#nuclear bombs don't exist

[dieletztepanzerhexe]

i logged into reddit (y)

[chaos-has-theories]

This post about TLT and Princess Maker 2 somehow awakened some dormant Homestuck parts of my brain. It's still kind of groggy though, so passing this on to the greater fandom community:

Something about Alecto and Calliope? The names already distantly ring the same, but it's more than that. Sth sth Muse of Space, from post-apocalypse earth (living there only with her brother, the Lord of Time, her other self, souls within the same body, her Death -) dressing up as something else to be less lonely. (Alecto as Calliope, Nona as Callie Ohpee...)

But most importantly, I wonder if there isn't an inverse going on here.

There's this general theme in Homestuck of how brutality can be necessary to survive. The trolls of Alternia are cruel and warmongering because Beforus didn't prepare them well enough for Sgrub, and they all died. Vriska can save the timeline by being alive because she can lock a clown in a fridge without caring for the consequences.

And Callie can only survive - can only defeat Caliborn - in the timeline in which she was entirely alone.

It's like the Ending of My Real Children. It's the trolley problem. It's interesting, but painful, and the mesaage is -

Well. It just seems Tazmuir isn't trying to send the opposite message. "How he raises her will determine whether mankind has truly repented." "You can't take loved away."

When Alecto was alone with John, she let him lead her to her death. This is how meat loves meat.

When she had her human friends... Well, Nona died. The Illusion. The face-paint.

Alecto is awake.

I just wonder what's going to happen next.

(“You looked like you wanted to be kissed, that’s all.”)

Homestuck [A6A6I4] - NtN, chapter 25

[vellichorom]

SHE CAN'T EVEN DOUBLE DUTCH

NATHAN DIDN'T EVEN FUCKIGN HOLD BACK OH MY GOD CALLIE THIS IS YET AGAIN JUST BLOWING METHE FUCK UP I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DID THIS JUST FOR THE FUCKING SAKE OF IT JUST TO KRUMP ON ROSEMARY'S ( CURRENTLY NONEXISTENT ) POLL CORPSE

JUST FOR THE BIT !!!!!!! TO DIG YOUR HEELS INTO THIERRY'S SOUL !!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS AMAZING I'M FUCKIGN NATHAN'S EXPRESSIONS, THE SMOOTH TRANSITIONS, THE FUCKIGNG !!!!!!! DESTRUCTION OF AN OLD MAN'S WILL TO LIVE

callie thank you yet again for the dedication on something like this i'm so mentally ill about it YOU ARE GIVING ME NEW MENTAL ILLNESSES WITH THINGS LIKE THIS THANK YOUUU

the kill poll if Rosemary died.

IT WAS FUNNIER IN MY HEAD TOOK ME A LOT OF THINKING THO

Theirry by @vellichorom, and Rosemary by @tomi-chuu! ur babas r so fun to draw istg

[gay-jesus-probably]

Let me just preface this by saying everyone is allowed to have their own opinions, TOTK is a really fun game, and I'm glad that other people have been able to enjoy the story as well.

...But I'm being dead serious with my complaints about the narrative being 100% imperialist propaganda. And I'm getting really tired of people replying to those posts by saying it can't be imperialist propaganda, because imperialism is bad and the game says that Hyrule is the good guys.

Like, guys. That's not the argument you think it is. Yes, I am aware that the game tells us Ganondorf is a flat, one dimensional character with no ambitions, interests or motivations beyond destroying the entire world for the hell of it, and also it's totally not racist because he's green, not brown like literally every other member of his race. Unfortunately literally all of these things are kind of the entire goddamn problem.

See, the thing is, everyone trying to make these arguments is accepting the game at face value. Hyrule is the perfect and almighty nation chosen by the demigod Zonai, and whose royal family has the right to rule due to their divine heritage. The other races exist to serve the glory of Hyrule, and they're happy to do it. Ganondorf is pure evil and must be stopped at any costs.

But that's not how anything works. The story informing me that Hyrule is the ultimate good that has done nothing wrong is the whole goddamn reason why I don't trust Hyrule at all. There's always more of a reason than that. And the game fucking suggests there was more going on! Ganondorf mentions Rauru has repeatedly 'invited' the Gerudo to become Rauru's subjects, and let's be clear here, it doesn't matter how peaceful those 'invitations' were, when the guy who owns every single magical nuclear missile in the world repeatedly demands you surrender to him, there's always going to be an implied threat of 'do it or get magically nuked'. Just that power difference alone shows us exactly why Ganon would feel threatened enough to invade. It's because Rauru was holding a gun to his head, and Ganon was expected to just trust that he'd never pull the trigger.

And yes, even if it wasn't intentional Hyrule was always threatening to wipe out the other nations, considering the entire royal family walked around openly wearing their magical nukes as cute accessories. If they couldn't be safely hidden away, there wouldn't be four other secret stones sitting untouched in a vault until the last second.

But that's never acknowledged. Of course Hyrule is the only nation with the right to the secret stones; even if other races get to touch them, they can only have them if they swear eternal blind loyalty and servitude to the glory of King Rauru and Princess Zelda. Ganon wanting to have one magical nuclear bomb out of a stockpile of eight of them is proof that he's dangerous and evil. I mean my god, what if he just walked around all day wearing a magical nuke and using its power for his own benefit, that would be terrifying. It's only okay when Hylian royalty does it.

And you can't argue that Ganon betrayed his own people, considering we don't get to know fucking anything about his relationship with his people. He's shows as the leader of the Gerudo, we're told he's a hero to his people, he has soldiers that loyally follow him into battle... and then oh nevermind, they all hate him and will spend eternity trying to atone for sharing a race with him. How did the entire race do a complete 180 in the span of at most a few months? Who cares, what's important is that now they accept they exist to serve Hyrule so they get to be the good guys now and we don't need to know why they were following Ganondorf, or why they stopped following him.

Basically my point is that yeah, I fucking know how the game insists everything went down. That's the entire reason I think it's imperialist propaganda, because the entire story feels like Hylian propaganda to conceal and justify some horrific atrocities that caused all of this. I literally do not believe that I'm getting the story through reliable narrators, especially considering that the only people allowed to actually tell me the story are all the characters that have the most reasons to be heavily biased in favour of Hyrule.

When the game shows me protagonists that have a massive amount of power and control over the entire world, then says the bad guy doesn't like that system just because he's evil, and literally nothing and nobody in the game says anything to oppose that take, I have some questions about what the fuck the story isn't telling me. And I'd really appreciate it if people would stop trying to argue with me just by telling me to stop asking those questions.

[media-illiterate]

FOTV'S PLOT MAKES NO SENSE

So since this is going to have MASSIVE spoilers for the new show, I'll put most of it behind a readmore. But, TL/DR: Destroying Shady Sands would not bring down the NCR, because they have at least seven other major cities that could and would take over!

So, lets start with a map:

This is map (made by me) very roughly represents the NCR as it exist circa 2277. All major settlements are labelled, but do note that there are dozens of minor settlements scattered around the whole of California, and into Oregon, Nevada, and Mexico.

Nuking Shady Sands, even if you used the largest nuclear bomb ever made, (The Tsar bomb: coming in at 100 megatons, it is the upper limit of practicality for a bomb, because any larger and the explosion would've vented into the upper atmosphere and reduced the bomb's effect), it would still only destroy Shady Sands. Maybe vaults 13 and 15, the closest settlements to it (given their nature as vaults, however, I think they'd survive).

Notice all the other settlements? WHERE DID THEY GO, TODD?

Now, exploding Shady Sands would still be really fucking bad for the republic, but I think it would be fully survivable. We don't have hard numbers for the population of the NCR, but in New Vegas it is explicitly in the hundreds of thousands, (and rising). So we can substitute the demographics of, say, Alaska (710,000 people). The largest city in Alaska, Anchorage, has ~290,000 people living in it, as of the 2020 census. That's a large chunk of the state's population, but its not even half.

I think Shady Sands would probably be a lot smaller than the Hub or Boneyard (not to mention San Francisco, Vault City, or New Reno) because it started out as a small farming village when the others were already major settlements. So, at most, nuking Shady Sands would only disrupt the NCR, not kill it. Even if the NCR broke up in the aftermath, Lucy's vault should still be smack in the middle of the Boneyard, probably one of California's largest settlements.

But! That's not all! Not only does this show contradict established canon at every turn, it doesn't even do it well, because there is an argument to be made that a few well placed nukes could bring down the NCR!

And its already part of the damn game:

This handsome, gravelly-voiced genius already mathed out how to, as he calls it, "cut the bear's throat": bomb the NCR's trade routes to the outside world, and watch them wither away on their own. His plan is a thousand times more interesting, and more feasible, than how the show brought down the NCR (blowing up one (1) city and acting like that would destroy an entire nation).

In fact, if they really wanted to get rid of the NCR, they could've easily just made that ending to Lonesome Road canon. But, lets face it, this show cannot be bothered to even look at the games for inspiration.

I like almost nothing I see coming out of the show. Its a thin veneer of fallout painted onto a story that bulldozes the very series it claims to be part of. The zombification of ghouls, the centering of the Brotherhood, the badly written raiders playground of a wasteland: its all of Bethesda's worst writing choices, just transmitted to a new medium.

I hate it here.

[thurisazsalail]

Millions of votes are uncounted. YOU can do something about it!

Take less than 10 minutes to register your protest.

Tell the White House to investigate election fraud. There is a sample statement in this post.

Bitching on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter will not help. If you are an American who is old enough to vote, please take the 10 minutes to do this. Post it on your Facebook, Twitter, whatever you have.

Bomb threats called into 32 polling places

Ballot boxes burned in Vancouver WA and Portland OR; hundreds of ballots damaged, casters unable to be contacted. The city had issued a request for anyone who dropped off their ballots after the previous collection time to come forward.

Ballots declined for spurious, questionable reasons, like physical signatures not matching the shitty electronic pad ones.

These 4000+ were in Pennsylvania alone.

An unprecedented number of mail-in ballots were denied, in fact.

Major disasters along the SE means entire CITIES displaced, and someone can only vote at their polling places. With documents. So what happened to thousands of people who don't have ANYTHING? And what happened with polling places that do not exist? Entire TOWNS that don't exist? "Record numbers" DID vote in NC, but there are *other places?* What happens to people who don't have transportation? Many states do NOT have protected days off for voting. Many places do not HAVE transportation to polling places.

y'all, there was a dude not far from me who went after people at a polling place with a fucking machete. cops did something right and took his ass to jail. motherfucker went after a 70 year old?? wow u r so brave

Voter intimidation has been rampant. People here in Tampa FL were wearing piles of Trump merch while voting, which btw is illegal, but of course they weren't turned away in a red county. And some of the cops here are KNOWN white rights members so who tf you going to call.

KNOWN Russian propaganda, such as the vote fraud video "in Georgia" was rampant and convincing people to not vote or that voting polls were rigged

Don't have energy to come up with your own writing? Think like a high school essay. Include some specific bullet points.

You MUST put your REAL NAME and ADDRESS (or temporary/registered address, whatever you have.) This shows that you are a REAL PERSON and not some fucking bot. Yes, you need to do this EVERY TIME you contact a government official, or you will not be counted.

Include both investigation reasons AND recount reasons. Weird shit like bomb threats and Russian propaganda should trigger an investigation.

I shouldn't have to tell you this but keep the fucking anger out of it. Do NOT make ANY veiled, passive aggressive, or even potential threat to ANYONE. jfc.

"I urge you to investigate the 2024 election on grounds of (reason, like Russian propaganda influence) and (reason, like bomb threats preventing us from exercising civil rights.) Domestic terrorists have burned ballot boxes, attacked voters at polls, and intimidated voters. An unprecented number of ballots have been thrown out or called into question for reasons such as signature mismatch, which is not something a ballot counter should know anyways. Those ballots must be cured, the caster not simply notified of an issue through e-mail. I am greatly concerned that foreign influence has especially changed the nature of our elections. This is a matter of national security. It determines who owns weapons and who can use our nuclear codes, while calling into question the integrity of the American people. I urge the United States Government to demand an investigation into these issues and to ensure that everyone has been counted. Thank you."

I'm not saying "wahhh, wahhhhh, my guy didn't win!!1" I'm not demanding election investigation because I didn't Like the Results. I'm demanding an investigation because people's lives were threatened, our civil rights were widely disenfranchised, and we cannot have a clear idea of who REALLY won (regardless of who) until we remedy this national issue.

This is a matter of national security. Now act like it.

original post @sunnys-aesthetic ; tumblr won't allow Blazing.

[nightingaelic]

Things that are Now Fallout Canon

(according to the Special LIVE Report from Galaxy News that preceded the Fallout TV series' teaser trailer release on December 2, 2023)

Vault 33, the focus vault of the Fallout television series, is located beneath Santa Monica, California. It's also implied to be very, very expensive to get into.

Bottle and Cappy, the mascots for Nuka-Cola and its theme park, Nuka-World, were about to embark on a seventeen-movie-long series of animated films before the bombs fell.

The sinking of the RMS Titanic happened in Fallout's alternate universe. The news announcer jokes about the world going down like the infamous ship, including the deadly lack of lifeboats.

Camels exist in this universe, too! The news announcer actually fucks this one up, because he says dromedary camels have two humps - dromedary camels have one hump, while Bactrian camels have two. Or maybe we'll get a sound bite from Todd Howard in a few months where he claims the camel breed names are swapped in Fallout, who knows.

Pets were not allowed in the commercially-advertised vaults. The news announcer regrettably informs listeners that they can't bring their cats, dogs, or even fish with them due to logistical concerns and safety hazards, but they are more than welcome to purchase Vault-Tec-branded gravestones and hold pet funerals before they move underground. Hypothetically-speaking, it wouldn't surprise me if people tried to smuggle their animals in, anyway.

Someone stole the Fallout universe's original moon landing flag from the Museum of Technology in Washington, D.C. - another headline report, with no further details. It was in the same exhibit as the Virgo II lunar lander, which stayed put for at least 200 years.

Vault Boy was named "World's Sexiest Man" in 2077 (when the report is being aired) - no word about which publication or organization bestowed this title upon an animated mascot.

Vault-Tec trademarked the thumbs-up emoji in the Fallout universe - which is very much in character for the company, but something about there being emojis in the world at all hit me wrong.

Vault-Tec instituted a "breeder search program" alongside vault placement purchases, and encouraged polyamory to get people to procreate (and buy more vault spots). I'll admit that this one seems plausible but shaky, because by this point in the report the news announcer is losing his mind while stalling for the vault door to open, and he might just be making shit up.

Nuka-Cola ran its own version of the Pizza Hut "BOOK IT!" reading program, called "ZAP IT!" Kids were required to read over 10,000 books to win rewards. If we use picture books for the math, and allow for five minutes to read each book, that's about 833 hours (34 straight days) of reading to get some soda.

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville and the ancient Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus both exist in the Fallout universe.

Resulting Thoughts

"The ghoul" in the show is possibly named Howard - unsure if that's a first or last name. In the teaser trailer, Walton Goggins (who plays the ghoul) is shown dressed like a Hollywood cowboy on the day of the Great War, riding a horse to try to escape the nuclear bombs that hit Los Angeles with an unidentified child. Meanwhile, the Galaxy News headlines report that a box office hit called "The Man From Deadhorse" is getting a sequel, which is currently filming at California Crest Studios, and the news announcer says the film is "Howard-led." Whether the ghoul is the lead actor, we don't know, but it seems like a solid enough hint at his origins.

I'm glad that the show is going to delve more into the idea of the haves and have-nots, what with vault entrance being both selective and expensive. The most recent games in the series don't talk about this enough, in my opinion.

This isn't specific to the show adaptation, but it's becoming more noticeable to me that the Fallout series is crawling forward in terms of relating to modernity. I'm not sure how to feel about this - for example, I don't really mind if the soundtrack of Fallout 76 features the Beach Boys and other 1960s songs when it used to be strictly limited to 1930s and 40s music. On the other hand, I thought that using a news announcer that sounds more like a modern podcast host than a Transatlantic-accented journalist was an odd choice, and as I said above, I really did not like the idea that pre-war America knows what an emoji is. I'll get over it, but I'm anticipating that there will be some more artistic choices in the adaptation (and future games) that rub me and others the wrong way because they don't fit our definition of what Fallout "is." I'm not saying anything new, people have been arguing about that forever.

Overall, I'm excited. We're probably not getting a new Fallout game until 2030, so I might as well try to enjoy this. I will be keeping my bingo cards handy, though.

Anyway, I transcribed the damn report because I'm very normal. Feel free to use!

Fallout - A Special LIVE Report from Galaxy News

with occasional commentary from yours truly

[An upbeat, strings-led orchestral jingle plays, and black-and-white picture focuses on a spinning, silver globe. The globe is being circled by a vintage toy rocket. The words "GALAXY NEWS" fly in, and are quickly wiped and replaced by script declaring "Vault-Tec Presents..." The picture is circle-wiped and transitions to a high view of a vault entrance, with no visible script or markings to indicate which vault it is. The large, circular vault door is closed, and the access bridge to the door is not connected. A timer counting down from 60 minutes is overlaid in the bottom left corner, just above the Galaxy News globe logo and a signal tower graphic next to the word "LIVE." News headlines scroll along the bottom of the screen, the first of which reads "GALAXY NEWS SIGNS 10-YEAR PARTNERSHIP DEAL WITH VAULT-TEC." The headlines are separated by small lightning bolt graphics. The music continues throughout, and a male news announcer's voice cuts in.]

Good morning! Or, afternoon! Or evening, depending on where in the world you are. If you're just tuning in with us now, you're in for a treat. Welcome to the unveiling of Vault 33, one of the flagship vaults of Vault-Tec's arsenal of vaults.

[The second scrolling headline reads "VAULT-TEC VOTED AMERICAN COMPANY WITH BRIGHTEST FUTURE."]

Galaxy News is here live with an exclusive look at the next generation of apocalypse-proof, purpose-built luxury housing, sponsored by our friends at Vault-Tec. Vault-Tec: Revolutionizing safety for an uncertain future.

[The third scrolling headline reads "ROBCO INTERPLANETARY PROBE PROBES DEEPER INTO SPACE THAN ANY PROBE HAS PROBED BEFORE."]

If you're a regular viewer of our programming, we consider you an astute, engaged citizen, doing your part to stay informed on the latest news impacting this beautiful country of ours, and so it will be no surprise to you that we are on the precipice of a nuclear armageddon. But, fear not, Vault-Tec is building the ultimate shelter-in-place solution for the more doomsday-savvy customer: A veritable ark meticulously designed to weather the geopolitical storm surely headed our way any day now. And for the first time on live broadcast, the fine folks at Vault-Tec will be giving you a tour of their newest product unveiling, from the comfort of your home.

[The announcer takes a break, and the music swells. The vault remains closed, and no activity whatsoever is visible around it. It might as well be a static image. The fourth scrolling headline reads "NUKA-WORLD BREAKS ATTENDANCE RECORD FOR FOURTH STRAIGHT YEAR. GALACTIC ZONE GIVEN CREDIT FOR INCREASED NUMBERS." The initial song ends, and a new strings song with a more staccato rhythm begins. The news announcer returns.]

Welcome, once again, to Vault 33, nestled in the coastal west side of sunny Los Angeles County, and minutes from the yet-to-be-destroyed, bustling downtown promenade. Should nuclear annihilation one day come for this quiet beach-side town, you can take comfort in knowing you are safely buried deep, deep below what numerous trade publications once called "one of the best places to live." Right now, ladies and gentlemen, what you're looking at is peace of mind. Billions and billions of dollars and decades of R&D funneled into the high-grade protection engineering that only Vault-Tec can bring you.

[The fifth scrolling headline reads "WE ASKED OUR VIEWERS TO ANSWER A SIMPLE QUESTION: WHAT IS THE GREATEST NATION ON EARTH AND WHY IS IT AMERICA? HEAR THE RESULTS TONIGHT AT 10PM EST." At this point, the news announcer starts to sound less formal and more excited.]

Aren't we a bunch of lucky ducks! Vault-Tec has tapped us into their closed loop security feed to bring you a sneak peek behind a vault entrance airlock. That large, fortified steel blast door you see there is the only thing standing between you and the rads.

[The sixth scrolling headline reads "UNITED STATES AGAIN ACCUSED OF ATMOSPHERIC COUNTER-ESPIONAGE BY THE REDS."]

Very soon - very soon, I'm told - Arnold? Are we - yeah - and we're very soon, and we're very soon. Very, very soon, I'm told, that gear door will open, and Galaxy News will be on the ground to give you all a walking tour of the facilities! Including the accommodations one might expect in a state-of-the-art, modern residence thanks to a partnership with RobCo Industries and some of your shelf-stable forever favorites like BlamCo and Sugar Bombs! There's nowhere to hide from explosive good taste! Boom!

[The news announcer disappears again, and the strings conclude and are replaced with a meandering clarinet-led number. Several scrolling headlines go by: "U.S. RENEWS DEFENSE CONTRACT WITH WEST TEK, HERALDS VALUE OF POWER ARMOR IN ALL THEATERS OF WAR." "ESPIONAGE THREAT SUBDUED IN DOMESTIC URANIUM MINES." "PRESIDENT DECLARES NUCLEAR STOCKPILE 'SAFE ENOUGH.'" "BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENCES SETS DOOMSDAY CLOCK TO HALF A NANOSECOND TO MIDNIGHT." "ATLAS OBSERVATORY CHRISTENS NEW TELESCOPE, RE-COMMITTING TO A NON-VIOLENT PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE." The song ends, a new one begins, and the news announcer returns. The vault still hasn't opened, and he's dropped what was left of his professional tone.]

And we are... stalled out. We're still... having technical difficulties. You know, sometimes things go bad and there's just no way you can plan. It's kind of like what's happening with the world right now, there's no way you could've been born into the world and know how you were going to end - know how the world would end. How will the world end, in fire or in ice? Well, it turns out -

[laughter]

It turns out it's gonna be fire...

[The twelfth scrolling headline reads "CHRISTMAS TOY TRENDS: RETAILERS REPORT SHORTAGE OF POWER ARMOR FIGURINES."]

Arnold! What's that? Okay. Yes.

[sound of paper pages being flipped through]

Okay. Arnold just handed me a fun fact. We're gonna do fun facts, fun facts.

[The thirteenth scrolling headline reads "NUKA-COLA QUANTUM GETS FDA APPROVAL, FOUND TO CONTAIN 'HEALTHY AMOUNT OF RADIATION."]

Fun fact about the construction of these massive vaults: They use concrete. Hm. That hardly counts as a fun fact, Arnold. Now is there an update on when the door... the door's gonna be open? Arnold? I'm sorry, is there an update on the door? Is there an update on the crane? Is it a crane problem, or a door problem? Is it a pr- is it a crane problem, or a door problem? Arnold? Arnold! Arnie!

[sigh]

Okay...

[The news announcer gives up, and a song with a lot of muted trumpet comes in to serenade more scrolling headlines. "NO ONE'S BEATING THIS DEADHORSE. 'THE MAN FROM DEADHORSE' TOPS BOX OFFICE. A SEQUEL IS ALREADY IN THE WORKS AT CALIFORNIA CREST STUDIOS." "ATLAS WEATHER EXPERIMENT BELIEVED TO BE THE CAUSE OF UNEXPECTED SNOW FLURRY IN LOS ANGELES." "DEVELOPING: REDS CONTINUES TO DENY EXISTENCE OF STEALTH SUBMARINES, US INTELLIGENCE SUGGESTS OTHERWISE." Woodwinds replace the trumpet, and the news announcer returns, pivoting to an unrehearsed sales pitch for his sponsor.]

If you have the money, please - please, guys - get a Vault-Tec vault. Get in there! Think of it as a life raft, a bit. Our country is the Titanic, and these vaults are the life rafts - right? - attached to the side of it.

[The seventeenth scrolling headline reads "NUKA-COLA MASCOTS 'BOTTLE AND CAPPY' TO APPEAR IN ANIMATED FILM FROM CALIFORNIA CREST STUDIOS. WILL BE THE FIRST IN A SEVENTEEN PICTURE DEAL BETWEEN THE COMPANIES."]

Now, were there enough life rafts on the Titanic? If you remember - no, no there weren't enough, and so many, many people died, and so, it's a nice allegory actually, because they're not going to die in the freezing ocean, which would be - actually, it's a little faster to die by fire than it is by drowning in the cold, so it is kind of an advantage to be dying now, th- rather than on the Titanic, the RMS Titanic.

[The eighteenth scrolling headline reads "SUPPLY LINES FOR RED FORCES BREAKING DOWN." Sort of like this announcer. He pivots again.]

Now - can you call a survivor of a nuclear holocaust a person, anymore? I don't know. Their brain is going to be cottage cheese, and they will be crawling... crawling on the ground, stuffing sand in their mouth, their blind eyes melted out, like the white of an egg, just dripping and dribbling out of their eye sockets.

[The nineteenth scrolling headline reads "VAULT-TEC ANNOUNCES COMPLETION OF VAULT 33 UNDER SANTA MONICA, CA."]

They raise their face towards their... god... and scream, "Nooooo! Whyyyyyy! What did it all mean?" It turns out it didn't mean much if you didn't get a spot in a Vault-Tec vault."

[The twentieth scrolling headline reads "MILITARY UNITS SENT TO QUELL UNREST IN SEVERAL STATES."]

"Now, let's talk about the luxury interiors of Vault-Tec vaults. We have camel leather. You've heard of cow leather. Probably. Camel leather is a great deal softer, isn't it? It comes from the camel, who keep their water on their backs in a hump. Sometimes two, if they're a dromedary. Now, let's talk about camel leather and why it is more supple, and why it is cooler to the touch, and we can talk about it forever but what you want is luxury, what you need is safety: Where you go is Vault-Tec. That's it.

[I feel like I need to point out that dromedary camels only have one hump, and no camels store water in their humps: It's actually just fat up there that they can live off of while traversing deserts. Regardless, the announcer is gone again. The scrolling headlines remain. "NUKA CORP SPINS OFF ATOMIC RESEARCH ARM INTO SEPARATE CORPORATE ENTITY AFTER SEC APPROV." "SUPER DUPER MART ANNOUNCES RECALL OF BLAMCO MAC & CHEESE FOR TRACE AMOUNTS OF DAIRY." "VAULT-TEC STOCKS SOAR AS US ECONOMY BECOMES FEAR-BASED." "BUREAU OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, FIREARMS AND LASERS TAKE DOWN NATIONWIDE WEAPONS SMUGGLING RING." Another woodwind-heavy song starts up, and so does our announcer.]

Um... Arnold?

[throat clearing]

Arnie! Can we- do- do we have a- can we start a clock? Can we - is there, like, anything we can do? I feel like people need something to hold onto, there's a lot of empty air. There's a lot of dead air, here. People need something to hold onto, people are freaking out, and I'm freaking out because I like to have - I like to bring people comfort - uh, in, in this crazy time. There's, there's only a few things you can predict -

[laughter]

In - in the world, and uh, I thought that opening the vault on time would be one of those things.

[The twenty-fifth scrolling headline reads "MILITARY SETS THREAT LEVEL OF POSSIBLE BIOLOGICAL WEAPON ATTACK FROM REDS TO HIGH."]

I was kind of counting on it as a - a thing that would bring some amount of normalcy, some amount of comfort. Something happening the way it's supposed to in a world that feels like it has been turned upside down by evil. But, unfortunately that is not the case. Here we are. Another thing we don't know. Another thing we have to grapple with.

[The twenty-sixth scrolling headline reads "TEDDY FEAR MANUFACTURER SETTLES CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT, DENIES TOY BEAR CAUSES SLEEP PARALYSIS NIGHTMARES IN CHILDREN."]

This particular vault and these technical difficulties that we're having right now have absolutely nothing to do with the product that you will buy when you buy a Vault-Tec vault. Now, Vault-Tec vault living is living the dream, and it's the only way to safety unless you're... the President of the United States, or something like that, and you have a mountain in Colorado to go under and direct the events of the world. Not many of us are that, there's only one of those... uh, and his various and sundry advisors, I'm sure they'll be fine, but you won't! You won't be fine!

[The twenty-seventh scrolling headline reads "WERE TEDDY FEAR BEARS MISUNDERSTOOD? ONE PSYCHOLOGIST THINKS SO."]

If a vault is out of your price range, there are lower-cost alternatives to purchasing a spot with Vault-Tec. They don't sound... good, if you ask me. Anti-radiation pills? Good luck with that. Not sure how anti-radiation pills will hold up against temperatures rivaling the surface of the sun, for example. But maybe that's just me!

[He's gone again. We're 15 minutes into the countdown, and the woodwinds have really started to outdo their own whimsy, at this point. Headlines continue. "TEDDY FEARS SKYROCKET IN POPULARITY AND PRICE DUE TO SCARCITY CAUSED BY RECALL." "VAULT-TEC ANNOUNCES NEWLY AVAILABLE SINGLE VAULT SPACES FOR SALE." "THIS YEAR'S FALLOUT SUIT DESIGN FEATURES ENHANCED PROTECTION, 20% MORE ZIPPERS." The whimsical woodwinds finish up and a bouncy, brassy horn piece takes over. This summons the announcer.]

When you see that vault, it's all gonna be worth it, fellas. It's all gonna be worth it when you see that vault. Now kids, you're probably wondering: Can I bring my pet doggy, or my pet kitty, into the vault? You can't. Unfortunately... it's a hazard in so many different ways. Uh... tch, uh, their hair can get caught in the ventilation system, you'll have endless problems, where do you put their waste? Where do you put... their food? So many, so many problems, so... we have specially-made Vault-Tec gravestones.

[The thirty-first scrolling headline reads "VIRGO II LUNAR LANDER NOW ON DISPLAY AT MUSEUM OF TECHNOLOGY IN WASHINGTON, D.C."]

We have specially-made Vault-Tec pet gravestones for your children to have many funerals for their pets before you go into your Vault-Tec vault. Memorialize your pets now with Vault-Tec mini pet gravestones! Dig a hole in the sand, put the pet in there, and put that gravestone - and it's got a space where you can write the pet's name - right before you go in the vault, no pets in the vault. Not even fish. No, not even fish.

[The thirty-second scrolling headline reads "FLAG FROM VIRGO II LUNAR LANDING STOLEN FROM MUSEUM OF TECHNOLOGY." The news announcer is really getting aggravated.]

What is happening? What is - Arnie! What is - what is happening? Okay - okay! Alright!

[The music and the headlines fill the space again. "NUKA-WORLD TO RAISE TICKET PRICES FOR UPCOMING SEASON, EXPECTING AN 'EXPLOSIVE' YEAR." "GWINNETT ANNOUNCES NEW PALE ALE SO PALE IT'S TRANSPARENT." "HAPPY NATIONAL SOCK HOP DAY!" "VAULT BOY NAMED WORLD'S SEXIEST MAN." The news announcer tries again, attempting to play up the complete inactivity happening onscreen.]

So much is happening here, we've got... the crane, as you can see, it's - it's about to be lowered, and I'm told - and I'm told... the weather. The inclement weather is - keep - I think the weather... there's a pressure cha- it needs to be - yes, of course. The pressure needs to be right to open the vault, or else the differential pressure between underground and overground will cause... a, uh... uh, the furniture to, uh...

[The thirty-seventh scrolling headline reads "VAULT-TEC REGISTERS TRADEMARK ON THE THUMBS UP EMOJI." This one made me physically recoil.]

L- Look... get a Vault-Tec vault. If you can't afford a whole vault for your family, that's fine. Buy time in a timeshare, one of our timeshares. And it's not the kind of timeshare you're going to regret, this is one that's not a scam, because you can look down at your intact body in a Vault-Tec vault and say, "Look at me! I'm whole!"

[The thirty-eighth scrolling headline reads "NUKA-COLA PATRIOTICALLY SALUTES SUCCESS OF NEWEST FLAVOR LAUNCH - NUKA-COLA VICTORY. EXCLUSIVE REDESIGN COMING NEXT YEAR WITH 'A TASTE AS SWEET AS FREEDOM.'"]

Stay whole in a Vault-Tec vault! Keep it together, meaning your corporeal form! Keep it together in a Vault-Tec vault! You'll be skipping around in a workout area, and... check out those barbells! Why not work those biceps while you're down here? What if there's an emergency, and somebody breaches your Vault-Tec vault door? Well, you're gonna want to be in shape to fight off that rageful beast!

[At this point the scrolling headlines loop back to the beginning.]

Now, is it a human? If you kill it, will its soul go to heaven or hell? Don't worry about it! Just get it out, because even its presence in your Vault-Tec vault could kill you and your entire family! These people are irradiated. It's not healthy, right? It's like putting your hand on a radiator. Don't do it.

[Music break. That vault still isn't opening. The song ends, and the news announcer clears his throat.]

We don't... have the exact scoop yet, ladies and gentlemen, so Arnie, why don't we put some music on while we wait for the skinny?

[noticeable pause]

I- I- I- I- don't know what song, put on anything, I'm dying up here.

[The next song opens with energetic trumpets that sound like they're charging through a movie theater snack stand. It's followed by a big band track that seems to re-energize the announcer.]

And, if you're just joining us, we're preparing to head inside the latest and greatest product offering from Vault-Tec. Vault 33, a pristine subterranean society purpose-built for America's best and brightest to wait out the nuclear fallout. There's no telling what will remain once this global conflict reaches its inevitable conclusion: That's why it's important for patriots like you to purchase a guaranteed spot in America's future. It's up to you to keep our golden society going, propagating forth until we have the ranks to repopulate the world outside.

"What if I don't have a partner or family right now?" you may be asking. "Don't give up on love so soon!" I say. Where better to meet eligible partners than in a cherry-picked community of like-minded individuals? If you find you need a bit more assistance, Vault-Tec has breeder search programs to help you find the one, or the two, or the three, four, five! Vault-Tec is a very open society, so go ahead and purchase that single vault space, and that single may become a double before you know it! And what better place to find someone to love, than safe underground?

Please stay tuned as we prepare to bring the crew, and the world at large, inside our Vault-Tec facility.

"But what if I don't have the money for a vault right now?" you may be thinking. You should never let not having the funds today stop you from reaching your dreams. You can always pay tomorrow, into perpetuity. Vault-Tec is reportedly constructing financial packages that allow for customers to continue payments on select economy vaults, in the event of total societal extinction. So don't worry, purchase away! Vault-Tec upholds traditional American values, and they believe no one should be excluded from the pursuit of life, liberty, and debt.

[Music break, wherein the song concludes and switches to something more pensive and staccato.]

A- Alright? Yes? Arnold is telling me - yes? We are moments away! Moments away - from having some kind of movement here. I'll believe that when I see it. Sorry Arnie, but your credibility with me could not be any lower at this point.

Let's talk about the amenities in these concrete miracles. Radiation King will be providing television sets, modern kitchen appliances.

[throat clearing]

The sofas will be... I'm sorry, do we know who makes the sofas? I'm sorry, do we - do we know who makes the sofas? Do we know who makes the sofas? Arnold, do we know who makes the sofas?

[Arnold does not reply. The announcer is miffed.]

What else is new. Yeah.

[Dejection turns to anger immediately.]

If you could please just give me something? If you could please just give me something to update? I'm sitting here with nothing! I'm sitting here... with nothing! This isn't my job! I'm a journalist! I report things, I don't... vamp! Is there even a - is, is there a clue? Is there, do the crane people - have the crane people chimed in? Have the door people chimed in? Is it all one person?

[Arnold presumably says some inaudible form of "I don't know." This does not please the news announcer.]

Well maybe con- maybe connect yourself to them. You should get yourself a radio. Get yourself a radio, Arnold. That's your job, to communicate with me the facts about what's going on, and it's my job to communicate to the people who are watching - we're trying to save their lives - you know, and this isn't advertising for me. This is a product I believe in!

Arnold, what do you do? What skills do you - are you somebody's son? Are you - are you somebody's kid, or something?

[Arnold can finally be heard, somewhat garbled from distance or technology: "My uncle is, uh, is the general manager of Galaxy News, your employer." The news announcer considers this.]

Your uncle is the manager of Galaxy New - mmm. Well, that explains how you got this internship. I'm sorry for everything I said, but... you can understand my frustration, here.

[The music concludes, but the announcer keeps going.]

The, uh, vault foreman is out here, and he is, uh, uh, doing hand signals. Ooh, yes, it's going to be a while, let's play some music for the people, Arnie.

[A new song starts. We're nearly 30 minutes into the countdown before the song switches over and the news announcer starts up again.]

All right folks, we have an update! They've got eyes on the gatekeeper out walking the grounds. It appears he was attempting to retrace his steps after misplacing the key and his wallet - still no word on the key itself, please stand by for more on the wallet, as this story continues to unfold.

Still on standby as we wait for the situation in the vault to resolve, but folks, there is plenty to get the American public up to speed on in the meantime. World news stories! Breaking, breaking news from the international desk. Peace negotiations between America and her adversaries crumbled in Anchorage, Alaska, this past weekend, a city recently liberated from foreign occupation, leading experts to believe nuclear war is indeed on the horizon. One more reason, America, to tune into the presentation Vault-Tec has for us today. Preparation, resilience, and smart spending are the only way our precious republic makes it through that long, dark night.

[This revelation approximates the date of the broadcast, which is happening not long after the Battle of Anchorage. The clash in Alaska officially ended on January 10, 2077: This news bulletin proves that attempted peace negotiations followed, then failed.]

Going the way of the dinosaurs has never felt this fun! If only the dinosaurs had Vault-Tec technology. Now, the dinosaurs died because... a meteor came from space, right? They had nothing to do with it. We have everything to do with our own demise. It's almost like… people are a virus that is destroying the Earth, we're a planet-killing virus. And people do say, "Oh, well, you know, well, the cockroaches... will outlive us and the the aardvarks or whatever will outlive us." Well, they won't. They're going to die too, because this is the real deal, guys. This is the end. So if you're not underground, I don't know what you're doing.

I wonder how we'll evolve. Will we develop a different kind of skin, some kind of leathery, plastic skin to fight off the nuclear fire? Who knows, but the only way to find out is to purchase a Vault-Tec vault, or a space in one of our timeshares.

[Music break again. It's a rather lively waltz.]

For those gathered around their Radiation King TV sets today, thank you for your patience. Rome wasn't built in a day!

[laughter]

Very soon you will witness… one of the greatest modern advances since the Virgo II moon landing - you won't want to miss this, the future of you and your future children depends on it.

[Exasperation sets in.]

Honestly, who wrote this copy?

[Arnold presumably raises his hand.]

You did, Arnold? Well, that's not surprising. It leaves… yes, well, it leaves a lot to be desired. They couldn't hire a professional writer? You look like you're 15 years old.

[Arnold inaudibly corrects him.]

You're 23? Yeah, well, 23-year-olds look like they're 15 now, still too young. What could you know about the - what could you possibly know about the written word, Arnold? Goddamn it. What could you - what do you know about writing and oratory? Nothing, I'll answer y- for you, nothing. The lack of professionalism - myself not included - disgusts me. The lack of professionalism disgusts me, Arnold!

Speaking of nuclear fire, you should see the muffin tray they left out for me. People want a blueberry mu- you want a muffin, okay? A muffin. Not a little squirt of dough, with a little powdered su- give me a muffin, give me a real thing, okay? Give me some snacks! You're going to give me some coffee? Good. I need a snack, to balance it. I'm not the only person in the world who needs a little bit of fat in their stomach when they eat a... big haul of caffeine.

[throat clearing]

Stand by as we wait for the situation in the vault to resolve.

[The music does some flourishes, then finishes.]

Ladies and gentlemen, it's official: We're experiencing some technical difficulties. And before we can open the vault - Vault 33, our flagship vault, full of the, uh, finest luxury items available to mankind, a- as of now - maybe we could put something on to keep people company while we figure out the technical difficulties. Sorry, these difficulties of course have nothing to do with Vault-Tec's vault tech. In- in- indeed…

Look, I need to have a whole cigarette right now. Just put on the song. Where are my smokes?

[The music starts up again while the announcer burns through a cigarette at the speed of a Corvega.]

Well, well, well! Here we are again! Ladies and gentlemen, we're dealing with a hiccup. Now, hiccups... might seem like a momentary stoppage, but this is a big hiccup. It's like God is hiccuping.

Vault-Tec is reporting that there's only one gatekeeper and one key on this vault model. The keys for these vaults are one of one, it fits like a glove, but it's - it's - these - these locks are very, very complicated.

God, it's so good to be on the other side of this. I don't think people know. People really don't know what's coming, and that's probably good. If you haven't watched… if you haven't watched the news up to this point, don't pick it up. Don't… just try and stay ignorant, uh, really don't find out what's going to happen because… it's bad, um, it's over.

[laughter]

The Earth is a slaughterhouse, and we are cattle!

[laughter]

We- we'll go back into, uh, a society resembling Bronze Age Mesopotamia. That's where we're going. It's not fun. Um... disease is… really prominent, um… we don't treat women well - let's just face it, it's - they - we don't treat them well now, but back then… oof. Rough. Rough treatment of women. You think we're racist now?

It's going to get bad. Where you want to be is underground. Vault-Tec vaults.

[A really tinny muted trumpet rises to its occasion as he disappears again for a bit.]

You know what else is great about Vault-Tec vaults? The air purification system. Let's talk about air. You need air to breathe, I need air to breathe, we need air to breathe. Vault-Tec's got it in spades! We've got oxygen candles straight from our finest nuclear submarines that you can burn, that turn nitrogen and carbon dioxide into oxygen molecules. Perfectly breathable, perfectly safe for your children, and your children's children, and your children's children's children in case we're there for three sweaty generations of sweaty living underground! In a fresh vault!

In fact, we put a family in a vault for 10 years and let them out just to see how it would go… and here they are now! "We loved it, uh… We loved it! That was great!" Uh… that's - I'm making it up! I'm making that up. I am imagining what could happen if I had more information about the vaults, but I don't have that information, so I'm making it up! Ha! Vault-Tec vaults, yes. Say yes to the tech!

[The music saves us for a bit.]

Unfortunately, we are back, the vault hasn't opened, and we have had absolutely no movement towards the vault opening, so! Hope you enjoyed that music. I know I was tapping my feet. Let's get back into it, where are we?

The US government has been quietly testing T-60 power armor suits as part of their long-standing defense contract with West Tek, following up the T-45 and T-51 efforts in the ongoing war with the People's Liberation Army.

[hisses through teeth]

How about that? How about that. The Man from Deadhorse gallops to a fast start at the box office! The Howard-led western is said to be the next smash for California Crest Studios.

[So the ghoul's name is probably Howard Something, or Something Howard. Interesting, but the announcer doesn't care and decides to throw another tantrum.]

Am I crazy or is this taking forever? I don't think I'm crazy, but I feel crazy! In fact, I might be the only person involved in this whole production who hasn't lost his mind! I'm looking at you, Arnie, I'm looking at you!

[Looking at Arnie yields nothing, again.]

"You don't know what to do, you don't know what to do." You idiot! I can't even get the word- I can't even get the information from you. Worthless!

[grunt of rage]

It's just me and Arnie here, I'm in hell, he's sitting there smiling at me, I'm in absolute hell!

Do you have a spot, Arnie? Do you have a spot in a vault? Oh! You do! What vault is that?

[long pause]

Oh, that's the one I'm in. Oh. Dear God.

[deep breath]

I guess we should get to know each other.

Ladies and gentlemen, we don't even know what's wrong here… but I can assure you that what isn't wrong is Vault-Tec technology, this has nothing to do with Vault-Tec's patented lock technology and everything to do with stupid people and human error. If you're this inefficient at work, what is home li- do - how do you wipe yourself?

[Uncalled-for, news announcer man.]

Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy this music while we figure out what's going on.

[Musical break number who knows. Just over 11 minutes remain on the countdown.]

In other sponsored news, Nuka-Cola is celebrating the success of one of their newest flavor launches, Nuka-Cola Victory, with an exclusive redesign release later next year. Students that read over 10,000 books can be part of the ZAP IT! Program, rewarding literacy with sugar!

[deep breath]

I don't like Nuka-Cola. Personally... I don't like Nuka-Cola. Too sweet. I don't drink it. But it's popular, I have stocks in it, I invest - I invest in it. I don't drink it. It's the way the world is. Just because it's popular, doesn't mean it's good, just because it's good, doesn't mean it's popular. A can of Nuka-Cola, what is that, it's energy slowed down, right? It's the energy of the universe slowed down, right? What are we, what am I? We are energy slowed down into the form of a human being. All that's about to stop.

[laughter]

All that's about to stop! All that's about to go away! Maybe there's life on other planets. Maybe there's not. Are they going to come save us, no! If I were on another planet, and I came here, I would have an endless belly laugh at our folly, I mean, the folly of man! It's funny, there's so much written about the "folly of man." I mean, read Moby-Dick. Read… uh… what di- what happened with the - the wax wings, the wax wing guy? Wax wing man, Mr. Wax Wings, Daedalus. What's his name?

[Arnold hazards a guess we can hear: "Shakespeare?"]

Arnold, Shakespeare? Arnold, Arnold, good god… Shakespeare? Where did you go - you went to one of these hippie schools...

[Arnold tries again: "I think it was Icarus?" The announcer is ecstatic.]

Icarus! Icarus. Wow! You are good for something. Wow, Arnie!

Now, Icarus, he was close to the sun. In a Vault-Tec vault, you'll be as far from it as possible. You will be up to 50 feet underground, in a Vault-Tec vault, safe and sound in the knowledge that the wax on your wings will not be anywhere close to anything that will make it melt, except our new Vault-Tec oven!

[The horns come in again.]

Where are you f- what's your family situation? Do you have kids or…

[Arnold probably shakes his head.]

No kids? Good for you.

[laughter]

Are you single?

[Arnold: "Yeah."]

Ahh, yeah. I wouldn't recommend going into a vault single. You might want to lock someone down and take you in there - if only to help you fight - and, uh, survive, it's good to have a partner. Yeah… oof!

Anyway, glad I'm safe and secure in my vault! Um… I'm in the tax bracket that kind of... automatically gets a vault, so, sorry everybody. Uh… I'll be, uh, doing this thing called surviving, while you are all burning.

[deep breath]

What's the point of any of this? What's the point of any of this? Nobody - nobody listening to this can afford one of these things. Everybody listening to this is about to turn into an idea!

[laughter]

Instead of a being! But, here we are! Let's whoop it up! Let's whoop it up! It's a big parade… for the end of mankind! It's a big parade! Here's the final celebration, Arnie! Here we are!

Let's stake our claim in a dying planet! Let's plant our flag in a dead rock, and see how we feel. Let's see how we feel after the flag is planted, Arnie.

[a deep sigh]

I don't know how much longer I can do this, man.

[another deep breath]

My voice hurts, I'm thirsty, we're out of water, the muffins they laid out at the top of the day are dry and old, I feel dry and I feel old.

I give up! I give up.

[chuckles]

What's the point of this? I mean, what's the point of anything? I'm... I'm broken.

[Emotion creeps in.]

I'm broken. I'm changed. I am broken and I have changed. I…

[one more deep breath]

Thanks to you, Arnie. Thanks to you, man. Thanks, you're the best, yeah, thanks to you, pal. Thanks to you, buddy boy. You are just awful. You disgust me. Yeah, I'm just - I'm sorry. I'm - I'm just… I'm fried, man. I'm - I'm fried, pal. I'm fried. Dead. Gravestone, dead. Oh yeah, that's, okay.

Oh, god. Where are we in the process of the door opening?

[Arnold: "Yeah, it's over."]

What?

[A record scratch stops the music. Two minutes remain on the countdown.]

What's that? Oh!

[The announcer clears his throat, and the music changes to a triumphant fanfare.]

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm getting word. Ladies and gentlemen... I've gotten word that we are star- we are starting, ladies and gentlemen. It's happening! Here we are! Here we are, we got it, we got it, and now…

N- and now, this afternoon is unlike any other afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It was the morning, now it's the afternoon - here we go! The crane is loweri- Here we go!

[relieved laughter]

Okay! Really close to the time where I can go, and get out of here! The crane is lowering, it is happening, the tumblers are tumbling! The crane is lowering, the tumblers are tumbling, we are… go! We're going! It's opening! It's opening!

[The static image of the vault has not changed in the slightest bit.]

You try doing this! You try doing this, Arnie! You try filling the time! Next time we'll switch places, Arnie, and you can try it! Oh boy, oh boy, here we go, thank god we're doing it and it's happening. I see motion, I see- I see Vault-Tec… I am convinced! Guys, this is great, it's been great, Arnie? It's been great. Arnie, it's been great. You know, I hope we are in the same vault. I'd like to spend the rest of my life with you, Arnie.

[slightly unhinged laughter]

As long as this happens right now, I am fine with spending the rest of my life with you! As long as the vault opens right now. The fact that nuclear fire could fall from the sky at any moment has made this broadcast that much more important. Thank you, thank you so much for joining us!

[neruomancer]

Oh yeah? You don't think God is real? Well I'll have you know we proved God's existence when the U.S military discovered Heaven and dropped 100 nuclear bombs on it, killing God instantly. Check mate Atheist ✅

[escapedaudios]

I appreciate my audience wanting more but when I put "To Be Continued" at the end of an episode and someone comments "make part two" I want to capture them and lock them in the chamber of stench and vermin for up to five hours. Like. What do you think "to be continued" means? Why are you outright demanding it instead of asking? Why are you asking this the very same day that episode came out when I very well could be working on the next part already? WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME TO MAKE PART TWO ON EPISODE SIX???? AAAAAUUUUGHHHH!!! AAAHHHHH!!!!!

Also, sometimes I just want to close the book on certain series. The story has been told. It's over. It's better that way. I'm not going to keep dragging out a series for eternity because you liked it, I'm going to make new stuff. It's going to be good. Better even, because my ability to write and produce improves with each series, but you wouldn't get to see those new series if I was still making more and more of what people like. Can you imagine if I was making Against the World Episode 53 instead of the shows I'm currently making? Those other series wouldn't even exist if I heeded these comments.

Some people don't know how else to show that the appreciate an audio other than just saying "make part two". Like. Even early on (in the fifth audio I ever made) I got comments for that on Final Broadcast. In that audio EVERY. SINGLE. CHARACTER. DIED. IN. A. NUCLEAR. BLAST!!!!!!!!! EVERYONE DIED. WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN IN PART TWO???? I SLAUGHTERED THE ENTIRE CAST WITH AN ATOMIC BOMB!!!!! What do you WANT FROM ME???? What do you WAAAAAAANNNTTT!!!!!

[caxyanalysis]

Thinking about how Homelander is actually so fucking tragic.

Raised to be the symbol of patriotism. Won the superpower lottery. Durable enough that a nuclear bomb wouldn't kill him, fast enough that nothing can outpace him, full freedom from gravity because of flight, laser vision that he can control the strength of to such a fine degree that he could cook popcorn or cauterize your brain in half and it's not even hard for him to do.

All of this, together, make him a god among men.

And it's so.

Fucking.

Boring.

And it's tragic, too.

It is.

I know, I know, "he's a fascist!!!" I get it, and you're right.

But look at what he's been through.

He was raised in a lab. No parents besides the scientists that studied him to figure out what he could and couldn't survive, what would and wouldn't hurt him, what he was capable of and how he could be useful.

At every turn, he was denied human connection in any meaningful way. His father was never in the picture, his mother was dead, he existed solely as a test subject, and as soon as he was old enough to be on TV, they wheeled him out like a shiny new toy and said "Look! It's the embodiment of America! The peak of human evolution!"

He has never, EVER known anything except two concepts: Fear and Blind Adoration.

The people who love him don't love HIM, they love the idea he represents. The people who know him fear him with all they have.

Spoilers for The Boys below

He finally meets someone who doesn't fear him, and claims to love him, and it's Stillwell. She doesn't fear him. But he doesn't realize the reason she doesn't fear him is because she thinks she has him under control. A little mommy-play here, a little milk there, and he's docile. She thinks she has him in her pocket.

But then she slips up. And out comes the truth. She's never loved him. Ever. She has always, always hated him, always been afraid of him. And suddenly all those happy memories of the only mother-figure he's ever known are tainted, ruined by the idea that she would have rather had him be dead than ever touch her, but she did what she felt she had to do so he would be a good boy.

And he doesn't understand. He was a good boy, wasn't he? His heart was in the right place, wasn't it? He only did what he thought would make her happy, and he tried to be have his best when she asked, didn't he? So why did she hate him so much? Why was she so afraid of him?

And it tears him up inside. It destroys him. He feels hurt, and angry, and scared, and it burns him up until that heat has nowhere to go but out.

And he kills her. And it kills him.

It's with Stillwell's death we see him truly change. He stops being the boy scout, in his own eyes. He just killed someone who meant everything to him. He killed someone he thought genuinely cared about him, saw him as good, and loved.

We watch him die right alongside her, and in that moment he performs one last act of kindness as he loses the final shred of hope in his heart: he saves Billy Butcher and makes sure that Stillwell's baby survives as well.

We see another kick in the head when he visits his "creator", the man in charge of the Homelander experiment that gave birth to him. And this man says he is nothing but a failure. A living embodiment of all that man did wrong, and all that man failed to achieve. He says that Homelander is nothing but one big failed experiment, and is his greatest regret in life.

Flash ahead. He's unchained, mostly. Edgar is still in control of him, but Edgar doesn't care enough to tug the leash. He expects Homelander to tie his own chain, and if he doesn't, then Edgar will yank it and choke the bastard for all he's worth until he sits, heels, like a good little attack dog.

And for the most part this works. Homelander stays under Edgar's radar, his descent hardly noticed, because he doesn't do anything that Vaught can track that he wouldn't have done before Stillwell's death.

All the while, mourning the loss of the only person to ever even pretend to care about him.

And then we meet Ryan, and realize who he is.

And when Homelander learns he has a son, we see something special, something that, until now, didn't seem possible.

We see the light come back into his eyes.

We see him start to hope again.

A son. The perfect opportunity to do better, to prove he is, in fact, a good man. If he can just do right by Ryan, if he can raise him right, be a good dad to him, show him the love, and compassion, and care that he never knew, then Ryan could grow up happy. Well-adjusted. We see that Homelander fully recognizes how broken and mangled a man he is.

Homelander wants Ryan to turn out better than him. He wants Ryan to turn out happier than him.

And we watch Stormfront ruin that pure, beautiful desire.

Stormfront corrupts him. He's vulnerable, he's weak-minded, after Stillwell. He knows what he wants, but he doesn't know how to do it or why, he knows what he desires, but he can't have it. And then Stormfront gives it to him. A supe who can not only take what he can dish out, but give it back just as well. A supe who sees him as good. A supe who seems to love him, truly.

She doesn't.

She, like all of his fans, loves WHAT he is, loves the IDEA of him, not Homelander himself.

He's blond, blue-eyed, white, and an omnipotent powerhouse.

And Stormfront is a nazi. How could she not love what he is and what he represents?

She manipulates him, turns him against his own idea of wanting to be good and convinces him that this brattiness, this pettiness, this immature need to be better than everyone is not a flaw, it's his birthright.

And Ryan is the product of that birthright. Ryan does not need to be better than Homelander, Ryan needs to learn from Homelander, learn to rule, to subjugate, because Homelander is a God, one who should rule the Earth, and Ryan is his Prince, destined to take over one day.

All of this is instilled into Homelander through Stormfront's manipulations. And on the one day every year that he's allowed to be treated like a person, the one day every year he gets a taste of humanity...

She does the one thing that would guarantee her lies stick like glue.

She dies.

She rips away the last person he ever thought he would have to live without, on the one day he never expected to be hurt on.

And we see that light, the one Ryan reignited, flicker.

He gets angry. He gets bitter. He realizes that, aside from Ryan, he is entirely peerless. Alone.

And Ryan must be nurtured, yes? Guided, right? Stormfront wanted the world for Ryan, and Homelander wants the best for his son, and so the world is exactly what Ryan will get. Homelander no longer cares about himself. He doesn't.

Homelander cannot be selfish past this point; he could drop dead then and there and as long as Ryan has the world in his palm, Homelander would die happy.

But he can't die. He won't die. Ryan needs him. Ryan deserves a father. Ryan deserves Homelander's life, his attention, his dedication.

And we see spots of vanity, yes. The preening, the pruning of grey hairs, the bitterness over his noticeable aging.

But these are not the same as selfishness. These are things integral to Homelander. He's supposed to be a God. God's don't age, why is he aging? It's so disgustingly human. That's what he thinks.

But it gives him a sense of urgency. He doesn't know how long he has. A year? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? Two hundred? More? Nobody knows, with supes. Some don't age at all, others age too fast, others age slowly, and Homelander is already a one-in-a-million fluke. Who's to say he won't suddenly age fifty years in the span of the next ten? Who's to say he'll ever age beyond what he is now?

He doesn't know. And he can't control it. He can't fight it. He can't change it. He has to prepare for the possibility he hates most.

He has to prepare for his death.

But then he learns who his father is. He learns that his father is alive, even. Soldier Boy, the idea that inspired Homelander. And he has to meet the man, has to introduce Ryan to his grandfather. We see that light in his eyes grow, because now he doesn't just have a son, he has a father.

The father he needed.

And when he finally meets him, finally gets face-to-face with the man who could so easily give him everything he ever wanted, the man who could fix him, show him what it means to be a parent...

He's rejected.

Soldier Boy tells him that he's pathetic, that he's nothing, that he's hardly even a man. Even the suit Homelander is so proud of isn't free from insult, with Soldier Boy saying "Look at you...You're wearing a goddamn cape..."

He has nothing but disappointment for what Homelander is, and resentment for the way Homelander was raised, but sees him as too far gone, too broken, too weak to fix. The only cure is death.

And once again, we see that light flicker.

He needs to be better than this man, DO better than this man.

And that means securing Ryan's place atop the world. This is why he calls in Sister Sage. Sister Sage is so incredibly intelligent, so beautifully smart, she can guarantee things he would never even figure out are possible. And, begrudgingly, he accepts her help.

But her help isn't giving him what he really wants most, because while putting Ryan atop the pyramid is his end goal, he wants Ryan's love just as badly. He wants to see the fruits of his efforts, to know that what he's doing is good and right, that it's best for Ryan.

And Ryan is showing him, at every turn, that it's not right.

Homelander kills for Ryan, and Ryan doesn't like it.

Homelander makes Ryan the object of public adoration, and Ryan doesn't like it.

Homelander is glad Billy's dying, and Ryan doesn't like it.

Everything Homelander does for Ryan, every effort he makes, is torn apart by the fact that Ryan doesn't want any of it. He wants a dad, not a coach, he wants a parent, not an instructor.

He wants a life, not godhood.

And Homelander has been so corrupted, so broken, so destroyed by every single person in his life that he cannot understand that.

To him, godhood and life are one and the same. Being alive is not a right, in his eyes, it is something that is deserved, earned, a reward, and he is the man to impress, he is the man to earn it from, and one day that man will be Ryan, and why can't Ryan see any of that?

None of this is in defense of Homelander. But I can't see one side of anything without seeing every other side of it.

And in Homelander's mind, he has done everything he can to be loved, to be appreciated, to be known and cared about...

And every single time, his power has caused people to hate him, to fear him. The only love he's ever known is that of the public and that of his son, and with every outburst, every conflict of interests, he is slowly losing that more and more.

And every time Ryan runs away from him, every time Ryan cries because of him, every time Ryan frowns over something Homelander has done, every human Ryan mourns, is a slap in the face. Water on the fire.

And we see that light drain from his eyes a little more each time.

I don't believe anything Homelander has done is justified.

But I do believe that, in his shoes, with his life, under all of the same circumstances...

I believe most of us would be no different than he is.

Broken.

Betrayed.

Abused.

Lashing out at every reminder of the pains of our existence.

A scared, angry child, with the power of a god, who was never shown that a better way does exist.

A wounded animal conditioned from birth to hate humans for what they did to it.

Homelander is tragic.

And I feel so very sorry for him.

[thatonebirdwrites]

Pine

The needles crunched under Lena's shoes, her hands deep in the pockets of her red jacket. Around her, the pines stretched toward the cloudy sky and a dusting of snow coated the ground. Snow caught the world's noise like the sound-cancelling headphones Lena used when alone.

It's why she loved the first snow. The silence wrapped around her, and she disconnected from her reality.

Snow here in California felt strange, but hadn't everything been off-kilter since she woke in her penthouse, her brother suddenly alive again?

Her thoughts bounced between the new reality her brother had somehow crafted. One where he was a hero instead of a villain. One where he'd tripped over backward to manipulate her into working for him, but he'd forgotten one detail.

Sam.

She still worked in L-Corp's financials, and she was Lena's friend still. But it had been a friendship prior Lena kept from Lex for reasons that Earth-38 had yet to understand, considering how cryptic some entries became during the worldkiller crisis, and how a few had been in a code that Lena struggled to decode.

Lex didn't know how close prior Lena had been with Sam. Nor had he known Sam had been a worldkiller. Lena had hid from Lex to avoid Lex killing Sam too like he did the other worldkillers.

The place he'd lured Purity and Pestilence became an inhospitable, irradiated wasteland, but the nuclear bomb had obliterated those worldkillers. A massive clean-up effort had been under prior Lena's jurisdiction, along with research of the worldkillers' effects on the climate and how to stabilize it.

Her boots crunched on a twig, and Lena slowed her walk, reluctant to reach her destination.

The world saw Lex as the hero who saved them, but Lena knew the truth. Written in prior Lena's journals, Kara, prior Lena, Alex, J'onn, and Nia had all worked to save Sam and destroy the terraforming machine in totality. A fight that nearly cost them their lives.

Prior Lena hadn't hesitated in asking Supergirl for help, but then prior Lena knew Supergirl's true identity. She'd been trusted from the beginning by Kara.

Earth-38 Lena had tried to do it all alone, scared that whatever secret government group worked with Supergirl would kill Sam instead of save her. She had not been trusted from the beginning by Kara.

Prior Lena knew how to trust. She had faith in her friends. She hadn't been painfully betrayed again and again and again. Most of her sour experiences lay in arguments with Lex about use of military weapons and the buying of the DEO.

Oh, and apparently Andrea had betrayed her in this reality too.

So here Earth-38 Lena existed as an interloper. Someone who shouldn't exist in this reality. Prior Lena had been erased, and Earth-38 Lena walked under pine branches in prior Lena's shoes.

Bitter, distrustful, and wrapped in pain -- Sam had noticed immediately the difference, and no amount of hiding from her worked. She'd been relentless in showing up to check on Lena. To find out why Lena was in such grief and pain.

Lena hunched in her jacket as she approached the center of the park. She thought of Sam's talk last night, of how it'd gone off the rails rather quickly, and she'd ended up confessing everything.

She hadn't realized how badly she'd needed a sounding board.

"Sam, I don't know what to do. Work with Supergirl or my brother? It's not like I can trust either. Both have used me in the past." Lena pressed her hands against her forehead. "I've been just a tool..."

"No, you're not going there," Sam interrupted as she sprinkled more flour across the cutting board, where she worked her gluten-free dough with expert fingers. In the living room, the music from Ruby's game drifted into the kitchen. "I get that it feels that way, but from what you've said, Supergirl tried to fix things, right?"

Lena shrugged. She still wasn't sure if Kara's actions were guilt or truly her trying to engage in repair.

"And your brother somehow made this reality..." Sam shook her head. "Which is a little hard to believe, but..." She studied Lena for a long moment. "But you aren't yourself."

"Oh?" Lena sneered. "Then how am I supposed to act?" She hadn't meant to sound so defensive, but Sam's words hurt.

Sam sighed and waved her hand vaguely at Lena. "That right there isn't you. The Lena I know laughs more, believes in the goodness of humanity, works toward a more equitable world."

"Equitable world. That's what I'm trying to do!" Lena crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Sam.

"Is it?" Sam punched down into the dough with far more force than it warranted. "We used to go to activist events about the climate and alien rallies together. But the last few weeks, you've become a bitter recluse. And now this new project? This sudden turn from disaster relief and climate studies to mind control? Honestly, Lena, I don't know what to say."

"It's not mind control," Lena protested, but it was a weak protest. Exhaustion soaked her bones, and she wondered if Sam was right. "It's just an algorithm to prevent people from hurting one another. It'll be a more equitable and safer world."

Sam frowned. "Right. And how is that not a violation of free will?"

"Sam." Lena looked at her pained. "I'm trying to free humanity from suffering."

"Are you?" Sam's beating of the dough grew more pronounced, the flour dusting the marbled counter. "Lena, my suffering is what molded me into who I am today. Yes, it sucked at times, and some of them were my fault. But I learned and did better."

"But wouldn't things be better for Ruby if she didn't have to suffer like you did?" Lena knew it was a weak argument, but part of her felt so hollowed by Lex's actions, by this new reality, that her heart wasn't in fighting for this project. She'd become disillusioned since waking up in hell.

"Of course I don't want Ruby to suffer!" Sam flipped the dough and dug her knuckles into it before rolling it into a ball and repeating the gesture. "But I won't let anyone, even you Lena, take away from Ruby her ability to choose."

"It's not about--" Lena's words died at Sam's glare.

"Keep lying to yourself, hun." Sam wiped her hands on a hand towel that hung from the stove's handle. "Lena, I've always had your back, right?"

Lena wasn't sure exactly what Sam had done in this reality, but the prior Lena's journal entries -- since when did she write in a journal anyway? -- her, Sam, and Kara had met up often for drinks or board games.

So this Sam had no idea what Lena went through, nor what Kara had done. How the hurt between them soured everything. Her attempt to explain had failed; the words just wouldn't come out; her thoughts and emotions a bundle of pain and fear.

Lena had used Kara, trapped her in kryptonite, and still failed. All her plans for naught, and she, honestly, should have stayed dead. She didn't deserve to be here. This should be prior Lena's life, the person who was a true hero, not like herself.

"Lena?" Sam grasped her shoulder. "You got that haunted look in your eyes again. What is it?"

"You don't know what I've done," Lena whispered. "Or what Kara did on that prior Earth. You weren't there. I -- I shut you and everyone out after the betrayal."

"Then don't do it here. Don't push us away for a project that would steal our free will."

Lena laughed, but it turned into a sob. The walls of Sam's kitchen, which had felt so comforting at first, folded in on her, and she needed air. She turned to run, but Sam caught her arm.

To her surprise, Sam spun her into a hug. "I said I'd always have your back, Lena, so how about this." She murmured into Lena's hair, her arms warm and comforting -- something Lena hadn't felt in months (lifetitmes?). "How about this. Let's explore options. I'll get my hands on a truthseeker, and we'll put it on Kara. You'll get the truth you want, and I'll be there this time."

Despite not remembering Earth-38, Sam acted remarkably like the Sam there. Lena sunk into Sam's embrace, and a few tears escaped. "Okay," she said, quietly. "We'll try your way."

So here she was, walking in the climate-change snow toward the meeting place. She'd let Sam pick it, let Sam reach out to invite Kara, to act the neutral party.

Sam didn't have Lena's history with Supergirl and Kara, and Kara had no reason to suspect Sam of villianry. Yet Lena wondered if Alex and the others were watching somewhere, ready to judge her, condemn her, maybe even nuke her.

Because she wasn't a fool. On Earth-38, she'd seen Claymore change it's orientation. Hope had calculated the trajectory, and it had pointed at her.

If that was Alex or Kara, Lena didn't know, but her heart suspected Alex. Kara had been too desperate to convince save her despite Lena trapping her in kryptonite.

This was a detail she hadn't told Sam. How could she?

Sam was all she had left, and she was the loophole in Lex's plans. Because whatever he planned, it might be worse than the red sun incident or Red Daughter/Kaznia. Prior Lex had been too free with his military toys during crises, but he'd been far kinder and more accepting than Earth-38 Lex.

No, trusting Lex, even after his truthseeker confession, was a dangerous situation. Lena had seen Lex's tells when the truthseeker sat on his arm. He'd omitted things, said only what he believed was true to convince her.

But what had he omitted? What did she fail to see?

A cold breeze ruffled the branches of the vines, and needles shook loose to drift softly into the snow. Ahead the clearing where benches loomed before a fountain. Lena stopped at the edge or the pine forest and ducked behind a trunk.

There, sitting on the central bench, Kara sat watching the sky, where a few snow flurries danced above the fountain, it's water shut off and a thin layer of ice over what remained in its marbled bowl.

Her golden hair hung loose, and the wind whipped to the left, locks drifting across her face. She looked ethereal in the light of the setting sun, her skin almost aglow. Her glasses were in her hands as she cleaned them with a white cloth. She wore no protective gear for the cold, no scarf, no winter coat, no boots, just a navy blue jacket and jeans with sneakers.

The grief and pain in her soul pulsed with the love that she'd failed to exorcise. Her urge to walk over, push Kara against the bench, and kiss her haunted her thoughts. Nothing had exorcised that desire from her traitorous heart.

She leaned against the rough bark, and nibbled on her bottom lip. Maybe she should leave now, before anyone noticed her.

But the thought of the truthseeker on Kara kept her rooted in place. She needed the truth, all of it unfiltered. No more omitting facts, no more lying, no more half-truths.

Part of her dreaded what she'll find, another part urged her to push forward with the plan, and yet another part burned with a desire to just run from everyone. To leave this cursed city and disappear from everyone.

Footsteps caught her attention, and she sighted Sam on the opposite side of the clearing. No, she'd ghosted Sam once already. Of all the people in her life, Sam hadn't ever betrayed her. She didn't deserve to be hurt again by Lena.

Sam rounded the fountain, a duffel bag over her shoulder, and her winter coat a different color than what Lena remembered. On Earth-38, Sam wore darker colors, often navy blue, black, or brown. Here she wore a forest green winter coat with brown cuffs and collar.

"Hey Kara! Thanks for meeting." Sam waved with a smile. "I know you've been really busy lately."

"Yeah." Kara brushed off snow. "It's weird to see snow in California."

"Polar vortex dipped too far south again." Sam shrugged. "Lena was studying it by the way. Had an idea on how to stabilize the climate, but..." She dropped onto the bench next to Kara, her duffel at her feet. "It's been a weird few weeks."

"Yeah. That's for sure." Kara's laugh sounded forced. "Was anyone else meeting us?"

"Yeah, one more." Sam scanned the clearing. Lena tried to keep out of sight in the pines, but her friend was far too observant. "Lena, stop hiding, girl. I can see that red jacket."

Lena sighed and stepped out from behind the pine. She tugged on her fingers nervously. "Hi." She didn't know what else to say.

"Lena?" Kara shot to her feet, her eyes wide. "What -- what are you doing here?"

Gingerly, Lena stepped out of the pine's safety and onto the stone tiles of the clearing. "I -- I was asked by Sam to come as well."

Kara frowned. "Last time we talked you almost threw a wine glass at my head."

"Wait she did?" Sam looked between the two. "Well, I suppose that's better than the microscope at Jack's head."

That was another weird thing about this reality. Jack still lived, but prior Lena had never dated Jack. Instead, she'd dated a lot of women, no men at all. Another major difference -- prior Lena was a lesbian, but Earth-38 Lena was a bisexual.

"A microscope?" Kara repeated. "What did he do?"

"Irritated me," Lena said, with a shrug. "His testing plans were ridiculous, and he wasn't listening to me." She walked to the bench, but didn't sit down. "Um, so, did Sam tell you what this is about?"

Kara glanced at the dufflebag. "Sort of? She said she'd bring a truthseeker to help mediate between us."

"Both of us will take turns with it," Lena said. She sat down on the armrest of the nearby bench. Cold seeped into her clothes. "The full truth, no holding back."

Kara nibbled on her bottom lip. "Okay."

Lena frowned. "Just okay? No self-righteous speech about how I should trust you without it?"

Kara sighed. "I don't want to fight you, Lena. If this helps you then I'll do it."

Sam unzipped her bag and pulled out a silver cylinder. "I admit, this is weird. Both of you are not acting like the Kara and Lena I knew." She settled the cylinder on her lap and shook her head. "Lena had been panicking over whether she should ask you out before-- before whatever caused this weird change."

Lena looked down at her hands. She'd read that in prior Lena's journals, and it had hurt so much. Prior Lena had confidence in everything but love, and yet, she'd still been more courageous than Earth-38 Lena. Prior Lena admitted to her love, while Earth-38 Lena hid from it.

"Wait, you were going to ask me out?" Kara leaned closer to Lena. "Really?"

"Prior Lena," she said flatly. "It's in her journals. She was a meticulous record keeper. Better than even myself."

Sam shook her head. "Comments like that sure make this surreal. So who wants to go first?"

"I will." Kara pushed up her sleeve and held out her arm. "Do it, Sam."

Lena said nothing, only watched as Sam carefully keyed the code and opened one end. She tilted it into Kara's lap.

The unnerving creature slipped out and wrapped its appendages around Kara's arm. The hiss of not-quite pain escaped Kara's lips, and a hint of redness blossomed around the tentacles.

"Ask away," Kara said, her voice trembling slightly as she looked at Lena.

"Did you ever trust me?" Lena couldn't meet Kara's gaze, so she picked at her cuticles instead.

"Yes. I did."

Lena frowned. "Are you immune to that thing or what? How can you say you trusted me and yet you used me."

"Lena," Kara said, fervently. "I did trust you. It's myself I didn't trust. I made a big mistake by using James to go behind your back and search for kryptonite. I'd been so wrapped up in pain at seeing my people harm Earth again, that when I heard synthesized, all I saw was red. And red would have doomed us."

"Red what?" Lena demanded. "It sounds like you're just making up excuses."

"Red Kryptonite," Kara said, her voice strangled almost. "Max Lord made it on Earth-38. It... it brings out the darkest parts of me, and people almost died. Alex and J'onn had to use everything they had to subdue me enough for the cure."

Red welts appeared along the edges of the wrapped tentacles. Something she'd never seen on Kara's skin before -- her always flawless skin, always flawless hair, always perfect in every way. More signs that she was not fully human if Lena had been more observant.

Or maybe more honest with herself.

"Is that your excuse? Past trauma giving you the right to use people I cared about and my name against me?" Lena wanted to slap Kara, but that'd likely break her hand.

"It's not an excuse, Lena. It's my truth. I fucked up, and I'm sorry."

The curseword stole all the angry accusations from Lena's lips. She'd never heard Kara curse ever.

"So," Sam said, cautiously. "Lots of bad blood between you two. My question is, what is real? This Earth-38 or our current world?"

Kara slumped against the bench. "Earth-38 and the multiverse at large was destroyed in the antimatter wave. It took all of us paragons -- and there wasn't many of us honestly -- to end that threat and restore the multiverse. I don't think Earth-38 will ever exist again." Pain coated her voice. "I couldn't save them."

"I couldn't either," Lena pointed out. "I build that massive portal, evacuated who I could, and yet we still died on Earth-1, didn't we? So all our actions were pointless."

"Never," Kara snapped. "We still thought we had a chance to win when that happened. You saved so many, Lena. You didn't have to do that. You could have turned Alex away."

"I'm not a monster," Lena said. She dropped onto the bench proper, and rested her arms on her knees, her hands clasped. "All I've ever wanted is to do good."

"Then do good now!" Kara said, earnestly. "Help us against Leviathan and Lex. Don't --"

"Stop." Lena struggled against an urge to cry. Why was she doing this? It felt like torture. Her heart ached, and she didn't deserve this second chance at life. "I manipulated you for months, Kara. Used you to finish my project. I encased you in a kryptonite prison."

"Yeah, that was awful." Kara winced. "More than awful. Like lava in my veins, but you didn't leave me there. It melted the moment you left, and you'd programmed a drone to saturate me with the sunlight I needed to recover," Kara pointed out. "You could have killed me, but you didn't."

Lena didn't say anything. She couldn't kill Kara.

She was capable of killing her own brother, but she couldn't kill Kara.

Her nightmares about Lex's death had returned with a vengeance since she woke in this hell world. She could feel the heft of the pistol in her hands. The stench of gunpowder as she shot her own brother. Her ears still echoed with the gasps of his breaths between his rants. He had checkmated her, and the truth he'd revealed about Kara obliterated Lena's heart.

"Why try to save me?" Lena watched the snow blow across the fountain's ice. "I saw Claymore reorient itself to face my location. You could have fired it."

"No! I would have caught caught it, taken the blast myself."

Lena's eyes darted to the truthseeker still on Kara's arm. The red welts had grown. Next to Kara, Sam sat silent, her eyes on the truthseeker, and a troubled expression on her face.

"Why?" Lena leaned closer to Kara, one arm against the bench's armrest. "Why are you so damn determined to save me? I'm not worth this effort, Kara. You should have let me die that day."

"Never. I can't lose you, Lena. I can't." Pain etched into Kara's voice.

"Why? Why can't you?" Lena snapped. "Why do you persist? You didn't care before! Lying to my face over and over again. And I, the lovesick fool, fell for it every time."

"Lena, when I was just Kara with you, I wasn't ever lying." The pain in Kara's voice echoed with a deep grief. "I can't lose you because I love you." Her face reddened, and she looked at the truthseeker.

Lena breathed in sharply. "Love?"

"Yes," Kara said, weakly. "I love you. And I wanted to protect you. But I was a coward. I couldn't be just Kara with you, even though I tried so hard. If either of us should have died in Crisis, it should have been me."

The red welts crept up Kara's arm. Lena couldn't take her eyes off it. "What's happening to your arm?" She pointed to the affected areas.

"I think I'm allergic to it," Kara whispered.

"Okay, that's enough." Sam double tapped the creature, and it unwrapped from Kara. It's slimy skin glistened with a soft blue glow, and it slithered back into its cylinder. "I'm sorry, Kara. I can go run and grab some Aloe Vera for you?"

"No need, Sam." Kara smiled, tiredly. "Time in the sunlight will heal this."

Lena stared at Kara's arm, the confession rattling against the sight of the allergic reaction.

Sam closed the cylinder and shifted to tuck it into her bag. "If you're allergic, then I don't think we should risk anyone--"

"Do it, Sam." Lena tugged her arm out of her coat and held it out. The cold bit into her arm, and she steeled herself. "I said both of us, and I, unlike some, follow through on promises."

"Lena..." Sam frowned. "What if you're allergic too?"

"I don't care. Just do it."

Kara looked back and forth between two, her brow scrunched with worry. She stayed silent, one hand lightly rubbing her sores.

Sam grumbled but walked over and opened the cylinder above Lena's arm. The creature slid out and wrapped around Lena's arm, and a rush of chemicals seethed into her veins.

Lena gasped at the mixture of pain and an intense desire to speak bloomed within her.

"Ask your questions, Kara," Sam said, sharply.

Kara stared at the truthseeker. "Do you trust me?"

"Yes. No. yes." Lena struggled against the urge to scream her truth. To hold herself back somehow, but whatever the truthseeker slipped into her blood overcame her. "I trust you to keep me alive. I trust you to come to my rescue. But I don't trust you with my heart. You broke it."

Kara took a haggard breath, her eyes haunted. "I'm sorry, Lena. Truly I am."

"Stop apologizing!" Lena snapped. "Ask me why! Ask me why it hurt so much, Kara!"

Kara flinched. "Okay, okay, why did it hurt so much?"

The words exploded out of her. "Because I'm in love with you. All I wanted was you. It's why I bought Catco. For you. It's why I led it and gave Sam L-Corp's CEO position. To be close to you. Why do you think I filled your office with flowers?" Tears stung her eyes, and she gulped back a sob. "To learn you never trusted me with your true self?"

"But I did! You saw me, the me I wanted so badly to be, and if it weren't for you, I would have lost myself after losing Mon-el." Kara darted to her feet and dropped down in front of Lena. "You are my light, Lena. My heart. And I'll never stop fighting for you." She started to reach for Lena's hands, but Sam intervened and pushed her back.

"How can I trust that?" Lena blurted. "I'm scared. I'm scared to trust again, scared to love you. I should have died, Kara." Tears blurred her vision, and yet she couldn't stop. The truthseeker pulsed its toxins into her, pushing her to spill her truth. "I erased prior Lena, who was a much better person than me. I'm a murderer, a villain, a monster that should have died."

"No!" Kara shouted, frustrated. "You deserve life."

"Okay, that's enough." Sam tapped the truthseeker and collected it in its container. It left slight red marks on Lena's arm, but nothing compared to Kara's. "No one deserves death, for God's sake." Sam ran a hand through her hair and tossed it over her shoulder. "You two have apparently gone through hell on Earth-38." She locked the lid and stowed it in the bag. "But this is getting ridiculous. I want you both to talk, while I return this. When I get back, you two better have talked this out, or I'm gonna lock you two in a room for a week. Don't test me."

Lena shoved her arm back into her warm coat, and zipped it shut. "Fine." She felt raw, exposed, but the truth had been laid bare. The truthseeker had done it's duty.

Kara clenched her hands into fists but said nothing. True to her word, Sam slung the bag over her shoulder and marched to the south, the far end of the park.

"Would Sam really lock us in a room?" Kara said after a long moment of silence.

"Yes." Lena chuckled softly, but it felt hollow still. "She locked me and Jack in a room to force us to talk through a rather ridiculous fight. I was being stubborn. She even barricaded the door."

"Well then." Kara sat back on her heels, her hands on her knees. She looked up at Lena. "I suppose we should talk then?"

Lena wiped her eyes. "I guess."

"Lena," Kara reached out, but her hand hovered between them, uncertainty on her face. "Can we start over? This time honesty and trust will be our cornerstone. And we can rebuild from there?"

This was the one difference between Lex with the truthseeker and Kara. Lex didn't love her. He'd chose his words carefully for maximum manipulation. He hadn't worn the truthseeker long, only enough for him to say the words he knew Lena wanted to hear.

He refused to keep it on for her questions.

But Kara had worn it long enough to blister her skin.

Lena reached out tentatively and grasped Kara's hand. She tugged Kara closer, her other hand gently running along the edge of the red welts. "This is new to me," she said softly. "I -- starting over feels overwhelming. Can it really be that easy?"

"Who said it'd be easy?" Kara settled between Lena's legs, her face upturned. Her gorgeous blue eyes met Lena's emerald ones, and her hair hung in soft ringlets around her beautiful face.

Lena's other hand betrayed her and tucked a lock of Kara's hair behind her ear. She bit her lip, and tucked both her hands under her legs. "I'm tired, Kara. Tired of fighting." She bowed her head, her hair cascading around her face. The snow seeped into her pants, and the wet spread its coldness to her skin. "I'm in hell. Lex masterminded all of this, and that makes us what? Pawns on a chessboard? I murdered my own brother for you. I stained my soul forever. Only for him to somehow survive." She laughed bitterly. "I'm a monster, Kara."

"No. No you're not." Kara gently tugged Lena's hand free and rubbed her thumb over her skin. Warmth radiated from Kara's hand. "You did what you needed to keep us all safe. You deserve care and love. Rebuilding will be hard, I know, but I think you're worth it. I wouldn't have agreed to come if I didn't believe that. Nor would I have tried to warn you about Lex once I woke up here."

Lena thought of the prior Lena's journals. Of the projects she'd been doing, projects Earth-38 had forgone to focus on Harun-el-- her hubris nearly destroying what she'd hoped to save. Or her revenge, once again abandoning projects that could have really helped people out of her delusions of grandeur.

"I'm not better than Lex," Lena said. "Sam's right. Non Nocere is just another mind control project. One Lex will definitely find a way to twist and pervert."

"Then don't do it. Work on other things." Kara leaned closer, her face inches from Lena's own. "Let me work with you. I was the youngest in centuries to be accepted to Krypton's Science Guild, at least before it died." She took a deep breath. "So maybe earth science uses odd units and programming languages, but I can learn it. You don't have to do it all alone, Lena. Please, let's start over. This time on the right foot."

Lena leaned her forehead against Kara's. The warmth seeped into her, and she took a shaky breath. "Okay."

[igglemouse]

Episode 1.1 ~ Introducing Zer

I head back inside and find Dre sitting there on my couch. I'm not sure where she's been and honestly I do not care. She doesn't live here but she will have this annoying ability to just pop up when she feels like it. Typical of her. We are birth mates, by the way, coming from the same mother back on Sixam. I think you humans call that siblings? So this is why I have to stick by her, you must always be loyal to your birth mates, all fifty or so of them.

Today she's here to review my grand plan and I can tell she's going to be insufferable about this. "So...how exactly are you going to conquer the planet again?"

"Simple. I find their leader and mind control them and then become their leader," obvious right? See what I mean? She's stupid. You land and tell them 'Take me to your leader' and go from there. Humans are very susceptible to manipulation. You just speak to them mentally and they think your thoughts are theirs.

"Not so simple, Zer," she pushes out a sigh as if I'm the stupid one. "They have multiple leaders. Different continents, governments, and some are even capable of...powers," she tells me this as if it will make any difference to me. It does not because it does not make any sense actually.

"Dre, how can you have multiple leaders?" What is going on here? "Every planet has ONE leader. That's how it always works. Remember when-"

But before I can finish I see her wrigglers start wriggling (those are head tentacles) and squirm the way they usually do when she disagrees. "Not here," she sighs as if she's talking her a child. "Each piece of land here has leader, and that leader is under another leader. These leaders can sometimes even hate each other. Drop nuclear bombs on other countries...yes, on the same planet."

I don't even know how to respond to that. What's wrong with you people? Are you TRYING to blow up your own planet? I mean yes, we Sixams have destroyed a few planets, but we exist on countless planets, what's one more? Any ways... "Look, Dre, it doesn't matter. Which 'land' has the most power then? I'll go to their leader and-"

Zer Avoi - Next

[kaurwreck]

There's certainly Something about singularities in Bungou Stray Dogs presenting as massive, myth-derived creatures with more than passing resemblances to kaiju given the setting predates its analog to World War II.

Gojira and the kaiju genre were born in the aftermath of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Lucky Dragon Incident (in which an American hydrogen bomb test rained radioactive ash on a Japanese fishing boat and much of the South Pacific). Life form singularities (like Chuuya and Verlaine), the Seven Traitors, the Transcendants, Mori's fixation on skill-based warfare, and everything else about the Great War all indicate that skills are akin to nuclear arms.

But unlike nuclear arms, skills are generally framed as intrinsic to their user. They're neurological; as much as part of skill users' wiring as the rest of their synapses. Even for Kyouka, whose skill was inherited but not fully integrated, her skill more resembles hereditary neurochemical wiring than it does nuclear proliferation.

Gojira (1954) ends with Dr. Serizawa's promise that hydrogen bombs would always assure nightmarish, monstrous manifestations of the horrors of war. You'd think Dazai's gift, then, would be the enigmatic focal skill of the series; he's capable of nullifying hydrogen bombs, after all.

But it's Atsushi and his celestial Byakko that Shibusawa calls the antithesis of all other abilities. And, as explained in 55 Minutes, Byakko doesn't heal or regenerate Atsushi, it negates his wounds. Atsushi isn't only a particularly tenacious shounen protagonist, Byakko compels him to stand when he's been cut down. When Atsushi is at the edge of death, Byakko consumes him completely, and Atsushi is lost within him, moreso than even Chuuya is in his Corruption state (Chuuya is fully conscious in Corruption— if Atsushi is conscious, he's either repressing or sluggishly recalling the memory of what occurred). Akutagawa also mentions during the Cannibalism arc that Atsushi's claws cut through skills themselves (even Rashoumon, which eats space). Akutagawa also becomes aware, in 55 Minutes, that Byakko can be triggered by Atsushi's peril, and Akutagawa does so to negate the manifestation of a seemingly transcendant skill that otherwise had utterly defanged them (although he seems sorry to have to do it).

Nevertheless, although Atsushi's Byakko seemingly negates the metaphorical horrors of the Great War illustrated by the others and their relationships with their skills, it's Atsushi who posits that perhaps skills aren't innate. He says to Kunikida, "Maybe they come from somewhere else and stick to us. Maybe they're something we can't understand... I don't really know how to put it into words, but that's how I feel."

Much of 55 Minutes is colored by Atsushi's fear of Byakko and his understanding that Byakko could devour him. His fear is seemingly validated by the antagonist, a manifestation of a skill that seemingly swallowed its human. But although textually consistent with his expressed fear, Atsushi's tone, demeanor, timing, and thought processes from when he speaks that line until the light novel ends aren't. His musings reflect his namesake's exploration of and uneasy relationship with the nature of existence, which he understood to be constructed by one's culture and environment better than most due to his somewhat rootless childhood.

I think it's interesting that someone with a skill capable of cutting through other skills, negating wounds, and antithesizing all skills challenges whether skills are innate at all. And if they're not, what does that imply about the parallels between skills, the horrors of war, and the fear of nuclear holocaust?

It's important to me that the scars of American imperialism and disregard for the sanctity of life are not erased from the narrative when discussing the world wars and nuclear proliferation. So I hesitate to posit anything about what skills may be in Bungou Stray Dogs that is too abstracted from trauma wrought by Western imperialism, Japanese imperialism, or the horrors of World Wars I & II. But perhaps that's it; when Atsushi speculates that skills are something that sticks to you, I'm reminded of how trauma has shaped and informed his own. He is certain that Byakko's negation and restless hunger are connected to his birth and subsequent suffering. At first, I thought we were being teased with his early background. But there's no need to tease; the reason so many characters in Bungou Stray Dogs are orphans directly relates to the Great War and the generational trauma still reverberating in its aftermath, and amid the threat of another, even more destructive war.

Perhaps Atsushi was implying that skills are constructs born not from any innate self, if there's such a thing, but from traumas, experiences, needs, cultures, and environments. Which is to say that skills aren't separable, exactly, from their users, but they're not innate either. They're like our personalities: immutable once shaped in the crucible of our most formative years, but nevertheless reflections of not only ourselves, but of what we need and who we become when confronted by others, in all of their beauty and horror.

Thus, perhaps it isn't Atsushi's skill that's so very antithetical to all others. It's his understanding of it, his ability to cut through to others, his compassion, his cowardice, his curiosity, and his separation from his sense of self that both inflicted him with Byakko and which will allow him to transcend it to become who he desires to be. It reminds me that, shortly before his death, his namesake decided to become a writer. And that although he wrote and lived only briefly, his sincerity, thoughtfulness, and introspective skepticism cut, and continue to cut, with a brilliance emblematic of life.

Anyway. Atsushi is both the main character and protagonist of Bungou Stray Dogs. Dazai knows this, too; even if he can nullify Byakko, he's just as impacted by Atsushi's brimming earnestness as everyone else Atsushi encounters. Atsushi liberates the narrative so that it's not a warning that the horrors of war will proliferate so long as we are capable of mass destruction, but instead it's a promise that hope needn't be intrinsic to persist all the same.

[alwaysalreadyangry]

very interesting to me that this summer we have Oppenheimer - big budget anti-nuclear film, making a record-breaking amount of money at the box office already for a number 2 opener, selling out images everywhere - and also that in Asteroid City we see nuclear tests happening in the background as a form of bleak humour - like, these characters are not going to be OK twenty years down the line. The film assumes we know how bad this is and lets us work it out ourselves... But it's still there. Made me pull a horrified face, like - oh god.

As nuclear treaties die and nuclear weapons proliferate I'm serious when I say that we do need more mass culture about how the bomb will kill us all. Keeping everyone fucking terrified of these things - reminding people that they exist and are terrifying weapons of mass death and genocide - is unironically a political good. How do we do this in a way that isn't exploitative? I don't know. There's been so much discussion of Oppenheimer not showing the Japanese and Korean dead, of it not showing the terrible effects on the native Los Alamos population or the population of the Pacific who were poisoned by nuclear testing. But I'm not sure it's better to introduce, say, a group of Japanese people just to watch them die in agony, especially as the film is about how disconnected people like Oppenheimer were from the mass death they caused. He can't even look at the photos. He's a coward. The film knows it. But it also enacts his looking away. For good and for ill. I don't know the answer! I'm not dismissing people who find it disgusting how it looks away! I'm also not dismissing people who would find the opposite exploitative and disgusting too!

an interesting response to it has been that we get anti-nuclear groups both praising the film and saying it doesn't go far enough to show the true horrors... We need everyone in the chain of command to remember that we need to keep these fuckers unexploded, untested, undeployed. Popular art and discourse can help with this. Is it an artist's responsibility? I don't know. If that's your chosen topic, maybe. How do we do it without exploiting the dead. Is a question you can ask.

[jyantabear]

been playing pathologic throughout the summer and i've enjoyed it a lot and im currently on the changeling campaign and I heard a lot of people say the changeling route is underwhelming and weak but honestly i think it's been really great so far and I think it has tons of depth and I find Clara very interesting Idk im on day 8 of the campaign I feel like I have more thoughts on this route then the haruspex campaign. Perhaps its partly because Clara's subject matter appeals to me a lot but I think it's amazing It's this tragic story about a little girl who so badly wants to be good and do good. She wants to be love and accepted and find her place in the world with all the anxiety she has over her unsureness on her identity and the strange circumstances of her existence. It's about the Saburovs playing this pretend, toxic, nuclear family structure with her. Where a part of them does care about and love her but for selfish reasons. They project their insecurities on her, both of them. They want her to be their salvation and be their key to finally helping the town as they feel they're failures and frauds in that pursuit. So they pressure, love bomb, and abuse their daughter to fit this mold. And Clara is scared but she follows anyway desperate for love. And even without realizing it she's mimicking their teachings and values because It's all she's been given in this world. The only source of guidance It's about Clara and her relationship to the people around her. How she feels sympathy for her bound because she sees herself in them. Because she sees they're people with dimensions and are complicated. And she wants someone to see and grant her mercy and forgiveness as well. And it's so interesting to compare this to her interactions with Daniil and Artemy. Who she's also very similar with but demonizes them. (which I don't think is unjustified btw as they're very horrible to her. But I want to note that while the healers always had some tension between them this route has definitely cranked it up a ton and in the opening play Clara is the one criticizing them for being heartless, selfish, and "not knowing compassion" right off the bat. And even in the few times Artemy and Daniil can have pleasant exchanges with her it's short lived and never sticks with her) And she goes the extra mile to demonize them and deny and dismiss any complexity they might have as she also sees herself in them but doesn't want to admit it. Because it's what she doesn't want to be. It hurts too personally for her to associate with them and makes her feel pathetic even thinking she could be similar to them because she doesn't want to share their loneliness, their struggles, their failures. It makes her feel more stable in her identity to put them down and go "Well at least I'm not like those bloodthirsty horrible useless doctors" And While Clara also feels dislike towards Maria. Maria is someone Clara wants to be. She wants to be that beloved and powerful mistress. Someone who can guide and help others and use her power for good. Which is why she'll say "Her and Capella will be the only ones to understand my loneliness." Clara wants someone to understand her pain but only if she can protect this idealized image of herself she's painted in her mind because she's been hurt too much. It's a tragic story of the unrealistic and harsh standards placed on young teenage girls. And the idea that perhaps humanity is the problem. But taking that message in a rather conservative and violent way then one that acknowledges the complexity and indoctrination society and people have built. A young girl internalizing beliefs of irredeemable ontologically evil people due to all the abuse she's been put under.

[thatdebaterguy]

Astoundingly flawed logic

So riddle me this, if Israel is committing genocide with the intent to kill all Palestinians

And has one of the best global militaries, with a budget surpassing Palestine's entire gdp

And even has nuclear weapons

Then how is Palestine still here, how is Gaza still here, how are millions of Palestinians in one of the most densely packed areas of the entire world, all still here. It literally does not fit the definition. There isn't intention to kill. It's the opposite, they've warned Gazans before bombing.

Whether in some cases they haven't warned, or if the civilians just lied, it's a war, they have no obligation to warn for bombing, the Brits and Americans sure as hell didn't warn Dresden, a bombing that killed 20,000 in a single strike, which is very close to the Palestinian civilian death toll, and yet Dresden wasn't a genocide too. Wanna know why? We didn't want to kill every single German. One interesting thing though, when Israel was founded and invaded by the Arab nations around it, what were their intentions? To block the existence of Israel.

Most likely by eradicating all Israeli civilians and soldiers in the area, to remove any possible claim Israel had over the area. Speaking of claims, Jewish people who founded Israel had lived in the area long before some of the Arab settlers had. Some of the Islamic Caliphates are regarded as the most successful settler colonial efforts in history, spreading to Spain, Morocco, the Turkic Steppes, and settling the region of Palestine too, and this all happened after the Jewish people who had founded the city of Jerusalem. There were I think around 400,000 Jews living there before Israel was created, maybe a bit less but around there. It's not a colonial state, in fact it was freed after being a British colony, no different to the way other British colonies were freed. South Africa used to include modern Namibia, but those two states separated, yet I don't hear anyone bickering about Namibia's right to exist. I know it goes vastly deeper than that comparison, but it still somewhat works.

Anyway, let's say you're living in modern Afghanistan as a woman, where your rights are being actively crushed by a group who used to be designated as a terror group before ruling the country. Are you going to try live your life peacefully and avoid being executed over the simplest things, or going into the streets, protesting, then getting beheaded. I think 99% of people would rather keep living to fight another day, than die a martyr. That's why they're Martyrs, they're the rare 1%, people like the ones who helped hide Anne Frank, or hid Jewish people in their homes. I strongly oppose Hamas, but you don't see me flying over to Palestine protesting against them, same way you don't go over to Israel to protest the Israeli government, or go live with Palestinians to show solidarity. Knowing something is evil and wanting it to end without knowing how, and acting against that evil, are both being against it, one is just activism, the other is opposition. Not many people wanna be activists when the crime is death. Is that enough proof for you?