#maybe ill start working on the part two of their analysis post soon??

[taweretsdagger]

uh oh i’m thinking of parallels between jack and juliet’s deaths again hahaha :’)

[mchalowitz]

the woman is the king

summary: a throughline of the matriarchal scullys; be they ethereal, sharp-witted, and ill-omened. 

this is a revamped version of my unfinished wip chain reaction. some of it will be familiar but don’t worry, there’s plenty that’s brand new. it’s been a minute and i wanted to give the idea what it deserved. i’m hoping to post a new part every friday for the month of october! so with that we have

part 1: melissa

----------

Her door is barely open enough for a hushed conversation.

“It’s Friday night, Mulder.”

Scully keeps attempting to have a separation between work and home. After the underwhelming experience with Rob, she is sure Mulder is aware of this; that she wants to have a semblance of a personal life, even if she is dedicated to their cases. He is making it prove difficult, with his work and his interests so intertwined. It never ends.

“I know, but these reports just came through,” he insists. “You need to see them before…”

A cacophony of flatware and curse words comes from the kitchen. Scully continues to stare up at him, unperturbed, but Mulder’s eyes flash upward over her head. Behind his eyes, he is creating a story; putting together puzzle pieces that do not exist. 

“Got a date in there, Scully?”

A female voice, its volume raising in comparison to the muttered expletives, calls, “Dana, is that the pizza?” 

“My sister,” she corrects. 

Scully has seen Mulder reserved in the face of criticism, but he seems sheepish, maybe even embarrassed, at the idea that his obsessive nature was exposed to this audience. She finds the bashfulness radiating from him to be endearing in a boyish sort of way.

He gives her the stack of papers held together with a binder clip. Not one of the small ones, no, one of the big ones meant for thick analysis that will take an entire weekend to sift through. “Just look them over when you get a chance,” he tells her.

She nods, and when the door is shut, Melissa appears behind her like a graceful apparition. “Working on a weekend,” she marvels. “Sounds like someone else I know.”

“Shut up.”

“Are you going to ask him out?”

Scully turns away, retrieving her wallet from her purse, and starts counting out bills for their soon-to-arrive dinner. “It isn’t like that with Mulder, our relationship is professional,” she babbles. “I already got caught up dating in the bureau before and people that really matter in the FBI are finally starting to see my value after two years of paying my dues at the Academy, I’m not going to jeopardize my future by consorting with my partner.”

"Consorting?” Melissa retorts. “Come on, Dana, be honest. If he were just a guy on the street, would you?”

She thinks. Mulder is ambitious, brilliant, and has an unrivaled sense of humanity. His dedication is frighteningly thrilling. It gives her an enthusiasm to strive for more.

Scully realizes the list could go on. Mulder’s positive qualities are more than can be said about most of the men she’s been involved with and in only a short amount of time knowing him.

Yes, she probably would. If he were just any guy.

The doorbell rings.

“No.”

--

Exiting the elevator, Mulder has anticipation in his step. His keys are already out and he hopes he’s beaten Scully to the door. It’s her first day back in the office.

And after interviews, and doctor’s approvals, and signatures, she’s been fully cleared to be back in the field. Fearing desk duty or reassignment, both of them are quietly ecstatic that they can pick up their work.

He nearly jumps when he sees a flash of copper in front of the door. Damn. But then he notices it’s attached to an unfamiliar head on a taller body. It’s Melissa.

“How did you get down here?” he asks, no introductions. Melissa steps aside so he can unlock the door. He invites her in with a wave of his hand.

“You would be surprised how far you can get with some kind words and a good explanation,” Melissa says. She runs his hand over the books on top of a filing cabinet. She looks over her shoulder at him. “Something to consider for the future, Mulder.”

He continues to stare.

“I told security I had an appointment with you. No one argued,” she smiles, almost amused with herself. “Dana tells me we’re very similar. With all of our ‘wild ideas.’ You know what wild ideas I have, Fox? The concept that my sister can go to work and no one has to worry that they’ll never see her again.”

Scully knows the risks of the job, Mulder wants to say. Do you really think I get a vote on the decisions she makes?

“I care about Dana.”

“Then you’ll go easy on her.”

He nods, even though it’s a lie. He wants it to be the truth. The question isn’t whether he’ll go easy on her or not. He already knows, and he believes Melissa does too, that Scully will only push harder if he tries to lighten her load.

When Melissa leaves with a warning glare, Mulder shuffles papers until Scully arrives with Dr. Pierce. He promises himself that he will not be compelled by whatever this guy presents to him. Above all else, they will not take this case.

Listening to the tale of something possibly wandering around in temperatures of 130 degrees, he repeats not interested to himself, even though he is really, really interested.

“I want to work.”

He reminds himself of his conversation less than an hour ago.

Lead investigator is not a title Mulder takes that seriously. He has never been able to successfully sway Scully in her beliefs and pulling the authority card doesn’t seem like a tactic that would go over well. And while it’s a fact he will keep to himself, in her absence, he sees how utterly incompetent he can be without her.

He’s got an angel and a devil on his shoulders, two dueling Scully sisters. He suggests time off anyway.

“I’ve already lost too much time,” she replies. Oh, that guts him. She knows how easily convinced he can be with some good poetic phrasing.

It won’t be a very intense case. Probably just watching that same footage, giving some opinions on the evidence. It’ll end up being something they can toss to another, more equipped agency. The explanation soothes him enough to not block the door when Scully leaves to pack a bag.

Lying in a month-long quarantine, he has a lot of time to wonder by what means Melissa Scully will kill him.

--

Mulder toes the line between agnosticism and fairweather judaism; a fact that Scully has always respected, and never pushed back against. 

He normalizes empty pews and suspicious clergymen. The sea of mourners for Melissa Scully is a foreign sight. 

Guilt feels like a target on his back and he hopes no one will shoot the proverbial arrow, hoping for a bullseye. Or maybe he does. 

He sits right behind the reserved row and his eyes follow Scully as she walks gracefully up the aisle. She once described her sister as ethereal to him, a gossamer darling, but in her sorrow, it is she, it is Dana, that is the diaphanous messenger of all that is holy and light in the dark.

Scully doesn’t acknowledge him as she sits. He averts his eyes when he briefly meets the eyes of Mrs. Scully. Behind her crow’s feet and unwaveringly maternal gaze, he sees Dana, he sees Melissa.

The priest tells the legend of Melissa Scully that Scully never divulged to him. She studied anthropology at Brown and spent two years on an archeological dig in Peru. In her thirty-three years, she lived in four different countries, but felt a special connection to her teenage years in California. It is possible she cared more for her community than for herself, she appreciated art in all of its forms, and she loved writing letters to her beloved sister, Dana, while she was away at medical school.

Almost imperceptibly, Mulder sees the sharp raise of her shoulders, the sudden intake of breath. Her hand covers her mouth. He reaches forward and places his hand on her shoulder. She lays her hand over his. 

“The dynamic presence of Melissa Scully is a gift to the Lord,” the priest finishes. “Let us bow our heads in silent prayer.” 

Mulder wonders how Scully even allows his presence in the same space as her, allows him to breath the same air when they both know he is the reason her sister is dead. This stupid, this idiotic pursuit of his, that ruins lives with no remorse, and yet he remains powerless to surrender. 

[curriebelle]

furtively tries to express my appreciation for BTS’s insane showmanship without gaining the reputation of Being a Kpop Blog

Actually leTS TALK ABOUT THE REPUTATION OF THE KPOP BLOG 👩‍🏫

So to a certain extent I understand why “friend’s blog became a Kpop blog” is a meme. From the outside, a lot of the Kpop fan activity seems quite vapid. The impression I got in previous years was that it’s mostly about gushing over handsome boys and a/b/o rpf. And that’s not........entirely wrong, but we’ll get into that more in a sec.

Another factor is that Kpop fandom is hard to follow. The barrier to entry is higher than with other fandoms. In posts, individual Kpop stars are referred to by name, stage name, or nickname, and the band they belong to isn’t always obvious, so it’s quite easy to lump it all into “Kpop”; it takes work for a new fan to differentiate the groups if you don’t know them ahead of time. Kpop fandom has its own lingo that differs from other fan language (other media fans don’t use “bias” or “delulu” — and there’s a linguistics dissertation for you). And let’s not discount the other language barrier — Korean isn’t exactly a common first language, so it does take a bit of extra work to find subtitles and translations.

This might be why the Suddenly A Kpop Blog Event supposedly triggers a different reaction in followers. I’m still following most of my friends from crit role season 1, even though a good chunk of them blog about other stuff now (what is this Chinese show? Boy with magic flute? Gay? Help). Fittingly, I’ve seen memes about how people are ride or die for their mutuals even when they move to different fandoms, but the jokes about Kpop blogs are always a bit different — about how turning into a Kpop blog is a bit cursed of u. It’s to the point where this is only “secretly a Kpop blog” because I don’t want the “Kpop blog” reputation.

And from my fandom lurking I can say that part of that reputation is not unearned. A lot of Kpop fans on tumblr engage in it in ways I’m either disinterested in or actively opposed to (the shipping wars are as terrifying as their reputation suggests. Some were arguing one ship was an rl canon true secret relationship because someone in BTS wrote the letter K on his drawing. Even though the letter K is in his name.) The reason I’ve been “secretly a Kpop blog” is that a lot of Kpop posts don’t inspire me into reblog frenzies the way crit role memes used to, and that’s not because Kpop Stans Suck — it’s more just a matter of taste. Then again, I do like gifs, but if I start reblogging BTS gifs, then I’m a Kpop Blog......and you don’t want to be a Kpop blog.

But isn’t there a whiff of “I’m not like other girls” about all that? Like, yeah, of course Kpop fans hoard gifs of the same people and overanalyze them. That’s what fans do! Pretending I didn’t overanalyze the shit out of Taliesin and Laura’s micro-expressions before Perc’ahlia was a thing would just be disingenuous. We’re all looking too closely — one of the best things about being a fan is diving into the excess of art and making things out of it. We all make mountains out of molehills because mountains are more scenic. And, on a baser level, we are all thirsty bastards. I have SEEN you all reblogging the gifs of Chris Evans ripping the log in half, okay, and you were not doing it bc of the camera angle, just own the thirst. Even the problems the Kpop fandoms have aren’t problems unique to Kpop — aggressive shippers and “””””problematic””” fans are everywhere.

I also wonder if the reason why we don’t see as much Kpop analysis on tumblr is because we’ve created kind of a hostile environment for it. Whether you are a Kpop fan or not, we’ve all decided to treat Kpop as kind of silly — the fans give it their all in the departments of cutesy photo sets and ridiculous fic prompts, and we laugh at memes of Gimli saying “never thought I’d die side by side with a Kpop fan” anyway Stan Jungkook. Just like thirst and over analyzing, that’s not necessarily a bad thing — I love that meme, and you should Stan Jungkook — but it does mean that if you want to start taking it a bit more seriously, or even a bit more casually, the assumption is that all your old tumblr friends will ditch you because “you’ve gone to the dark side”

And that’s a shame because uhhhhhh there is some baller stuff to analyze in BTS’s discography. The album before last was based on Jungian psychology (???). Their leader and primary writer is a huge fan of multilingual puns so in the latest album he makes a three-way pun on the phrase “I’m ill” — he’s sick, he’s cool, and he’s overworked (because “il” in Korean means “work”). So is he sick or is he simply made sick by like, society’s expectations of labour under capital???? Like, you know me. Societal critique by way of pun. That’s my shit. There’s also an essay or two in me about the way BTS are marketed for fan consumption and the way we handle multilingual lyrics and the way they’re handling the temporary departure of one of their members (he is an absolute cat of a man and I hope he gets well soon).

Also fuck can J-Hope ever dance.

EDIT: I should probably acknowledge that I can only make this justification for BTS, which is the only Kpop group I really like; I got no idea about the rest of them. I do know that Shinee can Also dance.

I might get the essays out but this probably won’t become “a Kpop blog” if you’re not into that. I think I’ve internalized too much of the stigma (omg V has a song called stigma it’s so good check it out find a good translation), but also, like I said, I don’t vibe with much of the other content and I kind of only follow one extremely successful group. The gifs, though. The gifs might be coming. They are pretty, those boys.

Anyway! People don’t like Kpop for nothing so like Maybe you would also like Kpop? Who knows. At the very least, think before u meme.

[along-came-atsushi]

About Dazai being the (possible) son of the former mafia boss

It has already been mentioned by some people in the fandom that Dazai could have a blood relationship with the former Mafia boss. I don’t know if anyone ever wrote a detailed analysis about this, so I read several scenes with that theory in mind and there are actually some scenes throughout the story where this could have been hinted at and where some things make way more sense.

For this analysis I want to stick with the theory that the former Mafia boss is Dazai’s biological father. But there is also the possibility that he’s any other relative of Dazai (e.g. his uncle or grandfather) or that Dazai is not related to him by blood and he is adopted.

Please keep in mind, that there are many speculations, especially in the first part of this analysis! Should there be any further hints to this theory in future chapters, then either this post will get an update or I’ll write another one.

Quotes from the Fifteen novel are from @looking-for-stray-dogs​ translations!

Beware: Some spoilers for some of the novels and the latest manga chapters!

What we know so far:

- Dazai had been in the Port Mafia since he was 14 (the time where he witnessed Mori killing the former boss). But it is possible that he was in the Port Mafia even before that, because he knew about Kouyou’s plan to escape with the man she admired (where Kouyou was around 14, so Dazai would’ve been around 11).

- It’s not explained until now what exactly was the reason for the former Mafia boss to start a wide underground war that involved many causalities to Yokohama and within the Port Mafia. It’s also not explained what exactly this “illness” was he supposedly suffered from.

He could’ve simply just gotten delusional, craving more and more power over the years. But it’s been stated by Hirotsu that he wasn’t like this from the very beginning, and puts the blame on the former boss’s “illness”.

Possible past:

A motive for the former Mafia boss to start this war is that something happened to a person dear to him, and he did due to sadness and to avenge this person. In this case, maybe something happened to his wife, who would’ve been Dazai’s mother. Yes, I know this origin would be pretty cliché, but there are several reasons why this theory could be true:

1.) There are several characters whose deaths / fates serve as a motive for another character’s actions -> Fitzgerald’s daughter (who died) and his wife (who became mentally ill due to her sadness over their daughter’s death) are the reasons why he’s searching for The Book™; Margaret’s sacrifice for Nathaniel, which then drives Nathaniel to follow Fyodor; Odasaku’s death is the reason why Dazai leaves the Port Mafia; Tachihara’s brother dying is the reason why he seeks vengeance at first; and so on.

2.) ‘Sacrifice for the sake of loved ones’ is a big theme explored throughout BSD -> Odasaku’s sacrifice due to his children dying; the death of Kyouka’s parents in order to protect Kyouka; Margaret sacrificing herself for Nathaniel; and so on.

3.) ‘Going to extreme lengths for the sake of / to avenge / to protect / to claim loved ones’ is another big theme explored throughout BSD -> Odasaku seeking death and vengeance after he witnessed his children die; Tanizaki vowing that he would see the whole world burn for Naomi; John saying something similar about his sister; Fitzgerald playing the big bad guy for his family; Nathaniel leaving the Guild and joining Fyodor because of Margaret; Mori’s creepy obsession with Yosano; Akutagawa’s obsession about Dazai’s approval; Tachihara deceiving everyone to avenge his brother; and so on.

In his last moments the former Mafia boss still wasn’t able to let go of whatever he was seeking, and it just seems as if he was seething with rage and vengeance about something.

[Side note: His mother’s death could’ve been the reason for Dazai to get to know about The Book™ in the first place. Maybe because he himself was looking for a way to bring his mother back, or because his father was searching for the book.]

Mori becoming the new boss:

We don’t know the exact reason why Mori chose Dazai of all people as a witness. But I highly doubt it was just because of a coincidence, or because Dazai was (conveniently for Mori) suicidal. It doesn’t make much sense and Mori himself is too much of a strategist to just go with coincidences. What makes more sense are these reasons Mori has:

“What Mori needed was an assistant. A secretary, a confidant, an outstanding right-hand man.”

“And more than that, as a town doctor turned traitor who usurped power, what he needed were subordinates he could trust. Subordinates he didn’t need to harbour secrets with. Subordinates who could understand him, even while he continued waving a solitary flag at the tip of an iceberg.”

“He couldn’t let Dazai die.

If he did so—if that happened, the people loyal to the predecessor, still firmly rooted within the organisation, would certainly say ‘as expected, the change of bosses was a conspiracy’ and create an uproar.”

It’s been stated that Mori worked as the former boss’s personal doctor. But maybe Mori also worked as the personal doctor for the former boss’s whole family, which would be the reason how he and Dazai got to know each other in the first place (with Dazai being the boss’s son):

“Dazai is not Mori’s subordinate. He isn’t even in the mafia. And he certainly isn’t an illegitimate child, or an orphan he picked up, or a medical assistant. There does not exist a word to correctly express what Dazai and Mori’s relationship is. If one had to use words close to its reality—they were in the same boat.”

This is the only very vague information we got about this so far. But it seems that not everyone in the Port Mafia knows about the former boss’s son, or of him having his own family. The reason for this could be simply to protect them. It’s possible that Dazai was kept hidden from Port Mafia members and he wasn’t an official member himself yet. But once he had reached a certain age, he would have become an official member, and then later he would have inherited his father’s legacy. It’s also possible that only a few certain loyal people, who earned the former boss’s trust knew about his family. One of these people being Mori, as he was the family’s personal doctor.

We know that the war the former boss started contained a lot of causalities in Yokohama and the Port Mafia alone. When Mori took over, he already was confronted with several problems inside the Port Mafia due to this (but more on that later).

Dazai more than anyone else would know that his father couldn’t be convinced to stop the war in his state of mind. So, the only solution to this would be that his father needed to die in order to stop it and with someone else sitting on the throne. Maybe Dazai wasn’t able to kill his father himself (for obvious reasons), so he asked Mori to do it. Or it was the other way around and Mori convinced Dazai to do this together with him. It’s possible that they made a deal: Mori would kill Dazai’s father in place of Dazai, and in return Dazai would relinquish his right as the new boss and give the position to Mori:

“The two of them have shared a common destiny since a year ago. The two of them—Mori as the boss’s private doctor and Dazai, brought into this, no more than a patient who had attempted suicide—colluded, and they carried out a certain secret plan.”

Choosing Dazai as a witness, if he actually was just a random kid brought in by Mori doesn’t really secure his position. But if Dazai is related to the former boss, then choosing him as witness would be a further backup should it ever come out that Mori really killed and usurped the former boss. It also serves as a ‘mind-lock’ for Dazai; in other words: Mori successfully manipulated and subdued Dazai from taking any further steps in betraying him or breaking their deal in any way.

Why Mori kept Dazai in the Port Mafia and wants him back:

After Mori took over, he was met with several problems:

“It has already been two weeks since the deadline for the supply of contraband guns to arrive. At this rate, soon all my subordinates will be reduced to fighting enemies with kitchen knives. And not only that. There have already been three cases this month where the city police were dispatched. Seems like I’m losing control over the members far down the hierarchy.” - Mori

“Cancellations of contracts in the protection business. Intensification of disputes with other organizations. Shrinking of territory. How troubling……a year after becoming boss, and there’s a mountain of problems. For it to be so terrible standing in the top position of the organization……could it be I’m not suited for this? What do you think, Dazai-kun. Were you listening to me?” - Mori

“No money, no information, no trust from subordinates. Even though you’ve known all these from the start.” - Dazai

“Liar! You say that and you keep making me work hard, gave me awful memories a year back, and in the end you didn’t teach me! If this goes on I’ll betray you and join an enemy organization!” - Dazai

“Already, this year he had stopped two cases of members from the “predecessor faction” planning to assassinate Mori. The traitors had certainly been executed, but below the surface Mori was still not approved of. He couldn’t imagine how many of the “predecessor faction” remained.”

It’s strange that Mori is seeking advice from a 14-year-old kid who just recently got into the Mafia. At this point Dazai isn’t even an official member and is only now becoming one. It doesn’t make much sense why Mori would keep a mere “patient who had attempted suicide” and was somehow “brought into this” by his side and choose as a witness, when it’s also made clear at the same time that Dazai “isn’t an orphan Mori picked up”, or why Dazai would willingly decide to stay by Mori’s side.

Of course, it could just be due to Dazai’s intelligence that he is a valuable advisor by nature. But if he is somehow related to the former boss, then he probably must have received some sort of training in how to properly lead a major organization like the Port Mafia. A training which Mori didn’t receive as a random usurper, so now he’s dealing with the problems and is in need of someone who has more insight than him. At least, in the beginning of his take over.

This point of view changed within Mori as Dazai climbed up the ranks as an executive with his own subordinates (who highly respected and / or feared Dazai). Therefore, Mori was constantly torn between seeing Dazai as a valuable advisor and weapon in battle and a possible rival / usurper.

Which then was one of the reasons why Mori kinda initiated Odasaku’s death, in order to break Dazai and make him leave Port Mafia. But during the fight with the Guild he regretted having lost Dazai as a member.

Possible hints:

Stepping away from mere speculations to theories with more canon facts. The following quotes could serve as hints for Dazai’s possible origin (in chronological order):

- Odasaku about Dazai:

“He was practically born for this job.”

The context of this quote is about Dazai’s cruel and effective methods as a Port Mafia executive. Of course, Odasaku doesn’t know about Dazai’s possible past, but it emphasizes just how natural and thoroughly Dazai fits in the Port Mafia. It could serve as a hint from a narrative POV.

- Dazai and Odasaku:

“Odasaku, I know what you’re thinking, but don’t. Doing that isn’t going to−” “Isn’t going to bring the kids back?” I asked. […]

“Odasaku…,” Dazai said softly. “Forgive me for the absurd wording, but−−don’t go. Find something to rely on. Expect good things to happen from here on out. There’s gotta be something… Hey Odasaku, do you know why I joined the Mafia?” […] I joined the Mafia because of an expectation I had. I thought if I was close to death and violence−−close to people giving in to their urges and desires, then I would be able to see the inner nature of humankind up close. I thought if I did that, I would be able to find something−−a reason to live.”

Interestingly, Dazai says this right after Odasaku witnessed his children dying right in front of his eyes. Dazai knew exactly how Odasaku felt after his loss. And he knew that grief over the loss of loved ones can make a person choose decisions that will have bad consequences (the former boss starting a war, not caring about who dies, which maybe stems because he lost a loved one). And Odasaku sadly really chooses to sacrifice himself, because he had lost all meaning in his life.

- Higuchi to Dazai:

Higuchi says this after she lists some of the things Dazai did during his Port Mafia time, which she claims to have read in some records. It could be that she just wants to express how cruel he was, even for a Port Mafia member. But the fact that she emphasizes “your blood” could maybe not only refer symbolically to his actions, but as him having actual Mafia blood, and she subtly informs him that she now knows about his possible past.

It would explain why he looks so shocked at first, because I doubt that Dazai’s actions are an actual secret in the Port Mafia. Higuchi could’ve simply asked pretty much anyone if she wanted to know more about that. And it’s also weird that Dazai is shocked just because a Port Mafia member tells him about the things he had done back then.

It’s still uncertain though, how exactly she found out about this, or if it was her doing all alone. And if anyone told her, then the question remains why it was necessary that she should know about this.

- Dazai, Mori and Hirotsu:

This whole scene and conversation just look very suspicious to me. And it also seems that Hirotsu knows a lot more than he lets on. It’s clear that Mori thought of Dazai as usurper and so he needed him out of his way.

Dazai also seems to take the former boss’s death pretty personal, as if he’s still holding grudges against Mori for killing him. Which would be strange, if Dazai really is just some random kid who got into the Port Mafia by Mori and not somehow related to the former boss. And in that case, it’s also weird that Hirotsu especially emphasizes that he believes that Dazai understands what Mori had to do. It could be that Dazai’s goal back in the Port Mafia was to gain enough subordinates / followers to take over as the new boss (like he threatens Mori with), in other words: to take back what was taken from him. But then the whole Odasaku thing happened and so he left and found a new purpose for himself.

Hirotsu either could have been one of the few people who knew about the former boss’s family and just keeps quiet about it, or he later found out about it somehow (and that maybe could be the reason how Higuchi knows, too).

It’s also notable that Dazai and Hirotsu seem to get along very well, which could be because Hirotsu just respects Dazai as a person, but maybe also because he knows that Dazai is the true heir.

[royalnugget42]

SPN is ending

And here’s my take on how it will go down, based on the limited knowledge we have. Please be aware that these are not foolproof predictions. Title analysis can only get you so far, and some of the titles are vague enough that they could mean just about anything. Still I’d like to try my best to predict the narrative based on how I would go about it and based on the vague references.

I’ll go episode by episode, include as many details as I can reasonably add, and try to keep my Destiel shipping goggles off as much as possible. Buckle up.

14

First one is pretty easy. Episode 14, “Last Holiday” promises to be kind of literal, with a mysterious figure appearing and giving Jack, Sam, and Dean the holidays they missed out on. However, I was curious, since Supernatural has a habit of including obscure or not so obscure references in their titles, if there was any other thing we could correlate this to.

There is actually a movie called “Last Holiday” starting Queen Latifah, whose character is diagnosed with a terminal illness, which results in her making the decision to abandon her boring life and live like a millionaire in Europe.

The idea of the fight with Chuck being a “terminal illness” on the horizon could be why now is the best time for these guys to live it up.

This possible reference coupled with the ‘last’ seems to say that this episode will be a sort of final moment of levity before the endgame. Past this episode there be monsters, lads. I’d also like to point out that since it will be just Jack and the brothers if the promo photos are anything to go by, this will be a good time to get in some forgiveness and family bonding for our characters before things go downhill again.

Looking at promo photos for this episode again, I’m not sure where, but the episode may also carry some development for the plot. I’m not sure whether the photos of Cas, Amara, and Charlie were for this episode or another one (since they are not listed as cast members for the episode on IMDb), but we’ll be seeing all of them again soon it looks like, and I can’t wait for Cas and Jack to go on a hunt together again.

15

This episode will be the beginning of the descent. We’re standing on the edge and staring into the void, and we’re about to take the plunge. How do I know this?

“Gimme Shelter”, the title for this new episode, seems to have a literal meaning of the characters continuing to try to hide from God. However, as usual, the title is also a reference, this time to a song by The Rolling Stones. The lyrics to said song are nice and foreboding.

Oh, a storm is threat'ning

My very life today

If I don't get some shelter

Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away

It's just a shot away

War, children, it's just a shot away

It's just a shot away

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin'

Our very street today

Burns like a red coal carpet

Mad bull lost its way

War, children, it's just a shot away

It's just a shot away

War, children, it's just a shot away

It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!

It's just a shot away

It's just a shot away (3X)

The floods is threat'ning

My very life today

Gimme, gimme shelter

Or I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away

It's just a shot away (4X)

I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away

It's just a kiss away (5X)

Kiss away, kiss away

Cue nervous anticipation

This is definitely where things are going to really pick up plot wise. Most likely, more will be revealed about Billie’s Plan to Kill God TM. Although, the idea of Death herself leading the Winchesters to victory feels sketchy to me still. She is deliberately withholding all the details, and she’s doing it for a reason.

Something down the line is going to make the Winchesters angry with her, and she’s not going to tell them about it unless it’s absolutely necessary. I have a feeling what it is will get revealed in the next episode.

16

“Drag Me Away (From You)” has some very clear negative connotations, and on top of everything has a weird format. It could be based on the lyric from Africa by Toto, ‘it’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you’, or a reference to the song “Drag Me Away” by Melissa Etheridge, whose lyrics mention angels, and are about resistance and perseverance, two defining characteristics of the Winchesters. However, I’d like to point out another correlation.

Like I said before, the title has a weird format. The only other episode of Supernatural with a similar title to this one is season 12 episode 12 “Stuck in the Middle (With You)”. That episode was about what seemed like a normal hunt, but was actually a mission for Mary by the British Men of Letters to get the Colt. In that episode, Cas came ridiculously close to dying a painful and slow death, which does not bode well for this episode if it’s correlated in any way.

If what I’m predicting for Billie’s plan is true, this episode will be where the viewers are clued in on the thing she won’t tell the Winchesters about. The brothers might not necessarily get clued in (like how they still hadn’t realized Mary’s involvement with the BMOL at the end of 12x12), but whatever Billie is withholding will have serious consequences.

For this episode, I predict that Cas will come absurdly close to death again, because I believe Billie’s plan involves him dying. Billie doesn’t consider Cas a member of TFW. Multiple times in the most recent episodes, she talks about how important Jack is, how important the Winchesters are, but never Cas, and it feels like a weird oversight.

“Ever since I got this new job, I stand witness to a much larger picture. You know what I see? You. And your brother. You’re important.” 13x05 “Advanced Thanatology”

“I told you Dean, you and your brother have work to do.” 15x12 “Galaxy Brain”

Surely Cas has a part to play, since he’s one of the main characters right? But Billie doesn’t trust Cas, as well she shouldn’t. Cas is a wildcard, an angel who doesn’t do as he’s told. He straight up stabbed her in the back, something that she was completely caught off guard by.

I could make an entire post about how Cas hasn’t played by the rules of the universe since season 4 episode 18 “The Monster at the End of This Book”, but I digress. The point is that this episode is probably going to shed some light on the true threat the team is facing. Which leads us into...

17-18

Here’s where things start to get muddy. The titles from this point on get vague, and without any solid information about the previous episodes, these could be headed anywhere.

“Unity” is the next episode, number 17, and that could mean a lot of things. In my proposed timeline it is after a supposed revelation about Billie’s plan, so maybe they feel more unified after learning it.

In Supernatural‘s usual story structure, though, it feels like this episode will probably be the buildup to what seems like the end of the villain, but will actually be the darkest hour.

The episode following right after this is titled “Despair” and I think that’s telling. Supernatural writers do this often, where the boys make a plan, and inevitably when they follow it something goes wrong. “Unity” is the plan being made and carried out, and “Despair” is either the episode where everything goes wrong, or the aftermath.

[EDIT: The title of episode 18 is actually “The Truth”, which I believe may still narratively serve the same purpose, but now I’m more convinced that this is where the Winchesters learn about Castiel’s deal and/or something that Billie has been keeping from them about the plan to kill God. Thank you to @kingofthecrossroads for the updated information.]

Before I go into detail about this two-episode arc, an obligatory

Warning: Shipping Ahead

To my eyes, “Unity” seems like the perfect place for Castiel’s arc to reach a breaking point. If I’m right, and this is the episode where everything seems to succeed, then what better time for The Empty to snatch Cas away from his happiness.

If I was a writer, and I was in fact planning on making Destiel canon, this is where I’d do it. It makes the most sense to have Dean and Cas finally realizing their love for each other be the catalyst for Cas “finally giving himself permission to be happy” especially if this episode also contains a false climax regarding the Chuck storyline. Cas has said multiple times that he’s “far from happy”, so there has to be something huge happen for Cas to get there. Not to mention, Cas would be a sort of vessel for the audience, simultaneously happier than we’ve ever been because we were finally right, and sadder than ever because Cas is gone.

“Despair” won’t just be despair that the plan failed. It could also be Dean’s despair at losing Cas, our despair at seeing our hopes for them dashed.

[EDIT: Again, the title will NOT be “Despair” it will be “The Truth”, but I still think it’s telling that Despair was a working title for long enough that it’s on the IMDb page, and if “The Truth” contains the truth about how Dean and Cas feel about each other, then this will still be a dark episode.]

Shipping over, let’s continue.

19

Now we come to another referential episode, “Inherit the Earth”. There’s really not enough information to have anything solid regarding the nitty gritty details, but we can take a look at what this title is most likely referencing. “Inherit the Earth” is just a tiny part of a common phrase. It’s used in media all the time, but we’re interested in the original source.

I’m not sure if the episode will contain references to all the pieces of this passage from the Bible, but “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” seems to build off of the last episode, “Despair”. Another translation for the word meek in this instance may have been “powerless”, and after the negative moments in the previous episode TFW would probably feel pretty powerless. Maybe, in the previous episodes, Jack failed and lost his powers again, and that’s what caused Despair, but now he will inherit the powers that God had, or inherit control of earth.

If the rest of the passage is to be taken into account here, there’s also the “poor in spirit” who will ascend to the “kingdom of heaven”, possibly a reference to Cas being depressed and fighting for Heaven to be maintained. “Those who mourn will be comforted”, and that may actually bode well for Sam and Dean, who constantly mourn for the friends they’ve lost. Maybe in this episode they’ll get some closure on that front, maybe with their friends trapped in Hell going to Heaven (Kevin). The next line after “inherit the earth” refers to “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”, and if that isn’t Michael/Adam to a T...maybe this will be the episode we see him team up to fight God. I’m not sure who the last line might refer to other than Sam, if you have any ideas feel free to tell me.

And after all this, we have the big one.

20

“Carry On” is referring to “Carry On My Wayward Son” by Kansas, and I don’t have a clue what it will entail. If the previous episode goes well, then this will be a sort of epilogue, with a (hopefully) happy ending for TFW, maybe we see Eileen and Sam get together, some kind of family dinner with Jody and the girls to resolve that plot line, or potentially, if the writers plan on doing it, a scene confirming Destiel.

It’d be interesting if they showed the brothers going on a normal, run-of-the-mill hunting trip, like a simple salt-and-burn, or even a (different) woman in white. It would be a nice way to bookend the story, to end on a hunt, but instead of the brothers on their own, it’s the brothers with the help of everyone they’ve come to know and care about in their journey, all the lives they’ve touched.

If, however, the conflict is not resolved by the end of the previous episode, this could be the resolution and epilogue all rolled into one, though if it were me I would want as much time as possible to resolve any lingering character questions because, at the end of the day, Supernatural has survived because of the characters. They are what people stay for, what they watch for.

Reminder that all of this is speculation. I do not know what will happen, this is just how I think the story could progress based on what we know so far.

For better or for worse, at this point Supernatural will be over. Will they do a perfect job? Probably not. This is Supernatural, it’s not the most perfect show. However, I’m excited to see where the writers will go with it. They have their work cut out for them.

[EDITED]

[its-a-branwen-thing]

On Qrow: Part 1

Buckle up, people, this is a Qrow appreciation post and it is a few weeks of brain gems so it’s loooonng and broken up into...two? three? I’m not sure yet parts because I love this man and his future story potential has me in tatters.

Qrow’s arc this season has been about recovery. Recovery from his alcoholism, his self doubt, his persistent pessimism. You love to see it. And it was evident from his introduction that Clover was supposed to be instrumental to that in an illustrative way. How instrumental, I think, is up to interpretation. (Yes, I did in fact heavily ship Fair Game and no, I am not here to discuss that topic, as this is a post on Qrow’s character moving forward). But as much of a help as Clover was he also served as a vessel for some very interesting tidbits and breadcrumbs that I think will service the future of Qrow’s character.

“I just found working alone tends to be for the best.”

“Well I think that’s a shame.”

It sure is a damn shame, Clover. E3 is our first real introduction to this character and his subsequent partnership with Qrow. My interpretation of these scenes is tinted heavily by my shipping brain which has shipped nothing in it’s life ever and decided now was time to read into this ill-fated, doomed relationship so in trying to look at them objectively, it seems that the start of Clover’s interactions with Qrow are about the latter’s relevancy. Which maybe we, as an audience, have also been questioning. If V6 proved anything, it was that team RWBY and JNPR are coming into their own and Qrow, who has been a guiding force for them these past few seasons, might no longer be needed in that same capacity. So what’s next for the mentor whose mentees are all grown up? Well, quite a bit of growth.

Ah, the infamous truck scene. Love it or hate it, Qrow and Clover have some dialogue here that moves the former’s arc towards something. There are two specific Clover lines I’ll point out as being significant:

“It’s a good thing they had someone to look up to, get them through it. Not everyone is so lucky.”

“Those kids wouldn't be where they are without you. You’ve had more of an effect on them than you realize.”

The crux of Qrow’s struggle is that he’s bad luck and he’s often so down on himself because he feels his presence hurts those around him, namely those he loves. That’s why I find the phrasing of these sentiments so interesting. Clover isn’t reassuring Qrow that he’s not bad luck. He’s reassuring him that he is an asset to his team regardless. That his guidance was something he should be proud of. He’s building his confidence in connection to others, which is exactly the thing Qrow is most sensitive about. And, ironically, what I find most compelling about his and Raven’s vastly different semblances in that they directly oppose their character’s foundational beliefs and functions. Qrow has always shown he’s wanted to be close to others. His semblance, as we know it so far, largely prevents that. And if a semblance is part of a person’s soul, than what does that say about our dusty old crow? (More on that...whenever)

“No one wanted me. I was cursed.”

This line hurts me so much. Let’s back up for a bit. Just a bit. This is a helluva moment in V6E4 because not only does it show us Qrow’s breaking trust and faith, it’s also ultimately what sends Ozpin into dormancy. It’s Qrow saying meeting Oz was the worst luck of his life that initiates his retreat into Oscar. Like the final twist of a knife in the gut. Qrow being one of his remaining generals likely plays a role in that dynamic, and I think these two need to have a reckoning soon.

But as V6 continues, we see Qrow spiral more. He tries to act like the leader but it feels forced. His heart isn’t in this fight anymore because his trust in Ozpin has been shattered. His ability to believe that the war is worth the effort is nullified. He drinks. He doesn’t care what the kids do. He stops really listening to them. This escalates when he tells them all to drop the fight in V6E9. It continues into E10, where he has a moment of panic in that they’ll all be caught and that he shouldn’t have dragged any of them into this fight. He says the state of the world is the fault of the older generation, of Oz and him and every other person who’s been fighting this war. He blames himself for dragging them along. But Ruby says they aren’t his responsibility. They chose this. So did he.

“But we could sure use Qrow Branwen on our side.”

The entire exchange in this episode is wonderful. It shows Qrow’s concern. It shows the team’s doubt. And it shows Ruby’s conviction. I loved her in these scenes because she took command in a way no one else could. Not even her uncle, a man she’d admired her whole life. Who she based her weapon off of, her color scheme. Ruby’s aim here is to reassure her uncle that he means something to this fight. He always has. Because he’s always been an inspiration to her.

Qrow’s recovery isn’t because of Clover, it’s been in the works since V6. Qrow fights Cordovin alongside them. He goes to Atlas with them. He could have, at literally any point, birbed out of there and gone to a bar to drink his sorrows away until his liver died. But he doesn’t. He remains in the fight. Because if there’s one thing we’re learning about Qrow Branwen right now, it’s that he’s never given up. Especially not on family. And, most evidently, he’s never given up on these kids. He might doubt their abilities, dismiss their plans. He might worry over their safety. But, and this is important, he never leaves their sides.

“I feel like they did all the heavy lifting.”

“But you were there to help when they asked for it, and you were there to catch them when the fell. Literally, if I recall.”

Maria, oh Maria, points this out to Qrow when he begins to doubt himself again. There’s a reason she’s here as a voice of wisdom. There’s a reason she was his inspiration. It’s being repeated, again and again, that Qrow has been important to these growing huntsman and huntresses. That he’s done his mentoring and teaching. That he’ll always be that for them. It, in my opinion, is effectively book ended by Clover’s points about how he mattered to the team. Why bring that up if it doesn’t culminate into something? He’s shared a lot with these kids. And they need to do more than lip service that relationship. But the one thing this, almost worryingly, solidifies is that Qrow’s continued arc is connected intrinsically to legacies. His idolization of Maria, his fight with Oz, his blame for the state of the world, Clover’s reassurance that he impacted the team, and, very importantly:

“What good is saving the world without another generation waiting in the wings? Hopefully they’ll leave Remnant better than we left it for them.”

I’ll start with this quote next time too but, for now, the parting shot of Maria and Qrow above that closes out their conversation--this is what made me realize Qrow’s recovery isn’t largely due to Clover. It’s largely due to all of this. And the fact that Maria and Qrow, two mentor figures, are framed side-by-side like this is a testament to the kind of legacies this show is all about. Legacies that are for better or worse. (with worse I’m referencing whatever legacies Cinder is part of with those lines this season)

----

I honestly want to leave this here as like, a peaceful end to this analysis but I have a lot of other things drafted in this breakdown so I’ll continue with them even if they’re a bit disjointed from this one to be...hopefully cemented together cohesively :) Hope this all makes sense and, obviously, that you enjoyed reading it!

[evakuality]

This one’s a double episode, mostly because our lovely boys don’t turn up too much in them.  To read the Isak and Matteo version of this series, start with this post, and to read the earlier Even and David ones, start with this one.

So.  Episodes six and seven.  Difficult ones for an analysis of these boys for a number of reasons.  Episode six and seven are obviously mostly wildernesses for us and Even and David.  They are, for the most part, absent from the screen because these episodes are very much focused on Isak and Matteo and their necessary development alone.  Of course, that leaves us in a bit of a bind here.  Neither of these characters will have been static, obviously, during this time but we have little to go on in terms of what they were doing and feeling.

David’s only ‘appearance’ in episode six is the drawing he left for Matteo.  He must have delivered it by hand since it’s totally open when Matteo receives it, so he ran some sort of risk of running into Matteo when he did that.  So some part of him must want to reconnect in person and not just in this weird message.  And it is weird.  ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ ‘maybe in eternity’ and a vampire with a toastie.  There’s a longing there, with the toastie, to want to have what Matteo had openly suggested earlier: cheese toasts again together sometime, and yet the words themselves are pushing him away.  It’s a resigned sort of thing, a need to explain himself at least minimally but still desiring to keep Matteo at arm’s length.  And I mean, this makes sense.  He still has this huge secret that he’s not willing to share with Matteo yet because he’s worried he’ll face a repeat of everything that happened before, only worse.  Because this time, it’s Matteo and he’s someone David feels a real connection to and will be more devastated if he reacts that way.  It’s interesting to wonder what made him reach out like this, though.  There are some risks here for David if he really does want to keep Matteo away as a beautiful ‘might have been’ - the most significant being the possibility of meeting him when he dropped it off.  The other being Matteo’s proven tendency to not sit back when he could just go and talk something out.  David has no way to know how Matteo took his last text, not least because until this moment Matteo has been phone-less.  So he has no way of knowing if this will push Matteo into another attempt at coming to his home.  I can only assume that David, after the time apart, is starting to regret running away and is in the beginning stages of wanting to reconnect enough that he’s willing to tell Matteo about being trans, and willing to take the risk that he will have to face Matteo sometime.  After all, sometime between now (presumably it wasn’t done earlier) and the week later he has written down whatever it is he wanted to tell Matteo about it.  He’s starting slowly to make those preparations to come out.

Even is a little more present, from the opening scene through the awkward meeting in the cafeteria to the drawing he leaves in Isak’s pocket.  His feelings are pretty evident.  He’s observant enough to see how badly Isak is affected by ‘something’ and he can make a fairly shrewd guess at what that something is.  The first scene shows him watching Isak as he walks into the school.  The bravado must be obvious even without the music we get to hear.  Isak is focused, head straight, not looking to either side, and clearly just wants to get through this gauntlet of Emma and Even and to the relative safety of the school building.  Even watches him as his focus is so tight he doesn’t even see the guy walking up to him.  At this point, though, it’s not necessarily obvious to Even what the ‘problem’ is for Isak, and so he does nothing else.  It’s only when he meets Isak in the cafeteria and Isak can’t hold it together that Even really sees just how much strain he’s under.  He’s not stupid, he must know how the text he sent would make Isak feel, and so he’s expecting some sort of cooler response.  But he doesn’t know Isak saw him kissing Sonja, and so he doesn’t know how hard that whole thing hit him.  That meeting in the cafeteria lays Isak’s feeling out all over his face no matter how casual he tries to be.  Even’s feelings are also obvious on his face, but there’s not the same sort of stark anguish that Isak is feeling.  Even’s is quieter and more contained.  His pain is older, for a start (it came in the middle of the last episode, not in multiple blows towards the end like Isak’s), and he’s had Sonja as a support in whatever way that has been.  

What is clear is that he’s missing Isak and wants to reconnect (this is an interesting contrast to David who isn’t as forthright at this point), and is willing to make inroads into a conversation.  He’s the one who approaches Isak with ‘no cardamom?’ and the attempt at a new start just before Isak brushes past him.  It feels like this meeting is what pushes Even back into wanting to pursue Isak.  It’s obvious that Isak’s not going to do much talking in person, so Even turns to something that has worked before: the drawings.  He uses the toastie as a connecting point, both to the time when they shared some together and to the meeting in the cafeteria.  It’s a way to sound out Isak and find out what he wants and how he feels.  Of course, as soon as Isak replies to him, Even must have some small moment of panic and doesn’t answer the text.  While this is frustrating to Isak, and he reads it as Even being a ‘hot and cold’ player, it’s understandable.  Even was hurt by Isak’s words about mentally ill people, and worse he’s worried about how Isak will take it when he knows about Even.  So when Isak shows signs of wanting to connect again, Even pulls away because he’s going to have to address the elephant in the room at some point.  

Of course, as we can tell from the way the reunions happen in episode seven, Even makes a decision to come back to Isak and try to hide his illness from him while David recognises that if he is to reconnect with Matteo he’s going to have to come out.  Even, on reflection, comes up with a plan to hide his illness but David doesn’t have this luxury.  To be with Matteo means having to be open with him.  So, let’s look at how the episodes look for these two boys shall we?  Even first approaches Isak with the next drawing, the one that answers his neglected text.  Interestingly, he doesn’t only draw and entire phone twice, but he also very deliberately writes out ‘miss you’ by hand.  There’s no possibility for this to be a situation where you type something and send it by reflex without thinking and then regret it later.  No.  This specific admission to Isak had to have been done with purpose - he drew it, he walked to the locker with it and he put it in the locker.  There’s no regret here.  Of course, we still don’t have an Even who is willing to try face to face again.  He’s still holding a small distance.  David, by contrast, is still metaphorically running away in the piece he sends to Matteo.  But he’s also making strides in the whole business because this time he’s taking Matteo with him.  They’re both reaching out, but also not reaching out and for both of them it’s not working too well because both Isak and Matteo are not about to let that slide, at least not after they’ve had some coaching from their friends.

For Even, he has obviously been waiting for a message or something from Isak.  The fact that he texted back immediately, and then turns up to Isak’s home so fast, is testament to that.  As much as Isak’s boys are telling him that Even must be trying to just play with him, it’s obvious even now before we know why Even has been so hot and cold that he’s not chill about this at all either.  His extraness is hugely apparent in this scene even before he arrives; he’s making the big gestures again to try to win over his boy again.  It’s obvious that by this time he’s made his decision about what he wants and all he needs is for isak to pick up some of the messages he’s been sending.  Luckily for him, Isak has this group of friends and they talk him into doing exactly what Even needs to see in order to do this one next gesture to win his boy back.  

For David, he doesn’t even bother to ask if they can talk he just makes his way immediately to Matteo’s home.  Unlike Even, I don’t think this is a case of making a big gesture to win the boy.  This is a recognition of how seriously he’s taking Matteo’s words.  That if he doesn’t actually commit he’s about to lose Matteo forever.  Isak’s text (‘call me when you’ve broken up with your girlfriend’) puts a certain condition on the whole thing: Even has to break up before Isak will accept anything more from him.  But this condition comes after a whole lot of preamble.  The drawing was cool etc etc, so there’s more of a connection there.  Matteo sends ‘stop sending drawings if you don’t want to be with me’ - the tone is more uncompromising here.  There’s no ‘cute drawing’ or whatever, it’s straight and to the point (both Jonases would be proud).  While there’s still room for hope for David with the ‘if’ it’s very much an ultimatum.  Isak’s is like the opening of a negotiation: if you do this then we’ll talk and we’ll see where it will go.  Matteo’s is: unless you’re willing to go all-in then you have to stop contacting me.  Obviously the result is the same for both of them as both Even and David (who have both presumably been lurking dramatically around their crushes’ homes) turn up almost immediately to face the music.  For Even, this is a time to consolidate what he’s had with Isak and to do more work to hide his secret.  For David it’s a time to make that final decision.  It’s now or never and he has to come out or lose Matteo.  

Clearly, this results in two very different reunions.  Even and Isak don’t hesitate; they’ve said it all through the slow conversations with the drawings and the texts and so for them it’s more important to reconnect in this very physical way.  Conversation about anything else can come later; all that matters for Even in this moment is making sure they’re both on the same page again so he gives into the reckless passion of it all.  For David, he has to work himself up to what he needs to do.  He needs the embrace because he has a much more difficult job right now than Even does: there’s no giving in to passion for him because he still has a job to do, and it’s a very scary one.  This soft affection and the comfort they both clearly get from this hug is really important in terms of the task David has ahead of him.  I’m not even sure that he knows for sure what he wants to do at this point.  He’s still clearly conflicted in the shot at the end, and how hard it is for him is right there on his face.  What is really clear for both of these boys, though, is how much Isak and Matteo mean to them.  They’re both having to put something scary on the line in order to be with their chosen partner.  Each of them is having to stop running and try to move forward with someone else and that’s a really terrifying thing to have to do.  That Even chooses to deal with it by trying to hide it more, even while he’s not running away anymore, and David has to deal with by facing up to it is irrelevant.  They’re both here in this position because the thought of being without Isak or Matteo isn’t a thought they’re willing to bear.  They’ve both decided the other boy is worth the terror they’re having to face.

Episode eight can be found here

[twdmusicboxmystery]

FTWD 5x08: Analysis

Okay, how did everyone like the episode? I really enjoyed it. I’ve got lots to say here, so hunker down.

***As always, spoilers abound for FTWD 5x08 in this post. Don’t read until you’ve watched!***

The title is Is Anybody Out There? A lot of it was about broadcasting voices on the radio, which ties it pretty strongly to the mysterious radio voice at the end of 9x16. More on that in a minute.

In the opening sequence, we see every member of the crew—Morgan, John, June, Lucia, etc.—broadcasting on the radio. 

It's pretty obvious this is a flashback from before the season began. That's important because, once again, they’re going back to show us what we missed. This is one of those things that was so subtle, I never even expected them to go back and show it to us. They always show us things that we missed eventually. So once again, they have to go back and show us what we missed with Beth after Coda, eventually. They ALWAYS do this.

Morgan and Alicia talk and Alicia suggested perhaps they really are the last ones left in the area. It just reminded me of Beth and Daryl’s conversation after the prison went down, when Daryl kept insisting no one else survived. Beth kept saying they had, and she was right. Similarly, Morgan was right in this instance. Again, this is before the season started and obviously they’ve found more people since then.

Then we have an interesting sequence where Morgan and Alicia walk away from the radio. As soon as they leave, a voice starts broadcasting, asking if anyone is there. In this case, it’s Logan’s voice. The guy who tricked them and took over the denim factory. So male, rather than female. Even so, this was an exact parallel to what happened at the end of TWD 9x16. Judith and Ezekiel walked away from the radio, and THEN a voice started asking if anyone was out there. So again, they’re tying this heavily to what’s happening in the narrative of TWD right now.

Then we move to the present. Basically, we have Morgan Alicia and Grace trying to lead walkers away (because the walkers are coming toward the sound of the sirens from the reactor). Al, Strand, June, and Luciana still trying to get the plane ready to take off, and John and Dwight are still missing and out of range.

Morgan, Alicia, Grace:

Morgan, Alicia, and Grace are together. Alicia told Grace that she got the blood from the infected walker in her mouth. Grace and Morgan actually don't seem to be terribly worried about it. That's mostly because they're trying to get out of the area before the reactor melts down, and Alicia isn't sick yet. It's something we'll probably just have to watch moving forward to see if she becomes ill. But it's not a super-urgent story line right now.

At one point, Morgan, Alicia, and Grace are in the truck and try to get away from walkers. Grace crashes the truck into some other cars. This configuration 

looks exactly like the one in 5x09. Here, let me show you: 

And that made me realize that this whole sequence might be a parallel to what happened with Beth.

We have them get stuck in the car, and they all duck down and watched walkers go by. 

If Beth was left in a car somewhere and a horde of walkers (the 800 reported on set for the filming of Coda) walked by, it's very possible something similar happened with her in those missing days after Grady.

Inevitably, something goes wrong. The sirens (the klaxon Morgan refers to; I had to look that up to see what it meant) stopped making noise and we hear an explosion. So basically, the meltdown is happening to the extent that the sirens short circuited and went out. When that happened, the walkers were no longer walking past the truck and toward the reactor. They turned and started coming back toward the truck.

The problem there is that there’s going to be a situation where Morgan, Alicia and Grace and trapped and surrounded by walkers, much as Daryl and Aaron were in 5x16 before Morgan arrived. Well, Morgan/Grace/Alicia are smart and know this is going to happen. Before the walkers reach them, trapping them, they jump out of the car and run on foot.

Do you guys see? We’ve always thought Beth was left in a car, and probably because they thought she was dead and therefore was “dead weight.” So what if in the days after Coda, something similar to this happened? They had her body, put her in a car, but something happened where a walker horde overtook them. (Maybe because the car and/or firetruck stopped working?) And then something went wrong and they were going to be trapped, so they had to jump out and run, but of course they couldn’t take Beth’s body because they wouldn’t have gotten away if they had, so they left her in the vehicle. That would explain these scenes of them running:

Meanwhile, in this episode, we have a configuration of cars that looks exactly like the ones in 5x09, which also shows a female walker who looks like she’s wearing Beth’s sweater waking up in the front seat of a truck, a lot like the one Grace was driving here.

Later, they make it back to the plane but are running on foot with the walker herd behind them. Once again, I was reminded of the random running in 5x09.

One more small, random detail: When they’re all on the plane, Alicia says the kids are buckled in. Strand answers, "you got them on the plane." The way he said it just reminded me of Beth's line from the prison, when she said she was searching for the kids “to get them on the bus.” Similar inflections and I wondered if it might be a parallel. Maybe, maybe not. Just reminded me of that.

John and Dwight:

While trying to get back to the plane, John and Dwight find a parking lot of cars that used to be for sale. They keep trying to hot wire them. Interestingly, contrary to what we’ve seen in the past, they show a car with red and green wires as well as one with black and white wires—both color combos we’ve seen around Beth—and neither of them work. When John finally finds a car that does work, the wires are blue and yellow. 

We’ve also seen those colors around Beth. She wore a lot of blue at Grady and of course there's the yellow polo. We believe yellow represents escape, but specifically escape from walkers. So this could be a foreshadow the John and Dwight (and the group at large) will be running from walkers and will escape them.

Especially given what I said above about Morgan/Grace/Alicia escaping the truck and the walkers on foot, and how it might parallel what happened with Beth, I think the yellow and blue are significant here. I really need to officially update my color scheme theories. It’s not so much that they’ve actually changed as that we’ve come to understand more nuanced definitions of the colors. I’ve recently said that yellow = not just escape, but escape from walkers specifically. I’ve always said blue = captivity, but I want to put forth that it specifically means being trapped. Yes, I know those two things are super-similar, but Beth specifically talked about being trapped (or NOT being trapped) at Grady, and we’ve seen this representation of being trapped in a vehicle with a walker horde around you many times since Coda aired. So I think it’s more specific than just “captivity.”

More thoughts on the colors of the wires? Well, usually the red and green, which represent death and resurrection, are the ones that work. They did last episode. But I sat back and thought about it. Remember in S4, which is the first time I remember seeing red and green wires being used to hot wire a car, Daryl tried to use them to hot wire a minivan they found the “hell” gas station. 

At first, the red and green wires didn't work because the battery was dead. When they “brought the battery back to life” so to speak (and with water, no less) then the red and green wires worked. So obviously for any of the wires to work, the battery still has to have juice in it. Which is true both literally and symbolically.

But we saw a lot of battery-dying stuff in this episode. Later on, the car Dwight and John successfully hot wired (the one with the yellow and blue wires) dies on them. 

At first, I thought they ran out of gas, but they went out of their way to say that they had plenty of gas. The battery simply died. This makes me think I also need to revamp my battery theory. We saw a lot of battery stuff around Beth at Grady (hence my Battery Theory) but it was hard to decipher what exactly it meant. 

A dead battery could basically = death, and then revamping the battery, whether with water as they did at the gas station, jumper cables, or using a re-charger, like Carol did with the car in 5x02, could = resurrection. So that’s the most I’ve been able to figure out about batteries in the past.

But I’m seeing things now that are more specific to the plot. I think the batteries have everything to do with communication and being able to get someplace (in a car). So when the battery dies, there is no communication and no transportation. That very well may be why we saw so many batteries at Grady. I'm working it into my theory about how Grady was perhaps associated with the helicopter people, even clear back in S5. Maybe the reason they needed batteries and mentioned them so heavily is that they were trying to keep in touch with the helicopter people. And why we saw the battery symbolism so heavily around Beth is because without the batteries, she can’t communicate with TF or get to them.

After the car dies, and John is still miles from the plane, he and June talk on the walkie. John makes June promise to leave without him if he doesn't make it back. He says, "Even without me, you find something to live for and you live." Then battery on his walkie dies.

I think this could be applied to Beth and Daryl too. We’ve always said that Daryl has been super-depressed and hasn't had much character development since Beth died. That actually changed last season with Lydia. Everyone chalked it up to Angela’s writing, and I think she’s a big part of it, but I also think it was planned that way. They weren’t going to deal with Daryl’s character much for several seasons. 

And of course, he’s always lived for TF. To help and protect Rick and the others. But he’s also been depressed and it always seemed like he was just going through the motions. Last season, we saw him take a more active role in what was happening, take on leadership against Alpha, and even smile a little when looking at Glenn’s, Hershel’s, and Beth’s portraits. When he was talking to Lydia at Hilltop at the end, for the first time since S5, he actually seemed fairly happy and excited…just in general.

So my point is that taking on a fathership role where Lydia is concerned is Daryl, for the first time since S5, finding something to live for and starting to really live again. I think, thematically, he had to do that before Beth can return to him. I know a lot of TD has thought that Beth will return when he’s at his saddest to “save him” emotionally and bring him back to life. But I’ve suspected for a long time that the opposite will be true. He has to live first, with faith and hope in the way she taught him in S4. It’s almost like he has to do that in order to be worthy of her. (Again, keep in mind this is thematic, not literal). And we started to see him do that for the first time in S9.

John and Dwight then see something interesting on a tree. There’s a ladder and a phrase that says, “if you’re reading this, it means you’re still here.” So let’s review these symbols. 

I need to update my Ladder Theory, so maybe I’ll save that for later. Just know it’s a thing. 

The “you’re still here” is something we can definitely connect to Beth. I do think we’ve heard it several times from different characters over the seasons, and I won’t remember all the instances off the top of my head, but it’s always in conjunction with Beth symbolism, kind of like here. The instance I always remember is when Carol says it in 5x06, Consumed. After the shelf falls on Noah, Daryl asks Carol if she’s okay and she replies, “I’m still here.” And that’s while they’re searching for Beth. Then @frangipanilove reminded me that Beth said the same thing herself. In 5x07, after Carol had been brought into Grady, Beth went in and took her hand and said, “Carol, it’s Beth. I just wanted you to know I was here.” So this is definitely something we can trace back to her.

Meanwhile, here, June does what John told her to. Even though the thought of leaving him behind broke her heart, she got everyone on the plane and would have gone, keeping her promise to him and living. And it’s almost like because of THAT, she was rewarded when John made it back in time. Yes, spoiler. John and Dwight find Sherry’s old car and make it back in the nick of time.

Kind of a random detail, but when the plane takes off, several of the walkers grab onto the netting of the plane and are weighing it down. Al actually uses the phrase “dead weight,” saying they need to get rid of it or the plane won’t get off the ground. 

I don’t talk about this too much because it’s so subtle, but I do think “dead weight” is a Beth theme. Weird, I know. But one of the governor episodes (4x07) carried that title. I’ve always thought of it as being that she was left behind because TF thought she was dead and therefore dead weight. They couldn’t carry her and hope to escape. So even though that may seem like a random theme to keep bringing up, it’s a very big part of the reason she was left behind in the first place. And we’ve seen it as a recurring theme in the show.

When the plane takes off, John and June have yet another conversation I feel could be applied to Beth and Daryl. John says that when the walkie went out (battery died) he never thought he'd never be able to speak to June again. He realized he left a lot of things unsaid, and the dude literally proposes right then and there. Go John!

I’ve said this before too, but I think that once Beth returns, things will happen romantically between her and Daryl very quickly. This is exactly why. Daryl was, of course, very hesitant before and shy in S4, and tptb like to say that he didn't understand his feelings for Beth. But after all this time and all he’s seen, I think he comprehends them perfectly now. He already lost Beth once and he won't want to lose any time. He'll simply tell her how he feels. So, this convo between John and June is yet another Bethyl foreshadow.

Sarah, Wendel, Daniel and Logan:

In the denim factory with Logan, we see two dolls and a ripped Bunny. These are all symbols we've seen before. Dolls are usually associated with Sophia and the missing girl symbolism. And of course bunnies are something we saw a lot, especially in S4, such as around Lizzie and Mica, but other places too.

As it turns out, Logan only took the factory because he’s looking for something. His people search for it and can’t find it. They basically say if he doesn’t find it for them, they’re going to kill him. These people he’s with aren’t exactly loyal to him.

Meanwhile, Sarah and Wendell are trying to figure out how to light up the runway, since they’ll be flying in at night. Sarah asked Logan for help and he categorically refuses. Thankfully, Daniel shows up to save the day.

Christmas lights! Daniels solution was to put Christmas lights on the runway. The Christmas/St. Nick symbolism is alive and well.

As the plane comes in to land, we had something interesting with Wendell. Some walkers came out of the darkness and tripped over the lights, unplugging them, which made the runway go dark. Wendell literally leaps from his wheelchair in order to get the lights back on at the last second, so the plane could land safely.

I'll have to think about it more, but it brought to mind other overturned wheelchairs we’ve seen. There was one in 4x06, which was a governor episode when he went upstairs to get the backgammon game. In that same episode, we also saw the Beth-walker in a yellow wheelchair with stigmata wounds in her feet. This could be more of that same symbolism. Again, not entirely sure what it means. In this case, Wendell lunged from the wheelchair, unsure if he’d survive, and even saying a goodbye to Sarah. So he kind of sacrificed himself in order to save others. Maybe the wheelchair symbolizes something along those lines. In this case, however, Wendel DOES survive. And of course we think Beth did too. But it’s hard to pin down exactly what this means.

So, the plane does land safely, which is an end to this arc they've been following for 5a. The plane crashed in the first episode, and it was all about getting back where they needed to be which they finally achieved here. Then we saw some of our favorite thing about TWD: reunions! Yay!

I thought it was funny that Daniel thought Dwight needed a haircut. I couldn't help but wonder what he’d think of Daryl. ;D

Then, right near the end, they hear a female voice on the radio asking for help. Could it be the helicopter people? Or just the next people Morgan's group will help? No way to tell yet. But again, it definitely mirrors the voice in 9x16.

Logan shows up and finally seemed to come clean about who he is. He tells them he’s looking for Clay's journal, which will lead them to fuel. He also reveals that the people he's with want the journal and would kill him if they knew he’d told Morgan's group about it.

First of all, they're looking for a journal. Something Beth also had. (Remember that Clay was called “Polar Bear” which is part of the Sirius/return symbolism. So Clay = Beth, and he kept a journal. Just saying.)

Second, within the journal is the answer to something that will help save people. Yeah, that’s pretty important.

We also heard Logan use the A/B Theory here. When asked why they should believe Logan, he said, 

A) his convoy would kill him if they knew he was there and 

B) he had shit to make up for, too. 

So, kind of an interesting example of the AB theory. A always seems to equal death (remember cell block A at the prison was death row) and I think B represents “trying,” making up for past wrongs, and NOT dying. It's living in moving forward in some way.

I thought this was a fitting end to the first half of the season. I didn’t get a chance to watch TTD because there was too much going on at my house last night. I’ll watch today and report anything I find. Interestingly, FTWD returns in 3 weeks. Not a very long hiatus. I’m not complaining. Just saying it’s interesting. Obviously, they really want to get the B part of the season in BEFORE S10 of TWD starts up.

I’m very interested to see where things go moving forward. The female voice on the radio wasn't exactly a cliffhanger. She could lead to the helicopter people, but it also might just be whatever Morgan’s group will dealing with in 5B. Either way, the helicopter people are still out there, and plenty of seeds have been planted for further interactions between Morgan's group and theirs. What did everyone else think of the episode?

[thatyanderecritic]

Yandere Simulator

Title: Yandere Simulator

Media: Game, created by Yandere Dev

Yandere(s): Yandere-Chan (Ayano Aishi)/ Yandere-Kun

Yandere Scale: 0/5

Criticism written by: Kai

Editor: Julie

The Review:

(Warning! This is one of our most highly opinionated critic piece on our blog so far. Be wary and come to your own judgement in the end. m(_ _)m )

It was only a matter of time till we finally reviewed Yandere Simulator… With both the game and the main protagonist sharing the name “Yandere”, it made sense for the Yandere Critics to swoop in and see if this game truly lives up to its name (spoiler alert: it doesn’t). What horrors will our two critics discover in their pursuit of the truth?

This time on ThatYandereCritic…

Hello everyone, Kai here! It’s no secret that Julie and I absolutely hate Yandere Simulator and how the Yandere Dev is handling everything (from how he’s creating this game to the sort of person he is). We would state time and time again how we think that Yandere Simulator is pretty much hot garbage and is a bad representation of yanderes in general. Good concept but awful in execution. Now it is time to give a proper critic to the game that’s became the “face” of our community.

I would like to clarify that we’ll only be looking at the story and the main character (Yandere-Chan/Yandere-Kun). We will not be discussing about the Yandere Dev and his drama. If you want that, there’s plenty of “Yandere Dev rants” videos on youtube that goes in depth about the things he done and currently doing. If you’re curious, I recommend watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY-aqqCFjnc With this being said, now for the proper review!

Let’s kick things off by talking about the story… The game starts with our protagonist, Yandere-Chan, accidentally running into her Senpai on her way to school. It was love at first sight when she first saw him. But Yandere-Chan soon found out that a girl named Osana plans to confess to Senpai under the school’s cherry blossom tree. This is like, totally bad! Everyone knows that confessions under that specific cherry blossom tree is guaranteed to be accepted! It was at this moment, Yandere-Chan knew what she needed to do… she must eliminate everything that stands between her and her Senpai.

First, can I just start off by saying how laughably lazy this story is? It’s one thing if this game was just some sort of parody or comedy. A game that is self aware that it’s just a joke and nothing more. But with how much the Yandere Dev hypes about the story and give it a “deep lore”, we can’t give the excuse: “It’s not that deep. It’s just a joke.” No. This game doesn’t have that shield anymore. The story is half assed and it can’t give a well developed yandere character a proper chance to shine. But… let’s ignore the story for now. We have seen examples of an awful story but a fantastic yandere (Example: Joe from the TV show, You). Let’s look at Yandere-Chan.

Thanks to Yandere Dev’s channel, we got a plethora of lore and background about the characters from the game. The office website is also a gold mine of information that we can analyze as well. So… thank god that Yandere Dev is more invested in those two things than his game. Can you imagine if we had to actually play his buggy game to get this information? Lol.

Let’s get on the same page here about Yandere-Chan’s backstory: Yandere-Chan had an odd childhood. Throughout her childhood, she was inflicted with an incurable condition that made her have no emotions. Growing up, she was bullied at school (because she couldn’t feel I guess). But Yandere-Chan learned how to fake having emotions and live the easy life. Oddly enough, Yandere-Chan’s mom had the same condition as well when she was growing up. Yandere mom reassured Yandere-Chan that “When she finds that special boy, [she’ll] be able to feel.” But Yandere-Chan’s dad went “Nah, bitch. I’ll make Yandere-Chan have feelings.” Of course, that didn’t work. In the end, Yandere-Chan lived her life as an empty shell till she finally met Senpai. Yada yada yada…. Start of the game.

So… what the fuck?

This is the literal definition of a psychopath, dude. Why are we skirting around what Yandere-Chan has?! “Incurable condition” my ass. It’s psychopathy (maybe sociopathy but the evidence leans more towards psychopathy). Next, in the video, why would a general practitioner know that Yandere-Chan is a psychopath?! At most, the doctor would notice something is odd about her before recommending a child psychiatrist to examine Yandere-Chan. Mr. Yandere Dev, you make it sound like Yandere-Chan has a cold; not a mental illness. It was also mention in the video that Yandere-Chan felt pity for her father who was struggling with her mental illness. If she can’t feel any emotions, as you said, then please explain how she felt pity for her father? Can I also point out that Yandere-Chan started faking her emotions for her father’s sake AND THEN started getting bullied because she wasn’t normal. But wait a minute… Yandere-Chan learned how to fake emotions because of the bullying. So how does this logic work? Did she take two steps forward but ten steps back? Why did we have the whole doctor fiasco if Yandere Mom already knew all this about her daughter? WHY DOES YANDERE-CHAN’S BACKSTORY HAVE MORE HOLES THAN A SLICE OF SWISS CHEESE?!

Kai.exe stopped working… now resetting program… reset is now complete

Phew… sorry about that everyone. I was going insane after going through a bunch of videos by the Yandere Dev and the Yandere Simulator website.  

For a character called Yandere-Chan, she’s more like Psychopath-Chan. Like geez. If it isn’t obvious, everything about this character screams “psychopath”. Sure, she is portrayed to have “lovesickness” but Yandere-Chan breaks so many rules that her “lovesickness” can’t save her.

A couple of rules she broken:

1. The yandere shouldn’t go on a random killing spree as if she’s/he’s in an all you can eat buffet. Bottomline, a serial killer isn’t a yandere but a yandere could be a serial killer.

2. Shallow background, shallow person. Why were you even created man?

3. Instalove is a pretty cheap cop out for a female yandere to start liking someone. We noticed that sometimes they would fall in love for shallow reasons like: “Kyaa, he passed me the salt shaker, I think I’m in love!” This logic makes me cringe, honestly.

“But, Kai! This game is all about killing the rivals! It isn’t fair to Yandere-Chan to tick her off on that!”

Um… there are many different ways a yandere can get rid of a rival without killing them. Mr. Yandere Dev even suggested a mechanic where the player can hook up love rivals with other NPCs.  Yet the core “tactic” Yandere-Chan (and the player) would chose would be to kill the rivals. Not only that, it’s also encouraged to go on a killing spree for extra points for Info-Chan and the Yakuza (not yet implemented). So… this absolutely is a tick against her.

Moving on! I also find it incredibly hard to even call Yandere-Chan a proper “yandere” considering her creator doesn’t even know what a yandere is. On Yandere Dev's website, he defines a yandere as: “A Yandere girl is a girl who loves a boy so much that she is willing to threaten, harm, or kill any other girl who seems interested in him.”

Uh… W.H.A.T.

That’s literally the definition he puts on his website, people. And don’t even get me started on the definition he uses during videos (“A yandere is a person who is crazy for someone else”). Okay, let’s give Yandere Dev the benefit of the doubt and say: “He sort of right… if you squint hard enough”. But if we refer back to our Yandere Actions post, just using the “yandere snap” doesn’t make Yandere-Chan a yandere. In the end, Yandere-Chan is nothing more but a psychopath.

To those who are reading this: As individuals who are part of the yandere community, I am appealing to you right now. We may disagree on a lot of things. We may disagree on what is and isn’t a yandere. We may disagree on some characteristics of what makes a yandere. But I hope to agree with everyone that “Yandere Simulator” is not the thing we want to define our community.

I’ve heard people compare Yandere-Chan as the “New Yuno Gasai”. I’ve heard people call Yandere-Chan as “the perfect example of a yandere” or “the ideal yandere”. I’ve heard many misinformed comments about yanderes thanks to this game. It may have brought to light our community but this is a double edge sword. It’s one thing if there’s only a couple misinformed users out there. It’s expected and no offense to them. But what’s troubling is the popularity of this misinformed game and the spreading through popular youtubers (again, no offense to them since they don’t know). This game is basically our face to those outside of the community. I talked to several people who are quick to judge me as “one of those perverts” thanks to this game’s reputation (water off my back). You can still like the game or the characters. I know Yandere-Chan generates lots of yandere aesthetics and the fandom has done way better with her than her own creator. But can we all agree to denounce this game as a “yandere icon”. Use it as a conversation starter and use it to point out myths about yanderes… but don’t let this define us. I believe we’re better than that… we’re all better than that. “Romance turned Horror” and “Horror turned Romance” lovers… Aesthetic yanderes, Yandere Recommendations, and Yandere Analysis blogs… We’re all in this together. Let’s shake on this, friends.

Overall score: 0/10

(Post-edit: I forgot to mention Yandere-Kun; there is a bit of a difference between him and Yandere-Chan. He is the genderbend version for Yandere-Chan (for those who want to play as a guy) but Yandere Dev stated that Yandere-Kun’s reasoning for chasing Senpai is purely sadistic. So, regardless how you paint things, Yandere-Kun is just as psychopathic as his female counterpart)

[seasaltmemories]

The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein Review/Analysis

Really expanding my pallet by tackling a book instead of anime like I’ve done in the past, but I have a lot of complex thoughts about this that I pretty much need to spill out immediately

Summary time:

Elizabeth Lavenza hasn't had a proper meal in weeks. Her thin arms are covered with bruises from her "caregiver," and she is on the verge of being thrown into the streets . . . until she is brought to the home of Victor Frankenstein, an unsmiling, solitary boy who has everything--except a friend. Victor is her escape from misery. Elizabeth does everything she can to make herself indispensable--and it works. She is taken in by the Frankenstein family and rewarded with a warm bed, delicious food, and dresses of the finest silk. Soon she and Victor are inseparable. But her new life comes at a price. As the years pass, Elizabeth's survival depends on managing Victor's dangerous temper and entertaining his every whim, no matter how depraved. Behind her blue eyes and sweet smile lies the calculating heart of a girl determined to stay alive no matter the cost . . . as the world she knows is consumed by darkness.

All my reviews are extremely personal, but this is going to get even more personal bc of the unique relationship I have with the original Frankenstein, I read that back in my senior year of high school and while it wasn’t a favorite of mine, I had my fun with it, I wasn’t the most diligent student, skipping much of the latter half bc I wanted to focus more on my senior thesis, but I really enjoyed Victor as a protagonist.  In contrast to how adaptions portray him, he’s a pathetic teenager/20-something who drops out of college bc he gets offended when his science professors laugh at him for wanting to study alchemy instead of a real field of science.  He gets sick at the drop of the hat, is so self-centered he really only acknowledges others when they are right in front of him, and a coward who can’t take responsibility for any of the problems he creates, all without being particularly malicious, I more enjoy laughing at him than fangirling over him, but there is a lot of humanity there that I find endearing in its own way

But I was an Elizabeth fangirl, the girl goes through equal amounts of hell without knowing it is all the fault of the man she adores.  While the narrative mostly kept her as “love interest” I felt their could be a lot of pathos to her tale and even wrote an essay about it.  However as I looked for academic material/retellings, I couldn’t find any that shared my sentiment

Recently I was brought back to Frankenstein because of a local writing contest that was celebrating its 200th birthday.  While it was looking for horror submissions in general, I wrote a modern retelling with the intent of giving it a female perspective and subsequently won first place for it

So when I discovered this book, published around the same time as when I wrote my own retelling, it seemed made for me.  And oh those first few chapters were a treat, it felt exactly like something I might even write: Elizabeth is someone who plays the angel bc she fears she won’t survive if she is anything less perfect, and no matter the situation this suffocating anxiety grips her every action as she tests people’s reaction to her, I was on cloud nine for all of act 1, other reviews seem to dislike the slow past of that part as it all takes place in one slow day with lots of flashbacks, but I loved marinating in Elizabeth’s inner world as I hadn’t be able to before

Act 2 is where some complicated feelings mixed in, and to talk about then completely I’m gonna go into spoilers.  If you are interested in it so far or tend to like my writing of worn-down girls trying to survive in worlds where their image can decide their fate, then I recommend it.  For full effect it helps to have read Frankenstein since there is so much of the novel is tied to the original and it pays a lot of love to the cultural icon it has become as a whole, but apparently other reviewers have enjoyed it without that prior knowledge.  If you are still on the fence/don’t care about spoilers, let’s dive into the next 2/3rds of it

First of all, this novel reads so much like fanfic.  I say that as not a measure of the quality of its writing, bc at its core it is fanfic, and since it falls into that genre, it shapes many of its strengths and flaws.  For example, Act 2 is the weakest section of all bc so much of the plot is recounting plot point by plot point or the original, and aside while the POV switch makes certain events, like Justine’s death hit harder and in a different way, it also inherits some less tightly-written sections, like Victor traveling to England to build the bride.  But in a way I can excuse that because by then I had started to treat it like fanfiction and took that as a sunk cost that couldn’t be avoided bc of the format

What really shows that this is fanfic is the fact that rather than simply retell the original, it uses the material left behind to build an original story of a woman trying to find an identity that has never felt her own, and I don’t find any fault in that because I have done the same, hell I’ve written about blonde teenage Elizabeths in the 19th century who tailor their entire personality for their dark, morally ambiguous cousin that they are in love with it, but because I can so closely relate to the mere concept of writing a story like this, I find I am much more critical of matters of personal taste than I would be otherwise

To put it bluntly, TDDEF’s Victor is not Shelley’s Victor.  And while it tries to play that “untold story” angle to explain the discrepancies, it does not work.  Here Victor is like one step away from being a literal demon child, lacking any care for anyone besides Elizabeth and always ready to cut someone/thing open with a knife.  He is completely obsessed with her, being inspired to conquer death not because of losing his mother, but because he realized her morality when she catch a life-threatening illness, and while it works for the story TDDEF wants to tell, it is not the Victor I know as he goes on to do even worse things than Shelley’s version

Now again I am faced with having done the same before, taking much less morally gray characters and in fanon dying then a few shades darker, but while this is nitpicky, it makes a lot of the details between the two works not line up so well, even before the narratives diverge

Like for example I never bought Victor’s love or even obsession for Elizabeth here, like Shelley’s version they are often apart and even when together Victor is stuck in his studies, yet here she becomes his entire motivation, part of this was because TDDEF wanted to highlight the problematic elements of the original relationship, but I feel like it still could have been done while veering closer to the original depiction, like despite all Elizabeth does for him, he treats her more like a pet he has to remember to feed and allows her to go through a lot of trauma to save his own skin, that’s still a damning portrayal without falling into the evil cartooniness TDDEF’s version sometimes does, but even within that criticism I can see my biases getting in the way bc I like and write male love interests who mean well but can still fall into toxic behaviors

Regardless, Act 3 is where the narrative really comes into its own, and while I still prefer Act 1, it preferable to the safeness and predictability of Act 2.  It is completely unsubtle about the message it wants to send, and while I can’t fault it for it, that’s when the YA label really starts to show, my feelings about the YA genre could fill an entirely different post, but to explain what I mean about feeling YA  in the most simplest terms, well I would have absolutely adored it if I was younger, sometimes it may get cheesy or self-indulgent but I know if I was the target audience it would have shaken my entire worldview on what books could do and say.  And a lot of that is bc it caters to the adolescent appeal of fanfic, like the narrative could have ended two chapters before its true end, but it instead goes on what feels like a fan’s post-canon imaginings, which while a bit too sappy and simplistic for me, is the type of closure younger me would be starved for

So I am in an odd position, feeling on one hand almost betrayed for it drifting from the vision I found perfect, but also knowing it did so to be true to a vision younger!me would have needed, I guess the best way to describe it is that while Act 1 is still something I personally enjoy, the rest is something I more appreciate from an academic/impersonal perspective.  And while I can’t say I am completely satisfied to be there, I feel like maybe a high school girl who reads Frankenstein for her English class and falls for Elizabeth like I did may now be able to find others giving her the type of love she needs Elizabeth to get

[fancydancing]

Virtue Moir - The musical

Let’s take a little musical journey starting with Stay and ending with YRMW. 

I don’t have an objective bone in my body when it comes to this topic, so I let other people do the talking. (I might have only picked comments that fit my narrative, but I’m only human, give me a break!) 

**I put this together very quickly, so please forgive any mistakes**

**Also, it’s very long, but you have to read to the end to get the whole story**

Let’s begin...

Stay - Rihanna

Song meaning according to VM:

“It’s really about this couple who’s madly in love and long for each other, but they keep missing each other and can’t get their timing quite right to make it work in the end.”

And oh yeah, didn’t Scott say that this was their story? Hmmm...

According to anonymous experts on the internet:

I think it is about two people that are completely in love, but are dealing with their own personal battles. He is the one that is "broken" (maybe mental illness), but she was in a place in life that she needed to be saved from emotionally. He is the only one that she feels can help her fill this emptiness she has been living with. He says its not much of a life she's living, and that she never sees the light. Life isn't something you take, it is given. Live it, don't just let it pass you by. He wants her to get out and live and stop being depressed. She needs help being there for him, it is dragging her down, but she loves him and wants to help him get through it. Round and around and around they go... meaning they keep dealing with this same battle over and over and over again trying to help each other, and it doesn't seem to be getting better. All they know, is they need the other and can't get through it alone, but it's a huge struggle trying to keep helping the other and pulling each other up.

**

The two each came into the other's life for some helping reason. They came to realize that they were both in need of help and helping. An unanticipated affection grew for one another. They end up genuinely caring for each other and not just serving themselves. The concept is foreign to them; they are stripped "naked" of pretenses...beyond mental or physical desires...they care for someone outside theirselves. It is a new unadulterated and pure place, and they are trying to understand it.

Into the Mystic  - Van Morrison

Most interpretations say it’s about the end of a long journey and beginning a new path into the unknown. All I know is ST choreographed it themselves in his (or hers?) kitchen.

Anonymous sources say:

“Into the Mystic.... Into the the unknown without fear with your soulmate at your side”

"At the very end Van sings: too late to stop now, suggesting that the song also describes an act of love." 

Good Kisser - Usher

This song left me screaming, “TMI! TMI!” I want to know whose idea it was to skate to this song? And did VM understand what Usher was talking about? Because I really never paid too much attention to the lyrics although I’d heard the rumors. 

And did they perform this IN FRONT OF THEIR PARENTS?? (no pun intended)

That’s all I have to say about this song. 

How Will I Know - Originally by Whitney Houston

I thought this comment summed it up pretty nicely:

“She still is unsure of how he feels, she doesn't know. He hasn't made it clear. Gave her reassurance or made any plans. She's sick of waiting by the phone for nothing to happen. If he wants her in his life hell have to communicate the good ol fashion way. If not than he obviously doesn't. She wants to marry him but if that's never possible she would settle for SPECIAL friends or even just good friends. She just wants to be part of his life and world like she has made him part of. She's giving him another chance and if he doesn't take it soon she can't promise the opp will always be available. He hurt her. She still tried. She wishes he would be comfortable with her as she is with them. They got along great and it was so easy. That's what doesn't make sense to her. There's no need to have fear. She's made her case. Hopefully she'll know sooner than later.”

What's Love Got to Do With It - Originally by Tina Turner

“I think that this song is about a woman who doesn't want to fall in love again with an obviously attractive man due to a bad relationship experience in the past.”

***** “This man is obviously (sexually) very attractive (his touch makes her "pulse react") but for her own "protection" she says to him 'nope sir', a guy won't cause me a "broken heart" (again).” **** “In the refrain she just asks a general question about the value of love at all, she concludes that love in real life is not what it is suppopsed to be according to ones imagination and /or dreams. At first you fall in love with an attractive man but than your heart will be broken (he will cheat or misstreat you). But she also states that she isn't all happy about her beeing reluctant to love because she actually doesn't really want to spend her life alone. "But I have to say... It scares me to feel this way" because even though she has made bad experience in the past, she still has hope that she will find the right one finally. On the other hand it might be interpreted as a song about a woman who uses to have sex with the guys but doesn't wand to start deeper relationships with them because real love can turn out painful. (She likes to have a 'higher pulse rate' but doesn't want to have a 'broken heart'”

***

“As for the meaning of the song,i think it's simply about how the word love is just thrown around in a relationship,without any real thought,I saying you love someone,doesn't mean anything if you continue to hurt them,and the guy in the song is just using the word love to make up for all the hurt,which is just unacceptable to the woman.Now i'm a guy but I agree with this song because I feel that also if a girl hurts a guy and tries to make up for the hurt by using the word love,it's meaningless and unacceptable.”

Sorry - Justin Bieber

Co-writer Julia Michaels:

“I immediately thought back to the time that my boyfriend and I broke up. Three months later he came back to my door and was like, ‘I’m really sorry.’ Everyone can relate to fucking up and asking for mercy.

We were just trying to capture that moment in a relationship or a particular moment in your life where you realize you made a mistake and you’re finally ready to admit it and apologize.”

 Latch - Sam Smith

I’ve already done a song analysis on this:

https://scottandtessasactinglessons.tumblr.com/post/172574202160/music-over-analysis-101-latch-so-im-going-to

Tessa said this:

The whole program wants to show fragility and strength, especially to find strength in fragility, and always have to pay and get in a relationship In the first part of the music, Scott lifts me up and supports me with the body. In second part their relationship becomes complicated, full of struggle, resentment and confusion. But in the end they are happy, free and in love. “We have more specific story line, but we wouldn’t tell about it” said Virtue with a smile. “Then we want to go on and see, how this relationship can unfold. We will work on it with our art director.”

From the internet experts:

“Latch's message is never let go love, of key-to-lock (or latch). The video shows couples who barely met becoming intimate. By just focusing on the instant and choosing couples who can't be that man-to-woman latch-to-key lifelong relationship, the video basically misses the point of the lyrics. The meaning of Disclosure Latch can be found in the keywords "shackle" "wrapped" "locked" or even Latch. The words evoke things that bind two together in an unbreakable union. All of these go tied with the most frequent word in the song: "Never." (21 times!) The love Latch sings about is a love never supposed to end, a lock that will never let go. This is the way love is meant to feel. And the feelings are meant to make us live a commitment of never let go.”

 Come what May - Ewan MacGregor and Nicole Kidman 

This doesn’t really need much analysis. The meaning is pretty obvious. But here’s some expert analysis anyway:

“...but rather it is saying that not matter what other extraneous stuff is going on in their lives, they are saying it doesnt matter, hence "come what may" because they are still going to love each other no matter what else occurs...”

“The song plays an important role in the film. When the forbidden strong and close romantic relationship between Christian and Satine has been discovered, Christian pens this romance song and includes it in the musical he is currently writing. Each time either of them sings this song, they can secretly declare their equally deep and true romantic love for each other.”

Long Time Running - Tragically Hip

It appears that no one really knows how to interpret this song. I read interpretations ranging from it’s a song about divorce and depression to people who are planning to use it at their wedding. 

Now I could go into what I think but it’s already been done beautifully by wishfulwannabee:

“Not only have they both said that they relate to this program and the song mirrors their relationship, but let’s take a look at both the program and the song. If you look at the lyrics, the song is actually quite heartbreaking and follows two people in love who can never seem to find a good way to get together. The lyrics changes from “it’s a grave mistake” to “it’s the same mistake” to “it’s a great mistake”, so obviously the song evolves with the relationship. “We don’t go anywhere, just on trips” hits me bc it’s like they test out the waters of the relationship but it never goes anywhere. It’s honestly a song filled with so many emotions and a messy relationship that wants to be somewhere but stumbles along the way to getting there. Now let’s just briefly talk about the program (which they choreographed themselves btw). For me, it seems that the “characters” are trying to chase after each other. There is never a moment where they both want each other. Whenever one is chasing, the other isn’t looking their way. It seems like there was never a good time for them to both want each other the same way at the same time. Until the end when they come together the way that they started. In unison. On the same page.” 

http://wishfulwannabe.tumblr.com/post/172369040350/ok-but-we-dont-talk-about-tessa-and-scotts-long

Here are some other thoughts from the internet experts:

“Part of what makes The Tragically Hip so unique as artists is that their work appeals on many different levels simultaneously, much like the song “Long Time Running.” It’s a beautiful, gut-wrenching ballad even if you don’t listen to the lyrics. If you pay any passing attention to them, you add a hint of whimsicality to the proceedings. But if you dig deeper, and if you have a background that’s at all rooted in the same influences or spaces that permeate the band’s storytelling, then you’re granted a song that encompasses regret, longing, heartache, and a clever undercurrent of Canadiana and esoteric references.”

***

“I believe this speaks on history. Likely as with everyone there were dark times endured with having to live through a break in relationships in some points in his life. I feel like he had a core feeling long ago he had a path he was meant to follow. Part of path with his huge heart we could see was to help bring ppl together( through music ). In all respects the song is looking so strong to become one of Canada’s treasured love songs about perseverance of various aspects of life in sickness as well as love and or success. And a heartfelt turned gently into a eulogy as well that’s sang with such perfect emotion you can feel the pain exhaustion as well accomplished goal - happy with how you lived out your life.”

You Rock My World - Michael Jackson

The experts say:

“MJ is saying that this girl he loves has a profound positive affect in his life, and sexual satisfaction…and he is willing to give everything he owns to keep her.”

“Michael has finally found someone who makes him feel whole. This girl obviously feels like the missing link he has been waiting for.”

“He goes on to describe a truthful love because this girl is herself. He never wants her to change and he tells her that in these lyrics.”

“Michael never thought he would find a Love like hers that is so uncommon, and he feels lucky and honored to be able to have it.”

And finally, this from a website that was just some random guy ranting about GOD and SEX and SIN and SEX and SPIRITUALITY and SEX and the DEVIL and SEX with a little LUST thrown in for good measure.

“YOU ROCK MY WORLD is marinated in sexual juices from its very beginning. It was conceived in the steamy rock-pop culture of the late Michael Jackson.

So then, THE ORIGINAL AND REAL MEANING of YOU ROCK MY WORLD comes from Michael Jackson being rocked into a SEXUAL FRENZY. You flip me out! You rock my boat. You get it on! You send me over the top! You take me beyond all limitations! You break all barriers! You rock me into rapture! Give it to me! Come on girl!

“I am reminded of the words of Shakespeare:

“LUST IS THE EXPENSE OF THE SPIRIT IN A WASTE OF  

SHAME. IT SQUANDERS THE ENERGIES OF LIFE.”

But this guy might be on to something because he closes with this:

“THAT MAN WHO IS ADDICTED TO SENSUALISM AND

FLESHLY APPETITES WILL HAVE LITTLE

APPETITE FOR THE SPIRITUAL WHICH

IS SEASONED BY  VIRTUE.”

What a perfect way to wrap this little story up!

So to recap:

We’re totally in love, but we keep missing each other and/or we just can't make it work (Stay). 

We’re ending this long journey (competitive skating) and we’re moving into the unknown (separate lives - Into the Mystic). 

Ummm, detour! Usher singing about oral sex! PERFECT! The children in the audience won’t understand! (Good Kisser). 

I love you, but I don’t know how you feel about me. (HWIK). 

I love you, I want to be with you, but I’m afraid of getting hurt. (WLGTDWI). 

I screwed up, I’m sorry, it’ll never happen again (Sorry). 

Yes, we’re scared, but we love each other and we’re going to take a chance and commit to being together (Latch). 

We’re declaring our true, deep romantic and secret love for each other. And no matter what happens, we’ll always be together (Come What May). 

Now, we’re wrapping up our skating career and we’re finally on the same page and our current relationship was worth the wait (Long time running). 

Now, everything is perfect, this is what we’ve been waiting for and yes, the sex is amazing (YRMW)!

Phew!

[aion-rsa]

Wynonna Earp Season 4 Episode 9 Review: Crazy

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This Wynonna Earp review contains spoilers.

Wynonna Earp Season 4, Episode 9

Wynonna Earp has often balanced the inherent darkness of its premise with, among other tones, some zany supernatural fun. Ostensibly, “Crazy” is another case-of-the-week story that has Wynonna & co. hunting a social media-obsessed genie who has a cannibal suffering from kuru disease as her, er, master.

Past that, it’s yet another glimpse into just how deeply Wynonna has internalized the curse she was once ruled by, and just how much she is suffering because of it. She may no longer be beholden to the Earp curse, but Wynonna is still living as if the only thing she’s good for, the only thing she deserves, is a life of demon-killing. “Genie, you’re free,” our protagonist tells her target—the implication being that there is no such freedom for Wynonna, only a life of looking morally ambiguous monsters in the eye as she kills them and then going to sleep drunk and alone. I can’t quite figure out where Wynonna Earp Season 4B is going thematically, and I love that I don’t know because I think that is part of the point: Wynonna is in a dark, messy place. She’s an imperfect heroine, a hero who has made some bad choices, and the show isn’t giving us an easy answer to the questions of morality those choices have brought up.

In “Crazy,” Wynonna’s antagonist is not Doug, but rather Ginny the Genie. I’m not sure how well it works that Ginny’s relationship with Doug begins narrative life on this show as an allegory for domestic abuse, but, aside from that, Ginny’s messy end works incredibly well with this larger thematic exploration of monsters & morality Season 4B has been exploring. Because Ginny’s culpability in Doug’s murders isn’t black and white. She may be hiding behind Doug’s wishes and his disease, or she may be genuine when she tells Wynonna she silenced her screams because she couldn’t stand to hear them when there’s nothing she could do. Wynonna seems to believe this is a lie, but it’s unclear if she would have made a different choice, that she would have spared Ginny’s life, even if she did believe the excuse.

“You gotta listen to the screams. You’ve got to look the cost of it in the eye, and tell it to go fuck itself,” Wynonna tells Ginny. Because this is the deal Wynonna seems to have made with herself, the line she has drawn in the sand, and you’ll notice it is very different from what happened with Hoyt Clayborn. She didn’t look Hoyt in the eye. She waited until his back was turned to shoot him, and she seems to think there is no coming back from that. She doesn’t believe she can be with Doc unless he falls down to the dregs of humanity alongside her. “Welcome to the moral low ground,” she tells Doc when she believes he has killed someone, so happy to have a companion once again because she is so damn lonely in her moral failure. But she doesn’t know how to ask for help; she only knows how to keep fighting. “The difference is that you have a way out,” Wynonna tells Ginny because she is so unpracticed at imagining a future for herself guided by self-compassion and forgiveness—these weren’t thinks her daddy taught her.

Meanwhile, Nicole is finally able to face her own ghosts—and I’m (mostly) not talking about that chicken-kicking video. It’s fitting that this episode begins with Wynonna and Nicole doing some friendly sparring because the two mirror one another in some interesting ways in “Crazy.” The difference is: Nicole is much further along working through some of the issues holding her back. She is able to look Doc in the eye and be honest about the mindset that led to making a deal with Margo Clanton, trading Waverly’s safe return for Doc. She admits that she was scared, and she thought Doc would be able to get out of whatever the Clantons had in store for him. She doesn’t say she regrets it because that would probably be a lie—she had to be sure that Waverly would come home—but she listens when Doc rebuts and she apologizes. More importantly, she faces it… and herself.

In the process, she reclaims the town sheriff position. (The democratic process has really fallen by the wayside in Purgatory, huh?) It’s hard for me to get behind Nicole’s return to the uniform as anything other than a plot point driven by characterization. If this series has a major narrative flaw, it’s the lack of specificity in its small town setting. As someone who grew up in the middle of nowhere, I’m always on the lookout for more authentic representations of rural life, and Purgatory is not it. (Though it does get winter right—for obvious reasons.) That being said, I don’t need Purgatory to be authentic, but I do need the setting to have, for want of a better phrase, better character continuity. Wynonna Earp seems to want Purgatory to have a sense of place, but it’s been incredibly erratic, from season to season and sometimes from episode to episode. That someone could live in this town and not know that Doc is a hundreds-year-old vampire or that Waverly is an angel is unlikely. The memory-altering fog hasn’t made it to town… yet.

Speaking of which, Ginny tells Wynonna: “I can stop what’s coming,” implying that yet another Big Bad is on the way—presumably, Eve, whom we haven’t seen since the beginning of the season. It’s too soon to tell and not as much fun to dwell on as other aspects of this meaty scene. We’ve discussed much of it, but not the fact that Wynonna is offered Ginny’s power and seemingly easily refuses. And that’s one of the things that sets Wynonna apart from the villain she is so afraid she has become. Villainy is using the power you have to hurt other people for the sake of securing and/or accumulating that power. It’s what Doug was doing when he started eating people’s brains. (Although that analysis is complicated by the fact that Doug seemed to have some kind of mental illness?) Wynonna has only ever used her power to try to protect others.

The question then becomes: what was Wynonna’s choice to kill Hoyt if not villainy? Is shooting someone in the back to keep them from potentially hurting your family an act of securing power? Does it matter what we call it? Should any one person have the right to decide which demon lives and which demon dies? Wynonna is obviously wrestling with these questions, even if she is unable to articulate them in any real way to herself or her loved ones. The closest she gets is in her conversation with Ginny—a “safe” space to express her feelings as Ginny is about to take them to her grave or hell or wherever she is about to end up. “I get it. I’m poison too,” Wynonna tells Ginny, equating herself with someone who just helped a man slaughter multiple innocent people. It’s yet another sign of just how poorly Wynonna thinks of herself these days, and just how dark this show can get in an episode that also involves another character delightfully yelling “Kristi Yamaguchi!” to a crowded bar.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Additional thoughts.

It’s telling how cult-like and obsessive people can get about trivia irl that it took. meso long. to realize that everyone in town was under the influence of Doug’s wish.

“I never want you to blunt your ambition… it’s one of the things that makes you you.”

“I got you back. That’s my happy.”

Doc is surprisingly good at pop culture trivia.

“I must remain in this battle to prove that it is I who has the ideal brain.”

Maybe Purgatory should come up with an alternate model of local law enforcement?

I loved the multiple convos between Nicole and Rachel—a reminder that these two spent a lot of time together as family when Waverly, Wynonna, and Doc were in The Garden.

Doc has minions now.

“God damn law enforcement.” “The gun does tend to go to their head.”

“That means our beautiful cowboy is in the clear.”

Jeremy’s a really bad coroner, huh? He didn’t notice that those corpses have no brains.

Jeremy and Waverly get to make a murderboard!

Weather facts!

Wynonna: I won’t leave your side. Wynonna: *immediately leaves Ginny’s side*

“Random trivia is not an accurate way to judge intelligence.” Scream this from the rooftops. But also I love trivia.

“Well, now I love trivia… and you. In that order.”

What did the Clantons want with Doc? I assumed Margo just wanted to, you know, torture him then kill him, but the fact that Season 4B made a point of bringing this up again makes me think it’s more complex than that.

“The badge alone does not give the authority.” Doc demonstrates his peptalk superpower yet again.

Anyone else miss iZombie while watching this episode?

The gap between real-life cops and TV cops is so broad.

The post Wynonna Earp Season 4 Episode 9 Review: Crazy appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[jooheonies]

nawar lover no.1 aka user shwhyuk uwu

bloodorangeki said: the lady formerly known as hyuccwoo, shreknu if u will,

send me a tumblr url and ill tell you what i think of them!

hhhhhh ok before i eben launch into this full love essay. i jst wanna say tht u truly are the light at the end of my tunnel sejung,,,,u make me so happy !!! Like i remember when i was losing my mind off of like three sips of pineapple cider and i legitimately felt like i was gonna throw up but then i was like … damn i can’t forget to text shannon and tell her about all this. and then i talked to u for a full hour or so while u called me a liddle babie nd i continuously whined…either way you truly have me under your spell you demon!!

okay so not to be. dramatic but youre so dreamy and pretty you remind me of rain and soft kisses on the cheeks and rose gardens and bouquets of flowers and soft sunlight on flower meadows and like! that feeling you get in your cheeks when you smile too much for too long and you get that permanent blush across your face! god that’s probabaly nonsense and not very cohesive but you have the same sort of colors…soft orange and light pink….you’re like a sunset on the beach right at the start of spring when theres barely anyone on the shore and the whole world feels really big and wide but even though youre all alone you don’t feel lonely because it still feels like the whole world(you) is poised right at the edge of your fingertips.

hhhh that also probably made very little sense but i dont care i love you so much and im very bad at expressing emotion (blame my virgo moon who hasn’t felt any feelings in over 18 years) but i still feel like always showering u in that sweet love and affection, despite the fact that im horrible with words and i have absolutely no consistency. I feel like it’s really rare to meet someone who literally changes your entire perception of the world but … damn here we are!! tlkaing to u is literally a part of my daily life its a part of who i am at this point :/

Anyways, friendships don’t really come naturally to me because I have a very weird perosnality where like. im simultaneously suffocating whilst also being very detached and it turns people off so quickly but..god we mesh so well i truly love you so much. i also tend to not write a lot whenever i make these posts bc im the kind of person who continously says how much i love you throughtout the convo (even thoguh ill ghost most ppl for a few days) so whenever i get around to writing these im like :// but what else do i say :// but this time!!! oooo i have so much to say i can never go into full loving hours with you bc you always turn things around and get me to start talking abotu myself and pretty soon we start talking about how i used to raise rocks as a kid instead of talking about how hot you are :/

so anyways firstly . those were just the intro pragaraphs im finally getting into my loving sejung essay :(( helloooo one of my favortie things about talking to you is how easily the conversation always flows ….us talking about shownus asshole and the questionable consumption of expired jello and orbeez at 3 am is most likely the more demonic things weve done while simultaenously being the more tame things…my head still aches when i remember that giagntic bruise i got from looking at that wonho+tentacles/changkyun+black hole sketch u made… god we somehow always go from topic to topic with absolutely no regard for cohesiveness and yet neither of us ever question it…we’ll spend hours discussing absolutely nothing …like that one night we stayed up for like three hours on rabbit talking about all the different mx stans and which member has the most stans internationally versus domestically and why….icons of developing complex sociocultural theories at 2am while occasionally mentioning “oh wow its late u should go to bed >:/” god its just that I always lose track of time whenever I talk to you…its like im so focused on that I Love Her mood that I don’t even realize its been 4 hours until I look down at my pile of unfinished homework and then back up at my laptop like. This was a Valid choice why would I pick ib math when I have a whole entire sejung talking to me. hhhh its just that talking to you comes so naturally and I always tell you all these quesiotnable things to which you always respond by first calling me a demon and then laughing about it and encouraging my stupidity. it’s also so so endearing that ill tell you about the dumb shit im doing and your first response is always to nag at me to be safe and take care of myself as if ill actually listen to you and clean a cut with alcohol, risking legitimate Pain… anyways sejung? queen of making me feel loved and noticed? MORE LIKELY THAN U THINK!!!!

hhhhh ok moving on now I get to talk about how. sexy u are damn….i remember back when we were first starting to talk and you sent me those pictures of yourself in that button up and I literally. I quite literally almost passed out in the starbucks while the barista was handing me my strawberry lemonade I truly almost lost it…nd right before that I was encouraging you to talk to the boba girl nd flirt nd be all spicie…but then u sent me those pics nd I was like for what reason would she have to impress boba girl when im right here … mouth open so wide in love that all the bobas are spilling out of my mouth :( not to be dramatic yet again when I know ive mentioned those selfies before but damn…those were so hot u unbuttoned like two or three of the top buttons and u looked so hot truly. raw me vore me behind each and every single boba store location hewwwooo u look so intense nd powerful im truly putty in ur hands not only would I lose my mind for u, I have already lost it

hhhhh im very much rambling and making very little sense rn bc its. 2:30 am and im sleebie nd I blocked all social media sites so id do homework bt I kept thiknning abt u so I was like hm the universe clearly wants me to write about sejung more even though ill have to post this in the morning bc tungle is blocked until then :// bt anaywas that also means I get to go into all the other thigns I love about u and all the things u remind me of :(( hhhh its so wild that I never actually aunch into full loving shannon mood bt I talk abt u so much w my friends theyre all. suspicious ,,,,

them: nawar u don’t actually like romance and u hate talking about people r u perhaps dating this girl??me, w hearts in my eyes laughing at smth ure saying on my phone: what

HHHH DJHFKSJDHF TAHST TRULY ME,,,,ALWAYS THIKNING ABT U,,,ALWAYS BEING BIG HEART EYES FR U,,,at any given moment I could be reminded of u :( I see a piece of paper nd im like huh I should do work then again is work necessary to live perhaps not but sejung is necessary to live,,,,me thinking abt u as I procrastinate every single thing ive ever had to do :D Like, ive never understood when people say that they hated a zodiac sign at one point, and then they met one person and they were like oh my god nevermind this sign is perfect but truly,,,I love geminis now ,,,I used to hate them almost as much as cancer nd now? geminis are all good ure so wonderful nd loving nd sweet u being a gemini saved geminis collectively,,

ill also neber stop talking abt how now matter how much I whine and demand attention, youre always jst,,,supplying it without any question like at one point people usually get annoyed, no matter how endeared they were by it at first, bt youre always calling me a baby (even though im older) nd giving me that sweet Love and Attention,,mmmmm my libra sun thrives under ur care :( hhhh also I feel it is important to point out I love. all of u,,,,like I don’t even usually care much for peoples voices or anything unless its like so deep it sounds like the grim reaper bc that’s wild u ,,bt anyways the first moment I heard ur voice I was. breathless I was so shocked like ur voice is so soothing nd warm its like. if the aesthetic of sunlight and honey and warm pies had a voice,,,hhhh im also not the type to really believe in things like fate nd destiny and soulmates and stuff bt that’s kind of what u remind me of ? in a? not weird way hhhhh so I feel like youre just so naturally in tune with people like nothing really catches you off guard and you roll with peoples different personalities and quirks and you always jst. mesh so well with everyone ure like the minhyuk of the internet,,,,nd like!! theres smth abt u that reminds me of balance and maybe its my libra sun always seeking peace and harmony in life but I always feel so relaxed nd steady whenever I talk to you its like . idk how to explain it!!! its jst so comforting!!!

I was originally gonna cut myself off at 1k but its too late for that now and im gonna put this under a read more anyways and its 3am now so I feel like. go Big or go Home!!! now im gonna launch into a long analysis of u! and ur smile!! first of all,,,its so rare nd wild to find someone who likes validating people more than being validated,,,,u finding my libra antics cute???hhhhh tahts so wild,,,,I could pout for hours nd u would call it cute,,,validating!!! nd the fact that you’ve read my writing,,,,excerpts from my demonic wips and youre stil friends with me?? you still talk to me?? damn that’s like. never to be expected any time I make someone read that tangerine fic they ghost me for a good month but I sent you pieces of that tentacle fic and YOU FUCKCING SKETCHED OUT THE LOOK,,,,,MY MUSE,,,nd also you tend to always steer the convo around to focus on the other person n dim a FOOL who almost falls for it every time,,,before I remember and make u tell me thigns…god ive told you so many obscure things from my childhood like that time I tried to eat a brick and yet you still,,,,talk to me,,,,who are u,,,,hhhh ure always so cute nd giving nd caring I feel like I could genuinely truly look like shit nd send u a selfie nd you would still be like WOW GORGEOEUS YOU LOOK SO GOOD THAT’S HOT!!! u,,,going out of ur way to make ppl happy :( anyways im a fool in love w u ,,,also not to be like. one of those old white boy text posts from tumblr but ,,,,hey girl,,,ladie,,,wamen,,,did u know? ur smile lights up my world? ,,,did u know? theres no such thing as u being anything less than perfect,,,why? because its impossible to be anything less than the essence of who you are. hhhh that’s the dumbest thing im ever written im cutting myself off that was too much this is like. 2k words so far and in all honesty I could continue but then id get gushier than that last line and nobody wants to see That,,,hhhh

this started out with. somewhat decent grammar like I used periods and I think I occasionally capitalized the first letter of the sentence but at this point its incoherent rambling it’s the inside of my brain every time I see u or hear frm u its like when spongebobs brain was on fire and all the cabinets and computers were going up in flames and all the little brain spongebobs were losing their mind that’s me right now losing my mind over you I wrote exactly 2k words in that whole essay,,,,im so fucking valid,,,,ananywas I love you if you couldn’t tell nd iim . somewhat satisfied at being able to vent all this love,,,smoochie,,smoochh,,SMOOCHIIE

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/covid-19-news-live-updates-the-new-york-times-7/

Covid-19 News: Live Updates - The New York Times

AstraZeneca halts a vaccine trial to investigate a participant’s illness.

The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca halted global trials of its coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday because of a serious and unexpected adverse reaction in a participant, the company said.

The trial’s halt, which was first reported by Stat News, will allow the British-Swedish company to conduct a safety review. How long the hold will last is unclear.

In a statement, the company described the halt as a “routine action which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials, while it is investigated, ensuring we maintain the integrity of the trials.”

In large trials like the ones AstraZeneca is overseeing, the company said, participants do sometimes become sick by chance, but such illnesses “must be independently reviewed to check this carefully.”

The company said it was “working to expedite the review of the single event to minimize any potential impact on the trial timeline” and that it was “committed to the safety of our participants and the highest standards of conduct in our trials.”

A person familiar with the situation, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the participant had been enrolled in a Phase 2/3 trial based in the United Kingdom. The individual also said that a volunteer in the U.K. trial had been found to have transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections. However, the timing of this diagnosis, and whether it was directly linked to AstraZeneca’s vaccine, is unclear.

AstraZeneca’s vaccine, known as AZD1222, relies on a chimpanzee adenovirus that has been modified to carry coronavirus genes and deliver them into human cells. Although the adenovirus is generally thought to be harmless, the coronavirus components of the vaccine are intended to incite a protective immune response that would be roused again should the actual coronavirus try to infect a vaccinated individual.

Adenoviruses, however, can sometimes trigger their own immune responses, which could harm the patient without generating the intended form of protection.

AstraZeneca’s vaccine is currently in Phase 2/3 trials in England and India, and in Phase 3 trials in Brazil, South Africa and more than 60 sites in the United States. The company intended for its U.S. enrollment to reach 30,000.

AstraZeneca is one of three companies whose vaccines are in late-stage clinical trials in the United States.

Britain, seeing a sudden spike in new cases, will ban most gatherings of more than six people beginning next week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce on Wednesday.

“We need to act now to stop the virus spreading. So we are simplifying and strengthening the rules on social contact — making them easier to understand and for the police to enforce,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement on Tuesday.

The new measure, which will be subject to fines beginning at 100 pounds, will apply to both indoor and outdoor gatherings, including private homes and parks. It is not expected to apply to workplaces, weddings, funerals and team sports.

A surge in cases this week and confusion over the current rules prompted the new measure, which is expected to take effect on Monday. About 3,000 new cases were reported on both Sunday and Monday of this week, the highest daily figures since May. About 2,500 more new cases were reported on Tuesday.

The current rules allow up to 30 people for certain types of gatherings, sowing confusion and making it difficult for officials to enforce.

In other developments around the world:

Japan approved a plan to spend more than $6 billion from its emergency budget reserves on coronavirus vaccines. The chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, told reporters that AstraZeneca had agreed to supply 120 million doses starting early next year, and that Pfizer would supply 120 million doses by the end of June. Mr. Suga said the government was also negotiating with Moderna for more than 40 million additional doses.

Amid a surge in new cases, Turkey is requiring masks to be worn in all public places, including offices, factories and open-air spaces such as parks and beaches. The country is also reinstating limits on public transportation after images of jam-packed minibuses began circulating on social media and fights over masks broke out between drivers and passengers.

The United Nations refugee agency announced the first confirmed cases of the virus among Syrians in refugee camps in Jordan. UNHCR Jordan said that two Syrians in the Azraq camp had tested positive and were transferred to an isolation site near the Dead Sea, and that their contacts were being tested and quarantined. The camp is home to more than 36,000 people, more than 60 percent of whom are children. There are more than 650,000 registered Syrian refugees in Jordan, with most living in cities, not inside camps.

Despite a steady decline in daily cases and deaths, Egypt surpassed the 100,000 mark for total known virus cases on Tuesday. The Arab world’s most populous country, with over 100 million people, Egypt endured a partial lockdown between March and June that included a nighttime curfew; the closure of airports, restaurants and cafes; and the suspension of prayers at all places of worship. But life on the streets has been returning to normal, with most of those restrictions lifted.

Nine drug companies issued a joint pledge on Tuesday that they would “stand with science” and not put forward a vaccine until it had been thoroughly vetted for safety and efficacy.

The companies did not rule out seeking an emergency authorization of their vaccines, but promised that any potential coronavirus vaccine would be decided based on “large, high quality clinical trials” and that the companies would follow guidance from regulatory agencies like the Food and Drug Administration.

“We believe this pledge will help ensure public confidence in the rigorous scientific and regulatory process by which Covid-19 vaccines are evaluated and may ultimately be approved,” the companies said.

President Trump has repeatedly claimed that a vaccine could be available before Election Day, Nov. 3, heightening fears that his administration is politicizing the race by scientists to develop a vaccine and potentially undermining public trust in any vaccine approved.

“We’ll have the vaccine soon, maybe before a special date,” the president said on Monday. “You know what date I’m talking about.”

Three of the companies that signed the pledge are testing their candidate vaccines in late-stage clinical trials in the United States: Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. But only Pfizer has said that it could apply to the F.D.A. for emergency approval as early as October, while the other two have said they hope to have a vaccine by the end of the year.

Late last week, Moncef Slaoui, the top scientist on Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to quickly bring a vaccine to market, warned in an interview with National Public Radio that the chance of successful vaccine results by October was “very, very low.”

In the nine companies’ statement on Tuesday, they did not mention Mr. Trump, saying only that they have “a united commitment to uphold the integrity of the scientific process.”

The other six companies that signed the pledge were BioNTech, which is a development partner in Pfizer’s vaccine; GlaxoSmithKline; Johnson & Johnson; Merck; Novavax; and Sanofi. Plans for the pledge were first made public on Friday.

For millions of American schoolchildren, particularly in the Northeast, the Tuesday after Labor Day traditionally signals the end of summer vacation and a return to their classrooms. But this year, instead of boarding buses and lugging backpacks, most of those students are opening their laptops at home as schools commence the fall term virtually amid the pandemic.

Classes started Tuesday in some of the nation’s largest districts, including Chicago, Houston, Dallas and Baltimore, along with many suburbs of Washington, D.C. But almost all began the year remotely, with some still hoping to hold classes in-person several weeks from now.

In New York City, the nation’s largest district, teachers and staff members returned to schools on Tuesday, but the city’s 1.1 million students won’t arrive until Sept. 21 — 10 days later than initially planned. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the shift a week ago after many educators said classrooms would not be ready to reopen this week.

In other parts of the country, including several states in the South and Midwest, schools have been open for more than a month now, resulting in a series of student quarantines and temporary shutdowns in some districts. Others seem to have reopened without major outbreaks — although reporting is uneven, making cases difficult to track.

While some educators spent the summer break seeking improved online instruction, concerns have grown over the academic impact of the pandemic, which has widened racial and economic achievement gaps. In Texas, more than 100,000 children never participated in remote learning assignments last spring, according to an analysis of state data by The Dallas Morning News, and 19,000 students dropped out of contact with teachers entirely.

Several large districts in Texas that opened remotely on Tuesday have said they plan to shift to some form of in-person instruction in the coming months, if case numbers allow.

For some districts, technical glitches are also hampering instruction. The Virginia Beach school district’s first day got off to a rocky start on Tuesday as an internet outage left students and parents unable to access online classes. “This outage is affecting schools up and down the East Coast,” the district announced in a Facebook post on Tuesday morning.

In other education news:

The graduate employees’ union at the University of Michigan began a four-day strike on Tuesday over concerns about the university’s reopening plans and lack of broad coronavirus testing on the Ann Arbor campus. The union’s demands include the right for graduate student instructors to work remotely, child care subsidies and rent freezes in campus housing.

Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., said it was requiring all students to quarantine in their residence halls or off-campus housing for two weeks, starting Tuesday, after it confirmed nearly 50 positive cases on campus. All instruction would switch to remote, the university said. While in quarantine, students can leave their residences to pick up meals and spend time outside while masked. They are not allowed to have guests in their rooms or gather with others besides their roommates or housemates.

The opening of the public schools in Hartford, Conn., has been delayed by a virus — but not the coronavirus or any other biological virus. Rather, the school district’s computer servers fell victim to a computer virus in a ransomware attack.

With just under two weeks left until the start of in-person classes in New York City, a vast majority of classrooms in the nation’s largest school district passed ventilation inspections and will reopen as planned on Sept. 21, the mayor said Tuesday. The mayor also said that the city will open a child care program this month with 30,000 spots for homeless students and children of essential workers and teachers, and will add more spots throughout the fall. Children will attend child care on the days when they are learning remotely.

Some JPMorgan Chase employees and customers misused federal coronavirus aid money, according to an internal memo reviewed by The New York Times.

The memo, which was sent by the bank’s operating committee on Tuesday, said that officials had found “instances of customers misusing Paycheck Protection Program loans, unemployment benefits and other government programs.”

The committee, a group of senior leaders that includes its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, as well as its chief risk officer and its general counsel, did not describe any specific misconduct by employees, but it said that, in general, some of the activities officials had identified could be illegal.

“We are doing all we can to identify those instances, and cooperate with law enforcement where appropriate,” they wrote.

Banks played a central role in distributing much of the $2.2 trillion in aid created by the federal government under the CARES Act to help Americans deal with the economic effects of the coronavirus. They were in charge of vetting businesses seeking aid money, and they also had a hand in distributing unemployment benefits that included an extra $600 a week in federal funds.

There was never a hope of keeping fraudsters away from the money entirely, and many lenders are scrutinizing customers’ activities. Some determined criminals created fake businesses to take advantage of the forgivable loans offered by the Paycheck Protection Program, while others got funds using stolen identities. JPMorgan, the country’s largest bank, handed out more than $29 billion in P.P.P. loans, the most by any lender.

It is not clear how widespread the misconduct among JPMorgan’s employees and customers had been or how it compared with other banks.

News of the memo was reported earlier by Bloomberg.

As senators returned to Washington on Tuesday, their leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, announced that the Senate would vote to advance a scaled-back stimulus plan, which is expected to reinstate lapsed federal unemployment benefits at $300 per week — half their previous level — and allocate $105 billion for schools and funds for testing and the Postal Service, according to Republican aides familiar with the discussions.

The plan is an effort to intensify pressure on Democratic leaders, who want to fully restore the $600 unemployment benefits and have refused to consider any measure below $2.2 trillion.

“It does not contain every idea our party likes,” Mr. McConnell said in a statement. “I am confident Democrats will feel the same. Yet Republicans believe the many serious differences between our two parties should not stand in the way of agreeing where we can agree and making law that helps our nation.”

He added, “I will make sure every Senate Democrat who has said they’d like to reach an agreement gets the opportunity to walk the walk.”

The Republicans’ bill would carry a price tag of $500 billion to $700 billion, far less than the $3.4 trillion measure Democrats passed in the House and smaller than the $1 trillion measure Senate Republicans introduced in July. A procedural vote advancing the legislation could come as early as this week, Mr. McConnell said. Democrats are likely to block it.

In a joint statement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, rejected the proposal, declaring it “laden with poison pills Republicans know Democrats would never support.”

“This emaciated bill is only intended to help vulnerable Republican senators by giving them a ‘check the box’ vote to maintain the appearance that they’re not held hostage by their extreme right-wing that doesn’t want to spend a nickel to help people,” the two Democrats said.

As the presidential campaign entered the post-Labor Day sprint to the finish line, President Trump returned to a familiar theme this week: minimizing the threat posed by the virus, sometimes in ways that contradict the advice of federal health authorities.

Mr. Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday morning to insist that “New York City must stop the Shutdown now” and then to claim that virus restrictions in other states were “only being done to hurt the economy prior to the most important election, perhaps, in our history.”

A day earlier he criticized a reporter for wearing a mask at a White House news conference, despite guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that “everyone should wear a mask in public settings and when around people who don’t live in your household.”

And at an outdoor gathering on Tuesday in North Carolina with a large crowd, where many of his supporters did not wear masks, he accused Joseph R. Biden Jr., again, of “undermining scientists” with “anti-vaccine rhetoric” because he has raised questions about whether Mr. Trump was rushing a vaccine out to help his political chances in November.

It was part of a familiar pattern for Mr. Trump, who back in March began pushing for states to reopen by Easter, on April 12. (More than 160,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the United States since Easter, according to a New York Times database.) In mid-April Mr. Trump sided with protesters who were chafing at virus restrictions, calling to “LIBERATE” several states including Minnesota and Virginia, which both saw cases rise in subsequent weeks. And in June he held an in-person campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., which local health officials said likely contributed to more cases there.

When many parts of the country were reeling from the virus in the spring, West Virginia was enviably quiet. It was the last of the 50 states to have a confirmed case, and its daily tallies of new cases remained low, topping 100 only once before July. But as summer comes to an end, the state’s fortunes have changed significantly for the worse.

Cases started climbing in July and, after a brief dip in late August, have been shooting upward since. The state announced more cases in the seven-day period ending Monday than in any other week of the pandemic.

And on one important front, Gov. Jim Justice warned at a news briefing on Tuesday, West Virginia is now worse off than any other state in the country: the number of new infections that researchers estimate are arising from each single case, a measure of spread called Rt.

“We have told you a million times, we’re the oldest state, the most vulnerable state, the state with the most illnesses, the state with the most breathing problems,” Mr. Justice said, apparently referring to research that shows West Virginia’s population is at particularly high risk of serious illness. “We have also told you to wear your mask. And there are still some who are not wearing their mask.”

After reopening for in-person instruction last month, West Virginia University announced on Monday that nearly all classes at its Morgantown campus would move online for the next two and a half weeks, because the number of confirmed cases on campus has spiked upward. The university has suspended 29 students after reports surfaced of large fraternity parties held over the holiday weekend in violation of quarantine orders. 

The surrounding county has one of the worst outbreaks in the state, and is one of nine counties where elementary and secondary schools are beginning this year with entirely remote learning.

Dr. Clay Marsh, the governor’s “coronavirus czar” and the vice president for health sciences at W.V.U., said the surge was almost inevitable. “Covid found its way to West Virginia, just like it found its way to every place in the world,” he said in an interview.

The state has been aggressive in many ways, he said, closing its schools before New York State did, ordering universal testing at nursing homes in May and imposing a statewide mask mandate in early July.

But the virus chiseled away nonetheless: showing up in nursing homes, churches and prisons; traveling in with vacationers; and spreading quickly at newly reopened bars and restaurants.

Dr. Marsh said he was especially concerned about the foothold the virus appears to have gained in some coal-mining counties in the south of the state, where health care resources are fewer and conditions like black lung are prevalent. The sources of outbreaks in these smaller communities are less clear than in college towns, making them harder to combat.

“We have done well, but we are seeing the vagaries of Covid-19,” Dr. Marsh said. “I don’t think anybody escapes it.”

Elsewhere in the U.S.:

As part of a move by New York City to promote compliance with the state’s 14-day quarantine requirement for many travelers, the city’s sheriff, Joseph Fucito, said Tuesday that in late August his office began stopping buses before they arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Officials are boarding the buses and asking passengers to fill out the state’s required travel form with their contact information and quarantine plans. Under consideration was an expansion of the operation to buses that enter the city through places other than the Port Authority Bus Terminal, he said.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said Tuesday that travelers from Delaware, Maryland, Ohio and West Virginia are now required to quarantine for 14 days, joining a list of 30 other states as well as Guam. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands were removed in the weekly update.

Travelers to Connecticut and New Jersey will now also be subject to a 14-day quarantine if they are coming from those 35 places, though compliance is voluntary in New Jersey.

Demand for office space in New York City is slumping, putting its financial health and status as the world’s corporate headquarters at risk. Fewer than 10 percent of the city’s office workers had returned as of last month and just a quarter of major employers expect to bring their people back by the end of the year, according to a new survey. Only 54 percent of these companies say they will return by July 2021. Office work makes up the cornerstone of New York’s economy and property taxes from office buildings account for nearly 10 percent of the city’s total annual tax revenue.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced that several counties, including Orange, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz, could now open indoors at reduced capacity a variety of long-shuttered businesses, including restaurants, gyms and places of worship. The governor on Tuesday gave an update on the state’s recently revamped opening process, which sorts California’s vast and diverse counties into tiers, tying the level of business restrictions to case numbers and positivity rates. The three counties were among those allowed to move from the most restrictive tier, in which most businesses are still barred from operating indoors.

After an uproar, Israel backs away from a lockdown plan, raising fears as the High Holy Days approach.

In July, a veteran Tel Aviv hospital administrator, Dr. Ronni Gamzu, was anointed Israel’s virus czar. Acknowledging previous government mistakes, he enlisted the military to take responsibility for contact tracing and pleaded with Israelis to take the threat seriously and wear their masks.

He also vowed to restore the public’s trust, demanding accountability from municipal officials while replacing the central government’s zigzagging dictates with simple instructions that anyone should be able to understand and embrace.

Last week, Dr. Gamzu won cabinet approval for a traffic light-themed plan to impose strict lockdowns on “red” cities with the worst outbreaks, while easing restrictions in “green” ones where the virus was finding fewer victims. The goal was to avoid, or at least delay, another economically strangling nationwide lockdown.

By Sunday, however, Dr. Gamzu was looking more like a victim himself.

Ultra-Orthodox leaders who felt that their community was being stigmatized revolted against the traffic light plan and directed their ire at Dr. Gamzu’s most important backer, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

And Mr. Netanyahu, under rare public pressure from one of his most vital constituencies, caved in on the targeted lockdown plan.

The upshot for Israel is a bleak prospect: The pandemic has mushroomed, with Israel’s number of new cases near the worst in the world on a per-capita basis. Yet the odds of stopping its march seem slim as the Jewish High Holy Days approach.

Ordinarily, the New Year, Yom Kippur and Sukkot are a festive and unifying time. Instead, there are fears that by Sept. 18, when the holidays begin, Israel will be either overrun by the pandemic or under a full lockdown.

Reporting was contributed by Keith Bradsher, Chris Buckley, Choe Sang-Hun, Emily Cochrane, Michael Cooper, Jill Cowan, Nicholas Fandos, Emily Flitter, Michael Gold, Veronique Greenwood, Jenny Gross, David M. Halbfinger, Isabel Kershner, Sarah Kliff, Victor Mather, Jesse McKinley, Derek M. Norman, Nada Rashwan, Campbell Robertson, Margot Sanger-Katz, Anna Schaverien, Eliza Shapiro, Karan Deep Singh, Mitch Smith, Katie Thomas, Katherine J. Wu and Karen Zraick.

[nerdyfoodandbeercollector-blog]

Depression Series: At least it was for nachos (part 2)

A fair warning is probably needed, I suppose: This post is not and has nothing to do with feer and bood (or beer and food, for that matter). This is a multi-part series I decided to write about living with my depression. Super uplifting stuff (but seriously give it a shot, you might learn something). I guess this second part is about friends. 

On my drive home from the taproom where I worked a shift after my regular day job, I decided I had no desire to cook dinner. For one, there wasn’t anything ready to be cooked, but also I didn’t want to eat any leftovers and sacrifice a meal that would be perfect for tomorrow. So I decided to spend money because of course, that’s what we do, isn’t it? And of course, nothing sounded better than grub from a local taqueria I have fallen head over heels for. 

After calling my wife to tell her (ask if it is a good idea) to get some tacos for dinner, I pull into the parking lot. As I walk in, a man from the neighborhood walks up to me and asks me for some money so he can buy some dinner. The man appeared to be homeless and ill-equipped for the winter weather we were starting to have. Feeling slightly upbeat, I tell him that while I don’t have any cash (and I didn’t), I would be happy to buy him a taco. I’ve done this in the past, I feel like it gets to the heart of the issue with some panhandlers: either they just want your money or they really do want the things they are asking for. In this case, the man wanted the food and he definitely did look hungry to me-- He graciously accepted the taco offer. 

We went into the restaurant together and after an awkward encounter with a patron leaving the place, he looked over the menu and noticed there were other offerings than just tacos. He soon began asking me to buy additional items to which I responded that he pick just one. “Chicken nachos then,” he said, and this was a good choice, I thought, for who doesn’t like nachos? 

After he ordered, the man started to walk around and see who else he could get change from. This was odd, seeing as I had already purchased him dinner, and I could tell the servers were annoyed when he scolded customers that didn’t bus their trays. Finally, he found the drink cooler and after picking some orange soda, he asked the servers behind the counter if he could have it. “$1.08″ they said to his disliking. After a few minutes of him trying to barter with them, he turned to me to see if I would buy it for him. 

“I already paid,” I said. “And I don’t have any cash. Still. Sorry, man.” 

His nachos were ready, a heaping pile of chips and cheese with chicken and beans. You can’t go wrong (well, maybe about the beans. I mean, why does everything have to have beans?). 

The man then slowly started to put the orange soda in his jacket, as if to steal it. The server kept telling him “$1.08″ but it only made him more frustrated. 

Then the man stopped, sighed, and reached into his pocket and pulled out a few loose dollars ... 

... And a crisp $100 dollar bill. 

The servers behind the counter were madder than I was. Honestly, at that point, I just wanted my food to take home and watch The Good Place. I actually found it, at the time, a little funny. I mean, here was this guy that looked homeless (or at least poor) asking me for tacos when he had more cash on him than I’d had in weeks. The servers yelled at him for making me pay for his food, they knew what was up. 

The man put $1.10 on the counter, grabbed his food, and then turned for the exit, but not before telling me “Yo I got you, man.” What does that mean here in this case? That he’s going to pay me back in tacos, that he was going to break that $100 and give me cash for the nachos? That he was grateful? Was that his way of saying thank you? 

He never did actually say thank you. 

I drove home and was still finding the whole situation a little funny when suddenly my laughing became more nervous and suddenly I was anxious about how I feel about humanity as a whole. And then I was in yet another funk. Don’t worry, the tacos and torta I got helped, but I couldn’t help think about how I treat people and how I want to be treated and then how am I actually treated. 

See, my therapist, let’s call her Deloris (because why the fuck not?), thinks I am a bit of an empath. And yet, at the same time, she thinks I have no desire to treat myself with empathy or to try and get better. I try to be nice to everyone around me and I constantly want to please everyone (and people always tell me that I can’t please everyone but then I try it anyways and sometimes it works but what they don’t tell you is that usually the person you don’t ever please is yourself, at least if you do it that way). If you look at my various jobs over the years, they’ve been in areas to help people. Service industry jobs are serving and helping people. At Best Buy, I was supporting stores to ensure no customer went “unserved.” Technical writers write up steps so you don’t misuse a tractor, causing it to blow up (that is, of course, if I wrote tractor manuals). I’m always there offering a smile, a hug, even a meal (like the nachos here or a homecooked meal for a friend). I love hosting. I offer up all my beer and vices to anyone that will join me because I’m just a friendly guy. 

Or so I thought! Dramatic! 

Recently, let’s say the last few years, I’ve felt that I have a really hard time making new friends. I’m almost immediately in my own head, thinking of ways to sabotage the conversation, the moment, the encounter so that I don’t have to talk to anyone anymore. Why is that? I like talking to people, don’t I? And then I listen to them talk about a trip or a new job or a new house or a better life and I know I should be happy for them, but then all I want to do is bury myself alive. It isn’t even logical, sometimes whatever I’m jealous about isn’t even something I care about or am interested in, yet I just can’t stop, and I know it makes no sense, has no rhyme or reason, but I can’t shake the feeling that I just can’t be happy for others. And that prevents me from wanting to be their friend, or even truly being friendly. 

But then I think, wait, I feel these things before I hear about the new job, the trip, the new cat. My anxiety starts going well before any of that, fuck, it starts when I enter a room and don’t light it up. Something stops me from wanting to make friends before my depression and anxiety can step in and make me feel awful about myself and for myself when I hear about all things I can’t do or couldn’t do or don’t do or haven’t done. Odds are, it’s still my depression and anxiety. It’s a weird double-edged sword, cycle thing: I have the tools to see others suffering and to try and help them through it, and I want to do that because it is one of the ways I feel validated, but I have no desire to help myself, which makes me sad so I continue to slip down, which then makes me see how others don’t treat me, how the world really is, which makes me not want to be nice or use those tools to help others. If I meet their lack of kindness with kindness, then it will only make me sad because I’m not being treated how I want to be treated, and if I stoop to their level and treat ugliness with ugliness, then I am doomed to feel worse and feel ugly for not being who I really want to be. Either way, I’m fucked. 

Lately, with this whole introspective analysis on my depression and trying to open up in the hopes of self-discovery, I’ve had this train of thought. Who knows if it’s right or not but... The thing is, I've had a hard time knowing where my depression ends and I begin. I don't really know who I am anymore because for so long I've been trying not to face something that's so very much a part of me and I can’t separate the two. How can I be friends with someone if I don’t even know who I really am? 

The last few months, I've been trying to change (like I said, self-discovery). I've been talking and listening and learning and opening up to the idea that I don't deserve this, that I shouldn't be this sad, that there's more to this life than feeling crushed by a wave of emotion (and I can't swim)... And then there's that voice again, telling me to hate myself. And we start over. The thing is, the important thing to keep in mind is, I am constantly just self-criticizing myself. There’s always something I am doing wrong. But that means I am constantly trying to do more, trying to do better, striving to be better. I have high expectations of myself. I guess I don’t know what I can do to make people actually care about others. Have their own empathy. Like, when I ask nicely for you to move so I can get off the bus and you decide this is somehow my fault and that you standing there is more important than letting me off the bus, how do I meet that with kindness? 

And so, what if this time, I am actually protecting myself? What if I have been so sick and tired of being nice for so long and not getting kindness in return that I am trying to tell myself to be an ass because, well, that’s what you’re going to be to me. What if the reason I don’t help people anymore is that they don’t help me? What if I am getting colder and colder because that’s what I am exposed to? From the people on the bus that decide not to move out of the way to let me off to the guy cutting me off on the highway to the co-worker that doesn’t hold the elevator all the way to the people in Charlottesville rioting on hate to the president of these United States who has admitted to sexually assaulting women to the Harvey Weinstein’s of the world. Are these good people? Are they worth my kindness, my empathy? Or do I just have high expectations for these people, higher expectations than they can actually live up to because they are the expectations in my mind? 

And is any of this rationale, even? Or just more of my depression and anxiety? I’ve often tried to live with the general rule that all human beings deserve respect for the sole reason that they are human beings. Kindness, caring, equity, empathy. All because we are more alike than we are different because we are made of stars. We’re all stardust.  

The truth is, even if it is actually the case, that I protect myself by being mean deep down so I can’t be hurt when I am disappointed, that isn’t a way to live. I don’t want to be that way. I need community. And the bitter truth is, my community is always going to change as people come and go. It’s better to keep it growing rather than tear it down. 

What does this have to do with nachos, John? Well, it would be easy for me to just give up, especially after getting “cheated” by someone pretending to be in need. It would be easy to give up on those that need our help, to use this as an example to give up on humanity. And to use this as another reason to not be friendly, or to be cold to the world. But I just can’t do that and expect to get anywhere. I need to fight as much as I am able this idea that it is me against the world, that I have a chip on my shoulder and everyone’s to blame. Recognizing it, talking about it... that’s half the battle, indeed. 

It’s hard, though. A part of me wants to use my anger that people aren’t nicer as a reason to be nasty, too, fight ugly with ugly. Hell, a part of me has probably already accepted that that's the way to be. But there’s still a voice inside of me that’s laughing and saying, Hey, at least they were nachos.

[garden-of-succulents]

I'M GONNA TALK SOME MORE ABOUT TATER'S LESBIAN MOMS. I had the original idea back in October, and then I decided I was going to do it for my Swawesome Santa, which I thought was super secret like Yuletide, so I clammed up about it since then. So I actually put a fair amount of work into researching the idea, but the fic turned into this monstrously huge unwieldy outline with 14 separate plot-important scenes at its smallest, and like five different emotional arcs, and I couldn't do it, so I wrote Leave Your Lovers Like Campfires instead.

So now I'll just cut it down to one aspect, which is Tater's moms Sasha and Galina. Even just cut down to one aspect, in bullet points, without weaving in the other plot threads, this post is three thousand words long. /o\

I read what I could find in my libraries on social and LGBT history in Russia, but resources in English are honestly pretty limited and I know I'm making shit up here. MY APOLOGIES TO ACTUAL RUSSIANS. But for what it's worth, the books I found most useful were Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia by Francesca Stella, Cracks in the Iron Closet: Travels in Gay and Lesbian Russia by David Tuller, and Putin Country: A Journey Into the Real Russia by Anne Garrels.

Content notes: Homophobia, being closeted, coming out, mental illness, and suicide.

So. Tater's moms are Alexandra Yakovna Mashkova (Sasha) and Galina Ivanovna Fedorova (Galina). They were born in Ulyanovsk around 1970.

Galina comes from a hockey family. (No relation to Sergei Fedorov, though.) The men in her family were like ALL ICE HOCKEY ALL THE TIME--her grandfather was part of the first generation of Soviet hockey players, and played for a professional club in Moscow for a couple seasons; her uncle played in the Soviet Championship League. Her dad, although excellent, did not make it quite so far as his brother, and became a hockey coach and coached his sons in hockey.

Galina WANTED to play ice hockey, but it was the 70s and she was A Girl, so what can you do. In the 80s, though, women's field hockey started being a thing, and she nagged her father relentlessly until he agreed to coach a field hockey team in the summer.

Just about that time, Sasha was a 16-year-old ballet dancer who'd just failed several important auditions, and whose ballet instructor admitted that she might have given Sasha slightly overinflated ideas of her balletic potential. In a fit of rage Sasha quit ballet, saw a bunch of girls playing field hockey, and walked over to ask if she could join them.

Look, you know this story: slender, slightly reticent newcomer to hockey meets far-too-serious beefy hockey nerd who has to teach them how to deal with a little physical contact. They meet for early morning practices. They learn to appreciate each other's strengths and differences. They bond as people. They fall in l o v e.

And then Sasha graduates and moves awa--wait, what?

Galina doesn't know what she was expecting. She was kind of wilfully hoping the future would never come and they'd just be teenage girls playing hockey and getting grass stains and kissing in the bushes forever.

But Sasha graduates and moves away. She breaks up with Galina. Galina's heartbroken. She starts working at the same factory as her brother, keeps playing field hockey, wins a few tournaments, and won't tell her family why she cries when she hears Sasha got married.

Sasha goes to university, to medical school, becomes a doctor. She marries a fellow med student partly because she can have sex with him without gagging, which is more than she can say for most men, but more importantly because it gets them preferential student housing.

When Sasha does a psychiatric rotation, one of the cases a fellow student brings in for supervision is a homosexual man in a deep depression after his long-term boyfriend broke up with him. Their supervisor listens to a long-winded analysis of just what dysfunction caused the man's homosexuality, then snaps, "You're on the wrong track. Whatever makes these people like this, it isn't pathological, and it's a waste of time trying to change it. Focus on his depression instead. Get him functional enough to go back to work and find another lover he'll be happier with."

So she has that to chew on.

When medical school graduation rolls around Sasha and her husband add "arguing over where to move and what work to do" to the other things they bicker over all the time, and divorce. He fucks off somewhere. Sasha accepts a surgical residency back in Ulyanovsk.

Galina's family caught her kissing another girl (look privacy is hard to come by) and threatened to tell her coworkers if she did it again, so she is not on good terms with them. She moves out into shared workers' housing.

Sasha moves back in with her parents and goes to work as a surgeon.

Sasha and Galina... reconnect. *wink wink*

So. This.... is the part where it's important to remember that these are the women who raised Alexei Mashkov.

This is the crucible in which was formed a man willing and able to pick Kent Parson up with one arm like a naughty kitten and cuss him the hell out.

This is a family made of solid fucking steel

These are women who looked at each other in the 1980s and went, "You. You are what I want. I don't want anyone else but you. You... and a couple children."

"But how would they make that work?" you ask

Well

they are just

that

metal

So Sasha goes to a medical colleague who owes her a couple of favours and says, "I want you to artificially inseminate me."

"You could just get pregnant the regular way," he says.

"I could punch you in the face," she says, and he's a good guy (and never suggested he should inseminate her the usual way) so he agrees and she doesn't punch him.

She tells her parents that she's pregnant and doesn't like the father and anyway he's unimportant, pay no attention to the sperm donor behind the curtain, look a baby.

UNRELATEDLY: This is her good friend Galina! Galina lives in an apartment building whose heat just stopped working, and it's December. You don't want Galina to freeze to death, do you? She's going to be living in my room now. Okay thanks!

Anya is born in the spring of 1989, just as the political and economic situation is going to shit. But for Sasha and Galina the upside is, everyone is way too freaked out about everyone else to care about hunting down lesbians. (Lesbianism was never illegal; male homosexuality is decriminalized in 1993)

Sasha's six months pregnant with Alexei when Galina's job just literally stops paying wages and gives all its workers crystal vases in lieu of actual money, and they maybe wouldn't have chosen to have another baby so soon if they knew just how bad it was going to get, but, well, shit happens, they don't die, and Alexei is 57cm long at birth so not everything went wrong.

(Galina is 181cm tall. Sasha is 185. His height was not exactly a surprise.)

So, social order basically collapses in 1991, the year Alexei is born. A lot of shit happens, but then there's a tiny ray of unexpected good: Sasha's father starts speaking Hebrew again.

Nobody in Sasha's generation learned Hebrew, but when her father was very young, he went to secret Hebrew School, and although he never taught his children, he held on to what he knew. And when the 1990s came around, he started speaking Hebrew to the two grandbabies who were living in his apartment.

And then Anya and Alexei started speaking it back.

So like, look. There's cluelessness and general plausible deniability, and then there's your daughter raising her children with her lesbian lover under your roof for six years. It is quite likely that Sasha's parents knew what the fuck was going on.

And they didn't know fuck about LGBT rights or anything like that. They didn't take some enlightened stand. They just listened to their grandchildren playing hide-and-seek in Hebrew and knew that they had to find the good in this as it came.

(Incidentally.)

(Do you know how useful it is when you and your siblings speak a language that your parents don't?)

(ALEXEI knows how useful it is.)

In 1995 Sasha, who was back to working as a surgeon and doing research, got a job with a Swiss medical research company that just opened up a branch office in Moscow, so she, Galina, and their children moved there. They visited Sasha's family over the years, of course, but Alexei considers himself "from" Moscow, even if he was technically born in Ulyanovsk.

Growing up, Sasha was "Mama" to the kids, but Galina (who was "unemployed" a lot of the time and looked after the kids while Sasha worked) was "Auntie". To most people who knew them, Sasha and Galina came off as sisters.

Galina taught the kids how to skate as soon as they could stand, and gave them hockey sticks to help keep their balance. She was their first coach, opponent, and goalie. Girls' ice hockey teams sprung up in Moscow in the 90s, and Anya was on a few of them. Alexei played against his mother and sister for years before he was old enough to go on a team with other boys.

In Moscow, Sasha and Galina started actually making LGBT+ friends, and within the confines of their living room or country house, they had people who fully understood what they were to each other. Their children grew up with gay, queer, and trans "aunts" and "uncles". One of Alexei's earliest memories is accidentally making a chair tip over because he wanted the absolutely beautiful feather boa hanging off the back of it. (After he finished crying and was done being soothed, they did give him the boa to play with, but admonished him to ask before grabbing.)

After a hiatus of a few years, Andrei was born in 1998. His Hebrew isn't nearly as good as Anya or Alexei's, since they taught him their version of the language. He plays right wing in hockey.

It wasn't actually evident early on that Alexei was going to be OMG AMAZING at hockey? Like, he was very good, but there's a difference between "very good" and "NHL scouting wants to talk to you." Even at 14, 15, he looked like he might just be another excellent player. But then at 16 he hit a growth spurt and absolutely blossomed, and people who'd known him for years were saying, "Whoa, who the fuck is that?"

So for most of his childhood, Alexei planned on being a businessman, not a hockey player

He wanted to be like a guy who lived in their apartment building, who was an expert in industrial machinery and travelled to China a lot.

English is Alexei's fifth goddamned language, because after Russian and Hebrew, he learned a little German (Sasha took him to Switzerland on a business trip once), and then a few years of Mandarin in school

and then the pro hockey scouts came a-fucking-round and someone from the NHL tells Tater that they've got their eyes on him

and his response was like

"Fuck fuck fuck, this means I have to learn English, don't I."

IN SCHOOL THEY TOLD HIM LANGUAGES GOT EASIER THE MORE YOU LEARNED THEM

HE WANTS HIS MONEY BACK ON THAT PROMISE

So Tater knew he was gay from about age 13

And if he had known back then that he was going to be a serious contender for the KHL/NHL... oh boy, that's actually something he debates with himself.

If he could go back in time, would he really distance himself from the LGBT+ community? Would he make himself more palatable, cultivate the background of a classic Russian hockey hero?

Is that even possible when the mother who was absolutely essential to him becoming the player he is is the one who isn't related to him by blood?

Does he really want to take back the teenage friends he met who questioned themselves and their sexualities, who followed him home and met his parents and looked at Sasha and Galina with something like hope dawning in their eyes?

Isn't it just cowardice to want to take back his friendship with the lesbian who killed herself anyway? It's painful to look back on all those midnight hours convincing Masha not to commit suicide tonight, telling her to at least wait until morning, and he will always regret that it wasn't enough. But what would he do without the knowledge that came from finally pouring out his troubles out on his mothers' laps, Galina's knowledge of informal suicide counselling and Sasha's knowledge of psychiatric care? She died when he was 15 and left a handprint on his heart, but also an initiation into the mysteries of survival when queer and mentally ill. And for better or worse, his knowledge of that life-or-death struggle has come in useful in his life.

He can't say for sure that anyone in the Russian hockey world knows his mothers are lesbians. No one's ever said so. But his great-uncle, Galina's brother, who's now a League official, definitely knows; since he made the KHL, Galina's younger relatives have slowly come out of the woodwork, wanting to simultaneously condemn his mother and claim him, the professional hockey player, as family. He could drive himself crazy wondering: Who knows? Was the KHL so happy to let me go when I was 20 because of it? Do I not get picked for Team Russia because of it? What am I imagining, and what is real?

He would love to publicly acknowledge Galina as his mother, position himself as the heir of her line of hockey players, of wisdom, of knowledge. As a teenager he made the deliberate choice to stop calling her "aunt". Now it's "Mamochka" when it's just the two of them, fiercely refusing to let himself be distanced from her, from his parents' marriage.

The biggest reason he hasn't come out is Anya, who lives with her husband and two children in Chelyabinsk. She coaches girls' hockey; one of her players made the Olympic women's team. She gets a lot of prestige over having such a famous, skilled brother. If he came out as gay, that would be one misfortune; but if someone traced his family back and showed that their parents were gay, why, then it's practically hereditary, and then who would let her coach their little girls? And to some degree that's just a threat she lives with, an inevitability she knows is waiting for her, but... it's an underlying tension of the family. They know they have very real things to lose, if their secrets come out.

So yeah, Alexei moved to Providence right around the time anti-LGBT legislation was coming out in Russia (2011). After a lot of hemming and hawing, he finally went to George to say, "So here's the thing. My parents are lesbians, the mother who isn't legally my mother is in the habit of breaking the law by telling gay teenagers not to kill themselves, and I'm very worried." George, lesbian extraordinaire, was very nice and reassuring and set Tater up with an excellent immigration lawyer.

Alexei's been trying to convince his parents and Andrei to move to Providence continuously since moving there himself. He's bought a nice big house! IT'S SO EMPTY, LOOK AT ALL THIS SPACE, IT NEEDS FAMILY TO FILL IT.

Sasha's the most resistant--she doesn't speak English at all, fears not being able to research or practice medicine in the USA, and doesn't want to leave her friends and family behind.

(Well, technically Anya is the most resistant--it's just not an option for her. Her husband is a nuclear engineer with a security clearance so high he just can't get its American equivalent. She's staying with him in Russia. Period.)

Galina spends months at a time in Providence, especially during regular season and playoffs. Alexei loves it. It's not about being lazy or helpless, for him, it's about being loved, about coming home from practice to her soup, about going out with her to the movies. Sometimes she goes to NYC or Boston to teach or attend workshops on "queer resistance" and "guerilla lgbt advocacy" and to network with other LGBT+ Russians. He worries about her, but to be honest, the part of her that's a fighter kind of relishes the idea of getting in trouble with the authorities and being rescued and publicly acknowledged by her amazing wonderful homosexual son. Yes, she worries about Anya, but... of all the family, she's least sympathetic to Anya's position.

Andrei's still a teenager. Once his brother brought Kent Parson to their Moscow apartment and, when Andrei wasn't looking, got him to go into Andrei's room and sign his Kent Parson poster. It was... mortifying, but also awesome. Andrei thinks he's maybe straight or maybe pan? He doesn't know. He is pretty good at hockey though, and his brother is trying to convince him that he wants to play ECAC hockey, maybe for Brown University. Jack Zimmermann isn't much of a salesman for his old league--but if Jack gets Tater to introduce Andrei to the new Samwell co-captains, this kid has a much stronger chance of deciding he wants to move to the USA and play there.

Actually, if Alexei could have anything in the world, he'd introduce his now very old grandfather to his lesbian rabbi in Providence. But he's not so sure that's within the range of possibility, given his grandfather's health.

So

That's Tater

And his moms