#like... daniel hasn't even died yet (for real)

[sssssssim]

[sad-girl-hours23]

Thinking about Buck,

Still not over Tommy, deeply unsatisfied being under anyone else (he's tried and lost count how many times). His best friend has moved away; he's happy Eddie's working things out with Chris, but he misses them both terribly.

Amongst every one else, he feels...not so much a divide, but maybe less enmeshed than they used to be.

Nothing's wrong with his job, but well, it's starting to feel a lot less like his whole life and purpose and more like just that: a job. He's stagnant. Stuck.

He feels an itch under his skin that he can't scratch in any of his usual ways.

He's over pouring out his love into a Kitchen aid mixer. He's done trying to bury his need for connection into hook-ups.

Realizes maybe he's not as settled as he thought he was. Maybe he's still searching; but for what, he doesn't know. Himself. His purpose. Love.

Realizes he misses not being stuck in one place.

So he takes a vacation. Spends two weeks in Japan. Tells himself he won't create a full itinerary for his time there (he spends most of his flight doing so anyway, but he compromises with himself and leaves his second week open).

He reads about the Wind Phone. How people travel from all over to talk to their late loved ones through a rotary phone.

He doesn't go his first week there, but the thought of it is never far from his mind. (He's held hands with Death, he isn't sure what he's so afraid of).

He gets to the garden of Bell Gardia.

He thinks about Red Delacroix, who warned him against making firefighting his whole life. “You can be the hero and save lives, but don’t neglect having your own. Last thing you want is to be at the end holding nothing but regrets.” So he talks to Red; tells him he hasn't quite figured it out, is scared he never will.

He comes back the next day, Thomas on his mind. Buck tells him how he found his scrapbook the other day (he had forgotten that he'd even taken it). He tells him about Tommy, the love he thought he finally found (then lost). He smiles. "I know, I know. You don't find it, you make it." He can't help the crack in his voice "I really thought we were."

Buck wonders what it says about him that he's spending his vacation talking to dead. Knows he's not done yet

He comes back the next day, and the day after that, and the one after that. He talks to Daniel each time. He isn't quite sure how to picture him; the age he was in the last photos taken of him, the age when he died, the older Daniel that his coma dream imagined up? He talks to them all.

He gives him the abridged version of his life. Wonders if he should leave out the parts he knows would break his brother's heart, leaves them in anyway. It's cathartic; to confess of the survivor's guilt he's carried since learning of Daniel, how it all came flooding back when woke up from his coma, how it felt like he was letting him down again in the interest of his own survival.

He's certain he's out of tears, and he may not have a voice left by the end of his trip.

But he's got one more phone call to make. And he can't make it here, in this haunted phone booth. And he doesn't want to wait until it's too late.

He hasn't figured it all out. He doesn't know where him and Tommy went wrong. He knows they're both haunted by their own ghosts.

But Tommy's still here. And unlike Buck's ghosts on the other end of the phone, he can talk back.

So Buck does what he should have done months ago. He calls Tommy. He nearly sobs in relief when he hears a breath on the other end and a quiet, "Evan?"

[warrenwaskilledbyadeer]

I know this is just from the Potato Sack ARG so it's probably in no way canon but the very thought of this is sending me

Quick explanation for those who don't know: the Potato Sack ARG was a celebration upon the release of Portal 2 (hence the potato) where a bunch of easter eggs were added to a bunch of different Steam games that you could then decode and put into a website to get an early release of Portal 2. Amnesia the Dark Descent got 2 major pieces of the ARG's puzzle added to it for the event (and also released the Justine expansion and Remember short story collection), and here is one of them.

This is Elise Zimmermann leaving a phonograph message to Daniel. Read the pure beauty that is her tirade to the man who murdered her before I start dissecting it to point out my favorite parts. (I should let everyone know now I don't know how to add a Keep Reading so I'm very sorry for the length)

I lost my mind reading this the first time, I don't know how to explain how excited this made me

Let's dive into it, shall we?

We start off with Elise laying down the law, as she of course should. Gotta make sure Daniel understands where he stands as a person (Unfortunately, this is being said to New Daniel who hasn't even gone to Storage yet, so he has no idea what she's talking about). But even still....

Not "you monster." Not "you murderer." Not "inhuman" or "evil" or any number of words that would perfectly fit to describe Daniel. No, it's just "you selfish old boy." This is probably my favorite part of the whole thing

Now THIS is important. Elise would be totally within her rights to want vengeance upon this man, to want to see him die or see horrible things happen to him. But instead, she offers him redemption. Instead of taking the easy gratification of watching him get killed the way she was or something, she wants Daniel to really pay for what he's done. She wants to see him go through the hard work of atoning for his actions, which is not an easy thing to do!! She wants to see him

a. Fully understand and accept responsibility for what he's done

b. Feel guilt for doing a terrible thing (but not such crushing guilt that he erases himself just to not feel it anymore, that's just selfishness all over again)

c. Put in the effort and the work to pay for this thing, to truly balance the scales of justice and do something that will make it right

d. And then come out of this actually having become a better person

Elise is the REALEST!! How many times do you see this in real life or in fiction?? Not many!! Usually swift revenge is what people want the most, but LOOK at how wise this kid is!! It's more satisfying for her, more punishing for him, and has the added benefit of actually improving a person so they won't do this kind of thing again!! I cannot describe how much I love Elise Zimmermann

Now we're into the ARG stuff (the first letter to the answers of each of these spelled out the clue you were supposed to put into the website) but I still got a lot of enjoyment out of this. To me, this reads as... well, I have to explain a little

What I got from this (and it was sort of an inkling of an idea I already had that was affirmed by this) is that Elise's ghost is following Daniel around the castle. I mean, the Shadow, Alexander, the Gatherers, none of them can make doors blow open, lights go out, and books fly off the shelves by themselves. Those are all distinctly ghostly things to have happen. Not to mention the way the flame bursts to life seemingly of its own accord over the spot where Elise died. That was the one that really got me thinking about it. Who would care so much about Daniel seeing and understanding what had happened there? Probably the girl who had been murdered.

But now getting back to Elise's phonograph message. To me, this reads as Elise, having followed Daniel around this castle, is also reading all the notes Daniel finds over his shoulder. Much like New Daniel, Elise can't make heads or tails of a lot of the information he's finding. So to me it sort of feels like Elise is saying, "From the bits and pieces of your life I've been able to put together I'm very confused, please explain it to me, I'm invested now." Daniel's life is sort of like a soap opera for her to watch (honestly Daniel's life is a soap opera for New Daniel to watch too)

(Can you imagine her reaction to the drama of Alexander locking Daniel out of the Inner Sanctum though, right after he'd killed Elise?? She'd be like, "OHHHH THE TEA IS HOT!!!" )

(Also I love how offended she is that Daniel laughed when she mentioned Gabriel. My brother and I actually joked about this while making Elise in Miitopia, I will add that at the very end if you're interested in seeing it) (She's also quite offended that Daniel knows Gabriel at all which I also love)

This is my other very favorite part in the whole thing. She's fed up with Daniel's low sanity shenanigans, come on man the girl just wants her answers

And then I can only imagine this next part goes something like

Elise: "Where did you leave your sister?"

New Daniel: "I have a sister???"

Elise, completely done with him: "Daniel, you are going mad!! Go home, call on her, ask her name, and let her bring you home to England."

I feel like Elise is just thinking that Daniel's a complete idiot, which he is. I also love that we go from Daniel needing to redeem himself to Daniel just needing to go home and take care of his sister to Daniel needing to be taken care of by his sister. Her faith in his abilities is steadily decreasing.

Elise: Daniel, just go home and take care of your sister, okay? Can you manage that much?

Daniel: Who...?

Elise:

Elise: Never mind, go home and let your sister take care of you

(I do love that Elise wants to see Daniel get to go home and just be happy with Hazel though)

This ending is just to let you know what the puzzle is, but there you have it!! Elise's message to Daniel which is almost definitely not canon but in tandem with Waiting for the Rain made Elise my favorite character in the game besides Daniel. I love the thought of a sassy, judgy ghost child following the man who murdered her around the castle, seeing him wipe his memory and stumble terrified and confused through this nightmare of his own creation, and just realizing,

"Oh no"

"He's stupid"

And as she realizes he has no memory, this means he actually has a better shot at redemption than his former self ever would have 'cause he might not be as incredibly selfish (it probably doesn't hurt that in some of Daniel's low sanity ramblings in-game he doesn't realize that Elise's voice that he keeps hearing is a flashback, he thinks he's hearing a real little girl right now and is trying to find her and save her from whoever's chasing her)

"Okay Daniel, I'll allow you to redeem yourself, but only if you're not stupid"

Speaking of Waiting for the Rain, I just want to say real quick that reading that story was an emotional gutpunch for me for several obvious reasons, but one less obvious one was how much Elise and Daniel struck me as being alike. Their childhoods, their personalities, their want to escape their constrictive lives....The whole time I was reading it I just kept thinking, "No Daniel no!!" because the parallels between them are so strong, I couldn't help thinking if they'd met each other in a different situation they would've been really good friends. You can probably see where I'm going with this lol. This is clearly far from the ideal situation, and Daniel doesn't know Elise is following him through the castle, but if he did, like in the Potato Sack ARG, I think that'd be a pretty great dynamic to see for them, strange and wrong as it is to say

So there is my take on Daniel and Elise for this all but nonexistent fandom nowadays to do as they please with. Disaster ghost child realizes her murderer is functionally a new person and an idiot so decides to help him as best she can (while also still constantly insulting and scaring him at every opportunity).

Bonus: If anyone is interested in hearing Elise's voice actress deliver this I did eventually manage to find a video of it!!

Bonus bonus (just our dumb joke while trying to pick Elise's eyes):

When the guy chasing you laughs when you mention Gabriel

When he pulls out a knife

[variousqueerthings]

Weird that they are placing so much emphasis on having bio kids as the ultimate form of happiness and legacy, when Mr. Miyagi is like, right there. Do the writers think of him as different/a tragedy because he would have had it if his wife and son didn’t die, or did they just forget?

I answered and I deleted and I answered and I deleted, because I agree so much with you and I don't want to ruin the enjoyment for anyone, so let's put this below the cut:

THE ANSWER/VARIOUS RAMBLES STUCK TOGETHER WITH TAPE THAT I ACKNOWLEDGE DID NOT STICK WITH YOUR ORIGINAL ASK APOLOGIES (we did start there though):

maybe miyagi was actually secretly evil the whole time........ 🤔🤔🤔(joke)

that family structure is suspect dude, sounds queer to adopt a kid who's being bullied, years after your wife and child died and then not even knock up his mom, what are you gay?

at the very least don't pretend it's a real family you've got there, you'll always be a tragic sad man, without your biological progeny, which is the only kind that matters, and only if done in the Correct way (single parents need not apply)

weird we had the "tanmee" line in s3, but this season just straight up forgot a lot of its own building blocks in favour of some weird aggressive and regressive heterosexual bullshit -- the more I think about it the more discomfort I feel, which isn't to make this deeper than it is, I don't think there was bad intent. I think there was a tragic lack of imagination and it coincides with some real-world Politics that the show doesn't care about and is tacitly conservative about, but I sign onto the show not to be reminded of that world

a lot of people have mentioned that the show bears very little resemblance thematically to the core of the original (two) movies -- it's always been conservative in its depiction of military and war and violence, and simplified an actually incredibly complex, and yet incredibly clear-cut messaging that positions Miyagi (and his ideals) on one side and Kreese (and his ideals) on the other, with very clear reasoning as to why one is right and one is not

the show has been antisemitic, it's been racist, it's had a lack of queer characters that is all the more obvious in a story about a group of outcast kids with found family themes (first produced in 2019), and it's been sexist/underwritten the value that women have in a story about legacy and toxic masculinity and gender roles

and in fandom there have been interesting bits of analysis and writing from very talented and clever people to acknowledge these unexamined prejudices and flaws. they have been challenged in art and in narrative, and there has been plenty of discussion about where we can suspend disbelief and what we (individually) won't take onboard in our own various tellings of the story

up until s5 I have been able to hold that tension, because I truly enjoyed the story and the underlying themes and characters and was baseline expecting those themes and motivations to still matter

but oof the way that this season became entirely divorced from any of the show's own grounding themes, hasn't only made the characters hollow to me, but it's also made me realise (and hey, maybe I should realised this sooner, more fool's me) that they really don't give a shit about Miyagi

which is crazy because the story's about him.

EDIT: and i do still feel deeply uncomfortable about the final fight, and generally how daniel “defeating” anything was done totally absent of miyagi’s ideals -- the only way to solve anything is violence now. beat the other guy into submission to beat your fear i guess. meaningless to what daniel’s journey was, but good to know he’s also manly enough now

and more importantly than anything in a story that's just about liking or disliking trajectories and reads... I am deeply uncomfortable with its politics now

I think how I felt about s4 was that it had some moments I didn't like, but the trajectory made sense to me. with s5 there are moments I do like, but it's empty. I don't know why anything in the last episode happened. I feel intense discomfort about the treatment of women and girls. And to be clear I don't think that there was an intentional drive to make the messaging... that about queerness versus dominating toxic heterosexuality, but honestly I'm living in a pretty shitty world these days with a lot of backsliding in equality and I don't think that I can happily shut off my brain and watch something that conservative anymore

it's not technically anything deep as such, it's not real life. I've really enjoyed the show, I've made some lovely friends through it, and read some of the best fic, and gotten to hype up some wonderful artists and I'll stay in fandom, but I think I might be done with the show itself

but hey, miyagi adopting this skinny little punk from new jersey and giving him some valuable life lessons only for this kid to adopt him right back, that I can rewatch a million times and like I said -- the story is all about that (and it most certainly isn't a tragedy)

[lovecolibri]

How do you feel about this buck's SL? Cause I feel like with buck they make him do 2 steps forward and 43 behind. I mean we weren't already in the selfsacrifice era last year when he buried himself in the loft with taykay? And when they breakup we said that finally he was going to understand his selfworth, so why after 5 months we're again at the same point, this time with the donor thing? I feel like he's the only character that never grows, he grows for an episode and then he regresses again.

Sorry 2 part, I know that healing is difficult, but every other characters struggled with something and got better, he never does. My bitch part says that is just kr plotting to have as less buddie scenes as possible, so he can have all his scenes with connor/wify, because the natural progression from 5b, was making buck going to therapy making him understand what was wrong and with time his feelings for eddie, but why having buddie scenes😱 when you can have buck/guests for another season?

*sigh* I don't really know. I'm not throwing in the towel, I'm willing to see where it ends up but I'm not real thrilled, mostly because I think there are other more interesting things going on right now that they could use for drama that they just...aren't.

As for Buck's growth, I actually don't like it when something is just *solved* like they did with Eddie having a handful of scenes for his breakdown and calling it good (though I will NOT complain about how good Eddie looks happy and health this season. Man is *glowing*), but Buck's storylines have felt especially cyclical to the point of getting boring and I think it's because none of his stuff actually gets addressed. We did get to see Eddie struggling, breaking down, and working to get better and repair relationships. Buck finds out about Daniel and then nearly dies and we get a bland, non-apology from the parents and therapy/Daniel isn't brought up again. Eddie gets shot and Buck finds out he's in Eddie's will but none of that has been talked about because they entirely skipped Eddie's recovery and spent all of 4x14 besides the scenes Tim made KR put in sidelining Eddie and forcing tay kay into the narrative instead of having scenes with the firefam centered around Buck and Eddie. Buck is shown to be unhappy with his gf from the start of s5 and yet the breakup drug on 18 episodes too long and was all about her job/being the same as she always was but Buck never got to address how miserable he was because of how she treated him, and how he wasn't getting anything he actually needed out of the relationship. Bobby gets hurt and we get concerned Buck, but in a throwaway line from some rando woman who knows nothing about Buck and Bobby's relationship and nothing ever came of that either, even with Bobby being in danger 2 episodes later. Someone dies while Buck tries to save them in 6x02 and it hasn't come up again now that the episode is over. I could go on but it's late and I'm tired. But he's going in circles because they are never really *closing the circle* on anything.

This is long and rambling, but the point is, it's definitely irritating, I'm hoping we can get more scenes of our main characters talking to each other about things, and I'm hopeful that this storyline, much like the cringe of the eddieana relationship, well ultimately at least end in an interesting and good way, even if we have to cringe our way through the middle part.

[catilinas]

was reading up on divination and necromancy and tate...i have questions:

“It is not, therefore, surprising to find the doctrine that human sacrifice is necessary to successful ghost-raising, and Cicero hurling against Vatinius the charge of sacrificing boys for necromantic purposes. It is a piling on of the horrors, a motive which inspires many of the extravagances of magical ritual, when the most powerful spell for coercing the presence of the dead is held to demand the sacrifice of an unborn babe, ripped untimely from its mother’s body (Lucan, Pharsalia vi. 556; Ammianus Marcellinus xxix. 2. 17). And another theory, which we have already noticed, doubtless assisted to cement the connection of human sacrifice with necromancy, the belief that in articulo mortis the spirit of the dying man hovered between the worlds of the living and the dead, and was able to give tidings of the future because it stood on the threshold of the next world.”

like whats all this then thought the pharsalia was about a fucked up city akdjsakld

IT HAPPENS............ if you haven't already read it im gonna point you towards greek and roman necromancy by daniel ogden for Necromancy Answers and probably also stuff on the greek magical papyri. which i unfortunately Have Not Read.

but honestly i don't think the baby-sacrifice in the pharsalia is even that big a part of the necromancy though? the thing about the spirit of a recently dead guy Lingering IS a thing even in homer (thinking about patroclus' ghost) but whether that ghost can see the future is v dependant on what you're reading bcs there is some but not much consistency in how the underworld works. like odysseus only gets a prophecy(ish) in the underworld from tiresias, who could see the future even when he was alive. vergil's underworld is like. you can know about the future there because it has already happened. less to do with where the ghosts are than the fact that the ghosts of people who haven't been born yet already exist.

and then the necromancy scene in lucan...... if you haven't read it i Extremely recommend it because it is just so weird and fun and fucked up. even before the ghost shows up (and refuses to talk about the future!!!) it's already temporally Weird, bcs erichtho summons the soul of a corpse that died in the battle of pharsalus...... when the battle of pharsalus Hasn't Happened Yet. the corpse is already from the future. althoughhh i do think the recently-deadness of the corpse (or uh. recently about-to-die-ness) is more important to the necromancy that the sacrificing an unborn baby part? the spell uses a lot of Weird Ingredients (including whatever 'moon slime' is supposed to be) that are kind of. in between aliveness and deadness. reminds me of the gifts pygmalion gives his statue in the met that are all things like. amber and and pearls and (presumably cut) lilies (funerary on main) things kinda uncategorisable as alive or dead. i think they can be read more as a spell to bring it to life (even if it was never dead) than as gifts. and sacrificing an unborn baby is like. how can you kill something that hasn't actually been born yet. the hashtag Liminality of what it is is more relevant than ooooohhhhhh human sacrifice. (im ignoring whatever cicero says about child sacrifice bcs he says a similar thing abt the catilinarian conspiracy and sallust is like yea he made that up. rip but i don't trust invective to contain real details of necromancy :/)

THE other thing about the baby-sacrifice thing in lucan specifically is that you might end up w weird/bad takes on necromancy in General if you don't think abt how lucan is making His necromancy specific to the pharsalia as a whole. like it's uhhhhhh metapoetic. erichtho is a vates. lucan is a vates. but lucan also (IN another quite meta passage) claims that the battle of pharsalus was so terrible that it means every generation born after it is effectively Dead...... maybe i am reading too much into this but wow that time-travelling apocalyptic battle sure can kill multiple things before they are born or it happens huh.

ALSO not to get into my undergr*d th*sis or anything but imo lucan is doing v interesting things w the figure of the matrona in the necromancy scene. especially in how the matrona was supposed to be involved in death rituals. like it's her job to clean the corpse and keep some hair and ideally catch the dying person's final breath in a kiss, symbolising the preservation of their Memory...... meanwhile erichtho's preparations for necromancy are like. steal some hair from a corpse. get another corpse. Wash It. she bites a corpse's tongue off in like a perversion of catching its final breath. she has messy, let-down hair which yea makes her look like a corpse herself but also makes her look like a mourning matrona. erichtho (and. dare i say lucan. let's not get into that) is like a fucked up and evil inversion of a roman matrona AND that's where the baby-sacrifice is relevant. bcs what's more the opposite of denying a dead person's legacy to continue than killing a child which is the living, physical embodiment of continuing legacy. ESPECIALLY if it's to replace that Memory Continuing Into The Future w a necromantic prophecy (= memory Of the future) that ends up not even doing that and just restating the infinitely repeating past.

anyway yeah have you considered reading the pharsalia. it's about so much more than just. a fucked up city :-)

[spookyboywhump]

Thinking a lot about Wren and Zander's real names today and wanted to know: how much do they remember them? After six years being referred to as Zander, does he really remember his name and time as Daniel? And for Wren, he hasn't been Cain's for very long yet but he's already pretty compliant. If someone addressed him as Elias, would he respond? Does he ever think of himself as Elias anymore? Give me the angsty talk about these boys and their relationships to their real names

Ohoho my friend I am more than happy to oblige

 I uh had fun with this one so it’s kinda long

 For Zander, while he remembers his real name as Daniel and remembers quite a bit of his time being Daniel, if someone was to call him by that name he would be seriously caught off guard and depending on the situation may respond very emotionally, however if someone was calling him that regularly, he would have trouble responding to it. Even if he was to escape, he would end up staying Zander because Daniel is dead, Daniel “died” six years ago and he would be better off just staying Zander. 

 I feel like particularly in the first year he was there he spent a lot of time in that room talking to himself, reminding himself who he is in an attempt to not give in completely. He’d probably gotten to a point of oversharing even mundane memories with Cain just because he needed to feel like Daniel ever existed in the first place, and that if he didn’t talk about his family or stupid things he did with his friends then he’d forget them completely. 

 By this point though he’s pretty much accepted that he’s Zander, and there’s pretty much no circumstances where he could go back to being Daniel- as far as he knows, his mom and the rest of his family think Daniel is dead anyway.

 As for Wren, he does his best to be compliant to make sure he sticks around and stays alive until it’s finally decided somebody can come get him. Even though he thinks all of this is terrifying and ridiculous, he’s better off just behaving and going along with it to avoid getting hurt or getting found out, and especially as him and Zander get closer, to avoid Zander getting hurt on his behalf. 

 What Wren doesn’t realize though is that the longer he’s here the more he’s losing himself, even though this is supposed to be temporary, between the main storyline and the side pieces, he’s been there longer than he intended and never really thought about what affects it could have. Sometimes it does slip his mind that he’s not Wren and that he won’t be there forever, and that genuinely terrifies him. 

 If he was to eventually get out, he would want to go back to Elias, though he would have a very, very hard time readjusting to it. He would still stick with it though, because that’s his name and he doesn’t want that to be another thing he’s lost due to his time with Cain.