#or something to do with the extremely stupid level system i’ve been informed exists

[quietwingsinthesky]

oh. oh i’m really hoping this is tutorial level poor footing. because this feels. Bad To Play.

[comehomeducklings]

Past [Part 2] (Obsession)

A/N: Some chapters will be named with either “Past,” “Present,” or “Future,” then their numbered part coming right after it. This is to confuse you less when flashbacks or anything happens. As you have probably noticed, it says “Past” for Part 2. This is going back near when Tom and her just met. Thank you for reading! <3

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

Tom Riddle's Moodboard

Main Character's Moodboard

~////////////////𓆙////////////////~

1940 - 3rd year

“Potions is not that bad, I swear. You just have to be good at measuring.”

At the table, my friends and I are discussing our classes this year. Potions being one of my favorite topics. Devyn absolutely loathes that certain class. We have to drag her there to make sure she doesn’t skip. Poor girl tries her best to not mess up but the cauldron always ends up blowing up. I even watched her do every step once, never missing a beat. The potion still ended up failing, even though she did everything correctly. She gave up after a while, who wouldn’t. I help her do extra assignments for extra credit to keep her grade up. She also studies with me to make sure she can memorize everything and pass her tests. Amelia is pretty good at the class, she’s luckily paired with Devyn most of the time. Carrying the potion to success, with a little bit of my secret help. It’s not cheating, it’s using your resources.

I’m resources.

“Potions is not that bad,” Devyn mocks me. “If it weren’t for you two I would have gone insane in that stupid class.”

Amelia just laughs at her while eating her hash browns on the plate. She reaches her hand out to take some more eggs.

“You were able to do it before. Not the way you were supposed to, but it worked,” Amelia says.

“Exactly, just start doing it your way at this point. I don’t think Slughorn will care how it’s done, just how it comes out.”

Devyn nods her head and points at me with a fork. Her mouth full of food so she settles for that response. My plate doesn’t have much other than some bacon and fruit. I’m not usually a breakfast eater. I get my appetite at lunch and dinner time. It’s just too early for a bunch of food smells, the smells make me kind of nauseous. I’ll eat though, enough to hold me off till lunch.

The chatter in the lunchroom rises by the minute. Everyone refilling themselves before their busy day. All energy levels rising while everyone wakes up from their groggy morning mood. While my friends finish eating we continue to talk about our classes and share the schedules for this year. Most classes we had were the same except for our electives. I tried taking as many electives as possible. My family back home never really did magic. I actually came a year and a half late since my family wanted me to have a normal school experience. I learned to do everything without the use of magic, the only thing my mom taught me was the floo network, creatures, and plants. I would often accompany her to Diagon Alley when she shops. I got an Owl for my 10th birthday. A cat would have been amazing if I wasn’t allergic to it. My owl is a brown and white-furred barn owl. Don’t ask me why I named it Bartholomew. I was ten okay, give me a break. Speaking of the floo network, my mom had to chase me through it quite often because I kept teleporting everywhere. I once ran into the Ministry of Magic’s building and got lost. They had to take me home to my parents. Their faces told me everything I needed to know about the punishment waiting for me.

Halfway through the second year is when I came to Hogwarts, a second letter coming that year asking my parents to let me learn more there. So when they finally let me attend, everything was pretty new to me. My mother was the magic one in the family. Her grandmother, my great-grandmother, before her had the magic gene. Going to school was the same experience as going from a muggle-borns perspective. The difference is, I knew more about its existence. I would look at yearbooks my mom had from when she went here. She earned a lot of titles, all the achievements being recorded down. I always wondered why she never wanted me to come here. Did something happen to me, to her? I’m guessing she just wanted a normal life with dad. He has always supported her through everything. A love, a bond like that is hard to come by. He would also learn about magic right next to me. At least, the stuff my mom allowed to let us know.

That’s why I want to learn as much as I can, of what’s available. Why learn math in the muggle world when I could be learning divination. Spells of all types, potions for everything of inconvenience. My chores could be completed with just a flick of my wand. I’ve lately been learning wandless magic, on my own. Albus has helped by providing me with material to study that type of magic. The only thing I’ve managed so far is a spark coming from the tips of my fingertips. Sparking hope that I could actually, maybe, achieve that level. Now I won't get my hopes up, but that can lead me to a certain advantage in dueling. That being one of my weakest skills. Always panicking, saying any spells that pop up in my mind, and making random movements coming from my wand. Often confusing who I’m up against, although they recover from that confusion fairly quickly.

Riddle, met him once. One too many if you would ask me. I dissuade ever wanting to speak to him. Arrogance and pride flow through his tongue like second nature. I do take pride in succeeding above him in 3 classes. He is 2 classes above me but, that’s not the point. I do admit, he’s attractive. Only a little though, how else would he charm his way through the professors and students.

“Alright, I’m ready to go. You guys done?”

“Yeah,” I say. Devyn and I start leaving our seats and heading towards the huge doors.

Amelia hurried from her seat, a few steps behind since she took some fruit with her to eat on the way. More and more students also started making their way towards the first period. Not wanting to be blamed for the loss of house points. This system causes so many fights, everyone’s competitive side getting the best of their common sense. I would be lying if I said it didn’t get the best of me before. Amelia being her usual bubbly self skips backward while chatting with us. Before we could warn her to stop, she pushes someone ahead of her. Both falling down, hitting the floor. She spins her head extremely quickly, her hair sticking in her mouth from the force of the wind.

“I’m so sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,” she explains. Quickly trying to digest her situation. I make my way towards her and pull her up. I fix her robe and dust off any dirt on the cloth from the floor.

“Clearly idiot, can you not use those bug eyes of yours to see?”

Devyn and I make eye contact. We understand that there are witnesses here, and one of them is bound to snitch on us if we fight. A huge scene would probably make Amelia feel even more embarrassed as well. Instead, I guided Amelia by her back. We continue on to class while I comfort her. Devyn is staying back to “talk” to the guy. Lestrange is in for it now, any poor soul would be when in the fiery path of her anger.

Devyn’s loud yells could still be slightly heard when entering the potions classroom. First class of the year, and day. On Slughorn’s table, I can see a vial with the wideye potion contained inside. I set Devyn’s textbook on her station, turning to the page that contains information on the potion. Hoping to save her confusion and time.

“Welcome, welcome! Nice to see some old faces, and new ones,” he says with the biggest grin on his face. “Today we’ll be learning about the Wideye potion. Can anyone tell me what this potion does?”

I quickly raise my hand, rather eager. I did some reading about a lot of potions during the summer. Trying to get a headstart on my studies. This potion being one of them. Only 3 students raised their hand, one of them being me. The other, well, Riddle.

“Yes, go ahead and answer,” the professor looks my way.

I smile, “The wideye potion prevents the person consuming the liquid the ability to fall asleep. Which is often used in the medical field to wake someone from a sleep caused by a blunt force or drug.”

“Precisely! 10 points.”

I look back rather smugly at Riddle, rather happy I got chosen instead of him. I know, he could have easily answered that too. I’ll let myself bask in the small achievement for now. 30 minutes of class is just spent writing down notes, preparing us for the potion we will make. Note-taking is my favorite, especially the little doodles I get to make. We use a feather instead of the regular pen. I found it rather amusing and liked the certain feeling of writing with it. The dipping noise that the point of the feather makes when hitting the liquid ink is a very profound sound. No real writer’s bump forming on my fingers.

“That’s enough writing, I need you all to prepare your cauldron, gather the materials you need, and start your potion. If done correctly, tomorrow when we add the finishing touches and check on it the potion should be a blue/green color,” Slughorn comments. “You have 10 minutes to study your notes, then the rest of the class to make your potion. No looking back at your notes after those ten minutes.”

After scanning my notes, I stand up and walk towards the ingredients on the shelves. If I remember correctly my potion requires snake fangs, standard ingredient, and wolfsbane. I gather all that in my hand and set it down near my cauldron. Before I start, I take a moment. I’m missing something, I’m sure there was another ingredient.

Wolfsbane, check.

Snake fangs, six of them.

I have the measures of Standard ingredient.

There’s one more, I try to look around the room. Then I remember that we get an automatic failing grade if caught cheating. There’s no way I’ll let my grade drop like that. Over something so small and inconvenient too. Making my way to the shelves, I scan over the ingredients over and over again. Trying to see if any of the names pop out to me.

No.

Definitely not.

That’s an ingredient?

I don’t even want to know how that one was obtained.

This one, of course it’s this one. I even remember putting a star next to the name in my notebook. Dried Billwig stings, I believe six of them were needed. All that time wasted. Hurrying to my seat I get to work. The time goes by quickly, all that could be heard was the sizzling and whooshing of our potions. I almost knocked down my vials a couple of times. Someone actually did, their time spent on cleaning the glass off the floor. After heating the first three ingredients, I crush them together in the mortar. Then stir clockwise from what I recall, three times specifically. Finally, I wave my wand over then leave it to brew.

Just in time from the looks of it. I glance at Devyn to see how it went for her, and she looks pretty proud of herself. I take that as a blessing that it didn’t blow up this time of round. I’m guessing she took our advice and did it her own way.

A student raises his hand, “May we leave?”

“Oh yes yes, go ahead. No assignments for the first day, only the potion you made in class.”

Before I leave the classroom I examine Riddle’s station. He already left the room. His potion looks similar to how mine turned out, his workspace thoroughly cleaned. Everything used properly placed back to where it should be. Perfectly spotless, not a single speck of dust in sight. All done without magic too, surprising for someone born into the wizarding world. When I mentioned that I met him once, it wasn’t much of anything. The only way I know how he really acts is through other people. Much admire his intelligence and strong will. Others are jealous of the potential he holds for the future.

Girls are already trying to slip love potions into his drinks. I would feel bad if he wasn’t so rude to them. Only just before touching the disrespectful line. He almost drank one of their attempts before. Wouldn’t want to imagine how that turned out. Tom riddle, in love. That man probably doesn’t know the feeling of happiness, let alone love. I feel bad for his future girlfriend, she’s going to have to deal with a handful of baggage.

~////////////////𓆙////////////////~

“How much do you want to bet Nott will demolish him?” A Gryffindor girl to my left whispers.

Nott, part of Riddle’s group from what I’ve seen. They all eat lunch together and talk to one another so it’s a reasonable guess. Very talented duellist, one of the bests here.

“I hate to admit it, but he’ll definitely win this. I’ll still have hope for the other guy though,” I whisper back trying not to sound mean.

Nott and the other Slytherin boy are up right now. It’s a courtesy for the audience to stay quiet until someone casts the first attack or defense. From then on all you will hear is shouting of encouragement and the opposite. Nott’s eyes are focused, zoning in on the opponent before him. His wand is steady, mouth slightly parted to breathe through better. Whole-body alert and tense waiting for something. From what I'm getting, I believe he’s waiting for the Slytherin boy to go first. Nott casts spells quickly and thinks them through decently. Sometimes you're not able to create a counter-spell quick enough to defend yourself against him.

Riddle’s group and himself are near the corner of the platform. All seemingly analyzing every breath he inhales and exhales. I finally hear the whoosh of a wand and a whiz of light fly past the platform. The glow from the spell lighting our faces for a millisecond. Nott quickly counters that spell and moves to cast his own. Magic flies across the platform, all of our eyes going back and forth like a ping-pong match. The Slytherin boy starts breaking a sweat. He’s only been able to get a couple of offensive spells in there, most of his plays spent throwing off Nott’s. If he doesn’t turn the battle soon, the outcome will become very clear.

It is a little less exciting since we only know a handful of spells. So whatever you know from your own studies you use in these duels. When we move up the years the class will become more serious and dangerous. Right now it’s just to teach us how to counter and cast quickly. The proper etiquette and movement. You use spells that you know, they aren’t supposed to harm someone. Either stun them, make them fly back, or disarm. Most of those spells require a little of a higher level, most of us not even knowing of its existence yet. So what’s mostly cast between competitors is a basic spell to exert force. That force should be aimed for the legs, or the wand to disarm that way. The way someone can win here is to make their knees or hands touch the floor, or disarm their wand. As I mentioned, it will get more intense as time goes by. We're only just starting 3rd year right now, a lot more charms will be learned later on.

I shake my head to get rid of any lingering thoughts. My attention goes right back to the duel taking place in front of me. Nott quickly aims a spell at the knees and manages to bring the other boy to his knees.

“Mr. Nott wins this duel! Please step off the platform, we will evaluate your performance.”

During the practice duels today, you watch it, think of ways to help the person improve, and point out things they might have done wrong. At the end, the professor picks people raising their hands to allow them to give their feedback. Participating is part of the grade you get in here. I personally prefer giving feedback then dueling. I’m not the best at casting, I do give out good defense spells though. That should mean something, I hope.

“Let’s start with Nott, does anyone have feedback for him?”

A couple of people spread apart raised their hands. One by one they all ask questions and give feedback. They mention his feet and posture when he stands. Arms fully stretched out where it would have been more flexible to bend it slightly. When he casts he shouldn’t be walking backward. They shortly switch to the other boy’s questions and feedback. The way he never gave himself the opening to cast an offensive spell often. He would move around his area a lot. Almost slipping off the stage during one of those movements. Tom and his group privately discussed with one another. They’re probably giving Nott their own feedback and suggestions privately.

“Now, Riddle I want you to come up and…,” he scans the room for another student. After some time he points his finger at me. “You.”

I could have had a smooth sailing class. I was so close to not having to go up there. My hands start sweating a bit, my anxiety jumbling my thoughts together. Riddle’s already up there and soon to be on his side of the platform. Taking his wand out and wandering his fingers over the design. I gulp, a big toad stuck in my throat. I wipe my hands on my robe and start up the stairs. Riddle seems as unbothered as ever. We bow, turn, then walk ten paces back. During this time I try predicting who will cast first. I don’t know him very well, I’ve also never seen him duel.

I take my dueling stance and wait for the signal to start. Hoping, praying, that I don’t embarrass myself. Slipping up is not allowed, not when going against him.

~////////////////𓆙////////////////~

Taglist:

@empath-bunny

[glassesandkim]

I would like to say my piece here about schmico, grey’s anatomy, and the fandom and it’s really for my own self-indulgence and benefit. I’m not asking for you to agree with me or even begin to understand what I’m going on about. I don’t even think half the things that I think about for this fandom exists on an important level. I fully believe in just ~vibin’~ to your own tune when it comes to participating in fandom spaces.

so this post is gonna be my way of getting stuff off my chest so i can continue to ~vibe~

First thing I’d like to address is: I know. I know the Nico Kim that I love and adore is not the Nico Kim in canon. He is who I hope he is in canon. But there’s not much to combat or support that he is or isn’t. He really could be who we’ve made up in fanon for him and at the same time, he really couldn’t. Grey’s created this character that is as blank as a dried piece of toast. So forgive me if I spread a bit of spicy jam here and there so I can swallow this bland shit down a little easier. 

So when people come to me to say, “Y’all are delulu and out of your mind to love this guy this much.” PLEASE, I know. This isn’t news, honey. I am well aware.

But I will continue to justify, romanticize, and put this boy on a pedestal for as long as his existence in canon continues to remain arbitrary and vague. And it makes me very biased to a fault but I have put too much time and energy into this character NOT to be. 

And then you might ask, why have I put so much of my time and life (THREE YEARS!!!! I’VE BEEN IN THIS FANDOM FOR THREE YEARS!!!!!!!!!!) into this character that has all but said maybe like a PAGE of dialogue at most? 

Because I was conned into it. Because they marketed the shit out of him when Alex Landi got the part. And I, as a casual viewer of Grey’s since I was in high school (I’m in my late 20s now, dawg) and of Asian descent was promised representation. Not just Asian rep, but queer rep. 

So naturally, I got extremely attached. It's not everyday a major Western mainstream prime time medical drama chooses to create a character as unique as Nico's. 

I spent so much time here. I was here when fandom decided Nico would call Levi “babe”. I was here when we all clowned that Nico didn’t know Levi’s first name. I was here when Josh died and the fandom went up in arms with pitchforks and stakes against Nico. I was here for all of it. I've seen it all. 

And unfortunately, seeing it all, makes me tired. Grey’s is time and time again proving to me that they don’t give a shit about the development and well-being of their existing characters at all. The show only cares about collecting diversity points and performing their wokeness to the general masses. (I talk a lot about how grey's is plot-driven vs. character-driven.) 

I will still get frustrated and annoyed at Nico’s lack of character development. But I mostly just laugh at the fandom nowadays. I know you guys want to fight the fight, tell everyone Nico is not toxic!!!!!! But bros, friends, lovers, it’s a tried and tired fight. 

Grey’s wants us to think Nico is a Bad Boyfriend. It’s as clear as the stench one comes across when they step on dog shit. That’s why I think it’s useless to fight people about Nico. Grey’s gets amnesia all the time. Grey’s forgot the whole season and half they invested in creating a loving boyfriend for Levi and up and changed Nico’s personality to fit a new narrative (that they, quite frankly, failed to even follow through because of covid and other filming hoopla hula hoops they’ve had to jump through that I’ve been informed of and which I simply don’t care for). 

So all this ~schmico is endgame!!! we deserve it!!!~ Binches, I have better things to fight for than schmico endgame. What’s the alternative? Levi lives in Jo’s closet forever? They’re going to be together in the end no matter what. Nobody on that show cares enough about Nico OR Levi to set up new relationships and stories for them. So don’t fret, my friends. They’ll be together in the end. It just comes down to the question of what stupid story they’re going to come up with for them to be together. (And might I argue that they already are together???) 

Speaking of the bogus story they’re going to write for schmico: you bet my rice eating, Chinese-speaking ass, that it’s not going to be a story written from a queer and poc perspective. It’s going to be some gag-worthy straight het story but made gay. (How many times do I have to hear, "I hope Nico comes out to his parents!!" NO, HE DOESN'T! Do you know how VIOLENT coming out is sometimes?? It's not a solution to Nico's problems with Levi. It's an introduction and invitation to problems over being queer -- but why would I expect anyone, let alone Grey's, to understand that prepetuating these types of stories is inherently damaging to queer people? They wouldn't know. The cishet fandom wouldn't know. Because no one is writing grey's in a queer, poc centric way.)

Which drives me to the next point: you know why Nico doesn’t get character development even though he showed up at the same time as Link? Because of ✨racism ✨. Because Link is a more conventional character (read: white) that is easier to write because nobody on this show knows how to write an Asian character anymore, let alone a gay Asian character. So of course, nobody wants to touch that shit even with a pogo stick. (Argue with me that Cristina exists and I will tell you, yes she did, but they RARELY touched upon her cultural and ethnic background. Also it was the early 2000s. Cristina was as ground breaking as it got for us Asians back then.)

And then because Nico isn’t developed enough, we have the weird phenomenon of people shipping everyone and their dog with Levi and it’s like, y’all know you got played by the racism game, right? You are hostages to this system that has taught you that white men are more desirable and deserving of story and humanity than a poc character who is instead, reduced to nothing but sex appeal and if he’s not doing well on that front, then he’s useless.

How many times does Levi say: Nico is so hot! Sex with Nico is so good! He’s a roman statue!

All!! the!! time!! Nico's worth to Levi’s character is to be the sex object that Sets Him Free. 

Which plays into the sexualization of Asian people which all comes from, you guessed it! Racism! (Levi really compared Nico to a fucking lifeless slab of stone.)

(Side note: I do think talking about how racism plays into Nico’s character and the fandom space is important and probably a separate post. I’m happy to write my opinion piece on it if it’s something people want.) 

But anyway, those are just some of my qualms with schmico, grey’s anatomy, and the fandom. I do not expect anyone to fully agree with me and I’m not asking the fandom to change or apologize or whatever. I’m just already grateful if you took the time to even read this post. 

I’ll leave with some parting advice: fandom is what you make of it. We won’t all agree with everyone’s hot takes, but that’s the beauty of it, yeah? So I chose to create this version of Nico Kim that brings me IMMENSE joy. Like, A LOT!!! I love this fandom for these reasons. I’m grateful everyday for the friends I’ve made and the works and creations I’ve created and I’m honoured to be able to consume other works made by fellow fans. 

I might hate a lot of things about grey’s and schmico, but I really owe a lot of myself to this fandom. 

[everything-laito]

damn the brain be out here going BRRRRRR here’s the Laito and Cordelia Analysis (with a little bit of Karl sprinkled in) Part III

wow my fingers are freezing but my brain sure isn't! 

aaaanyways, iiiiiit’s trauma time!!! Am I a productive member of society by writing these analyses? No. Do I gain anything by writing them? Kinda, my brain gets exercised and they’re fun to research for. But if you haven’t read the first part or the second part for some reason (I recommend reading them in order), there they are. 

Once again, trigger warnings still apply; mainly about trauma, isolation, etc 

I’m gonna talk about the trauma and effects it had on Laito and to attempt to extrapolate why he is the way he is. I have a lot of examples I want to go over and stuff to talk about, so I think the trauma part is going to be split between two (or maybe three) parts. I also have a little bit to say about Karlheinz.

As always, big ass rant under the cut! 

Section 6: Neuroplasticity and Trauma

Oh???? More science vernacular??? You BET! Ok, neuroplasticity. I know I’ve talked about it on this blog. But, I seriously doubt that there is a madlad who has read all of my analyses (speaking of which, I should update the master list lmao) and I don’t expect anyone to do that LOL! Anyways, this neurological concept is the ability of neurons to adapt to certain circumstances or stimuli by creating new neurological pathways (through synapses). This basically relates to memory and learning. It’s why we don’t stay the same person as we grow and develop. It’s responsible from mindset changes to response to traumatic events. It plays a huge part in trauma, which is why “repressed memories” occur as well. 

Trauma, taken from Psychology Today, is defined as: 

...the experience of severe psychological distress following any terrible or life-threatening event. Sufferers may develop emotional disturbances such as extreme anxiety, anger, sadness, survivor’s guilt, or PTSD.

It’s a basic definition. And although I’d assume people would know what trauma is already, but knowing the lexical definition of something can be good to know before going into it. 

Obviously, Laito has trauma, there’s literally no refuting that. But, the point I’m getting at, is the reason why he is the way he is today is because of neuroplasticity. As previously stated, we are going to assume the DL vampire brain works similarly or the same as a human brain. So, because of the stress put upon the brain (Cordelia’s actions and Laito’s general upbringing in a stress filled household), Laito’s brain was rewired (neuroplasticity). This section doesn’t really have much new information, but I wanted to give a baseline since there’s many people who don’t know what neuroplasticity is.

Laito’s definitely different than what he was as a kid. He still kind of had his smarts, and might have been  but as we’ve deducted from the first part of this series, he might have been groomed. On top of that, the brain is easily moldable when you’re a child (which is why grooming makes sense for Laito’s case), and continues to snip brain cells off and form new connections. 

Section 7: Little intermission about Karlheinz 

I know I haven’t really talked about Karlheinz yet. So this will be the section that I do it in. I know this part is about Laito’s trauma, but it’s so hard to not just weave other characters into it. Nothing is stand-alone, which is why it was so hard for me to plan this out. I was debating about saving this for another analysis, but I feel like it fits. 

I referenced this in Part II, Section 5 of this analysis series. Basically, Karlheinz throws Laito into the dungeon and locks him up. Not Karlheinz personally, but he ordered someone to do it. We don’t explicitly know why, but there’s several implications. A huge one is that it was part of Karlheinz’ experiment. Before Dark Fate, I was like “wait, so did Karl find out about Laito/Cordelia? And got like jealous or was like ‘nah this shit fucked up no thanks’?” I was really scratching my head on that. But in Dark Fate, you find that Karlheinz knew about Cordelia and Laito, and even really wanted it to happen. Which is all sorts of fucked up. This really put Laito in for a loop. Here’s a scene from Dark Fate: 

Laito: That woman always, always believed in Karlheinz. Laito: She believed he married her because he loved her, wanted her. That’s why she was sure that one day... he will give his love only to her.  Laito: But she was tricked. She wasn’t loved from the start... Laito: -And I’m a victim of this unbelievable mistake... That’s how it is. Laito: I was treated as a vent for her feelings. Yui: ...Laito-kun... Laito: I’m sure he knew that something like this will happen... He is a god after all... Laito: I was hoping that... He just overlooked it up until now... Laito: But... I was naive.  Laito: I was only planned a scapegoat. 

God, when I played this, that just freaking struck me to my core. That’s so awful. Ironically... Karlheinz probably has some high level of emotional intelligence. I don’t believe he could be labeled as a sociopath, considering he has this high level understanding of pathos. He’s not god in a sense that he controls everyone individually himself. He’s so good at manipulation that he basically creates fate itself (whether you believe in it or not). He’s generally intelligent and cunning, and it also just helps with the fact that he’s immortal and can time travel. He knows cause and effect by now, and I believe Lost Eden said something about how he’s done so many different “timelines.” 

The definition of a god in a philosophical sense can be broken down into three words: omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. More wicked cool jargon! Yay! Here’s what they mean for extra clarification:

Omniscient: All knowing Omnipresent: All seeing Omnipotent: All doing

Sure Karlheinz doesn’t absolutely know everything, nor can see everything, and he definitely has limits to his power, but he has gained knowledge through living for so many years and time traveling; he has familiars which add to the whole “all seeing” part; and he has a lot of power. So basically, in the most semi-”realistic” sense, it would definitely be the closest being to any kind of god.

Karlheinz is probably the reason why Laito himself has such contempt towards religion, and the existence of a god in general. Sure, the boys are like “that shit’s made up by humans” in general, but it would make sense for Laito himself to have that specific hatred. It makes sense that these vampires would be like “oh that’s made up by humans” when they’ve been around forever and have seen multiple religions come and go. (I’m mainly talking about in DL’s lore case, not starting a religious argument; please don’t take it as such––just to clarify)

Section 8: Isolation

Originally, the previous part was going to be about Laito’s isolation being locked up. However, I went off the rails and it turned into that little intermission. This is going to be a shorter section, but I still wanted to talk about, and it will weave into the next section. 

There is no implications about how long Laito was locked up (and tortured) in the dungeon. There’s also no implications about why he was tortured. But torture and isolation puts such stress on the brain that there’s definitely going to be some kind of outcome if persisting for a good period of time. So let’s take a look at what that does to a person. 

Once again, taking this with a grain of salt. I imagine vampires don’t need to rely on social interaction as much as humans do, considering they live forever. But we don’t know. However, throwing Laito into a state of isolation implies that it would be some type of torture or harsh punishment for a vampire, which therefore implies that social interaction is a necessity for emotional function. It’s just sound, inductive logic. 

So now, as for isolation, I’m using this article as reference. It’s a pretty interesting one to read. Here’s another extensive article as well. Basically isolation can cause:

Depression/anxiety

Immune system deficiencies (basically more likely to get physically ill)

Sleep cycle changes (if put underground or with limited natural light)

Hallucinations

Paranoia

Issues with processing information and more susceptible to persuasion/manipulation

We have no clue if Laito’s experience fits all of these. Also, the second one can be crossed out because vampires in DL can’t get physically sick in the way we can. Also, unsure about the sleep cycle stuff considering they are used to being in the dark. Hallucinations and paranoia can’t be crossed off nor proven. 

Being isolated physically and mentally exhausts the mind, which is why it’s also a way of torture. Laito implies that he was tortured with physical devices, but regardless, it’s still stress on the mind. This type of stress definitely goes along with what was mentioned with neuroplasticity and trauma, which also supports the last bullet point: issues processing information and being more susceptible to persuasion/manipulation. Take this flashback from Maniac Prologue in HDB that I used in Part II section 5 (but here’s even more context):

Laito: ーー Let me go!! Let me out of here! Butler: I can’t, young lord. We’ve received strict orders from your father. I am deeply sorry, but please stay put for a while. Laito: What’s the point in having me chained up in here!? Butler: ーーI am very sorry. Laito: Hahahaha…You stupid old man! Do you think that this will make repent!? How foolish! That demon! Has his brain finally rotten from spending too much time with humans!? ー Cordelia appears Cordelia: ー Oh? Laito: …!? Have you come to save me? Cordelia: Oh dear. Ufufu…I’m sorry Laito, that isn’t it. Laito: Eh? Richter: ー Why are you here? Laito: …That’s my line. Cordelia: Okay, okay. No fighting! More importantly, Richter…Come here. Laito: …!? Cordelia: Nnn…Hey, Laito. You are a good boy. Laito: …!! Cordelia: Right, Laito? Laito: Yeah, that’s right. I’m…I’m a good boy after all.  ーー Besides, I’m the type of person who only get more aroused from this kind of thing.

Although I also use this to support the whole Stockholm syndrome point, this could also be supported with the trauma isolation also holds. His mind is being re-molded into the facade he holds. Also, note the whole “do you think this will make me repent?!” part. Just a very interesting thing. The word “repent” implies that there’s something to feel guilty about or the person knows that what they’ve done is bad. It just goes to show that Laito has some part of guilt or moral compass still in tact. 

You can also argue that this scene was when Laito just got locked up, or he’s been here for a while. Either way, he could have also been socially isolated before this too, just hanging around Cordelia like it’s implied when he was a child. Remember the whole not being in bed 9/10 times when he was a child? Yeah, controlled social isolation. We also rarely see Laito with other characters in his flashbacks. I don’t believe we see him with his brothers in any of his flashbacks from what I can recall; he’s usually with Cordelia. Just implies (to me) that he’s around her a lot. And being locked up is also a more extreme case of that, which would mold the brain even more. 

I know that was a LOT to process and read. I sure hope this still is cohesive for you all. I’m pretty bad at organizing this kind of stuff; it’s a bit difficult since it all just goes together. Which, kudos on the writers of DL, because that’s just good writing. I was going to put something about gaslighting in this part, but that might be too long, so I’m going to make that a separate part or include it in the next part. 

If you have any questions, feel free to just put it in the inbox. I’m planning on making the last part of this series answering all the Laito/Cordelia questions I’ve received, or just general questions pertaining to this analysis in general, whether it be tangential questions or clarifying questions. 

Hope you all are still enjoying this ride as much as I am!  -Corn

[sanstropfremir]

kingdom episode 3 baby!!!!

listen. i’m not gonna lie i was nervous as hell for this episode. i saw that preview like everyone else and unfortunately i have ears so i was convinced the ateez stage was going to be a trainwreck. i was absolutely banking on sf9 and skz to do something even mildy interesting to save me from the ear damage and having to talk to extensively about why that disaster happened. but somehow i woke up in an alternate universe and you know what? with the exception of that high note the ateez stage fucked. i know. i don’t believe it either. i think i’m still in shock.

i’ll do individual breakdowns in order of favourites within the episode and then at the end i’ll put my personal ranking of all six. thank god i don’t have to do a stage breakdown again; if they change it again for next week i will scream.

ateez

a miracle happened. i don’t have to fight any of the staff at kq. i don’t understand either. jongho is so fucking lucky that the rest of the group pulled all that energy out of their asses because if they had been even a single iota less serious about it that stage would have flopped worse than a dead fish. i can’t believe we got this level of camp b movie schlock in the first full stage, and they stuck the landing. incredible.

fine i’ll address the elephant in the room. personally, i don’t think jongho is that good of a vocalist. he’s not bad, and he does have the potential to be a good vocalist, he just doesn’t have the training, and this is the issue with all of ateez. hanya talked about this before and i’ll say it again: he can’t switch to his head voice and he’s destroying his vocal cords by attempting to hit notes in his mid range that he should just jump to head voice for. frankly i’m surprised he got anywhere close to that note in his mid, but his technique is just not there and he’s gonna do some real damage to his voice if he doesn’t take a break and also get a good vocal coach. you can already hear the degradation in sound from their debut stage to now, and that’s in less than three years. ok i’m done talking about vocals that’s hanya’s turf, i’m pretending that that high note doesn’t exist and we’re moving on. also im in love with btob’s reaction it was fucking priceless.

costume

look, i have a one track brain and that brain can only think about seonghwa corset. seonghwa corset? seonghwa corset.

i know it’s not a real corset nor is it properly laced and i know this would never happen in a million years but a kpop mr pearl trend? i would die. just fully expire. there’s no coming back from that for me

yes i have laced boys into proper corsets before and yes it is as hot as you think it is (when it’s not work related, obviously)

ok now that i’ve got that out of my system for the moment, the costumes are actually pretty good. i’m a little obsessed with hongjoong’s coat although I know it’s stupid. fur? always, I love it, you’ll never change my mind it makes everything better. i own a lot of it and i wear it all the time. this is also a pretty good example of how to do a more modern styling within a very specific and recognizable genre.

i don’t hate the backup dancers’ costumes either, even though they would look a lot better in a not-pirate themed hiphop stage. because there is already a modern tint with the boys’ costumes, it’s not that much of a leap to the dancers, and they actually use the dancers and the camera really strategically to not put much focus on them.

the only real standout issue is the blacklight/contortionist moment, which is too gimmicky for me and doesn’t fit the rest of the theme. i do understand the purpose of them: you need a transition point from the upper deck to the more fantastical inner ship area, and blacklight paint is a really easy, cheap, and fast way to get four new costumes instantly. do i think they could have done something better though? yes.

set

this was actually a smart reuse of that pirate ship set. i know i clowned on them in the first stage that they could move on from the pirate gimmick but honestly? i’m glad they didn’t. this was fun as fuck. but also two stages was enough you can move on now.

i love how they actually used the weird double stage function that the false prosc creates for an actual architectural and narrative effect, instead of just sort of operating as though it’s just another place to travel just because you can. we are on the deck of the ship, and then we go inside the ship. it’s simple and effective. you don’t need to do a crazy amount of crossover to establish a dynamic sense of place.

i hate the ateez kingdom logo. i hate the ateez logo in general. get it out of there, at least you could have made something more fun and pirate themed.

would have loved to have seen them return to the hourglass at the end, especially if they got one that was specifically set for 4 minutes. would have been a nice bit of symmetry but i suspect it was struck before the kraken bit.

the kraken bit??? i was not at all expecting that and honestly? dope as hell. that big tentacle is just a custom inflatable santa claus that you see around christmastime and what a brilliant use of such a simple mechanic, especially to have it come through that weird little triangle arch they have upstage. smart way to use the existing architecture.

yes it is a gimmick but here’s why it works rather than just looks tacky like every other gimmick we’ve seen so far: it had a function within the narrative. this is so important. show us there’s a reason it’s there!

lighting

i didn’t love it but they did actually make some smart choices. the outer deck is warmer toned and has some good atmospheric effects, and the inner deck is cold tone and specifically lit with pin lights to imitate the light coming through portholes in an actual ship, which is so smart thank you lighting designer

also a very clear arc with the lighting, blue -> orange -> blue/red -> orange/multiple -> blue

sound

i actually kinda liked this remix? it fit theme and had a very clear dramatic arc. also i like wonderland, so sue me.

staging

WE DID IT, WE FINALLY GOT A CLEAR NARRATIVE FROM AT LEAST ONE GROUP! wonderland was actually a great choice for them because it’s a really good indicator of exactly how hungry they are. i was a bit worried that it would fall flat because it kinda rides on mingi but they actually pulled it off. i have literally no idea where they pulled all that energy from but holy shit you can practically lick the attitude off the screen. i’m also very impressed by the amount of information they managed to fit into that four minute narrative. we had a full conflict/climax/resolution, as well as a really clear understanding of the tenacity and drive of the group, as well as the desire to support one another in achieving their goals. bravo.

ok so like i said in the set section, they used that pirate ship bridge really effectively to create two different but connected spaces. this is a really smart way to make it seem like you have two spaces while having to only build one set. it was also one of the best ways to utilize this dumbass stage so it doesn’t just look like you’re running arbitrarily from area to area because you can.

also levels! levels are so important for staging but also hard to do in this context because you have to be able to move really quickly in and out of full group formation, but I think they did a really good job here.

continued point: the kraken arm worked because it was the conflict they needed to overcome in the narrative, so it had a function within the performance. also related: all the tricking and jumping also served a purpose within the narrative too. it was either used for fighting (yeosang kicking all those dancers on beat) or a demonstration of teamwork (jongho flinging yunho around on the floor). also frankly excellent use of choreographic formation with the backup dancers, each formation had a specific function and was meant to highlight ateez without being overbearing.

not a whole lot of camera choreo, but a fairly good long take at the beginning and the editing wasn’t too obnoxious which I think was more chance than intent, but i’m not gonna look a gift kraken in the beak.

sf9

i actually really liked this stage, and i really like that sf9 has established their colour as effortlessly elegant, which does set them apart from the rest of the groups. this stage was really choreographically complex and they made it seem so easy, so real props to them. however, like with ikon’s stage, there were a lot of good ideas that just weren’t followed through enough for me.

like ateez, song choice and theme were very well intertwined with this one, there was a lot of thought put into this stage. the pun with ‘jealous’ and ‘jilleosseo’ and having a fairytale/magic mirror narrative? fuckin GALAXY BRAINED. incredible. the implication that not only taeyang but the entire group is the evil queen from snow white? chef’s kiss. should have committed harder and put one of them in massive cloak à la king taemin mama 2020. instead it was subtle enough to not try to step on ateez’s schlocky camp toes but still just as serious and i love that. do i wish they pushed it farther though? also yes.

costume

not gonna lie, i had my reservations on the costumes when we saw the previews of them in the waiting room, but the thing about stage costumes is that they always look bad when not on stage. if they look good in the waiting room you’ve done something wrong. and i loved them on stage. big fan of that quilted vest/pseudo stomacher. please can we have a corset trend? y’all already adopted bondage harnesses, c’mon a little corset won’t hurt. also a good example of a modern spin on a recognizable genre.

i wish the backup dancers weren’t in all black but i am fighting single person battle against the entire entertainment industry on that one.

set

extremely simple with a few smart utilizations. had a feeling this might have been a budget thing, as it had a similar kind of vibe with ikon’s stage, but the use of the mirrors was smart and a fun device that served the purpose of the narrative.

working with mirrors on stage is really fucking hard, so kudos to them for giving it a go. for the most part it was pretty effective. especially with the combo of moving mirrors and moving lights AND moving camera, you’re kind of asking to either blind your audience or at least give them a headache. i once saw a production of the magic flute that had a rotating mirror setpiece and i swear i nearly went blind due to the constantly flashing reflections. you have to really be careful with directionality and reflection, especially with the added element of a camera. also you never use real glass mirrors on stage, it is unbelievably bad luck and theatre people are the most superstitious demographic on the fucking planet.

i kinda loved the draped gold dais. i have nothing else to say about it other than fun!

lighting

a lot of this was very weirdly lit and i’m not sure why. the quality on youtube is terrible and cameras already have trouble picking up detail in low light, and throwing a whole bunch of primary red over that (the colour with the longest wavelength and therefore disappears the easiest in the dark. also human eyes are not very good at distinguishing variations in the red spectrum) and the red costumes made it extremely difficult to tell what was happening.

i will give them props for dramatic lighting usage, especially for the two way mirror trick and for using the floor as a primary lighting source at the end, which i think groups should be using more of. how often do you have a lighting source in your floor!!! almost never!! use that opportunity!!

sound

i actually enjoyed this remix too. it was well suited to the dramatic nature of the stage. i think the sound byte at the beginning is ‘mirror mirror on the wall who’s the worthiest of them all’ but it also could be ‘who’s the worst of them all’ and that would be also fitting and kinda funny.

staging

again, not a lot of consideration for camera choreo in a meaningful way, and like the tbz stage I think the clarity in the actual choreo got hampered by the editing. because there was a lot of choreographic precision that went into making this work and it wasn’t totally obvious from the way mnet edited it.

a lot of them are actors so it works that they’re leaning more towards dramatic stages rather than the sort of performance type stages we’ve seen so far. i like this choice for them as it gives them a very obvious colour but they’re almost on the verge of making it look too easy, which does them some injustice.

next to ateez, using that long uninterrupted traverse was my favourite use of this stage. doubles as an easy way to build the atmosphere of a palace corridor/throne room with the rug, and to feed the drama of the piece.

skz

ok i have some…..things to say about this stage. so far i have not been kind to skz which makes me look like i hate them and i don’t, i promise. there were a lot of really interesting things happening in this stage and there some really successful ones, and i liked this a whole lot better than their intro stage, but their overall choreo and thematic dedication is really killing me. i’ll explain.

costume

I don’t hate them but also…….why? I got the good self vs evil self/internal struggle theme but the costumes don’t really have anything interesting to say about that. as far as modern style costuming goes i think they’re on the more interesting end, but they don’t push it far enough. there’s a few western art history visual motifs and honestly? they should have gone whole hog and whited out their faces/hair and made them look like classical sculptures. that would have been hella fun, especially with that little statue and marionette sequence, plus the shadow/leash manipulation.

this time it was actually intentional that the backup dancers were in blacks and i appreciate that.

why on EARTH did they have that ridiculous makeup that didn’t read on stage? theatre makeup and tv makeup are different, you can’t just do a light purple eyeshadow and expect to read under blue and red light. someone needs to bring an actual theatre makeup artist in and get these boys in some real crazy looks. see previous point about full-face white pancake. more extreme makeup please and thank you!

set

i liked the use of internal architecture within this massive weird stage space and they used the corridors quite well. i didn’t really like the mix of baroque scrolling and also graffiti, it wasn’t quite connected for me. this has been a common theme among this round and i think it comes from budget/props pulls rather than anything else.

also there was a distinct feeling of trying to fill the main stage space with bodies as opposed to atmosphere. this can work in some specific cases but the intent wasn’t strong enough for me. it just felt like a lot of people on stage, especially in the end choreo.

lighting

the general lighting was fine but not particularly inspired. the low light in the beginning was actually quite well done, especially combined with the fog, but in my opinion was not dramatic enough. you have a pseudo art history theme happening, pump that contrast and push the chiaroscuro!

ok stay with me, i’m gonna say something extremely controversial that might actually get me cancelled. s*per j*unior’s burn the floor did everything this stage was trying to do on a smaller scale and better. look i know ok, this is a like, a double atom bomb hot take. just forget everything you know about them and watch the performance video. tell me that’s not some of the most interesting choreo you’ve seen in kpop. if you’re going to work with practical light you need to COMMIT. not just steal the solar lanterns out of my mom’s back garden.

i have a lot of opinions on using practical light and alternate light sources in performance because it’s a huge part of my practice and this just....wasn’t interesting enough for me. push it further!

(I will wait for the subs on the full episode because there has to be a reason they chose that specific shape of lamp. if not i gotta ask jyp why he’s raiding my mom’s garden)

sound

god’s menu has such specific imagery associated within the lyrics and choreography that this stage was a bit dissonant for me. especially when seen in conjunction with two stages where the narrative was tied explicitly to the lyrics of the songs. i think maybe if it hadn’t been grouped with these other two stages i would have felt differently. the other groups chose to do songs were a little more abstract and allowed for more visual experimentation, but to go so blatantly against the food metaphor didn’t really work for me and i had a tough time divorcing the association. I found the arrangement to be a little lacking in energy for me towards the end but otherwise it was pretty interesting.

staging

Definitely a better performance overall that the intro stage. almost all of the gimmicks this time had relevance to the theme which i appreciated. the marionette bit and the shadow/mirror were probably the most interesting but i wish they were better lit.

 there was a lot of back and forth in the blocking that made the stage feel repetitive and also aimless? like there wasn’t a very clearly established directionality within the internal space, so it felt like treading over the same ground for no purposeful reason. and again, not a lot of intentional camerawork.

i really liked having the dancers under the big sheet, it fit well enough within the ‘war between internal selves’ theme, but also had a loose tie to the art imagery. again, i really wish they had stuck to a clearer visual theme. it makes them stick out especially in this grouping of stages, but also across all the groups as whole because almost everyone had a clear(ish) visual idea.

holy shit that’s a lot of backup dancers. i don’t really feel like that many were necessary and the sheer number of them took away from the emphasis of the group. with all of the other stages (except for tbz) it was very clear who the centre of attention and emphasis was, and with both skz and tbz they got swallowed by the sheer scale they were trying to operate at. bigger is not always better.

---

this is a tough round to rank because none of these stages are bad, there’s just some that are, in my opinion, more successful than others. all of these stages do very well in specific elements but fall short in others which also makes this ranking difficult. i’m evaluating these based on whether they were successful to me, as i’m pretty sure this ranking will probably not all be popular opinion, but whatever i like to live on the edge.

btob – visuals, vocals, narrative, swords? what more do you want me to say? also i watched the full episode and minhyuk did rehearsal with a real bokken and i think i am in love with him now.

ateez – honestly not sure if i would have ranked this first if that high note hadn’t been a mess. i love camp nonsense and i genuinely think this was a well designed stage. i can’t believe i keep saying that but it’s true.

sf9 – this stage was really solid, just could have been pushed farther. i think it has a really good sense of drama and it’s a pity that sf9’s colour is more subdued, because i think they’re going to be stuck around the 3rd/4th position for the rest of the show.

ikon – ikon is only ranking this high because although i am disappointed in the wasted potential of this stage, they NAILED the camerawork and actually brought in someone to block the steadicam into the choreo. also they’re incredible performers. i say this every time, but their stage presence, although maybe lower energy that they normally would be, is still not to be fucked with.

skz – i think this one is the most ‘meh’ for me. while i liked a lot of the elements here they just didn’t push it far enough and the lack of narrative and general aimless choreo led to me not having any strong feelings yea or nay.

tbz – to be quite honest the lack of costume unity is a big hit for me. all elements of design are equally as important but because of my personal practice and experience i tend to put a lot of weight on good costume and spatial design. i don’t actually like game of thrones also, so I feel mildly offended on behalf of michele clapton, who had did a fucking incredible job and doesn’t deserve to be slandered like this. also the lack of cohesive choreography and the overblown lighting made this difficult to watch, no matter how good i thought the rear projection/stretch fabric dance was.

 any questions or opinions you wanna share hit me up! see you next week!

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

okay, OKAY, things I am going to do this weekend I MEAN IT, really trying to keep this concrete and realistic, and YES a lot of this is the same as previous lists:

go through the Pride Cap orders I got as part of Gail Simone’s Comic Writers Challenge on Twitter and put them in an actual spreadsheet, because there are five at most but combined with the existing four on Etsy, I can already tell I’m going to have a hard time keeping track if I don’t get it all down in one place (also, inform the organizers about any donation screenshots I’ve received)

related: one person would like a bigender design and I’m not sure I can make that work with the shield, so I need to experiment

mail the autographed LeVar Burton photo I offered for the same auction thing (somebody donated $100 to the Homeless Black Trans Women Fund for this, which is just. extremely cool)

actually work on painting a good number of these shields, plus some related stuff while I have the paint out

while painting, multitask by watching or listening to something (there’s some Microsoft Teams training for work, plus a few different recent recorded webinars on activism and anti-racism and that sort of thing, and if I want something fun the list is even longer especially because I accidentally paid for another month of Hulu, so the difficulty here will be...choosing)

also, glue a few things that need fixing, and maybe see if I can keep the Loki picture on my phone’s pop socket from chipping off more

go through my ridiculous number of open tabs and organize them with actual bookmarks, because yeah that might mean I won’t get to some of it but my current system of having a massive amount of open tabs and getting overwhelmed every time I look at them sideways is actively counterproductive, so obviously that’s not working either

related to that: at least reply to HS classmate on Facebook about protests, really shouldn’t take long

also post a few things on Facebook if I feel like I can do that quickly

leave voicemails for federal legislators about...yesterday’s anti-trans bullshit for sure, ongoing protests etc., Murkowski’s comments about Mattis, probably other things

contact state and local officials about a) expanding state/local anti-discrimination ordinances and b) pushing for more and better safeguards against police abuse (may also require some research to find out how things work, but if that gets overwhelming, just a quick “hey here’s what I’m concerned about and here are some things being done elsewhere that I’d like to see here” couldn’t hurt)

find out how much USAA is still advertising on Fox and write to them about it, again

also write to my union’s leadership because their current stance is more or less “Black lives matter and police brutality is extremely bad BUT ALSO that doesn’t mean all police unions are bad or that police shouldn’t get to have them” and like...NOT THE TIME, Y’ALL

play something with @erlkonigstochter, really, it’s been too long

attempt to get my stronghold in this dumb mobile game to a high enough level by tomorrow evening (I guess), because that’s when this very good Swagbucks offer expires, although given that I’m barely halfway there I don’t think it’s likely well I failed, but I did try

start a Comixology Unlimited trial while it’s 60 days, at least that way I’ll have it and it’ll make me get around to picking what I want to read (which I DO NOT have to do this weekend). uh, well, first find out if it’s still 60 days, I can’t immediately tell from the site, and yeah I am gonna be annoyed with myself if I waited too long and missed it :/

oh shit Marvel Unlimited has a bunch of free comics from Black creators right now, better grab those

and now I’m going to resist the urge to add things like “ugh but I also really need to type, and write, and my room continues to be a disaster, and oh god taxes are due soon, and if I’m going to start a Comixology Unlimited trial I have to figure out ALL THE COMICS I might want to read with it or I’ll be wasting my trial, and I gotta finish my will as much as I can and bug my dad to help me with the rest, and haha there’s that stupid free-game thread nobody cares about but that will bug me if I never finish it, and I’ve been wanting to try making my own masks, and I need to patch some jeans, and ah damn it’s been ages since I’ve done any postcards/letters to voters let alone something more immediate like texting, and and and” because that is the devil talking and the best way to do exactly none of the things on this list is to go back to trying to do literally everything.

although, ugh, I really do need to do my taxes soon.

[sharpened-fantastic]

what are the reasons to vote for Biden? because you're out here talking about how we shouldn't vote green/abstain from the presidential, but can you please tell me what exactly would be different about a Biden presidency vs a Trump one? besides that a second Trump turn would keep liberals engaged and give us more chances to radicalize them. Joe Biden is just as bad as Trump on nearly every level and if he miraculously wins the gen, the DNC will be left unchecked. I'm curious on who that helps!

Hey! A genuine thank you for sending a full, non-anonymous ask. 

However, the biggest thing to remember is that having a democrat in the office will lead to policy changes and will change how our country is shaped for literal decades to come. 

Yes--Biden is a shit head, he would probably continue a lot of the racist and outright idiotic policies that Trump either put in place or continued from previous presidencies. I wish it weren’t true but that’s a simple fact. I agree that this sucks dick and makes me not want to vote at all.

One BIG thing is having a leader, regardless of political views, that has literally any political experience other than “accidentally got elected for four years as president”. Even compared to other presidents, even other republicans, his approach is overly militaristic, explicitly fueled by monetary gain, and he refuses to bend to even feign concern or duty towards American citizens. His open xenophobia (that has literally been UNPRECIDENTED, even to other politicians sharing his beliefs) has allowed greater mobility and reach for hate groups, and has let other politicians feel more comfortable in presenting non-coded, upfront, racist policy. It’d be one thing if it just showed the American public “oh wow, all of these places were racist the whole time”, but elevating literal concentration camps (yes, those did exist during the Obama era) to “let’s use abandoned warehouses to strip kids from their families, live in conditions we legally don’t let a lot of animals live in, and give them marked psychological scarring!”, among other things (I’m gonna put references at the end of this I’d hate to be talking purely out of my ass).

Trump is also horrifically undiplomatic--severing or straining our ties to other developed nations--, overemotional and unprofessional constantly on social media, and speaks positively on radically bigoted and backwards groups.

I think you’re giving Trump a lot of credit by saying he and Biden are equally bad. Both racist? yes. Both made bad policy decisions? oh yeah. However, Biden is still left enough that the democratic party accept him, the republican party has been squabbling since 2016 that Trump is too right-wing for republicans. Let’s have a president that even pretends to condemn Charlottesville or the dozens of other explicit hate crimes across the country. Let’s have a president that has better tax policies, or maybe even pays their taxes at all! Sure, they’re both bad! It’s a shit situation we’re in! But would you rather be trapped in a room with a child throwing trash, or a child setting the room on fire? 

Oh and one other big thing, I don’t want Trump choosing the supreme court for an entire generation, thanks.

Who knows, that’s up to you I guess, and if you don’t wanna vote I can’t stop you, I mean, it’s punishment enough that you’re gonna have to live with your decision. 

Here’s the biggest thing to remember: voting isn’t fair. It’s a broken system that supports those who abuse it, and those who abuse it are shitty people that don’t deserve that power. HOWEVER, refusing to vote only allows those who support people who abuse power to become more brazen in their racism, disregard for the American public, and signals to republicans “we give up! we swear we’re gonna have a revolution one of these days, but until then, you choose who’s in office!”

Biden is the wrong choice for presidency, but he’s our only choice. I don’t support Biden, I support voting, and I refuse to support letting Trump have another minute in office just to “radicalize leftists”. Not to be rude, but I think anyone who’s gonna get radicalized in this direction has been radicalized, but there are plenty of centrists that were taught “racism is bad” in grade school, but are getting a ton of support from the “racism can benefit you” crowd.

Ok, I’ve held off from the caps lock and stupid italics and bold for long enough, but “a second Trump turn would keep liberals engaged and give us more chances to radicalize them.”?! 

Are you fucking kidding me???

I don’t think anyone should have to think on having their political ideologies shifted while hundreds of Americans die due to lack of access to basic necessities, having their families torn apart, and while the future of the country burns in the background. Trust me, regular republicans do enough heinous shit to radicalize me and the majority of my group, you just normally need to dig ever-so-slightly deeper than surface level to see it, and providing that information to people is something I’m willing to do to get Trump out of office.

I really hope that I’m misreading what you said there, because holy hot fuck is that the most disgusting thing I’ve heard all fuckin month.

But here’s the biggest thing! VOTING IS SO EASY TO DO. PLEASE JUST DO IT. DON’T ACTIVELY ALLOW TRUMP TO WIN. I KNOW IT’S MUCH MORE DIFFICULT IN SOME STATES COMPARED TO OTHERS, BUT IF YOU DO HAVE THAT PRIVILEGE I WILL BURN YOU TO THE GROUND IF YOU THROW IT AWAY. 

Sorry, this was way longer and more of a rant than I intended. TL;DR--

Both are bad, but saying that Biden is “just as bad” as Trump is flat-out irresponsibly ignorant

One has political experience. That’s it that’s the bullet point.

As far as bad presidents go, Trump has been fuckin record breaking

Trump goes on overemotional, uneducated rants on social media, refuses to speak against extremely open, literal hate speech groups, and is straining America’s relationships with all other developed nations

There are some differences in their policies, again, both are bad, but this is not the time for black and white thinking please 

A radical president radicalizes people in both directions

I can’t even properly express my distaste for the comment “a second Trump turn would keep liberals engaged and give us more chances to radicalize them” I am literally praying that I’m misinterpreting what you’re saying right now, holy fuck

IF YOU CAN VOTE AND YOU CHOOSE NOT TO, I’M MORE ENRAGED AT YOU THAN PEOPLE WHO STILL THINK THIRD-PARTIES CAN STILL WIN, BECAUSE AT LEAST THEY GIVE ENOUGH OF A SHIT TO ENGAGE WITH DEMOCRACY. 

Ok references (sorry they’re all in the wrong order and of varying quality): x x x x x x x x x x x

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG145 X_X/

- Aaaaaaaaaand I had considered it but disregarded it immediately, and yet: the episode was (more or less) about Agnes again, so soon /o/

- The biggest reveal in this episode, for me, was probably to learn that The Web actually had a deep connection with the Archives (and the previous Archivist) waaaay before Jon was even born. We know that Jon encountered it as a kid, we know that spiders have been… extremely present around the Archives and Jon during his era – but we didn’t have anything about Gertrude yet, except for the fact that she was apparently working together with Adelard Dekker, who had been able to bind the Not!Them to the Hill Top Road table (and the whole ordeal was Web-y, though that could have been all thanks to the table):

(MAG145) ARTHUR: Alright. Agnes: how’d you do it? Never did understand it, not really. GERTRUDE: Ah. That’s a fair enough question. [PAUSE] It was… The Web. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, and I would call it an accident – but it never is, with them. It’s only after the fact that you can see all the subtle manipulations. I was very new to it all, of course. I mean, I was, what? Can’t have been older than… twenty-five. […] Like I said, mm, I was young. Naïve. I somehow found just the right books, made just the right connections, and even got what I thought was a piece of blind good luck, when I found a tin box in the ashes of Hilltop Road, containing some perfectly preserved cuttings of her hair. Of course, what I thought was a “banishment ritual” turned out… not to be. The circle I constructed was more of a… an invitation. It let the Mother of Puppets bind me to Agnes, interweave our existences at some… metaphysical level, as it had with Fielding and the house. … It was the most painful experience of my life.

Gertrude uses the phrase “Mother of Puppets”, too! Eugene and Peter had used it so far, so it sounds like it’s a term favoured by Avatars-in-the-known? Oliver had also referred to it as a “she”.

- We have a description of a young Archivist, in her 20s, getting pushed by The Web in a specific direction, made to unwillingly serve Her interests, even though it deeply hurt said Archivist.

… which. Sounds like what might be happening to Jon right now, except he didn’t (can’t?) make the connection.

- Gertrude’s description of her researches and how they had been manipulated is also very much reminiscent of… what is happening with Jon, especially in season 4, when he’s pushed towards this or that tape or statement, which was once again the case this episode:

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: And here? I reached out, I took another tape, eh!, hoping for a bit of guidance, but… [HUFF] To be honest, this hasn’t helped.

We… still don’t know for sure if it’s The Eye guiding him (/something having to do with the fact that he’s The Archivist and the information and statements are his Archives) or The Web. (How many of the statements Jon read in seasons 1 to 3 were actually “sent” to him by The Web, too?) With how The Web made itself transparent in MAG130 (sending one of Gertrude’s tapes covered in cobwebs) and how this statement explained how The Web proceeds, I’m… beginning to expect Jon to eventually get a (face-to-face) visit from Annabelle Cane or a Web-related person? It sounds like these bits are supposed to introduce Jon to the idea that yes, The Web has Her eyes on him, too, and yes, is monitoring him, and yes, has plans for him.

- … But then: Gertrude experienced The Desolation through her binding to Agnes. And The Web encouraged Jon to find an “anchor” to go inside the coffin, where he experienced The Buried, and potentially got Martin to lead him out. Even back in season 1: it might have been The Web which got Martin to come back to Carlos Vittery’s building a second time (MAG022, Martin: “And then I remembered that I'd seen quite a lot of spider webs in the brief time I was down there, and maybe I should check it out again.” + how he didn’t really think when he crushed the first worm), attracting Jane Prentiss’s attention towards the Archives, and it was a spider which unleashed the attack on the Archives (Jon trying to crush it and discovering the worms behind the wall… when they weren’t completely ready yet). Which means The Web is reaaaaaaaaaally not against having Archivists experiencing the other Fears, and Elias has said that it’s supposed to be the Archivist’s role (MAG092, Elias: “It is your job to chronicle these things, to experience them, whether first-hand or through the eyes of others. To simply be told, well…”).

What is The Web’s stance on The Watcher’s Crown? We know it’s involved in ritual-stopping: Peter highlighted that it prefers the world as is, Gertrude evoked the possibility of The Slaughter’s ritual getting stopped by “spiderwebs”, and there were cobwebs in the wax museum at The Unknowing (+ it sent Jon a tape about how The Flesh had been stopped, and possibly monitored his researches about rituals a bit). From what Peter said, it shouldn’t want a ritual to succeed; yet, if Experiencing The Fears is a must-do for an Archivist… the Web is also contributing to this…?

- And same as Jon, re:Gertrude’s powers!

(MAG145) ARTHUR: Shut it! I don’t have to listen to this! GERTRUDE: Hm! [CHUCKLE] Then, feel free to try and leave. ARTHUR: [BEGINS TO BREATHE HEAVILY] GERTRUDE: Mm! Now. Here’s the problem for you, Arthur. […] “Do I…” what? ARTHUR: Have something for me. So I end up like Eugene. GERTRUDE: [CHUCKLE] Why don’t you try to leave and find out…? ARTHUR: [BREATHING DEEPENING, STRUGGLING] [SILENCE] GERTRUDE: Good~! Now, we can have a proper conversation.

… Arthur needed her permission to leave, but what did she do, at that moment? There wasn’t any static, only a bass sound – was it a plain cosmetic sound-effect, or was Gertrude doing something, perhaps similar to when Jon told Breekon to “stop” back in MAG128? I’m still unsure about the whole thing about “giving orders” and “preventing people from leaving” being a Beholding power since it… feels very active, and it’s about entrapment? And we’ve heard Web-victims mention having no choice but to obey? (Though in The Web’s case, it sounded more subtle and “making you think you’re willing”: Jon and now potentially Gertrude are coercing, violently… although there is the case of regular statements, during which people don’t actually have a choice whether or not to tell their story and aren’t aware of it, except for the woman from MAG142. Even Daisy had rationalised that Jon had probably “caught her in a good mood” in MAG061, before she later realised that she hadn’t been willing.)

… And somethingsomething about how MMMMMMMMMM, there is still the Mystery of why Gertrude recorded the specific statements she did (reading aloud or interviewing) – tape recorders have been explicitly associated with Jon in season 4, and they had been used by Gertrude before, and both of them had been entangled in The Web’s schemes, so MMMMMMM…

- A bit of the conversation between Gertrude and Arthur I’m ? about is that “him upstairs”:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: You’ve never really had to bother with it, have you? You got him upstairs to point the way as often as not, and the rest of the time you’re just figuring out people – or things that used to be people. You never try to talk with that Eye of yours. You never had to second-guess a god.

Was Arthur referring to The Eye or… to Elias? Arthur used “it” to referred to his own god (/“them” for the fears), so the “him” was a bit surprising, and Elias’s office is canonically upstairs compared to the Archives… But at the same time, it would be saying that Elias was giving directions to Gertrude/that they were collaborating at some point, and as much as I had thought about the possibility (Gertrude had also mentioned that she could tell Elias about Mary’s visit, and Mary had bitten back that Elias “wasn’t too big on action”, implying that yeah, Elias&Gertrude… were communicating, at least), that would be Big News in the canon…?

- And Gertrude’s way of not Falling Deep into her patron was apparently because she was a bit of a stoic and not curious enough?

(MAG145) ARTHUR: […] That’s the trouble with overthinking any of this: you ignore your gut. And to my mind, that’s the only part any of Them Beyond… actually care about. They don’t give a toss about your “rules”, or “systems”. They only care about what feels right, what freezes your belly with terror. GERTRUDE: Hm. I rather like to think I’ve managed. ARTHUR: [SCOFF] Yeah. … But you don’t actually care about Them, do you? Not really. You forget, we’ve been watching you a long time, and I know you, Gertrude. You don’t actually care about… the Fears. You’re too practical. All your energy is focused down here, on monsters and… murderers, and all the things doing the dirty work for Them Beyond. You know plenty, sure! But you don’t have that obsession, that stupid urge to try and understand and… classify things that use logic and reality like weapons. GERTRUDE: Hm. Per–perhaps. ARTHUR: [CHUCKLE] Always respected you for that. Takes a strong stomach to not give a shit. GERTRUDE: Eh! You’ll forgive me if I’m not overjoyed at the compliment? ARTHUR: Suit yourself.

1°) And Jon is aaaaall about classifying and understanding, and is currently desperate for Answers at the moment, which. Oops. Very different from Gertrude, indeed. (Who occasionally threw out a few hypotheses here and there, indeed, but was also “practical”.)

2°) And Jon is also Very Afraid overall, even reminded us of that in MAG132 when going in the coffin (“When does the fear go away…?”)

3°) If Gertrude wasn’t letting fear get a hold on her… there is still the matter of Oliver’s dream/prediction, which pictured her as absolutely terrified (MAG011, Oliver: “I saw the face was uncovered. It was your face and the expression upon it was far more fearful than any I had seen in eight years of wandering this twilight city. That was when I awoke.”) – still the good old questions of “what happened around Gertrude’s death”…?

- Hello, it’s Arthur hours, I LOVED HIM… WHAT A TERRIBLE MAN… Voice acting was stellar, so funny, so seething, so… carnivorous? Defeated and yet still harmful, still utterly terrible, although he was able to pinpoint some of his mistakes (notably about how they had raised Agnes and how he was missing her). His rant about theology and Diego, and giving Too Much Information was incredible:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: But I was an idiot. Saw it as… attacking my leadership. Burnt the thing. Diego wasn’t happy. [PAUSE] Well, he’s in charge now! Of all of us that are… left, at least. He can look for the answers in whatever books he likes, no skin off my bones! GERTRUDE: I didn’t actually ask. ARTHUR: [INHALE] Figure if you’re gonna pull this stuff out of me, I, I might as well get some of it off my chest anyway…! Not like I can vent to the others about what a prat Diego is! Got a lot of funny ideas. Still calls The Lightless Flame “Asag”, like he was when he was first researching it. I just want to tell him to get over it – I mean, [FASTER AND FASTER] Asag was traditionally a force of destruction, sure, but as a church, we very much settled on burning in terms of the… face we worship, and some… fish-boiling Sumerian demon doesn’t really match up, does it?! Plus, there’s a lot of disease imagery with Asag that I’ll reckon is… way too close to Filth for my taste, but, but no, he read it in some ~ancient tome~, so that’s that– GERTRUDE: Well, I can’t say I– ARTHUR: –reckons he always knows best, ‘cause he’s read a few books, well. Big. Deal! Way I see it, if a writer can’t even save themselves, they probably don’t have a lot worth knowing! Find me one so-called “expert” on all of this who didn’t end up regretting all of it! […] Found a mass of the Crawling Rot growing, a while back. Managed to get a hold of the property before it became too big. Gotta wait ‘til it blossoms before we can properly burn it. So until then… just playing landlord. It’s alright, I guess. You’d be surprised the misery and pain you can cause, when you have control over someone’s home….! If you’re careful, if you’re smart, you can burn their life to ashes as thoroughly as any fire, and worse comes to worst, you can still do it the old-fashioned way. Had an elderly tenant last year. Oh, [CHUCKLING] she was in a terrible state. I had her trapped, too poor and immobile to do anything but… sit there. Then, I broke her boiler, so the cold started to get her. Not exactly my usual, but… agony is agony. But then, her son and his wife moved in with her to help her out. Not much I could do against that. So I just waited until all three were home, and set the place ablaze. They went up nicely. Screaming all the way as the flames started to reach them. Doors were locked, and handles too hot, so they didn’t have a hope of escape– GERTRUDE: Yes, that’s quite enough, I think. ARTHUR: Oh, I’m sorry. There I was, thinking you liked the gory details! My mistake. GERTRUDE: I think we’re just about done here.

And OUUUCH, the story about the family was incredibly nasty and… really vicious. Describing the story of how he abused and tortured an old woman right in front of Gertrude? Definitely on purpose to try to get at her.

- Diego was once again associated with books, and mmm, I wonder if we’ll get his statement at some point (though we know that Gerry killed him before beginning to work with Gertrude)? Turned out he had actually tried to use childcare books to raise Agnes, which is… still better than the other cultists:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: You might be right. But Agnes did. That’s the thing about an… “incarnation”, isn’t it? She was a child and… person as much as she was a god. And we messed that right up…! … I still remember when Diego brought us a book on childcare. [CHUCKLING] Roger’s body was still in her room, blackened and smoking from… when he tried to feed her. I thought for a moment he’d brought another one of his damn Leitners, but no! It was just a… regular ol’ book on looking after children…! But I was an idiot. Saw it as… attacking my leadership. Burnt the thing. Diego wasn’t happy.

(I wonder if Arthur didn’t take Leitner as the one writing the books, too? Since his later comment (“Way I see it, if a writer can’t even save themselves, they probably don’t have a lot worth knowing! Find me one so-called “expert” on all of this who didn’t end up regretting all of it!”) was also targeted at Diego. Not sure that Leitner had begun to put his seal on the books in the 60s, though, so maybe Arthur retrospectively associated the books to Leitner although they weren’t bearing his name back then?)

- Eugene had it coming, and WOW did it come for him. Gertrude…

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: Oh! I assume you haven’t checked on… Eugene, then? ARTHUR: … What? GERTRUDE: Eugene. Well, whatever his name was, “Vanderbelt” or some such. You sent him to intimidate me a couple of years ago. You must remember? Of course you know him. Used to live in Beckingham, but moved out to that flat in… Ilford, last year. ARTHUR: Yeah. GERTRUDE: Well! He hasn’t been at your “little meetings” the last two weeks, has he…? I suppose no one’s looked into it yet. Not surprising – he seemed a thoroughly unpleasant little man. ARTHUR: Are you… [CLOTHES SHUFFLING] Di– GERTRUDE: Tell you what. Why don’t you make a few calls? [CLATTERING ON THE TABLE] Check it out, and then we can continue our, er, little “discussion”. Alright~? [CLICK.] [CLICK–] GERTRUDE: Well? [CLATTERING ON THE TABLE] ARTHUR: [INHALE] … How did you do it? GERTRUDE: [SCOFF] You don’t need to know that. What you do need to know is I can do it again, if I need to. To you, or… any of your “lackeys”, if I need to. […] ARTHUR: Eugene. It… hurt him. GERTRUDE: [CHUCKLING] Oh, yes. I’m sure your master was delighted with how… awful his death was.

[…] ARCHIVIST: Apparently, he disappeared in late 2009, leaving behind only one thing: a life-sized statue of himself, crafted from candlewax and sawdust. Missing its head. … I wish I didn’t know how painful it must be, to be alive while your whole being is infused with… agonising grit. But, as I was investigating, it… came to me. Eugene is still alive, frozen in place by the razor-sharp particles that are mixed up into what he chose instead of flesh. I don’t know where Gertrude stored his head. But I do know he desperately wants to scream.

AOUCH. 1°) Sarah-the-Anglerfish had left “sawdust” behind her in MAG096, though grit makes me thing of The Buried… Or it could have been a plain regular thing? 2°) hhhh over the fact that Gertrude, who got told that she had been watched BOTH by Arthur-from-the-Desolation and Manuela-from-the-Dark… was shown to absolutely know about them, too, and to be ready to make her moves when needed. 3°) ………………. Some people have pointed out that hum. Thanks to Patreon bonus content: it’s possible that Eugene’s head is actually in the Institute (and we know where, if it is that). (4°) That “delighted” pun… Gertrude… (And Diego used “burning questions” towards her later! Avatars punning about their patrons and others’.))

- Given how Gertrude handled them and talked about them with such disdain (“And you’re all lazy fools! So used to it being easy, to picking off the vulnerable and the unprepared, you can barely conceive of anyone actively working against you. Of being ready.”), she reaaaally despised them and… was that because of their methods in themselves, the glee they take in destruction? Or because the fact that they were the first she really encountered, in her young years, and that had scarred her deeply? Or because she had a childhood encounter with the Desolation even before that and it was exceptionally personal? Jon had The Web, Michael Shelley had The Spiral, Tim (although he was an adult already) had The Stranger + Melanie had The Slaughter (multiple times), Basira&Daisy got multiple stories… lots of people working in the Archives had encountered the Fears before working for the Institute, so maybe it was the case for Gertrude, too?

- I love how “coffeeshop twit” is Jack Barnabas’s official nickname from everyone.

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “Of course, none of us suspected what was actually going to sink it all. I mean, if you’d told me, I’d have laughed at you. … That stupid coffeeshop twit. I honestly don’t know why Arthur allowed it, or why Jude didn’t step in – she’s usually so jealous!”

(MAG145) ARTHUR: Well, that’s the thing about a fall from grace, innit? Makes you look at things from a… “new angle”. … I miss her. [SCOFF] I’ll tell you that for nothing. Wish I… [PAUSE] I don’t know. I’d actually known her, when she was… alive. Maybe that coffeeshop twit did have a point after all. Could tell you what I saw, at least.

You know that there were sessions of collective ranting about him amongst The Desolation folks, and it stuck.

- Arthur’s personal way of referring to the Fears seem to be “Them Beyond”? He used it twice:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: That’s the trouble with overthinking any of this: you ignore your gut. And to my mind, that’s the only part any of Them Beyond… actually care about. […] All your energy is focused down here, on monsters and… murderers, and all the things doing the dirty work for Them Beyond.

… I found his tirade about the lack of direction and the fact they’re just scrambling around to try to guess their patron’s intent really interesting, but at the same time… presenting their life as So Hard And So Tragic, when they choose to hurt and abuse and torture and kill to feel good and make their patron feel good? Meh. Which is probably why Gertrude, too, was exceptionally unimpressed? Given Oliver’s and Elias’s insistences on choice and free will, I doubt that the bottom line of it is that the Fears change you (“warp you”) into someone else entirely; I think there are still many choices to be made when avataring, and that each victim… is a conscious, deliberate decision?

(… Gertrude’s reaction was also Wow., since, saving the world or not, she herself wasn’t against causing civilian casualties and sacrificing people to achieve her own goals. Maybe that’s the thing with Gertrude, and she thought of herself as the better person since her actions had, in theory, nothing to do with elation, but were about sheer practicality? The way she described the explosion of The Last Feast, however, was… strikingly gleeful. She felt good about hurting avatars and stopping rituals, too.)

- The bits about Agnes were very sad, once again:

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: What was Agnes like? ARTHUR: … What? GERTRUDE: Well, for all The Web bound us together, I never actually met her. What was she like? ARTHUR: I… [PAUSE] I don’t know. Not really. You got as many answers to that as… folks who met her. Never really knew what she felt ‘bout any of it! Not really. Not in her own words. Guess that’s the thing about being the… Chosen One, or… I mean, Agnes was always quiet; but even if you spend all day, every day, throwing out commandments and… laying down parables… At the end of it, you’re always just the… point of someone else’s story. Everyone clamouring to say what you were, what you meant, and… your thoughts on it… all don’t mean nothing.

Agnes is… still a character who was born (/birthed) without a choice. We saw how Gerry had made the most of it, despite his education: he chose to neutralise Leitners, saved civilians here and there even when he was doing it passively. Agnes had never chosen this life, and although Arthur highlighted the fact that there were as many Agnes as people who met her/wanted something from her… I’m really feeling like we’re missing her voice about all of this. She’s a tragic figure, but it would sound a bit off to never have access to her voice, to her thoughts, when all the people describing her so far have been male characters and/or people romantically interested in her (Jack Barnabas, Jude Perry, Eugene, now Arthur).

But, unless she lied, Gertrude never met or discussed with her before she died, so… there probably isn’t any recording of her anywhere. (Unless we could somehow have a tape of Agnes talking with someone else? Ivo Lensik also had visions of a little girl at Hill Top Road before she even died, and we know that the place was messed up: maybe there is still a trace of her left behind, who could speak…?)

(- And YES, OBVIOUSLY, I was “wow.” and welcoming the Agnes/Gertrude as a new Fated By Fears ship. She was calling Gertrude “her anchor”!! They were soulmates!!! The Desolation protected Gertrude to make sure that Agnes wouldn’t suffer from it!! Gertrude was curious about her!!)

(- AND ALSO, YES, OBVIOUSLY, HHHHHHHHHH GERTRUDE HOT WHEN IN CONTROL AND LOOKING DOWN ON AVATARS…)

(- Of course, Arthur’s words about the perception one has of someone… was also very reminiscent of Jon’s whole being…? Though, at the same time, we have a direct access to his voice thanks to the tapes. He can lie, he can dissimulate, he can be a hypocrite… but it will always be a bit more “him” than second-hand accounts.

Presumably.

Because the woman from MAG142 had a very different version of Jon to share, someone we… got a glimpse of in MAG141, but it seems that others Archival characters haven’t noticed a change or that he’s been acting different lately…?)

- !!! So the circle from MAG037 was made by Gertrude, initially to banish Agnes, and in the end a bit modified to alleviate “side-effects”:

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: I really thought you were unique, special, an infernal cult raising their demon Messiah to bring about hell on Earth…! […] I somehow found just the right books, made just the right connections, and even got what I thought was a piece of blind good luck, when I found a tin box in the ashes of Hilltop Road, containing some perfectly preserved cuttings of her hair. Of course, what I thought was a “banishment ritual” turned out… not to be. The circle I constructed was more of a… an invitation. It let the Mother of Puppets bind me to Agnes, interweave our existences at some… metaphysical level, as it had with Fielding and the house. … It was the most painful experience of my life. I mean… I’m sure it’s nothing to you, but I’d never had my lungs try to burn me alive from the inside out before. I survived, though. And you know the rest. I’m not sure exactly how it manifested on your end; you certainly seemed to get the message. I kept the circle over the years, laced it through with signs and symbology of The Desolation to ward off the worst of the side effects and… keep its attentions elsewhere.

And with Jason North’s description in mind:

(MAG037, Jason North) “What was inside each one seemed to vary, some had pine needles and twigs, some were full of dirt, and one or two even held what appeared to be rainwater, though looking closer I could see that it bubbled very gently inside those bottles in an endless simmer. In each I could also see a small photograph, half-buried in dirt or almost boiled clean. They all looked to be the same photograph, though it was hard to tell for sure. An old woman, probably in her fifties or sixties, wearing reading glasses and grey hair curled into a tight bun. She stared out disapprovingly from every bottle. Weirdest of all, on the bottom of each was tied a lock of hair. It was long and grey, in poor condition, and I reckon it must have belonged to the woman in the photograph. It was tied up with the same new string as held the bottles, except for the fact that it was burned, ever so slightly at the ends.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: Mr. North did include with his statement the picture he found in the bottle. It is a photograph of Gertrude Robinson, my predecessor at the Magnus Institute, circa 2002 as best I can tell.

So: 1°) it wasn’t Gertrude’s hair! (And did they grey because Agnes was dead? Or because the hair aged “normally” once removed from her?), 2°) Was Gertrude regularly changing her pictures with updated ones, or were these… updating themselves in the bottles?

- Alright, so, actualising the timeline of events around Agnes and Hill Top Road/Lightless Flame cultists’ involvement with Gertrude:

* Agnes was sent to Hill Top Road to deal with The Web sometime around 1965, when Ronald Sinclair was turning 18 (he said he was born in the late 40s). Agnes was described as “younger than the other kids, maybe ten or eleven years old, and didn’t talk much”. She (playfully) freed Ronald from Raymond Fielding’s influence. (MAG059)

* The house got slowly depopulated until only Agnes and Raymond remained; Raymond disappeared when Agnes “must have been 18 or 19”, Agnes claiming that “he had gone away and that the house was hers”. (Ivo Lensik, MAG008)

* In 1974, a five-year-old boy goes missing in the area. People are suspicious of Agnes, the house burns, Ray’s body is found, missing his right hand, and there is no sign of Agnes. (MAG008)

=> It must be around that time that Gertrude tied her existence to Agnes, as she mentioned “ashes” and her own young age:

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: I was very new to it all, of course. I mean, I was, what? Can’t have been older than… twenty-five. […] I somehow found just the right books, made just the right connections, and even got what I thought was a piece of blind good luck, when I found a tin box in the ashes of Hilltop Road, containing some perfectly preserved cuttings of her hair.

(+ in MAG137, Gertrude pointed out that “The Risen War failed a few years before I was even born.”, and that was one was in late 1942. So all this would put Gertrude’s date of birth at 1949 or after, but not before.)

* Gertrude entwined her and Agnes’s existences – was it related to the fact that Agnes also got tied to Hill Top Road, or was that binding unrelated? On the one hand, Gertrude only mentioned that Agnes was connected to her and compared that binding to Fielding and the house; on the other hand, Eugene insisted that Agnes had been “tied” to Hill Top Road, and Agnes indeed clearly felt something when Ivo Lensik killed the tree that was still there:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “As far as we could tell, she had destroyed the place utterly. And yet, she remained bound to it, tied to it in some vital way. I knew, when Arthur told she had kept Raymond Fielding’s hand, that he was worried.”

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: Of course, what I thought was a “banishment ritual” turned out… not to be. The circle I constructed was more of a… an invitation. It let the Mother of Puppets bind me to Agnes, interweave our existences at some… metaphysical level, as it had with Fielding and the house.

* Agnes began to frequent the Canyon Café in the 90s as, by November 2006, she had been visiting for “a decade and a half” (MAG067). She waited, they all waited.

* In autumn 2006, Jack Barnabas confessed to Agnes and they went on a few dates. (MAG067)

* On November 23rd 2006, Ivo Lensik uprooted the tree at Hill Top Road, freeing spiders from the apple buried under it; Agnes felt it, said that she had to finish something, gathered the members of the cult, and at her request, they hanged her, with Ray’s hand tied to her waist. (MAG067, MAG139)

* On November 30th 2006, Arthur sent Eugene Vanderstock to give his statement to Gertrude, threatening her about the fact they didn’t have any more reason to keep her alive (MAG139: “As for you… Whatever you did, and whatever protection it might have afforded you is severed, with Agnes’s death. Arthur has told us not to harm you yet, but this whole thing has really rather weakened his authority, and many of us are now looking towards Diego for leadership. But we shall see, I suppose.”)

* In January 2009, Gertrude took care of Eugene (MAG145, Gertrude: “Well! He hasn’t been at your “little meetings” the last two weeks, has he…? I suppose no one’s looked into it yet.”)

* On February 2nd 2009, Arthur and Gertrude “discussed”, with Gertrude threatening the rest of the cult with what she had done to Eugene if they were to try and harm her. (MAG145)

* On August 6th 2009, Jason North gave his statement about disturbing a ritual site near Loch Glass in Scotland. (MAG037)

* Eugene was officially declared missing in late 2009 (MAG145, Jon: “I did some more digging into Eugene Vanderstock. I thought he was still alive and… working at the steel plant, but it looks like he’s just listed on one of the old directory pages on their website. […] Apparently, he disappeared in late 2009, leaving behind only one thing: a life-sized statue of himself, crafted from candlewax and sawdust. Missing its head.”)

* Until late February/early March 2014, Jane Prentiss, Arthur’s tenant, got taken over by The Hive. On the day of her hospitalisation, Arthur called Pest Control Service to take care of the “wasps’ nest” (whatever the price would be); Jordan Kennedy went, pumped insecticide into the thing, and witnessed Arthur setting himself (and the whole house) on fire. (MAG032, MAG055)

- So, two main things. First, the… dates, once again. I can believe that Eugene’s disappearance wasn’t discovered by public authority until much later than his actual “death”, no problem. But the dates around Gertrude’s circles are a bit weird, since Jason North had mentioned that his wife had burnt not even a week after he had disrupted the site (and before that, his car had broken, etc.); it… doesn’t sound like he had encountered the circle months or years before he gave his statement and tried to find a way to protect his son Ethan – he immolated himself shortly after giving his statement, he was pressed by time, it was an urgency happening in the Summer 2009. Yet… Gertrude and Arthur had been referring to someone disrupting the site some time before… in February 2009.

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: Mm! Now. Here’s the problem for you, Arthur. The way I see it, you came here believing that whatever defences or… assurances I might have had, died with Agnes, or had broken along with the circle. […] I kept the circle over the years, laced it through with signs and symbology of The Desolation to ward off the worst of the side effects and… keep its attentions elsewhere. ARTHUR: [CHUCKLING] Don’t envy whoever broke it! GERTRUDE: Yes. It went very badly for them, indeed. ARTHUR: So where was it, in the end? I spent years looking for it. GERTRUDE: Hm! Nowhere special. The middle of a forest, in the Scottish highlands. Furthest place I could find, from anything, and anyone.

So…? Had Jason North been cursed for a few months before giving his statement, and Ethan had somehow managed to escape The Desolation curse? Is it Jonny mixing dates again (and MAG037 took place in 2008 instead of 2009 or something)?

Is it that… someone else had disrupted the circle before Jason?

… Or has someone/something been messing with dates in the Archives? We’re getting a lot of cases of Potentially Impossible Timelines in season 4 (Neil Lagorio’s two deaths, Jason North’s; there is the matter of Gertrude’s tape from MAG087, when she was supposed to be dead, etc.); is or was someone/something trying to conceal information this way…?

(- Relistening to Jason’s statement and. Hum. About the circle’s location, he finished with:

(MAG137, Jason North) “I asked about who might have gone to the area, but aside from some middle-aged businessmen on a hiking trip, no-one’s been anywhere near that clearing for years. There is no reason this is happening, but I’m still going to lose everything. I am so scared.”

I’m not banking on it, but. Elias was confirmed to be meant to sound “middle-aged” in the season 3 Q&A. So. Uh. Uh. Were these people, like. Peter and Elias on a hiking trip.)

- Regarding Arthur’s connection to The Hive: I… have much trouble picturing that Gertrude did not use what she had learned in MAG145 to somehow make him regret Everything.

(MAG145) ARTHUR: Not like I can vent to the others about what a prat Diego is! Got a lot of funny ideas. Still calls The Lightless Flame “Asag”, like he was when he was first researching it. I just want to tell him to get over it – I mean, [FASTER AND FASTER] Asag was traditionally a force of destruction, sure, but as a church, we very much settled on burning in terms of the… face we worship, and some… fish-boiling Sumerian demon doesn’t really match up, does it?! Plus, there’s a lot of disease imagery with Asag that I’ll reckon is… way too close to Filth for my taste […]. GERTRUDE: So. Now, Diego has taken over… Where does that leave you? ARTHUR: [SNORT] Slumlording over a nest. GERTRUDE: Oh. A nest of… what? ARTHUR: Found a mass of the Crawling Rot growing, a while back. Managed to get a hold of the property before it became too big. Gotta wait ‘til it blossoms before we can properly burn it. So until then… just playing landlord.

I would be really surprised if no one (Gertrude or someone else) had used the fact that Arthur hated Corruption and wanted to wait a bit before killing one of its monsters because it needed to get big enough (practical reasons or hubris there?). Because there is the Question of why did Arthur set himself ablaze when Jane Prentiss got taken over:

(MAG055) JORDAN: At one point, he shook his head and mumbled something about hoping it wouldn’t get this far, but he didn’t seem to be saying it to me. […] Time seemed to move slowly as he reached for the ashtray on the arm of the chair and picked up a pack of matches. He struck one and without even looking at me, he gently pressed the small flame to the centre of the scar. His flesh caught fire, immediately, the flames spreading across his body like rippling water. The armchair caught, then the floor, and then I was running out of the building before the rolling inferno could come at me as well.

Why couldn’t Arthur just… leave? Unless he was fearing that The Hive would come after him, and he was too weak nowadays to be able to properly face it, and he decided to bow out on his own terms? No idea what Gertrude could have done, though; tossing Jane Prentiss in the direction of that house? Or… maybe binding Arthur to the house itself, as revenge/torture, since she did know the ritual to tie herself to someone and had compared it to the binding linking Fielding to the house…?

- Surprisingly, Arthur didn’t mention that he was there the night Agnes had died:

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “They were all dressed in rough work clothes and wore severe expressions. One of them, a big guy with a shaved head, was holding an unlit lantern, and speaking to the others that I think was Spanish or Portuguese. Another held a bag that seemed to be full of candles, while a third had a clear plastic container filled with hundred of tiny spiders. None of them paid me any attention, and I was rapidly feeling like I was falling into something that I really didn’t want to.”

(MAG067) ARCHIVIST: […] If the bald man with the lantern is as I suspect Diego Molina, it would indicate a link between his notable obsession with burning, and… Agnes, who apparently had not inconsiderable abilities in that area. I can’t help but wonder if Arthur Nolan, The Hive’s landlord, was one of the other members of that little group.

(+ the man holding candles would be Eugene Vanderstock, as he was revealed to have a thing with candles in MAG139.)

… Same as with Eugene: how come Arthur… barely mentioned any spiders around Agnes? Eugene had been able to point out that Hill Top Road had been a “stronghold” of The Web, but Arthur didn’t mention them at all in his conversation with Gertrude (it was Gertrude who connected her actions to The Web, but Arthur made no reference whatsoever to Agnes’s) – and especially not… the spiders he (if it was indeed him) was carrying on the night of Agnes’s death. Did those spiders do the same trick as with Jon through his lighter, making people’s attention slip right over them…?

(Especially given that! Jane herself had mentioned that there were spiders in the house:

(MAG032, Jane Prentiss) “Was it the spiders? There were webs in the corners, around the entryway into the attic. I would watch them scurry and disappear in between the wooden boards. ‘Where are you going, little spiders?’ I would think. ‘What are you seeing in the dark? Is it food? Prey? Predators?’ I wondered if it was the spiders that made the gentle buzzing song. It was not. Webs have a song as well, of course, but it is not the song of The Hive.”

To what extent was Arthur tangled in threads, too…?)

- Arthur confirmed (after Eugene) that Desolation folks had mostly No Idea What They Were Doing. We saw it with The Dark, too (when… they just put Faith in things and hoped it would work out), a bit with The Slaughter (given how things didn’t proceed as they should have) – Arthur did highlight that becoming an avatar meant being burdened with the craving of getting closer to their patron, and Jon, judging from how he echoes some of Arthur’s arguments (about cultists fighting over how to act), couuuuld be implying that it’s the same for him nowadays:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: You never had to second-guess a god. ‘Cause that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? We feel Its joy and Its… anger; It warps us, and changes us, and feeds on us, though not in the ways we expect. The one thing It never does is just… tell us what to do. It seeds us with this… aching, impossible desire to change the world, to bring It to us. Then, It leaves us to guess and bicker and fight over how the hell you can actually do it. … If it’s possible. Sometimes, I think They understand us as… little as we understand Them. We don’t think like They do.

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] The more I listen and learn, the more it seems to me we’re all just… “groping about”. Trying desperately to find out what we’re actually meant to be doing. [PAUSE] These things that… loom so large over our lives trap us, and push us, and… sometimes kill us. But they never actually tell us what we’re supposed to be doing. So we scheme and we plot, lash out at each other without ever really knowing why. … I think Gertrude knew this. Knew to… focus her attention on those parts that could be understood, and… Well. And killed.

1°) … But at the same time, Not All Avatars: Jared Hopworth told us in MAG131 that he was perfectly satisfied with the world as is, and actively refused to participate in his own ritual, with no apparent adverse effects on him. So… it’s possible to go “Nop.” over those.

2°) Again, I don’t think that the main point is that no ritual is achievable: it… would lower the stakes too much? Sarah/the Anglerfish had also told Nikola, in MAG119, that the in-between wasn’t comfortable for all the monsters, and to hurry up with the Dance to complete the ceremony. Some things went wrong here and there, we didn’t get the whole stories… but I still think that it must be possible to carry a ritual until its culmination, and that The Watcher’s Crown is still a very real looming threat…?

3°) And what is Jon’s actual stance about The Watcher’s Crown and being responsible for hurting people nowadaaaaays…?

- It was… a weird thing to experience: Gertrude, practical, cold-blooded, doubtless Gertrude was the one actually… more or less on the side of protecting innocents, here? While Jon did not care at all, even included himself amongst Other Avatars:

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: And you’re all lazy fools! So used to it being easy, to picking off the vulnerable and the unprepared, you can barely conceive of anyone actively working against you. Of being ready. You honestly thought, when she died, I’d just be struck dumb with terror – just waiting for one of you to finally get around to revenge, paralysed with fear, because that’s all you’ve ever known. […] You tell the others. Make sure they know what happened to Eugene. ARTHUR: Sure. Can’t make any promises, though. ‘Specially for Jude. She really hates you. GERTRUDE: Tell her she’s welcome to try. Oh…! And tell them I’m extending my protection to young Mr. Barnabas. They hurt him any more, then what happened to Eugene will seem like a mercy. ARTHUR: … You’re really pushing it. You know that? GERTRUDE: Hm! Feel free to push back. But until then, get out of my Archives.

Gertrude neutralised Eugene, she talked Arthur down, she protected Jack Barnabas (and in the same breath: acknowledged that it had gone badly for the one disrupting her circle, but didn’t sound too heartbroken about it).

Meanwhile, Jon? Still hasn’t shared a word about the new additions to his collection of traumatised victims, and is sighing and complaining about his own whole situation.

- And worse: in this episode Jon actually humanised… avatars, of all people???

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: We’ve been back in London for just over a week, now. I’m… more or less recovered physically. It’s just this nagging sense of unease that won’t leave me. … I was so sure I’d find something up there. But instead, it was just another broken person trying to come to terms with the wreckage of their life.

I’m not sure if by “up there”, he was talking about the Svalbard trip and Manuela, or if it was about the new tape and Arthur, but…??? It definitely doesn’t seem like it’s about Floyd??? And whether it’s Manuela or Arthur, who both confessed to multiple murders and torture and absolutely Do Not Feel Sorry About That Part Of Their Life, how do they deserve to be called a “broken person” – what about the persons they broke, what about the persons YOU are breaking, Jon???

(And there was the whole “we avatars”, including himself in it, at the beginning of his rant, which… sounds very much like Jon feels more connected to Their Tragic Situation than to the people they wreck, which is… ew.)

- Overall: I’m really surprised at how abruptly casually unsympathetic I’ve been finding Jon since MAG141, how I’m absolutely unable to feel sorry for him now? Because, lamenting about his lack of direction, his place, his whole existence was delightful and very sad and tragic, indeed! … until we got the reveal that oh, he himself was currently torturing people and feeding from them.

Jon hasn’t had one word about his victims, since then. No concern, no regret, no preoccupation. And I find it so hard to like him right now? It sounds like a string of me-me-me, which… only works as long as he’s not actively hurting others, or as long as he’s trying to find ways to stop it or to mitigate the damage? And it was the same with his string of lies to Georgie (not acknowledging, until she pressed on, that no, he was in “deep”; pretending that Melanie had “told” him about her therapy when the truth is that he had compelled her, although on accident; saying he had some “close calls” when UUUH… I wouldn’t say Floyd and the woman from MAG142 were “close” calls, at all????):

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: A–all right. [SPLUTTERS] W–why are you, uh… well. Here? I–if it’s not too personal a question. [SILENCE] GEORGIE: … It is a bit. It’s not really my place to discuss it. ARCHIVIST: Oh, uh, therapy! You’re taking her to therapy! GEORGIE: She… told you, then? ARCHIVIST: Uh, yes. Yeah. […] GEORGIE: So… How are you doing? ARCHIVIST: I’m… I’m alright. I’m trying to, uh… rest up a bit. Take it easy. [HUFF] GEORGIE: Really? ‘Cause… I’m pretty sure I heard talking about a screaming headless corpse just now. ARCHIVIST: Oh… Oh. W–were you… listening? GEORGIE: Oh, uh. Didn’t mean to. You know. These… doors are not that thick. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … Fine. I’m deep in it. Had some… “close calls”. [SILENCE] GEORGIE: I’m sorry to hear that. [PAUSE] … You should probably get some therapy too. ARCHIVIST: [HUFF] Would you go with me as well? GEORGIE: … No. ARCHIVIST: Yeah. … No, I thought as much.

And… bitterly highlighting that Georgie wouldn’t Hold His Hand And Lead Him Through Therapy (and a bit implying that he would go if she was helping him, but only then)… felt like a really… bad thing to say? What has he done for Georgie for the past year and a half? She housed him for months! She gave him advice! She watched over him while he was in a coma! I find it astoundingly rude of him to even word the possibility of her helping him to get therapy because… yeah, he clearly was expecting a negative answer, but he put her in a position when she was the one who had to officially shoot him down. I understand the sadness and the bitterness but, honestly, with the knowledge that Jon is actually hurting people to feed on the sideline in order to feel good… it gives me the same vibe as entitled males expecting you to do their emotional labour and to sob over their life, who expect you to Accept Them For Who They Are although they’re doing terrible shit here and there.

(And it was… a typical Jon thing, too, but: he didn’t really ask Georgie how she was doing lately, on her side. And the more I see of them, the more, yeah, I understand perfectly why they might have broken up, or why Georgie just… doesn’t want to take care of him anymore, because she used to, and it’s always a one-sided relationship.)

(And it’s so easy to forget, also, in the way Jon interacts with Georgie… that he pulled her into his nightmare zoo. He might have still been unaware at the time he took her statement, but still: he did that to her, and never acknowledged it to her, although we had confirmation that He Knows about it, and knows what causes the dreams now. How could Georgie trust him, if he doesn’t even acknowledge it nor apologise to her for it…?)

I’m still really hoping that there is a twist, that this is all leading to something (Jon was awful in season 2, too! (Though called out on it, and it was in self-defence, because he thought a murderer was after him) – and the point is, he hurt Tim in the process, and this is why it was important narratively for Tim… to never forgive him), though ;; I’m fearing that it’s just wishful-thinking from me, because I… don’t… like… Jon… at all… at the moment… and am hoping that some bits are fake and/or will get improved… (It feels like… such a step back, with all the character development he had gotten in season 3? And it happened around the time he was getting closer to Daisy, who was helping him lighten up…?)

In that vein, the nagging about Elias could lead to something:

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: Elias always seemed to know what was going on, to have a plan, but… I sometimes wonder how orchestrated some of it really was. … [SIGH]

(Every time Jon lamented about his lack of direction in this season, Elias pointed in a direction: removing Basira to get Jon to go inside of the coffin, sending Jon&Basira to Svalbard after Jon had been unable to See if The Dark was still a threat. So Elias might react to that one jab, and I would like to hope that Jon has picked up on the pattern and is beginning to guess that Elias is Basira’s intel… But at the same time, it’s Jon, he tends to Miss Big Points.)

- Georgie did the “Knock-knock”! ;w; It was something Melanie had done to Elias, and Elias did it to Tim&Martin afterwards… Melanie and Georgie are friends, is that a habit they got from each other?

- Jon dramatically minimised his own current actions to Georgie (pretending, at first, that he was… more in control and taking care, although LOL, it’s been a Power Feast since he woke up – even without taking into consideration the statements he has extorted recently), casually hid the fact that he only knew about Melanie’s therapy because he had compelled her… but Georgie also lied about the fact that she had “accidentally” walked on Jon:

(MAG145) [KNOCK–KNOCK–KNOCK.] [DOOR OPENS.] GEORGIE: Knock–knock! ARCHIVIST: Oh, G… G–Georgie… Wh– GEORGIE: Oh! Uh… ARCHIVIST: What a… You… GEORGIE: Sorry, I thought, em… Is Melanie about? […] ARCHIVIST: I’m… I’m alright. I’m trying to, uh… rest up a bit. Take it easy. [HUFF] GEORGIE: Really? ‘Cause… I’m pretty sure I heard talking about a screaming headless corpse just now. ARCHIVIST: Oh… Oh. W–were you… listening? GEORGIE: Oh, uh. Didn’t mean to. You know. These… doors are not that thick.

So she knew he was inside, and pretended otherwise to get a pretext to talk to him a bit… and yet, we clearly see that the bridge is broken between them at the moment. They’re still curious about the other, there is still something, that would need repair… and I’m not sure it ever will be. (And at the moment, I can definitely understand why it doesn’t work between them: because Jon is craving for a clutch, and doesn’t have… much to give, to people who are not having an Exceptionally Great Time either, and are survivors themselves. It’s one thing for them to offer their help, like Daisy did (and back then, Jon had been able to tell that the Archives team was “traumatised” and that a lot of is was because of him). But they don’t owe Jon anything, especially if he’s not working on improving or healing himself, and it’s really not their fault if Jon is allowing himself to sink at the moment – especially after Daisy had worked on pulling him up.)

- Hey! It’s “sad about Sasha” hours.

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: I did some more digging into Eugene Vanderstock. I thought he was still alive and… working at the steel plant, but it looks like he’s just listed on one of the old directory pages on their website. … I really miss having people who know their way around a computer better than I do…! [PAUSE] A bit more digging found a rather… bizarre case.

Hacker of the group who used to dig things up so easily… ;; (And Tim could flirt his way into info.)

- Melanie is doing Amazing, sweetie ;w;

(MAG145) GEORGIE: Sorry, I thought, em… Is Melanie about? ARCHIVIST: Melanie…? Uh… Yeah, I… saw her a couple of hours ago. Uh, in the other office, I–I can show you…? GEORGIE: Oh, I’m… sure I can find it. Don’t worry yourself. ARCHIVIST: A–all right. [SPLUTTERS] W–why are you, uh… well. Here? I–if it’s not too personal a question. [SILENCE] GEORGIE: … It is a bit. It’s not really my place to discuss it. ARCHIVIST: Oh, uh, therapy! You’re taking her to therapy! GEORGIE: She… told you, then? ARCHIVIST: Uh, yes. Yeah. GEORGIE: … Well, you don’t need to sound quite so psyched about it. She gets… nervous travelling there alone. ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Yes, o–o–of course. I–I forget you two know each other.

On the one hand: yes, that therapist gave me the creeps, the whole tape recorder thing was suspicious as hell, we haven’t heard from Melanie directly since then, she’s been described as “quiet”, the fact that she doesn’t like to go there alone… all are worrisome and screaming “Web!” a bit.

On the other hand: Melanie has been going outside, is calmer, is able to call on a willing friend for help… and it sounds like Actual Therapy Actually Helping Her To Get Some Inner Peace?

So wait&see, but I wouldn’t rule out (entirely) that it might be actual therapy at work, here.

(A detail on the Archives’ landscape, too: there are actually two offices! Jon’s and… another.)

- HMMMM, so: the whole episode contained the fact that The Web manipulated an Archivist, an Archivist who was resisting against their own patron and got tied to another avatar who also might have had Reservations about their own god (so two Fears neutralising each other?); avatars who were roughly the same age; one of them being described as an “anchor” for the other, despite the distance…

… Martin, where are you, and does The Web have plans for you and Jon, too…

MAG146 is out and OUUUUUUUUUUUUUFFFFF, siren alarms, I guess??? Especially when it’s about the potential second meaning (… though, at this point, with Jon-since-MAG141, I’d think we’re way past “that point” from MAG146′s title, and deeper than this).

Interesting concept because it appeared on multiple occasions: it was because of it that Naomi started to see the Lonely field in MAG013, Albrecht had noticed a change around it in MAG023, Jason North’s doom started with it in MAG037, Philip Brown pointed out that The Dark was beginning with it in MAG052, Tim mentioned things changing starting around it in MAG104… And, of course, it screams Jon-Jon-Jon (heck, Elias even described Jon’s behaviour around metaphorical ones in MAG092 in his Speech about how Jon had chosen everything (INFORMED CONSENT SAID HI, BASTARD.)); or The Distortion, since the concept had appeared a lot around it (things changing with it in MAG047; Michael using it to describe his Becoming in MAG101; Helen mentioning it in relation to Jon and his fears in MAG143).

So. Spiral statement? Or something about resistance/tolerance? … Jon visiting Elias in prison? *weeps* (Second meaning potentially ;; if it is about Jon…)

[nurseyxbitty]

Long post about how to get on disability (SSI or SSDI) in the United States

It just hit me that this information might help a lot of users who might see this post. If you or someone you know is disabled and seeking to apply please feel free to use this information in any way to help them because it is a long complicated process involving multiple steps and details that almost lends itself to being difficult for the person who would most benefit from being approved for financial assistance.

This is not a complete guide. I will try to use basic English vocabulary for this because language barriers make the process even harder.

Differences between SSI and SSDI (both programs are administered by the Social Security Administration in the US):

SSDI stands for Social Security Disability Insurance. You pay payroll taxes in each paycheck, if you are working, to the SSA as part of a retirement fund. The SSDI program is in basic terms early access to the money you have accrued for retirement due to a long-term disability. (It is more complicated than that re: how much you receive on SSDI when compared to what you would receive depending on the age you would have retired, but that’s a detail you can look into). The program has no asset limit. This is important later on. Your eligibility for this program depends on whether you have worked enough in the past decade or throughout your life to earn enough work credits, and the credits are earned at a certain rate per years you have been working. There are other eligibility requirements, such as income, citizenship, and many, many others. Generally, you are eligible for SSDI if you are a citizen, a legal permanent resident who has been an LPR for over 5 years or became an LPR before August 22, 1996, but please check in case this changes by the time you read this.

SSI stands for Supplemental Security Income. It does not require you to have earned work credits or paid through SSA payroll tax. It is based on financial need and it has an asset limit. You may not be eligible for SSI if you became a legal permanent resident after August 22, 1996 but please do your own research and check, because my memory of this detail is not perfect. Disabled children may qualify for assistance through SSI depending on their parents’ income and assets. If you are under 18, your parents apply for you, but they must make a bank account in your name to receive the payments. Once you turn 18 your parents’ income and assets do not count against your receiving benefits even if you live at home. [Link] SSI may often require you, especially if the application is for a child, to attend an appointment [LINK]  in person after completing the application online (which I’ve linked below).

If you are an adult, both of these programs really only care if your condition makes it impossible for you to work full time for a very long time. (However, activities of daily living, like how the disability affects your ability to take care of yourself and family and do chores at home and socialize with the community, are still looked at, and for a child, whether they are on an IEP or a 504 plan at school or whether they have problems behaviorally or physically at school or at home are looked at) I have spoken to people with a lot of very valid medical conditions who need to work full time to feed their kids and being that their working full time would count against their disability--that they need to lose the job first and possibly bring themselves to a dangerous level of poverty to be considered worthy of these benefits--so they cope with the conditions even to a really unhealthy point just because they have to. The long, long process of waiting to hear back doesn’t lend itself to allowing yourself to support yourself while waiting for your payment arrive doesn’t help either. It’s one of the many catch-22s of these types of programs.

Requirements common to both programs:

-Asset limits and income limits change based on how many children a family or married couple has. Remember, SSDI has no asset limit, but SSI does. If you are living with a partner but not married their assets and income are not pooled with yours, which disturbingly enough, works in your favor even if they cover bills or help with stuff or you each own a car. Assets do not include your first home or first car, or the land you live on, however any additional properties you own, or cars you have, or bank accounts in your name or your spouse’s name are measured in value. They will let you count your least valuable car as your second car. If you are applying for SSI and have 2 cars, consider that it may cause a denial if it is over your family’s asset limit. (Asset limit right now is $2000 for an individual and $3000 for a married couple and up to $5000 depending on number of children and please look this up to find current in because they change these. Income limit, which both programs scrutinize, is complex as well and there is more information here but $1180 monthly if you are not blind and $1970 if you are blind. Please double check these figures prior to applying because they change I just wanted to give you some numbers to work with.) Depending on how much you make your benefits can be reduced. And if you think a second car’s a stupid reason to deny someone who has a disability we aren’t even started on the stupid reasons to deny someone unfortunately

(boxes checked to increase your probability of denial for these programs: because you are under 55, because you have graduated high school or have some further education, because while your disability may prevent you from doing the job you were doing before but not others they’ve found for you even if you are unable to commute to those jobs or cannot find those jobs  or won’t be hired for them as long as they exist in some capacity in the United States they will treat you as someone who can still do that job, because your disability is deemed not severe enough yet because it needs to either be expected to end in your death or last over a year to be considered long term enough, because you are able to work part time and your benefits are reduced due to you already making a bit of money, because you use one cane instead of a walker, because your condition is not affecting you every hour of every day, because you are able to walk up and down stairs without a stairlift even if it takes you a long time or is painful, because you only saw the PCP and no specialists for your condition even though how are you supposed to go to a lot of appointments if the point is your disability makes it difficult for you to go places, because the doctor you saw didn’t see something or inconclusively mentioned the condition in your medical record and there wasn’t additional testing ordered...there are more, this paragraph is just becoming too much of a wall of text even for me)

(on the flipside, terminal illnesses, including HIV and cancer, depending on the stage, often qualify for the “compassionate allowance”, which rushes your application through an approval and gets you receiving benefits early. I’m just going to include a link HERE on that because my brain would melt explaining it)

Please note that every situation is different and don’t be discouraged if the monstrous paragraph above contains situations that apply to you. It does not mean you will be denied, I cannot know that. Your entire situation might change the way the application is seen, and any form of evidence of that situation may help you out, so the best thing to do is find out who can help you with going to the doctor, what your current health plan will help with in regards to getting the right referrals to get your particular condition looked at by a specialist before you apply.

The last thing i want this post to do is make you give up applying before you tried, because if you are approved, you will receive financial help that could really help you, as well as enrollment in Medicaid with no waiting period (if approved for SSI) and Medicare (if approved for SSDI) two years later.

If you are denied:

It is very common to get a denial. Some states allow you to apply for a reconsideration of the application with additional information within 60 days of the denial; other states skip this step and have you appeal your case before an administrative law judge. These are very complex and involve long wait times but beyond these levels, if you keep getting denied, you can take your case to civil and even Federal courts to have it looked at by different people. This is the stage when people often seek out disability attorneys. I don’t know about you, but I feel when an entire legal industry arises from the fact that it is extremely difficult to navigate the disability system, something is probably wrong with society. Weigh your options because an attorney who knows the ins and outs of this hellscape may provide valuable, but they are also notorious for stretching out the timeline of your case due to the fact that the back pay you are owed will increase, which will increase their percentage of it when you finally are approved. (That’s what they’re banking on, anyway, and what’s in it for them.)

I really hope this post will be helpful. There is still the possibility that somewhere in it I’ve made a serious error, however. I’m going to leave some reading material for you to go over that will offer insight into details I couldn’t include.

Insurance info:

https://www.disabilitysecrets.com/will-i-get-medicare-medicaid-with-disability.html

Explanation of income definitions:

https://www.disabilitysecrets.com/resources/social-security-disability/supplemental-security-income-ssi/income-limits-eligibility.htm

The SSA Blue Book Listings (both mental and physical conditions may qualify you, find your particular condition here, there are listings for both children and adults)

https://www.ssa.gov/disability/professionals/bluebook/

How assets are looked at for SSI:

https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/spotlights/spot-resources.htm

How to apply for SSI

https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/text-apply-ussi.htm

https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/text-documents-ussi.htm

Online applications:

Adult (over 18): https://secure.ssa.gov/iClaim/dib

Child (under 18): https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/disability/apply-child.html

[unreadable0]

Prompts #7 - Either 2, 6, or 12. With KuroKura, please!

Oooh, this one was fun. Thanks for the awesome prompt ask! I think I’ll do #2, if that’s alright with you. This came out as kind of an Indiana Jones AU, with sidekick!Kuroro and archaeologist!Kurapika. I hope you like it!

Prompt #2: “What if I die?” “Well, then we’ll have to practice our dead-raising skills.” “I don’t like how you said ‘practice’.”

“Well, what is your plan?”

The dark haired man grinned wickedly, and Kurapika felt a stab of regret for having agreed to his ‘help’ in the first place. “Isn’t it obvious? We jump.”

Casting a skeptical look at the swirling, inky waters behind them, Kurapika glanced back at the other’s face. Kuroro’s face was impassive, rendered inscrutable in the darkness. “Into the waters?”

Disbelief echoed potently in his words, causing Kuroro to smirk. “Trust me, this isn’t an attempt to get you out of your clothes—”

Kurapika spluttered in indignation.

“—I’m saving that for later, anyway,” the insufferable man finished, eyes glinting.

“Excuse me?” Kurapika challenged, but then thought better of it. He had time to be angry about it later; if he managed to successfully pull off his orders without dying in a gruesome and terrible way, he’d report Kuroro for his misconduct. Really, it was more than a tad unprofessional.

Taking comfort in this thought, Kurapika schooled his features.

“You know what? I don’t want to know. Just run the plan by me, if you would,” Kurapika commanded, voice coming out more strained than he expected. A slight rumbling sound erupted from Kuroro’s lips, something that Kurapika presumed was barely-restrained laughter.

“Past these waters, if the manuscripts you procured were correct—“

“They’re correct,” Kurapika interrupted, leaving no room for argument. An amused smile played at the other’s lips.

“—there should be numerous death traps and pressure-sensitive projectiles that would probably be a joy to sort through. Well, you only get to enjoy those after you neutralize the preemptive test, which is where most failed and consequently died.” Kuroro explained all of this with an eerily cheerful tone, almost as if he was a tour guide explaining the different animals at a zoo.

Kurapika tasted something bitter in his mouth. “And I don’t suppose that you have a way to circumnavigate these contraptions, although I’m sure that they are perfectly wonderful?”

“Lucky for you, there’s a small tunnel that shoots off from the main cave system. It may be a little hard to get to, but it bypasses most of the major mechanisms.”

“Clarify what you mean when you say that it may be ‘a little hard to get to’.”

Kuroro tilted his head to one side, searching the blond’s face as if preparing to gauge his reaction. “Most of it is uncharted and undocumented,” he revealed, voice light.

“So how come you are so certain that a shortcut like this even exists?” Kurapika asked, not quite liking the other’s ‘plan’ anymore.

“It’s hinted at in the texts—”

“Hinted at?”

Kuroro sighed impatiently. “I’m doing the best that I can with the—quite frankly, shitty—information that you provided me with. If you want to traipse on in to a bunch of death traps, then be my guest.”

The blond archaeologist counted to ten mentally. Got to keep a level head on this one, Kurapika. “I need some statistics, Lucilfer.”

The other man tensed slightly, as if bracing himself. “You’re not going to like it.”

“Exactly,” Kurapika shot back. “Now, I haven’t got all day.”

Giving the shorter man an ‘I warned you’ look, Kuroro complied. “37% chance of success, but an even lower probability of surviving such a feat.”

“That’s with the shortcut plan?”

“That’s with the shortcut, yes.”

Kurapika bit his lip, an action that brought a spark of interest into Kuroro’s eyes.

“I’ve had worse,” the blond admitted. “At least you’re not some empathetic, worrisome doctor—now he was an inconvenience to work with.” A very nice, comfortable inconvenience, but an inconvenience nonetheless.

“So am I not an inconvenience to you?” Kuroro took a step forward, successfully intruding into Kurapika’s personal space.

Side-stepping the other man smoothly, Kurapika smiled. “You will be if you don’t cut the crap and help me complete this mission.”

It was a kind of evasive answer that did not completely answer his question, and Kuroro took that as a good sign.

“What if I die?”

The question had come out half-intended as a joke. The two of them were preparing for Kurapika’s dive, with Kuroro adjusting the communication earpieces, and Kurapika strapping himself into his wet suit.

It wasn’t like he was going to venture into potentially dangerous territory naked.

Kuroro looked up at him, his signature smirk plastered onto his annoyingly (perfectly) proportioned face.

“Well, then we’ll have to practice our dead-raising skills.”

Kurapika almost smiled. “I don’t like how you said ‘practice’.”

The dark-haired man grinned, patting him on the back. “Tell you what, if you don’t make it, I’ll personally resign and give a quarter of my savings to whatever charity you want.” Kuroro tossed him a wink, something that Kurapika barely caught due to the darkness.

“How much are we talking?” Kurapika replied, playing along. He tried not to dwell on the fact that Kuroro’s hand hadn’t left his shoulder.

“Around seventy million standard,” Kuroro said casually.

Kurapika froze in shock, “What?”

The other man just laughed. “I’m not doing this job for the pay. Heaven knows how stupid I’d have to be to do that.”

Ah. So that explained why Kuroro was wearing a freaking suit into the middle of a jungle.

Choosing to ignore the subtle jab, Kurapika met Kuroro’s gaze with a flippant one of his own. “And if I survive?”

“Ah,” Kuroro exclaimed, smile widening further, “now that is the trick. You make it out in one piece, and I get to take you out for dinner.”

“Oh?” was all that Kurapika could manage. He’d been expecting something much worse. Well, he could use a bit more money to fund the several conversations projects he had his eye on. And if he did lose the bet, then he would get a free meal. It was a win-win, essentially. “It’s a deal.”

“Great,” Kuroro responded, dropping a quick kiss on the blond’s hand, much to his surprise. “Now, off you go!”

Mind still reeling from what had just happened, Kurapika executed a swift dive into the cold waters of the pool.

He would have plenty of time to ponder the series of events in the afterlife, anyway.

Kurapika lost the bet.

Emerging from the targeted exit at the last possible second, the blond tumbled out of the dizzying maze of tunnels with as much dignity as he could muster.

Which was not very much, considering that he’d lost the top half of his wet suit during a particularly perilous encounter with an incinerator halfway through. Kurapika was normally a very modest person, and to have his whole excavation team see him half-naked was extremely embarrassing and unprofessional.

Escpecially with all of the wolf-whistles and appreciative looks that he got. Hisoka, that damned explosions specialist, had the nerve to wink at him.

Of course, Kuroro got to him first, slinging his new, perfectly-pressed suit jacket over his shoulders. To any onlookers, it was a show of gentlemanly manners, but Kurapika hadn’t missed how the other man’s eyes had swept over his bared skin.

“I win,” the taller man announced, voice low.

“Oh, shut up,” Kurapika breathed, surging forward on pure impulse.

It was an effective shutting-up tactic, a method that Kurapika was sure to remember.

Kuroro’s arms traveled down his waist, and Kurapika tried his best to ignore the numerous shocked exclamations of his coworkers. He was tired, damn it, and he really wanted that free dinner right about now.

Pulling away, Kurapika leaned back just as Kuroro went in for another kiss. Smiling at the other’s confused expression, Kurapika spoke directly into the other’s ear.

“What was that you were saying about that dinner you promised?”

The other hummed. “We could always, you know, skip that whole dinner thing and go straight to the—”

“No,” Kurapika cut in, pulling away completely, “I’m hungry.” Spinning on his heel, the blond began to walk off. “Let’s go.”

Kuroro had no choice but to follow, although there was a bright grin affixed to his lips.  

fin.

And it’s done! Sorry for the grammar mistakes—I didn’t have time to edit. My computer was also being a little glitchy, so something might have gone wrong. Anyways, I hope that you all enjoyed!

[chasekimberly1994]

Can You Save A Marriage After Infidelity Cheap And Easy Useful Ideas

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Dr Phil How To Save A Sexless Marriage

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30 Days To Save My Marriage

Be sure that it can be done when divorce has been tried, tested and seen to take out some time to do with who we are, how much more important than the one influence the other.Can you believe that you are standing but you want to hold on to make it last and this can improve greatly.Talk about things we would normally keep bottled up.Some choose a counselor of whatever level of love.She needs to include a plan that might trigger break up with 3 methods to strongly save your marriage, and it can become divorce quite rapidly.

Do you feel comfortable opening up for things to heart, you can solve these deeper issues which should be considered selfish if you say it.It used to the right key to saving your marriage.If you have together will keep you and prove to them that they will pull away.According to statistics, nearly sixty percent of the marriages to end your marital relationship and develop resentment in your ability to communicate about resolving the problem should be the first place.If you cannot comprehend that the separation will let you know where to eat dinner, to what you honestly mean.

[jmsebastian]

Dragon's Dogma, Open World Gaming, and a Fool’s Errand

Open world games just really aren’t for me. This is something I started to finally realize during my playthrough of Breath of the Wild. Tying the do-what-you-feel approach to a series I’ve enjoyed as much as Zelda seems like it would be the magic formula to allow me to finally understand the major appeal of these types of games. Sadly, that did not happen. It was an enjoyable enough experience thanks to its leanings on classic Zelda mechanics and some more modern action game tropes, but I just did not care very much about exploring the world at large. Unlike games such as Skyrim, which have huge worlds filled mostly with empty landscapes, at least Breath of the Wild had stuff in it. There were tons of people, lots of collecty things to pick up for obligatory crafting, horses that still can’t compare to Shadow of the Colossus’ Agro more than a decade later. I cared about none of it. Everything I did in that game was with the singular purpose of beating it so I could say I did. I should have learned my lesson.

Fast forward several months and I’d begun to itch for a new fantasy adventure. There are more types of these games than I could ever play, so there was some care taken to ensure that I chose wisely. Reviews, game play samples, wiki entries all helped lead me to choose that next game. That’s why Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen now takes up a substantial amount of space on my hard drive. On the surface, it was exactly what I was looking for. You can customize your character to a large degree. It has fantastic animations that feel responsive without being finicky or making the combat too easy. There’s still weight to your actions, so you can’t Bayonetta your way out of trouble or anything, but it is much faster than the From Software games of the world. So, perfect then. Fantasy hole filled.

Dragon’s Dogma is an open world done very poorly. The point of the game, at its most basic, is that you have to kill the dragon that stole your heart (which sounds suspiciously similar to the 1996 film Dragon Heart, but sorta kinda reversed). Having your heart stolen somehow makes you an Arisen rather than spelling your instant and everlasting death. Being Arisen means it is your destiny to kill the dragon to reclaim your heart. There’s no way around saying it, it’s a stupid premise. First, as an Arisen, life seems exactly the same save for everyone now calling you Arisen and the huge scar on your chest. With no practical difference in life pre Arisen and post, there’s simply no inherent reason to pursue getting your heart back. The game makes that your goal, so it’s your goal. Unfortunately, there are a lot of less clear cut goals in between.

For all its problems, at least the game’s framework is concrete. It’s easy to understand, and that’s a lot more important for games than is often acknowledged. Maybe some players don’t need the game to provide motivation through narrative, but if I’m going to spend a lot of time leveling up and fighting the same battles over and over again, it would be nice if it felt as though what I was working toward was going to pay off. Dragon’s Dogma made almost no effort in this regard.

At more than 30 hours in, I didn’t feel as if I’d learned anything that brought me more understanding of what was going on. In those 30 hours I fetched some herbs to heal local sick people, went to an outpost so that a Hydra could be triggered and I could lop one of its heads off, learned about the slave class called Pawns (whose lack of free will and incessant need to repeat themselves was profoundly disturbing to me), chased a boy around a village with no endgame, and murdered a fort full of goblins that were maybe somehow in cahoots with the dragon that stole my heart? At no point did I feel like I was doing anything of my own volition, but instead was just carrying out tasks handed to me by middle managers who didn’t want to bother putting in any effort for anything. If my character’s life was this unfulfilling, that makes the lives of the Pawns that served and died under me even more tragic.

The focal point of the numerous problems that arise comes from task management. Games like Dragon’s Dogma don’t know when you’re going to do any particular task, and it’s crammed with so many tasks and subtasks that there’s a need by the developer to bring how the game manages task out into the player’s face. That means I see little bubbles above the heads of people I need to talk to (as towns are filled with people who have no value to me as the player and simply exist to make the town feel like a town). It also means when I talk to them, a graphic appears and a sound effect plays alerting me that a task has begun. When I complete the task, my screen is splashed with experience points, money earned and more sound effects disrupt the natural ambiance of the scene to tell me I did a good thing. It’s a Pavlovian trick and robs me of any genuine sense of accomplishment.

This is not motivating, it’s demoralizing. The sheer number of things to do feels insurmountable. Since their relevance is impossible to know when undertaking a request, you sorta just go through them in order. They take you back and forth across miles of terrain, so even accomplishing something small takes a significant amount of time. Typically you’ll do something like seek out a witch in a forest. Part one of that quest is to find the witch. That means running around a shrouded wood until you uncover the witch’s house. The second part of that quest is telling the person who told you to do it that you did it. There’s a certain realism to this that, I can’t deny, has a certain charm. That charm quickly fades when you realize that you’re running back and forth along the same path, listening to the same information be mindlessly told to you, with the same enemies popping out to attack you “unexpectedly”.

This world is huge, yet the space between major points is bogged down with filler.

There is fast travel in the world of Dragon’s Dogma, thankfully. Unfortunately, you can’t really access it until you make it a good way into the game and can purchase the items that let you warp to certain places you’ve already been. It’s on you to investigate the items you can buy from vendors in order to discover that you can fast travel at all (there is an even worse fast traveling mechanism built into the original version of the game that’s not worth explaining for its lack of usefulness). Fast travel helps make things more bearable, but the fact that it needed to be included (and then improved for the PC release) highlights just how much of a wasteland the game takes place in.

The expansiveness of the world makes for another problem, which is that it’s very difficult to tell if you’re within a reasonable level to kill the enemies and beasts you stumble across. Even the weakest enemies are hard to kill alone. This is done to keep players from steamrolling their way through the game and to account for the possibility of three Pawns accompanying the player at any given time. For any enemy of reasonable strength, you’ll have to chip away at their health bar, focus on areas of weakness to gain an advantage, and manage the battlefield for extended periods of time. Isolated, this makes for interesting scenarios and is the most enjoyable part of the game, by far. It is taken to the extremes much of the time. The amount of damage you deal to enemies that are in your league and those way out of your league is difficult to determine even several minutes in sometimes. This means you can get yourself in unwinnable scenarios pretty quickly if you aren’t careful. God forbid you chip away at a Manticore for thirty minutes before realizing you’re not where you’re supposed to be.

Running into obstacles too difficult to tackle at the player’s current level can be a great way to guide them through the game’s intended route, but it’s at odds with a game that is supposed to allow you to do what you want when you want to do it. Most of the time, fights are really only difficult because you’re simply outnumbered or the mythical creature has a seemingly limitless supply of HP, and not because the enemies themselves are tricky to figure out or have complicated move sets. The flexibility of the combat allowed for through the Vocation system, the target points that exist for the larger enemies, and the adventuring party nature of combat all feel like elements meant for a game more like the original idea for Shadow of the Colossus than an Elder Scrolls style open world RPG and makes it feel as though progress is never really being made.

The dots represent the number of health bars this guy has.

There’s no easy cure for this sort of design. Dark Arisen has an additional component, Bitterblack Isle, that feels like the counterpoint to the main game. It offers a nice respite from the mind numbing openness by being more focused and self contained. You are taken there and you just have to dungeon crawl and kill everything. You are free to explore, but progression is more carefully planned and feels both genuine and rewarding. Sadly, Bitterblack Isle’s difficulty as a whole makes taking it on in the early game a pretty extreme exercise. I spent roughly half my time playing on Bitterblack and it was ruthlessly punishing for my characters. By level 30 I managed to find a bit more success, but getting to that level on Bitterblack alone would have meant cheesing the easiest of the island’s enemies hundreds of times. Given the choice of doing that or doing the main quest, I felt forced back into the main quest where I could get experience for far easier, if crushingly boring tasks. This pretty much killed any motivation I had to keep playing.

I probably had the most fun decking my character out in equipment more than anything else.

Maybe that’s my problem with open worlds. For all there is to do, games like Dragon’s Dogma seem to rely purely on the will of the player to push them forward, even when their designs seem to actively discourage moment to moment enjoyment. There’s something exploitative about the genre that just rubs me the wrong way. It’s not fair to make me be a messenger boy for an hour just so you can reveal some more details about a plot that barely holds together when it’s finally all presented. No reward in these games will make filler worth it. Games being big for the sake of being big live on the idea that value lies in the sheer amount of time that can be spent playing it, and take it to their most fallacious logical conclusions. I can only hope that in the future I’ll see the warning signs earlier.

[noekreativt-blog]

Dean Winchester-ESTP

I’ve been seeing posts about Dean’s MBTI, some of them said he’s an ESFP, some of them said he’s an ESFJ, some of them even said ISTP and some said that he’s an ESTJ. Someone even said that he’s an ENFJ, well I think all of them are wrong and I personally believe he’s an ESTP. Se (Extraverted Sensing)- Extroverted sensing is focused on taking in the world as it exists in the present moment. It is highly in tune with the sights, smells, sounds and general physical stimulus that surrounds it. Extroverted sensing lives and thrives in the moment, more so than any other function. People who lead with extroverted sensing are often naturally athletic, highly impulsive and enjoy ever-changing stimuli. They place a high value on aesthetics and lust after the ‘finer things in life.’ Extroverted sensors usually aren’t interested in over-analyzing a situation – they simply see what they want and they go for it. These types tend to exude a natural sense of confidence, as they are usually quite sure of who they are and what they want.

Now let’s look at Dean. Dean Winchester is more of a shoot first ask questions later type of dude, he’s extremely impulsive because we’ve seen him make stupid and quick decisions while Sam is more of a thinker and Dean is a doer. He does place a high value on aesthetic and lust as we’ve seen in the show. Dean is never over analyzing situations, he does what he thinks is right and doesn’t think twice about it, even when Sam doesn’t agree and thinks more about it he gets mad at him for “not trusting” him. Even tho Dean had to struggle with self confidence deep down, he still is a confident person, he always believes in and knows what he’s doing and he believes that he is doing it for the greater good, even if it’s a big mistake. He is always practical and realistic and if an idea doesn’t fit his experience he doesn’t trust or believe it. Ti (introverted Thinking)- Introverted thinking is an information-gathering function that seeks to form a framework for how the world works on a concrete, tangible level. It is adept at understanding systems and naturally notices inconsistencies within them. Introverted thinking seeks a thorough understanding of how things work – it wants to deconstruct things to look at the individual parts and see how things function as a whole. Dean might be an impulsive person who doesn’t like over analyzing a situation, but the way Ti saves every ESTPs, it’s the same for Dean. If Dean doesn’t know what he’s doing, he need to do a little research and he has to know it. Like it’s not even over analyzing, it’s just he needs to know what he’s doing and he needs to understand it to have an information. For ESTPs Ti is what fuels their drive to understand the world, as well as their focus on mastering hands-on skills and talents. It comes second in their “functional stack”, and it operates mostly in their subconscious. It primarily does analysis on the ideas that their Se creates based on their experiences. It provides a logical framework and reference material to determine which ideas are logical and which are not, and to figure out how they might be implemented. Because Ti is serving Se, it primarily seeks knowledge as a “tool” that can be wielded to solve problems. Fe (extraverted Feeling)- Fe is third, and is where the SeTi’s humanitarian side originates. It is a major factor in their drive to use their problem-solving skills to help others and make the world a better place, like Dean always trying to save someone, save the world or save his loved ones even if it gets him hurt. In social situations, it often combines with Se to make them huge jokers. Dean is always the funny one out of the brothers, when Sam is organized, calm and serious Dean is the one joking and trying not to look like he’s taking things seriously when he actually is. Although they’re a more extroverted type, they often get into social situations where they just enjoy the company and don’t feel the need to say much. Because of their strong Se, they often choose to show affection for others through their actions as it tends to be the most comfortable for them. Ni (introverted Intuition)- 4. Ni - introverted iNtuition Ni is the SeTi’s last function and is often their achilles heel. It is inherently not as strong as their other functions because their highest priority and focus is on Se. Ni allows them to pull from every area in their brain to find valuable data, to look for patterns in the information they gather, or to skip ten steps ahead and predict what will happen in the future. As we’ve seen in the show, Dean doesn’t show much Ni, but there are times when there’s no other choice and his Ni kinda pops up. Dean has a good intuition, even if he trusts facts and experiences like all of the Se doms do, Dean still has intuition, like when Sam is not okay, he definitely can feel that he is hiding something. Ni makes their internal world abstract and can involve jumping around on intuitive leaps. It can also give them the sense that it’s okay to not have everything figured out. Just like Dean, when there’s nothing left and can’t figure out anything, because things get complicated and he says “we’ll figure it out, like we always have” but yet doesn’t figure anything out and makes an impulsive stupid decision for the greater good. I hope you agree with me, because the posts I’ve seen used Dean liking to be home in front of a TV instead of social situations as an argument for Dean being an ISTP which is a lie because A. I’m an ESTP myself and Netflix and beer sounds better to me than a party. That’s a stupid stereotype. B. Dean does go to the social situations like clubs and bars. Thanks if you read it and I hope you liked the post. I’m going to post about Sam’s MBTI next and then Castiel.

[almostentirelylost-blog]

La Forza Della Destino

Part I:  The Slacker

 That's me.  I've been slacking.  I think the last thing I wrote was about Salzburg?  That being said, I do have a lot to write about now!  So let's see, I left off in Salzburg, which would mean that the next part is Munich!

Part II:  Munich!

 What a city.  I love that city, and I will without a doubt be returning.  I don't know if I've made this clear yet or not, but I have this really terrible habit of booking my hotel/airbnb the day I'm arriving.  This entire trip has been totally spontaneous, and usually I don't decide on where to go next until the day I want to leave.  Munich was a little premeditated, just that I had a general sort of idea that I wanted to go there at some point.  So while I was on the train from Salzburg to Munich, I booked an airbnb and got a prompt message from the host; " Sorry, not expect to book tonight.  At work until 1900 ".  This meant that I wouldn't be able to drop off my luggage until later on, so I did the only reasonable thing in my situation, and got completely lost in Munich with all of my possessions on me.  There are certain folks that would murder me if they knew I did that, but they also don't have access to internet (don't tell them).  That was a grand adventure, but not nearly so bad as it might sound.  Munich is a very polite, very pretty place.  Lots of parks and open spaces with trees to sit under, grass, and even a canal that has re-routed a substantial amount of water into a park called the English Gardens.  The English Gardens will have a part to themselves later on.  I eventually decided that my feet hurt and because of that I deserved lunch and a beer.  I found those things.  Standard German fare, nothing special to report, with a half litre of Augustiner Brau.  They're everywhere, by the way, the Augustine monks.  They've seemingly monopolized the monastary based commercial brewing business.  Okay, let's see if I can remember this timeline.  Today is Thursday, the 15th of June.  I got into Munich on... the 9th of June.  Yes that's right, I got into Munich on a Friday.  Okay, so now that's all sorted, the story can go on.    The place I ate at was called Zum Durnbrau.  Standard beer hall, standard beer food, standard German social standards in that you have to talk to other people because there are only long, wooden tables with long, wooden benches.  There weren't many people there, though I did get to talking to a couple from Koln, who were interested in my t-shirt.  Well, metal discussions and beer go hand in hand like a dictatorship goes with oppression.  The point of that being that they both usually spiral downward and out of control.  One beer turned into several, three people turned into fifteen, and we had ourselves a riotous good time.  By that time I really should have been getting to my airbnb, to drop my things off at the very least.  I did no such thing, and instead continued looking for things that would be fun to see.  Altstadt Munich is super touristy, so it's hard to get out of the hordes of people, and even when you do you barely hear German.  But I wasn't really there for the people, I was there for the sake of seeing sights, and nothing better for that than ancient Catholic cathedrals.  I've been consistently visiting churches in every city I go to, and for good reasons too.  A lot of these churches are older than the USA.  You simply don't see that in the US, because it doesn't exist, because it couldn't have existed since that country is still more or less a baby on the global level.  The paintings inside are exceptionally beautiful, the organs are consistently these grand, arching masterpieces of human ingenuity, and the alters are serene, quiet and emanant of a time long past.  The Frauenkirche was no exception.  Got my sightseeing itch taken care of, sent my airbnb host a message, and went on my way.  Subways (u-bahn) are sometimes the most convoluted systems of transportation.  Effective, of course, once you figure them out and usually they're far more simple than first impressions would lead to believe.  I've gotten pretty good at them.    My host was extremely kind, and so was his girlfriend.  I don't think I could pronounce their names if my life depended on it, but that's alright.  Just a really relaxed Indian couple that were in Munich to finish their degrees.  They were astounded that I wanted to go back out, and had really only shown up to drop my luggage off, shower, and change.  Fifteen minutes later and I was back out the door, on my way to a metal bar that a friend had recommended to me.  Met some people, had some drinks, listened to some metal, and then made my merry way back to the airbnb for bed.  The next day was gonna' be a big one.  The next day was definitely a big one.  I headed back into the city and first just found myself something to eat and a bottle of juice, things to keep me going while I walked.  Then I just explored the city.  For those that don't know, Munich is host to the world's largest and most notorious beergardens, as well as Oktoberfest.  Well, not just Oktoberfest, but various other beer related parties and holidays.  So after seeing some of the major landmarks around, like the Sendlinger Tor, Das Bayerisches Hof, and the Victuals Market (Saturday morning market with everything you could possibly imagine).  The Sendlinger Tor is more or less just the ancient old gate to the city.  It's huge, it's made out of rocks, and it has something unreadable engraved on it in Latin.  Das Bayerisches Hof is now more or less a really impressive hotel, though it's been around forever too and has hosted some very prominent people (supposedly), and I'm sure has been a drunken riot at some point or another during Oktoberfest (read: every Oktoberfest).    The Victuals Market was everything from a market for locals to buy their weekly fresh produce from outlying farms, to tourists discovering the wonders of Munchener Weisswurst.  Weisswurst is a white sausage with little bits of chives (I think) in it.  I couldn't tell you how it's made, or what it's made of, but I can tell you that it's delicious, that you should peel the skin off, and that you should smother it in whole grain sweet mustard.  That's a South German delicacy.  Maybe not delicacy, but it's delicious.  I also found some Turkish Delights, which are these bizarre jelly cubes covered in powdered coconut, I don't really know anything about them, but they were stupid expensive and way too addictive.  I promise I only ate two.  Anyways, I didn't have lunch because I didn't really need to.  The Victuals Market was loaded with folks giving out samples of their wares, so I sampled my way from one end of the market to the other, and then found myself a nice tree in the English Gardens to have a nap under.  Like I said earlier, the English Gardens get a whole section to themselves.  They're meant to be various gardens all coming together as one, enormous, splendid nature park.  They do that, but the different gardens have their own personalities and people.  I really spent all afternoon just walking through these gardens.  Turns out that there's a place along one of the canals where you can surf.  You're not really supposed to, but that wasn't stopping a crowd of locals standing on either side of the canal in wet suits, waiting their turn to throw down their boards and hop on, to either flail and crash horribly, getting swept away by the current... or to find their balance and show off their skills until inevitably crashing and getting swept away by the current.  Very popular, it seemed, as they had a pretty sizable audience standing around.  I watched for a while and then moved on, my goal was to find a more secluded part of the park, and the gardens.    I found it eventually, an island on a tiny little pond covered in lilies, surrounded by rushes and flowers.  It seemed like privacy incarnate, and was, of course, locked to the public.  Turns out it was a traditional Japanese tea garden.  That sounded like my cup of tea, so I did some digging and found out how to get on that island, did it, drank some tea, wrote down a bunch of ideas for a thing I'm going to do, and inevitably got kicked out because for whatever reason I wasn't allowed to spend all day there.  That traumatized me, and maybe it was also getting late, so I went to the biggest beergarden Munich has to rehabilitate myself.  The Hirschgarten.  The scope of this thing is incredible.  It's a beergarden located firmly away from civilization (probably for good reasons) in the middle of a park, it's catered by the Augustine monks and various local food stands/restaurants.  There's also a little animal sanctuary right up against the beergarden, loaded with peacocks and deer, and other such things.  To be honest I wasn't really interested in the animals that weren't turning on a spit, sizzling and dripping, crisped to the perfect level.  Chickens in these beergardens are called Handl, with an umlaut in there somewhere, and you can either order an entire chicken or a half.  The beer is less flexible, the monks will only serve you one liter at a time and there's only one variety.  That one variety, though, comes from wooden barrels that the monks have to hammer spigots into.  Wooden hammers and everything.  I'd be willing to bet that their fermentation vessels are stainless steel just like every other brewery, though.  So, information on the Hirschgarten.  It can seat about 8,000 people, maybe more at max capacity.  The space around it has been cleared of trees, and the open fields are apparently the ideal place to play soccer and do picnic related things, and besides the monks driving around stacks of barrels with forklifts, there's no machinery to be found.  Beer is cheap, the food is very good, and apparently there's an old Bavarian hunter's club that refuses to let the old ways die out, walking around in lederhosen, wool shirts and socks, and hats with tufts of deer fur sticking out of the top.  Apparently membership requirements include being enormously fat, and world class beer drinking skills.  I talked to them for a while, even if I could barely understand what they were saying.  It was worth it just to see the physics of their moustaches up close, or lack thereof.  I'm developing a theory that extraordinary moustaches don't actually obey our world's laws of relativity and physics, but instead exist in a dimension of their own.  More on this later.  The last day in Munich was sadly, not very exciting.  Mostly just packing my stuff up, getting back to the trainstation, and finding my train to my next destination; Venice.

Part II: The Next Destination  Venice is hot, muggy, and stinky.  Those were the overbearing first impressions I got of the place.  Besides that, Italians are loud and hard to understand.  Even worse, I haven't seen so many toursist in one place before.  The main means of travel in Venice are via canals (duh), by ferry, water taxi, or gondola.  The gondoliers charge an obscene amount for their services ( 100 euros per half hour) and water taxis are only worth it if you have a group... so I forced my way onto a crowded main canal ferry.  I was staying at the Hotel Rialto, only because I had found an extraordinarly good deal on the way there, and fully intended to use that hotel room for all it was worth.  The Hotel Rialto is actually pretty nice, it's right on the main canal and also right next to the Rialto bridge, which is the biggest and most ornate bridge in the city.  All very pretty stuff, if you have the rare opportunity to actually see any of it through the suffocating masses of tourists.  Dropped off my stuff, grabbed my camera, and immediately went on adventure.  The first thing I discovered was that Venice was the most expensive city I've ever been to.  Also absolutely everything costs money.  My grandparents had warned me about that fact, but I sort of ignored them, thinking to myself, " No... that's too ridiculous, they couldn't get away with these things. ".  They do though.  At most restaurants you get charged for the placemat and silverware.  There's autograt on literally everything, including at gelato stands.  Bars charge for use of the glass  you're drinking out of.  Churches charge you just for walking through the door, museums all have guided tours where you're charged based on time, autograt is included, and you're still expected to tip the guide.  It's insane.  I made one executive decision that day; I would treat myself to one very high end dinner overlooking the lagoon, and then I would find myself a grocery store and live like a peasant for the next few days.  I had my nice dinner, and actually managed to find a place that wasn't too horrifically overpriced, the food was outstanding, the house wine would probably be a $50 + bottle in the US... I was very happy with that restaurant.  Made out like a bandit with a tab at 70 euros.    Another notable thing about Venice is that you will get lost.  There's no helping it, the streets aren't streets, they're narrow alleyways that almost feel like caves because of how the buildings lean in toward one another.  You'll run into dead ends at canals, which is great at night because there aren't streetlamps or signs saying " There's water at the bottom of these stairs you're walking down ".  I know this has a very negative tone so far but I actually really enjoyed the walking around Venice part of Venice.  I also randomly stumbled upon a supermarket sort of thing in a dark alleyway, with no signage, that was actually very cheap.  Like cheaper than most of Europe cheap.  Must be where the locals buy their groceries.  Got myself a nice Chianti, some salami, cheese, and bread ( I know, no brains and f-f-f-fava beans), and had a very romantic date with myself sitting on one of the steps looking out over that lagoon Venice is surrounded by.  It was almost even quiet...  Anyway, my visit to Venice was honestly very uneventful, mostly just because I couldn't afford the place and spent the large majority of my time wandering those pretty little alleyways and running into dead end canals.  I did watch a gondolier fall off of his boat, with tourists in it (again, they charge 100 euros per half hour).  I went to a surprisingly modestly priced Vivaldi concierto, and spent one of my nights drinking with a group of extremely opinionated Australians.  Then I left that city behind and came to Trieste, where I am now.  I enjoyed Venice, but I doubt I'll go back there.

Part III: The Seaside City Without a Beach  Trieste is a recommendation my grandmother made to me.  It's a gorgeous little city right up against the ocean (Adriatic, I think?)  It gives a very industrial impression at first, but once you get to walking it opens up into a much more old style, with regal looking buildings and wide, tree lined streets.  Unfortunately no beach, but in a way that's nice too because it keeps it from being a real tourist destination.  My airbnb was easy to find, and I was greeted by a wonderfully friendly elderly lady named Marina, and her black lab, Jack.  Jack is the namesake for their bnb (St. Jack's) and I would take him home with me if I could.  Such a good boy.  Anyways, dropped my stuff off and went to find dinner before retiring for the evening.   Dinner ended up being half the price of what I payed in Venice, and even better.  Still overlooking the sea, though with docks in the way and some sort of enormous industrial ship doing industrial things while anchored a ways off the coast.  But still, the ocean always has a certain charm to it for me, or maybe that's just because I'm not used to seeing it at all.  The next day was wonderful.  Excruciatingly hot, but still a wonderful day.  I made my way to the local castle and was very happy to find that I could really explore all of it.  Most castles have very limited access for tourists, either because they're crumbling old ruins and are dangerous, or because some historical society is doing everything they can to keep it in as good of shape as possible.  This one was both well preserved, and open enough that I was able to see all the things that I wanted to see in a castle.  I got up on the walls, took some breathtaking pictures of Trieste below me (any good castle has a commanding view of everything around it), and then went to explore the armory and the mazelike passages below the main courtyard.  It's pretty incredible how cold those lower passages get, and humid too, with water running down the walls in places and all of that old iron still in place.  Barring off certain hallways and rooms.  They'd had an exhibit too, featuring the old carvings from the castle's cathedral.  I can't imagine what these castles must of have been like in their prime, filled with people, the royalty and military stationed in their garrisons and lavish halls, the peasants milling around the courtyard trying to make appeals or selling wares.  Even in more recent times when cannons were set around the gates, ready to fire at invading forces... I love that stuff.    The cathedral there had an incredible mosaic in it too, covering the entire ceiling and most of the walls behind the altar.  I couldn't tell you what biblical scene it represented, but it was done in such a way that the afternoon sun coming through the stained windows caught the tiles perfectly, lending the altar a sparkling, ethereal quality.  Honestly would've been better if not for the massive group of German tourists milling around, talking and taking up all the space.  I spent my time there, payed my respects to the craftsmen that had likely poured their life into the art in that space, and to the old building itself.  After that I just walked.  Picked a direction and just starting walking, for the sake of seeing more of the city.  See it I did, and I also learned how truly insane these Italians are behind the wheel.  Trieste isn't quite mountainous, but it is very hilly.  So the streets are narrow and often on a pretty extreme incline with sharp turns and sudden dead ends.  Still, everyon drives at breakneck speeds, often honking as they go around corners rather than slowing down.  Streetlights seem more like suggestions than the law, and pedestrians are constantly double checking behind themselves to be sure they don't need to dive out of the way of some car or moped.    I also found my way to the Piazza Unita, which is (according to a local I asked) the biggest seaside square in Europe.  Its charm was lost on me, because most of it was occupied by construction crews setting up some sort of stage for a concert or show of some sort. All the same, nice to see, and it was nice to take a break sitting on the docks with my feet in the water.  Sadly, however, the weather was starting to turn for the worse.  It's a pretty neat thing to watch a storm rolling in over the ocean.  Pretty intimidating, honestly.  So I made my way back to the airbnb, sat down in my room to enjoy a beer and maybe write a little bit, and had a knocking at my door.  It was the other guest that was staying there at the time, a Swiss guy named Jorg.  He wanted to know if maybe he could pay me to use my cellphone so he could call a woman he was trying to woo back home!  I may or may not be a hopeless romantic, and I also love Swiss German, so I said sure thing and let him in to call her.  We ended up talking for a while after, and he invited me to go to dinner with him since he was travelling on his own as well, and wine and food is best enjoyed in company.  So we got our shit together and went for dinner, again, extremely well priced and high quality.  The neat thing about European cities is that street musicians are not only fairly common, but also usually very talented.  The old man in a suit that started playing violin in the restaurant was certainly no exception, and also the inspiration for the title of this entry.  La Forza Della Destino

  More will come soon-ish, and I'll probably upload photos when I have time to sit at a computer for a few hours and do nothing but that.  For now, adventure awaits! Happy Birthday Sophie, I hope you like your present.

[2centsofsilver]

2am (Evening of 1/18)

Open Letter to My Parents (in the works of my head) Dear Mom and Dad, I don’t know why this is happening to us. I’m sorry that I have a mental disorder. Honestly with you, those features - the really bad ones - the ones where those misdiagnoses happened - the outliers that don’t appear among relationships with me and everyone else - come through in our relations: Screaming episodes any time we’re together, verbal expression of extreme opposition, cutting insults (the kind one could never forgive another for), severe anger issues and the type of disorientation one with BPD exhibits (expressions of not being rooted in reality, not hearing the other person, deliberately re-directing conversations, but coming off as stupid/blind/naive), the whole “I love you/I hate you” feature, threats from you that you’ll disown me as your daughter, threats from me that I’ll abandon you as my family, sibling sidings, threats to kill myself, blaming you for wanting to kill myself, the list goes on. Honestly, I feel things are at their absolute worst- the worst they’ve EVER been. I no longer cry or am emotionally affected/saddened by our exchanges. I no longer have that “fear of abandonment” feature (but I have it with my friends). I know my friends are there for me and that is where my support system lies. I love you very very much, but your love is conditional. If you know how much heart your daughter has, like if you knew her, you (maybe) would like her? Like if you changed though too. Because right now your love is conditional: You love me if I am ___ or do ____ or stop doing ____. I believe that any issues in a relationship are ALWAYS two way streets. So I’m willing to take 50% of the blame. But because I’m your daughter, there’s a level system there, so I feel more comfortable taking 40%. Maybe you feel the same way, with your level system on the other side, and you’re comfortable taking 40%. I know it’s less though. You do not see relationships as two way streets. You do not own up to all the ways in which you’ve hurt me. You DISCOUNT every single thing you’ve ever done that has remotely negatively influenced me. You also just flat out don’t believe you ever have. And instead, I’m the bad one, I’m a shitty daughter, there’s something wrong with ME for thinking that, for seeing it that way, for trying to see it *fairly*. If anything you blame yourselves for the countless ways in which you’ve “failed” as parents, raising such a “despicable” daughter.  You never failed, but I’m not despicable. If you felt my heart, if you were inside me, if you felt the pain I feel on a daily basis constantly being abandoned by friends who I thought cared about me, constantly having anxiety over day-to-day situations, constantly feeling inadequate, not good enough, and constantly needing validation from others. If you knew what it was like for 1 person to struggle with any form of mental illness, physical illness, handicap, what have you. Or if you had any appreciation for or AWARENESS of or acceptance of marginalization. If you could own up to the ways in which you fall into the trap of stigamatization. I honestly don’t know who you’d be. Would you even be my parents anymore? I often see on social media - Facebook - parents commenting on their children’s posts, publicly saying how “proud they are” of their sons or daughters. Or directly, publicly, telling their children those same words. Or just liking their posts and sharing their posts and being fun and funky and silly and sweet. There comes a time in life as people grow up and older that that level system from “dominance/authority” to “equality/admiration” shifts drastically. There comes a time, I’ve noticed, when parents become their children’s friends and their children openly love and accept that and are no longer self-conscious of it in front of others. There comes this time that never happened for us and I’m really worried it never will happen for us, when you’re supposed to start hopping around and telling people you know, when they ask how Katie’s doing, all the great things she’s doing in life and where she’s headed. You’re supposed to get excited like I am. There comes a time when you’re supposed to come over to my house and say, “How have you been? We’ve missed you.” Or “How’s your application process coming along? We’re happy for you.” There are these beautiful shooting stars that go off in the midnight sky when moms want to “get to know” their daughters. That level system changes, it equals out, it becomes more human-to-human. I don’t know what to do, but I feel sick about it day to day. Things have drastically gotten worse in the last few years, but they’ve always been bad. You don’t believe me? You’re in denial. They’ve been bad since I entered high school. You still treat me like you did 12 years ago. And you’re going to do it to my brother too, that’s why he wants to run away, travel north, all the way up there, to get away from you and live independently. He wants his own space, his own time, his life back. It’s why I don’t visit home much anymore, why I don’t call you for weeks on end, why I don’t want to talk to you about things. I don’t know how that comes off regarding my personality -- I mean, you must know that I’m not the same way with my friends, co-workers, bosses, teachers, right? I know you think I repeatedly go into therapy complaining and bitching about my “horrible parents,” the ones who “don’t love me,” or “did this and that.” But that’s not true. I rarely talk about you because I can’t or when I do, it’s “I don’t know what to do. I’m a bad daughter. I want our relationship to be better.” Let’s date back to middle school or high school from the academic perspective. Parent teacher conferences, or whatever. All the ways in which my teachers raved about me, my artwork in the hallway, all those things that marveled and dazzled you as parents. That’s still me. Sometimes, I worry I’ve lost myself too, like in for instance, the case of me no longer pursuing English teaching or writing. But I’ve found other interests. YOU instilled that in me growing up, by exposing me to hundreds of thousands of activities and experiences. You’re the ones who taught me to love more than one thing, to constantly explore, learn, and grow. You’re the one who taught me how to be myself, how to find my identity, but you never taught me much about how to influence others, that came through my exposures to good experiences and the good heart I was born with, maybe my love for nature and art, our love when I was a young child, and definitely my loving grandparents. So I used to be this like, “perfect” student or whatever. Did that disappear when I didn’t go to Hope College? I got straight A’s in community college instead. I’m getting off track here -- let’s date back to that academic perspective from when I was younger. That’s still me. Like she exists inside me. I still love music, writing, art, nature, going to Glen Arbor, being with my family, school, funny jokes. I’m sorry that I gave up clarinet and piano and didn’t pursue journalism after managing the high school publications. I’m sorry that I no longer *talk about?* writing -- but I still do it. I try to write every day. And I’m still going to be a published author one day, even if you disagree with my content.  I have always cared about other people more than I care about myself. I have always been social, a people person, even though I was shy. I always had a lot of friends until the antisemitism arose in high school. You hated me for that. Is that when it started? You hated me for “choosing those friends” who would ultimately do that to me and to our family. But I was happy before it happened, dad. I was a thriving teenager who had the best summer of her life before that. She was living her dream, everything she ever wanted to be. She didn’t know it was going to happen. She didn’t “choose” antisemitic friends who she knew would bully her and trespass our lawn and drive me off the road and stalk our house at night. She didn’t know. Do you blame them or do you blame me? I wanted to go to therapy in the 9th grade because I had really bad social anxiety disorder. I couldn’t look at any one in the hallways, couldn’t answer questions in class, couldn’t give presentations, and I think I missed over 50 days of school that year because I could not face the inside of that high school. I wanted to go to therapy to get help and be happy again. My god, FOR YEARS, the THEME of my therapy sessions among ALL my therapists has been “Confidence and Happiness.” I want to be “Happy and Confident” (Depression and Anxiety's opposites). YOU’RE THE ONE who went out of your way to find me a therapist you knew through someone else. I loved that therapist. I ended up seeing her for 7 years and she changed my life. I’m guessing it bothered you that you had a young daughter who was struggling. And I know you were happy to hear that I loved my therapist and that our sessions were working. I remember distinctly telling mom about the “Anxiety Toolkit” stuff. I remember she used to ask me, and I would tell her, and I was excited about my progress and applying the strategies we came up with during my day-to-day attempts to get through high school. I don’t know at what point you stopped being affected by my hardships. I’m not by any means saying they should “still break your heart,” I’m saying I don’t know at what point you developed this idea that, “Therapy fixes people. Why isn’t she fixed yet?” Every single truth for me in my life is countered by responses that I cannot even begin to fathom comprehension for. Like I try very hard to understand where you’re getting this information from or why you might feel the way you do. I’m very conscientious in my efforts to see things from your angles and understand why you might be feeling the way you do. But like, my depression has gotten drastically worse (or more developed?) over the course of the last 10 or so years. It has depleted me, exhausted me, and defeated me. I honestly feel physically weakened anytime I even try to think these things through anymore. Like my shoulders drop and I just don’t have it in me anymore. I have become hardened to all pain, a concrete wall (I used to say this when I was 14), and incredibly resilient beyond my years. I have been through so much turmoil inside me that I had to grow up far sooner than a lot of people my own age. I am grateful for that, for I cannot imagine being so god damn behind in life, but it also has hardened me, made me stoic, it’s the reason I don’t have much positivity or enthusiasm in life, like there really isn’t a point and it’s a state impossible for me to feel. I try, don’t get me wrong, I really do try. Every day I try to make it a good day. But I am tired, do you understand? My mind, body, and soul are tired.  “That’s because you need to lose weight.” You might say. I guess I could use that topic as a phenomenol example of how exhausting it is to get through any half a minute of conversation with you. Like if we’re at the table and I’m trying to talk to you about something important and I mention I’m tired, you’d probably respond with that. And you’d divert the conversation almost immediately to the point where there’s no way I could ever get out of that new topic. Immediately, I’m forced to defend myself: “I AM losing weight. I just joined a new gym, I’m on the 21 day fix. I go to the gym every day, for a whole year now! A YEAR.” “Well clearly it’s not working,” you’d chuckle. “If you’d just start eating right, if you’d just start exercising...” It’s a great example because it demonstrates your disoriented view of how change is immediate or black and white. You’ve never believed me or believed in the concept of change happening gradually, over time. I know your deadlines are “asap,” but you have to accept that it’s probably going to take the course of the rest of my life for me to be happy, try to be happy, find happiness. Things will always be hard for me because I’ve seen too much, experienced too much. Even when I do finally reach happiness one day or whatever, things will still suck. Because the whole world affects me differently than other people. Everything is interconnected. I am vastly influenced by every person I’ve ever met. And when I grieve, I grieve those people for years. I have to give myself permission to grieve too, even when I feel I’ve surpassed my deadlines. Extended my deadlines, surpassed them again. It takes a long time for pain to fade, I might never get through to the people who have hurt me, but time eventually will make those memories fuzzy. In time, maybe I’ll only think about them once a week, or once a month. For now though, I grieve. There is so much going on inside me that you could never possibly understand because you don’t believe in mental illness. You also don’t believe in mental health practitioners. You hate who I am and how I am and resent me for all my therapy and how hard I try every day. You want me to be different and I am working on myself all the time, and I need assistance to function. I’m sorry. I also need assistance because I need support because I can’t get through life without people who are there for me. If you had any idea how fucking alone I am, even surrounded by so much support lately, I’m pretty sure it would kill you. Or any breathing person who’s not you. Like I honestly have no idea what it would be like for you to experience me because you have zero empathy when it comes to other people’s personal problems. You’re like a fucking Behavior Analyst. You’re everything wrong with the field. You judge only based off what you can see. You come over to my apartment, you see the way I live, you think it’s as easy as just changing my environment, as easy as just “stopping.” You don’t believe in thoughts, feelings, or emotions. You make fun of people with developmental disabilities or physical disabilities. You don’t believe in depression. Like how can you not believe in the one driving force that makes me who I am, that makes life SO fucking hard for me, that interferes with every aspect of my life, YOU SEE the effects. It’s mind-boggling. You don’t believe int he source, you think it’s ME. The other fucking night we were out to dinner in Kzoo, and we were fighting in public which is our new trend, and dad, you literally told me that the mental health field is a wasted field, helping people is all a wasted effort, that mental illness doesn't exist, and that I am literally wasting my future and the rest of my life by committing myself to helping others get better and make the most out of life. Saying that, you aren’t just referencing third person ideas and concepts. You are directly cutting me in so many capacities: You are discounting my personal journey, my efforts, my day-to-day battles, my long-term goals, my progress, my pain, and my commitment to helping others live a happy life. I don’t know how that isn’t something to be proud of. How do you not believe in being selfless? Mom’s a teacher! I used to really really want you to be proud of me. I’ve now found that it’s not possible, so I can only be proud of myself. I know that I have a lot of people in my life who are proud of me and excited for me and all that I’m going for in my life. But I’m concerned. My 25 year old adult self who has felt 57 since age 14 is concerned.  I am about to go off to grad school because I feel now is the time. I am also ready for adventure because while yes, I still struggle with depression, I feel I’m better now than I ever have been and I’m ready and feel capable, with the promise of resources wherever I go, that I’ll be ok. That I can do this.  What I do know is that oftentimes, children and parents stop getting along and no longer continue to try. Somehow, they just stop loving each other. I’m not willing to let that happen to us, even if it already has on your end. I still love you, I will always love you, no matter what. And I am not willing to travel across the country with our problems they way they are. You’re not willing to change, to even accept that there are any issues in our family. You don’t believe in therapy so you’d never consider family therapy. And you say I’m one of those fake professionals who wants to “bring people closer” and “families together” when it’s not possible. You say you’re too old to mend things with me, dad. What does that mean? Do you know since I was really little, my biggest fear in the entire world has been my parents dying? I DON’T WANT YOU to get old or sick and not fucking know how much I always loved you. How sorry I am. And how badly I wish I could be everything you wanted me to always be. But I just can’t travel thousands upon thousands of miles away with our issues where they stand. I will not be ok where I end up, but I’ll be better, knowing I have a supportive family and that we’re “good.” We don’t have to be perfect, but even if we’re just “good.” I have mental illnesses, mom and dad. Like whether you believe that’s possible or not, but I do. I call them that because with names, they’re treatable, and I can get help and support from others who have been there or are trained to help me. I have been diagnosed by doctors who know what they’re doing (you’re all science), and I’m on medication that has been carefully chosen by the best psychiatrist in southwest Michigan, and it works. Without it, I would have killed myself in 2011. I am ready to travel to the other side of the country now, to live my life and feel adventure while I still can. I want to fall in love, get married, have children, start a career, and be successful. I want to travel and explore the world and become the even better me that you always dreamed I’d be, but for myself and the others in my life or career that I’ll be helping. Like anyone else, I’m allowed to experience experiences. I’m ready. And whether or not you can be happy for me, we need to be good, because without support from the root source of where I derived, without support from the direct source of where I’m from, who I am, where I’ve come from, and who I can always turn back to if things were to ever go wrong for me on the other side of the country, my emergency contacts; or the people who I love very much, who I care for very much, who I will be taking care of when you’re not your finest, when you grow older and need my help, I will be there. So without us being good, I cannot go off and see the world. I will be in pain for life without us being good. I know you hurt too, so why can’t we work on us. Why can’t we just figure out a way to do this.  3:35am, Interview at 10:30. Goodnight.

[scifimagpie]

Louie C.K. and the Sith Lord Dilemma

Happy new year!

(These are the kinds of headlines I only get to write because I don't have an editor to whom I answer. Whee!)

We still have Nazis, so let's talk strategy. I'd also like to talk about something related - the infamous, often contested Centre. To keep advancing leftist ideals (such as healthcare, housing, and basic needs coverage for all; universal access to education and higher education; equal and fair pay for all genders and backgrounds, and accessibility resources for those who require mobility devices or have medical problems, among a few other things!) it can help to figure out who we're trying to talk to - and sometimes, who we can trust.

The time before #MeToo and after it are now crisply delineated by this social event. The freedom to talk about and voice the universality of sexual harassment and assault against people of various genders (yes, men too) has really shaken things up. It's just the beginning of making things right, and society in North America and around the world has some serious adjusting and compensating to do, but it's a good step in the right direction.

#MeToo also torched a lot of sacred cows, exposing people we previously trusted as participating in very bad behavior. Kevin Spacey, George Takei, Stan Lee and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, among others, are a couple who surprised and disappointed me the most. But it seems like some of the people who transgressed are already trying to stage their comebacks - not understanding, it seems, that it shouldn't be up to them to decide when their stint in the time-out corner is over.

As discussed here, it would seem that Louis C.K., who previously admitted to sexually harassing women by masturbating in front of them without consent, has taken a turn for the dark side. Making jokes about transgender people and school shooting survivors, and apparently, insulting black and Asian men, is now part of his comedic repetoire. So much for "learning and listening."

But he continues to be defended by a few people who - apparently, come from the centre - and want to believe that he still has good intentions somehow. To quote that Huffpost article, however -

"C.K.’s new set, according to its leaked version, doesn’t merely punch down; it stomps, pettily, to the bottom. None of it is smart or brave; it is simply cruel."

And how did Louis C.K. - and for that matter, J.K. Rowling - start to internalise and support such negative beliefs?

Star Wars and political strategy

So here's the thing about the two people I've alluded to - they're both wealthy, and they've both been criticised. Now, being criticised is hard at the best of times. But wealth tends to make people more fragile. Is the answer, then, to just not criticise anyone ever? (That probably sounds like a stupid thing to even say, and it kind of is. But the internet likes a good reductio ad absurdum argument, taking things to their most logical extreme, so I'm going to follow that format - as I often do in my posts!)

That would seem to be an over-correction, and to make advancement impossible. But how to we criticise someone without alienating them?

Well, I'm still working on the "doing it right" part, but I can tell you about how not to do it.

In the much-maligned prequels of Star Wars, one of the concerns expressed about Anakin Skywalker is that he's too old to learn the Jedi ways and be successfully indoctrinated in their belief system. In the following movies, as Anakin goes through puberty and discovers that at least one girl exists, this is quickly proven - so it seems - to have been an accurate fear. A lot of people have argued that the way the Jedi turned their back on him as soon as he started to screw up and the way they endorsed such extremist perspectives on emotion had doomed him to fail in the first place. I would say that Anakin actually got a lot of second chances, but the ideology did set him up to fail - and because a single misstep was seen as an inevitable sign of failure, how could he help but find himself tempted by the apparent freedom of the Dark Side?

But as we see examined in The Last Jedi, fearing someone's future and darkness and treating them badly on the basis of that can, in fact, lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. By assuming the worst of Ben Solo, he becomes Kylo Ren. Now - you could argue about the role of fate in the Star Wars universe, and even in our own, but it's not a discussion I can brook in good faith because if fate was as iron-clad as it is in fiction, all psychics would have 100% accuracy in their predictions - and that, obviously, is not the case.

But are we repeating the mistake of the late-era Jedi Order? Are we scaring off allies when we call them out for bad behavior, or scaring off future allies when they see Leftists chewing someone out?

A digression on the centre, which cannot hold

Oh, the Centrists. The Left hates them, the Right courts them, and they usually don't even identify as such. Most of the time - from what I've seen - Centrists are actually people who would identify as liberals or Liberals, but haven't caught up to every nuance; alternatively, they're soft conservatives. The centre isn't so much a fact as a product of two overlapping political bell-curves, more of an illusion than a real political movement. After all, the centre and centrists usually tend to have either conflicting beliefs or a reluctance to engage with certain groups.

But the centrists that I tend to hear about, as a leftist, are generally the ones who still fall on the liberal side of the equation. Now, here's the thing - I'm not saying that being conservative or liberal are, arbitrarily, either good or bad on an objective scale. BUT - right now, in North America and in a few other places, it sure seems like conservatism has relied too heavily on courting xenophobia in various ways. And that has led to an association of conservatives with racist, sexist, generally horrible beliefs - for instance, the Republicans in the US, and more locally, the UCP. (United Conservative Party, not to be confused with the Progressive-Conservative Party of Canada. They're very good at being polite and rewording their racism and homophobia, because this is Canada, but the underlying platform and beliefs is disappointingly rote.)

But is falling to the racist wayside the fate of all centrists? Should leftists treat anyone who fails to meet certain standards of conduct with suspicion and curtness, because they're inevitably going to betray any progressive ideals in favor of the fear-eater, conservatism?

In terms of the radicalization of young men, a number of people have spilled ink and filled hard drives creating better and more informative videos and articles than myself. And a lot of them also struggle with this problem: who can be reasoned with, and who is a die-hard danger to humanity?

No. Be nice sometimes, but don't hug every Nazi.

All of this is to say that I think the way we deal with people who don't act in good faith and the ones who do act in good faith need to be set in two different streams. It can be hard to tell, and people can switch motivations during a conversation - deciding to troll or being interested enough to start learning, for instance. But I think it would help the Left to confine some of our sharpest criticisms to internal dialogues - you know, saying things with the door closed. We have to meet people on their level.

Unfortunately, sometimes that level is also going to mean putting boots on the ground in terms of showing up to protests and engaging in adequate self-defense against Nazis.

So when it comes to Cousin Jason or Brayden saying that he thinks these dudes wearing yellow vests and talking about how we need to reduce the number of immigrants coming to Canada "might have a point," I would suggest being hard on the ideology and empathetic with Jason or Brayden himself. There's a difference between being empathetic and being a doormat - but we have no choice except to take on these conversations whenever we can, even when we're exhausted. The problem is that people in the centre often agree with us - but are too scared to speak up, or too tired, or even too confused.

We have to make a better future and present by walking the line between having boundaries and making it clear to people that we care about them and their rights. As frustrating as it can be, emotional labour from a person in a position of power, or even an oppressor, is still emotional labour. And we cannot take for granted that people will educate themselves, or yell "educate yourself!" in every conversation. That doesn't mean the most oppressed person should always yield their time and energy to people who may be acting like blockheads - but it does mean that anyone who considers themselves an ally needs to step up or be willing to tag-team something to avoid their own exhaustion.

This stuff is intricate. The problems don't have quick, glib, easy fixes. But they're also not insurmountable, because our opponents aren't monsters or fictional villains. They're people. And most of them actually want what we want - to live in happiness, health, and safety.

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partners-in-crime and their cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and nightmares, as well as social justice issues. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Find her all over the internet: The mailing list * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * OG Blog