#so rare to find a book where the whole entire plot is cohesive in its moral universe

[lovesodeepandwideandwell]

I have no business enjoying The Golden Enclaves with all of its flaws as much as I do

[seizethecarpe]

Between Bookends || Dave and Rio

Timing: Currentish, during versipellis plot.  Summary: Dave knows he isn’t well, and he turns to the only scribe he knows for help. Whether that’s a good idea or not... well. They’ll find out. Content warnings: Body horror mention

Dave trembled, his muscles exhausted to the point of no return. He could barely steer the boat cohesively, except for the hunger eating at his stomach despite the pound and pounds of seal meat he’d already eaten. As he got closer and closer to the shore, the monstrous sickness became even louder, knowing its prey was nearby. He’d almost slaughtered Adam, had come close to killing several other too. Maybe he’d even drowned a couple, even if he hadn’t eaten them. Guilt tried to gnaw at him, but how could it even begin to compete with the hunger inside him? The boat shuddered to a stop, a small distance from where he’d dock it. Maybe just a small enough distance to give Rio the chance to run, or fight, or whatever the kid needed to. Dave took a last deep breath through his mouth, so that the last thing he smelled was the sea. If he didn’t talk, he wouldn’t have to breathe. He raised his hand to Rio in recognition. “You said you could help,” Dave signed. “How can you help?”

 Orion didn’t know what to do with his hands. His eyesight made Dave’s boat coming into view that much more awkward. How close was close enough to start waving? How awkward would it be for him to stand completely still while Dave came closer and closer to land? In context of exactly what Dave was going through, none of this seemed relevant or important. But as Rio’s mind raced with all the possibilities of what could be wrong and how Dave could end up hurt, these annoying little social cues that Rio couldn’t get a grasp of seemed to be the only way to distract himself from completely freaking out. As an annoying compromise, Rio swayed his arms a bit by his side until Dave motioned first. Then Rio started waving and moving to close the distance between the two. Dave’s question didn’t exactly ease Rio’s concerns. Promising help was something that Rio always did. This time he actually needed to follow through on the offer. Easier said than done when he still wasn’t absolutely positive he was right. “Right. Yeah. I have some ideas. Um- I just want to be sure about what you saw.” Rio signed as he spoke, moving closer to the boat to try to help him with anything he needed.

 “Stay back. I don’t rightly know if I have a handle on this.” Dave signed aggressively, taking a couple steps back in his boat. He’d seen Rio against the cockatrices, in tears over the thought of having to kill an aggro chicken. No matter what tricks Rio had up his sleeve, he wouldn’t do what would need doing if… well, just if. The hunger was an ambush predator, overwhelming him before because he hadn’t known it was there. That was the only way he could swallow the guilt of how close he’d come already to eating people. Now it could no longer sneak up on him, Dave liked to believe for a moment he would have control, but as Rio got closer, even without smelling the air, Dave’s mouth was beginning to salivate. “Biggest wolf I’ve ever seen in the woods. Not around a full moon, skin dangling from its back like it was wearing war trophies of something. Barely got away in time.” Dave raised his arm, showing the bandage and the angry red that had seeped through and had dried on the outside. 

 Crossing his arms in protest, Orion froze in place and kept the distance from Dave that was demanded. He didn’t like the idea of it though. Dave was clearly going through a lot right now, and what he needed was someone that could do whatever it took to help him out. Dave had given an overview of what was wrong and how dangerous he was becoming. Rio had to determine the line of separation between helping Dave and trying to keep himself safe. For as smart as he was told that he was growing up, it was just about the only thing that his parents would compliment him on, he hadn’t mastered the art of self preservation. “Jesus” Rio mumbled to himself, not wasting the time in signing it before moving on, “Right. Okay. Well, I have a theory. I think.” It wasn’t perfect and it certainly wasn’t something he had ever come across before, but the pieces of Dave’s story seemed to be fitting together. “I have a place we can go. Nobody but me will be there. But on our way, explain what you’re feeling. Like uh- you mentioned about a hunger for…” Unable to finish the sentence himself, he dropped his hands and left it open ended for Dave to elaborate.

 “I’ll take the hint of an idea over anything swirling through my head at the moment.” Better than wondering what had broken in him, if this was the work of the Valkyrie messing with his head or a sickness Dave wouldn’t shake, or something to do with how rare Leopard Seal Selkies were, that there was something inherently wrong with him. Wild leopard seals ate the young of other seal species… maybe that was what he was relegated to, why he’d been so hungry for Ollie. Reaching out to Rio had been… desperation. Better than continuing to ignore it after nearly killing several. “People,” Dave signed, disgust curling his lips, ashamed of the admission. “I’ve almost killed… too many people, in the last few days. One of them a selkie. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

 It was definitely as horrifying as it sounded, and Orion could understand why Dave was so set on keeping distance from him. He wondered how strong the craving was, or how hard it had to be to hold himself back anytime he was around someone. “I think I know what’s wrong. Maybe.” He couldn’t exactly be sure, not with all of the other craziness that happened around town. At any given time there could probably be three or more explanations to some gory murder or unexplained phenomenon. In this case, all the stars seemed to align. “I have a place that we can go. I’ll have you look through a book with me and if I’m right, it should help us figure out what to do next. Follow me okay?” Rio signed and then waved him along. The trip to the Scribrary wouldn’t take too long, but both would have to be on edge the entire time, wary of what might happen if Dave’s self control wavered. Rio had strength on his side, but he didn’t have experience. Or guts. “And it’s safe there.”

 “And if you’re wrong?” Dave signed back, his hands jerking in agitation. He looked at Rio with wide, agonised eyes, hoping he wouldn’t have to explain his fears here. That even for a young man with very little meat on him at all, Rio looked delicious as a snack. It was only his breathhold that made just looking at the kid bearable. Dave didn’t want to point out that on that boat, he’d almost made a different call, not to a small scribeling with a fear of violence, but a  hunter with a certified skill at murder. He wasn’t sure he’d made the right call. “I need to know you’ll keep yourself safe.” Because Dave had seen that too, in the woods with those cockatrices - that Rio had more strength in his than his baggy sweatshirts showed. Whether the will was there was a whole nother matter. “I don’t know how much grip I’ve got on this whole situation.”

 “I’m optimistic” Orion ignored Dave’s question. He didn’t want to think about what could happen if Rio was wrong. The unknown would just induce panic that Rio couldn’t exactly afford right now. He was already panicking enough internally, a full blown panic attack would do nothing but hinder his ability to help Dave. He definitely didn’t want to think about how dangerous it was to willingly go alone to an abandoned building with a man who just admitted to craving human flesh. “I know how to get in and out of this place way better than you do. If worst comes to worst, I’ll just let you get lost in there.” Rio laughed nervously, unsure if that was actually a joke or not. They both knew that he wasn’t exactly an expert when it came to fighting or defending himself. Rio’s strength advantage probably wouldn’t go very far against Dave. 

 Orion didn’t talk much as they trudged through the woods. He was too busy forming a plan of escape in his head in case it became necessary. Dave kept his distance from Rio, which Rio knew was more in his interest than Dave’s. All Rio hoped was that he could give him some sort of hope that this wasn’t going to last forever. “Here we are” Rio mentioned nonchalantly, motioning towards the empty expanse of forest that sat in front of them. Now was hardly the time to be impressed by the Scribe’s magic, but he could never quite get over how the Scribe building would slowly come into view as if a mist was rising above it. All it took was a simple spell that Rio’s uncle had taught him so long ago. A trick built into an unassuming tree that allowed access only to those that were granted access. Within a minute, the whole building was sitting a hundred yards away, “So uh- welcome to the Scribrary. I’ll lead you back to the library. I have some books we should look at.”

 “That ain’t good enough,” Dave snapped, but his options were limited. Clearly, he didn’t have the fucking werewithal to hold himself captive. He was already thinking about hunting down Ollie again. The crunch of her windpipe if he bit through her throat, the sweet flavour of the blubber of her skin if he caught her in the water. He’d only had harbour seals so far, a ring seal would be a delicious treat. With a start, Dave realised he was staring at Rio, blood-stained drool dripping from the corner of his mouth, every muscle in his body straining. If they’d both been on land, that small lapse in concentration could have been fatal. He put his hand on the engine, tempted to steer away. But what were his choices? Giving in, or calling a hunter.

 Dave was damned if he was about to sign his own death warrant. 

 One final deep breath, and he steered the boat against the dock, and stepped on the dock, gesturing for Rio to lead. They walked quickly through the forest, Dave tapping every tree with a stick so that even when Rio wasn’t looking, he’d know where Dave was. If the tapping stopped… well. For as long as he could hold his breath, the monstrous hunger - unsatiated by how stuffed his stomach was - still craved more. He couldn’t help but stare at Rio, fantasising about how easy it would be to tear his head from his body, how the poor sweet child would probably let him rather than be violent. Dave wasn’t convinced there was much meat on him to eat, but it would be satisfying all the same. And once he’d had one…. Dave was sure it would be easier to eat the others. By the time the scribe headquarters faded into view, Dave could barely even manage to be impressed, only focused on Rio and fighting the temptation to eat Rio. “Hurry,” he signed sharply. He’d feel better if there was a locked door between them. 

 Orion wasn’t sure what to do about Dave’s apprehension. For better or worse, Rio was a lot less concerned about being attacked and eaten by Dave than Dave seemed to be about doing it to Rio. Sure, that was probably because Rio had a serious trust issue. Or rather, a trusting too much issue. He wanted to believe that Dave had the self control to stop himself from doing it. But the fact was that Rio had no idea what Dave was feeling right now. As a small measure of extra precaution, Rio reached into his bag and pulled out the knife that Athena had given him. It was silver, more specifically targeted for werewolves. But it would do fine against a Selkie if he really needed it to. Not that he had any interest or plans to actually use it. “I’ll make sure to stay on guard. Promise.” Rio waved the blade as a show before slipping it into his front pocket. Easily available. 

 Leading their way into the Scribrary, Dave was giving Orion the impression that things were becoming urgent. Rio didn’t like exploring the idea that Dave might actually take a bite out of him, but he still obliged, picking up the pace through the hallways of the Scribe building. “Stay here.” Rio signed when he got to the sleeping area. It was full of old bunks, most of them seemingly untouched for decades. In the back corner of the room was a pile filled with bags of clothes books. They laid next to the only bed with new sheets and comforters. Leftovers from the days that Rio spent most of his days and nights here. Before Winston and Ricky. “I’ll be back.” Rio jogged off as fast as he could to find the book he was looking for. It was his only theory for what was happening to Dave. It was still on one of the tables where Rio had left it and he swiped it off before jogging back. He hovered in the doorway of the sleeping area, keeping his distance from Dave. More for Dave’s purposes than Rio’s own. “Versipellis” Rio signed letter by letter, unsure how to sign it any other way. “My mom-” Rio paused, hands freezing midair before he backed up and started the sentence over again, “I learned about them a tiny bit as a kid, but I have never seen one before. Or even heard of one showing up. They look like werewolves, but they’re different. Their bite makes someone crave uh… cannibalism?” To put it simply. “How long ago were you bitten?”

 Dave looked around the sleeping area, his brows creasing in concern at the sight of the used bed in the back corner, free of the layers of dust that coated everything else. Dave didn’t have to breath to know who had been sleeping there. He looked at Rio with a flicker of concern between all the barefaced hunger. Which was when he was left alone, inhaling shakily and trying not to let the taste of young scribe overwhelm his sentences. He grabbed the post of one of the bunks so tightly it felt like the skin over his knuckles might split. He wiped at the saliva dripping down his chin. When Rio came back, he spelled back the name of the creature, but muddled up the letters. It was so hard to focus on that when he could imagine feeling Rio’s rapid heartbeat under his throat. Rio would let him, wouldn’t even mind. He paused, for a moment not sure of the answer. Maybe the answer would bring Rio closer in, to eat even more easily? Dave rolled up his sleeve, showing the angry red bite on his arm. “6 days ago,” He signed back. “I can’t become a werewolf. This shouldn’t affect me.”

 Orion didn’t like the way that Dave looked. He couldn’t describe the look either. In pain? Starving? Desperate? All of them seemed to fit in part, but none of them felt right. None of this felt right at all. This was the same man who was ready to get torn apart by the cockatrice to make sure Rio was alright. He shouldn’t have to worry about trying to eat anybody. Without knowing much about the man at all, Rio knew he was a good person. “They’re not werewolves.” Rio explained, leaning against the doorframe. He had the book open, but he didn’t need it. He had read the pages a hundred times. Memorized them line for line before even telling Dave he had an idea. He just couldn’t be sure. But he was pretty positive now. “You’re not safe from it just because you’re not human. I don’t even think-” Rio stopped himself. He almost told Dave that he wasn’t sure that he was even safe from the bite. But Rio hadn’t exactly had that conversation with Dave yet. About his hunter heritage. Right now probably wasn’t the best time, all things considered. “If you give in, you’ll turn into one of them.” Rio finished, “But there is some good news? You’re almost done. You only have to stop for like 9-10 days according to the scribe who wrote about them in this book.”

 “Not werewolves?” Dave signed back skeptically, “I saw him change. Tear right through his human skin and be a wolf. How the hell is that not a werewolf-” He crossed his arms more tightly in front of his chest, watching Rio signing, trying to take in the words little by little. He’d turn into one? Bullshit, Dave thought, and began to sign the same. That didn’t happen to selkies. They were resistant, stronger than most humans when it came to whatever magic took one from a human to a werewolf. He already had a second skin, and how they hell would that even work? He shivered when it occurred to him that it wouldn’t. Whatever that thing was, it would not fit into his pelt. He would lose the pelt along with… everything else. His mind, his control. He’d lose the pelt. Dave shuddered, like ice water had been poured down his spine, his demeanor shrinking in on himself. Almost done, the scribe said, but when he said just how long… Under the sudden despair of his situation, Dave’s self control collapsed. To endure half the time again that he'd suffered with resisting his hunger… wasn’t worth it. Not when there was such young tender flesh in front of him. Dave looked up at Rio, opened his mouth to expose his jagged seal teeth, and sprinted at the man.

 It happened quickly. One moment Dave’s facial expression looked like he thought Orion was crazy. Clearly he wasn’t convinced that he could change into such a creature. Rio supposed he understood the disbelief. The idea of changing into a werewolf wasn’t the same for a selkie as it was for a human. As far as Rio was aware, Dave was just as immune to the bite as Rio himself was. But just as Rio was trying to explain, this wasn’t a werewolf. It was another shapeshifter. One far rarer than an everyday werewolf. Rio didn’t think his own hunter genetics would protect him from this bite. But Rio didn’t get much time to think about it. Seconds later, Dave’s posture had completely shifted and suddenly he launched himself towards Rio. The only thing saving his life- and by extension, Dave’s- were the hunter reflexes. His arm shot out instinctively, launching the book he had been holding at the man’s face and then ducking falling backwards to avoid the man’s teeth. If he had been attacked, he might be able to heal. But if Dave got a bite out of him, it could all be over. Maybe. Rio still wasn’t exactly sure if a selkie feasting on a human would count as cannibalism enough to finish the curse. He wasn’t even sure it was a curse. More like some horrible disease. Either way, Rio wasn’t interested in trying it out today. The Scribe journals would have to go unanswered. Rio rolled off his back and out of the doorway, grabbing onto it and slamming it shut as a barricade between himself and Dave. “Okay, didn’t love that!” Rio yelled at Dave, trying to keep an ounce of calmness in his voice despite wanting to scream his head off. But that would only make Dave feel worse about what he had done once he was back to normal. For now, Rio needed to find a way to make sure he stayed isolated for a few more days. “Maybe you should just stay in there for awhile? It’s cozier than it looks!” He wasn’t even sure if Dave could hear him. Without the sign language and visual confirmation, Rio wasn’t sure anything he was saying was getting through to him.

 Jaw wide, intent on sinking his canines into Orion’s pale flesh, Dave barely had a thought long enough to parse the wide swing of the book before the hardback surface slammed into Dave’s face, knocking him off balance. Stunning sense into his for a split second, rubbing his face as he looked up at Rio. He inhaled sharply, and like sharks in chummed water, the split second of control was lost once more as he rushed after the boy. “No!” 

 Dave tried to force his way through the door as Rio slammed it in his face. The hinges of the door rattled but held firm as Dave slammed his body into it. “Let me out!” He barked. “Orion, let me out now!” He backed up, teeth bared, rolling his bloodied sleeves up, and barrelled into the door again, ramming his uninjured shoulder into the wooden structure, over and over, leaving more and more bloody smears on the door each time. “I’ll kill you!” He bellowed, spit flying through the air, slamming his fist on the door. “Orion- kid. C’mon. You don’t need to do this. I need to eat. I’m so hungry it’ll tear me apart. Orion.” His rage drained out of him, forehead dropping to rest against the wood. “Shit.”

 Then, much to his chagrin, Dave admitted, “Maybe that’s a good call, scribeling.”

 There was something deeply disturbing about the way that Dave shifted back and forth. One second, Orion was wincing against the assault on the door from the other side. Rio had to keep him from getting out, but the constant pounding and screaming made him want to do nothing more than cower in a corner. The next moment everything would go quiet. Suddenly Dave would be pleading to leave as if he hadn’t just been threatening the hunter’s life seconds before. Rio’s hands were shaking, an after effect of the fear he felt. Not for himself, necessarily. But for Dave. He wondered how much of the real Dave was beneath the surface. Was he able to see everything that he was doing and saying? Or was he completely taken over by this curse or disease or whatever it was? Would he even remember this in a few days, when all this was over? How did Rio even think he could feasibly keep the man completely locked up for multiple days if he was acting like this? 

 He pulled himself into a fetal position, back still resting against the door. He didn’t know what to say to Dave. Nothing felt right, not in this situation. He couldn’t even know for sure how much of the man was actually there. For all he knew, Dave’s last statement of resignation was just a ploy to get Rio to drop his guard. “My book isn’t damaged is it?” Without any other ideas, Rio settled on a pointless question, quickly following up with “Oh uh- and your face too. How’s your face? Sorry about that?”

 Dave stood, walking over to the bed where he’d dumped his phone, before returning to sit against the door, knees folded in front of him. He used the phone to text his reply. “Easier to talk like this. Less breathing.” It was an terrible way to say that he was one tiny moment away from tearing through the door with his naked teeth if he needed to. “Book’s fine. Might want to leave it in here. Keep that door firm and locked between us.” 

 Truth be told, Dave could barely process the pain. Not from the battery by book, nor the gash across his nose and cheeks - he was aware of it now, a sharb throb worsened by the assault by book, but it didn’t get through the haze of hunger. Not enough to do anything about it. “My face has had worse.” Like’ Rio’s would, if he got through the door. Dave punched the floor, grimacing at the thought. Now he recognised them, they were persistent, a constant whispering in his ears, to eat until the bones were clean. Dave started at the texts on his phone, and allowed himself one, singular moment of weakness. 

 “I don’t know if I can hold on for another 3 days.”

 Orion jumped as his phone buzzed against him. He dug it out of his pocket and checked. A text from Dave. He hated this. Really, really hated this. He had no idea that this was actually going to work, just going based off of what one scribe wrote in a journal sometime greater than forty years ago. Rio bit his lip and held his breath at the man’s text. This wasn’t going to be easy. “Right. Book can stay. Maybe you can read it? Might be some helpful stuff. The information on the Versipellis is like sixty three pages in.” He sent the text and put the face of the phone against his leg. He didn’t want to see any replies for a moment. He just needed a second to collect himself. 

 The pounding on the door shook him from that moment. Just a single jostle, probably Dave releasing anger instead of trying to break out. Rio sighed and readjusted, resting against the edge of the door frame and stuffing his body in to rest his foot against the other side. He didn’t like the vibration of his phone. He didn’t want to see what Dave had to say. He had no idea how to make this better, and just barely had an idea to fix it at all. “I don’t know that we have any other choice.” Rio finally texted back, resting the side of his head against the door. “I don’t want to keep you locked in there.” That much was true. It went against everything he believed in. If there were any other options, Rio would jump on them immediately.“But I don’t know what else to do.”

 Dave nodded, looking over at the book, but he knew in this state he was as likely to eat the pages as he was to read them, nevermind understand them. Hell, he was more likely to use the book to bribe the kid in here to eat him. The thought sent a shiver down Dave’s spine, of horror and anticipation. Hunger gnawed at his self control like a blunt knife at a fraying rope. “Got it.” He texted back, before locking his phone and curling his hands into fists. Dave had survived the maws of a mermaid, hunters bullets, spell caster magic, the chilling grip of an aipaloovik. This monster lived inside, but he could survive. He needed to, for the justice he’d promised his family so long ago. There was stuff on this earth he still needed to do. He clung to the last scraps of his sense of self ferociously. 

 Dave grimaced at the texts he got back from Rio. “Neither.” If it gets bad. Worse. You should call a hunter. Dave typed it out, and stared at the black letters on his screen, his fingers hovering over the send button. There was a long pause. He deleted the message without sending it, and stared at his phone. Eventually he settled on, “Just… keep yourself safe, kid.” 

 A lot needed to be done. Orion would need to figure out how to get food to Dave in the meantime. The scribe’s journal made no reference to the diet while waiting out the curse. Would he be able to eat regular food? Or would his body reject it? He would have to eat something eventually. Even if it had to be raw meat, at least it would be something. But he knew Dave wasn’t a pushover when it came to strength. Leaving him unattended wasn’t the best idea either. Dave could find a way out if he was desperate enough. Without Rio there to try to stop him, who knew where Dave could end up? Or who he could end up eating. 

 Dave’s texts hurt Rio. They sounded so… defeated. Hopeless, even. He couldn’t imagine the amount of stress or pain that he must be in. Rio would never understand the sort of craving that others had to go through. He hated that, wanting to understand something but knowing he never could. All he could do was try his best to do what he thought was right, “I’m going to keep both of us safe.”

[elftwink]

What are your feelings about wtnv condos?

WELL, since you asked: 

for one i think most everything has been said about cecil calling carlos perfect prior to condos and imperfect after it. i agree w/all that, i think its beautiful and it makes me cry and also it’s so cohesive and such a good character development thing BUT like i said, it has been covered so i won’t waffle about that. but i will waffle about the way that perfection is presented in and of itself and how that presentation is tied to night vale’s larger themes. namely, this line:

“I understood that the cubes are perfect! I understood that this is how we become perfect. I understood that what I was seeing was the way to perfection. And I don’t know how I understood this. Thinking about it now, nothing about it seems good, let alone perfect.” [bolding mine]

night vale is far from the only media around that covers the idea that perfection is a myth that people spend their whole lives chasing. i think what it does that works so well is that it never portrays perfection as completely unattainable— in fact, the plot of the episode hinges on the fact that the character can access a perfect existence— but rather as alien. so far removed from a real human experience that looking at it from an outsider perspective, as cecil does after the weather is over in that line, makes it very nearly incomprehensible. 

and moreover, the people who are “perfect” within the context of the episode are not, in any tangible or understandable way, “better” than they were before— which, as far as my personal media consumption goes, is a fairly novel twist. off the top of my head i can think of several stories or plot points that revolve around a protagonist being offered a perfect existence and refusing. basically any media that involves omnipotent beings will have a plotline like this or similar and stories about human beings refusing like, divinity or power or wealth or skill or whatever it might be are kind of a staple of like, every genre. HOWEVER the idea tends to be that they have something to gain from that; power or wealth or status or knowledge or something, something that might be massive and that they could never hope to achieve or accrue on their own.

the condos offer no understandable improvement. they don’t even offer the promise of improvement. the demonstrations of perfection and the examples we are given as an audience are not glorious or grandiose but foreign and terrifying, something that the characters openly admit. 

“Janice Rio (from down the street) saw a city. A lost city. A dead city, nestled in a jungle – the kind of jungle that only ever existed in books written by people who have never seen a jungle. The city stood, and Janice stood, in perfect dread, its doors were open jaws. Its windows were open jaws. Its roads and avenues were gaping mouths and open jaws. That dead city teetered. It rotted in its jungle tomb, but…it was not empty. And she started to run. Run through the thick foliage of that absurd place, she shouted and ran.”

“Roger Singh (who had been able to buy a condo with the spine) saw a cave, underwater, in an ocean far to the north. And the water around him was dark – so dark! – that he wasn’t sure even which way led to the surface, to life…and which way led down only to the deep silent. He gasped, but found he had no breath…and no need to breathe. And there was this cave that smoldered with a light, a light that was charged and alive. And shadows moved against the light, cast by…what?…within the cave. And then he swam towards it, uncertain whether he was guest, or sacrifice, or invulnerable dreamer. And he heard a song from the cave, and he knew it, and it was perfect. And he sang along, but at the same time, he had never heard that song before in his life. And what was life? What made it his? It all seemed so small, part of the world that didn’t exist anymore.” 

and like, to some extent, so what, right? who cares if perfection is seen as desirable vs unknowable? what difference does it make? well, i will tell you/theorize about it abstractly. i find that this framing of perfection makes it much much clearer that wtnv intends imperfection to be celebrated rather than tolerated. 

the order of events is not imperfection is human -> being human is good -> imperfection is good, but rather, imperfection is good -> humans are imperfect - > being human is good. cecil says pretty much this when he says: “And those imperfections in our reality are the seams and the cracks into which our out-sized love can seep and pool. And sometimes we are annoyed, and disappointed, and that too is a part of how love works. It is not a perfect system, but… Oh, well.”

and i mean, even in and of itself that’s a deeply moving thing to say. this post could end here with me saying that night vale’s framing of imperfection as not just necessary but integral to experiencing life in a way that is worthwhile makes for an incredibly powerful story. 

but condos is part of a larger story. and i’ve talked about parade day & old oak doors before, and briefly mentioned all right in that post. one of the most oft quoted night vale bits is the candle wax spiel from a memory of europe (the “time is like wax” speech). with these, and with countless other moments across the show, over and over again, wtnv is about the value of right now. of action. of effort. of choice.

what actually sets night vale perfection apart is that above all else, perfection is stagnant. the people in the condos float motionless and frozen. fading away. even when cecil says that they are able to be contacted, the action is still taken by the people left behind, imperfect: “Walking through where the condos once stood, you can hear their voices — but distantly, faintly. And if you reach out when you hear that voice, if you reach out and feel for them, you too will get a vision of some far-off place, a place that is, in its own way, in a way perhaps that can never be explained, perfect.” these people no longer do anything. they no longer live, even though they are presumably alive, in their own perfect way. the reason the condos offer no improvement is that improvement is growth, it’s movement, it’s action. improvement and perfection are antonyms. you improve for the sake of improvement, for betterment, rather than to attain perfection.

when cecil escapes from the condos, he does so through resistance, through fighting, through choosing imperfection actively. throughout the show, things happen because people try. they do. they live and they grow and they change and they discover and they fucking try. and when they don’t it’s to make a point about inaction, to show you that being static is easy and nice but that even in the face of all that, it’s important to try. and you try knowing you could fail. and you try knowing the odds are stacked, knowing that the world is chaotic and things don’t always happen for a reason. you try if it doesn’t personally affect you. you try if you have never tried before or if you couldn’t or didn’t last time. 

i promise i’m almost done but i couldn’t mention all that without saying something about how community is tied up so tight with those values that you can’t tear them apart. the way in which things happen is rarely because cecil does something on his own but because the town does something, together. relationships are built on communication and effort and trying, from one-on-one to city wide. the entire show is fundamentally built on balancing your inclusion in the community of night vale with your independence and ability (& sometimes duty) to act as a single person. you can stand alone, and if you must, you should, but you shouldn’t have to. and hopefully you don’t have to. 

disclaimer that i’m way behind on wtnv so i could be contradicted by more recent episodes and also this isn’t nearly long enough to really get Into It(tm) and also the wtnv has covered such a variety of topics that it’s very hard to make generalizations like this, but even so, i hope i’ve done it justice. also shoutout to cecilspeaks for all the quotes, here’s the full transcript for condos if anyone wants/needs it

anyway, on a final note, i think cecil really says it best so:

“A perfect place that you will never visit. And that is the best news of all. Listeners, I send you now back out into the night. And it’s dangerous out there, and it’s lonely, and it’s not perfect.

Goodnight, all of you here, goodnight, all of you listeners, and goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.”

[pallideinanis]

DISHONORED: DEATH OF THE OUTSIDER NOMINATED FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN VIDEO GAME WRITING.

Really?

(rant ahead, feel free to ignore this)

Don’t get me wrong -- I love Death of the Outsider and the world that it gave us but.. Compared to the last two titles and the two DLCs, I easily find this game to be weak in terms of its writing. It completely undermines the character development and growth that occurred in a past titles and in my opinion, really compromises the integrity of some of the series’ key characters. The entire plot was “just because”, and while I’m hoping Dishonored’s team is scrambling working to correct that in the upcoming Return of Daud book, I don’t foresee this character development massacre to be remedied.

I understand that there are certain guidelines that restrict the past titles from being nominated this year, but if it up to me, I would seriously give it to one of the other games. The writing is so much more cohesive in the other Dishonored games than the disaster that is DoTO, in my opinion. 

Dishonored 1 hugely capitalized on a theme of revenge and introducing the series gimmick: agency. The player can run around in the destitute world of Dunwall, making whatever violent or passive decisions they see fit while ultimately learning that even someone who has been stripped of everything can still play an integral part in what’s to come... And that sometimes, the easy answer isn’t always the best answer.

The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches come in with HUGE character development for series antagonist-turned-anti-hero, Daud. Further solidifying the idea that your choices matter, these DLCS drive two new themes of regret and redemption as we watch Daud, who was wallowing in regret for what he has done, come to peace with his evil actions and dark past, willing to accept the price for the choices he has made.

Then comes Dishonored 2, a game that surrounds an over-protective and loving father and his daughter, a daydreaming, but well-meaning empress. This game really shows off the dynamic between these two characters and their symbiotic relationship. One can’t and doesn’t want to exist without the other; they’ve been through too much shit together and have come to rely upon the other’s presence for emotional support. Further, the Heart of a Living Thing plays a key role in hidden themes of mourning loss and moving on with the reintroduction of Jessamine’s spirit, as well as her final release, fading into the great unknown.

This is the part where Death of the Outsider comes stumbling in all sloppy and drunk and disoriented and this is where I get angry. Dishonored 2 left us with an interesting cliffhanger. We see Meagan Foster staring at the antiquated, iconic Whaler mask, as well as the Assassins Blade, which certainly must feel comfortable and familiar in Meagan Foster’s hand. All while The Outsider watches from an open door, a mysterious blue glow shining in from behind him. We learn that Meagan Foster has faded from the shadows, and from them, Billie Lurk has risen. The events of Dishonored 2 have brought back haunting memories of the bad things that have happened to her and the bad things that she has done to others, and it has displaced Billie Lurk. That body has seen many identities and many lives and she just doesn’t know who she is anymore and she seeks guidance. Familiarity. Family. The ending of Dishonored 2 leaves us to believe that she is remorseful and has been seeking Daud through this whole adventure. Daud was like her father and she believes he can help her find herself.  

Cue up to E3 2017, the familiar, haunting Whaler shanty of Daniel Licht’s (rest his soul) echoes in and we’re met with a familiar face. Billie Lurk. We witness Billie kick the asses of several very large sailors by herself and it’s absolutely glorious. We’re getting the resolution to Dishonored 2′s ending--she’s finally found that old fart Daud and this was going to be a grand new adventure of finding oneself and accepting her past and--

What’s that, Daud? One last job? 

Wh-- ...weren’t you going to fade into obscurity? Isn’t that what you promised to Corvo when he confronted you and nearly took your life in Dishonored 1? And Billie, weren’t you lamenting all through Dishonored 2 about all of your regrets and mistakes? If these were weighing so heavily upon your shoulders, why are you so willing to just accept Daud’s offer? In the game itself Billie expresses initial shock towards Daud’s idiot idea, but she doesn’t display any unwillingness to listen to The Knife. I mean, I guess I can understand this considering how much trust she puts into this man because of how high she places him on that pedestal, but... the moment Daud is introduced, he just seems to shove Billie’s problems and identity crisis on the back burner, so Daud and his massacre of character development can take center-stage. Why? We’ve heard from Daud, we know he’s sorry for his past and we know he’s finally accepted what he’s done. So what’s Daud’s angle, why does he feel the need to make another stupid decision?

Because everything he discovered about himself and The Outsider in the two DLCS that starred him is absolutely moot. Inching closer and closer to the edge of his final chapter, apparently Daud no longer feels content with his decisions and chooses to throw blame onto a third party whom he knows remains neutral...or usually does. 

The Outsider is a deity who sees all things. He has a habit of giving power to those who have been scorned and likes to watch them rise from the ashes and regain the control that was taken from them. Corvo, Daud and Emily are great examples of this. However, Daud and The Outsider seem to have an interesting relationship. The fandom likes to make jokes about how The Outsider plays favorites and prefers Corvo over Daud, but truthfully the Outsider, at least in the past DLCs, displays a strange attachment to Daud. Going out of his way to guide Daud towards redemption -- something he has said is very rarely seen from his four-thousand years of issuing marks. 

So why murder your guiding light? 

There isn’t really much of an answer outside of Daud sort of randomly believing that everything will magically be right with the world once The Outsider is eradicated. This notion seems incredibly ignorant, especially from Daud. It’s no secret that the Outsider finds entertainment in chaos, but the player is quick to learn from waaaaaay back in the first game that it isn’t The Outsider that causes chaos...it’s the player. So why should Daud, knowing what he knows and after experiencing everything he has, demonize The Outsider? 

What’s the point of undermining the very core of your game’s primary mechanic, Arkane? 

The Knife’s absurd and uncharacteristic change of heart, alongside Billie being shoved into the dark, (as well as how the end-game saw The Outsider’s character being reduced to but a weak princess needing saving, and how Billie is apparently stuck in some fucking timewarp--but those are other rants for another time,) are some of the biggest issues I take with Death of the Outsider’s writing. That is why I find it undeserving of this nomination. These are all my opinions and you’re welcome to disagree. 

Thanks for sticking around so long, if ya did. 

[theliterateape]

Book Club Made Me Read It | The Changeling

By Kari Castor

I’m a member of a small, informal, friends, and friends-of-friends book club. We try to read one book every 5 five weeks or so. The rules are simple: Everyone gets an opportunity to pick a book for the book club to read. Each member must pick a book that they have not personally read before and each member is responsible for leading the discussion after we read their selection. Sometimes the books are good. Sometimes they are not. I review them here regardless of their quality.

I’m a bitch and don’t care about ruining the experience for you, so I’m going to include spoilers whenever I please. That’s your only warning. Proceed at your own risk.

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

Sigh. I wanted to like this one. I thought I was going to like this one. Hell, I did rather like the first 128 pages of this one, which makes it a real shame when the whole thing shits the bed in the final two-thirds.

Here’s the problem: Victor LaValle’s The Changeling is not a novel. It is at least three separate stories that are loosely stitched together into some vague semblance of a novel. It is an effective and frightening novella stretched into an increasingly disappointing novel. It is a bunch of ideas, about parenthood and family legacies and the dangers of the internet, with which the author would like to whack you about the head. It is a heavy-handed fairy tale that bemoans the heavy-handedness of fairy tales.

The first 128 pages are primarily the story of a relationship. Apollo Kagwa’s father left when he was a child, and he has felt the loss echo acutely across his life. Apollo meets, woos, and marries Emma Valentine, and they have a child. Apollo is deliriously happy to be a father, and he vows to be everything to his own son that he wishes his father could have been to him. Meanwhile, Emma slips increasingly into darkness and despair, refusing to call baby Brian by his name, refusing to care for him, insisting that he isn’t Brian at all. Apollo and Emma’s relationship grows antagonistic. Frustrated and angry at her inability to snap out of it, he pushes her away and devotes himself wholly to Brian. Emma’s presence in the story (which is told primarily from Apollo’s perspective) begins to feel more like that of a malevolent spirit than of a co-parent and partner. And then one day, Apollo wakes up chained with a bike lock to a steam pipe in their apartment and a kettle is whistling on the stove, and Brian is wailing in his bedroom. And Emma, Emma who has been insisting that the baby is wrong, takes a hammer to Apollo’s face and the kettle of boiling water to Brian’s room with the words, “It’s not a baby.”

And holy shit if this book had ended right there, I’d be writing a very different review right now. The vibrancy of their early relationship with each other, the slow creep of horror as things become more and more wrong in the Kagwa-Valentine household, the awful question of whether Emma might actually be right, the visceral brutality of the final scenes… It works. It’s good.

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t end there. Instead, it takes one of the dullest turns for the fantastical that I’ve ever encountered.

The narrative continues after a time skip: Baby Brian is dead and buried, and Emma is missing, a fugitive from the law. Apollo, a used-bookseller, sells a rare book to a weird nerd who says he hopes to win his wife back with an extravagant gift, and then the nerd tells Apollo that he knows Emma is alive, and that his internet friends helped track her down. Apollo thinks this is great news, because he wants to kill Emma himself for murdering their child, so he and the weird nerd go on an adventure together to a magical island on the East River inhabited by women and children. The women there all, like Emma, killed their babies on the basis of a belief that it wasn’t their baby. Apollo starts to believe this fake baby thing might hold some water after all, and then we find out that his weird nerd buddy is actually a bad guy and the evidence of his badness is that… he killed his baby. Yeah, I know, but you see, he killed his real baby and not his fake baby, and that makes all the difference. Anyway, then his mysterious bad guy friends show up to wreak havoc and everyone flees the island and none of it really matters.

The whole island episode is about one hundred pages long and could be lifted entirely out of the book with no real loss to the plot.

I should probably curb my impulse to continue summarizing the absolutely whack plot of this book, in large part because I’m afraid that the short version will make it sound much more interesting than it actually is, but the whole thing ends with Apollo finding Emma, who is a witch now, and they fuck and get back together without ever bothering to have a conversation about the fact that she hammered his fucking face in and maybe they should look for a couples counselor or something. Also, a troll has been trying to raise the real not-dead baby Brian, so Apollo and Emma kill the troll and get their baby back and also murder both the weird nerd who bought the rare book and the nerd’s dad, but not before the dad does a straight-up Bond-villain exposition dump to explain everything about how a troll emigrated to New York with a bunch of Norwegians in the 1820s and now his family is responsible for stealing real babies and replacing them with fake changeling babies, so the troll can try to raise the real babies (except it always fucks up and eats them instead).

The book… takes one of the dullest turns for the fantastical that I’ve ever encountered.

Meanwhile, there’s a B-plot about Apollo’s absent father, which eventually reveals that Apollo’s dad tried to kill him (in a fit of If I can’t have him, no one gets to.) as a toddler. Also, Emma’s mom tried to kill her and her sister as part of a murder-suicide. Basically this book is an exercise in How many subplots and backstories centered on the themes of ‘family secrets’ and ‘violence committed by parents in the name of their children’ can I cram into a single book? There is a distinct lack of subtlety at work in this book.

Much to-do is made about the dangers of posting things on Facebook (people will know things about you!), which mostly reads as though it is written by someone who has never actually used Facebook himself but asked his friend to tell him about it. The book twice uses the exact same metaphor about how dangerous it is: That putting stuff about your life on the internet is like inviting a vampire into your home — you’ve compromised your safety by making your private world accessible to the monsters. One of the villains (the aforementioned weird nerd) is an internet troll working in cahoots with an actual troll. I cannot roll my eyes hard enough to convey my exasperation with this.

There’s a bunch of miscellaneous shit that seems like it’s meant to be symbolic or important but just… isn’t. There’s a room that has four space heaters in it, which seems like it’s an important detail given how many times the extreme heat in the room is referenced, but it turns out the only reason there are four space heaters in that room is that the plot requires a way for Apollo and Emma set a house fire later, and four space heaters fits the bill nicely. Another example: The narration specifically remarks upon a headstone with the name Catherine Linton on it, at the cemetery where not-Brian is buried, but it doesn’t appear to mean anything... Did the author intend some symbolic significance there that he failed to convey? (At best, I can come up with some loose connection to the general “fucked up families” theme that runs rampant in The Changeling.) Is it supposed to be a fun little easter egg for the lit nerd who recognizes that name as a character from Wuthering Heights? Is it just “Look at how smart I am, I can drop in random literary references” masturbatory bullshit?

Honestly, an extraordinary amount of stuff happens in this book, and most of it is a mix of astonishingly boring and ham-fisted. It tries really hard to weave an epic modern fairy tale about parenthood, but there are too many abrupt left turns into entirely new plots and not enough cohesion and interweaving of threads throughout the whole tale. Classic fairy tales can do that sort of thing and still work in no small part because they’re short, but this is a 430-page book, which is actually just several ideas for different novellas loosely Frankensteined together, and all of them end up being less interesting collectively than any one of them might have been on its own.

MY RATING: 2/5 stars

POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT FOR: Writing a solid 128-page novella about a woman who might have serious postpartum depression or might actually have identified that her baby is a changeling and no one else can see it.

PLEASE NO MORE: Everything after page 128.

SHOUT-OUT TO: Victor LaValle's Destroyer, which is a comic book unrelated to The Changeling aside from the fact that it has the same author. But the full title of the comic book is legit Victor LaValle's Destroyer, which is just… awful. Why would you do that? Sorry Victor LaValle, but you’re nowhere near good enough or famous enough to justify putting your own name as a possessive in the title, and I don’t care if it’s your fault or the publisher’s fault, fuck everyone involved in that decision.

[gta-5-cheats]

Legion Season 2 Gets Where It Wants, Unconvincingly

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Legion Season 2 Gets Where It Wants, Unconvincingly

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Spoilers ahead for Legion season 2. Please stop reading if you haven’t seen all of it.

Legion’s big plan for its protagonist David (Dan Stevens) came into sharper focus during its season 2 finale, “Chapter 19” – it aired Tuesday on FX and is available for purchase elsewhere – as the extremely-powerful mutant son of Charles Xavier refused to reckon with the idea that his seemingly good-guy actions had dragged down him a slippery slope into potential outright villainy. In essence, David ended up reinforcing the well-known proverb: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Of course, this being Noah Hawley’s Legion, which loves to place its straightforward narratives and big-picture themes in a mind-boggling package that’s always more interested in ratcheting up the visual style factor than plot or character depth, that idea of the hero being the villain was never given the time it needed to develop. Instead, the show relied on a few late-game inserts, in Syd (Rachel Keller) being shown David’s actions from another light and a manipulated sexual encounter between the two, to quickly convince the audience of the same.

For what it’s worth, David going dark was hinted at early on, and the show’s original big bad – the Shadow King aka Amahl Farouk (Navid Negabhan) – said as much, albeit a little more than midway through the second season. But unfortunately, Legion has never been good with sticking to its main arc – here, it was about the race to find Farouk’s body – and frequently gets distracted in exploring other ideas for entire episodes at a time. Sure, it may deploy them using the visual smarts it’s become known for, but that’s still in service of a side track.

A big culprit was the subplot involving mass hysteria, which came to the fore in the seventh episode of the season, “Chapter 15”, as Farouk’s sabotage of David’s allies almost resulted in them killing the leader of Division 3, Admiral Fukyama (Marc Oka), the guy with a straw basket on his head. It was aided by the so-called educational interludes, with Jon Hamm (Mad Men) as narrator, which contributed to our understanding of what was going on at times, and entirely failed to connect the dots in other places.

Amber Midthunder as Kerry Loudermilk, Bill Irwin as Cary Loudermilk in Legion season 2 Photo Credit: Suzanne Tenner/FX

That difference in cohesion, and in turn quality, was true of the season as a whole. Where Legion gained some necessary momentum in one episode (“Chapter 11” had David solving cerebral puzzles inside everyone’s minds) and provided some character depth in another (“Chapter 12” gave us a look at Syd’s troubled upbringing), it squandered that by going for a big twist for a character it never fleshed out (“Chapter 13” revealed Farouk had turned Amy into Lenny) or hitting the brakes hard (a check-in with supporting characters in “Chapter 17”).

There was just one case during Legion’s season 2 where it was able to stick its brave approach, with David exploring the multiverse in “Chapter 14” and seeing all the other lives he could’ve had if he never went to a psychiatric hospital, be it dying at the hands of Kerry (Amber Midthunder), gunned down by the police after an incident with the yellow-eyed Devil, or becoming the richest man in the world at the cost of being controlled by Farouk all his life. Put that together with “Chapter 11” and “Chapter 12”, and you’ve got three good episodes among an extended total of 11, thanks to a mid-season announcement that there would be an extra episode.

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That episode was the aforementioned “Chapter 17”, which was devoted entirely to characters not named David or Syd but failed to include anything noteworthy and ended up being underwhelming. Though it finally gave Melanie (Jean Smart) some screen time, she was under Farouk’s control and hence had no agency of her own. Moreover, it digressed heavily from the main plot at the wrong time, which had enough problems as it is, what with everyone taking forever to find Farouk’s body.

The season was, of course, about David giving in to his worst impulses. “For me, I always had this question in my mind, what would happen if Walter White was a supervillain? That Breaking Bad superhero show,” Hawley said in a recent interview. “This idea, especially in the X-Men universe, that the moral line between good and evil is often fudge-able. […] And the idea of what the right thing to do is can shift depending on the circumstances.” Moreover, Hawley said he designed it such that Syd would emerge as the new protagonist.

Rachel Keller as Syd Barrett in Legion season 2 Photo Credit: Suzanne Tenner/FX

But those interludes narrated by Hamm interfered – possibly intentionally on Legion’s part, as obfuscation – with what Hawley had in mind for David’s season-two arc. And then right before the pivotal scene in the finale, a bunch of intertitles followed by a narration riffed on the ship of fools metaphor for madness, as defined by Michel Foucault in his book “Madness and Civilization”. With hindsight, the episode seems to suggest everyone around David has gone crazy. But if you go by the evidence Legion presents the rest of the time – and Hawley’s words – it’s clear he’s become the villain.

For one, his quest for revenge on Farouk has consumed him, causing him to lie over and over. He tortures Melanie’s husband Oliver (Jemaine Clement) in the penultimate episode, and what he does with Syd in the finale – she doesn’t mince her words and lays it out plain and simple – is unspeakable and abhorrent. Why then does Legion want it to be confounding? So there’s chance for the character’s redemption? The only answer seems to be “why not”, given the show is rarely bothered with explaining itself.

Either way, David going full tilt is an interesting place for the show (however unconvincingly it got there), because it opens up the narrative scope for season 3. Abandoning his friends and teleporting away with Lenny further contributes to that shot from the future at the start of the penultimate episode, of David resembling his comic-book avatar with long hair, sitting on a throne and holding a crystal ball with Syd’s face in it, as a dazed Lenny lounges in front and a pile of bones surround them. It’s now up to the new hero Syd to save him from himself.

Legion season 2 is available to stream on FXNow, and for purchase via Amazon Video, Google Play, iTunes, and Microsoft Store.

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