#so here's an ivy from last night while I was watching game reviews

[dazzle-art]

There's no more coffee left in the palace, gods save the soldiers' souls

[redqueen-hypothesis]

yearning ➳ kiro (mlqc)

➳ PAIRING: reader x kiro (mlqc)

➳ WORD COUNT: 1818

➳ GENRE: slight angst, fluff

➳ SYNOPSIS: you miss kiro

➳ REMARKS: i forgot i can’t w r i t e... here have some word vomit

yearning /ˈjəːnɪŋ/ (noun): a feeling of intense longing for something.

Yearning shows itself in the way that everything reminds you of him.

You’re walking along the street on your way to work, footsteps hurried as you type out a message to Anna, instructing her what documents to prepare for you so that work can start smoothly when you arrive at the office. A little out of breath from how quickly you’re walking, you’re about to cross an intersection when the bright rays of the morning sun catch your eye.

It’s a beautiful shade of soft orange today, its gentle light dappled as it filters through the leaves of the trees planted along the roadside. The warmth seeps through your skin, down to your very bones - just like Kiro.

The moment only lasts for a brief second, the lights turn green, and you pull out your phone to snap a picture of the early dawn before continuing on your way across the road. While you continue down your way to work, you post the picture on Moments, captioning it with ‘I’m waiting for you to come back, Kiro!”

In the cafe, waiting in line to buy coffee for yourself and your colleagues, you find yourself pondering what to buy as you glance over the chalkboard menu. There are all sorts of treats for offer, and while you already have a drink that you would normally get, you see one of Kiro’s favorites illustrated with chalk in a rainbow of eye catching colours.

Caramel macchiato. Without much thinking, you get it together with the rest of your drinks. You can’t remember how many times you’ve snuck this specific drink into Kiro’s trailer as an encouragement for him while he’s filming, and recall the sweetness of his smile, the way his azure eyes light up when he sees you at the door, clearer than a summer sky devoid of clouds.

As you sip at the drink on your way to work, the sweetness spreading over your tongue, you hope your smile is bright enough to make up for the absence of his.

Work is a tiring affair - it leaves you exhausted, boneless like a wrung out cloth, and you’re slumped over your desk counting down the minutes down to sending Victor your monthly financial report. While you’ve learned to navigate the CEO’s tongue and of the softness it is capable of - barbed as it may be - you’ve still never quite gotten over the nerves that handing up a report entails. Perhaps it’s the perfectionist in you that demands only the best that you can offer, but if Victor finds a mistake with a piece of work you’ve reviewed so many times, you’d feel awful about yourself and your capabilities.

Victor informs you of three typos and a mix up of values between revenue and expenditure barely ten minutes later. You groan and curl up in your office chair, too discouraged to review the report. Victor has extended the deadline for the submission of the revised edition, but you can’t quite find the energy to look over the same words all over again when they’re practically swimming off the page.

“I want to call Kiro.” You mumble absentmindedly into the stack of papers on your desk. That cheerful smile of his, just imagining it gives you the tiniest bit of energy. You desperately want to hear his voice, listen to his encouraging words as he tells you not to worry. You want to come to work the next day and find a bag of chips in your favourite flavour, left at your desk by an anonymous sender whose identity you already know. Your desire translates into a something unbelievably simple, and yet so deep you can feel its ache in your chest with each breath you take.

You want Kiro.

On your way home from work, you spot a bunch of sunflowers outside of the florist’s, bright yellow and fresh. You look at it for a second, and before you know it, you’re walking out of the shop with a bouquet of sunflowers in hand.

Flowers that always chase after the light of the sun.

You press your lips to the petals, and your mouth curls up in a sad smile. “I’ll have to make do with these till you get back, Kiro.”

Yearning shows itself in the way you can’t sleep without him at your side.

You lie awake in the middle of the night, seemingly unable to fall asleep. You’ve tried to, listening to white noise, trying to tire yourself out before bed, but none of them seem to have the same effect as the sound of Kiro’s soft breathing next to your ear, and the warmth of his arms wrapped around you.

A sigh leaves your lips as you roll onto your back, gazing up at the darkness of your ceiling. The bed feels too big without him, and you look longingly at the small brown teddy bear sitting on the pillow Kiro’s head usually occupies.

He’d given that to you after winning it from a carnival the two of you had gone to together, his hood pulled over his head to hide his bright blond hair and a mask drawn over his face to remain as your Kiro, not Kiro the superstar. Still, neither had been able to hide the sheer warmth that Kiro exuded, as if he were the sun itself.

Kiro had managed to shoot all four targets at a game stall (you were still in disbelief, you’d played it moments before and had become convinced that the game was rigged) and had won the teddy bear as a prize. Right after that, however, he’d plopped it into your arms with a big grin, hoping that it would give you as much comfort as he did in his absence.

Now when you look at it, its glass eyes stare back at you mournfully, as if it were Kiro himself wishing he could be by your side. You reach out to tug it against your chest, squeezing it softly, hoping the affection in your touch could somehow reach him, wherever he is.

“He said to wait for him to come back.” You murmur to the teddy bear, stroking a finger over the stitches in its ears. “I promised him I would.”

You fall asleep to the softness of the teddy bear held close, seeking him out even in your dreams.

Yearning shows itself in the way that your heart feels like it’s torn without him.

It’s been a month of radio silence from him.

Every day, you send messages and pictures of things that invariably remind you of him, from a cat napping in a sunny spot or a new flavor of a packet of chips being released. And yet he replies to none of them, not a single call or text to at least let you know he’s doing fine.

Your heart is fraying at the edges, pained and torn without him. It’s like he’d taken a piece of it when he’d left, and you want to kiss away the distance between the two of you, fold that map edge over edge until your heart is back where it belongs - next to his.

He told you to wait, and you have promised, but waiting hurt. You thought you could, thought you were strong enough to do it, but you realise the truth now: that you’re not strong enough to do it alone.

Loneliness tugs at your heartstrings, unraveling you quietly when you watch couples from your window walking along the street hand in hand, smiles the very picture of bliss. A month ago, you and Kiro had looked like that, and you can’t help the pain that takes root in your chest, sprouting into poisonous ivies that strangle the air from your lungs - you feel suffocated.

In that moment, you curse how much you love him, the pain that it brings. Would it have been better for you to never have known him, to never have met him? Would you exchange all your precious memories if it meant that you could get rid of this agonizing longing in your chest?

Unable to answer the question, you move to grab a glass of water from the kitchen, only to see the vase of sunflowers sitting at your windowsill. You’d bought new ones from the florist weekly, to make up for the absence of brightness in your home. And yet, these sunflowers are starting to wilt as well, their heads drooping. You touch it gently with a finger and one of petals go fluttering to the ground.

“I’ll wait till the last petal falls.” You murmur quietly to yourself.

And yearning is how love shows itself - absence makes the heart grow fonder.

You pick the sunflower stems from your vase, holding them together tightly in your hand. The last petal has fallen, and it’s time to let go. It had clung on stubbornly, one last shred of hope, but in the end it had still lost to the relentless flow of time.

Moving to throw the stems in the trash, you hesitate - and in that moment, the doorbell rings.

A little bemused, you move to the door of your apartment, stems still tucked firmly in your hand.

“Hello, how can I help you-”

He stands outside your door with a smile. His blond hair is a little disheveled and he looks thinner than you’ve ever seen him, dark circles under his eyes and a weary slant to his mouth, and his smile is still the brightest thing you’ve ever seen.

It’s your Kiro.

“Sorry I’m late-” He doesn’t manage to finish his words before you’ve thrown yourself into his chest, sobbing at the sight of him, at the warmth of him. Your yearning makes itself known in the tears that soak into the fabric of his shirt, and his arms come up to wrap around you, pulling you flush against him until you can feel the steady ba-dump of his heartbeat.

“I’m sorry I’m late, Miss Chips.” His voice is hoarse.

You don’t need to apologise, you want to tell him but words would fail you right in this moment, so you only bury your face into his shoulder and hold him as tightly as you can. You must be squeezing him hard enough to suffocate, but the laughter you feel as his cheek rests against your hair tells you he doesn’t mind.

“Were you sad waiting for me?” He whispers gently, and the memory of it all vanishes like a nightmare in the morning light. Just a bad dream.

So you shake your head and pull him down into a kiss proper, feeling the softness of his lips on yours, the warmth of his mouth, and you don’t even notice the sunflowers dropping to the ground as he returns your affections tenfold.

Leave them be.

You don’t need them anymore.

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG157! ;___;

- … I’d been making fun of the fact that The Corruption was the unloved Fear of season 4, since we hadn’t had any statement since MAG103… and consecutively, we got a small talk about Jane Prentiss at the end of MAG152, a Corruption statement in MAG153, and now… another one, which dealt with an identified avatar, and was, I felt, the most gruesome Corruption one we ever had. Somethingsomething about how season 4 is the “be careful what you wish for” season, uh. (Well. You never wish for a Corruption statement, you mostly note that there hasn’t been one for a while.)

Jon was suspecting that Jane Prentiss’s attack on the Institute had been a ritual attempt:

(MAG152) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … It’s all that left of her now. Apart from a… jar of ashes in my desk. Just a circle of rotten stone on an otherwise… unremarkable wall. HELEN: More of a legacy than some people get. ARCHIVIST: … It was meant to be a gate, I think. A hole that she… rotted into The Corruption itself. Maybe the start of a ritual. HELEN: Hm. Not exactly impressive, is it? ARCHIVIST: Less complex, certainly. But I think that’s the thing about– … what did Elias call it… “Filth”. I don’t think it really plans much. It just starts to grow wherever it can get a foothold and… if no one stomps it out in time: Game Over. […] I’ve been wondering what they were doing down here.

And it’s a bit terrifying to think that technically, Jane Prentiss was quite… low scale, in the harm she did during the attack on the Institute, compared to what we saw in “Love Bombing” (a whole cult minus one getting eradicated) and Amherst’s actions (contaminating the entirety of Ivy Meadows, and it probably could have spread through Nicole Baxter if she hadn’t lost/cut her hand, and eradicating the entire population of Klanxbüll):

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “I knew at that moment that there was nothing that could be done to save the town. […] I found the source of this sickness in the Parkplatz opposite the train station. The cars had been pushed to the side, clearly at great cost to the bodies of those that pushed them. And in the centre was a figure from whom the rot clearly flowed. He was sat upon a most dreadful throne, formed from a dozen, two dozen bodies mixed together like putty, eyes staring out like horror-stricken stars twinkling in the night – and their hearts beating for all to see. A moaning came from that awful seat, voices trying to scream through things that weren’t their throat – and it is a sound I shall be glad to leave behind me when I go to my rest.”

What kind of music was Amherst hearing in his dreams, to go for mass-damage like this every few years? Ivy Meadows happened during summer 2011 or 2012 (dates were a bit inconsistent in MAG036 itself, Elias said in June 2017 that it had been “five years” since the death of Melanie’s father), Amherst’s actions in Klanxbüll happened in 2013, that’s… such a short span to cause so much damage… ;; Really hoping that this concrete lasts forever ;;

- Chronology time, regarding Adelard’s actions since we began hearing about him in season 2:

* 06/02/1991 or 06/07/1991: Adelard had left a statement about the “NotThem”, calling it as such. Although it was referenced in MAG077, Jon explained in MAG078 that he had found another statement in the file:

(MAG077) GERTRUDE: Based on the interactions and effects, I suspect this to be the creature that Adelard Dekker refers to as the “NotThem” in statement 9910607. […] Based on Dekker’s statement, it would seem Polaroids are also relatively stable.

(MAG078) ARCHIVIST: I found this in the folder marked 9910602, where Gertrude’s tape had indicated I would find the statement of Dekker himself. There is nothing else in there, but I think it tells me what I need to know. This thing, this… “Not Sasha”… it’s tied to the table.

(… With an inconsistency regarding the month. Either Gertrude messed up (unlikely.), either Jonny messed up, either Jon messed up in his panic and fortunately still found a Not!Them-related statement despite going for the wrong file with the wrong month.)

* Sometime between 1991 and 1996 (since Eric knew Elias but didn’t know he had become Head before his own quitting&getting murdered): Adelard was identifiable as Gertrude’s collaborator and, amongst other things, threw a “screaming box” in the Thames:

(MAG154) ERIC: She never played dumb when I was stalked by bloated, blood-sucking things, or told me I was “imagining it” when I saw your friend Adelard drop a screaming box into the Thames.

* 04/11/1996: Gertrude recorded Lucy Cooper’s statement (given in September 1994) about the Not!Them taking her mother’s place. In her Final Comments, she mentioned a statement previously left by Adelard:

(MAG077) GERTRUDE: Based on the interactions and effects, I suspect this to be the creature that Adelard Dekker refers to as the “NotThem” in statement 9910607. If the pattern of behaviour is consistent with what he establishes, then further follow-up on this case is pointless: the thing has finished with the Cooper family and will not be revisiting them. It rarely seems to stay in the same place or with the same people for long, though it’s hard to guess at its motives. Personally, I suspect it to be an aspect of The Stranger, though that’s entirely conjecture at this point. […] It is at least reassuring to know that magnetic tape seems to escape being overwritten, so if I get changed, you can be sure this is my real voice. Based on Dekker’s statement, it would seem Polaroids are also relatively stable.

* Shortly before 12/06/2001: Lawrence Moore’s statement described Adelard Dekker, binding the Not!Them to the Web table which had previously been in Raymond Fielding’s ownership at Hill Top Road until the 70s. We don’t know how Adelard acquired the table, nor what happened to explain that he left without it and that Breekon&Hope were the ones to retrieve it afterwards:

(MAG078, Lawrence Moore) “He was black, dressed in a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a thin necktie. For a moment I had the idea he might be a Jehovah’s Witness, but one look at his face dispelled that idea immediately. It was hard and stern, set in look of determination, and his short hair was iron grey. He was very thin, with aging skin stretched tight over wiry, corded muscle, and though he was slightly shorter than I was, it seemed like he towered over me. He asked if I knew the man who had left my house earlier that evening. […] At this, the old man’s eyes lit up with excitement, and I took an involuntary step back. If he noticed, he didn’t show it, walking past me into the house and ordering me to get any photos that hadn’t changed. […] He told me his name was Adelard Dekker, and that he was an exorcist, of sorts. […] Adelard Dekker stood in the corner. He was straight and motionless, his lips moving rapidly, though no sound came out of them. In the centre of the room, next to the empty box, stood a table carved from dark wood and wrapped all over with a sprawling, intricate pattern. And in front of that table was the thing that had said it was my cousin. It was long and thin, the tops of it bent against the ceiling and its stick-like limbs flailed from too many joints and elbows. Wrapped around it were thick strands of what I think was spider’s web, stretching back into the table, which I now saw pulsed along its carved channels with a sickly light. The face at the top of that gangly frame was like nothing on earth. […] I didn’t return to my house until the next morning. Dekker’s blue van was gone, and in its place was another one, dirty white. There was something printed on the side, but I couldn’t make it out under the grime. I watched two men in overalls carry that same box out of my house, load it up, and drive away. That was about two months ago, and it was the last time I saw them, the table, Adelard Dekker or the thing that wasn’t my cousin.”

(MAG079) NOT!SASHA: Once upon a time there was a monster, but no one realised. Sometimes someone did and then they were scared, so that was good. But one day a nasty man came along. A nasty man who tricked the monster and wrapped it all in webs and tied it to a table. So the monster got its friends to carry the table all around, and it still got to take faces and scare people.

* 22/01/2006: Adelard sent a letter to Gertrude regarding Garland Hillier’s disappearance in 1867 (the year of Robert Smirke’s death…) and describing Bernadette Delcour’s discovery of his old sealed flat, leading to an encounter with the Inheritors from The Extinction.

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “Sorry I can’t be there in person to go over all this with you. I still have a few things to clear off over here, but I thought it would be best to let you know as soon as possible. I am now certain my theory is correct: there is something new emerging. A fifteenth Power. […] Now I know what you’re going to say, Gertrude: odd doors are signs of The Spiral, empty worlds tend towards The Lonely, and eschatology is almost literally the study of The End. But this is different. I feel it. This Fear is new. This is a fear of extinction. Of change. It used to be part of The End, perhaps, when The End of humanity was to be the end of all things; but now, the fear is not of a rapture or a revelation; it is of catastrophic change. A change in our world that will wipe out what it means to be “us”, and leave something else in its place. […] These are new fears, Gertrude, and a new Power is rising to consume them. The Extinction. The Terrible Change. The-Future-Without-Us. […] I know you don’t credit my theories, and I’m sure you’ll have plenty to say on this one, but I’m going to need your help with this at some point – I’m sure of it. I don’t know how you can stop the birth of something that has no life, or mind, or… substance, but if anyone can figure it out, it’s you. I’ve never met anyone so gifted at understanding that… strange, dream logic of the Fears, and if what I suspect about this new Power is true, it could be catastrophic. Until then, I’ll keep searching for evidence, trying to find… instances and manifestations of The Extinction. I’ll keep you updated.”

* October 2008: Dekker had helped Gertrude stop The Flesh’s ritual – suggesting she use explosives? Providing them? Helping her set them up in the gnostic church?

(MAG130) GERTRUDE: When I heard there’d been survivors of “The Last Feast”, I was rather concerned that one of them might be able to positively identify me, [CHUCKLE] which could land me in all sorts of trouble! But she doesn’t seem to remember me at all. […] Dekker really came through with the explosives! It almost felt like cheating. Sad about the loss of history but Miss Wright didn’t seem to think the old Gnostic church got many visitors anyway. […] At least we know for sure that these “grand rituals” can be disrupted by conventional means, though a more… nuanced approach will be needed for some of them, I’m sure. Also… I can’t rely on having this much lead time.

* 04/01/2009: Adelard sent a letter to Gertrude describing an unnamed man’s experience in the Bright Lake amusement park in Colorado, with something Adelard identified as an Extinction occurrence.

(MAG156, Adelard Dekker) “Gertrude; I wanted your opinion on an encounter I’ve had described to me recently, and given your recent dealing with Viscera, I would very much value your input. Good job on that, by the way […]. So: what are your thoughts? I’m keen to hear your own interpretation of this account. My first assumption would have been The Flesh, based on the cannibalism and strangeness of the bodies involved, but… something about this idea of some sort of “famine world”, its location within a made-man ruin, the whole… societal aspect of it… I’d be inclined to chalk this up as a genuine Extinction manifestation. But I don’t know. Am I drawing wild conclusions, trying to fit the account into my own preconceptions? Keen to know your feelings on the matter.”

(* 03/10/2009: Gary Boylan gave his statement to the Institute, about the destruction of his village following a signal he had deciphered. No mention of Adelard Dekker in the notes.)

* Undated letter, likely circa 2012: Adelard sent a statement to Gertrude about an avatar of The End encountered when he was tracking The Extinction (without naming it), through a string of people dying by carbon monoxide poisoning in their sleep. Adelard also mentioned that Gertrude had asked him to move out some plastic explosives (he hadn’t been her provider, Gertrude had got them elsewhere).

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “I was pursuing my researches into the new emergence I mentioned earlier. I know you are dismissive of the possibility, but if I’m right, the sudden urgency of these “immediate dangers” you are so focused on could very well be a direct result. But that’s for another day, as this particular instance turned out to be unconnected. The point is, I was alerted to a series of deaths by a coroner friend of mine. […] I don’t know if my little “theoretical” is strong enough yet to start taking avatars, but this one, as you’ve no doubt guessed, turned out to be Terminus.”

* 13/05/2013: Judith O’Neill gave her statement about (mostly) unmoving creatures made of garbage, killing a researcher. Judith had been explicitly sent by Adelard:

(MAG149) MARTIN: There’s… hum, a, a note here as well. [PAPER RUSTLING] Looks like Gertrude’s handwriting? Start of a letter to… Dekker, thanking him for sending Judith to her, though… it doesn’t look like it was ever finished or sent. [PAPER RUSTLING] I assume this is another one he was trying to use to prove The Extinction? It… certainly has something in it. Mankind’s trash giving rise to something terrible. And again, fear of the other, inanimate humanoid figures. That’s all very… Stranger, isn’t it?

* Before August 2013: Adelard had apparently been the one to suggest explosives to disrupt The Unknowing. Gertrude made the following comment on 09/10/2014:

(MAG137) GERTRUDE: Another one to cross off the list. Doesn’t help with The Unknowing, though. [HEAVY SIGH] We still have Dekker’s back-up plan, of course, but… it’s very risky. To be sure, I–I think the detonation would need to happen from within The Unknowing, while it was going on.

* 14/08/2013: Adelard Dekker sent an email to Gertrude regarding his suspicion about an Extinction activity in the town of Klanxbüll, which turned out to be the work of John Amherst, from The Corruption. Adelard was poisoned during the fight, and told Gertrude what had happened and how he was choosing to die, ultimately expressing doubts about the reality or the shape of The Extinction:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “You must forgive me, Gertrude, for any typing and spelling errors that might be in this message. My hands are shaking quite badly and my fingers… aren’t what they were. […] But I shall not wait for it to putrefy as the rot overtakes me. I have dragged those other afflicted I could find into the Parkplatz, laid them at the feet of that appalling throne, and… taken the last gifts of that… generous construction site: a dozen cans of petrol. I will sit upon that seat, and release these poor souls from their suffering. [INHALE] And hopefully make things simpler, for the ECDC clean-up crews. But it did not seem quite right to leave without letting you know what happened. And… Herr [Becker?] was kind enough to succumb to the sickness without signing out of his computer, so… perhaps you were right about The Extinction. I’ve been hunting it for decades now, and… while I have seen evidence of its influence in other Powers, I have never found anything to genuinely prove its emergence as a true Power of its own. Perhaps it is an existential fear that flows through the others like a vein of ore; or perhaps the birth of such things is longer and more complicated than I believed.  For all that though, I cannot regret the time I have spent seeking it. I have done my duty; and none may ask more of me.”

So… although he sounds absolutely dead-dead, I don’t think this is the last we’re hearing from Adelard. I guess it could be possible that he had just left the Web table binding the Not!Them behind him around 2001 (though quite uncharacteristic), but we’re still missing his statement from 1991, and given that Jon had acknowledged that he hadn’t found Dekker’s own statement, I think it’s safe to assume that we could be hearing about it later (in season 5? Or in MAG160, as a “closure” to Dekker’s own story and investigations, since he was quite important through season 4?), in a written statement or through a recording with Gertrude.

- I’m a bit interrogative about the way Adelard mentioned his investigations regarding The Extinction:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “… perhaps you were right about The Extinction. I’ve been hunting it for decades now, and… while I have seen evidence of its influence in other Powers, I have never found anything to genuinely prove its emergence as a true Power of its own. Perhaps it is an existential fear that flows through the others like a vein of ore; or perhaps the birth of such things is longer and more complicated than I believed. ”

Because the earliest he tried to summarise and essentialise what he felt was the New Power, labelling it “The Extinction”, was in 2006 (MAG134), so only seven years before his death. Was he exaggerating when he said “decades”? Or will we learn more about his genesis, as an addendum, and it was truly a long-time conviction / a dissatisfaction with Smirke’s categorisation? I had already noticed that it was strange (ha) that, although the Not!Them presented itself as a creature from The Stranger (or at least allied to it), the earliest things we know about Adelard was that he was after it… when his description of The Extinction feels very close to some of the Not!Them’s effects (although in lower scales, for the latter); so maybe he had trouble categorising the Not!Them, back then, hence his conviction that a New Power might have been emerging…? Adelard also used some of the names inherited from Smirke’s work:

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “There was… an inevitability to his movements, and I think that is when I realised he was simply serving The End, which I won’t pretend wasn’t a disappointment.”

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “Now I know what you’re going to say, Gertrude: odd doors are signs of The Spiral, empty worlds tend towards The Lonely, and eschatology is almost literally the study of The End. But this is different. I feel it.”

(MAG156, Adelard Dekker) “So: what are your thoughts? I’m keen to hear your own interpretation of this account. My first assumption would have been The Flesh, based on the cannibalism and strangeness of the bodies involved, but…”

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “I’ve spoken before about how keenly I have watched news of possible pandemics, which is where I suspect The Extinction may pull away from The Corruption during its emergence. […] So, it seemed it was not The Extinction as I had anticipated but simply a new and awful strain of Corruption.”

But he was also occasionally labelling them in unique ways:

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “I don’t know if my little “theoretical” is strong enough yet to start taking avatars, but this one, as you’ve no doubt guessed, turned out to be Terminus.”

(MAG156, Adelard Dekker) “I wanted your opinion on an encounter I’ve had described to me recently, and given your recent dealing with Viscera, I would very much value your input.”

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “I have spoken to you before of Christabel, my… contact within the ECDC. She had a run-in with the Crawling Rot some decades ago, and has since then kept me up to date with any incidents they have encountered which display “unusual” properties.”

(Though that last one was also used by Arthur Nolan in MAG145: “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.”)

It is curious that, of all people, we didn’t get Adelard’s story of his first few years, how he came in contact with the Powers, with Gertrude, why/how he came to tracking down avatars, so I think there is a good chance we could get a statement about it, indeed. After all, we keep hearing stories of/from people who have been dead for a while; what I’m curious is when/how it could be done in a way that would “add” something else to the current storyline, if we’re done with The Extinction after the season 4 finale…? (Unless we aren’t.) Or it could be about categorising, or the concept of “Faith” against the Fears, I guess.

- There is something heart-breaking putting together his ways of addressing Gertrude in his messages:

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “Gertrude; Sorry I can’t be there in person to go over all this with you. I still have a few things to clear off over here, but I thought it would be best to let you know as soon as possible. […] I’ll keep you updated. Stay safe. Adelard.”

(MAG156, Adelard Dekker) “Gertrude; I wanted your opinion on an encounter I’ve had described to me recently, and given your recent dealing with Viscera, I would very much value your input. Good job on that, by the way; I’m sure the gnostic temple was a great loss culturally speaking, but I can’t help but admire your directness when it comes to dealing with this sort of thing. […] So: what are your thoughts? I’m keen to hear your own interpretation of this account. […] Keen to know your feelings on the matter. […] Oh – one more thing: if you do try to follow up with my source – and I know you have your own ways of finding him should you wish – please be careful. He told me, near the end, that he had recently been worried he was being followed. He keeps catching glimpses of a thin figure in the distance, or disappearing around a corner, and I can’t quite get past the detail that there was no reflection at all in the mirror he used to return. If my suspicions are correct, there’s little either of us could do for him; but do take care, should you make contact.”

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “Gertrude; It should all be here, though god knows I was tempted to take a block for myself just in case. […] Anyway, you owe me a favour. And… maybe another one once you read this. It might come to nothing, but it’s something you should probably be aware of. […] I’m sure you can take care of yourself, of course, but I thought it would be worth letting you know. Good luck, Gertrude. And enjoy the fireworks.”

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “You must forgive me, Gertrude, for any typing and spelling errors that might be in this message. […] This is the last time you will hear from me. You must trust me on that and not come looking. Not that you would; I know you’re too smart for sentimentality, especially after what I have to tell you, but I feel it worth saying nonetheless. […] I’ve wondered, Gertrude, whether you are truly as fearless as you seem; or if you are simply a master of disguising your terror…! I suppose I’ll never have a chance to find out. I rather hope it was the former. However much I disagree with some of your methods, it feels good to believe there are people in this world who can stare down the devil without flinching. […] But it did not seem quite right to leave without letting you know what happened. And… Herr [Becker?] was kind enough to succumb to the sickness without signing out of his computer, so… […] I am proud of the work we have done, and it has been an honour to do it alongside you. Goodbye, Gertrude. May you find your rest where no shadows are cast… and no eyes may see you slumber.”

Politely beginning all his letters with “Gertrude”, except for the last one, which began with apologies. Ending each ones with little words of encouragements and concern (“Stay safe”, “do take care”, “good luck”)… up until that “goodbye” in the last one.

Something that MAG157 put into a new perspective, too: in MAG137, Gertrude had mentioned “Adelard’s back-up plan” to thwart The Unknowing. That recording had happened in October 2014; Adelard had been dead for more than a year at this point. When she sighed right before mentioning him, was it only a pragmatic sigh, linked to the fact that she was a bit at a loss to counter The Stranger? Or was it also because she had lost her closest ally, and someone she had been seeing as a friend despite herself, and who wasn’t there anymore…?

(And in the end, Gertrude didn’t have the time to stop The Unknowing and to follow through with Adelard’s plan. Jon, Tim and the others followed in her footsteps and, without knowing, also in Adelard’s, accomplishing the plans of two dead people…)

(- There is still The Mystery Of Gertrude’s Death and thinking again about MAG113 made me realise that, UHOH???

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “Anyway, you owe me a favour. And… maybe another one once you read this. It might come to nothing, but it’s something you should probably be aware of. […] I cannot make any guarantees Justin Gough will remain in the state I left him. And it seems that, as he deals in dreams, it may be worth your while to keep an eye on the statements you take, in case he finds his way here. I’m sure you can take care of yourself, of course, but I thought it would be worth letting you know.” […] ARCHIVIST: This was found tucked into a hard case containing… many blocks of plastic explosive, kept by Gertrude Robinson in a storage unit that I can only assume has… extremely lax oversight. It is unclear if she ever read it. […] I know there are more important things to be doing, but I did ask Basira to have a quick search for Justin Gough, see what might have happened to him. There are records of his residence in an East London care facility until 2015, when he disappears from their records. Several deaths among the staff apparently occurred at roughly the same time. And it will come as no surprise that the inquest returned a verdict of carbon monoxide poisoning in each case. I’m not too concerned, to be honest, my dreams are, uh... well, let’s just say I don’t think they're going be letting anyone else in any time soon.

… Adelard had explicitly warned her about an avatar from The End who dealt with dreams, who went loose again in 2015.

… And Jon wasn’t sure that Gertrude had read this message.

… And in March 2015, Oliver, End-touched person, soon to become avatar, had described his own dreams of Gertrude, terrified, being the target of the vines usually announcing people’s death…

We know that Gertrude didn’t die when she should have (she was still alive in April 2015, if she didn’t lie on the date), and Elias confessed to her murder, and she had plain mundane bullets in her body… But it’s actually extreeeemely suspicious that Justin Gough escaped the year she died? Was The End involved in her death a bit more actively than just through Oliver’s visions…? Or was Oliver’s vision the fate awaiting her if Justin had managed to kill her?)

- One Nice Thing (aesthetically) is that I really experienced Adelard’s realisation right along with him? I assumed that the town was under a new Extinction threat, assumed we were on the verge of meeting our first Extinction avatar… and then, as Adelard already introduced the idea that he had been Wrong and began describing the cause of the town’s downfall, I suddenly realised that OH NO, LANKY AND BROWN COAT, IS THAT–

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “No pale spectre in a lab coat, or twisted golem of petri dishes and test tubes. No; he was… lanky, wearing an ill-fitting brown suit and a smile. I’d never previously had the misfortune to meet him, but I knew the description well enough to recognise John Amherst.”

… and it was.

(MAG036, Nicole Baxter) “The door to the reception opened, and a tall man stepped out. He was rail thin and wore a faded brown suit that seemed to have been cut for a much fatter man. His eyes were a watery blue and his dark hair stood on top of his head in an unruly mess. He must have been around forty, but had a nervous sort of energy to him.”

(MAG055) JORDAN: He was tall, maybe 6ft5? But it was hard to be sure of his shape inside the huge, brown suit he was wearing.

(Extra funny thing is that “ill-fitting brown suit” + “a John” also feels really close to how Jon probably looks like from the outside.)

- I’m so sad for Adelard, but also so proud of him in a way?! It’s a really strange feeling because we’ve never heard him live (so far?), but he was still a reassuring figure in some way. I was anticipating that he could have snapped, because I Remember Oliver, but no: although he was giving up pretty fast when it came to saving their potential victims, Adelard was simply someone who would fight what he identified as evil, putting his life on the line when it came to stopping threatening avatars. It’s interesting to compare what we heard of him with Gertrude: Adelard was firm, a bit callous at time, but not keen on sacrificing people to reach his goals, and was personally involving himself in the cases he was investigating… to the cost of his own life, as it happened in MAG157. (So it was not “like Oliver”, it was “like Gerry”. If you like a character, and you feel like they could be helpful/do some good: either they’ve turned into a monster since then, either they’re dead. … Though, now: we… have no Characters Who Are Helping left still alive at the moment – hoping that it could mean that Team Archive will more or less try to go that way but ;; Not very optimistic about it.)

Adelard had expressed that he was afraid of the idea of dying in his sleep:

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “I’ll even make it a statement. Give your patron something to keep it satisfied. It’s not like I sleep enough to worry about dreams. […] It’s odd, isn’t it? Sleep. That you can never remember or fully pin down the exact moment you lose consciousness. Just lying there, waiting to find yourself in a dream without the first clue or interest in how or when you got there. Or to find your eyes closed and force them open to sunlight and morning, only realising that sleep has happened in retrospect. I wonder if… death is the same way? No clear dividing line, just… gone, only to realise after it’s happened, except for the fact that there isn’t an after. Is that a comforting thought or a terrifying one? Depends on who you are, I suppose. It bothered me when I was young. If I thought too hard about the concept of sleep, of exactly what it was, I would worry myself, and end up having to turn the light on, and read for an hour or two. Everyone always talks about how they want to die in their sleep, but honestly, I think that’s the death that scares me the most.”

So ;; Best outcome you can hope for really is dying on your own terms, uh. We got it with Tim, and Adelard got to face his own death awake, in a situation he chose to put himself in, also turning it in one last “good” action (putting an end to the suffering of the villagers who… indeed couldn’t be saved at this point):

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “This is the last time you will hear from me. […] Perhaps I’m simply prevaricating, trying to cling on to a few more precious minutes of life – but that’s not me. I know what awaits me, and must have no hesitation in going to my reward. [SCOFF] I know you’ve never had much patience for my faith, but perhaps it will provide you some small peace knowing I face my death gladly, knowing I have done my duty before God. […] For all that though, I cannot regret the time I have spent seeking it. I have done my duty; and none may ask more of me. I am proud of the work we have done, and it has been an honour to do it alongside you.”

“Faith” was present in more than one aspect in his last message: as his religion, which had driven him (and in hindsight, I realised that there had been a few words from that lexical field in his past statements) and in which he found comfort in his last moments; as his belief in Gertrude and their “work” together. And, in parallel, there was also a loss of faith, as he was hypothesising that he may have been wrong all along about The Extinction as a Fifteenth Power:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “so… perhaps you were right about The Extinction. I’ve been hunting it for decades now, and… while I have seen evidence of its influence in other Powers, I have never found anything to genuinely prove its emergence as a true Power of its own.”

So, it was a bittersweet ending, but one that didn’t feel utterly crushing either. On the one hand, it’s still a death; it’s upsetting that Adelard died while neutralising a dangerous menace who had caused harm to many people, it’s sad that his death was caused from a Corruption avatar while Adelard had been running after The Extinction all this time – he did something brave and amazing in his last actions, but it would have had more meaning, for him, if it had been against The Extinction… and precisely, John Amherst was a tipping point making Adelard lose faith in his theory. But it’s still honourable, and fits Adelard well, as someone who made that world a bit less dark, who was keeping in mind circumstantial victims without always getting lost in the Big Plans and the Big Picture like Gertrude:

(MAG078, Lawrence Moore) “Then he instructed me to go to my bedroom, and not to leave until he told me it was safe. I did protest at that, and I asked him how my locking myself upstairs would help save Carl. There was no sympathy in his voice when he told me my cousin was dead, that nothing would bring him back, and that my best chance to not join him was to stay in the bedroom until everything was over. He did not seem inclined to tell me what he meant by “everything”.”

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “I may try to interview her again later, though I have my suspicions she may find herself disappearing. She has that… quality about her, I’m sure you know what I mean, o–of an unfinished meal. And I can only hope that when the second course starts, she can remember her way back to Garland Hillier’s apartment once more.”

(MAG156, Adelard Dekker) “… Anyway, I was following up on a young man who had apparently had a nasty experience whilst exploring the ruins of the Bright Lake amusement park in Colorado. You will forgive me if I withhold his name, as I have all the verification I need to be convinced he’s telling the truth, and I find it hard to believe any follow-up you’d be interested in doing would be beneficial for him. He’s earned his anonymity. […] He keeps catching glimpses of a thin figure in the distance, or disappearing around a corner, and I can’t quite get past the detail that there was no reflection at all in the mirror he used to return. If my suspicions are correct, there’s little either of us could do for him […].”

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “I think that is when I realised he was simply serving The End, which I won’t pretend wasn’t a disappointment. But still, I thought if I could deal with him and save a few lives, I might as well. […] I was not quick enough to save the man who lived in that house. Truth be told, I didn’t especially try. I didn’t think I would be able to move quick enough to do so, and was more concerned with being quiet and thorough. […] I knew it wouldn’t kill him, he’s too far from human for me to do so, but I thought that scrambling his brain a bit was probably my best bet. And I was right, as far as it goes. He survived what I did to him, and when the police picked him up after an ‘anonymous tip’ about a break-in, he was barely able to speak, and I very much hope I managed to sever his dreams.”

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “I knew at that moment that there was nothing that could be done to save the town. But I could perhaps identify the cause – and identify it I did. […] So, it seemed it was not The Extinction as I had anticipated but simply a new and awful strain of Corruption. Still. It was not something I felt I could leave to run its course unopposed. […] I have dragged those other afflicted I could find into the Parkplatz, laid them at the feet of that appalling throne, and… taken the last gifts of that… generous construction site: a dozen cans of petrol. I will sit upon that seat, and release these poor souls from their suffering. [INHALE] And hopefully make things simpler, for the ECDC clean-up crews.”

And it’s so soft that his last words were for Gertrude, not berating her, but almost… comforting her?

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “For all that though, I cannot regret the time I have spent seeking it. I have done my duty; and none may ask more of me. I am proud of the work we have done, and it has been an honour to do it alongside you. Goodbye, Gertrude. May you find your rest where no shadows are cast… and no eyes may see you slumber.”

(Wishing her the best, uh. I can read the mention of “shadows” as innocuous, but I also wonder if it might not be a direct reference to something of Gertrude’s personal history with The Dark?)

(- I also mean: gdi, what is it with season 4 and the way it’s offering me New Ships For Gertrude. We got Gertrude/Agnes, a bit of Web/Gertrude, I was wondering if she didn’t used to have some Feelings for Eric, now I’m REALLY digging Gertrude/Adelard, gdi.)

- Adelard died in August 2013, Gerry in late 2014. Gertrude had previously lost Michael sometime after late 2009 (MAG126 mentioned the upcoming “Great Twisting”), although in his case, she had minutely planned his sacrifice. I’m not sure Leitner was a good judge of character (was Leitner good at… anything.), but he had gotten the feeling that she was getting lonely:

(MAG080) LEITNER: I think she was lonely. I didn’t meet her until about six years ago, after she’d lost the last of her own assistants. She would mention them sometimes. I believe she missed having someone to talk to on occasion. ARCHIVIST: I… I didn’t know Gertrude had assistants. LEITNER: Of course. Three of them, each meeting an unpleasant end.

(During her last year, Leitner was apparently her last “ally”. That’s telling how low she was, and how bad the situation was, I guess.)

Those were rough years for Gertrude, uh? I wonder how much Adelard’s death impacted her – if she took it in stride, or if it almost made her crumble; they had been allied for at least twenty years, at this point, and it really sounded like she trusted him; there was a very specific enthusiasm when she mentioned the explosives stopping The Last Feast in MAG130?

… on the less bright side, I wonder if Adelard’s death was what pushed her to try and seek out Gerry? She had promised to find him in August 2008:

(MAG154) ERIC: I want you to find my son. If Mary is… if she’s gone, or worse… I want you to make sure he’s alright. GERTRUDE: [HUFF] I’m not exactly a mother figure. ERIC: You could hardly do worse than her. GERTRUDE: Fine. But I don’t know what growing up with Mary has done to him. If he’s… gone rotten, I can’t promise anything. ERIC: I understand. GERTRUDE: I suppose he might be useful. ERIC: Oh, sentimental as ever.

But we know she didn’t do it right away:

(MAG111) GERRY: In the end it was Gertrude who saved me. She came to me when I was desperate, nowhere to go, and she offered to help. […] I think you know the rest. I joined Gertrude’s work for a few years. Didn’t realise how ill I was until it finally caught up with me. Then I died.

Gerry mentioned that they had worked together for “a few years”, but Mary Keay ~died~ in 2008 according to MAG004 and haunted Gerry for “five years” according to him in MAG111, so that would put Gertrude finding him around 2013 – so, they worked together for a bit less than two years, before Gerry died. It could be that Adelard’s death was the reason why Gertrude finally decided to honour the promise she had made to Eric, and if so, yikes. Still utilitarian until the end, uh.

(Though: did Gerry remind her of Adelard, at least a bit, in the way he was waving his way through the Fears and neutralising supernatural occurrences and/or begrudgingly helping people to get out…?)

(- Adelard wondering about whether or not Gertrude felt fear reminded me of Arthur’s comment about it:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: [SCOFF] Yeah. … But you don’t actually care about Them, do you? […] 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?

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “I’ve wondered, Gertrude, whether you are truly as fearless as you seem; or if you are simply a master of disguising your terror…! I suppose I’ll never have a chance to find out. I rather hope it was the former. However much I disagree with some of your methods, it feels good to believe there are people in this world who can stare down the devil without flinching. [SHORT SNEER]”

And 1°) it obviously puts Georgie to mind, though in her case, her inability to feel fear was inflicted on her, and 2°) … Oliver had seen Gertrude terrorised in his dreams:

(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) “Getting closer I realised that there was a person sitting at that desk and it was them that all of this scarlet light was flowing into. I could see none of the figure’s body beneath the flesh that enclosed them, but as I moved around 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. […] If you do see this in time and read this far, then to be honest I don’t know what else to tell you. Be careful. There is something coming for you and I don’t know what it is, but it is so much worse than anything I can imagine. At the very least you should look into appointing a successor.”

… so I don’t think Gertrude couldn’t feel it, which means she was probably just really good at hiding it. On the other hand, creature and monsters feel fears and are fed by it, so would it even be possible to fool them if she wasn’t truly fearless?)

- ;; Something bittersweet, too, is that… Gertrude apparently Learned from Adelard and took a page from his book when it came to concrete:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “I can’t deny some pride in my solution, Gertrude. In all our discussions of how to contain a being that we could not destroy… I’m not sure we ever hit on a method quite so neat…! I am no builder but, by the end, I think you would have been hard-pressed to criticise how well that concrete had been laid – and Amherst four feet beneath it.”

(MAG103, Dylan Anderson) “If you hadn’t turned up that evening, I don’t know what I’d have done. I know a monster pig wasn’t what you were looking for, but I do appreciate your advice. When you explained the situation, I hoped you’d have some special trick for dealing with it, but I suppose welding scrap metal around the pen and filling it with cement just about works, even if I do owe Mason a favour for borrowing his mixer. I’d have thought the thing would at least try to break free while I did it, but… thank heaven for small mercies, I suppose. A huge block of solid concrete. What ought to do with it? Some sort of engraving, maybe?”

Monster Pig happened in July 2014, so eleven months after Adelard��s message. And Jon had also noticed that Gertrude’s computer had receipts involving “petrol”:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “I have dragged those other afflicted I could find into the Parkplatz, laid them at the feet of that appalling throne, and… taken the last gifts of that… generous construction site: a dozen cans of petrol.”

(MAG066) ARCHIVIST: There’s also the matter of the products she was ordering. There were several online orders of petrol, lighter fluid, pesticides, and high-powered torches. They are sporadic, but notable in that she did not drive, smoke or work in pest control.

… So maybe it was also an idea she got from Adelard’s last actions. Utilitarian, and/or an homage, in a way.

- I’m also HUMMMM re:Adelard, because if there is one thing that’s been recurring when he was depicted fighting avatars or monsters, it’s that he tended to notice what he could use in his surroundings and improvise a lot…

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “Truth be told, I didn’t especially try. I didn’t think I would be able to move quick enough to do so, and was more concerned with being quiet and thorough. The cutlery drawer was largely empty, but after a minute’s searching I did find what I was after: a long, metal skewer. Did you know there are certain forms of brain injury that cut you off from your ability to dream?”

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “At first, I was struck almost with despair, having nothing to hand with which I might attempt a confrontation with this creature. But upon retreating some ways, and considering my options, I realised I actually had… almost the exact resources to hand that I might need. A few minutes spent scouting the surrounding streets even revealed a small construction site, almost precisely suited to my requirements. I returned to the cordon and took what I needed: a stretcher, as many quarantine sleeves as I could carry, and a syringe. […] I loaded the gear into a wheelbarrow I had taken from the building site along with a thick metal chain, and began to head back towards the Parkplatz, stopping only to fill the syringe from a can of garden pesticide I had noticed during my earlier sweep of the houses. […] I dragged the thing over to the building site, and with the last of my strength threw him into the hole that had been left. By this point, the concrete truck I had turned on earlier had been mixing for some time, and it was a simple matter to open the pump and… pour the contents of its hopper down on top of him.”

And isn’t it a bit like Basira?

(MAG142) MARTIN: Would have thought Basira would’ve had more sense, though. DAISY: When Basira and I were partners, I’d see this happen sometimes. She can read a… situation like no one I know, always seems to know the right move, but for all her research, she never wants to put a plan together. I think she just hates all the unknowns, the… variables. [SIGH] Contingencies. If she spots an advantage, she’ll… grab it, and trust herself to figure out the details as she goes. MARTIN: Hm. DAISY: It’s worked so far.

- Aaaah, so confirmation/a few more things about The Eye’s effect!

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “My hands are shaking quite badly and my fingers… aren’t what they were. Even so, just knowing where this is going, this… statement [CHUCKLE], I can feel The Eye’s power on me, be it ever so slight. Steadying me; helping the words flow. Is it strange that… here… now… that seems almost a comfort…?”

I was wondering if something wasn’t at work in the same way as for live statements since people’s letters were so articulate too – it sounds like just being conscious that you’re sending a message to the Institute and/or an Archivist and/or to an agent of The Eye is enough to put you under The Eye’s spell, because your tale interests it? GOSH, it was so sad that Adelard was aware of it, but also that he was potentially stalling since, as long as he was giving a “statement”, he wouldn’t drop dead or reach a state of too much pain to continue…

I’m curious about the fact that the letters Jonah Magnus was receiving were of the same kind – clear enough to be read as statements. Was it “simply” because his penpals from the XIXth century were quite educated and used to sending long, articulate letters? Or was the fact that they knew they were sending them to Jonah influencing them? If so: was it because he was under The Eye’s effects… or because, specifically, he was an Archivist at the time…? (We still don’t know where Jonah fit, back then, if he was more like Elias, or more like Jon… He was collecting supernatural stories, at least.)

- More on the medium Adelard used to give this statement later, but it was explicitly an email:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “You must forgive me, Gertrude, for any typing and spelling errors that might be in this message. […] But it did not seem quite right to leave without letting you know what happened. And… Herr [Becker?] was kind enough to succumb to the sickness without signing out of his computer, so…”

1°) It… worked on a computer. It went through. We only know for sure that statements don’t record digitally in audio form but I was wondering about written ones, whether they could be typed down… Not sure if that’s a confirmation that yes, they can; or if there is something wrong with this statement; or if it’s that somehow, “something” (Web?) helped Adelard’s message to go through.

2°) … There was no static at any point of it during Jon’s reading. I don’t know when statement-reading static has happened for the last time during narration, but there were many moments in this statement at which there could have been, when describing supernatural things…? Why didn’t the tape recorder react to anything at all during the statement, even though Adelard described his encounter with a very powerful avatar? There were no quoted words or verbal exchanges, yes, but the tape recorders don’t only go All Staticcy at those. Overall, I realise that Jon’s last readings haven’t produced a lot of static? Iirc, there was nothing since MAG148, except for a few lines in MAG153 (“Love Bombing”), when there were direct quotes. Is there something hidden in the fact that the tape recorders are reacting less lately…?

- Adelard’s death was Sad News, but I’m so glad that we learned that John Amherst was actually neutralised a few years ago… in the same episode in which we got confirmation that Melanie is alright, is not regretting her choice one bit, and that it didn’t go supernaturally “wrong” or anything.

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … No, you’re right, I’m sorry. A–are you alright? MELANIE: Yes! I’m, hum… actually doing okay…! ARCHIVIST: That’s good. MELANIE: [SOFT CHUCKLES] My therapist isn’t happy about it, you know? Uh, unsurprisingly. Tried to have me put away, but they, uh… they let me come here. It’s, it’s been good for me, though! I… I feel alright. I’m, hum… I’m not scared anymore.

I was so afraid that John Amherst would be re-emerging, thus giving Melanie an incentive to go back to business in order to avenge her father? But nop! John Amherst was sealed under concrete five years ago! We’re not safe from him freeing himself, but it’s a hypothetical, not an active threat. Melanie is just free to… enjoy her life. Really free from All That (at least right now), and she… really sounded like she had found peace ;w;

I do also like that it seems like she’s back to the world. The Institute was a closed universe, with its personal rules – only Section 31 officers go when something happens, the Archives team has been isolated (Jon also mentioned that the regular staff didn’t want to talk with him much lately); but now, Melanie is back to another world, with its own rules and workings. Yes, gouging your eyes out is self-mutilation, and means you need help (although in practice, institutionalisation can make things worse); yes, your therapist is going to get worried about it. (The fact that Melanie still said “my” therapist also said, to me, that she was still seeing her? But aouch for the therapist; she must be used to compartmentalising, she must be used to patients self-harming, but probably not to the point of what Melanie did…)

I’m not absolutely sure it was the intended impression, but I reaaally felt that Melanie was currently on painkillers and/or tranquilisers? Her voice sounded almost too relaxed, she sounded like she had just woken up together with The Admiral, and Georgie was insistent on her resting. Nothing negative there – I would find it a bit reassuring for her to be medically handled right now, actually! Doesn’t have to be forever, doesn’t invalidate her words about feeling fine. Just. Melanie is not isolated; she needed help, she sought it, she did something that is understandably perceived as self-harm by society, and she is being tutored to make sure she can relearn to function. (I also wondered, at first, if Georgie was talking to The Admiral or to Melanie because she sounded a bit too cautious rather than tender and concerned, to me? So that would fit, if Melanie’s under treatment right now, and really not needing the extra strain.)

- We lost Tim and he left… so many… Bi babies… in his wake…

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Look, is she here or not? She–she said she was staying with you. GEORGIE: Yes, she’s here. ARCHIVIST: Really? Where’s all her stuff? GEORGIE: Bedroom, why? ARCHIVIST: … No, I just– [STATIC] Oh. Oh! I’m sor– I didn’t– I didn’t realise you were… to–together… GEORGIE: That’s ‘cause it’s none of your business. Now leave.

(MAG086) MELANIE: Then there are some old cuttings about Robin Patton. […] Hmm, wasn’t bad looking, before… well… that.

(MAG106) MELANIE: I don’t think so; Georgie Barker? She does What the Ghost?. […] Well, she and Jon, they… dated. BASIRA: Yeah? MELANIE: I mean, it was years ago.

(That’s also putting another light of Melanie’s discomfort when she mentioned that Jon&Georgie had dated – I was assuming it was mostly because Urk, Don’t Wanna Think About Jon’s Romantic Life since she was Eww at the concept of thinking about him sleeping with Martin, but. (ALSO, the beauty that in the same breath, we had Melanie talking about Georgie, describing past Jon-Georgie, and mentioning Martin’s ~fussing~ over Jon.))

“What’s the Ghost?” is officially queer culture! ;w;

I’m SUPER GLAD for Georgie to get a girlfriend, very !! but a tiny bit less over Melanie&Georgie being together at the moment – but that’s mostly because 1°) I also REALLY love Deep And Very Important Platonic Relationships, and Melanie&Georgie had been that to me so far with Georgie helping her, and we… don’t have a lot of deep friendships at the moment (quite the contrary, we have a lot of pairs who are (not all confirmed but STILL) romantic in nature: Martin-Jon, Basira-Daisy, now Georgie-Melanie), and personal taste but I would have liked to hear about Melanie re-learning to function outside of the Institute before learning that she’s actually romantically involved with the person who had supported her in her steps towards recovery, 2°) … I’m super concerned about Basira&Daisy because, if one romantic relationship had to be canon-canonised, I was expecting them to get that first, and I’m Still Super Afraid About Daisy’s Chances Of Survival By The End Of The Season, so a bit heartlessly strategical here, but thinking that giving us Georgie/Melanie miiiiight be a way to not… destroy all the wlw romances. If Daisy dies, I’m also losing the only Intense Platonic Friendship we have at the moment (hers with Jon), so, sob.

… But then, Melanie is saying that JON IS A FRIEND

(MAG157) GEORGIE: Melanie, you don’t have to do this… MELANIE: It’s, it’s okay. He’s… welcome. As a friend. But that’s it. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … Right. MELANIE: But you’re not after a friend, are you, Jon?

AND I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS NEW CHALLENGER!! IT’S SUCH A WILD DEVELOPMENT THINKING BACK TO THEIR FIRST INTERACTIONS…………………

(MAG028) MELANIE: I knew you guys were a bit… slapdash, but this is absurd. ARCHIVIST: No doubt you’re used to a higher calibre of equipment when pretending to see ghosts in old churchyards and mental institutions. MELANIE: People like a show. People like our show. And, even if we do ham it up a bit, even we do add a bit of sparkle, we’re still more respected and evidence-based paranormal investigators than you and your lot. [NERVOUS, DISPARAGING LAUGH] ARCHIVIST: We are not “paranormal investigators”. We are researchers. Scholars. MELANIE: Whatever. […] ARCHIVIST: Hmm. And you’re sure you weren’t… dreaming? MELANIE: Are you serious? ARCHIVIST: I just have to check every possibility. Obviously working in your field, you must have quite a powerful imagination. MELANIE: Great! Great! I should have known this was a complete waste of my time.

(MAG063) MELANIE: You look like hell. ARCHIVIST: It’s been a hard few months. Look, can I help you, because if you’re just after another shouting match… MELANIE: No! I… I actually do need your help. ARCHIVIST: Hm. Interesting. MELANIE: Alright, can you not be an arsehole about it? I just need access to your library. […] I don’t exactly have the “academic credentials” you guys demand. So I apparently need someone to vouch for me. And you’re basically the closest thing I’ve got to a friend here. ARCHIVIST: We’ve spoken once, and we ended up screaming at each other.

So yes, losing a platonic relationship but getting a new friendship in the process ;w;

- I’m not sure the scene actually played this way? But given how The Admiral purred:

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Ah– [DOOR OPENS] MELANIE: Oh? What’s go–, what’s going on? You… you woke The Admiral… GEORGIE: Hey, hey, easy; it’s–it’s alright, he was just leaving. ARCHIVIST: Melanie, I… MELANIE: Jon…? ARCHIVIST: Yeah, it’s… me. GEORGIE: It’s alright, Melanie. Jon, leave. [ADMIRAL STARTS PURRING] ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry, I just… […] I suppose not… GEORGIE: Okay [ADMIRAL MEOWS IN PROTEST], you’re done. [PURRING CEASES] ARCHIVIST: Yeah. [INHALE] Yeah, I am.

I pictured The Admiral rushing towards Jon as soon as Melanie opened the door, more or less climbing on Jon until Jon secured him in his arms. The Admiral’s purrs were loud, so he had to be close to the tape recorder, right? And given his protest when Georgie cut in, she removed him from a comfy place, so that wasn’t Melanie’s arms.

(So: I pictured it as The Admiral in Jon’s arms AND Melanie petting it, able to find him through his purr. Melanie’s voice sounded like she was doing something else at the same time, to me? So yeah. Very close, very intimate, very comfy.)

(Kudos to Georgie for stepping back once Melanie began to talk about herself, without interrupting! She’s a good! Jon also has learnt his lesson from MAG131 and did not interrupt, listened to her! Sadly, Georgie is losing Awesomeness Points because… she retrieved The Admiral before he was done purring? D: Kitty crime??? Georgie, how could you do that to the cat? D:)

- I found Georgie a bit less harsh about Jon, too: not saying that her stances in season 4 haven’t been valid, far from it! But she’s still fair, and she didn’t blame him for Melanie’s injuries, she only pointed out the sacrifice Melanie had to make in order to flee, and wanted to make sure that Jon wouldn’t undo it, which was… extremely legitimate.

(MAG157) [CLICK–] [MUFFLED SOUNDS OF THE STREET] GEORGIE: No, Jon, you’ve done enough! ARCHIVIST: I just need to talk to her. GEORGIE: What don’t you understand? She mutilated herself to get out of that place, and there is absolutely no way I’m letting you involve her again! ARCHIVIST: Look, is she here or not? She–she said she was staying with you.

(And she was right about Jon threatening to pull Melanie back in, since Jon acknowledged he wasn’t really after a “friend” in current circumstances.)

Since Melanie did acknowledge that it might have been hard for Jon to tell her about Eric’s statement, I wonder if Georgie won’t mellow down about Jon a bit, given that Jon has indeed been trying a bit more, lately…? That will depend on Jon’s state at the end of season 4 (are we “losing” him forever? Or will he still try to not totally give in to The Eye, without cutting their link?), but it could be a possibility…

(I liked what we saw of Jon&Georgie’s friendship in season 3 a lot é_è Jon had remembered their break-up as having been a bad one, and despite it, they were getting along in season 3, and Georgie could be harsh and fair with him, so… I still want to cling to the hope that they’d manage to get back on speaking terms at some point, if Jon doesn’t fall entirely and keeps trying like he has begun to do… Maybe there could still be a way for them to build something again… maybe…)

(- At the same time: yes, Melanie&Georgie are legitimate to want to stay out of the supernatural business and to not participate in it anymore.

… On the other hand: if “bad things are coming” and an apocalypse is launched, and the world is changed, and monsters are let loose into the world because what was left of Team Archive wasn’t powerful/competent/numerous enough to prevent it… they won’t have any right to complain about what happens. But that’s interesting, because still “nobody is right/wrong” in their situations, even when they’re not directly harming anybody; if nobody is there to stop powerful avatars, like Adelard did, or to prevent rituals, then what would happen? More victims, probably. So, at the same time, it feels like it’s nobody’s and everybody’s responsibility to step in when they can.)

- Okay, so Basira&Daisy were unavailable, and Jon didn’t have anyone else, but still SOBBING that “someone I can trust” turned out to be Melanie, because gnnn. After learning about Eric’s statement, they made different choices, but I’m so soft for the fact that Jon still valued Melanie’s opinion and…

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Melanie, I… MELANIE: Jon…? ARCHIVIST: Yeah, it’s… me. GEORGIE: It’s alright, Melanie. Jon, leave. [ADMIRAL STARTS PURRING] ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry, I just… It’s Martin. MELANIE: Jon… don’t… Please. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … No, you’re right, I’m sorry. A–are you alright? MELANIE: Yes! I’m, hum… actually doing okay…! ARCHIVIST: That’s good.

… wanted to make sure she was fine!!! Even in the midst of urgency, of the fact that Martin was very likely in Big Danger and Not Fine, Jon still took the time to ask Melanie about it!!

- Jon Learned but at the same time, so many poor choices of words…

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Look, is she here or not? […] Look after yourself. Both of you.

jON… Being an Eye avatar doesn’t mean you have to be insensitive about it…

- ;; Overall: I’m sad that… Jon has indeed learnt. He didn’t dash to the tunnels, trying to find the centre on his own, or to go fight Peter. He immediately understood he needed to think about the broader picture, about who could have wanted him to listen to the tape and read the statement, and his first instinct was to want to talk about it with people he could trust.

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Am I just hearing what I want to hear? I need a second opinion, but… Basira and Daisy are… “out”, somewhere. […] I need someone I can trust. [LONG SIGH] […] Please, Georgie, it’s not– … I just need to know I’m not overreacting to something, I need an outside perspective.

It’s mostly that, due to circumstances, all his options have been cut. The timing of Daisy&Basira leaving is definitely too suspicious to think that it was unrelated and had nothing to do with getting Jon isolated, worried, and prone to being easily manipulated into doing something… so I’m guessing that the point was that someone/thing (Elias, Peter or Annabelle) is trying to get him to reach the centre. But Jon did try, and indeed, what other options would he have at the moment? Waiting for Basira&Daisy to come back, while Martin could be getting sacrificed? With the current configuration, I can understand that Jon is not keen on risking it… although, yeah. It’s undoing all the “trust” he was forcing himself to give Martin from afar during this season – his understanding that Martin had a plan, and that Jon had to hope Martin knew what he was doing to ensure Martin’s success. Jon made a mistake once when he tried to “Know” about Peter’s plans at the end of MAG139… and is probably doing a new one right now, confused by urgency. (“A tiny… hairline fracture, which destroys everything.”, to quote MAG139 orz)

… and hum. You know what had previously claimed to bank on Jon’s worry for someone to get him to level up a bit more?

(MAG135) ELIAS: Fine. Consider it a test – things are… coming, things that will need Jon to be far stronger and more willing to use his connection to our patron. His performance during The Unknowing was… disappointing. I needed a way to force him to harness his ability more acutely than he had before. The coffin was a useful tool; Daisy an adequate bait. BASIRA: Then you messed up. Way he tells it, he doesn’t know how he got out of there. ELIAS: But he did. And his powers were no small part of it. Even if he required some assistance, they were what saved him. And he’s still achieved what no one – mortal, monster, or anything in-between – has ever been able to. He climbed out of The Buried. BASIRA: [DRY SIGH] What was the point? You won’t be getting your ritual off from in here so, what do you need him for? What’s so important you need him stronger?

Still squinting very hard about The Bastard and the concept that ~no, he’s not getting his ceremony off from his prison~.

- Amongst all the exchanges, this moment was probably my favourite:

(MAG157) MELANIE: It’s, it’s okay. He’s… welcome. As a friend. But that’s it. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … Right. MELANIE: But you’re not after a friend, are you, Jon? ARCHIVIST: I need an ally. MELANIE: Then I can’t help you. [SHORT SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I suppose not…

Because it immediately conveyed that… Jon wasn’t seeking an opinion about whether or not to try to get involved and help Martin – that opinion would have been a “friend’s”. No; at this point, Jon had already decided to go in. And I like that Melanie, of all people, was immediately able to pinpoint that.

- Laughing forever, though, that YESSS, rule of three re:Jon and wlw:

(MAG089) ARCHIVIST: I just… er, you were a friend of Agnes Montague, correct? JUDE: She’s not one of your little stories.

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: I think Basira is the same, she's coming along to back-up Daisy, or so she says. I–I– I don't quite get those two, I suppose. What they’ve done, seeing what they’ve seen… It’s a hell of a bond.

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Look, is she here or not? She–she said she was staying with you. GEORGIE: Yes, she’s here. ARCHIVIST: Really? Where’s all her stuff? GEORGIE: Bedroom, why? ARCHIVIST: … No, I just– [STATIC] Oh. Oh! I’m sor– I didn’t– I didn’t realise you were… to–together…

I can’t believe it took Beholding’s powers for him to realise. (Though, to be honest: he knew Melanie&Georgie were friends, Georgie was going on dates with other people in season 3, we don’t know whether Georgie is poly or not, so it wasn’t a given that they had gotten together sometime before this episode.)

- You know things are dire when, in the last few episodes: 1°) even Jon said “fuck”, 2°) Jon knocked on a door, not only once but twice.

(MAG146) [CLICK–] ARCHIVIST: [BREATHING HEAVILY, FRANTICALLY BANGING ON A DOOR] [A DOOR CREAKS OPEN] [DISTORTION SOUNDS, BRINGING CONSTANT STATIC] HELEN: You rang~?

(MAG157) [CLICK–] [FRANTICALLY BANGING ON A DOOR] [A DOOR CREAKS OPEN] [DISTORTION SOUNDS, BRINGING CONSTANT STATIC] ARCHIVIST: Helen…! HELEN: Jonathan~?

(Well. Banged on a door that wasn’t there.) Reminder that there is few knocking around Jon, and he still diiiiid it, times are… what they are.

(- When was the last time that someone called Jon “Jonathan”? I only remember Georgie’s “Jonathan Sims, are you trying to save the world?” from MAG093, and Elias in his first appearance:

(MAG017) ARCHIVIST: A complaint? I could just as easily complain about her wasting my time! ELIAS: That’s not how it works, Jonathan.

Helen had been generally replying to Jon on the same level when it came to names/designations, so was she just playful, or was this a way to point out that “Helen” is technically as formal as “Jonathan”, and not something someone close to Jon would call him? Even Melanie calls him “Jon”. Why “Jonathan” suddenly? Just for the variety?)

- SAD for Jon that his option as “ally” was… Helen, given what we’ve seen of her lately:

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: I need to know that’s in there, what’s at the centre, it’s–it’s important, Martin… I need to know. HELEN: [CONTAINED TITTER] That’s a shame. Because I’m afraid I’m not going to tell you. ARCHIVIST: What…? Why not? HELEN: Because I have a good enough sense of what’s going on to know that it will be much – more – fun – without – my – involvement…! [HELEN LAUGHS AND LAUGHS, ECHOING] […] ARCHIVIST: Just tell me what’s going on – please! HELEN: Bad things, Archivist. [HELEN LAUGHS AND LAUGHS, ECHOING] Really – bad – things!

It sounds like she’s going full Distortion lately, uh? She seemed comparatively so stable and straightforward, in MAG131…

- AHHAHA, Helen had reminded Jon about her sharpness recently:

(MAG152) ARCHIVIST: Huh? You’ve got hands. HELEN: Sharp enough to pull out worms. Kill a few old men. Maybe stab an overeager Archivist… ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] HELEN: But my physicality is as much an illusion as everything else about me. Think of me… as a bear trap. Not a sword.

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: I don’t have time for this! [STATIC] What is at the centr– [SHARP SOUND AS HELEN GRABS HIM BY THE THROAT] HELEN: No. We are not playing your game now. ARCHIVIST: [PAINED SOUNDS] HELEN: Don’t forget how sharp I can be, Archivist. Perhaps here, now, you’re powerful enough to learn what you want from me. But if you try, I promise you I will resist, and only one of us is going to survive the attempt. [SHARPING SOUND, RETREATING]

“Not a sword”, uh.

And we’re back to Jon getting whumped and threatened by everyone. It’s… interesting that Helen felt that Jon’s compulsion was an actual threat – it had annoyed Jude, too, but Helen directly went for the throat (… apparently, it was actually truly the throat in the script, Anil said). Would getting straight answers from The Distortion cause it harm on an essential level, like it potentially happened with Breekon when Jon “extracted” his statement and got to “know” him?

- Also interesting that Jon’s compulsion is apparently getting stronger? You would think that Jon’s powers would begin to crash and burn since he’s quit taking live statements, especially since Helen advised him to get a victim to replenish himself, but nop. Is it still from the power-boost Jon got when he chose not to die? Is it because of the new Fears he experienced over season 4 (Flesh taking ribs out of him, going and getting out of The Buried, staring at the Dark Sun)? Is it because we’re in 2018, and it’s supposed to be kind of a zenith for Beholding given that it’s the Institute’s anniversary…?

- … I was very scared that Jon might have forced a statement out of someone on the way to Georgie’s, but given how Helen invited him to find one right now, doesn’t seem to be the case!

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Fine. [PANTING] Can you take me there? To the centre? HELEN: I honestly don’t know. But I’m not inclined to risk it. ARCHIVIST: Damn you! HELEN: Run home, Jon. Find a victim on the way~ Chaos is coming, and I think you’d best be ready.

Which is a relief ;;

I’m… super worried about Basira and Daisy, who left Jon absolutely unsupervised, and with Jon proving that he is able to go outside. Melanie is not there anymore either to check on him, and Jon had told Martin juuust a few episodes ago that:

(MAG154) ARCHIVIST: Honestly: thank you. [EXHALE] It’s been hell, but… I–I did need to hear it. MARTIN: Oh, hum… Uh, g–good. Heh. Are the others… helping? ARCHIVIST: Oh! [DRY CHUCKLE] They’ve been keeping a… very close eye on me…!

… but no, it’s really not the case right now ;; And I’m worried again. What’s the point of Jon getting caught and made to stop in the last third of the season…? I still feel like if he makes new innocent victims, then it’s indeed over for him (there would be nothing to differentiate him from other avatars who feed and prey on innocents to stay alive); is his withdrawal a step towards something else…? Or is it to exemplify that there could have been another option, that Jon didn’t hold to it and crashed himself down in the end…?

- From their point of view, I’m REALLY worried that Daisy&Basira left suddenly, leaving Jon unsupervised and alone because… why would they.

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Am I just hearing what I want to hear? I need a second opinion, but… Basira and Daisy are… “out”, somewhere. They left in a hurry and didn’t tell me why; now, their phones are going to voicemail. Maybe they’re just… on the Underground, and probably th– … That doesn’t help me now. [SIGH]

The way Jon phrased it, it seems like he saw them leaving (it wasn’t that he couldn’t find them or anything), so? Why would they choose to not tell Jon? What could make them leave together, Daisy included, when Daisy was still “weak”? They could be trapped in Helen’s corridors right now (like Tim&Martin at the end of season 2), or in The Lonely because Peter wanted to get Jon absolutely isolated, but I’m still a bit baffled about why they would leave Jon unsupervised and without telling him anything.

1°) Is it that Basira managed to convince Daisy to Hunt again (nooo, Basira, don’t…), and to go after Trevor&Julia… ;; (Or Julia&Trevor were spotted somewhere, and they left to get them with Daisy trying hard not to Hunt.)

2°) Same thing, but with Annabelle Cane?

3°) Maybe they left for the tunnels on their own because something’s happening down there/Basira found something about it in the Archives, and it was really important to not talk about it (because Elias Watching, or The Web having its many eyes on him) and/or because Jon is still an avatar of The Eye…?

4°) Or plainly: they read Adelard’s statement, were the ones who left it on Jon’s desk, and are trying to stop Peter&Martin. … Would still be very stupid, tho, because OF COURSE Jon would panic about it ;; Unless they read it, hid it, and something else pulled it out to get Jon to panic. Could Martin have contacted them about something they need to do without Jon knowing? Basira knew that Martin was planning to go for a self-sacrifice; if it’s tied to this, it could explain why they didn’t tell Jon anything regarding their departure.

5°) … It would still go back in the “but why not tell Jon!!” category, but I’m really worried that there is something very wrong with Elias’s prison right now, hence why they left in a hurry – that either he has disappeared (and/or was “Peter’s map”, so Peter got him out), either the prison is unresponsive and it turns out it has been under Elias’s control for a looong while. He didn’t seem too upset about the prospect of going in MAG120, the Institute was built with strong ties to the Millbank prison (so it’s not an unfamiliar place for The Eye to thrive), and we still don’t know what he’s “eating” (/how come Elias is fine, as an avatar of The Eye, while Jon is suffering so badly from withdrawal? Is Elias himself really under withdrawal?)…

(MAG120) POLICE OFFICER: By all means, mister Bouchard: why don't you have a look in my head, and see exactly what will happen to you when you mess with me. ELIAS: [GRUNT] There will be no need for that, inspector, I’m sure we’ll get along famously. POLICE OFFICER: Good. ELIAS: Best of luck, Martin. Ah, let the others know I shall be thinking of them. MARTIN: [SIGH]

(MAG127) BASIRA: Can we cut the bullshit? ELIAS: What “bullshit” might that be? BASIRA: The part where you pretend you don’t spend your whole time watching us. ELIAS: … Sometimes I’m eating.

+ There is the fact that Elias spent this entire season in prison, and I have trouble picturing him still inside at the beginning of season 5. He’s getting out before that.

- ;; GODS, Jon listening to Martin&Peter’s exchange was so tense and heartbreaking… we knew that Jon had listened to previous tapes, but it was something else to hear his deep breathing, really heavy and conveying how much he was… upset? Worried? Angry about Peter?

(MAG157) [CLICK–] [VERY SHARP SQUEAL OF DISTORTION] MARTIN’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “… Will I be coming back?” PETER’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “You’re not going to die–” ARCHIVIST: [LONG, SHAKY INHALE] PETER’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “–if that’s what you’re asking–” ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE] PETER’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “–but… no. If all goes well, you won’t be.” ARCHIVIST: [DEEP, SHAKY BREATHES] MARTIN’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “[LONG INHALE, EXHALE]” PETER’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “How does that make you feel?” ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE] MARTIN’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “… Nothing.” ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] MARTIN’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “[SNORT]” ARCHIVIST: [LONG EXHALE] MARTIN’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “Nothing at all…!” PETER’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “Excellent. I’m so proud of you, Martin.” MARTIN’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “I really don’t care.” PETER’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “Perfect.” [CLICK.] ARCHIVIST: [LONG INHALE, EXHALE] This… tape was left on my desk.

1°) I was wondering, but Peter’s voice indeed records on tape!

2°) Complete with the squeal of distortions that are his trademark when we’re hearing him live. So it’s indeed something that tampers with the recording a bit, but not to the point of being inaudible.

3°) It was the worst pre- and post-supplemental to hear when it came to Martin… the one when he sounded the most “lost into the Lonely”…………. And he had said he wasn’t sure whether he still cared about ~Jon hearing his voice~ at the start of it…

And at the same time: given how Martin had been so self-aware of being recorded, of Peter being potentially in the room… the question is still open. Elias did acknowledge that Martin was manipulative:

(MAG138) MARTIN: … What? [HUFF] That’s it? No, no monologue, no mindgames? You love manipulating people! ELIAS: That makes two of us. MARTIN: [HUFF]

And was it only about keeping tapes from Jon behind Peter’s back? How much can we trust of what we heard from Martin during season 4? Even Jon had managed to hide that he had attacked people from his recordings; it took Jess’s complaint and Helen calling Jon out for him to admit what he had done. Does Martin truly not “care”, as Peter was glad to hear, or was Martin feeding Peter what he wanted to hear, too…?

(tl;dr Web!Martin is not dead as long as Martin is still alive :|)

(- I'm Still Not Claiming That It’s Romantic On Jon’s Part Until We Get A Very Explicit Confirmation Because I Wanna Raise The Bar Higher, but: Jon… Jon, you big worried bi…

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: [LONG INHALE, EXHALE] This… tape was left on my desk. I don’t know by who, but to my mind there are… three options. Martin has left it here, to let me know that… whatever the situation is with Peter Lukas, it is entering its final act and he needs my help. […] This, uh… this changes things. I–I think. … If Martin found this, r–read it already, then perhaps he’s having… second thoughts about, about Peter and The Extinction, this… this could be a cry for help, his way of asking me to follow him without Peter knowing, or… [EXHALE] Or what? I don’t understand – Martin’s been quite clear he doesn’t want my help…! Am I just hearing what I want to hear? […] I’m sorry, I just… It’s Martin. MELANIE: Jon… don’t… Please. […] ARCHIVIST: I need to know that’s in there, what’s at the centre, it’s–it’s important, Martin… I need to know.

Urk… The fact that he went “Martin” first, before giving Helen a formulation that she probably wanted to hear (=> Jon as an Eye-avatar Wanting To Know…))

(- Last minute Extinction speculation, but I wonder if Adelard’s most important speculation in his last message wasn’t this one:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “while I have seen evidence of its influence in other Powers, I have never found anything to genuinely prove its emergence as a true Power of its own. Perhaps it is an existential fear that flows through the others like a vein of ore”

… what if, indeed, The Extinction had never been a Fifteenth Power… but a kind of enhancer? Every time Adelard was prone to label an occurrence as an Extinction one, it felt like it was operating on a big scale. What if The Extinction is indeed something new, but mostly boosting good old Fears into something bigger, scarier, more effective – and a few of them, such as the Corruption, would obviously be more compatible than others?)

- There are indeed so many options about who left the tape and the statements, and why:

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: [LONG INHALE, EXHALE] This… tape was left on my desk. I don’t know by who, but to my mind there are… three options. Martin has left it here, to let me know that… whatever the situation is with Peter Lukas, it is entering its final act and he needs my help. Alternatively, Peter may have left it here to… goad me into action? Or just to gloat, to highlight my helplessness and everything. [SIGH] Or Annabelle Cane is trying to manipulate me into thinking it’s one of the other scenarios. Previously, the Spiders have made their presence clear when they’ve sent me… “hints”, but I can’t take that for granted. I don’t know what to do…! [SIGH] There’s a statement with it. It looks pretty recent – hm! First time in a while I’ve been… wary of reading one. … Still. I guess… [LONG INHALE, EXHALE] [PAPER RUSTLING] […] This, uh… this changes things. I–I think. … If Martin found this, r–read it already, then perhaps he’s having… second thoughts about, about Peter and The Extinction, this… this could be a cry for help, his way of asking me to follow him without Peter knowing, or… [EXHALE] Or what? I don’t understand – Martin’s been quite clear he doesn’t want my help…! Am I just hearing what I want to hear? I need a second opinion, but…

1°) But Jon casually ignored the fact that the statement was a last message, sent to an Archivist, to say goodbye, and that… that could have been what Martin was aiming at. (I’m not really digging that Martin would have done that without leaving a message on his own, though; even if he were to stop caring about Jon, he would still keep in mind that Jon would be prone to doing drastic things to try to save people, or to run into danger. He got a whole discussion with Daisy about it in MAG142, and asked Basira not to tell Jon that he wasn’t planning on coming back just a few episodes ago.)

2°) The tape and the statement have been left by different persons/things, and had different purposes, and/or one of the factions could have subtilized something else to prevent Jon to connecting dots.

3°) A big question is also who was aware of Adelard’s last message (and of his death). I lost my bet that Peter had killed him, but still: it’s extremely suspicious that Peter never mentioned in front of Martin the possibility of getting Adelard’s own help… so he must have known it wasn’t an option. We never heard Martin questioning about it, so… Martin might have found out, or guessed about it, too.

4°) Adelard’s message was explicitly an email:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “You must forgive me, Gertrude, for any typing and spelling errors that might be in this message. […] But it did not seem quite right to leave without letting you know what happened. And… Herr [Becker?] was kind enough to succumb to the sickness without signing out of his computer, so…”

… And Peter’s not good with computers:

(MAG126) PETER: Anyway, I’m very excited to see this rota you’ve put together. Never had much of a gift for– MARTIN: Okay. PETER: –administration myself; too many variables. Now, this box on the left, that’s the library stuff, yes? MARTIN: What? N–n–no, th–th–that’s, no, those are the dates, I– … Look, are you sure you don’t want me to teach you? It’s, it’s a very simple program– PETER: No. No. Can’t stand computers. Besides! That’s why I have an assistant, isn’t it? MARTIN: [SIGH] Yeah. I guess so.

Unlike Annabelle (who was very interest in the www in MAG123), and unlike Martin. Who printed it out? Gertrude? Or someone else, very recently?

- ;; Is next week Jon trying to reach the centre of the tunnels already (and unknowingly being Peter’s map, being tracked when thinking he was tracking Peter&Martin?), using or not using Leitner’s supernatural copy of The Seven Lamps of Architecture, or going to ask Elias for help because he’s desperate………………… I don’t see many more options for Jon at this point… There is still the Threat of Jon’s inner door looming here:

(MAG127) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] It’s… hard. It’s like there’s a–a–a door, in my mind. And behind it, is… i–is the entire ocean. Before, I didn’t notice it, but now, I know it’s there, and I can’t forget it, and I can feel the pressure of the water on it. I, I, I can keep it closed… but sometimes, when I’m around p–people, or–or places, or… ideas, a drop or two will push through the cracks, at the edges of the door. And I’ll… know something. BASIRA: … What happens, if you open the door? [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: I drown.

… and I’m dreading that yes, he would try to open it to find the centre, in order to find Martin… ;; (And that there is actually no centre; only Jon, with his sea of knowledge, in the middle, thus precipitating the bad things Helen was cackling about.)

- As usual: what are Elias/Annabelle/Peter’s plans and aims, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgggg

(- Hi, guess who was there at every 38th episode of a season so far:

(MAG038) ARCHIVIST: Urgh. Urgh. [SOUND OF CHAIR SCRAPING] I see you… [THUMP… THEN SOUND OF COLLAPSING SHELVES] [NOISES OF EXCLAMATION] [DOOR OPENS] SASHA: Alright? ARCHIVIST: Ah… Yeah. A… spider. SASHA: A spider? ARCHIVIST: Yeah. I tried to kill it… the shelf collapsed. SASHA: I swear, cheap shelves are… Did you get it? ARCHIVIST: Ah… I hope so. Thinks so. Nasty, bulbous looking thing. SASHA: [CHUCKLES] Well, I won’t tell Martin. ARCHIVIST: Oh, god. I don’t think I could stand another lecture on their importance to the ecosystem.

(MAG078) ARCHIVIST: [WHISPERED] It is remarkably easy to buy an axe in Central London. Harder to sneak it into Artefact Storage but not impossible. I don’t know if destroying this is going to kill that thing… but I am damn sure it’s going to hurt. […] Hollow. Just cobwebs and dust.

(MAG118) DAISY: Shut. Up. BASIRA: It’s just cobwebs. ARCHIVIST: There’s no such thing as just cobwebs! I don’t like it. TIM: Tough.

MmMMmmmMMmmmMMMmm.)

Title for MAG158 is… ouft. F–finally, I guess?

So, hum. Beholding, I guess? (It would be the 5th one this season if we count MAG138 as mostly Eye’s… ;;) And probably tunnels stuff. Depending on how the groups are split, could be Peter&Martin, Basira&Daisy&Elias or Elias&Jon, I guess… I’m mostly expecting no statement and a two-part climax like in season 3, but if there is a statement, I guess it could be read/told by Elias, whether alone or ~in company~ (a letter to/from Jonah Magnus? Another thing from Smirke’s earliest days? Something related to [the title itself]?).

Regarding the… less concrete aspect of the title, it… could be either about Elias (is he really confined.), either about Jon and his powers, I guess……………… could be Jon opening his ~inner door~ to try to find Martin/the centre of the maze, too……………….

[dipulb3]

MLB TV review: Stellar baseball streaming hampered by blackout restrictions

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MLB TV review: Stellar baseball streaming hampered by blackout restrictions

For out-of-market baseball fans, MLB.TV is the only game in town to follow your favorite team night in and night out. As a Cincinnati Reds fan living in New England, I’d be able to watch only a handful of Reds games during the season — on the rare occasion when my small-market team makes an appearance on national television — were it not for MLB.TV. With the service, I’m able to watch nearly every one of the Reds’ 162 games from April to October, along with other out-of-market games every day of baseball’s regular season.

Like

Wide device support

Easy access to in-game stats

Choose your own audio feed.

Smooth streaming

Don’t Like

Blackout restrictions can be frustrating.

Inconsistent experience across devices.

At $130 for the year, MLB.TV is too pricey for casual fans but certainly worth it for serious baseball geeks who live outside their team’s home market. And that’s the catch. For fans of the local team — say a Red Sox fan living in New England, a Dodgers fan in LA — subscribing to MLB.TV makes little sense. That’s because your local team’s games are blacked out on MLB.TV, which means you’d be better served with cable or a live TV streaming service, like AT&T TV, Fubo or YouTube TV, that includes the regional sports network (RSN) that carries the games.��

Read more: MLB baseball streaming 2021: Watch your team’s games this season, no cable required

Not only are your local team’s games unavailable on MLB.TV, but nationally televised games also fall prey to blackout restrictions. Games on ESPN, Fox, FS1, MLB Network and TBS are blacked out on MLB.TV, which can be terribly disappointing when you attempt to tune into a game and are greeted with the blackout notice. It’s even worse for fans of the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Cubs and other big-market teams that are on national TV seemingly every week and, thus, constantly blacked out on MLB.TV. Even if you think you are sold on the service, be sure to peep your team’s national broadcast schedule before subscribing so you don’t find yourself singing the blackout restriction blues before the ivy turns green at Wrigley.

If you’re an out-of-market baseball fan willing to put up with the blackout restrictions, however, you’ll find plenty to like about MLB.TV. The live game streams are steady and smooth with few dropouts in my experience. They feature informative, easy-to-access stat overlays that enhance the viewing experience. From iPhones and tablets to PCs and TVs, there’s broad hardware support so you can tune into games no matter where you are. And you can listen to radio broadcasts with MLB.TV, which I’d say would be useless for every sport other than baseball.

Check out the MLB.TV app on iPad, phones and TV streamers

See all photos

In short, MLB.TV makes it possible and enjoyable to follow your favorite baseball team when you live far away from it. Being able to watch games live almost every day of the six-month season and hear your team’s announcers, the home crowd and even local ads connects you to your team. And after a year of chaos, pandemic and lockdowns, a summer of baseball could be just what the doctor ordered.

MLB.TV subscription options and extras

There are three ways to subscribe to MLB.TV:

Pay $130 to be able to watch out-of-market games live or on-demand. You can watch replays of your local team’s games, but there’s a 90-minute delay from the final out before the archived stream is available. Archived games are available sooner for out-of-market teams.

Pay $110 to be able to watch a single, out-of-market team live or on-demand. If you’re only interested in watching your favorite team play, then this plan can save you a few bucks. You sacrifice, however, the ability to switch over to a potential no-hitter in progress elsewhere or any other exciting matchup or moment that does not involve your team. I spend 95% of the time watching Reds games, but I still pay the extra $20 for the full package because FOMO is a real thing.

Pay $25 per month to be able to watch out-of-market games live or on-demand. This is a good option if you have doubts about your team contending this year and can see your attention waning along with your team’s chances by midseason. 

You can pay by the month or for the full season.

Sarah Tew/CNET

With MLB.TV, you can also listen to home and away radio broadcasts. And baseball is one of the few sports, if not the only, that’s enjoyable to listen to on the radio. And some rare good news for the in-market fan: MLB.TV’s radio broadcasts aren’t subject to the blackout rule, so you can listen to your local team’s games live. 

MLB.TV also includes a ton of video content, including classic games, baseball documentaries and old This Week in Baseball episodes. This year, a new show called Big Inning made its debut for MLB.TV subscribers. Starting at 9:30 p.m. ET each weekday night, Big Inning will offer live look-ins across all the games in action as well as highlights as they happen. It’ll feel similar to the NFL’s RedZone channel that jumps around the league’s game on Sunday afternoons.

MLB.TV is also adding pre- and post-game coverage this year, which is a welcome addition. After a big Reds win, I’m pumped up and ready to hear interviews and analysis, but my MLB.TV feed gets abruptly cut off before the on-field celebrations are complete. It’ll be a slow rollout with one or two clubs offering pre- and post-game coverage to start the season before being added to more than half the clubs by midseason, according to MLB. As with the games themselves, the pre- and post-game coverage will be available only to out-of-market viewers.

Two types of blackouts

MLB.TV lets you watch every game of the regular season that’s outside of your local TV market and also not on national TV. As a resident of New England, for example, I cannot watch Boston Red Sox games live on MLB.TV. Since the team I follow is a small market team that has not had much success in recent years, it is not picked for national broadcasts with any great frequency. As a result, I rarely encounter a Reds game blacked out on MLB.TV. I’d imagine the blackout restriction is much more frustrating to fans of successful, big-market teams, since their teams are shown regularly on ESPN and other national broadcasts. 

These blackout restrictions mean an MLB TV subscriber is either an out-of-market fan like me who can’t watch his or her favorite team in-market, or a hardcore baseball fan who wants to watch even more baseball than what they can get from their local and national TV broadcasts. Were I not a subscriber to MLB.TV, I would need to subsist all summer long on box scores, highlights and the rare Reds national broadcast to follow my team.

Watch (and listen) on just about any device

No matter how big a fan I am or how much I enjoy streaming games on MLB.TV, I have neither the time nor the inclination to watch nine innings of baseball every night. My favorite part about MLB.TV is its wide device support that lets me catch parts of a game while I go about my day and evening. 

I watch a few innings on the iPad in the kitchen while making dinner and a few more innings after dinner on my laptop when my son is playing on my iPad. And perhaps the last few outs on the big screen via my Apple TV. And when I can’t watch, I listen to the Reds’ radio call on my phone when I take the dog out for her evening stroll or during weekend yard work, which just so happens to coincide with Sunday day games.

MLB.TV offers broad hardware support.

Sarah Tew/CNET

MLB.TV is part of the free MLB app, which is available on a slew of devices, from phones and tablets to computers and game consoles to streaming boxes and smart TVs. Here’s the full list:

Mac and Windows PCs

iOS and Android phones and tablets

Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Chromecast streaming devices

PS4, PS5 and Xbox One game consoles

Samsung smart TVs

Xfinity Flex

You can get more details, including system requirements and specifics on supported models, on this MLB.com support page. 

I tested MLB.TV on the devices I usually use to watch games: iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro and Apple TV. I also checked out MLB.TV on my Roku TV and a Windows PC.

Stat overlays and radio feeds

My preferred device for watching MLB.TV is the iPad. All devices give you access to stat overlays, but the iPad’s implementation is best. Swipe from the left edge and you can see a pitch-by-pitch summary of the game. Swipe from the right edge for the box score. A two-finger tap brings up both info panels along with scores of all the games along the top edge and a game-status panel along the bottom edge. 

Stat overlays work well on the roomy iPad screen.

Matt Elliott/CNET

You get similar overlays on a phone, but there’s only two and the box score panel that slides up from the bottom edge blocks most of the screen. On an iPad, you can call up all four panels and can still see most of the game going on in the middle of the screen. On a PC, there’s only a single stat panel that you can toggle on and off on the right edge of the player. 

MLB.TV lets you watch the home or away video feed so you can listen to your team’s announcers. And should you prefer your team’s radio announcers to the TV announcers, you can change the audio feed so you can listen to the radio call while still watching the video stream. 

The ability to choose my audio feed is one of my favorite features.

Matt Elliott/CNET

Watching MLB.TV on an Apple TV has a benefit not offered on my other devices, including Roku. On the Apple TV, when you tune into a game in progress, you are given three options: Catch Up, Start from Beginning and Watch Live. The last two are self-explanatory, and the first is the option I usually select. It gives you 90 seconds of highlights from the action you missed before taking you to the live feed. On Roku, you can only join live or start from the beginning.

The Apple TV app has a cool catch-up feature.

Sarah Tew/CNET

As much as I like watching on the iPad, there’s no option to start watching a game other than to join it live. Why can’t every device offer the three options as Apple TV when I go to tune into a game that’s already in progress?

On all my devices and using both wired and wireless network connections, games streamed smoothly. They occasionally get choppy when on Wi-Fi, but such instances lasted only a few seconds or a minute at most before returning to HD clarity. A few seasons ago, I would avoid watching on my Apple TV because the video quality looked poor when displayed on my HDTV, but now streaming games on MLB.TV on my TV look no different than watching a game on ESPN on my TV via YouTube TV.

Ad-free highlights, repetitive ads during games

When I miss a game, I can watch the Game Recap highlight package on MLB.TV the next morning or a slightly longer Condensed Game. Each shows plays from the game without additional commentary; you hear the call from either the home or away announcer. There is also a collection of individual highlights you can fire up to see the big hits and outstanding defensive plays.

When watching highlights, as a subscriber you do not need to sit through ads. The highlights play immediately, letting you jump from one to another without the fear of an ad inserting itself in the middle of your review of the previous night’s game. Individual highlights are also available during a live game on about an inning-or-so delay.

You will see ads during the usual commercial breaks between innings and during pitching changes of live games, and they will get repetitive. We are not even a week into the season and I can safely say I’ve seen the ad for Duluth Trading Co. underwear enough times to last all summer. On the other hand, I never grow tired of hearing ad reads for Skyline Chili during Reds games even though each mention of Cincinnati’s unusual take on chili makes me wish I were back in the Queen City.

Beware big-market blackouts

For diehard baseball fans who don’t live near their favorite team, an MLB.TV subscription is the only way to follow your team day in and day out over the course of the long, 162-game, six-month season. I don’t take advantage of any of the extra video content and still think my subscription is money well spent just for the ability to tune into nearly every game live on TV or the radio and hear the Reds announcers no matter if my team is playing at home or on the road. My only word of caution is for out-of-market fans of big-market teams. 

You access MLB.TV via the free MLB app, but be sure to check out how the blackout restrictions affect the team you follow before subscribing.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Baseball’s inequity between big- and small-market teams makes it difficult to be a fan of a small-market club like the Cincinnati Reds because my team loses its young stars as they enter their prime and misses out on free agents to big-market teams that can hand out huge contract after huge contract. An MLB.TV subscription might be the only thing in baseball where it’s an advantage to be a small-market fan. 

To fans of the Yankees, Dodgers and other big-spending, big-market teams, I would say enjoy your team’s abundance of pitching, your deep lineup, your regular postseason appearances but be sure to check its national TV broadcast schedule before subscribing to MLB.TV. There’s not another option for out-of-market baseball fans that delivers the sheer volume of baseball of MLB.TV, but a Yankees fan who lives far from the Bronx, for example, might be able to satisfy their fandom with a pay TV service that includes ESPN, Fox, FS1, MLB Network and TBS instead — the channels that regularly show your team’s games that are blacked out on MLB.TV.

[rarestereocats]

rundown of last night’s game!

we make our way to the last town of this mission.  before arrival,  i talk to Ilyana about my cousin,  Cat,  a bit and gift her her stuffed unicorn,  Princess Strawberry.  she notes that PS is actually blue,  to which i say that Cat was color-blind so #canon.  Industria also shares some of her chocolate stash with us all,  so hell yeah.

Carson,  while not as bad as some of the other towns,  still has no guards watching over,  so we head on in and are flooded by beggars.  Tenin does what he does and scares them off,  but Xaren calls one guy back to give our spiel and then we’re pointed to some fields to camp out in.  we camp the fuck out and gather up to alert the townsfolk and Thompson just comes out of nowhere with a fucking giant cowbell.

obviously stunned,  i gotta know where it came from.  family heirloom apparently,  but we all reluctantly turn down more cowbell and he’s a little disappointed by that.  as we have the day to ourselves,  he suggests we start a band.  jokingly going along with it,  Thompson thinks we’re serious and so,  the band is born.  there’s Thompson with the cowbell,  Elliot with the flute,  Elathera with the tambourine,  and Industria with her lyre and angelic voice.  oh and me being a stage mom.

the band surprisingly is not a disaster despite this odd combination of instruments and they rock the fucking crowd here at the camp.  as we do this,  Xaren goes to gather the townsfolk in a completely normal way and encounters an actual authentic redneck.  he gives the man a gold and is told to pass the word around about our camp,  but this dude wants to know what the catch is.  with no catch,  he hands Xaren his gold back and tells him that he just bought his freedom.

the man then goes on about having the last cow in town.  get all the milk you want and all that,  just come to my creepy barn.  Xaren gives a firm “no” to that and goes to leave,  but on the way back,  decides to peer into the barn anyways.  despite the implications that there’s something terribly wrong with the redneck,  there is indeed a cow in that barn and a lamp.  and the redneck rambling on about doing whatever it takes to get her that goddamn cowbell.

i decide to stir up drama before he returns cuz Thompson asks me what Xaren thinks of him.  instead of being an Honest Abe,  i tell him that Xaren doesn’t hate him.  in fact,  quite the opposite!  he’s got a crush on you,  Tommy.  Thompson is surprised,  but ecstatic and i realize that i’m gonna get my ass beat,  but i’m in it now,  folks.  when Xaren returns,  Thompson and his now inflated ego approach Xaren.

Industria and Elathera who heard me to tell Thompson that fake news pull each other aside to talk about it and wonder if they should tell Samuel.  with me panicking in the background,  Industria realizes what i’ve done,  but Elathera hasn’t caught on yet.  Thompson wants to netflix and chill,  but Xaren isn’t catching on either and says he’s gonna go chill with his actual boyfriend.  Thompson tells Xaren that i told him how he feels about him and now it finally clicks.

Xaren’s eyes seek me out and i go to hide,  but he Sees All.  i cannot hide from his fury now and as the truth comes out,  Thompson is shot down and feels like an asshole, but Xaren assures him that the only asshole here is me.  oops!  with Xaren storming over,  i climb up into the tree as he yells for me to come down.  Samuel walks onto the scene cuz obviously this is mildly concerning.  i still refuse to come down,  so Xaren has Samuel hoist him up to the branch so he can have a chat.

Tenin is also concerned and needs to know if it’s corndog time and i yell for him to save me,  but realizing he would probably cleave through Xaren with no hesitation if he thought this was an actual fight,  we calm him down and send him away.  as Xaren gets his balance on the branch,  i dart off higher into the tree to be a weenie.  he calls Thompson over and makes me apologize,  so i do so but not before lying and convincing them all that i misunderstood the situation.

he pulls my tail to get me down and i scream cuz excuse me,  my tail is sensitive,  so he gives up that pursuit and settles for climbing up to grab me.  i reluctantly allow it and so we start our journey down until he trips and we go tumbling into Samuel’s arms.  Xaren and Samuel abandon me cuz i am a Naughty Child,  but Elathera,  who still hasn’t figured out i was just being an ass,  stays to comfort me.  she’s a good friend.

Rikius comes over to see what the fuss is about and helps me off of the ground while Elathera explains what she thinks happened.  Rikius immediately knows it’s bullshit and gives me the Stare as i hide my face in my hands and it’s at this moment,  Elathera finally realizes what’s really going on.  knowing that Xaren probably needs some cooldown time,  i decide not to push my luck again and we all retire for the night.

come morning,  Elathera sets up another fortune teller tent so she can see if she can pry some more past life memories out of Xaren.  his vision’s pulled back to Remy,  who’s been inside the temple of the dead with Lucky for a month.  desperate for some fresh air and to get out of that creepy ass place,  they tell Lucky they should go to the beach.  after some convincing,  Lucky reluctantly agrees to a few days outside of the temple,  but they’re desperate to find and learn all the place has to offer.

they wanna spend another week or two there and Remy knows it’s gonna be longer,  so they call them out and now there’s some tension.  Lucky’s holding something back,  but before Remy can coax it out of them,  Xaren is pulled back into his own body.  after talking to Elathera about it,  she says that she doesn’t think the situation ended well for either of them.

with our mission finally done,  we get ready to head back home.  as we pack into the carriage,  i notice Sephi talking to someone.  so as her glance falls on me,  i goose Rikius,  who’s startled,  but doesn’t find it entirely unwelcome and she scowls.  she’s probably plotting to murder me as we speak.  Industria asks Xaren if he can train Ilyana in hand-to-hand combat,  so Xaren says she can join the lessons he’s giving to Sirqi.  she also asks Tenin to train her with a sword and he seems pretty fucking jazzed about it.

i talk to Ilyana about Cat some more cuz i’m pretty happy about Princess Strawberry finding a new home,  but unfortunately,  i get a little morbid when i think of my mom and tell this child that some monsters don’t look like monsters at first.  and everybody is immediately concerned,  even Xaren who’s still a little salty about the Thompson situation.  we drop the refugees off and finally head home to Florence.

Industria and Rikius get into a spat about the fact that we have prison cells in the manor and give each other some nasty ass glares and surprisingly,  Industria wins.  we get inside and our good pals Camilla and Ivy are there to join the order and to apparently escape pirates cuz uh oh!  they’re in trouble.  but it’s good to have them here and i’m noticing a trend of catfolk hanging out with drow and what the fuck is the deal with that??  do we all just naturally gravitate to each other or what?

after the room clears out,  it’s family intervention time with me again and i finally open up about my mom.  Trash Can Asri.  i tell them about how awful she is,  how abusive she was,  and how i’m absolutely scared of her.  Industria says i’m stronger now and that i have friends.  Power of Friendship,  ya’ll.  it can move mountains.  we have a group hug that even Rikius joins in on with no eye rolling or dramatic sighing,  so cue me sobbing.  with money to collect,  i ask everyone if you can use it to buy me a new mom and everyone is still concerned as shit.

Industria catches on that i’m holding something back and it’s time to unravel even more Tragic Backstory.  Kina is like an onion,  okay?  that trauma has many layers. i tell them how Asri forced me to kill somebody in cold-blood when i was just a teenager and everyone still loves me,  so let me cry some more.  Xaren asked if a kid was involved and i bring up how after it was all said and done,  i found the woman’s baby and everyone’s shocked again.

Trauma Shock and Awe.  Xaren leans in to ask me “are you...Mariellis?” and upon hearing my birth name,  i recoil back as sudden realization hits us both.  we knew each other before all of this.  everybody is pretty much “what in the goddamn”ing all over the place and Xaren explains how he talked with me every now and again when i’d come in to check on the child,  Ginger.  Xaren brings up how he held me when i was a baby cuz my mom left me crying my eyes out on a pew and then he brings up how absolutely unlikable Asri is.

with my tragic backstory unveiled,  we go to collect our money for the job well done.  we tell him how everything went,  where to focus most of our resources,  and then he asks if anybody needs promoting or demoting.  Industria immediately comes for Elliot (who thankfully isn’t here) and says he’s not cut out for the military and should be in peace corps or something.  we then bring up Thompson who seems a good candidate for promotion.  he asks how Xaren did and the reviews were nothing but positive.

with that done,  Xaren asks me to wait around the monastery and brings out Ginger.  it’s been two years since i’ve seen her so i talk with her a bit and the minute she starts wondering about her family is the minute i fucking died,  folks.  my soul left my body and it is not coming back.  i bid her and Xaren farewell and Rikius waited around for me,  so hell yeah.  i got held,  guys.  in public.  irl me begins sweating as he holds my hand and off we go.

after what Industria said about Elliot,  her and Elathera get into a catfight.  Industria explains where she was coming from,  bringing up how she’s not sure he’s cut out for the military and she needs to make sure we all stay alive.  she brings up how she’s not even sure she’s cut out for the military and Elathera asks her if she regrets joining,  but she doesn’t.  she got to meet us,  so she thinks it was all worth it.  with the catfight done and over,  they take Ilyana shopping.  good ol’ shopping girls.

i go to visit my family,  but the only ones coming along this time are Rikius,  Industria,  and Ilyana.  Ilyana gets to meet my sisters who are more than ecstatic to meet her and Sirqi is especially excited knowing that her and Ilyana are gonna be trained by Xaren together.  Rikius gets to meet my very big and scary dad (he’s a teddy bear,  guys),  who is absolutely stunned when he finds out we’re dating.  after i talk him down,  he goes over and shakes his hand,  nearly crushing him,  but you know how dads are.

he gives him the Designated Dad Talk,  basically “make sure you take damn good care of my little girl or i’m gonna take care of you,  if you know what i mean”,  but otherwise,  i’d say it went well.  i pull Industria aside to talk more about Asri and how Krag doesn’t know about it all and decide that maybe i should tell him.  i drag my dad outside to talk and Industria and Rikius begin arguing over what to do.  she thinks he should go with me,  but he thinks i need some space.

i tell my dad about the things Asri’s done,  except the murder cuz that is too much to throw on him at one time,  and we have another moment of just holding each other and weeping on the porch.  it’s what we do,  ya’ know?  he talks about how he wants to be there for me now and that he should’ve protected me and i am heartbroken.  i assure him that he did everything he could and as our moment is done,  we both hear Industria and Rikius arguing inside.

the minute i get inside,  Industria asks me to pick a side and i am baffled.  she tells me they were “discussing” what he should do in that situation.  i take Rikius’s side cuz clearly i needed some space if i excused myself like that and he looks very smug about that.  then...tea?  i tell them honey in tea obviously,  so Industria also gets to look smug,  but i quickly shut them both down when i tell them they’re acting like children.  pot calling the kettle black,  but nobody came for me after that,  so hey,  i fucking won.

my dad fetches Granny and the kids cuz it’s baking time and we all pitch in.  me and Rikius decide to stealthily get handsy in the kitchen,  but Sirqi catches on.  she asks me what her silence is worth and i tell her it’s worth not getting my foot up her ass and she glares at me,  but remains silent.  Rikius wins our little game cuz he’s smooth as fuck and somehow,  no one else noticed.

Elathera and Samuel have a talk about the Velevana situation,  but with no solid information to go off of,  neither of them really know what’s up.  they talk a little about religion and war and everybody else finally comes home.  Industria decides to be petty and before we close up the session,  she sprinkles salt on Rikius’s cookies.  like i said...children.

[casiestewart]

Day 59: Support Your Friends! https://ift.tt/3fReIpn

Right now, more than ever we need to support our friends! We are all in this together and we will get through it by being there for each other, at a distance!

Social media is an amazing tool to share the things you love, you like, and support others. This tweet has been pinned to the top of my Twitter profile for over a year!

IF YOU LOVE YOUR FRIENDS, SUPPORT THEM. BUY THEIR STUFF. SHARE THEIR POSTS. SHOW THEM YOU CARE.

— CASIE STEWART (@casiestewart) January 4, 2019

Last night I joined in a pop-culture trivia game on Facebook hosted by my friend Alex. Follow her on IG @lexniko, I love the content she creates and she’s funny AF.

View this post on Instagram

que pasa #cincodemayo #xæa12

A post shared by alexandra nikolajev (@lexniko) on May 5, 2020 at 9:10am PDT

Today my friend Mariah sent me a message about her latest project, a film called Pamela & Ivy. I know I don’t do movies reviews often but today her message came just as I was about to have lunch. So, I watched it and put a few notes into a post here. You can also watch the full 16-minute film in the post or on YouTube.

Mariah and I had been internet friends for a little while and last year we met for a coffee date. It was so since to meet face-to-face! I am inspired by her work and how much she has accomplished at a young age. She founded GTE Productions at 21 and is an award-winning actress & filmmaker. Her talent is out of this world!

After lunch, I went to the post office to ship a wee package of a card & friendship bracelet + an item from Knixwear. I am so impressed with their customer service! A couple of weeks ago I placed an order from the warehouse sale and when the package arrived, the order wasn’t correct. That same afternoon I was refunded for the missing items and they asked that the wrong size item I received was gifted to a friend or Women’s Shelter. I loved that idea so I sent it to a friend!

If you love creating content and know someone who is making it, tell them, share their posts with your friends. We all need to stick together!

Original article: Day 59: Support Your Friends!

©2020 CASIE STEWART. All Rights Reserved.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior December 20, 2019 – STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER, CATS, BOMSHELL, INVISIBLE LIFE

I’m doing a lot of writing about J.J. Abrams’ STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER (Lucasfilm/Disney) and Tom Hooper’s CATS (Universal) over at The Beat, so I don’t have too much more to add here. I have only seen the latter, and I’m under embargo, so can’t say much more about it anyway.

I mentioned last week that Jay Roach’s BOMBSHELL (Lionsgate), starring Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie -- all SAG Award nominees!! -- was going to expand nationwide this weekend, and I’m still hoping to review it sometime this week, but haven’t had a chance to write it just yet. Sorry!

LIMITED RELEASES

Not a lot of limited releases this weekend, thank God, but I do want to draw attention to the Brazilian Oscar entry INVISIBLE LIFE (Amazon), which will get a limited release this weekend.  Directed by Karim Aïnouz (Madame Satã), it’s the story of two sisters from Rio who are separated in 1950 as the elder one, Guida, travels to Europe to marry a sailor and is estranged by her parents when she returns alone and pregnant. The younger sister Euridice is forced into a loveless marriage, and the two of them end up living their lives unaware that the other is still living in Rio. The movie takes a little time to get going, but once it does, it’s quite an emotional experience, especially the last act where Oscar nominee Fernanda Montenegro takes over one of the roles. Invisible Life won the Un Certain Regard at Cannes earlier this year, but sadly, it did not make the shortlist in the Oscar’s International Film category, which is a shame. It will open at the Film Forum in New York Friday, as well as the Laemmle Royal in L.A.

It’s actually the only film I’ve seen this week, although the Bollywood action-comedy Dabangg 3 (Yash Raj Films) brings Salman Khan’s badass cop Chulbul Pandy back for his third movie, which should do decently over the holidays.

Xiaogang Feng’s Chinese drama Only Cloud Knows (China Lion) will also open in select cities this Friday about a Chinese man (Xuan Huang) who returns home to New Zealand after the death of his wife and learns that she has all sorts of secrets.s

Irish filmmaker Alexandra (Lotus Eaters) McGuinness’ indie drama-thriller She’s Missing (Vertical Entertainment), starring Lucy Fry and Eiza Gonzalez, playing Heidi and Jane, best friends living in a small desert town, and what happens when one of them goes missing.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Another movie I hoped to review, and I just didn’t get a chance to is this the amazing drama THE TWO POPES, starring Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins, which will hit the streaming service this Friday. It’s a wonderful film directed by Fernarno Meirelles (City of God) about the relationship between

This Friday, Netflix will also begin streaming the fantasy series THE WITCHER, based on the popular video games and starring Henry Cavil. I really don’t know much about the series, but it looks like the kind of big-scale fantasy I love.

Although the seventh episode of Disney’s series The Mandalorian will air on Weds. this week, as to not conflict with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s opening. Friday will see the debut of the new Disney+ movie Togo, starring Willem Dafoe and a Siberisan husky named Togo. Don’t know much about it, but Dafoe has been great in recent years, so I’m sure it’s worth watching.

REPERTORY

You’ll notice a lot of the same movies playing in the repertory theaters in New York and L.A. this weekend, maybe because Christmas is next week?

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER (NYC):

The big retrospective in New York this week is FilmLinc’s comprehensive “Varda: A Retrospective,” which will run from Friday through through January 6, and it is indeed comprehensive, showing all of her films, including four shorts programs and some television work. It ties into the late French filmmaker’s excellent last film, Varda by Agnès, which has been playing there for the past couple weeks. (It’s an exceptional introspective film class that I highly recommend.) If you want a taste of Varda’s work but can’t figure out what to sees then maybe you can check out the free five-part mini-series Agnés Varda: Here to There, each episode screening on the afternoons starting Friday and running through December 24. (Even though it’s free, you still need to go to the FilmLinc site and register for tickets.) The series will include a wide range of films from her part in the early French New Wave to her more recent documentary work, and it’s a slew of riches for those who’ve already seen Varda by Agnès and want to see some of the films discussed.

On Thursday night, FilmLinc will have a special 20th anniversary screening of Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey with Soderbergh in attendance along with cinematographer Ed Lachman and some of his cast.

METROGRAPH (NYC):

“Holidays at Metrograph” continues this week with screenings of Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), Mitchel Leissen’s Remember the Night  (1940), The Thin Man (1934) and of course, Todd Haynes’ 2015 film Carol, Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 movie Phantom Thread, and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Metro’s holiday standbys. Welcome To Metrograph: Redux will screen Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames  (1983) and Haile Gerima’s Bush Mama (1979) while this week’s Late Nites at Metrographis Eric Rohmer’s Claire’s Knee (1970). This weekend’s Playtime: Family Matineesis the classic It’s a Wonderful Life, in case you haven’t seen one of the 200 showings at IFC Center.

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Wednesday’s “Afternoon Classic” is The Bishop’s Wife (1947), starring Cary Grant, while Friday’s “Freaky Friday” matinee is John Carpenter’sThe Thing  (1982). Wednesday night’s double feature of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Scrooged is sold out (of course) but Thursday night, you can see It’s a Wonderful Life (of course) with Brad Pitt’s Meet John Doe. Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogsis the Friday midnight offering while the horror film Christmas Evil screens Saturday at midnight, while the weekend’s Kiddee Matinee is The Muppet Christmas Carol, which shows that even Tarantino can get in the Xmas spirit. Monday’s “Afternoon Classics” matinee is expecting that kiddee’s will be out of school, as it’s screening Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, while Tuesday night aka Christmas Eve is a double feature of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas (1954) and Holiday Affair (1949), starring Robert Mitchum. Also on Tuesday are two sold out screenings of the Xmas classic Die Hard (of course), the night screening a double feature with Silent Partner (1978).

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

The Egyptian’s “Holiday Spirit 2019” series begins with a double feature of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Things to Comeon Thursday, then they will screen It’s A Wonderful Lifeon Friday night. (Why not? Every other rep theater is playing it.) Saturday is Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (ditto) and then Saturday’s “Christmas Noir” is 1950’s Backfire on 16mm! Sunday evening is a double feature of the Oscar-winning The Apartment, starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, paired with the 2015 film Tangerine. No, I don’t get it, either.

AERO  (LA):

A lot of the same movies are playing here this week including Die Hard(as part of “Greg Proops Film Clumb 2019” on Weds, a double feature of The Thin Man (1934) and Mr. Soft Touch (1949), as part of the “Christmas Noir” series. “Holiday Spirit 2019” continues on Saturday with a double feature of White Christmas and The Holly and the Ivy (1952). Saturday’s midnight movie is The Exorcist III (1990), then Sunday is a screening of Will Ferrell’s 2003 movie Elf, and then Monday might, what else? It’s a Wonderful Life.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

On Friday, the Quad is beginning a new series called “A Face in the Crowd: Remembering Lee Remick” including a 40thanniversary restoration of James Ivory’s The Europeanswith Ivory appearing on Friday. The series will also include 1957’s A Face in the Crowd, 1959’s Anatomy of Murder, as well as one of my favorite movies of all time, 1976’s The Omen, and more.Wednesday night’s One-Shots offering is Jean Cocteau’s 1950 film Orpheus.

MOMA  (NYC):

Modern Matinees: Iris Barry’s History of Film continues this week with the 1930 film All Quiet on the Western Front Wednesday, 1921’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse on Thursday, and the classic Battleship Potemkin (1921) on Friday. Monday is a double feature of Dream of a Rarebit Fiend from 1906 and Buster Keaton’s The Navigator  (1924). Fred Newmeyer’s The Freshman  (1925) screens on Tuesday.  The Wonders continues through the weekend with its look at the films of Italian sisters Alice and Alba Rohrwacher, including Luca Guadagigno’s I Am Love (2009) on Wednesday evening and other more recent films including Alice Rohrwacher’s 2014 eponymous film The Wonders on Monday night.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

While all the other rep theaters in New York and L.A. have been jumping on the It’s a Wonderful Life bandwagon, the IFC Center has been playing it consistently for weeks with Donna Reed’s daughter Mary Owen introducing many of the screenings. That continues through Christmas Day. Next year, you’ll be able to watch all of the Studio Ghibli movies on HBO Max, but if you can’t wait that long, the IFC Center is celebrating the holidays with “The Films of Studio Ghibli” from Friday through January 16. It’s a pretty comprehensive series including many films not directed by Miyazaki, but there’s a lot of great stuff, and you can click on the link above to see when various movies are playing or check out the full calendar here. (There are a few 35mm prints in there, labelled accordingly.)

Weekend Classics: May All Your Christmases be Noir is … also Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. Seriously, if you live in New York and still haven’t seen this movie, then I don’t know what your damage is.  Waverly Midnights: Spy Games will screen Matt Damon’s The Bourne Identity (2002) and Late Night Favorites: Autumn 2019 is Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), which you also should have seen by now.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

The Film Forum will begin screening its own holiday offering, the 1962 thriller Cape Fear, starring Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, through Christmas Eve. The weekend’s “Film Forum Jr.” is a sing-along version of 1954’s White Christmas.  Lee Grant will also be at the Film Forum Thursday night to screen her 1981 documetnary debut The Willmar 8.

ROXY CINEMA (NYC)

The Nicholas Cage-a-thon continues Thursday with 1996’s The Rock, directed by a very young Michael Bay, as well as Leaving Las Vegas, for which Cage won an Oscar. On Saturday, you can get in the Xmas spirit with Bill Murray’s Scrooged  (1988) and Home Alone (1990).

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

This Friday’s midnight offering is Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988).

Next week is Christmas, and there are two new movies in the animated Spies in Disguise (20thCentury Fox) and Greta Gerwig’s Little Women.

[noonmutter]

Final Acts

(( Fair warning: This got really long at about 3600 words. ))

Deliverance Point was abuzz, more so than it had been in a while. Everyone was feeling that mix of excitement and bone-chilling terror that preceded a major change on the battlefield. The Tomb would crack open any day now, and everyone was ready, and no one was ready. Most of the time, this problem was addressed by drinking, going to a brothel, gambling, and in some cases, deserting.

He’d gone with option three, and had come out actually profiting a little bit, but it didn’t really help all that much. Of course he’d cheated, but so had everyone else at the makeshift table; winning wasn’t the point, the actual game was whether you could keep the other guys from guessing your trick. Fair games were dull and people who took offense at basic loaded dice rarely had enough money to be worth the hassle anyway.

Option one came afterward, once he had the coin for it. His tolerance was far too high for going to bars unless he was willing to go broke until next pay day, especially bars catering to soldiers. He needed a lot of drink to get a buzz, but at least the mixed nature of the forces on the Shore made price gouging dangerous territory. You could get away with that sometimes, but not when a too-sober Tauren paladin was standing in front of you with six friends and a mug half full of water.

Option two... he wanted option two very much. He was lonesome, and there was an abundance of company to be found on the floating city, one short flight away. But he was spoken for, and he wasn’t a dishonorable man where it mattered. Even if he’d been willing to entertain the idea for more than a few minutes, he knew Shedwyn would be crushed. And then castrate him. And then Leon would probably show up and kick his head in...

Terry didn’t respect the deserters, but he understood them.

His reverie was broken by a poke in the side, and it took him a moment before he thought to look down. The goblin courier scoffed at him, then held up a clipboard and a package of simple brown paper and twine. “Sign here, mac.”

“Sign?” Terry couldn’t recall the last time he’d had to sign for mail.

“Yeah, sign. Y’know, pen to paper, scribble somethin’? Usually yer name. I ain’t picky, whatever’s fastest.”

Already tired of listening, Terry took the clipboard and scrawled something that might have been his name, but had even odds of being a bunch of swear words. To judge by the goblin’s expression, he interpreted it as the latter. He hung around a few seconds, looking expectant, but Terry had already started walking away. With an irritated sigh of “Cheap friggin’ Gilneans,” he took his leave.

Rather than returning to the hustle and noise of the Point proper, Terry walked out past the edges of the More-or-Less-Safe Zone. His personal campsite wasn’t too far from the point, but far enough that he could avoid most of his night terrors. Some of the dreams were stubborn and came to him regardless, but he chalked that up to general fatigue.

Sitting down in front of his tent with a soft grunt, he took a proper look at the package and clucked his tongue in disapproval when he found the address was printed, rather than handwritten. The sender’s address wasn’t one he recognized, and he hated not knowing where things came from. It didn’t stop him from opening the thing, but it made him somewhat wary. Turning it over to find the knot in the twine, his nerves settled when he found a letter held flush against the box, addressed “Terry - Read First” in Vember’s tidy hand. He didn’t recognize the wax seal holding the envelope shut, though.

Dutifully, he set the box down without unwrapping it and broke the seal on the letter. Although some of the phrasing sounded like Vember, the handwriting was not hers. It was even cleaner, almost like a printed script, and clearly painstakingly pored over to minimize spatter from the quill and avoid mistakes. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the writer had been using a ruler.

“Terry,

I hope this letter finds you at an opportune time. If you are not already, I would suggest that you be seated and, knowing you, alone. Following the events of our initial raid on the lab in Gilneas, a large number of notes and materials were recovered and sent to the Kirin Tor for further study. Among them were a series of objects revealed to be data storage devices, the functionality of which is best left unwritten.

The Kirin Tor were recently able to translate the information on these devices to a less primitive medium, and upon review, deemed it nonviable for research purposes and returned it to us. 

Enclosed, you will find a Draenic crystal recording device, in which one sequence has already been stored. Upon realizing what it was, Vember and I determined its fate would be best left to you to decide. Please be assured that we did not play the recording in its entirety, out of decency and respect.

You are free to keep this device and the data on it, and I have included instructions on how to operate it. It is also possible to delete the data, or to record over it if you deem it necessary.

Respectfully, Lady Neun Shadhemir Vember Marlon Shedwyn Mair Lias” Just below that, in Vember’s own handwriting, was a single line:

“You have my word that I will not breathe a word of this to your brother. But you should. - V”

His hands were trembling once he’d gotten through the second paragraph. By the time he’d finished reading it, he nearly lost the slip that explained how the device worked in his rush to open the box.

The device itself was...underwhelming, a pleasant but bland quartzlike rectangle about eight inches across with a faint bluish sheen to it. Arcane energy arced between it and his fingertips for a moment before settling to an almost imperceptible warmth in his hands. It took him a few minutes to figure out he was holding it upside down, but once that was sorted, getting it working was a matter of seconds.

On activation, the device glowed bright blue, and most of the flat surface shimmered before turning a deep, pure black. The display was wobbly and unclear at the beginning, but clarified after a few seconds, until he was able to discern a set of hands--his hands--opening a door...

“Wha’ d’you mean you shot ‘im?!”

“Only in th’ leg, mate!”

“WHY DID YOU SHOOT ‘IM?!”

Diggs’ face was white as the hunter, barely out of his teens, pushed back his antlered hood and rubbed frantically at his scarred mouth. “I-I-it were a--there was a bloody--’e was a madbeast, Terry! Y’din’t say nuffin’ bout ‘im bein’ one o’ those!”

[Eyes wide, Terry mumbled “Oh god” to himself, but did not stop watching.]

Terry swore for the hundredth time in the last minute and a half, picking up his own rifle and moving his rucksack next to the doorway. He was glad he was already dressed. “You bloody nit, why were y’even carryin’? Y’were just sposed t’ watch ‘im!”

“Don’t put this on me, bruv! Yer th’one din’t fink t’mention I might be starin’ atta ‘ell’ound!”

The impact of Diggs’ back on the wall was loud, and he let out an undignified yelp when he felt something pop. Terry’s grip on his shoulders was like steel--angry steel--as he got in close and snarled, “Leon could be dead right now, you fuckin’--”

“What th’ bloody ‘ell is goin’ on in ‘ere?!”

Terry’s blood ran cold all over again as dad’s voice rattled both their brains. The man could really boom when he wanted to, and the tiny Duskhaven cabin they’d been given already amplified every footstep. He wasn’t the least bit surprised that Diggs bolted into the night the instant he could, leaving Terry standing alone, rifle in one hand, pack by the door, as his parents came inside. Bettany reached out to stop the fleeing man, but missed by a wide margin when he actually juked around her.

[A weak, mournful laugh. ”You cowardly prick.”]

They’d been away at their own party, but it was the old-folks’ party, so they were dressed a bit nicer. Mum’s hair was still done up the fancy way she liked, and she’d managed to keep her one good dress pristine for another day. Dad’s suit was already trying to split at every seam again, after a dozen trips to a dozen tailors. He already dwarfed his wife, but that suit made it even more obvious just how big he really was.

[Terry wished, as he watched the scene unfold all over again, that the suit didn’t fit because his dad was fat. It would’ve been easier to deal with him if he was fat.]

Graeme set one huge hand on his wife’s shoulder and stepped around her, not letting her get between him and Terry, though she’d already started to try. Bettany knew what was coming and her expression had shifted from confusion to determination almost immediately. The younger Ambroce stared up into his dad’s face [Terry noticed the way the image seemed to pinch at the edges; he’d been trying to look stern, and ended up scowling instead] as he came close enough to make out every stray whisker around the bush of a beard he wore.

I can still do this. It’ll still work. Just please, please, let it work fast.

“We’re leavin’. T’night. I already sent Leon a’ead.” The focus shifted for just a second to Mum’s worried frown, then back to Dad, just in time to catch his mouth twitch at one corner. When Graeme didn’t say anything beyond a low harrumph, Terry continued, voice audibly quivering this time. “I’m takin’ mum with me. It ain’t safe ‘ere.”

“What was tha’ rat bastard friend o’ yours screamin’ about b’fore ‘e ran like ‘e stole somethin’?” 

“I--’e was--sposed t’ be... guidin’ Leon through th’--”

Graeme wasn’t having it, scoffing and beginning to pace back and forth across the narrow hallway while keeping his eyes solidly on Terry’s face. “That slag was Leon’s guide outta town? Th’same dipshit ‘o wanted t’ fight Kormac stone sober an’ couldn’t tell th’ dif’rence between moss ‘n’ poison ivy?”

Rather than trying to defend one of the weakest lies he’d told in his life, Terry bulled ahead, raising his voice to be heard over his dad’s. “We’re already packed in too tight, there’s more people filt’rin’ in ev’ry day, an’ there’s things in th’ woods out ‘ere! We ‘ave t’go b’fore there’s no way t’get gone!”

“I am not leavin’ my ‘ome be’ind just so you kin feel like th’ big man in th’ouse, boyo!”

Again, Terry’s eyes shifted to mum, looking to her for help. She just barely nodded her head to him before stepping forward, reaching for Graeme’s arm. “Love, it’s not safe ‘ere. ‘E’s not wrong about th’woods. You know tha’ better’n anybody ‘ere.” She was trying to force him to look at her, but he wouldn’t stop pacing, and eventually swatted her hand off of him.

Terry growled under his breath, moving closer to the door and holding out his hand. “I’m not doin’ this all over again. I’m--we’re leavin’, with or without you.” He held out his hand toward mum, but her eyes narrowed and then went wide. “Is that blood?”

Terry looked down and saw the dark red smear across his palm. It must’ve gotten on him when he’d shoved Diggs around. Saying nothing right away, he pulled a handkerchief from his shirt and began wiping it clean. 

“Terry, what ‘appened?” Now mum was rushing forward, grabbing for his hand and intent on inspecting him for damage. He managed to dodge her once and once only before she whapped him over the back of the head and took his hand anyway. “It is blood!”

[”Don’t say it!” Cringing in almost physical pain, he knew what was coming.]

“Nothin’ t’worry over, it’s not mine.”

That, of course, was not the right thing to say, causing both of his parents to stop moving and look straight at his face. He knew what he’d done as soon as it’d left his mouth, but there was no taking it back. Bettany didn’t have a chance to say anything else before Graeme had crossed the room to shove Terry back a few feet.

“Whose blood is it then, boy? What’ve you done?”

“Dammit there’s no time fer this shit! Leon’s waitin’ fer--”

[Now, of course, Terry knew why he hadn’t seen it coming; he’d been talking, angry, panicked over his brother bleeding out somewhere in the woods. But it was plain as day on the screen.] As soon as the word ‘Leon’ reached his ears, Graeme’s eyes flicked down to focus on the rifle Terry still held. The stubbly parts of his beard began growing, and his eyes shone yellow for just a second.

Terry was still talking when Graeme picked him up and threw him across the room, and Bettany was shouting at her husband to stop by the time he’d gotten back to his feet. Face already becoming distorted and dark, Graeme paid her no heed. He was a walking cacophony of cracking bones and fleshy squishing as he stalked toward his fallen son, and growling--actually growling, bestial, impossible--from somewhere in the depths of his enormous chest.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!”

[He nearly dropped the crystal when Graeme lunged forward, a monstrous wall of black hair and yellow teeth. This part, he still remembered very clearly. He remembered thinking he was going to die, and that if he didn’t, he was going to turn into the same thing. He remembered thinking that mum was right there. That Leon was still outside, probably dying.]

The first few seconds were brutal and bloody, as a man pinned by a raging worgen always was. When he raised a hand to shield his face, one of Graeme’s claws went straight through his palm, nearly gouging his eye anyway. At one point, he’d managed to draw a bowie knife, but all that did was give the beast something to chew on and scrape up his muzzle with.

[Terry was confused. This wasn’t right. He’d had his rifle. He’d had his rifle, and they’d grappled over it, and he’d used it to block the worst of the damage--]

BLAM.

Graeme toppled sideways with an unmistakably canine yelp of pain. Terry turned his head to see Bettany holding his smoking rifle in shaking hands, eyes streaming, expression hard. She was clearly holding herself together as tightly as she could, and just as clearly, it wasn’t quite enough. “Graeme. Get up. Please.” When no response came, she cocked the rifle and took a single step forward, half-shrieking, “Give me back my ‘usband, you devil-dog bastard!”

He turned again, stunned, to look back at the thing that had been his father. As he took in the sight of the hulking brute laying in a rapidly spreading pool of blood with a gaping hole blown out of his side, everything shook for a few seconds. There was a distant rumble like thunder, but not quite the same, and the wolf finally stirred. Terry started to sit up, but fell down almost immediately with an agonized gasp. The sound shook Bettany out of her momentary lapse in control and she started toward him, only to stumble and drop the rifle when the world shook again.

This time, there was a shrieking sound, like trying to twist a wet branch until it snapped, amplified by ten million times and only growing louder. [Even muted by the playback from the crystal as it was, the sound was an assault on the ears. Still he watched, transfixed.] 

He could barely see straight for how wildly the world around him shook, but he was able to see the black wolf rise. They both looked up when they heard splintering wood above them, and both saw the hole forming in the roof. Graeme looked at Terry for a moment--barely a quarter of a second--and bellowed something [he could almost make it out over the din] as he ran forward to shove Bettany out of the way. The beam fell scant seconds before the rest of the roof, and then the entire world tumbled into roaring darkness around him.

It suddenly went silent, not even white noise, and stayed that way for a few seconds before the display flickered again. Grey text, numbers, and alchemical symbols began scrolling across a solid blue pane, too numerous and rapid to read. The variations began to dwindle until it was just repeating two words: “ERROR” and “SOURCE.” At the very last moment--the last frame--of the feed, another single line flashed and then disappeared. It took a few attempts to freeze it long enough to read.

“SRCMEMDUMPT101 COMPLETE. EDIT MODE? Y/N”

Terry spent almost an hour rolling the recording back, playing it again, listening as hard as he could, rolling it back, playing it again... It was too damned loud and the controls on the bloody thing weren’t fine enough to isolate the voices from the noise. In spite of himself, Terry had picked up and run all the way back up to the Point, bothering every Draenei he passed in hopes that one of them would know how to manipulate the recorder.

Once he’d nearly gotten his ass kicked for bothering the same guy a third time, he forced himself to go back to his campsite. Nearly willing to admit defeat, he caught a glimpse of his commstone sticking out of his bag.

First step: Call Darlain.

...That was the only step he had, really. He was just kind of banking on her knowing somebody who could do it, or knowing somebody who knew somebody. Thankfully, one step was all he needed; the dwarfmum pointed him to Nirahsa, a name he didn’t recognize until Darlain finally fell back on ‘Draenei woman who says ‘yes yes’ a lot.’ Driven by an almost mad need to know, Terry shelled out for a portal jump to Stormwind, rather than using the mail or, gods forbid, waiting till later. He figured nobody would miss him for a few hours.

Nirahsa didn’t have a lot of reason to want to do him a favor, and he knew that, but he was desperate, sincere, and willing to pay her every coin he had to his name if she’d do it. He assumed it reminded her of Leon (actually, she just also didn’t have a lot of reason not to do him a favor). Whatever the reason, she finally relented and told him to come back in an hour. It was a diversion from her actual work, but she needed to take a break anyway, and easy work like that counted, right?

He still insisted on paying her for the work, especially once she handed him written instructions on how to use the little remote she’d put together for him. Had he been in his standard state of mind, he would’ve asked how much she had watched, but his concern was firmly on finding privacy to pore over the recording again. Terry did have enough sense to make sure he sent a message to Shedwyn, telling her he was back in town and to find him at the barracks.

Once he got there, he settled in to get to work.

[With Nirahsa’s tweaks, he was able to mute the background noise almost completely in a matter of minutes. It was with some trepidation that he pressed ‘play’ once again. He wasn’t quite expecting the voice amplification to work as well as it did; it was picking up things that weren’t even shouted. The sound was distorted from the effects applied to it, but functional.]

Graeme rose and grunted in pain. As the wolf’s head lifted to take in the sight of the building in the beginning stages of collapse, he growled “No” to himself. Then, he looked at Terry, and began to run. 

[Yelling with almost no sound around to muddy it up, his voice made the crystal vibrate noticeably in Terry’s hands, almost startling him enough to drop it.]

“I’m sorry, Terry! I’m sorry! I love you! Find--”

Whatever else Graeme had hoped to say was cut off by another yelp and a scream as a beam almost as big around as he was slammed into his back, and the feed ended shortly after.

Terry didn’t watch it again, dropping the crystal on his cot and staring at nothing. At some point, his eyes began to water, but he didn’t move save to blink and breathe. When it finally progressed to tears, he didn’t make any attempt to wipe his face. In the next hour, he only moved once: to pick up his pillow, bury his face in it, and scream until he couldn’t anymore.

Just after dusk, Terry’s boots made soft squeaking sounds as he walked slowly through the damp grass. He came to a stop at the foot of the lilac-strewn graves, took one breath, read his father’s headstone, and froze. All the preparation he’d made in his head--things he’d rehearsed a dozen times over, words he wanted to say--dropped away in an instant, bringing him to the ground with his head hung so low his chin nearly touched his chest. His hands rested limply in the grass by his knees, and he wept unrestrained.

All he could bring himself to say were three tiny words, tearing themselves free of his painfully tight throat, filling the little clearing with ache and regret inbetween wracking sobs.

“Me too, dad.”

( @darbiebot @nirahsa @shedwyn @vembermarlon @neun-deserrat )

[spotlightsaga]

Kevin Cage of @spotlightsaga reviews... Dear White People (S01E01) Chapter 1 Airdate: April 28, 2017 @netflix @JSim07 Ratings: Privatized @DearWhitePeople Score: 7.5/10 TVTime/FB/Twitter/IG/Tumblr/Path/Pin: @SpotlightSaga **********SPOILERS BELOW********** Dear White People, Brown People, and any People who are reading, listening, watching, or paying attention... Eventually it was coming. Eventually this series had to be addressed. But how? The last thing a Sexually Fluid, White Scotch-Irish, Ginger Male in an 11 year+ gay relationship, living in an Argentinian neighborhood within a city that has massive pockets of square miles with +80% people who speak Spanish as a first language... Or large numbers of neighborhoods with Haitian-Creole voices blasting loudly from friendly faces throwing friendly waves from a group of old men, who for some reason are always sitting at a major bus stop in North Miami Beach (but never going anywhere or taking any busses), wants to be labeled as is a 'Pseudo' or even a 'Hardcore-Leftist' who's desperately out to prove that he isn't racist. You won't be getting that article from me. You won't be getting anything of the sort from this 10-Piece Project that I assure you I will be taking my time on. I am not Left. I am not right. I'm barely in the middle. This isn't political, though it might have political undertones and repercussions. That's on interpretation, not me. By now you know that Spotlight Saga never reviews anything in a traditional manner unless it's an everyday type series that doesn't carry a particular tense or emotional impact. We go at our own pace and I prefer existential challenges, but all are welcome. I had made promises to write articles to accompany 'Dear White People', brought to us by the new & true, multitalented Justin Simien, to multiple readers, but I was waiting for the right time. Sure, I have an army of unreleased articles and reviews ready to shoot out of an iOS cannon when I'm not feeling particularly inspired, but that just hasn't happened lately, so expect last second 'Big 4 Network' reviews to start spewing out sometime in September, because everything from 'Gotham' to 'Lucifer' to 'Colony' awaits you. Oh boy. Now let's get something straight, particularly to the people on Social Media whining and crying about the show's polarizing title, claiming to cancel (or to the ones who actually did cancel, though I doubt it) their Netflix subscriptions because the title evoked some sort of feeling of uncomfortable paranoia, or what they felt was divisive rhetoric, even though it was them who were attempting to divide themselves from Netflix and causing a stir... Ultimately giving the show free promotion in the process. DWP isn't a series that is out to make anyone feel shame, wagging a brown finger across your noses, or smacking you over the top of the head with a rolled up newspaper, preferably Sunday (because there are some people who actually deserve it). The show's main protagonist narrates the thoughts of Justin Simien directly and quite accurately, right off the bat. "Dear White People is a misnomer. My show is meant to articulate the feelings of a misrepresented group outside the majority." @jsouth71 on Twitter, one of many racist, idiot keyboard warriors (I'm personally singling out him because he no longer seems to be active - guess he came, he typed, and he successfully looked like an idiot), responded to the original trailer (legit on March 12, 2017, the show didn't even air until April 28th) with multiple hashtags claiming that Netflix was racist. His most hilarious claim (to me anyway) is the one claiming that the show, what it stands for, and those that support it are all full of #LiberalBS. Well what now, Joey Southworth? I'm not even Liberal, Black, or some sort of seemingly desperate apologist... I have no agenda, except to review a Netflix TV Series in a way like no one has ever done before and while doing so, tell you all MY story, my letter to White People, because there is one thing I won't do... Tell someone else's truth... Unless they ask me to, I am for hire, y'all. Ironically, Lionel (DeRon Horton), says something eerily similar to what I've just said and said before a million times. Some people, *coughAVCLUBcough*, don't understand that telling someone else's 'truth' isn't necessarily the point of journalism, but sometimes it does involve telling another person's story from your OWN perspective, after a little help from gaining a bit of someone else's. So let's kick this thing off, shall we? It's going to be a doozy! Samantha White aka Sam (Logan Browning - ah, yes we see the ironic juxtaposition of those names already, especially since the character is biracial) attends an Ivy League school called Winchester University and hosts a radio show on campus called 'Dear White People'. As the aforementioned quote pulled directly from Sam's mouth would suggest, she really just wants to be a voice not normally heard without some sort of filter or applied lens to trickle out what people feel safe with. Sam isn't prejudice or even remotely a bigot, she doesn't seem to be whatsoever. As a matter of fact, Sam's reactions to environmental stimuli and certain situations remind me of me. She is shown often attempting to pull back when faced with a possibility of reacting off of an emotion, but when that emotion becomes overwhelming, she caves and takes control by spiraling out of control. There is a blackface party on campus and it is quickly revealed by the end of the episode that the campus crew, Pastiche, had their Facebook hacked and invites were sent out after the school's administration had already shut down the idea of the party even going forward. Did Sam send it? Please remember we're talking E1, and I don't go beyond that. She claims to have sent the email in an emotionally provocative, genuinely stirring speech she delivers after her radio show is pushed to the sidelines. She had shown up for her time slot and someone else had taken her place due to the recent controversy. This all forces Sam to make a split, snap decision, overthrowing the DJ booth like a straight up BOSS... A prime example of what I mean when I say she 'takes control by spiraling out'. Sam is also seen videotaping the party and later editing & going over the footage. So far, 2+2=4, but if she did indeed do what she said she did, then she's not the only one playing games to prove a point. She's outed to have a white boyfriend, Gabe (John Patrick Amedori), who she seems to genuinely like and in turn he is definitely enamored with her. Yes, by the way, one can be racist and have a significant other of an alternate race (as we covered in an article in S2 of the E4 & Netflix series 'Chewing Gum' after talking with and interviewing several women of color from the Caribbean)... Thats related to the fetishization or perversion of race, skin color, or anything of the like, but that isn't what it looks like what is going on here. There's definitely some real life chemistry brewing. Of course, some of Sam's peers look at her with disdain after Gabe puts their ongoing, once secret relationship on blast with an Instagram pic and a hashtag... Amazing what hashtags are capable of these days, ammirite? Well, in this case it's less the hashtag and more of the 'tagging' of the pic done by Sam's arch nemesis, Coco (Antoinette Robinson - who my white, CW loving ass recognizes from the God-awful 3rd season of 'Hart of Dixie', yeah I see you, Lavon's Niece!)... All of this confusion and animosity is what Coco wanted but this isn't what she necessarily got, not in the exact form she was aiming for, at least. Here comes the fun part! Through self-reflection and talks with her best friend, Joelle (Ashley Blaine Featherson), Sam realizes she does in fact like Gabe and decides to embrace the couple's outing... Bringing him along to her usually, black only, weekly viewing of 'Defamation', a hilarious satire of Shonda Rhimes' (who might just answer this cheeky mockery, since she just scored herself a Netflix contract) ABC political thriller, or just plain dumbed down (sorry Rhimes' fans) version of 'Scandal' (as if it could go any lower). Ouch! Anyway, according to Sam, 'Defamation Wednesdays' are the cornerstone of black college campus life.' It's just that, well, Gabe is obviously feeling a bit 'fish out of water'... Come on, white people, think about how you feel when you are the only white person in the room, you get it right? Well, that's more than likely how your good friend of color feels when you invite them out and they are the only black person to show up at your Baby Shower, Birthday Party, 'Girls Night Out', whatever the event may be. It takes time. It's admirable that Gabe came, it truly is, but this isn't exactly the same situation that I used for environmental comparisons. Sam has a show called 'Dear White People' for Christ Sake, she has an obligation to stick to her guns, sure... But love is love, and as long as there is no perversion of skin going on, who the fuck cares? Mind your mother fucking own! Oh, but that's a tale as old as time, people just love to give no fucks about this or that, while simultaneously giving all kinds of fucks about who someone lays next to at night. I can attest to both of these things, or some version of it, at least... As I live in a part of the States where I'm the only white guy that's not a Euro-Tourist in an incredibly wide radius, also being in a gay relationship, I get quite a few double takes... And the giant Red Beard doesn't help. Yet, I've come to a point where I've been here so long and become so accustomed to a different environment, being amongst other white people makes me a tad uncomfortable. More on that another episode, another day. Reggie (Marque Richardson) isn't too happy about Gabe's presence at the 'Defamation' viewing party... I'm guessing it's a lot less because he's white and a lot more because Reggie feels like he should be the one holding Sam's hand. Reggie comes off as a bit of a jackass, then again, Gabe is not only encroaching on what appears to be Reggie's love interest, but he's also aggressively inserting himself into the group. It's not that Reggie, or most of Sam's friends and acquaintances are prejudice of intolerant, quite the opposite, really. It actually seems more like a 'too much, too soon' situation. Take race out of the equation for a second, take out that fact that Sam's ideals are being broadcasted over the radio, representing a whole lot of people. EVERYONE eyes the 'new' guy or gal in a group, especially if that new person is also a new significant other, I don't care who you are. It's always best to sit back, shut your mouth, and let people come to you... Not stick out your hand and affirm loudly that, 'Hi, I'm Gabe, and I'll be taking a prominent role here now, whether you like it or not.' I love the fact that just like we all have a long way to go as a society when it comes to understanding where everyone is coming from, why people feel what they feel, so do the characters of 'Dear White People', all of them... Black, White, and everyone in between... Especially the girl in between! Yes, it appears that Sam is telling the truth in her guerrilla takeover, emotionally charged, campus wide, broadcasted admission... And if she wasn't she appears very much ready to to take both the praise & the heat (something not yet shown in E1) that she was the one who hacked the Pastiche Facebook and sent out the invites, encouraging the culturally ignorant to show up in Blackface and other embarrassingly idiotic, culture appropriated, misfortunes of human error to a party that had already been given the axe... But the show is still playful in its righteous delivery. The narrator (Giancarlo Esposito) points out a white girl and guesses that she's in a Nicki Minaj costume... Later on, while in her feelings, Sam quickly switches her music from a soft, feminine country crooning track, Suzanna Spring's 'Some Blue Sky' to 'Black' by 'Innanet James' on her way to the radio station when passing a group of Black acquaintances... It's ok to laugh, it's ok to point out the confusing parts of a sliding identity. It's ok to be who you are as long as you are true to whoever that is... Unless your a fucking hateful asshole, then Fuck You. *Somebody cue a 'Run The Jewels' track, please* *********Written By: Kevin Cage********** http://www.tvtime.com http://www.facebook.com/spotlightsaga http://www.spotlightsaga.com http://www.facebook.com/groups/artsentertainment

[wordswithkittywitch]

Bilingual Dream

Last night I had a dream that was about half in French. The thing is, I don’t speak very good French. I barely speak French at all. Which was also true in my dream, but about half of the people in my dream spoke fluent French. So either there’s a part of my subconscious that’s much better at French than I am, or my brain used what French I do know and then filled in the rest with fluent-sounding gibberish and I couldn’t tell the difference, which I think is the more likely of the two.

Like many of my dreams, it was very visual, like a horror movie. Lots of beautiful settings and images and jut the barest plot stringing them together. Like a horror movie. It started with me doing some very basic urban exploration, which people who do not have anxiety and actually live in a city might call “going for a walk”. But for me, I was at the height of my “having my agoraphobia in check” and walking through mostly abandoned streets until I reached a gorgeous graveyard, which was completely without foot traffic. Just me, my camera, the peaceful dead, and a lot of beautiful statuary. I got the impression I’d been there once before but hadn’t had the chance to fully explore it. 

I seemed to have been in the first fenced-in part of the graveyard before, because I took several pictures of this sculpture of a sad woman, which was covered in ivy or some other climbing plant, and I remember thinking these pictures were coming out much better than the last one I took did. It was such a beautiful statue, I remember looking at her face for a long time, with her eyes downcast as if looking at the ivy coming up her in a sort of despairing acceptance, like she was in chains. There was a small stone gazebo next to her, one of those which is like half of a gazebo, almost shell-like.

I moved onto a more open part of the graveyard, less densely populated by gravestones. I had the impression I didn’t have the opportunity to go this deep in before. I kept taking pictures as I went, the sunlight was making the white flowers glow like the graveyard was full of fireflies, and I had just the right exposure on my camera to capture it. I remember I was feeling pleased with the quality of photographs I was taking. I moved onto the beach and started taking pictures of the house along the river. There was a line of old buildings all built up like building blocks stuck together with glue, with weathered facades that had clearly been there at least a century and taken a beating from being so close to the water. There were stores and homes stacked on top of each other, with laundry hanging out the windows on long lines like flags. Perpendicular to this line of buildings there was a built-over bridge, so covered in buildings it looked like a building itself. Kind of how I pictured old London bridge, but smaller. Like only the size of one or two houses, slightly more than a group of SCAdians might try to recreate old London Bridge at Pennsic, but not by much. So, of course, I was taking pictures of this as well. Behind me and to the right was some sort of fairway or boardwalk, because there were a lot of little game stalls and rides that didn’t really seem to be connected; and beyond them was a small, disused beach. It definitely looked like the off-season because the water was grey and cold like the water at home and it was so empty there wasn’t even enough litter for me to notice. I usually pick it up.

Two children, a girl and a boy came off of the mall walkway in front of the buildings where they were playing to watch me take pictures on the little beach. They were dressed in sort of a “French peasant in a 1930s photograph” style, and they were adorable. After they had been watching me for a while, I said hello, and the little girl said, “ ‘Allo.” meekly in a thick French accent, so I tried addressing them in my broken French. I’m not going to write everything that was said in French in French here, so just assume all conversations that take place in italics are taking place in French. “Hello, children.” “What are you doing?” “ I’m taking pictures because this place is so beautiful. Is that alright?” “Do you go everywhere with your camera?” “When I remember it. I was in the… uh, what’s the French word… where the dead are?” I pointed at the graveyard. “You were taking pictures in the graveyard? Isn’t that scary?” “Graveyard! That’s the word! I think graveyards are very beautiful and I like to explore them whenever I find a new one. I don’t live around here. Do you live here?” “We live in that house.” the little girl pointed out one of the buildings. “Do you take lots of pictures? Are they nice?” “Some of them are. Sometimes I can sell them to magazines, but the magazines don’t buy my pictures very often.” “Will you take a picture of us?” “If you like, but I can’t sell it to anyone without your parents’ written permission.” “Please take a picture of me and my brother.” “Alright. Take a step back, so you’re in the shadow and you’re in the light. That’s perfect. One more. Would you like to see?”

I chatted with the children in my bad French for several minutes, as they kept telling me what to take pictures of and I humoured them because they were adorable and their home was very beautiful. They took me back to their house, because I asked them to so I could tell their parents I was an artist and not a weirdo and ask the parents if they would like me to send them copies of the pictures of the children or just delete them. 

Their house was very charming, it all looked like a Ghibli movie, and there was such an assortment of people there who all looked related I wasn’t entirely sure who the parents were at first. I ended up assuming the friendliest woman, in her late thirties or early forties, was their mother because she was the one who told me she did want copies of the pictures of the children, and I could keep all the pictures I took but I could only sell the photos of adults who personally agreed to it, which was totally fair. I ended up taking a lot of portraits, these people had great, expressive faces and the thin light from the windows was lovely. There was an old woman who said she didn’t like me taking pictures, but kept asking me to take more photos of her, reviewing them, and asking me to take more photos because I hadn’t quite captured her. She was fun to talk to, but I don’t think she would have been if the other people weren’t being so much more friendly than she was.

I had some tea with them but didn’t stay for dinner. I walked home through the graveyard and past the fareway as the sun was setting. I came home, or at least to where my family was staying because it looked kind of like an extended stay hotel. My sister and mother were waiting for me, a bit worried because I took so long and didn’t call, and I told them about the nice family I met. I went for another walk the next morning, mostly staying in the graveyard this time, and came back in the afternoon. My mother said that someone from the family I had visited the other day had come by and they were very upset, but she was a little cagey as to why. I had the impression her French, not much better than mine, was up to the task of understanding someone who was that upset. Then the mother showed up with the little daughter, who needed to be guided by the hand because she had a hat over her shoulders. 

Far too far over her shoulders.

We let her inside, and my mother said, “It’s gotten even worse.” before the French mother took the hat off of her daughter, who no longer had a head. My mother explained that when she came by before, the daughter’s head was the size of an apple, and that she had given the girl one of my little loli hats, which was about to scale with her head because it appeared to cheer her up a little. The daughter seemed scared, but the sort of scared where you’re frozen up. It was a bit hard to tell, given as she didn’t have a head. The five of us, my mother and sister, the daughter, the mother, and I sat around the kitchen table with cups of tea trying to communicate, which was much more difficult now that everyone was scared. 

It seemed the grandmother was sure that the pictures I took. I asked if I needed to delete them, and the mother got even more terrified, saying that no matter what, that was exactly what I should not do. That if I deleted the pictures of the little girl, her head would be gone forever. One of the last things that was said stayed with me as I woke up. The mother took my hand and squeezed it, looking in my eyes far more kindly than I felt I deserved. “Tu as fait ça, mais ce n'est pas de ta faute, ma petite.” You did this, but it isn’t your fault, little one.

I hate people using diminutives with me, especially if I don’t know them well, but this woman was so scared and so kind I can’t get past how she addressed me. “Ce n'est pas de ta faute, ma petite.”

I woke up, and for a moment I was worried about the girl, but as I became more aware that it had been a dream I became annoyed that I had just seen this terrifying, fascinating, beautiful story play out and I have no idea how it’s resolved.

[randomrichards]

I need to get back to get back in the game of writing reviews. To encourage more consistent writing, I decided end each month by writing a list of movies coming out in the next month. The movies I believe have the most potential to be exact. If you’re interested, you can click the film titles to watch the trailer. Keep in mind; just because I said these films have potential doesn’t guarantee they will be good. There has been great trailers for terrible movies. So proceed with caution. SEPTEMBER 1: VICEROY’S HOUSE – Based on the true story of the independence of India and the formation of Pakistan. At the centre of the film is Lord Mountbatten (Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville), the last Viceroy of Britain. Mountbatten and his wife (Gillian Anderson) arrive in India to oversee its transition to independence. But it proves a challenge with disagreements amongst the locals, especially those of different religions. At the centre of the internal conflict is Jeet Kumar (Manish Dayal), who finds disapproval in his choice of a significant other. I don’t know if its religious differences or the chaste system, all I know is it has to do with some form of prejudice. This one looks like it will fit the tropes of the “White Savior” film; a film that has the white person solving problems for different races. The problem with these films is that they overlook the contributions of the locals, making it look like they need Caucasians to save the day. It doesn’t help that this film seems to centre around representatives of Britain; the country that violated India’s right to control its own destiny. However, there is hope in co-writer/director Gurinder Chadha, a Kenyan-born Englishwoman who took the world by storm with Bend it Like Beckham. She reteams with her Beckham co-writer Paul Mayeda Berges to tell this story. There’s a good chance she’ll present some bring some perspective as a person of colour. In addition, the film seems to divide itself into different perspectives, specifically Lord Mountbatten, his wife Lady Edwina and Jeet. I suspect Lady Edwina’s storyline will be more interesting than her husband, especially with her being played by the underrated Gillian Anderson. People focus so much on her role as Agent Scully they forget what a great actress she is in period pieces. I’d recommend watching her in The House of Mirth and Bleak House to see what I mean. But most likely, her plotline will pale in comparison to Jeet’s plotline. Here, we see India reclaiming independence form the perspective of the locals. Plus, we see the clash between Hindus, Siekhs and Muslims who lived there, leading to the formation of Pakistan, which in turn resulted in many people being forced out of their own homes. SEPTEMBER 8: HOME AGAIN – After a bad divorce, Alice Kinney (Reese Witherspoon) is forced to take her two daughters and move in with her mother (Candice Bergen). On her 40th birthday, she has a one night stand with Harry (Pico Alexander) a college student in his early twenties. Then, her mother lets Harry and his two friends move in with them. Awkward! To make matters worst, her ex-husband (Michael Sheen) has returned. This romantic comedy certainly has a vibe of Nancy Meyers (What Women Want, It’s Complicated). Its especially notable with that trademark Meyers scene where the romantic interests are caught in an awkward situation. Notable examples are Jack Nicholson catching Diane Keaton naked in Something’s Gotta Give or the laptop scene from It’s Complicated. In this case, it’s Alice’s kids coming home while Harry’s still in her bed. Of course, this similarity may have something to do with Meyers serving as producer with her daughter Haillie Meyers-Shyer serving as writer/director. Is her daughter copying her or will Meyers-Shyer find her own voice? The only way to find out is to watch the movie. IT – Stephen King’s classic horror novel is comes to the big screen. Sure It was made into a cult classic tv movie, but this is the first time It was made for the big screen. On the surface, Derry, Maine seems like your average American town. But within the sewers, a shapeshifting evil takes the form of Pennywise the Clown (Bill Skarsgard) to pick off local children. It’s latest victim is Bill’s (Jaeden Lieberher) little brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott). Forming The Loser Gang, Nick and a small group of misfits try to figure out the origins of this monster to stop this monster once and for all. Can they face up to a monster that can take the form of their worst fears? What I love about King’s storytelling is how he uses the supernatural to examine more personal themes. In the case of It, the theme is childhood trauma. Each kid is an outsider in his/her own way, from Bill for his stuttering or Mike (Chose Jacobs) for his skin colour. Each kid is also coping with their own trauma, which Pennywise uses to terrorize the kids. Bill in particular blames himself for his brother’s death, not helped by his parent’s emotional distance from him. Another strength of King is how he incorporates real life horror alongside with the supernatural horror. Kids don’t need to worry about shapeshifting clowns, but they do have to deal with bullies. In this case, the Bower’s Gang, led by the psycholtic Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton). The bullies in King’s worlds are violent sadist, so prepare for some uncomfortable moments. Bowers reveals a theme of how children inherit their parents worst traits. Through his father, he develops sexism, racism and anti-semetism, which leads him to target Mike, Beverly (Sophia Lillis) and Stanley Uris (Wyatt Oleff). King’s one of those rare writers who can make teens want to read a thousand page book, myself included. But this giant book puts screenwriters in a bad position when it comes to adaptation. Even if the film were three hours, story elements inevitably have to be taken out. It is especially challenging, with the story switching between our heroes as kids and them as adults. This builds a theme of how child trauma affects people in their later years. While this works great for a novel, movies are very strict with story structure. I think writers Cary Fukunaga (Beasts of No Nation), Gary Dauberman (Annabelle) and newcomer Chase Palmer made the right choice by keeping the focus on our heroes as children. There’s a good chance there will be a sequel if this film proves to be a hit. The film does look terrifying. This version in Pennywise especially looks creepy. I noticed in the trailers that his eyes seem to cross away from each other. But I’m going to wait until it comes out to see whether or not it will live up to the novel. REBEL IN THE RYE – Since the late J.D. Salinger won’t let anyone adapt his stories, Hollywood’s went ahead and made a biopic about the notoriously reclusive author. The film focuses on his years as an up and coming writer (played by Nicholas Hoult). He returns from the war suffering from PTSD, with writing serving as his one salvation. So, he takes writing classes, led by the eccentric mentor Whit Burnett (Kevin Spacey). Despite many naysayers and his own self-doubt, J.D. Salinger pulls through, leading to the creation and publication of Catcher in the Rye. Salinger had been burned by a bad documentary, so there’s a lot of weight on this film’s shoulder. For an author known for avoiding clichés, this film seems to follow the usual tropes of the underdog stories, from the eccentric mentor to the endless naysayers doubting his books. What gives me hope for this one is writer/director Danny Strong, whose teamed with Lee Daniels to make the well done The Butler and created the tv sensation Empire. It could still be entertaining. SEPTEMBER 15: BRAD’S STATUS– From Mike White, the writer of School of Rock and the creator of Enlightened brings us this dramedy of a father’s midlife crisis. Brad (Ben Stiller) feels like a failure. While his other friends have their own success, he finds he has nothing to show for his work in nonprofit. He expects a brighter future for his son Troy (Austin Abrams), whose advanced enough to qualify for an Ivy League School. Now is the time for Brad and Troy to tour colleges and see which one’s the best for him. In the process, Brad will get a chance to reunite with the very friends (Michael Sheen, Jemaine Clement and Luke Wilson) who make him feel inferior. Whether it’s a rocker forming a band of prep school students (School of Rock), a former yuppie becoming an elightened activist (Enlightened) or a Latin American masseuse confronting a racist mogul (Beatriz at Dinner), a lesser writer would have made forgettable comedies with these premises. Mike White elevates these premises with complicated characters, memorable dialogue and subversion of tropes. I’m interested in seeing where he goes with this story. It’s interesting to see Ben Stiller taking on more mature comedies. He’s gotten audiences interested with The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and gained some indie cred with We Are Young. Now, he’s in a dramedy about a man’s feeling of insignificance. FIRST, THEY KILLED MY FATHER – Angelina Jolie directs another biopic, this time about a girl who grew up under the reign of Cambodian regime the Khmer Rouge. Based on the autobiography by Loung Ung (who also co-wrote the screenplay), the film centres on Ung (Sareum Srey Moch) as a little girl. She was a happy child with a loving family. And then Khmer Rouge came to town and the Ung were forced out of their home. As you may guess from the title, her father is killed. Then Ung is subjected to dehumanizing conditions as the regime tries to brainwash her into a child soldier. With this in mind, there will be moments the audience will find uncomfortable to watch. Fortunately, Ung was able to escape this horrible life and grew up to become a civil rights activist. As a writer/director, Angelina Jolie is a mixed bag. She hasn’t been successful with neither her directorial debut In the Land of Blood and Honey nor with By the Sea. But she has garnered acclaim with Unbroken. As a result, this film could go either way. MOTHER! – In a remote house, Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) enjoys a tranquil life with her husband (Javier Bardem). Then one night, a mysterious stranger (Ed Harris) comes to their house and the husband lets him stay. Then the stranger’s wife (Michelle Pheiffer) joins them. As more people come around the house, Mother grows more suspicious of her husband. Then she starts noticing strange things around the house, especially a hollow section of the basement wall. The film’s seems to have a Rosemary’s Baby vibe to it, what with the cult-like storyline or the suspicious husband. It doesn’t help that the film is called Mother. Knowing this is written and directed by Darren Aronovsky (Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan), the film is guaranteed to get weird. SEPTEMBER 22: BATTLE OF THE SEXES – From Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the Oscar-Nominated director team behin Little Miss Sunshine and Ruby Sparks comes this biopic of the unforgettable tennis match. Despite Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) rising as a major tennis star, women weren’t taken seriously in the game, or any sport. It really comes to a head when middle aged has-been and serial hustler Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) challenges any woman to beat him in a match. At first, Billie Jean doesn’t want to feed this troll, but as he takes the misogyny up to 11, she finally challenges him to a one on one. Their battle came to be known as the Battle of the Sexes. I remember watching a documentary of Billie Jean King on PBS and it really goes into detail of the cringe inducing sexism women tennis players had to deal with back then. What was also clear from the documentary was how much of a self-parody Bobby Riggs was. It’s hard to tell whether he actually believed what he was spewing or if he was just playing it up for the cameras. Either way, you don’t know whether to laugh or cringe. Carell is clearly having a ball with his performance, bringing out how cartoony Riggs was. Stone also looks like she may have another Oscar nomination, blending into the role of King. KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE – “Manners maketh man.” Eggsy (Taron Egerton) has come a long way, going from a gang member from the England’s underbelly to a classy secret agent of the Kingsman. All before he’s even it his mid twenties. Now, Eggsy finds the Kingsman under threat by Poppy (Julianne Moore), a CEO who believe the world would be better off without this agency. She goes as far as destroying their building. Now Eggsy and tech whiz Merlin (Mark Strong) enlist the help of their American equivalent The Statesman, led by Agent Champagne (Jeff Bridges) to stop Poppy from… Whatever she’s got planned. We also see the return of Eggys mentor Agent Hart (Colin Firth). The first Kingsman came out of nowhere to become a sleeper hit, embracing the goofy side of the Bond movies with glorious gratuitous violence over the top villains (that lady assassin with blades for legs) and extreme British politeness. With this film and Kickass, Matthew Vaughn has proved himself the perfect director to adapt Mark Millar’s graphic novels. He’s also excellent a directing action scenes, as you can see in the kickass church slaughter scene (in tune to Lynard Skynard’s Free Bird). This film looks like we’re going to get some glorious action scenes, guaranteed to be as ultraviolent. We got an all star cast, including Halle Berry and Channing Tatum. But it looks like Pedro Pascal (Oberon Martell from Game of Thrones) will steal the show as Agent Whiskey. Just watch him throw that whip. THE LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE – Another addition to the surprisingly well done Lego Movies, this time based on the franchise of ninja legos with big vehicles. A Chinese town finds itself at the mercy of supervillain Garmadon (voiced by Justin Theroux). The only thing stopping them is Ninjago, this universe’s equivalent to Power Rangers. There is one problem; Garmadon’s the father of Ninjago member Lloyd (Dave Franco). Everyone knows that fact, which has made Lloyd an outcast. With the help of his Sensei Wu (Jackie Chan) and his team Kai (Michael Pena), Jay (Kumail Nanjiani), Zane (Zach Woods), Nya (Abbi Jacobson) and Cole (Fred Armisen), Lloyd seeks the secrets of his father’s past. It would be easy if the giant monster known as Meowthra wasn’t unleashed on the town. When the Lego Movie was released in theatres, it blew everyone away with its quality storytelling and excellent animation. What made it special was how it subverted the tropes of the “chosen one” storyline while satirizing unkempt capitalism. Then along came the Lego Batman Movie, which deconstructed the mythology of the caped crusader. This begs the questions; will The Lego Ninjago Movie maintain this trend and if so, what will it subvert? What does stand out is the animation and design. The Lego movies have an animation style resembling stop-motion animation and this film is no different. The one notable difference is Meowthra, whose played by a live action cat. As for the design, Garmadon is a standout. Never have I seen a Lego character with two torsos, which gives the character an insect look to it. Plus, Garmadon is an awesome name for a villain. What I’m most curious about is the fight scenes. The film recruited Jackie Chan’s stunt team to choreography the fights. Judging by the clip of a ninjago fighting some ninjas with a fridge while holding a baby, it looks like there will be some funny fight scenes. STRONGER – Based on a true story, this biopic showcases the struggles and triumph of Jeff Bauman, a survivor of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing. Before that fateful day, Bauman (Jake Gyllenhaal) was an ordinary Costco employee. When his girlfriend Erin (Tatiana Maslany)Â ran that marathon, the most he was expecting was her seeing him with the sign. But his life changed it that explosion. He survived, but lost his legs in that explosion. The film focuses on his struggle to walk again, with the support if his love Erin. It’s interesting to see director David Gordon Green returning to drama. He’s known for directing comedies like Pineapple Express, but he’s made some amazing dramas including George Washington and Undertow. I hope this brings him back to top form. It certainly seems that way, portraying Boston’s sense of community and strength. VICTORIA & ABDUL – Dame Judi Dench reteams with Philomena director Stephen Frears for this biopic of Queen Victoria’s real life friendship with a young Indian Clerk named Abdul Karim. This is an interesting situation because Dame Dench’s first lead role was as playing Queen Victoria in Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown. It also centres around her majesty’s relationship with a servant. This film seems more lighthearted than the previous film, especially with the mango scene. September 29: AMERICAN MADE– Rarely are biopics as fun as this one seems to be. With Doug Liman directing, American Made is sure to be that fun. Tom Cruise plays Barry Seal, a real life pilot placed under extraordinary circumstances. He finds is ordinary life turned upside down when he’s recruited by the CIA to transport firearms from Central America. This would be enough for an average biopic, but Seal took it a step further by transporting drugs from the Medellin cartel. This are sure go get crazy from here. MARK FELT – THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE – “Follow the Money.” These three little words helped exposed Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate Scandal, leading to his resignation. Anyone who either watched All the President’s Men (or read the book), you’d recognize these words came from Deep Throat, a mysterious secret agent who offered this advice to world-renowned journalist Bob Woodward. Deep Throat’s identity wasn’t revealed until decades later, when Mark Felt revealed his true identity. Now we finally get to know the man who helped expose the Nixon’s disgraceful actions. For 30 years, FBI Agent Felt (Liam Neeson) has worked with integrity and respect, earning the admiration of fellow agents and president Richard Nixon. But then the 5 men are caught breaking into the Watergate hotel. Felt starts finding opposition in his investigation into the crime, raising his suspicions. To maintain his principles, he has no choice but to violate regulations by revealing information to journalist Bob Woodward (Julian Morris)

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West Week Ever: Pop Culture In Review - 3/10/17

  In movie news, a lot is going on with the Deadpool sequel. At the beginning of the week, it was reported that David Harbour of Netflix’s Stranger Things was being sought after for the role of Cable. While fans have wanted a bigger name, like Ron Perlman, Harbour is definitely gonna be cheaper, fitting right in with the movie’s budget. Meanwhile, it was reported that actress/singer Janelle Monae was the studio’s frontrunner for the role of Domino. Yesterday, however, Ryan Reynolds tweeted the above image, confirming that Atlanta‘s Zazie Beetz had gotten the role. I swear, with Donald Glover off Lando-ing in the Han Solo movie, and Zazie in Deadpool 2, Atlanta ain’t ever coming back. It’s already “on hiatus”, and I fear that it’s gonna be like Curb Your Enthusiasm – something Glover comes back to when he gets bored and has the time to do it. So, look for Atlanta season 2 in 2025.

In other movie news, the Valiant comic universe is getting closer to the big screen, as Dave Wilson has been tapped to direct the Bloodshot movie. Wilson comes from Blur Studio, known mainly for video game trailers, and co-founded by Deadpool director Tim Miller. If you don’t know anything about Bloodshot, you’re not alone. He looks like some kind of albino madman. From what I’ve read, he’s basically a zombie soldier who’s animated by nanites. I’ve never read a Bloodshot comic, though, so what do I know? Here’s where it gets interesting: there’s currently a webseries being made by Bat in the Sun called Ninjak vs The Valiant Universe. Starring Michael Rowe (Deadshot from the Arrowverse), the webseries pits the character of Ninjak against other characters in the Valiant Universe – where Bloodshot just happens to be portrayed by original Green Ranger, Jason David Frank. Now, JDF used to go to all of his convention appearances promoting the Power Rangers brand, but lately has been doing it dressed as Bloodshot. This project isn’t big enough to warrant that kind of dedication. No, I’m convinced he’s lobbying for the role in the big screen film. This is like when Sean Young used to go out in public dressed as Catwoman just so she’d get the role in Batman Returns. I don’t know whether to be impressed or saddened. I mean, he’s lobbying hard, but there’s no way he gets that role.

Though the news got sort of lost in the cycle last week, Nickelodeon announced that the new season of the 3D Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, premiering March 19th, would be its last. After five years, the show is ditching its serialized approach and is rebranding into an anthology format with the new title Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Once the series ends, a new 2D cartoon, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, is slated to premiere in 2018.

In other TV news, folks are wondering if Glenn Howerton is leaving It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. The show aired its 12th season finale this week, where we learned that Dennis had a son from a layover in North Dakota. At the end of the episode, he decides that he can’t carry on as he’d been doing the past 12 years, and that he needed to leave and go be with his son. This episode aired the same day it was reported that Howerton and Patton Oswalt had been cast as leads in an NBC pilot where Howerton plays an Ivy League professor who loses out on his dream job, and ends up teaching high school science. Currently known as AP Bio, the series is produced by Seth Meyers and Lorne Michaels, so I think it’s likely it’ll be picked up. Now, Kaitlin Olson currently juggles working on Sunny and The Mick, but Howerton has a bigger role on Sunny, as he also writes and produces. In an interview with Uproxx, though, Howerton said that he wasn’t sure if he was coming back. He said the decision doesn’t have anything to do with his relationships with the other cast members. Sunny still has two seasons ahead of it, but even Danny DeVito recently mentioned that he might be done soon, too. The show really matured this season, as a lot of plotlines came full circle. I don’t even know what they’ll do with 20 more episodes (their seasons tend to be 10 episodes long), but I definitely don’t know how they’d do it without the character of Dennis.

In comic news, Marvel announced that Astonishing X-Men would be returning in July, written by Charles Soule, with art by…unknown at the moment. If you remember, Astonishing X-Men debuted as a miniseries during the “Age of Apocalypse” story in the mid 90s, but its claim to fame was the ongoing series written by Joss Whedon in the early ’00s. This incarnation of the team stars Old Man Logan, Archangel, Rogue, Gambit, Mystique, Psylocke, Bishop, and Fantomex. This, combined with the previously announced X-Men Gold, just proves that Marvel is trying to initiate a 1991-style refresh of the X-Men franchise, and I am here for it! This Astonishing team is basically a refresh of the 90s Blue Team from “adjectiveless” X-Men, while the team in X-Men Gold is pretty much a refresh of the 90s Gold Team from Uncanny X-Men. I love the Old Man Logan character, though I fear he’s approaching typical Wolverine levels of overexposure. Meanwhile, it’ll be interesting to see how Bishop redeems himself considering he spent the bulk of the last Cable series trying to kill a little girl. And it’ll be an interesting dynamic between mother and daughter Mystique and Rogue, as well as starcrossed lovers Rogue and Gambit. I still hate Fantomex, though, and I wish Marvel would stop trying to make him “happen”. Anyway,  I don’t get excited for much, comic-wise, but I’m really looking forward to this book.

In sports news, Jay Cutler was cut from the Chicago Bears after 8 seasons. Now, if you know anything about me, you know I don’t give a shit about sports. Still, there’s a funny anecdote here. You see, when Lindsay and I first started dating, Cutler was the starting quarterback of her beloved Denver Broncos. She bought me my first NFL jersey, which happened to be a Cutler jersey. After all, there was no way he was going anywhere, right? Well, he got cut after that season, and I couldn’t really wear the jersey anymore. He ended up going to the Bears, who had the same color scheme. I thought that meant I could still wear the jersey, but apparently that doesn’t fly with sports fans. Anyway, he’s also married to Kristin Cavallari of Laguna Beach/The Hills fame, so I guess there’s your pop culture connection to justify my mention of him.

Things You Might Have Missed This Week

Director Joe Carnahan has exited the third Bad Boys film, Bad Boys For Life. Maybe I’ll get around to finally watching the first two before this thing gets made.

Jason Isaacs was cast as Captain Lorca in Star Trek: Discovery. I…don’t know who that is, so it’s done nothing to get me excited about this show.

It was a week packed with renewals, as One Day At A Time was renewed by Netflix, Riverdale was renewed by The CW, and Baskets was renewed by FX. I pretty much only have interest in one of those shows. Can you guess which one?

Emma Dumont was cast as Polaris in Fox’s untitled mutant series, which will be interesting since she’s Magneto’s daughter and all…

The embargo for reviews of Netflix’s Iron Fist was lifted, and they weren’t pretty. It seems the problems are with the structure and not necessarily the casting, so it looks like the folks lobbying for an Asian American lead dodged a bullet there.

Who knew Josh Radnor had been working since How I Met Your Mother ended? Well, he’s not anymore, as his PBS series Mercy Street was canceled yesterday.

Now, I know Logan had a great week. It came out to rave reviews, and it opened to $238 million worldwide. Still, I kinda got things off schedule. You see, it got the West Week Ever last week before it had even performed. I don’t really want to start this trend of the same thing getting the WWE two weeks in a row just because I just had to see it opening night, hours before pushing “Publish” on the next post. So, yeah, Logan had a great week, but it was the best thing I experienced last week. Now, I’m gonna talk about the best thing I experienced this week.

Since its debut in 2015, I’ve been a big fan of the FXX series Man Seeking Woman. Starring Jay Baruchel (you know who he is, even if you don’t know his name), it follows Josh Greenberg, a down on his luck Millennial who tries to navigate the waters of modern day dating. Like a less contrived version of How I Met Your Mother, the first two seasons saw Josh go on date after date, trying to find The One, but always coming up short. That all changed this season, however, as he met Lucy. He meets Lucy in the season premiere, marries her in the season finale, and their courtship fills out the middle. Lucy’s not only perfect for him, but she also helped the show take on a new direction. We started seeing things from a female perspective, as the show became as much about her as it was about Josh. We got to see her deal with having to give up her fun party life to settle down. We see her deal with the temptation of another possible suitor. But in the end, she chose Josh. This season, it was as much Man Seeking Woman as it was Woman Seeking Man.

This week saw the season finale of the show and, as I mentioned, it focused on Josh and Lucy’s wedding. The show hasn’t been picked up for a fourth season yet, and I’m hoping it doesn’t. As much as I’ve loved it, it has served its purpose. Over the course of 30 episodes, it set forth a goal and it achieved it. Sure, there are a lot of shows that evolved past their initial concept (looking at you, Cougar Town), and I’m sure the show could keep going as we see Josh and Lucy navigate married life, have a kid, etc. But I think I like it where things ended up. We don’t have to see all of that to know it happens, and I don’t think the show as a whole would be any stronger if we did see all that. Instead of overstaying its welcome, I’d prefer it take the British approach of “less is more”. Three seasons is a good run, and it did what it set out to do. It found Josh a woman. Now, if they did want to continue the show in some capacity, I would love if they flipped it to Woman Seeking Man. You see, every season, there’s one episode that stars Josh’s sister, Liz, as we get to see her life in contrast to Josh’s. While Josh is an unlucky in love office manager who lacks ambition, Liz is a driven workaholic attorney – who also happens to be unlucky in love. The Liz episodes tend to be the strongest of an already strong season, and it’d be great to see more focus on her. Josh and Lucy could still pop up as supporting characters, but the focus would now be on Liz.

With all of this gushing, I haven’t really explained what’s so great about the show. After all, it probably sounds like a run of the mill sitcom, but it’s far, far from that. There’s a streak of absurdity to the show that really lends to its tone. For example, in the pilot, Josh’s girlfriend, Maggie, leaves him to date Adolf Hitler. Last season, Liz had an affair with Santa Claus, while Josh dates a girl whose ex-boyfriend was Jesus Christ. Yeah, it’s not your run of the mill comedy. You’ve got to see it to fully experience it, but I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

The season finale ends with a scene that brings the show full circle to the pilot. If there is another season, I hope they don’t fuck it up. If there isn’t, though, I love what they did, and how they did it. Everything was wrapped up with a nice bow, and it’s a strong series from beginning to end. That’s why Man Seeking Woman had the West Week Ever.

[casiestewart]

Day 59: Support Your Friends!

Right now, more than ever we need to support our friends! We are all in this together and we will get through it by being there for each other, at a distance!

Social media is an amazing tool to share the things you love, you like, and support others. This tweet has been pinned to the top of my Twitter profile for over a year!

IF YOU LOVE YOUR FRIENDS, SUPPORT THEM. BUY THEIR STUFF. SHARE THEIR POSTS. SHOW THEM YOU CARE.

— CASIE STEWART (@casiestewart) January 4, 2019

Last night I joined in a pop-culture trivia game on Facebook hosted by my friend Alex. Follow her on IG @lexniko, I love the content she creates and she’s funny AF.

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Today my friend Mariah sent me a message about her latest project, a film called Pamela & Ivy. I know I don’t do movies reviews often but today her message came just as I was about to have lunch. So, I watched it and put a few notes into a post here. You can also watch the full 16-minute film in the post or on YouTube.

Mariah and I had been internet friends for a little while and last year we met for a coffee date. It was so since to meet face-to-face! I am inspired by her work and how much she has accomplished at a young age. She founded GTE Productions at 21 and is an award-winning actress & filmmaker. Her talent is out of this world!

After lunch, I went to the post office to ship a wee package of a card & friendship bracelet + an item from Knixwear. I am so impressed with their customer service! A couple of weeks ago I placed an order from the warehouse sale and when the package arrived, the order wasn’t correct. That same afternoon I was refunded for the missing items and they asked that the wrong size item I received was gifted to a friend or Women’s Shelter. I loved that idea so I sent it to a friend!

If you love creating content and know someone who is making it, tell them, share their posts with your friends. We all need to stick together!

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