fanfics #motivational #inspirational #motivation #inspiration #bobosmith01

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hamidshojaee · 5 years

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Tesla Stock, Short Sellers, EVs and Autonomous Cars

If you follow Tesla's stock closely, you fall into one of 2 camps:

Tesla is going bankrupt. Its cars are crap. It never delivers on its promises, the whole company is mismanaged, run by a con artist who has built a house of cards waiting to collapse. Elon Musk has no idea what he's doing and his continued mismanagement is about to cause Tesla to crash and burn and its stock is on its way to $0.

Tesla is an amazing company. It makes the world's best cars. It continues to defy the odds, making cars deemed impossible by others, a reality. On its way to deliver a sustainable future, Tesla will own the transportation industry and become a Trillion-Dollar company. Elon Musk is a visionary, and key to Tesla's success.

The two camps are polar opposites and each camp gets more convinced of its position with every passing Tesla announcement. But of course, only one of these narratives can be correct.

This article will answer the question: is Tesla destined for greatness or doomed to fail?

Before we can answer that, lets review some fundamentals...

The Stock Market

The stock market is a complicated beast and understanding it is beyond the scope of this article. However, it would be good to review 2 fundamental rules of the stock market:

Rule #1: In the short term, a company's stock price is a reflection of supply & demand. More buyers than sellers equates to a higher price for the stock. More sellers than buyers equates to a lower price for the stock.

Rule #2: In the long term, a stock's price will largely represent the fundamental value of the company. Revenues, profits and growth are the 3 key contributors to the long-term price of a stock.

Easy enough, but because of the significant fluctuations of the stock market on a day-to-day basis due to rule #1, many believe investing in stocks is the equivalent of gambling. That's probably an accurate description for investors who have a short term horizon of days, weeks or even months. Without insider knowledge, its nearly impossible to predict a stock's performance on a short-term basis and with insider’s knowledge, it’s illegal to trade a stock. So short term investing is a lot like gambling.

But unlike gambling in the casino where the odds are always in the house’s favor, short term investing in stocks can be manipulated by simply changing investor opinions. To understand how this is done, watch this video by one of CNBCs biggest anchors and a daily stock manipulator, Jim Cramer:

youtube

Crazy as it seems, its perfectly legal to sell a stock you don’t own (this is called “shorting a stock”), then spread crazy, unsubstantiated rumors about the company being on the verge of bankruptcy. Then when investors panic and sell the stock, you “cover” your short position by purchasing the stock again at a lower price than what you had sold it for. In summary:

You sell a stock you don’t own (“shorting”)

You spread misinformation about the stock to lower its price

You purchase back the stock at a lower price

Tesla’s stock is currently one of the most shorted stocks in the stock market. More than 32 million shares of Tesla stock (about $8 Billion worth) are sold, for which the seller doesn’t own the stock. If you think this seems like some sort of crazy loophole scheme that some day we’ll look back at and wonder how this was ever legal, you’d be right. Short sellers have every incentive to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (known as FUD) about a stock in the hope that the stock goes down, ideally to $0 where they can purchase their shorted shares for a fraction of what they sold it for.

Not all investors gamble and bet on miserable outcomes.

The most successful investors generally have a long-term horizon of years, and they don’t generally gamble on anything. They evaluate companies based on fundamentals and future potential, then they invest in opportunities that have the highest potential return and hold on to the stock long-term.

This strategy is summed up in 1 sentence by the most successful investor of all time, Warren Buffett: “Our favorite holding period is forever.”

If you are a short-term investor, this article will have no value for you. I have zero knowledge of what Tesla's stock will do in the coming days, weeks or even months.

But if you are (or considering to be) a long-term investor in Tesla, we should be able to answer the question of whether or not Tesla has a bright future...

Disruptive Technology and the Innovator's Dilemma

In the late 90s, I read a book called The Innovator's Dilemma. In it, Clayton Christensen describes why market leaders are often set up to fail as technologies and industries change. His brilliant book was later named "one of the six most important books about business ever written" by The Economist. Christensen argues that market leaders tend to maintain their leadership positions because of their market reach and power, until that is, there is a disruptive technology that comes along and over time unseats them from their leadership position.

An easy way to understand this concept is to look backwards at industries that had dominant players that changed. Examples would include companies like IBM who maintained their leadership in the computing world (despite heavy competition), until the PC disruption occurred. Kodak maintained their leadership in Photography until the digital disruption occurred. Microsoft maintained its massive leadership in software, until the Internet disruption occurred.

Leading companies maintain their leadership because they have name recognition, a distribution network, lots of financial resources to fight new competition, not to mention the experience to build great products that helped them become a leader in the first place. IBM knew how to make mainframes. Kodak knew film. Microsoft knew desktop software, and so on.

However, when a disruptive technology comes along, there is no established market for the new technology. Even when there is a market, it's relatively small compared to the revenues of a market leader. Incumbent leaders see the new market as a distraction to their already established $20, $50, $100 Billion or larger businesses. Nobody has time to invest in and chase after a market that's 1/100th their core business.

Therefore, disruptive technologies are often developed and improved by newcomers who see the potential. To a newcomer with $0 in revenues, $1 Billion is a great market opportunity to chase. To Ford, that’s 0.75% of their revenues. But once a new startup hits $1 Billion in revenues from a disruptive technology, they have major competitive advantage as they have been accumulating name recognition, a distribution network, the experience and talent to continue to be a leader in the disruptive category.

By the time Microsoft was a Billion-Dollar company, it was too late for IBM to dominate the new PC world. By the time Google became a Billion-Dollar company, it was too late for Microsoft to dominate the Internet world.

You get the idea. Lets move on to cars and Tesla...

The EV Disruption in the Car Industry

For nearly a hundred years, the US car industry has been lead by 3 automakers: Ford, Chrysler and GM. Internationally, they are joined by Toyota, VW, Hyundai, Nissan and small handful of others. For decades, these companies have fine tuned the art of designing, manufacturing, distributing and selling impressive cars that all rely on a fundamental marvel of engineering:

Harnessing the combustion of fossil fuels to power a transportation device.

For better or for worse, this pinnacle of human technology has helped humanity achieve unimaginable advancements that would not have been possible without the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE). But we also now know that ICE-based engines are responsible for huge amounts of greenhouse gasses that are rapidly warming earth and causing catastrophes around the globe.

For the past few decades, car companies had provided no real alternative to gas-powered vehicles, citing that electric cars are impractical, cost too much, and they are a niche market that nobody wants. They argued that electric cars end up being just as bad for the environment because they simply move the burning of fossil fuels from the vehicle to the power plant.

These excuses not to invest in electric vehicles, is the classic "incumbent leader vs. disruptive technology" syndrome.

It turns out that with the proper research and investment, electric cars are practical, they can be competitively priced, and they are far more efficient than gas-powered vehicles, even if the local power plant is burning coal! Most importantly, based on the success of Tesla's Model S, X and 3, it turns out that they are not a niche market after all. Given a good choice, consumers would pick electric cars over their gas-powered counterparts by a wide margin. The way we know this is because all 3 of Tesla's cars are leaders in their category and Tesla has shown that Electric cars can provide far superior performance, maintenance and joy of driving, than their gas-powered counterparts.

Tesla has Awakened the Giants

Great! Tesla has shown electric cars are in fact the future. All the major car companies now agree. Every major car company plans to completely revitalize their lineups with electric options. Finally! The giants have been awakened. With the enormous resources that these companies have (collectively near $1.5 Trillion in annual revenues), it's game over for Tesla, right?

Well, not so fast. Disruptive technology is unkind to the incumbents. Turns out Kodak was a pioneer in digital photography in the 1990s and had the most advanced digital photography technology in the world before digital photography was even a thing. My first digital camera was a Kodak - it's actually how I met my wife, but that's a different story. Similarly, GM was light years ahead of its competition back in 1996 with the EV1. But when you have a $100 Billion+ business selling gas-powered engines, and all of your headaches are caused by the business unit that's generating no revenues and is only costing your company hundreds of millions in investment, it's easy to see why these companies would shut down their disruptive technology research!

The argument today is that the car companies finally see the potential, and this time around, they are throwing $10s of billions at electric car lines, so the results will be different.

Here is the problem: Imagine you are Ford. You build more than 1 million trucks per year and you want to offer an electric version of your truck. You can't stop building the gas-powered trucks because that's your current bread and butter. Without it, you will die. So you have to add a whole new lineup of trucks that are electric. After years of trying, Ford has learned the hard way, that virtually nothing about their gas-powered Truck-building knowledge translates to building an electric truck. Their designers have no experience designing trucks where the battery needs to be in the floor. Their engineers are Mechanical Engineers who build combustion engines and know virtually nothing about electric circuits and electrical components necessary to control electric flow into an electric motor. Even their manufacturing processes are not easily translatable to building battery packs. It turns out it's so freakin hard, even for Ford, to build an electric truck, that it's given up and instead invested $500 Million into an electric startup called Rivian.

And Ford is not alone. The Tesla Model S was released in 2012. Since then, it quickly became the top selling car in the luxury sedan category, destroying the sales of Mercedes' S class, BMW's 7 series and a handful of other luxury cars. Every one of those luxury brands has been promising an electric "Tesla Killer" that has yet to arrive.

The disruption of Electric Vehicles is here and real, but there are no guarantees that existing car companies can make, or even survive the transition to EVs.

If the EV disruption wasn't enough to shake up the landscape, there are two other major disruptions affecting the car industry...

Car on Demand and Autonomous Vehicles

There is no question that ride sharing services like Uber and Lyft have completely changed and are disrupting consumer expectations for transportation. The convenience of having a car magically appear exactly where you happen to be, has even made many reconsider whether or not they need to own a car. If you can spend $500/month and have a Chauffeur drive you around everywhere, why would you buy a car that needs maintenance, pay for insurance, gas, and have the headache of driving when you could spend that time on a productive task?

Take away the driver, and you've eliminated the only negative in that equation. The risk of having a stranger drive you around, or to have to maintain an awkward conversation you don't want to have is gone. The driver is also the highest portion of the cost for the trip. The holy grail of transportation is getting a car on demand using autonomous technology to get you to your destination. Safer. Cheaper. More convenient.

Every car company, as well as Uber, Lyft, even Google and Apple realize this is the future. The race is on - the only question is when and who will emerge as the winners.

While Uber and Lyft seem to have a technical advantage by already providing the exact same service, but using a driver, it's counter-intuitive to realize that Uber and Lyft are actually at a major disadvantage to providing driverless vehicle services. Assuming they build the autonomous technology necessary to accomplish driverless trips, the cost of having to buy the vehicles, then upgrade them post-production to add autonomy, will mean their cost per vehicle will be significantly higher. But even worse is the fact that these companies employ hundreds of thousands of drivers who make a living on the Uber and Lyft network. There would be no ambiguity who the bad guys are if Uber or Lyft start to put these drivers out of a job. The same companies that were once hailed as Job Creators would become the villains that are now killing the very jobs they created. It's unlikely that either Uber or Lyft will survive this transition, but fortunately for them, this transition will take years.

Then there is the car companies like GM, Ford, Daimler Benz and others who are investing billions in self-driving technologies. While car companies have a legitimate shot at building autonomous technologies, their expertise has never been in software development. Car companies are notoriously horrible at making software. Just look at how many taps, clicks and movements it takes to enter a destination address into any car navigation system. This is a problem that was solved by Google and Apple more than 10 years ago, yet for the past 10 years, none of the car companies have been able to figure out how to simply copy existing patterns for entering in an address into a navigation system. For these car companies to miraculously figure out computer vision, neural networks and all the other software technologies necessary for autonomous driving seems like an unlikely event.

The real competition for autonomous driving and car-on-demand is a 3-way race between Tesla, Google and maybe Apple.

Google seems to have the advantage here. It has had an autonomous research unit since 2004 and its Waymo car service is actually giving rides in production (with a backup driver). This advantage can't be underestimated. Google also has the resources to buy 100,000 cars, equip them with autonomy, and put them on the road. Such an investment would cost Google, a company with nearly $100 Billion in cash, just $10 Billion to do. Although to get to 1 Million autonomous cars, it would require all of Google’s cash, nearly a $100 Billion investment. Doable for a company like Google, but certainly not cheap. Google is in an awesome shape in this race.

Then there is Apple. With the secrecy that Apple operates with, it's unclear what Apple is planning, but we might be able to make some speculations. First, Apple definitely lags behind Google because they don't have nearly as many cars on the road. Second, it's highly unlikely Apple will choose to build its own cars. Manufacturing cars would take years, at least 3-5 years, to iron out. If they wanted to make cars, they would have had to start building plants a while ago. Apple’s best bet is to follow Google's strategy, use its massive cash reserves to buy cars, outfit them with autonomous technology, and put them on the road. Under the leadership of Tim Cook, it's unlikely this "me too" strategy of copying Google will work, especially if Apple's other businesses ever have hiccups. If Apple sales ever decrease, the pressure on Apple would be to stay focused on its core business of iPhones.

And finally, there is Tesla. Tesla is probably far behind Google in Autonomous technology, but what's impressive about Tesla is the rate of improvement. This rate of improvement is also accelerating because of the number of vehicles Tesla has on the market that are equipped with its self-driving hardware sensors. Lets do a little math...

For every car that is equipped with self-driving hardware:

Google, Apple and others spend somewhere between $100,000 - $150,000 plus pay for a backup driver (for now)

Tesla makes a gross profit of $10,000 - $20,000 (Model 3 or Model S/X) and gets a free backup driver (the owner)

This advantage for Tesla is absolutely insane. While others have to buy their cars, equip them with self-driving technology, then hire a backup driver to drive the car around, Tesla gets to sell its self-driving technology to its customers allowing its customers to finance the deployment of these cars all over the world, while it makes a profit on selling each one.

Think about that for a moment. In order for Google to put 1 Million self-driving cars on the road (after the technology is perfected), it will cost Google $100 Billion. Tesla on the other hand will make $10 to $20 Billion in profits by deploying a million self-driving vehicles. In fact, it's already done exactly that by deploying around 400,000 cars that have the hardware sensors needed for self-driving. It’s already gathering data from 400,000 cars, and its doing so while making money from each of those cars!

More than the cost of the cars, Tesla has another major advantage. The AI and Machine Learning needed to perfect self-driving is heavily data dependent. The more cars you have on the road with the hardware sensors, the bigger variety of road conditions you encounter, and therefore, the faster the AI algorithms learn. Tesla has the largest fleet of cars, deployed in the widest array of geographical locations, giving it a major advantage for data collection to teach its algorithms how to drive. And it’s doing this without having to employ backup drivers or paying for the cars. Tesla's backup drivers are the vehicle owners who paid full-price for the privilege of being a backup driver for Tesla’s autonomous AI going to school!

The Tesla advantage is incredible. Nothing like this has ever existed! This is a major disruptive advantage that no other car company in the world has. It’s also something that’s beyond the understanding of most Wall Street analysts. They have nothing to compare it to.

Tesla’s Autonomy Day

If Tesla's future is so bright, why is it that so many Wall Street analysts have a "Sell” or “Underperform” rating on the stock?

Great question! Let's dig into that.

Last week I had the fortunate experience of attending Tesla’s autonomy day. At the event, I had a chance to talk to several wall street analysts that cover Tesla. In my conversations, I realized a critical factor: Tesla is covered by “automotive analysts.” When I would ask about their thoughts on Uber or Lyft, they mentioned those stocks are covered by their “Internet analysts.” This is a huge discrepancy in viewpoints. The automotive industry hasn't had major new players in many decades. Existing players go bankrupt regularly (GM, Chrysler, etc.). Their margins are extremely low and investing in disruptive technologies usually means making an SUV that can give 20 miles per gallon - not exactly a revolutionary disruption. It's not that these analysts hate Tesla, it's that they are comparing Tesla to Ford or GM and they have no idea why Tesla would be worth more. In their world, a car company doesn't ever have a 10x increase in sales. Tesla is an anomaly that they don't understand. Car companies are often valued at just 0.5x revenues because of their low profit margins. Tesla is valued at 2x revenues, so it appears way over-valued.

On the other hand, you have companies like Uber and Lyft being evaluated by "Internet Analysts." As a result, despite the extremely low margins of Uber and Lyft, these companies are getting valuations that are 10x their revenues! In comparison, Tesla has a faster growth rate, higher margins, and a larger market potential, but is being valued (on a revenue basis) at about 1/5th the price!

Tesla’s self-driving technology is not yet perfect, but it’s pretty damn good:

youtube

Even if it takes Tesla several years to iron out the AI software, every year, it just keeps accumulating vehicles that all have self-driving hardware. Then with 1 Over The Air (OTA) update, all of them can become Robo Taxis overnight. Imagine a company that goes from having 0 Robo Taxis to all of a sudden having 1 million or 2 million Robo Taxis all over the world! Each one has the potential to add thousands of dollars to Tesla’s profits.

Elon Musk and Tesla Mistakes

Tesla and by extension, Elon Musk, have made their share of mistakes. Turns out great companies make mistakes all the time on the road to success. Some pay for them with punishments on the stock price...

In 2011, Netflix announced they were splitting their DVD business and separately charging for streaming and DVD. The results were pandemonium. Wall Street analysts turned on Netflix. Short sellers cashed in on the panic and cited competition from HULU and Verizon - announcing the death of Netflix. They spend too much, have too much debt and not enough cash to live long. Sound familiar? As the stock price nose-dived from $40/share (split adjusted) to just $9 per share, it seemed like the panic was real and Netflix’s days were numbered. Just look at their stock chart during that period:

But of course, the panic was not real. The rumors of Netflix’s demise was just pure fabrication and despite so many people losing money for selling on the panic that was falsely generated, nobody ever went to jail! That’s what’s wrong with short sellers. They create a false narrative on purpose specifically with the intention of causing a stock to go down.

In the years that followed, Netflix continued to deliver quarter after quarter and eventually the false narrative of Netflix getting destroyed could no longer be supported. As a result, Netflix’s stock shot back up and has gone up more than 42x (that’s 4,200%!!!) since 2011 lows.

The arrow in this chart points to the right-most part of the chart above!

If you had invested $2,500 in Netflix when the Wall Street experts had turned on them with “Sell” ratings and journalists were predicting the end of Netflix, your investment would be worth $100,000 today!

Similar stories exist for Apple in 2000 under Steve Jobs, and Facebook in their first year of going public. Who remembers the headlines “Twitter is Dead” just a few years ago? The stock is up more than 200% since Twitter was declared dead. The examples are endless. When the foundation of a company is solid, irrational fears create opportunities to buy.

In fact, Warren Buffett has another great quote that applies here: “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”

Evaluating Tesla Rationally

So how can you tell if Tesla is truly over-valued and about to go bankrupt, or if it’s legitimately a great buy because of all the panic and fear that has been created? Great question. While we wait for all the Tesla Killer EVs to come out, let’s look at the facts around Tesla:

#1: Tesla Revenues have increased by 400% in 4 years!

No other public company in the world has had this kind of growth with similar numbers. In fact, Tesla’s awful, horrible, couldn’t get worse, Q1 2019 results generated more revenues than Tesla did in all of 2015! Tesla’s stock price is roughly about the same as it was in 2015. The stock has a ton of stored energy.

#2: Tesla has 3 cars, each of which are the #1 selling car in their category. Not by a small margin, but by a large margin! The Model S, X and Model 3 are all the best-selling cars in their respective categories, which is pretty incredible when you consider how few variations they have.

#3: Tesla Q1 2019, supposedly their worst quarter ever, had a year-over-year revenue increase of more than 33% and they made 110% more cars than the same quarter in Q1 2018.

#4: Tesla car owners are amongst the happiest, most satisfied and most likely to buy another Tesla, than any other car company! Have you ever spoken to a Tesla owner that said “oh man, I wish I never bought a Tesla?”

#5: The fastest super cars in the world have a hard time keeping up with Tesla’s 7 passenger SUV, but if that wasn’t bad enough for the future of gas-powered vehicles, the new Tesla Roadster 2 goes from 0 – 60 MPH in just 1.9 seconds!

In the meantime, for the past 4 years that I have been following Tesla, these have been the headlines:

These headlines are just Friday’s top stories about Tesla on Yahoo Finance. Day after day, the stories on Tesla’s stock in the finance news pages are negative. Meanwhile, Tesla continues to defy the odds and makes products everyone else thinks it was impossible. The very same people who thought the Model S was not possible, then the Model X, then the Model 3, then producing 5,000 of them per week, are amongst the loudest critics still! Not a single one ever goes on CNBC and says “you know what, I was wrong - turns out, Tesla can make 5,000 Model 3s per week. I was wrong!” Yet, there they are, day-after-day, making their next bogus prediction of doom. You would think I made this stuff up. It’s crazy! Just watch this exchange between CNBC anchors and Cathy Woods (start at around 3:48 into it for the Tesla portion):

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If Tesla continues to deliver with the Model Y, the Tesla Truck, Roadster 2, the Semi and other future cars, and there is little reason to think they wouldn’t considering their track record, Tesla will likely exceed $200 Billion in revenues within 10 years.

And that’s not even taking the potential upside of autonomous driving. If their dream of creating a Robo Taxis becomes a reality, their margins will easily double or triple during that same timeframe. When you combine these factors, Tesla has a shot to be a Trillion-Dollar company in 10 years. That would put their stock price at over $5,000/share!

I’m going to end with 1 more Warren Buffet quote: "If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes.”

P.S. I’m not affiliated with Tesla in any way. I’m just a tech investor (been doing it for 25 years) who has never seen a more crystal clear opportunity with a public company. In hindsight, it’s obvious that companies like Apple, Netflix, Facebook, etc. were going to be huge successes, but sometimes the FUD factor (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) that is created around companies by their competitors, journalists and “shorts” (those who bet against the stock then go out and make up lies and false rumors), causes stocks to have a mismatch between their value and their actual price.

And there’s this:

youtube

#tesla #autonomous #stock #tsla #tslaq #driving #supercars

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feelbadorgan-blog · 5 years

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Journal Entry #1: Draw My Life

I would like to think that I’ve always been a reflective person even my childhood memories are full of solitary moments, me left alone to my perceptions and creations. I find it almost addicting going back to my childhood memory of playing in our sandy garden alone. This reflective peculiarity will prove valuable to me in the later years up to the present. It helped me grow and develop my definition of my identity, although more of identities. It brought me to the world of self-help books, journaling and constant self-evaluation. My days are full of questions and ambiguous answers to life. This time a year ago, I have decided to write them into journals. My journal typically starts with a question and continues freely, most of the time irrelevantly, to where writing takes me and it may be observable in this entry. I hope not. It is also written as if it is someone else’s so I can be more objective and harsh on myself.

Ever since I arrived here in NCR, I haven’t written anything yet so this will serve as my first entry. I literally write in journal notebooks, but I have discovered that I can use technology, prove myself as a gen-Z and use the softcopy format a.k.a. “.docx” and even “.txt”.

I have filled three different journal notebooks ever since I started a year ago. Although majority of my writing are on my laptop now, I still write on paper and my fourth journal notebook is almost halfway filled with whatever this mind encounters. Journaling is a very soothing and liberating process for me.

This is how I journal now, and I’d like to call it “E-journal” as if putting an E in the beginning of any word makes it sound better. I typically write anything I can think of and anything that intrigues me. Although, my writings are hindered by my writing skills because I don’t know a lot about forming sentences, using punctuation and selecting words from a narrow and shallow vocabulary. I love English because I think it is a very creative and inclusive language but sadly, I’m not that good yet to create and enjoy it to its fullness.

I think I am exposing myself too much already but what’s life without a little vulnerability. I personally have struggled with vulnerability and insecurity. This basically became the story of my high school life and pretty much of my life because I can hardly remember events before high school. Peer pressure got the best of me and it made me do things I would regret but I can do nothing about so let’s move on.

This is the grade 7 me, too naïve about the world around him and on the things about to come. He feels very insignificant and is peer pressured a lot. He has grown and he’s very different now but it humbles him to know where he started. Reminiscing how we grow through time always lead to smiles.

“Beast”

In high school is where you find inevitable to be grouped to the same people with the same interests. For our group named “BST”, we found each other through sports and cutting classes to play sports. They saw and guided my growth from the one on the picture above to who I am today. The day after graduation transforms high school friends to lifelong family.

“Megs”

Megs is the Bisaya term for friends. This my wholesome and nerdy squad. It may seem contradicting belonging to two squads with different nature but it’s not. I found that one squad completes and balances the other so that I stay right in between my academics and my passion. I am not swallowed by academics nor do I sacrifice my future for playing sports.

“Do your thingsss”

I have loved a few things and formed a few passions in my life and this picture shows it all.

The Wipcap, official cap of Fliptop which is the Philippines’ Rap Battle League and is the last Rap Battle League in the world, for my love of the hip-hop and culture.

The rifle for my love of service and to my three years membership of our school’s CAT.

Kyrie 5 “Husky” shoes for my passion in The Game and my homage to passionate players.

“Orchid in a bottle” for my love of biology, laboratory work and simple science.

The Innovators book for my love of technology, great people, great work and cooperation.

This is the product of my six years in high school. When I heard we were allowed one creative shot for our yearbook, this image of me popped into my mind. I have unconsciously viewed myself this way and I can say this has been my self-image as a product of my high school life. High school has been productively transformative for me. It gave me the chance to redefine myself through reflection. I have known myself deeper. This probably is the most “me” picture of my life.

I believe that a man is defined by how he uses much of his time. This is where majority of my time goes and majority of where my self-concept comes from. These are my mentors and my hobbies.

THE HIP-HOP CULTURE

“BLKD”

A UP-Diliman graduate Fliptop pioneer who is considered now a Legend and the best lyricist of the game. He takes pride in his timeless content, intricate flow and crafty use of rap elements like anagrams, personals, quadruple meanings, metaphors and bars. These are a few of his lines.

“Tanggap ko kung wala ako sa top 5 niyo, nasa Top 5 ako ng nasa top 5 niyo”

He may not always be the fan favorite, but he surely is feared among fellow emcees.

“Kaya kong magpaka-street, magsalit ng pa-slang

Kasi pen-game ko perfect, sa iyo pass lang

Puro galaw wala namang puntos, puro pass lang

Ako puro tirang sharpshooter na pumapaslang”

A quadruple meaning of the homophones paslang/pass lang with street, school, basketball and battle references.

“Hindi titulong pangdakila tinutukoy ko pangratrat

kapag sinabi kong si Bonifacio ay ginamitan ko ng Gat”

Personals spat in a game against Marshall Bonifacio referencing the Bonifacio vs Rizal argument through the “gat” double meaning as a pistol and as Jose Rizal.

BASKETBALL

“The Alchemists”

This was taken after our exhibition game. I have only known basketball in high school and from that day onward I still have the same passion from when I started. The summer after my first year, I then enlisted to a basketball camp. All the free time I have after that we then spent playing the game. I am very passionate about the game. Although I don’t play as often as I once did, deep inside is the same fire.

DOTA

“The Internationals 2019 bracket”

The internationals more commonly known as “TI” is the most prestigious and largest tournament in e-sports. It’s prize pool is crowdfunded by the Dota 2 community and is now at US$33 million. Today is actually the first day of the main event. I have played Dota 2 for 4000 hours already, all on the internet cafe. I know I shouldn’t be “that’ proud about it but it’s not all negative. I know that I have developed some of my skills and besides, I don’t play anymore in fact I only had 30 games last year. The best part about ti9,The Internationals 2019, is that there is an all-Filipino team in the upper bracket, TNC. They are representing the Philippines and all the Filipino players. They have cemented their name along with the best teams worldwide and now they have the chance to win The Aegis of the Immortal, the trophy of the champions ever since 2010.

“TNC Predator”

This is our team fighting for the Aegis of the Immortal.

The SCIENCE of LEADERSHIP

“The Golden Circle”

This is a concept by Simon Sinek in his book “Start with Why”, one of the first books I have read and reread. I love the book as much as the man who wrote it. It demonstrates the difference between good and great leaders based on their conduct. Good leaders lead from the outside in starting from what they do, how they do it and why they do it making the “what” aspect clearest for their followers. Great leaders do the opposite, they talk most of the time about why they do it and they assure that this be the clearest aspect for their disciples. It is even manifested in their advertisements. TiVo is a good television company with good leaders. One of their advertisement says “We can pause, forward and rewind your favorite shows for you”, focusing more on the what. Apple, a great company with a great leader - Steve Jobs, would have an advertisement that would sound like “The ones crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who actually do”. This advertisement doesn’t even mention any of their products but it does mention why they make their products and it being clear to their followers is one of the reasons why people line up for hours in Apple stores to get their new Iphones even if they can buy it without hassle the week after.

I love leadership and cooperation especially the the value they bring to the world. It has brought us movements to question what the world is doing, great products and most of all it bring faith back into humanity. This interest in leadership forced me to read leadership, business, self-help and personal development books. You’ll find a lot of these people in these.

Another fascinating aspect of this circle is its accordance to the layers and structures inside our brain. The “what” represents the prefrontal cortex which is responsible for, you guessed it, what we do. The “how” is where the limbic brain starts representing the basal ganglia - responsible more on how we conduct thing. Lastly, the “why” represents the primitive amygdala which answers all the question to why we do and it sets out our priorities from food, reproduction and finding meaning.

SERVICE of the CAT

“Legions of Pisay”

We are the Legions of Pisay, a club created and organized by students. Our advocacy is the Citizenship Advancement Training. We trained volunteers, we serve the student body as manpower for events and we are directly under the disciplinary officer in imposing the laws of the school. My three years of service in the CAT is all about service. We arrange the venues, direct the audience and clean up after the event. We are the first to prepare and the last to clean. All of this for service. In three years, we have created a bonding from all the sacrifices we’ve made together for the student body. I have served and I hope soon I will be able to serve again.

INTERSECTION OF TECHNOLOGY and PASSION

“Steve Jobs”

Steve Jobs. The great man Steve who founded apple at his parents’ garage with Woz, brought great products to the world, exiled by the very company he founded, created another company “NeXT”, created Pixar, sold NeXT and himself to Apple and saved apple from oblivion. This is how I simplify the life of Steve. He founded Apple, Apple kicked him, out but Apple bought him back just to save themselves and to bring back their visionary. I am a total fanboy. He has nothing but passion. He gave his all even his health for the world to enjoy great products and to bring us great experience. He placed a thousand songs in our pocket when all there was is a Walkman through iPod. He didn’t commercialize his software. He created the best animation movies. He thought he can change the world, he did. Apple is now US$1Trillion in valuation and in fact if it were a country it would’ve been the 27th richest. We don’t know when we will get another Steve or another Apple but I’m sure it’s trying to change the world with passion.

MOVIES and The NERDWRITER

Evan Pushack aka “The Nerdwriter” creates videos about everything he can think of but mostly about people, art and movies. We share the same interest and his youtube channel has become a haven for me. I indulge in his content. With this platform he tries to help people. His K.I.N.D. “Kids In Need of Desks” video raised US$3 million for the school children of Africa. That’s worth 62 000 desks in 4 000 classrooms. He himself is struggling to make money from his videos but he never forgets to help. The world needs more of these people and those who can’t be them can at least support their causes.

I really talk a lot and mostly not about myself as much as my self-concept which is hugely not about me at all. I like talking about topics I love and consequently they become intertwined with my self-concept.

I don’t remember much before my high school life and I don’t rely on them so much for my self-image. As far as I can remember these are where my personal life revolves around, outside the relationships I’m keeping and building. These are where most of my time is spent. I like that I have a lot of mentors and passions. I can and have tried doing these for consecutive hours without getting even bothered. I hope that I would be able to keep most of these.

I have probably crafted, maybe stolen, my self-image around these people and activities. If they crumble, so as my self-image. They have contributed a lot to my ever-expanding self-concept as well as to the self I strive to be.

Knowing about people is my thing. Writing about them fuels me. I like to write more about people especially those who touch me. If I’d be given another chance to draw my life, I would still make this kind of piece.

credits/follow:@dotesports @startwithwhy @cultofmac @nerdwriter1@danicamarie

p.s. reading this entry proves how much i need to improve on the canon of disposition

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goddessofthundathighs · 6 years

Text

The Aftermath

Pairing: Poly!Erik x Hennessy Stevens-Udaku

Word Count: 2,163

Premise: After feeling under appreciated, everyone’s favorite wife decided to take a leave of absence. What’s the worse that could happen?

Warning: Angst with a little fluff

A/N: I apologize in advance for how this may affect you all.

“Now get yo filthy impertinent ass up out my room.”

The words replayed over and over in her head as she cleaned herself up. She’d had a time freeing herself from the expertly tied rope, but once she did, a new rage boiled inside of her. She was used to being punished, but what had just transpired was nothing short of torture and she wouldn’t stand for it.

She dressed like she would for a mission: coils braided into two French braids, black long-sleeved crop top, camo pants and combat boots. She loaded her duffle with all of her tactical gear and a couple weeks worth of clothes and purposely left her phone and kimoyo beads on her bed. She knew how life was without him; she’d done just fine on her own before they met. Without a second glance she loaded her belongings into her army green G Wagon and left the lavish estate. She was back to square one: alone and off the grid, living life on her terms.

He hadn’t seen her all day, but he was used to her disappearing after a punishment. Their attitudes were similar so he figured she needed time to reconstruct her ego. This punishment had been the worse he’d ever delivered to her, not because he wanted to, but because he was sick of hearing the others complain about how lenient he was on her and she’d really fucked up this time. To an extent the other wives were expendable, but Hennessy? The world would burn if anyone harmed a hair on her tiny head.

1 week. 168 hours, 10,084 minutes, 604,800 seconds since she’d been gone. The house had an eerie chill and was strangely quiet despite its many inhabitants. After the third day of her absence, he made the short venture to her bedroom. To the untrained eye, everything was in its rightful place; but no one knew her the way he did. One glance in her closet told him everything he needed to know. All of her tactical gear was missing and her gold iPhone 8 Plus rested in the middle of her plush green comforter along with her kimoyo beads. Her puppies Sosa and Cocoa sat quietly in their kennels. His heart ached a bit. After years of his bullshit, she’d finally left him.

_______________________________________________

The palace was a madhouse. Erik had taken a leave of absence and Killmonger was now running the show. Hennessy was still M.I.A. which meant the rest of the wives were feeling the brunt of his anger.

“Where the fuck is she?” Bastion whispered angrily to Angel and Aly’Sha.

“No one knows,” Angel responded. “She left her phone and her kimoyo beads here and Ashley said that all of her tracking devices had been disabled.”

“This bitch just doesn’t give a shit about our well-being!”

Bastion was furious. She had never been one to bite her tongue, but she also wasn’t stupid. Killmonger was an entirely different beast, and after their last altercation, she vowed to never find herself on his bad side again.

“ANGEL!” he screamed from his bedroom.

“Welp, guess that my cue ladies,” Angel remarked before slowly retreating down the hallway. The last week had been especially stressful for her. Her peaceful demeanor meant that whenever Killmonger felt the need to destress, he called upon her. She was exhausted and wanted Hennessy back more than anyone else.

______________________________________________

Hennessy reclined in the hot bath, allowing the soothing scents of lavender and vanilla to invade her senses. The last few days had been exactly what she needed: peaceful and quiet. She was thankful that she’d secretly kept her old condo despite her husband’s protests. Speaking of her husband…

A lone tear fell as she toyed with the ring on her left hand. She missed him, but was just as stubborn as he was when she was hurting. Though everyone else in the house respected her and her position, she couldn’t help but feel inadequate at times, like there was a constant competition that she seemed to be losing.

She allowed the last few tears to fall before exiting the bath. She wrapped herself in her robe and pondered the last few years of her life. Financially, she was more than capable of living without him. She owned several dispensaries and could sweet talk a rattlesnake out of its rattle if necessary. But her heart was an entirely different story. It had been 10 years since he’d infiltrated her life and she’d be lying if she said her entire world didn’t revolve around him. But even still she was tired and angry. She hated feeling as though she was on the back burner of his affection, though she was fully aware of what she’d be getting herself into when she agreed to the arrangement. More tears fell as she allowed her wayward thoughts to completely consume her.

“What are you going to do if I ever decide to leave, Erik?”

She could tell the question caught him off guard by the way his body went rigid, but in true Erik fashion, he quickly recovered.

“You ain’t going nowhere Henny. You love a nigga too much,” he replied smugly before pulling her closer into his arms. Before this conversation, he’d never imagined life without his feisty munchkin. Ever since that fateful day he stumbled on her doorstep, she’d been there. She stuck by his side for everything, even the Wakandan takeover and failure. He remembered her teasing him, singing “Oh I just can’t wait to be king” at the top of her lungs once he finally came to. She was his best friend and the love of his life. Though he had 10 other wives, there was something about the good doctor that had him hooked.

Her heart had never ached this much. She wanted to go home, wasn’t sure of she was ready for the beast that awaited her.

2 weeks. 336 hours, 20,168 minutes, 1,209,600 seconds since the lavish palace had only been a speck in her rear view mirror. After a much needed break, Hennessy Stevens-Udaku was finally home. She’d barely gotten all the way in the door before she felt tiny arms wrapping around her neck, squeezing for dear life.

“Thank Bast you’re back,” the little woman said. “He’s been on a rampage the entire time. How dare you leave without telling anyone where you were going? That’s the reason you got punished last time.”

Hennessy stared at the little woman as though she’d grown another head. For a split second, she contemplated leaving again, but the dark figure looming in her peripheral vision stopped her.

“I missed you too Baby,” she responded before moving to her bedroom. The tiny woman followed behind her, finally releasing all of the anger she had built up over the last two weeks.

“I was forced to bite my tongue the entire time you were gone because you decided to unleash the beast! He almost broke Aly’Sha’s X-Box and don’t get me started on poor Angel! All of us have had to deal with the monster you created and you’re just standing here like you don’t give a shit!” Hennessy listened to Bastion rant for a little while longer before putting a hand up, stopping her mid-sentence.

“Listen, I’m sorry, ok? I’m sure shit has been rough around here, but I needed to get away for awhile. I honestly didn’t think he’d notice I was gone.”

“BITCH!” Aly’Sha’s voice called from the hallway. Hennessy knew she was in for another earful from the medium sized, younger version of herself. Before Aly’Sha could begin her rant, however, Hennessy’s icy stare cut her off.

“Listen, I said I was sorry. Y’all know I don’t apologize for shit so y’all better take it and leave me the hell alone.”

“Yes, Kitana,” Bastion replied before sashaying out of the room. Aly’Sha remained. She’d been just as worried about Hennessy as Erik was. They talked about everything, so the fact that she’d left without telling her really hurt her feelings.

“I really am sorry,” Hennessy stated, sensing Aly’Sha’s agitation.

“I know, but it still hurts,” Aly’Sha replied.

“You know he cried, right?”

Erik Stevens? Crying? That was new.

“I just needed some time. I almost asked him for a divorce.”

“A what?!”

Her body went rigid. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing in the doorway, but she could tell by his tone of voice that he was far from happy. Aly’Sha took this as her cue to exit. She hugged Hennessy one more time before retreating to her gameroom.

She continued unpacking her belongings, refusing to meet his stare. This was the longest that she’d been away from him with no communication and she knew that he wouldn’t rest until he’d learned the reason for her unannounced disappearance.

“So you wanna tell me why you had me sitting up here playing where in the world is Henny Sandiego?”

If the situation had been different, she’d have laughed at his response, but even she knew not to play with him when he got like this.

“I just needed time, N’Jadaka.”

His eyes softened at the mention of his given name. Though he was livid with her, he was happy that she was home.

“You were gonna divorce me?” he asked, voice just above a whisper.

“I honestly don’t know what I was going to do. I felt like I had been replaced. It felt like I’d gone from being your number one to number 1001. It felt like I’d been replaced ten times over.”

His arms found her waist instantly. This side of her was something new. She always exuded confidence and to hear that she’d been feeling less than broke his heart.

“I’ll drop them all like a bad habit if you really feeling a way, Mama.”

Her eyes widened as she stared up at him.

“I didn’t stutter,” he stated, catching her expression in the mirror.

“You can’t just say stuff like that, Daka,” she replied, voice dropping to the same level as his.

“I know, but I mean it. At the end of the day, if you really feel like that, then yeah I’d do it. You were my first, I’ve known you the longest, and we’ve been through some heavy shit together. I know I’ll never find another one like you.”

She briefly met his gaze in the mirror before turning away again.

“I’m sorry if I made things awkward around here. I love you all, that’s undeniable, but there’s a love I have for you that’s unmatched.”

“I get that Daka, which is why I’d never make you choose. All I’m saying is sometimes it gets frustrating having to share you with so many others. I know that this is what I signed up for when I agreed to this arrangement, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

“I get that too, Henny. You’ve never liked sharing,” he chuckled quietly. “But I don’t want you to forget that I’ll always come back to you. It might take a minute, but I’ll always come back. Nobody gives cuddles like Henny,” he stated, softly squeezing her sides.

She met his gaze in the mirror once again before snatching away from his grasp.

“Really nigga? All I’m good for is cuddles?” she asked, placing her hands on her ample hips.

“Nah. That pussy is pretty amazing too,” he replied, flashing those gold fronts that she loved so much.

“Bye nigga!” she replied, pushing him towards the door. “You can get the hell out since all I’m good for is pussy and cuddles,” she said.

He turned around suddenly, taking both of her wrists in one hand.

“You good for more than that Princess. You smart as fuck.” he kissed her forehead. “Your cooking is amazing.” he kissed her nose. “And you make sure a nigga does whatever he has to do to be successful,” he said before kissing her lips.

She smiled softly at his compliments, but she still played hard to get.

“Plus you got them pretty ass eyes and that pretty ass smile. You got a nigga weak, girl.”

She was full on grinning at this point. Hearing him admit that he’d drop all of the other wives definitely fed her ego, but she’d never let him do it. As annoying as they were, she’d grown to love them just as much as he did and couldn’t imagine the palace without them.

“I love you Hennessy Monae Stevens-Udaku,” he stated, placing soft kisses along her jawline.

“I’m sorry for making you feel less than and I promise I’ll do better in showing my appreciation.”

She hummed in agreeance, smiling in spoiled Princess the way she often did when she got her way. The rest of the wives cheered silently outside of her bedroom door, thankful that peace had been restored in the palace and that the beast had been returned to the fiery pits of hell where he belonged.

TAG LIST: @vikkidc @hearteyes-for-killmonger @kxnfuzed @inlovewithmakeupcomicsanimelove @thehomierobbstark @sweetsexysavagery @beautifulqueenflaws @iamrheaspeaks @wakanda-inspired @winteroflife @amethyst1993 @thickoreo @ange-sensuel @allhailnjadaka @dameshaemonique @theunsweetenedtruth @ayellepea @thadelightfulone @drsunshine97 @princessstevens @princesskillmonger @muse-of-mbaku @imagine-mbaku @wawakanda-btch @killmongersgurl @yaachtynoboat711 @eriknutinthispoosy @youreadthatright @forbeautyandlife @panthergoddessbast

#vanity writes #erik killmonger x black oc #erik stevens #erik x henny #hennessy chiron #i’m an artist #and i’m sensitive about my shit

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