#so no in-person contact. we have to create a dialogue about this article and then compile a master document with all our notes

[non-un-topo]

Let's ban group projects at the 4th year level forever

[nvc-nonviolent-communication]

Until this integration happens, the gap between the words and the consciousness is likely to show up as lack of authenticity, which is a big piece of what's annoying to people.

Almost everyone I've come in contact with sees and experiences the immediate power of NVC when used by an experienced person who is calm and present in the moment of using it. Even people who would otherwise vehemently disagree with the premises of NVC, especially with the idea of transcending right/wrong thinking completely, derive immediate benefit from being heard. However, getting to the level of mastery that allows such presence and fluidity to emerge requires something far beyond facility with a certain template of speech (pdf). Until this integration happens, the gap between the words and the consciousness is likely to show up as lack of authenticity, which is a big piece of what's annoying to people.

Two factors combine to create this gap. One is the awkwardness of using a new and unfamiliar form of speech. Trying out something new, especially if there is any tension with another person, is highly likely to bring about self-consciousness and discomfort. Having such discomfort and then hiding it, as we are wont to do, immediately shows up as inauthenticity. Any hiding of visible discomfort does.

The other aspect of the gap derives more directly from the difference between our words and our thoughts. If we use empathic words while judging another person, or make something look like a request when it's really a demand, we create inner tension. The empathic words or our request is likely to carry with it the tension, in our body's movements and posture and in our tone of voice. Add to this our habitual preoccupation with "doing it right", and the possibility of connection diminishes even as we are trying to forge a more satisfying level of connection that we have seen work.

article continues after advertisement

Integration addresses both of these at once. As we become fluid with the language itself, it's less likely to sound clunky. We can speak poetically and creatively even while using the language of needs, provided we have mastery and ease, and provided we genuinely care about the other person's well-being even in conflict, and have capacity to let go of attachment to outcome while engaging in dialogue.

Practice and Life

Integration doesn't happen overnight or by itself just because we love the new ideas. Integration arises from practice. This is why people who learn about NVC so often gravitate toward others who have learned it, so that they can practice together. I have no doubt that using the template in a practice setting, where everyone else has the same intention, supports the integration of the principles, which are truly the heart of NVC. At the same time, as often as I can remember to do so, I ask people to let go of the language altogether when they are outside of a practice group context, and only focus on what is most likely, moment by moment, to lead to an outcome that attends to everyone's needs. If only it were so easy to do... People continue to hold on to the language because it's so concrete that they feel more secure having it as a "crutch", without realizing that they are losing their most valuable resource, which is the authenticity of their heart intention.

Honoring Others' Choice

I am always happy when I see couples or work teams coming together to a training. This is because the relationship they are in provides a natural context for mutual consent to practice together. Unless we have a designated practice setting or an explicit agreement from another person to accept our own fledgling efforts to learn a new way to connect and communicate, we are, effectively, practicing on another person instead of with them. This doesn't mean to me that we never use NVC except when we have fully integrated it or in a practice setting. We can also get someone's agreement on the fly, especially if we express our desire in terms of the benefit to both of us. If we say something like, "I am so aware of how many times we've had this same conversation with painful results. I'd like to try something different. I'm pretty new to this and so it may sound clunky or stilted. I still believe it may give us new avenues for resolving this sticky situation. Are you open to me trying it out?," there is much more of a chance that the other person will have goodwill towards what we are doing rather than annoyance.

article continues after advertisement

Adapting to Context

Bringing NVC to a workplace setting is not the same as using NVC in a personal relationship or in a therapeutic relationship. Because I have used NVC in these and other contexts, I have a deep appreciation for how much clarity, resilience, and creativity are required to navigate these differences.

Most people learn NVC in a workshop context, in which they focus most often on personal relationships or on their own healing. A healing context operates on a high level of trust and tends to have an implicit agreement to engage at a level of vulnerability and depth. Extrapolating from this context to other environments which may be operating at arms length and where people are accustomed to protecting their vulnerability presents specific challenges.

For example, when someone at work expresses frustration or gossips about another person, an empathic response modeled after what happens at a workshop, in addition to sounding clunky if not fully integrated, also runs the risk of inviting the person speaking to a level of vulnerability they simply didn't sign up for. They do want to be heard and understood for what they said, we all do, or we wouldn't speak. However, being heard and understood is not the same as having our deepest needs or feelings invited to the surface. In different contexts, how we convey to another person that they are being heard will vary. For this, we need flexibility and heart focus rather than an anxious effort to remember the "right" words

article continues after advertisement

The Paradox of a Language-Based Practice

Ultimately, I hope that people who learn NVC will adopt a paradoxical relationship with the specific word choices that are part of the practice. My own commitment to bringing NVC to the world is based on wanting to transform how we view and relate to ourselves, each other, and the natural world of which we are a part. I am hoping to support a morality that doesn't depend on harsh notions of what's "right" and what's "wrong," and that does support social structures and institutions focused on attending to human needs as a primary focus. I don't have any commitment to, nor do I want to see, a world where everyone speaks in the same way and uses the same words. I imagine many shifts could happen just from adopting the question: "What would support an outcome that would work for everyone in this situation?" without anyone changing how they speak.

At the same time, I passionately believe in practice as a reliable path to change, mastery, and freedom. The genius of what Marshall Rosenberg brought to the world, as I see it, is a practice that uses very specific forms of speech in a specific sequence in a way that supports a consciousness shift. Use the language, and over time you gain a deeper knowledge of yourself and more freedom of choice. Practice role-plays in a practice group, and over time you gain ease in remembering both people's needs when you are in conflict with others. I hope to be joined by others who treasure the practice and its transformative possibilities while at the same time recognizing that life is not a practice group. Outside of a practice setting, I hope we can all remember the core principles that move us, and focus only on how to align our actions and words with our deepest heart's desires and core values.

[thediaryofnikkiv]

Recognizing Your Soul Tie And How To Break It

Have you ever been in a relationship with someone and felt so deeply connected to them? Everything about the relationship was intense – good or bad? Then you might be in a part of a soul tie.

The concept of a soul tie binds individuals on a level beyond a relationship's physical and emotional aspects; it’s more than a mere connection. You can form a soul tie with anyone – lover, friend, colleague, etc.- but we are discussing romantic partners for this article. Think of you and your partner as an intensely burning flame. The flame can burn passionately to light the relationship’s way or chaotically burn everything in its path. Either way, it leaves an indelible mark on the souls involved.

A soul tie should not be confused with the term “soulmate.” The main difference is that a soul tie can be positive or negative, while a soulmate is a mutual, harmonious connection. Unlike a soul tie, a soulmate relationship is generally characterized by mutual understanding, support, and shared values.

However, the more we learn about soul ties, the more it becomes evident that they are not monolithic; they vary in nature and intensity. As someone who has experienced a negative soul tie, it is crucial to discern whether they contribute positively to personal growth or hinder you from flourishing.

A negative soul tie manifests as a detrimental and draining connection between individuals. One clear sign of a negative soul tie is the presence of emotional turmoilwithin the relationship. When the connection becomes a source of constant distress, causing emotional upheaval and hindering personal development, it indicates a negative soul tie.

Codependency is another red flag for a negative soul tie. In such connections, individuals may become overly reliant on each other, impeding their ability to thrive independently. Codependency often leads to unhealthy dependencies and can result in a toxic dynamic that hinders both individuals' growth and well-being.

A lack of effective communication is a third indicator of a negative soul tie. When there is a breakdown in communication, misunderstandings and unresolved issues can fester, contributing to a strained and unhealthy connection. In negative soul ties, the absence of open and honest dialogue can perpetuate a cycle of negativity and prevent the resolution of underlying issues. These three indicators—emotional turmoil, codependency, and poor communication—point to the negativity associated with an unhealthy soul tie.

Unfortunately, my deep, intense connection only caused destruction. And despite the obvious red flags, it took a minute before I broke the connection. Why? Because I was addicted to the relationship, we both were. But it is possible to break a soul tie if and when you are ready because if you are not, pretending you are when you are not is a waste of your time.

Breaking a soul tie requires intentional and purposeful actions. Establishing clear and firm boundaries is a fundamental step in severing the connection. By limiting contact and emotional engagement with the person involved, individuals can gradually weaken the tie and create space for personal growth.

Seeking professional support is another effective strategy to break a soul tie. Guidance from therapists or counselors provides valuable insights and coping strategies. Professional assistance can help individuals navigate the emotional challenges associated with breaking a soul tie, offering a structured and supportive environment for healing.

Redirecting energy toward personal growth is important in breaking free from a soul tie. Engaging in activities that promote individual well-being and create a sense of independence allows individuals to refocus their attention on their own growth and development. This redirection of energy is essential for breaking the emotional bonds of a soul tie and moving towards a healthier, more fulfilling life.

The last step I advise everyone to go through is the mourning period. My partner and I did our song and dance for years before I walked away. And I would be lying if I didn’t say that I mourned our relationship while I healed.

Recognizing the presence and nature of a soul tie in your relationship is crucial to understanding its impact on your well-being. Whether positive or negative, the intensity of a soul tie can shape the course of your personal growth and happiness. Breaking free from a negative soul tie demands intentional efforts, from setting clear boundaries to seeking professional support. Redirecting energy toward personal growth and allowing oneself a necessary mourning period are vital steps toward healing and liberation from the intricate ties that bind.

[mystlnewsonline]

3 Tips To Grow Instagram Followers As Quickly As Possible

(STL.News) Getting regular readers quickly and easily is one of the main tasks that newcomers to Instagram set themselves.  The audience of the network is constantly expanding, so competition is growing, and it is much more difficult to stand out from the crowd than it might seem at first glance.  Those bloggers (who are now media celebrities) who managed to win an audience about 5 years ago are called the spoils of fate.  Basically, they only needed to post interesting and useful content, and now this is not enough. In order to achieve the desired result and become more visible on the Internet, you need to know which ways of promotion are effective and useful, and what you should forget about.  The main way for any beginner is to contact a company that offers to buy Instagram followers.  Thanks to their services, novice creators can quickly and efficiently create a subscriber base, which is an excellent ground for further promotion.  However, this is not the only thing you need to know about audience engagement strategies.  In this article, we will give 3 useful tips that will help you reach heights. Communicate with subscribers.  The initial goal when creating any social network is to create a platform on which users will communicate with each other.  For you, as a blogger, this is an opportunity to create a closer connection with readers and increase the loyalty and trust of the audience.  Respond to new comments and personal messages, create surveys and be interested in the opinion of your viewers.  This way, you will show them that every subscriber matters to you. For potential readers, this will be a sign of your friendliness, therefore, they will click on the "follow" button more often.  You can also write comments for the author of popular posts and respond to feedback from other users.  Enter into a dialogue with people and express your opinion, if everything goes well, they will go to your account, evaluate the content and start following you. Use paid services.  To achieve fame and expand the subscriber base with the help of organic promotion methods is a long and time-consuming process that requires your efforts.  If you are an ambitious beginner and want to get the desired number of readers as quickly as possible, take care of the presentability and attractiveness of the page. One of the best options is to buy real Instagram followers.  This is an inexpensive but effective option that is available to every blogger. Paid services are used not only by beginners but also by well-known influencers who have some problems with activity on the page.  By buying accounts of real people, you start to look more attractive in the eyes of potential viewers and get more likes and comments. Shoot short Reels videos.  This format of information appeared last summer but has already become one of the most beloved and popular among users of different ages and interests.  Instagram is no longer just a platform for sharing square photos - you have the opportunity to shoot clips, and add effects, masks, and music.  Such content often gets into recommendations and can go viral.  Show your talents, come up with a bright image and an interesting plot, then everything will be fine! Read the full article

[ktffansub]

Bijutsu Techo: Boys Love – Interview: Yoneda Kou

This article was first published in November 17th, 2014. Translated from Japanesse to Bahasa Indonesia by kalengjelek and then translated from Bahasa Indonesia to English by KTFfansub. Source: here

When did you first encounter manga?

I was born in a family with three daughters; while my older sister likes reading Ribbon magazine, I like reading Nakayoshi. It was the era of Asagiri Yuu-sensei, when I was in elementary school. My favorite at that time were Kusunoki Kei sensei’s works and Patlabor. When it came to Shonen, I would say I was more into Shounen Sunday. I also loved Kawaraha Izumi sensei’s works. When I think about it, rather than manga that were full of passion, I’d actually prefer manga that had calm and soothing kind of vibe.

Is that so… What about BL?

When I was in Junior High, my older sister showed me Captain Tsubasa Doujinshi by Ozaki Minami and I was dumbfounded, I thought, “So, there’s also a world like this!”. After that, I started to buy BL manga. At that time, the mangaka who left the most impression to me was Nishi Keikosensei. Her works such as Mizu Ga Koori Ni Naru Toki, Tenshi Ni Naranakya have unique openings, it made me reread them many times. Uida Shiuko (now Kano Shiuko) and Yoshinaga Fumi Sensei are also my favorite mangaka.

When was the first time you draw manga?

I seriously began drawing manga in my first year of junior high. At first, I drew a pair of man and woman, but after page three, I felt something was off. So, I tried drawing BL for the next one. Just like the present, I’ve always loved less expressive and less-talkactive main characters (laughs). But the more I draw, then an attentive senpai with good personality and short haired ones like Togawa in Doushitemo Furetakunai also appeared. At that moment I thought, “Oh, this is it!”

You really weren’t embarrassed, are you? (laughs)

Well, it’s because it was embarrassing, that’s why I’m not really open about my drawing manga activity.

(laughs) But you debut as professional mangaka eventually, how did that happen?

Yes, after that… I worked as office lady. I got married not long after, but then, I was getting through a marriage blues. At that time, I was invested in Kakashi and Naruto shown by my older sister along with Comiket catalogue.

The power of moe beats out your anxiety (laughs)

It’s true (laughs). Escaping from reality, I checked a lot of circles and opened some sites. There I found a work from a novelist (now has debuted professionally) that I really liked. This is why I started writing novel at first, not drawing. I have a lot of ways to accommodate my moe needs. I also once drew Doujinshi but due to my inability to use a proper diction, the result wasn’t optimal (laughs). After drawing slowly and more at ease, I got into Katekyo Hitman Reborn fandom and drew a lot of doujinshi for that series. A year later, I was contacted by Taiyou Tosho publisher.

“With that publisher, Yoneda Kou published Doushitemo Furetakunai which has been adapted into a movie. Since the beginning, Yoneda Kou didn’t draw one-shot but serialization. For the movie, even though it only tells a story of daily lives, but the directing, composition and dialogue are impressive. About 4,5 years later, the second volume of Saezuru Tori wa Habatakanai that had the yakuza neighborhood setting was released. This has completely different feeling compared to Doushitemo Furetakunai.”

My first work was actually published in Drap, so I had it adjusted to be a less-heavy work. That’s why I ended up switching to another magazine.

Was it a demand from the editor?

Of course I only draw what I want to draw. But without realizing, I always draw them to fit the magazine. And it seems like Taiyou Tosho prefers me to draw more simple work.

So, sensei is the type who pays attention to editor’s suggestion. When you wrote the first chapter of Saezuru Tori Wa Habatakanai, did you already want Yashiro to be the main character (for longterm series)?

Right. I didn’t explain it in the first one-shot, but I always believe that no matter how you look at it, Yashiro really loved Kageyama. And (even though he’s drawn like that) he is actually a neko (uke). I think he is an interesting character. When I drew highschooler Yashiro and others, it had been decided that I wanted to write a serialization for this.

And only then the character Doumeki was born?

At that time, the character Doumeki didn’t exist, but I thought very hard about what kind of partner that would be suitable for Yashiro. I took a break from drawing for about two years. I only worked on illustration during that time, until one morning an idea suddenly came to me, “That’s right! Erectile dysfunction!”. I immediately sent an email to my editor: “A perverted impotent man!” (laughs). Afterwards, I finally worked on the first draft.

(laughs hard) Finally, the combination of Yashiro and Doumeki who are the opposite of each other was decided. What an amazing couple that can even make the readers losing sleep.

I do have this particular interest in people’s decision and behaviour resulted from a contrasting relationship that is full of conflicts. Because there are so many characters in Saezuru, I have this excel file compiling the plot for each character chronologically. Otherwise, I would’ve forgotten about it. If I didn’t seriously research (the setting of my own story), I wouldn’t be able to write anything when I made name. But even though I got through it, drawing a family with no blood ties like yakuza was still difficult. If I don’t focus, the story might turn out like Nagara Sakugyou*. That’s why now I’m just focusing on doing Saezuru.

*) nagara sakugyou: other work that being serialized at the same time

Up until now, Sensei has published 5 volumes and all of them have beautiful covers with varied tones.

Actually, the cover color for Doushitemo Furetakunai should’ve looked like red wine, but it seemed like there was an error in printing so the pink was contrasting into it. But it turned out to be good.

Then about the cover for the Saezuru first volume. It’s so impressive! The stepped-on man! All the people around me also had high appraise for this.

Actually, there were so many things happened in the process. By taking the request (it isn’t clearly explained whether it’s from editor/designer) of “Yashiro sitting alone”, I first submitted that illustration to the book designer. However, I couldn’t throw away the idea of Yashiro being stepped on, so, during the next three days I was stressed out. I’ve finally asked them to keep my idea and that’s how the cover of the first volume ended up the way it is now.

I see! For the second volume, it’s totally different, isn’t it? It’s a scenery, but when you do a double take, there are Yashiro and Doumeki!

I always want to give a different vibe in each volume. Actually I’m also a fan of the way Tsumugi Taku-sensei draws scenery.

Hoo-, sensei is a fan of Tsumugi sensei! Talking abough NIGHTS, when you open the cover, there’s a surprise in it!

Yes, if you look at the rough sketches there were 4 pages of picture that were interconnected. In the end, the desainer took picture number two as the cover and number four to put it on the bottom of the back cover. For Soredemo, I didn’t get any guide from the book designer. I combined the the feel of the story with a touch of water paint. At first, I actually wanted to make Deguchi pulling Onoda’s hand to get out of the train, but it ended up looking like Deguchi forced Onoda to stay (with him). So I decided it’s Onoda who’s getting off the train by himself with Deguchi waiting on the platform.

Do you do the coloring with computer? How about the non-colored script?

I use SAI for coloring but for monochrome I usually draw by my hand until the inking, then I do the tone using photoshop.

Do you self-learned drawing?

Well, I at least bought a lot of ‘pose reference’ books often. When it comes to buy things, it feels great, doesn’t it? But when it comes to manga, we draw to tell our moe concept.. well, I love drawing moe concept, but the thing is- I’m not really good at drawing. I like thinking about moe stuff, I also like to combine colors (inside my head) but when I do, I have no desire to draw I, even though that’s the important part. There are often times when I feel like drawing is a handful. In short, I want to draw something that isn’t too troublesome.

But, isnt it because you’re doing manga seriously that it feels difficult?

Because I’m too serious I feel like the story can be boring. Not only the work but also the author (laughs). I often read comments saying my manga is ‘down to earth’. I guess it’s shown obviously in every each of my works

Sure, there are people who think like, “In real world, there’s no way a wakagashira can be as masochist as Yashiro”, but apart from that, Saezuru still gives an impression of it being realistic. In drawing the important men’s arms and muscles in your work, sensei has done your best. Getting into the story, the characters also put extra effort to look elegant. Despite the young age, in a positive sense, sensei’s works feels like having Showa* vibe.

(*SHOWA ERA: 1926~1989)

I’m no longer young, though (laughs). Maybe this is why my works often get called “JUNE”. Especially Saezuru, I think it really fits (JUNE concept).

Are you an organized person?

I’m actually a person who have no chill (laughs). But I have this side of myself who tend to see things as a whole, look at my surrounding then step on the brake. There is also a side of me that is so energetic in creating my own moe that I turn into a selfish person. I guess that’s also my flaw.

It seems like sensei is the type who has her own editorial meeting inside her head (laughs)

I wish it’s not true, but unfortunately, I’m the type of person who is embarrased to admit that I have a relationship with manga. Even until now I have yet told my close friends about this job (as BL mangaka). I’m not that kind of person who like to share or tell others about my moe situation inside my head. When my moe concept is being visualized in public I would scream, “Don’t look! But if you want to read it, I’d be happy”. Yes, I’m that kind of person.

I wonder if sensei’s works are the manifestation of sensei’s own self-contradictions..

[kaistarus]

The Only Exception

Pairing: NishinoyaXReader

Words: 2.2K

Summary: Nishinoya was genuinely happy with his life. He’d gotten used to being by himself and had accepted the fact that that was how it was supposed to be. Until you came along and threw everything he thought made sense out the window.

A/N: I really like this fic. It’s one of my favorites Nishinoya ones so far just because it’s his pov and timeskip and the amount of love feels makes me happy. i got a lot of serotonin while writing it :D

Masterlist

Nishinoya had never been someone’s first choice.

He knew that sounded dramatic, but it was just a fact of life. The sky was blue, Tanaka could chug three-fourths gallon of milk before vomiting, and Nishinoya was never anyone’s preferred option--which never bothered him so keep the pity to yourself.

He learned to accept this when he never got scouted for the All-Japan Youth Camp and after the only person Nishinoya ever even kind of loved ended up loving his best friend. It taught him to keep his expectations low and to focus on things he could control, which was what led him to solo-traveling Japan and then the world. He realized things might be better on his own, and with the constant itch that he was missing out on something bigger traveling alone just made sense.

But then you came and ruined everything.

Hold on. That came off way more aggressive than Nishinoya wanted. He meant there was a perfect vision for how his life would go-pyramids in Egypt, Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, deep sea fishing in Italy-until he toppled over you in the streets of Italy. He’d been sprinting toward the docks when you stepped out of a marketplace and he collided into you, knocking you flat on your butt and sending your groceries all over the sidewalk. Nishinoya fumbled through his best apology in broken Italian while shoving produce into your paper bag, but froze in surprise when you snorted rather than began an enraged lecture.

He swore his heart actually stopped when your eyes met. You were clearly amused by his flustered behavior and when his heart started back up it was abnormally fast. Not once had he understood what Tanaka meant when he explained the first time he’d seen Kiyoko, but the first time Nishinoya saw you everything Tanaka said clicked. If Nishinoya had been fifteen he probably would’ve proposed to you on the spot.

But he wasn’t, so instead he shakily handed you your groceries with furiously red cheeks.

“Come ti chiami?” You asked with a raised brow.

Nishinoya blinked several times. He racked his brain for what he’d been taught on his last fishing trip, but it was mostly curses and inappropriate sayings he should probably avoid using. He was pretty sure Duolingo mentioned ‘chiamo’ as name though.

“Nishinoya?” He answered like a question and felt relief wash over him when you nodded.

“What are you doing this weekend, Nishinoya?”

He stared blankly before pointing at you with wide eyes, “I understood that.”

“Well you obviously don’t know Italian,” you rolled your eyes and he pouted at the incredibly accurate jab, “so, are you free?”

He looked around the empty street before pointing to himself. “Are you still talking to me?”

“Is there another Nishinoya around here?”

“I mean, there could be.” He looked up thoughtfully. “The odds would be crazy though.”

You laughed lightly which made a warmth creep up his neck. “I’m talking to you. I’m trying to ask you on a date.”

He looked at you like you’d grown a second head. “Why?”

“You’re attractive and you seem nice,” you cocked your head to the side. “Is that not a good reason?”

He stared at the ground intensely. “I guess… It is?” Then his original reason for being there struck him and his eyes widened. “Oh shit. I have to go,” he started leaving before quickly coming back. “Wait, I, uh, yes. Yes to the date thing.”

You chuckled, pulling a cellphone from your pocket to let him hurriedly create his contact before continuing his sprint to the docks-with a teasing recommendation not to knock anyone else over. That literal run in was the moment his entire world view became out of whack.

It wasn’t that he thought he was immune to liking someone-high school Nishinoya fell for any breathing human that gave him attention-he just lost the ability to imagine someone liking him. Maybe he’d been by himself too long or maybe that was just another fact he’d grown used to. He didn’t know anymore.

He did know that when he showed up at the restaurant thirty minutes early-there’s only so much pacing someone can do before they go insane-he hadn’t expected to see you. Just sitting on a bench beside the main entrance, looking too perfect while bouncing a knee and nibbling on your thumb nail as if you were nervous to be there.

Except it was only him, so that wouldn’t make sense.

“Hey,” you said when you spotted him standing in the middle of the sidewalk like an idiot.

“You’re here,” he raised a brow. You took it as the time, but he meant it in a general sense. He truly hadn’t expected you to show up.

“Oh,” you chuckled awkwardly, twisting the material of your clothes. “Yeah, I was kind of nervous.”

He mulled that over for admittedly too long, but it just seemed like such a stupid thing to say. It wasn’t that you looked stupid, but that’s what made it so confusing.

“You’re also early.” You pointed out when the silence became awkwardly long.

“I was nervous.” He said like it should have been obvious.

“At least we’re starting on equal ground,” you said with a shaky breath.

Equal ground? He wasn’t sure his brain was cut out for this type of critical thinking. He’d even spent the past few days planning for every scenario-even you sneaking out the bathroom like in the movies-but he never pictured you being nervous.

“Uh, yeah,” he tapped against his leg while glancing through the window at the half-filled dining area, “we can probably go inside.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” you gave him a quick finger gun before whipping around with shoulders to your ears.

Nishinoya blinked several times before looking back down the street. A part of him thought about running, saving you both from the shitty date to come filled with awful conversation starters he’d pulled from an online article for high schoolers. However his fate was sealed the moment you sent a gentle smile over your shoulder and his feet began following you through the door without his permission.

Ever since that day he’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Ever since you giggled behind your hand instead of wincing at the terrible jokes he regretted the moment they left his mouth; ever since you weren’t burdened by the need to translate for him the whole night; and ever since you were amused rather than annoyed at his nervous rambling and awkward icebreakers.

It was just too good to be true.

Like the first time you came over and teased him for the cheesy dialogue in his favorite action movies. How his chest ached when your head rested in his lap and you gazed at him with overwhelming amounts of affection. He’d never dreamed he’d have this-couldn’t have if he tried. Sharing his favorite things with someone while they traced designs against his palm and occasionally sealing them with featherlight kisses. The fire it sent up his arm was too much and not enough and he hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted this.

It was a little scary how much Nishinoya didn’t want to lose it.

And that thought started keeping him up at night. Nishinoya was never really scared of anything-it was kind of what he was known for everywhere he traveled. If anyone needed something done they asked the foreigner with a death wish. So, the idea that you had that effect on him was, again, terrifying.

But what was Nishinoya supposed to do when you press your forehead against his in the middle of the night? Running your fingers through his hair and paying special attention to the blonde strands he’d always been secretly self-conscious of, whispering low how they were one of your favorite things in the world. How could he regret anything when you rubbed your nose lazily against his and kissed him softer than he ever deserved? He didn’t give a shit how scared he was if it meant he could stay like this, with you, for as long as you’d let him.

Because his heart raced a million miles a second when you mindlessly held his hand under a table or leaned against him just to be close. Because for some reason he was the first person you called when you were excited or when you needed comfort. Because when he rambled too long about spearfishing or an old friend’s volleyball game your eyes lit with genuine interest rather than annoyance. And because he was in love with you.

Which he both wasn’t prepared for and had known was inevitable. Falling for you had been like getting hit by a semi-truck he’d seen coming for miles.

It probably happened sooner than socially acceptable, but that didn’t surprise him given his all or nothing nature. This outcome was decided the moment Nishinoya knew he’d be fine with you breaking his heart a hundred times if it meant he could keep waking up next to you cascaded by the rising sun because he was still too lazy to invest in curtains. Just you cuddling closer to him for warmth in your sleep would make every ounce of pain worth it.

Once Nishinoya’d acknowledged his feelings it was nearly impossible keeping them down. With every breathtaking smile, or brush of your hand against his, or bubble of laughter that rang throughout his apartment it nearly spilled from his lips like a breath. It took all self-restraint he had to hold it back. And it wasn’t that he didn’t want you to know because you deserved this piece of him-every piece of him.

He just wasn’t sure you’d want it.

His resolve lasted nearly a month-a month longer than he thought he was capable-before the feeling was too intense for him to keep down. And it wasn’t anything drastic that made him break. No, it was something so absurdly casual that he was almost pissed at himself when the words flowed from his mouth.

It had been a completely average morning, nothing crazy, the weather was actually gross with rain pounding against the windows and the sky a depressing shade of grey. But then you stepped out of his bathroom while rubbing the sleep from your eyes, giving him a lopsided smile before slurring a soft request for breakfast. It was like time froze and he was in a stupid romcom except you were there so it was actually an oscar nominated masterpiece.

Your head lolled to the side, half-lidded eyes filling with concern at his silence. “We can cook together. I didn’t mean it like-”

“I love you.”

That seemed to wake you up. Your body straightened while your mouth hung open in stunned silence. Nishinoya had expected this kind of reaction, so he clenched his fists tight in preparation for the worst.

“Are you sure?” You asked, barely above a whisper. “That’s a pretty serious word, Noya.”

He knew that. Nishinoya had spent too many nights losing sleep over that.

“You scare me,” he confessed, deciding if he was going to dig his grave he might as well make it deep. “I’ve never really been the one someone chooses. More like deal or settle with.” He grimaced when his heart squeezed painfully in his chest, “but I love you more than I thought I could ever love anyone and that scares me. You make me feel wanted and I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Because I do want you.” You whispered and his stare locked on yours so quickly, meeting your loving gaze while his heart started racing. “And everyone you know must be really stupid because I feel lucky I got to choose you. I get to love you.”

He stared at you wide-eyed while his chest swelled with so much emotion he was surprised he hadn’t passed out.

“Sorry, that sounded really lame.” You placed a hand against your forehead and Nishinoya shook his head vigorously.

“I think that was the greatest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

You stepped closer and cradled his face, gently brushing your thumbs along his cheeks. If he wasn’t so manly and awesome he may have teared up, but he definitely didn’t. Which was why you obviously weren’t wiping any water off his cheeks before pulling his lips against yours.

Nishinoya set a languid pace that turned desperate when you tangled your fingers in his hair. He pulled you as close as he could, which was never enough, snaking an arm around your middle and sliding one to cradle the back of your head. 

When it got heated enough that he decided he’d very much like to move it to his bedroom Nishinoya’s stomach growled and you snorted against his lips. Nishinoya pouted, whining when you pulled away with a playful smirk.

“Later,” you said, pinching his cheeks and waving his head around. “Food first. We’re both hungry.”

He did love food.

He disrespectfully watched you leave him in favor of searching the fridge for food that could be thrown together for breakfast. A dopey smile covered his lips because he loved you. He was lucky enough to get to love you. And for some ridiculous fucking reason you were dumb enough to love him.

He would do whatever he could to keep it this way. For now, that was helping you cook breakfast. Tomorrow, who knows? But whatever it was you would be there, so it would be pretty god damn amazing.

[headoverheelsforramsey]

Hey hey hey! Here are this week's newlywed questions! So excited!

Note: Once again, this week’s round focuses on photos! Dialogue is entirely optional, though for some of these, it’d be fun to know the story behind the pictures ;) Tumblr mobile only allows 10 picture uploads (there are 10 questions), so collages are highly encouraged! Otherwise, the non-beta version of Tumblr desktop will allow more than ten.

Have fun!

For MC

Favorite childhood photo of Ethan

What’s your phone wallpaper image?

Contact name and photo for Ethan

Top three photo results when you Google Ethan

First picture of or with him that you uploaded to social media

For Ethan

Favorite childhood photo of your spouse

What’s your phone wallpaper image?

Contact name and photo for your spouse

Top three photo results when you Google your spouse

First picture you ever took of or with your spouse

*Credit to the anon who sent me the first three questions!

Hi Bree! These questions were so fun to answer, I loved it! 🤩 Thank you for sending these to me! 💖

P.S. : Ignore my mediocre editing skills, I tried my best! 😬

So lezz go!

FOR MEERA

Favorite childhood photo of Ethan

Meera : Ooh! Starting with a bang!

Ethan : No, Meera. Bree said favourite not embarrassing.

Meera : What if the embarrassing one is my favourite?

Ethan (with a snug face) : Fine then, I have ammunitions too.

Meera : You do?

Ethan (nods)

Meera (thinks for a moment) : Fine, so can we call it truce that no embarrassing pictures this round? (extends hand)

Ethan (shakes hand) : Sure Dr. Ramsey-Bose.

Meera : After the infamous CPR pic, this has to be my favourite. Look at this kid. Isn't he adorable? 🥺 You were always a dog person, no doubt we are soulmates.

Ethan : That's Tito. He was the pet to an elderly couple that lived accross the street from us. He was a very good boy.

What’s your phone wallpaper image?

Meera : This picture from our wedding is one of my favourite.

Ethan : Mine too.

Contact name and photo for Ethan

Meera : He didn't allow the 🥵 emoji so I bargained it for the 🔥 one.

Ethan : I neither understand the purpose nor importance of this.

Meera : Try being a millenial to understand babe.

Top three photo results when you Google Ethan

Meera (chuckles) : Remember the first time you did this for the pictagram profile.

Ethan : I said this that day, I'll say it again, the internet is a scary place.

Ethan : Officially off the market? What even is that?

Meera (not being able to stop laughing) : You look so cute when flustered.

Ethan rolls eyes

Meera : Okay this is the article from when you announced on national television that you are not single. And the rest two are your recent achievements.

Ethan : Yes but how is something from four years back still the top result?

Meera : You did break almost a million hearts that day.

Ethan (a huge grin on his face) : Damn. Bad luck, I am stuck with you.

First picture of or with him that you uploaded to social media

Meera : Oh my my I have to scroll waayyy back for that.

Ethan (looks at Meera's screen as she scrolls) : Howcome there are more pictures of me on your profile than yours?

Meera : Because you are hotter and more famous and that gives me much more likes and followers.

Ethan (shakes head) : Kids these days.

Meera : So, a little backstory. Dr. Ramsey kissed me infront of the entire hospital on the day of the Gala. But then didn't want to make our relationship public. I agreed because everyone was not in a right mindspace with the hospital closing and losing jobs.

Ethan : We were also figuring things out since we no longer would be working in the same place.

Meera : Then the hospital got saved and everything went back to normal. But he still didn't want to make it public. Next he wanted to take me for a getaway before the hospital opened after the remodeling. So I told him that I had to make it public now.

Ethan : As far as I remember, you ordered.

Meera : Yes I did. You tell me Bree what was I gonna tell my roommates? That I am going away for a romantic getaway with my BOSS? So I had to make it public a week before we left with this post. And all my friends and acquaintances literally roasted us alive in the comments. (facepalms)

Ethan : In my defense, how was I suppose to know that every single person knew?

Meera : You weren't quite subtle about it babe.

Ethan : But at the end it all paid off. (kisses Meera)

FOR ETHAN

Favorite childhood photo of your spouse

Meera : Remember no embarrassing ones.

Ethan : I got you, love.

(just breaking character here to say this is me lol 🙈)

Meera : Oh my God! How did you even get this?

Ethan : Maa (Meera's mom) sent this.

Meera : This was at my uncle's wedding. I was what? Four.

Ethan : and the cutest four year old.

What’s your phone wallpaper image?

Ethan : One from our Indian Wedding, where she looked like a queen.

Meera : I LOVE this picture!

Contact name and photo for your spouse

Meera (sighs) : Gonna be something boring for sure.

Meera : Okay Ramsey, I see you played well. Now what about adding a 🥵 emoji beside the purple heart?

Ethan : I'll delete the picture and the heart if you try to bring me to put one of those faces.

Meera : Okay, okay, I hear you. Better be happy with what you have!

Top three photo results when you Google your spouse

Meera : Am I even famous enough to be Google searched?

Ethan : Ofcourse you are, darling!

Meera (chuckles) : Yeah I am, after marrying you.

Ethan : That's not true see this one is about you heading the DT.

Meera : And the other ones are about our wedding and honeymoon respectively.

Ethan : Don't worry you will recieve all the recognition and love within a few years, I promise. (kisses her forehead)

Meera : With a husband and mentor like this, ofcourse I will.

First picture you ever took of or with your spouse

Meera : Shit! Why can't I remember this?

Ethan silently pulls out the picture.

Meera : Oh yes this was in Miami, with Ines!

Ethan : Absolutely correct.

Meera : Now I remember. I was too afraid to ask you for a photo so Ines made you click one of us. And look at you know, my designated photographer for life!

Ethan (grins) : Can't say, I don't enjoy capturing your beauty.

Meera : Aww!

(they kiss)

Phew! Another week done! Thank you Bree for this once again! 💖 @jamespotterthefirst @messrprongs

A/N : I realised after creating the social media post that @gryffindordaughterofathena had used the same photo. But she gave me a green light to post mine so thank you Dri! 🤗

Tagging my usual : @starrystarrytrouble @mm2305 @charisworld @choicesfanaf @potionsprefect @genevievemd  @shanzay44 @little-flowers-on-heaven @schnitzelbutterfingers  @coffeeheartaddict @gryffindordaughterofathena @chemist-ana @adiehardfan @custaroonie @ireneadlerisseggsy @takemyopenheart @natureblooms24 @mainstreetreader @izzyourresidentlawyer @a-crepusculo @quixoticdreamer16 @starryeyedrookie @barbean

Please let me know if you want to be added or removed. Also if you want to sit out only the answers to the newlyweds game then hit me up too. There will be no hard feelings I promise! 💜

[ebaeschnbliah]

SHERLOCK’S  WEBSITE

‘Reading the document is the same as seeing the author’

This says a Chinese proverb (X). What does it mean then, when John tells Sherlock in A Scandal in Belgravia: ‘nobody is reading your website’?

SHERLOCK: I have a website. JOHN: In which you enumerate two hundred and forty different types of tobacco ash. Nobody’s reading your website.

Some more musings about Sherlock’s website ‘The Science of Deduction’ and its content below the cut ...

Just a little while later in the same episode - while he writes aboout the unsolved plane crash case in Düsseldorf ... ‘Sherlock Holmes baffled’ - John describes his own blog as Sherlock’s ‘living’.

JOHN: Look at that. One thousand, eight hundred and ninety-five. SHERLOCK: Sorry, what? JOHN: I re-set that counter last night. This blog has had nearly two thousand hits in the last eight hours. This is your living, Sherlock – not two hundred and forty different types of tobacco ash. SHERLOCK: Two hundred and forty-three.

‘This is your living’ is basically the same as ‘this is your life’. This is YOU. The way John describes Sherlock on his own blog, shapes how the public eye views the great detective. The same way as Dr Watson did in canon in his stories for The Strand. This fact becomes even more clear during the greenhouse scene in TAB. Although Dr Watson is aware that he doesn’t tell the truth about Holmes, he doesn’t change his stories about him either. 

HOLMES: .... as I have often explained before, all emotion is abhorrent to me. It is the grit in a sensitive instrument ... the crack in the lens. WATSON: Yes. HOLMES: Well, there you are, you see? I’ve said it all before. WATSON: No, I wrote all that. You’re quoting yourself from The Strand Magazine. HOLMES: Well, exactly. WATSON: No, those are my words, not yours! That is the version of you that I present to the public: the brain without a heart; the calculating machine. I write all of that, Holmes, and the readers lap it up, but I do not believe it.

If John’s statement ‘my blog is your living’ can be translated into ‘my blog is your life’ - my blog is YOU - what then can be said about John’s other comment, regarding Sherlock’s website ‘The Science of Deduction’, when he tells Sherlock: ‘nobody’s reading your website’? If the document, the blog, the website reflects the personality of the writer, the author and when nobody is reading Sherlock’s website because nobody is interested in its content ... doesn’t this translate into:  'nobody’s interested in who you really are’?  I assume one can indeed read it that way, because the plot confirms such a translation as well.

Oh, don’t worry. I know who you really are. I’m never off your website.  (THOB,  Dr Frankland)

If Dr Frankland knows who Sherlock really is, just by looking at his website - at Sherlock, the author -  maybe it would be a good idea to take a look as well. ... the same way Sherlock advices Kitty Riley in TRF: ‘Well, look at ME and tell me what you see ... you can just read what you need’. 

First of all, I’m not going to use the external internet website created for Sherlock BBC in this post. @possiblyimbiassed did already a detailed and very interesting analysis of it in ‘The Science of Reduction’. In the comments of that post I tried to exlpain the reasons for my doubts as to whether those external informations - as fascinating and tempting as they are - could lead to a solution for the story told on TV. Anyway, in this post I’m going to look at Sherlock’s website just as it is presented on screen. But what can be deduced about The Sciene of Deduction by using solely informations from TV? There’s not much to go on, one might say ... and as I’m no Sherlock Holmes either, I will most likely ‘miss almost everything of importance’, like John did with Carl’s shoes. But looking at Sherlock, the author, is definitely worth a try  ... :)))) 

The Science of Deduction

Sherlock’s website ‘The Science of Deduction’ can be seen already in the Unaired PILOT when he is about to answer requests from various people. The very first message he is just writing, is directed at his brother Mycroft who apparently contacted him in a somewhat ... ‘impossible situation’. Sherlock’s answer is a quote from canon, probably the most well known and often used statement of the great detective ... in canon as well as in many adaptations:

Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.  (The Sign of the Four)

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?  (The Sign of the Four)

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.  (The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet)

We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.  (Adventure of the Bruce Partington Plans)

When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (Adventure of the Blanched Soldier)

Five more requests wait for Sherlock’s attention. His Inbox is indeed well filled ... at least six possible cases ...

Sherlock answers Gregson’s request about a ‘Church bell theft’. This done, he is clearly pleased about DI Lestrade’s not very informative message ‘Please call me’. When he is about to answer Jones request about ‘Samson and Del’, Mike Stamford and John Watson enter the room and Sherlock stops working through his Inbox. 

The next day Sherlock and John meet for the first time at Baker Street 221b. John mentions that he’d found Sherlock’s website the night prior but contrary to Sherlock’s big expectations, John isn’t much impressed (unlike Jeff Hope who thinks Sherlock’s Science of Deduction is brilliant). This scene happens in both versions - PILOT and ASIP - almost identically.

JOHN: Oh, I, um, looked you up on the internet last night. SHERLOCK: Anything interesting? JOHN: Found your website, The Science of Deduction. SHERLOCK: What did you think? JOHN: Quite amusing, I suppose. SHERLOCK: “Amusing”? JOHN: You said you could identify a software designer by his tie and – what was it? – a retired plumber by his left hand. SHERLOCK: Yes; and I can read your military career by your face and your leg, and your brother’s drinking habits by your mobile phone. JOHN: How? SHERLOCK: You read the article. JOHN: The article was absurd. SHERLOCK: But I know about his drinking habits. I even know that he left his wife.

Sherlock BBC, PILOT

One of the small and also strange differences between the two versions is the ‘identification’ text line from Sherlock’s website, quoted by John. In PILOT Sherlock refers to a plumber and his left hand and in ASIP to an airline pilot and his left thumb. “It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles” tells Holmes in The Man with the Twisted Lip and “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important” in A Case of Identity. A lot of such little, seemingly unnecessary modifications and inconsistencies can be found throughout this adaptation. Maybe they are indeed there for a reason?

JOHN: I looked you up on the internet last night. SHERLOCK: Anything interesting? JOHN: Found your website, The Science of Deduction. SHERLOCK: What did you think? JOHN: You said you could identify a software designer by his tie and an airline pilot by his left thumb. SHERLOCK: Yes; and I can read your military career in your face and your leg, and your brother’s drinking habits in your mobile phone. JOHN: How?

Sherlock BBC, ASIP

Why had the profession to be changed from plumber to airline pilot and the body part from hand to thumb, one wonders? Unless it’s because plumbers have to do with water and work down to earth or even underground. They install pipes/tubes or mend broken ones. By the way, in german language the phrase ‘install a pipe’ (ein Rohr verlegen) has the same meaning as the english ‘put up shelves’. Airline pilots on the other hand often tend to be situated high up above the clouds. Well, this sort of topic runs like a red thread throuout the whole story. And that strange change of profession isn’t the only ‘small’ modification from PILOT to ASIP either. 

(Strange little changes   Plumber musings)

Also interesting ... there are no visuals of Sherlock’s website in the official episodes ASIP and TBB. Only in the following episode, TGG, the viewer is able to take a first ‘official’ look at The Science of Deductions, when Sherlock writes his messages to the bomber. The look of his website has changed completely.

The Great Game: the first entry in the Forum is about Carl Powers shoes and botulinum toxin ... that’s the reason for food poisoning.  (Under the microscope)

Next time the website can be seen, is after Sherlock solved the second case and sends his congratulations regarding Ian Monford’s relocation to Columbia ...

And a third time when Sherlock has solved the murder of Conny Prince ...

There is no picture of Sherlock’s website connected to the fake Vermeer painting because this time Sherlock sends the solution not on his laptop but uses the pink phone dublicate instead (Yes, besides 2 Johns, 2 Faiths, 2 Charles, 2 serial killers, 2 empty houses, 2 flights of the dead, various pairs, doubles, twins ... etc, etc ... there are also 2 pink phones present in Sherlock BBC). Anyway, the Science of Deduction can be seen again when Sherlock suggests a meeting with the bomber at the same pool, where once little Carl died, to hand over the stolen missile defence plans ...

There’s no picture of Sherlock’s website in ASIB. The Science of Deduction turns up only in the two short but very interesting pieces of dialogue between John and Sherlock with which I started this post.

John utters the opinion that their clients come to Baker Street just because of his blog. Sherlock reminds him that he too has a website. John then mockingly mentions Sherlock’s analysis of 240 different types of tobacco ash on said website and adds ‘nobody is reading your website’. Sherlock is clearly offended and corrects the number of tobacco ashes from 240 to 243. Some time later John raises the tobacco-ash topic once more, proudly refers to his own blog - and the 1895 hits on it - and tells Sherlock ‘this is your living’.

The next visual presentation of the website can be seen in THOB, when Sherlock shows John the Inbox message of little Kirsty about her vanished, luminous rabbit Bluebell ...

In the same episode Sherlock tells Mrs Hudson that a ‘little blog on the identification of perfumes’ can be found on his website. It turns out that Sherlock hasn’t only extensive knowledge regarding ash, he also knows a lot about perfumes.  (Perfumes in Sherlock BBC by @gosherlocked ) 

The HOUND-episode is also the one in which Dr Frankland tells Sherlock: ’I know who you really are. I’m never off your website’. The Baskerville scientist knows John’s blog as well and is a bit confused that Sherlock isn’t wearing the deerstalker hat, as shown there.

The Science of Deductions turns up next in TRF, in an newspaper article about the recovery of Turner’s masterpiece, the ‘Falls of the Reichenbach’, that Sherlock was able to recover (last line on the left column).

Sherlock’s website is mentioned a last time in TSOT. Not on Sherlock’s laptop but on John’s phone. Mary suggests that John should go on a case with Sherlock. John opens The Science of Deduction on his own phone and asks Sherlock to pick a case from his already ‘bursting Inbox’. Sherlock chooses The Bloody Guardsman. Sadly it’s impossible to get a clear shot of the small mobile-screen. (John’s blog stops at TSOT by @gosherlocked)

THE LOOK

Blue is the main colour Sherlock has chosen for his website ... shades of different blue ... a dark midnight blue and the skyline of a city by night can be dimly seen in the background and - a little bit clearer - on both sides. 

As Sherlock Holmes is one of London’s most popular characters, it’s easy to assume that the skyline used for his website is that of GBs capital. With this in mind, the water in the bottom right corner, that can be seen rather good on the first pic above, should be the Thames and the shallow arch above it, most likely one of its many bridges. On the opposite site, in the upper left corner, next to the small, pale tower and right behind the ‘The’ of the website’s headline, the vast vault of Saint Paul’s Cathedral can be dimly seen (the view is better on a TV screen). 

If one connects the images of river and bridge on the left with St Paul’s on the right, I guess the background of Sherlock’s website could be a panorama photo similar to the one below. That’s a view from the Southbank of the Thames with Blackfriars Bridge in the foreground. And this location does play a role in the story ....

Blackfriars Bridge is located between Southwark Bridge and Waterloo Bridge. The name derives from Black Freres ... the French 'frère' meaning 'brother'. This referes to the black habits of the Dominican monks. A monk is also called a brother, a nun is also called a sister and the opposite of a ‘black brother’ would be a (ghostly) ‘white sister’. Just saying. :) 

(The Roads we walk   Vatican Cameos   A Christmas Tale)

As mentioned above, this particular cityscape plays a role in Sherlock BBC. It’s a crime scene from TGG. 

SHERLOCK: View of the Thames. South Bank – somewhere between Southwark Bridge and Waterloo.

At this place, Alex Woodbridge was found, the security guard and hobby stargazer, killed by the Golem, in the Vermeer case ... the same case which doesn’t turn up in the messages on Sherlock’s website because he uses the pink phone and conveys the solution verbally. Viewed metaphorically ... he speaks through the heart.

Blue is the colour of the sky ... high up, where the aeroplanes fly. Blue is also the colour of the water, deep down below ... where powerful emotions run freely and London is Sherlock’s city. The country, the city, the houses, even cars are closely linked to the famous detective. They seem to represent his ‘body’. 

Just put me back in London. I need to get to know the place again, breathe it in – feel every quiver of its beating heart.  (Sherlock, TEH)

Brother Mycroft IS government and ‘queen’ at the same time. There are all kinds of networks above and below ground and steam trains run behind fake facades. Saint Paul’s Cathedral and the river Thames are often special eye-catcher. The coat of arms ... with dragon, lion and Saint George’s cross ... make their appearance as well as the great fire of London in 1666, the Isle of Dogs and the Greenwich pips. ‘Transport’ goes from standstill to movement ....

666-The number of the beast   Every quiver of his beating heart   Saint Paul’s Cathedral   Still at the centre of the web   From standstill to movement 

WEBSITE ... A SITE FOR THE WEB

Sherlock has a website .... John has a blog. Why the difference? Both men, Sherlock and John, are given strongly internet-related nicknames ... Hat-man and Robin:The web detectives ... Sherlock & John: Blogger Detectives. Sherlock is also called ‘Net Tec’ and ‘net phenomenon’. What’s the difference between Blog and Website:

BLOG:  The word ‘blog’ is short for ‘weblog’ (web=net + log=logbook), jokingly broken into the phrase ‘we blog’. A blog is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries. Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. 'Blog' and 'blogging' are now loosely used for content creation and sharing on social media, especially when the content is long-form and one creates and shares content on regular basis. (X)

WEBSITE:   The word website consists of web=net + site=place. Literally web-site means ‘a place in the net’. A website can be used in various fashions: a personal website, a corporate website for a company, a government website, an organization website, etc. Websites can be the work of an individual, a business or other organization, and are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web. (X)

Of course, the word ‘web’ immediately reminds me of Jim Moriarty. The spider at the centre of a criminal web, woven with thousands of threads and Jim knows precisely how each and every single one of them dances. Sherlock is going to monitor the underworld in order to notice every quiver of that web, so he will notice when the spider makes his move. 

As mentioned above, all kinds of networks - above and below ground - play a major role in Sherlock BBC. There are Mycroft’s people, his agents and spies. There are terrorists who threaten London with a massive attack. General Shan has a vast network with thousands of operatives and Sherlock calls it ‘a cult’. A surveillance web is closing in on Baker Street, their attention focussed on Sherlock. An Underground network as well as an underground network runs below the surface of the big city. A secret cult of revenging birdes meets in the crypt of a desanctified church. Sherlock is convinced that the ‘world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing every other. What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable, as inevitable as mathematics’. So many threads - linked and interwoven - they create a web, a net .... a web-net. Basically, that’s exactly how brains work as well. Every brain is a very vast and highly functional biological network ... and Sherlock’s is faster than most ‘... still catching up with my brain. It’s terribly fast’.

Recent models in modern neuroscience treat the brain as a biological computer, very different in mechanism from an electronic computer, but similar in the sense that it acquires information from the surrounding world, stores it, and processes it in a variety of ways. Neurons typically communicate with one another by means of long fibers, which carry trains of signal pulses to distant parts of the brain or body. (X)

And then there's also Sherlock’s ‘own’ network ... the ‘homeless network’ it is called. According to Sherlock, it is ‘indispensible and faster than the police’. Those group of people is based on the Baker Street Irregulars from canon. There, in Victorian London, they are street boys, sometimes employed by Holmes to run errands for him. Holmes speaks of them as ‘division of the detecitve police force’. Dr Watson describes them as ‘little scoundrels’ and ‘half a dozen of the dirtiest and most ragged street Arabs that ever I clapped eyes on’. 

While the idea of homeless people who sometimes assist Sherlock in his cases is taken from canon, the name - homeless network - is not. Names are always important in this story. So basically, what is a homless network? It is a network that has no home. At times it is usefull for Sherlock and he pays them for their help. In a way this reminds me of Eurus. She says abut herself: 'to remember everything one just needs a big enough hard drive’. Her intellectual abilities are also of occasional use for the government. In return she requires treats. Similar to Sherlock’s homeless network, Eurus has no home either. She lost it long ago in her childhood days. Sherlock has a website ... a site, a place in the web ... but only very few people are interested in it. Actually just Jeff Hope and Dr Frankland as it seems. Sherlock has a homless network ... a network without a home. 

The women of the ‘cult’ from TAB first gave me the idea that all those dangerous groups ... agents, spies, terrorists and the various networks ... could actually be metaphors for something that happens inside Sherlock’s mind. That all those groups represent the awakening of emotional stirrings ... desires, fears, impulses ... that haunt the great detective. There seem to be aspects of Sherlock’s personality which he views as rightous criminal and puts them behind padded walls or elephant glass. Others are just annoying and distracting. Some he ignores most of the time because he considers them to be irrelevant for his system. Some have no home, although they turn out to be usefull now and then. Then something unexpected happens ... something new is coming ... and this marks the beginning of a change of perception in Sherlock Holmes, maybe a revolution.

The reptile in 221b   Underground networks    AGRA-Under the sign of four   Eurus, the emotional memory & The cold war by @raggedyblue

FOUR MESSAGES and a GAP 

Four messages can be read on Sherlock’s website. All of them are from TGG, related to four of the five cases, written by Sherlock and directed at ‘the bomber’. As it turns out at the end of the episode, this person is none other than Jim Moriarty, the spider in the centre of the web. 

FOUND. Pair of trainers belonging to Carl Powers (1978-1989). Botulinum toxin still present. Apply 221b Baker St.

Congratulations to Ian Monkford on his relocation to Columbia.

Raoul de Santos, the house-boy, botox.

xxx

Found. The Bruce-Partington plans. Please collect. The Pool. Midnight.

Only one of the cold cases is not mentioned on Sherlock’s website, because Sherlock uses the pink phone duplicate, sent to him by the bomber in a strong box at the beginning of the ‘great game’, to submit his message. Sometimes it is useful to ‘mind the gap’ as Sherlock says. Sometimes that, what is left out, is just as important as that, what is there. The ‘gap-case’ is the one about the fake Vermeer painting, whose forgery was first noticed by security guard and hobby stargazer Alex Woodbridge, murdered because of it by the Golem. His body was found at the Southbank of the Thames near Blackfriars Bridge ... the same location Sherlock uses as background for his website. Sherlock discovers and proves the truth due to the display of an impossible supernova on the painting. 

A picture pretends to show a scene from the past, but the massive explosion painted on it reveals, that the picture has actually been created much more recently. That massive explosion had never happened in the past.

The bomber’s hostage in the Vermeer case is a kid who is never shown on screen. The little boy transmittes a countdown from 10 to 1, that mirrors Sherlock’s own countdown in TFP (Countdown) while the boy’s plea for help mirrors that of the girl on the plane and also that of Victor Trevor, the boy in the well near Musgrave Hall. Victor Trevor and Musgrave Hall represent two canon stories -  The Adventure of the Gloria Scott and The Musgrave Ritual - both set in Sherlock Holmes’ university time, long before he met Dr Watson. Both cases lead back to a time ‘where Sherlock began’.

(Why Victor Trevor was turned into a child by @sagestreet)

THE HOUND & THE GUARDSMEN

Little Kirsty Stapleton’s cry for help in THOB to ‘please, please, please’ find Bluebell, her vanished, luminous rabbit, marks the beginning of the HOUND case. Chemistry, triggered by the pressure of feet, fills the air and drives everyone exposed to it, crazy. Love is in the air .... At the end Jim Moriarty (Mr Sex) walks free, released from his cell by Mycroft Holmes himself ... 

Private Stephen Bainbridge’s request in TSOT, regarding a mysterious stalker, marks the beginning of the GUARDSMEN case. Jonathan Small (literally: Jonny Little), a brilliant, ruthless monomaniac (who strongly reminds me of Jim Moriarty), stabbs guardians/facades with a ‘meat dagger’. At the end Mary Watson is pregnant ... ‘stabbed’ by ‘Johnny boy’ (Hamish=James) Watson ... the HOUND hidden behind the facade of the facade .... Matroshka ‘poppets’ indeed.

“Mary – lots of love ... poppet ... oodles of love and heaps of good wishes from CAM.”  (Telegram from Magnussen, keeper of the deepest and darkest secrets and scandals,TSOT)

THE BLUEBELL COMPANIONS

Alongside little Kirsty’s message about Bluebell there appear two more requests on the Inbox page of Sherlock’s website (they can be easily read on TV screen). In films neiter images and certainly not texts appear on screen out of coincidence. Pictures are there for certain reasons, even if it’s just for the purpose of a fitting decoration. Texts on the other hand are much more specific. Someone must have had the idea to put it there and someone had to create the image. Especially the makers of Sherlock BBC have repeatedly mentioned that everything that appears on screen has its meaning. With this in mind, what can be deduced about those two earlier requests in Sherlock’s Inbox?

1- Please help victims of China earthquake. It costs just 5p. 

China - right from the beginning a certain ‘easterly’ theme appears and runs from there throughout the whole story like a red ribbon until the moment the Eastwind finally approaches in the shape of Eurus. In a metaphorical reading I connect the East to emotions and memory. 

An earthquake is a sudden outburst of held back and bottled-up energie. When the pressure gets too high it results in a violent release of that energy. Explosions .... rocks crack, the earth shakes. Earthquakes can trigger landslides, volcanic activity or cause a tsunami. Major changes are also often referred to as ‘earthquakes’.

Costs of 5p ... A penny (p) is a coin and a unit of the britisch pound (£), the official currency in the UK (a currency Sherlock doesn’t know how to spend?). 5p is money. The saying goes that time is money. A minute is a unit of time. Viewing it in reversed order ... money is time = 5 penny are 5 minutes. ‘It took her (Eurus) just five minutes to do all of this to us.’

Reading it that way, a possible translation of the first request in Sherlock’s Inbox could be:  “Please help victims of emotional upheaval. It takes just 5 minutes.”  :)

2- Re. Mudchute Query

Mudchute is a railway station situated in the Millwall area on the Isle of Dogs. The name Millwall has its source in the large number of windmills built on the river wall in the 19th century. They were needed to ground corn and wheat into flour that was brought along the Thames. The original station was located on an old Victorian railway line that had been disused for many years. An elevated station opened 1987. When the line was extended under the Thames, the station was rebuilt close to the tunnel entrance. It opened 1999 and was finally completed 2009. The station was originally intended to be named Millwall Park but then renamed in Mudchute, refering to the engineering overspill when Millwall Dock was being created in the 1840s. (X)

Basically ... the second request in Sherlock’s Inbox is about a query regarding a railway station, built in the Victorian area at a place linked to mills (♪ Remember the maid ... the maid of the mill ...♪, TAB), disused for years, rebuilt and elevated, named, renamed ... until it was completed in 2009, the same year the Unaired Pilot was created. Well .... that sounds a bit ... familiar?

PERFUME AND TOBACCO ASHES

Appart from Sherlock’s cold case messages addressed to Jim Moriarty and two requests from - Kirsty Stapleton and Stephen Bainbridge - there are only two other entries on The Science of Deduction ... Sherlock’s own analysis about perfumes and tobacco ashes. Basically that’s about ... scent/smell and fire residues.

SCENT:  From Kasbah Nights to Claire de la Lune, perfumes play a significant role in this story and Sherlock is a true expert in smellig and recognizing the different brands. The first thing that comes to mind, related to the word ‘scent’ is a dog - more precisely a scent dog. One of the most prominent representatives of that breed is the Bloodhound. And it is well known that Sherlock Holmes is indeed compared to a blood hound in ACDs The Sign of Four. That same quote has been adopted in TEH (Sherlock the Bloodhound), it appears on John’s Blog and is read by Mary. But in Sherlock BBC the bloodhound isn’t only linked to Sherlock himself. The HOUND is also connected to John Watson, Jim Moriarty, Victor Trevor, Eurus and Redbeard the Irish Setter, also a scent dog.  

(The dogs in Sherlock’s mind palace  The bloodhound in his hands   Transformation of Redbeard  and the ‘Follow the dog’ series by @sagestreet​)

FIRE RESIDUES:  Sherlock has an extensive knowledge regarding tobacco ashes. This characteristic has also been taken from canon.

I have made a special study of cigar ashes—in fact, I have written a monograph upon the subject. I flatter myself that I can distinguish at a glance the ash of any known brand, either of cigar or of tobacco.  (ACD, A Study in Scarlet)

In TSOT drunken Sherlock proclaims loudly ‘Ash! I know ash!’  Almost the same words (‘I know human ash’) uses the guy from ASIB, whose aunt had been among the plane crash victims in Düsseldorf (’Sherlock Holmes baffled’). In the same episode Sherlock steals an ashtray from Buckingham Palace. In TEH Sherlock’s return from hiatus is underlined with at least half a dozen scetches of phoenixes, rising from the ashes, at the walls of the Landmark Restaurant. Another bird that has great resemblance with a phoenix can be found on Brenda’s gravestone at Musgrave Hall  (Among the funny gravestones).

Ash is the residue of a fire damage. Fire and burning is one of the main themes in Sherlock BBC. From Jim’s threat to burn Sherlock’s heart out to the gingerbread man burned to a crisp, from John’s Guy Fawkes bonfire to Sherlock’s admission ‘I’m burning up’, from the Baker Street living room in flames to the great fire at Musgrave Hall ... not to mention all the exploding or not quite expoding bombs throughout the show ... fire anf burning is never far away in this story.  

(Love is a burning thing   A case ablaze   Set this house on fire by @gosherlocked)

TOBACCO ASHES ... CHEMISTRY BURNED

Tobacco s the common name for plants belonging to the Nicotiana family. It contains the highly addictive stimulant nicotine. The dried leaves of the plant are mainly used for smoking in cigars, cigarettes, pipes, etc ... Nicotine is a widely used legal drug. The burning of tobacco results in smoke and the residue left behind is ash. Sherlock knows ash. Interestingly and unlike to canon, in this modern adaptation Sherlock doesn’t simply know ‘any known brand of cigar or tobacco ash’, he has analysed exactly 243 different types of those ashes and he explicitly corrects the number 240, cited by John. Is this seemingly unimportant correction just there to emphasise Sherlock’s annoyance over John’s mockery or is maybe another meaning hidden behind that corrected number?

243 ... ‘This is your living, Sherlock – not two hundred and forty different types of tobacco ash’ - ‘243!′

243 different types of tobacco ash are not Sherlock’s living. 243 different, tobacco products - burnt to ashes - are not Sherlock’s life.

As mentioned above, tobacco contains nicotine and nicotine is a drug. Viewing Sherlock BBC on a metaphorical level ... all drugs are chemistry and chemistry is love. The chemistry of love, burnt to ashes ... 243 times over. Hmmmm ....  Then an idea hit me and I asked Google a question:

This answer is from January 2020. The first official series of Sherlock BBC aired 2010 and the Unaired Pilot has been produced in 2009. I seem to recall that the first and the second series have been accepted by the BBC at the same time and since 2009 several more Sherlock Holmes adaptations have seen the light of day (Guy Ritchie Holmes, Elementary, New Russian Holmes, Miss Sherlock, Mr Holmes, Sherlock Gnomes, Holmes&Watson, Enola Holmes ... to name just a few). 

Could it be that the number of different tobacco ashes, analysed by Sherlock, mirrors the number of different adaptations about the famous detective? Sherlock Holmes ... reborn again and again with each adaptation, like a phoenix from the ashes, and yet he was never able to live a full life ... including emotions, love and sex?

‘All lives end. All hearts are broken’, that’s what Mycroft tells Sherlock in ASIB. Chemistry burned to ashes in an endless row. ‘So many days not lived, so many words unsaid’ ... says Eurus in TFP and referes to the coffin whose lid is adorned with a brass plate, I LOVE YOU, written on it  (A coffin for love). You are absolutely right  @loveismyrevolution with your idea of Sherlock standing between two ‘angels’ in that scene, although I would rather call them ‘choices’. Because this scene has great resemblance with the three solutions/choices Sherlock has to choose from after the event on Barth’s roof  (Solutions or choices). 

At that time Sherlock is confronted with two elemental forces ... love and sex. The one is represented by Molly (mirror for John) and the other one by Jim Moriarty, Mr Sex. Sherlock chooses neither one of the two. He backs away and walks a third path. He decides to live a celibate life - married to work - solely dedicated to reason and intellect, represented by Mycroft. That’s why he needs to create a strong facade to hide his true feelings for John. But then, unexpected and without noticing it at first (delayed action stabbing), even this facade gets ‘penetrated’ by John. Love (Rosie) is conceived and this changes everything. (Changing of the guard)

After the first shock (shot), Sherlock starts to go deeper into himself than ever before. He repeats the investigations about himself (the pink case) from a different perspective. Everything that happens in S4 reflects, in one way or another, occurances from S1-S3 ... arranged differently and some new actors are added. For example: the morgue-scene in TLD is a mirror of Sherlock’s fall in TRF ... it’s another Reichenbach. Eurus’ five tasks of Sherrinford seem to be a sort of ‘final distillate’ of Sherlock’s repeated analysis. In the coffin-scene Sherlock is once more confronted with a choice. This time though SEX is excluded. Sherlock has to choose between LOVE or BRAIN. And just as he did after the ‘first’ Reichenbach, Sherlock tries again to back away. At that stage though Eurus doesn’t let him. Sherlock’s emotions force him to go back to the very beginning, to find the truth. What that truth is and what consequences will come from it .... is still untold in this story, as I read it. There’s a final distillation but not a final solution at the end of S4.

“This is your living, Sherlock ... not 243 different types of tobacco ash” 

... says John, refering to his own Blog. But is this really the truth? The counter on John’s Blog stops at 1895 in ASIB and the text entry, read by Mary in TEH, is a quote from canon. Already in the first series, in TBB, Sherlock asks John - his blogger/biographer - to pass him the pen and near the end of S4, in TLD, John’s Blog has ‘gone a bit downhill’ and people actually think it's Sherlock’s Blog. This leaves the question: is Sherlock taking over the narrative of his own story now? What kind of story will it be? How will it end? Will Sherlock have to make a third choice in the future? A choice between Dr Watson, the ‘fixed point in a changing age’ and John Watson, who could be so much more than just an ‘eternal’ friend? After all, there are two Faiths in the story, two serial killers and Hamish (Jim, Mr Sex) hides right in the middle of John (H) Watson ... at the very centre of the web, one might say. 

Two times John    Pairs-Twins-DoubleOHs   Double OH seven Bond Air is go   The big question   and an excellent explanation of the idea about ‘Two-John’s’ in the comments on this post by @lukessense

Will Sherlock BBC turn out to be one more adaptation that ends as a ‘missed oportunity’ ... one more chemistry burned to ashes .... another sample of tobacco ash for Sherlock to analyse and add to his list? Or will it be different this time? Something new ... something big? Will it be the story about the emotional and sexual awakening of the literary character Sherlock Holmes? 

Only the future will tell ....

Thanks for reading and thanks @callie-ariane for the scripts.

February, 2021

[kimkitsuragi]

Final Cut News!

All right, so, by now most people are probably aware that we got a glut of new information about Disco Elysium: The Final Cut yesterday. However, so much content from so many sources can be a bit overwhelming, so I’m making a roundup of links to all the new articles, art, music, and videos I can find, highlighting the details that I personally find interesting.

(under a read more because this will be quite a long post!)

To start with, new official art of Harry and Kim has been released! This art was created by Anton Vill, who did the art for the in-game Thought Cabinet.

ZA/UM's Head of Publishing, Mikk Metsniit, also posted art of Martinaise in the official Disco Elysium Discord. This art has been shared in lower quality before as part of a promotional image for the collector’s edition of Disco Elysium, which will include it as an “illustrated fabric map”. The file Metsniit posted is named “Martinaise Revitalization ‘48.″ In-universe, a design studio previously made an attempt to restore Martinaise to its pre-war state, but ultimately failed. This piece appears to show the planned development of Martinaise--except it’s being swallowed up by the Pale. Fun!

Along with the first piece of art come two new songs by British Sea Power, which will be featured in the final cut:

Advesperascit, named after the city in Vesper-Messina where Dolores Dei was crowned Innocence in-universe. Apparently the name is Latin and roughly translates to “evening comes”

Ignus Nilsen Waltz, named after a prominent communist figure in-universe.

I think these songs will likely be tied to the new political vision quests, which are four new questlines that are each associated with one of the game’s four political ideologies. More information about them, along with other details, can be found in the following articles and videos:

Disco Elysium - The Final Cut Is Like Going From A Black-And-White Movie To Color, article from GameSpot’s Phil Hornshaw. In this article, voice over director Jim Ashilevi talks about adding full voice acting to the game and says that The Final Cut will feature 59 voice actors from countries around the world, chosen to reflect the backgrounds of Revachol’s diverse inhabitants. Lead artist Kaspar Tamsalu speaks about the political vision quests, saying that they will allow the player to meet new characters, learn more about the existing ones, and dive deeper into the politics, secrets, and history of Elysium. Tamsalu also says that The Final Cut will add the ability to fast travel and include Twitch integration, allowing stream viewers to vote on streamers’ decisions and even influence the build of the protagonist.

Biggest Changes In Disco Elysium - The Final Cut, video from GameSpot’s Phil Hornshaw, accompanies the above article. This is a fairly short overview of The Final Cut’s new features as detailed in GameSpot’s article. It includes samples of new voice acting, clips of new animations from the end of the game involving the protagonist and his coworkers (1:47, 2:05), a scene showing a new area added by one of the political vision quests (1:57), and a particularly funny voiced line from Kim (3:22)

‘Disco Elysium: The Final Cut’ comes out March 30. Here’s what’s new.  Article from The Washington Post’s Elise Favis. Includes more details about the political vision quests. According to developer Kaspar Tamsalu, these quests may be started after one in-game day, and are mutually exclusive so that only one may be completed in each playthrough. Jim Ashilevi talks more about the challenge of recording all of the game’s dialogue--more than one million words in total--without outsourcing the work to other studios. Ashilevi also says that he sees ZA/UM as an “art collective”, and “compares his team to the Wu-Tang Clan, in that each person has other creative endeavors, both personal and professional, outside of creating video games.”

Disco Elysium: The Final Cut even gives your horrific necktie a voice. Very brief article from PCGamer’s Fraser Brown. Not much new information in this article, but there is one interesting tidbit: apparently the Horrific Necktie’s voice will be provided by Mikee Goodman, who is one of the game’s voice over directors. Goodman also provides the voices of the Ancient Reptilian Brain, the Limbic System, and several other characters.

Disco Elysium is getting even more political, a long article from PC Gamer’s Fraser Brown. Lead writer Helen Hindpere talks more about the political vision quests, which she says ZA/UM was inspired to add based on fans’ enthusiastic reception of the game’s existing political themes. Hindpere says that the new quests can change the game’s map itself, allowing the protagonist to leave his own mark on the district of Martinaise. The quests will also allow for deeper and more serious exploration of the protagonist’s political views, which were often taken to humorous extremes in the original game. Each quest is different, with some being more wordy and some more visual. The Ultraliberal quest will allow the player to “build a personal brand”, while the communist quest “inspires you to begin a movement”. One quest also adds a new urban location to the game, which Hindpere says reminds her of Berlin. The quests don’t just revolve around a single topic, though; according to Hindpere, "You'll be talking about love, sexuality, hope, ambition, and even about certain geological features specific to our worldbuilding. There's an opportunity to get close and intimate with characters who have thus far seemed unapproachable. Let's say that once you share the same ideology many barriers disappear, allowing you see a different side of many important characters." There will also be a significant amount of new dialogue with Kim Kitsuragi related to these quests.

Disco Elysium PS5 Gameplay - 5 Things You Need To Know, fairly long video from PlayStation Access’ Ash Millman. This video provides some basic information about the game’s premise for new players and shows what the game will look like on PlayStation 5, with a user interface redesigned for the console. The video also includes clips throughout that show some new content, presumably from the political vision quests. Three of these clips seems to be connected: in the first of them, wires are shown that run from the battery of the protagonist’s crashed car to radio equipment set up on and around the statue in the center of Martinaise; in the second, Soona, the radiocomputer programmer from the church questline, can been seen climbing the statue itself to set up some more equipment; and in the third, Soona, Harry, and Kim stand near the modified statue, talking about attempting to contact the flying warship Archer via radio. There are also two other clips: in one, the statue has been splashed with multicolored paints, while in the other the protagonist is seen talking to Idiot Doom Spiral, a local drunk, about hiring him for an unspecified job. Millman also talks about the three different settings that will be available for the game’s voice over: “Classic Mode” will play the same as the original game, with only a few lines voiced, while “Psychological Mode” will provide voice acting for all characters except the protagonist’s internal monologue and skills. The last option, “Fully Voiced Mode” is, well, exactly what it sounds like. There’s also a brief clip that provides a sample of the Horrific Necktie’s new voice (1:26).

DISCO ELYSIUM - The Final Cut (Cuno Voice Example), YouTube video shared by developer Mikk Metsniit. Video is age-restricted. This video includes new voice samples for Cuno, a few of the skills, and Kim. Due to COVID-19, Cuno���s original voice actor, Dot Major, was unable to return, so Cuno is now voiced by Oli Dabiri. Lenval Brown, the narrator of the English language trailers, acts as the game’s general narrator and voice of all 24 skills. Jullian Champenois remains as Kim.

[radramblog]

What happened to Dirk in Homestuck^2?

Why am I doing this to myself.

I memed a little yesterday when I was posting that article around social medias about Homestuck jokes, because once again we are in lockdown and I am therefore Stuck at Home. Canned laughter goes here. But there’s a topic related to the comic- or more specifically, its aborted sequel, Homestuck^2, that I’m interested in delving into a little bit. I’m going to avoid talking about spoilers as much as possible, but considering said comic takes place not only after the events of the massive sprawl that is Homestuck but also the more linear but still messy Epilogues, some amount of sus shit is inevitable.

Anyway. Much maligned is what the Epilogues and 2 did to everyone’s favourite decapitation target, Dirk Strider, and I have a theory as to why it happened this way.

To begin with, let’s summarise what and who Dirk is through the course of the comics. Fair warning from me, though, it’s been a while since I read through this.

Dirk Strider is a teenager who grew up in a post-apocalyptic future Earth, completely devoid of physical contact with other people and only really ever gets to talk to 3 other people, only one of whom is in anything remotely resembling a relatable situation. He struggles with self-identity, having created numerous robots including an artificial intelligence based on his own brain, aka Lil’ Hal. He’s somewhat of a control freak, and a bit of a cold aloof asshole, but means well, and is pretty gay. NBD. The kinda guy to set up a plan meticulously and thoroughly, not informing any of the moving parts even if said parts are his friends, and often involving some form of self-sacrifice.

Throughout the comic he further reckons with self-identity problems and his own self-loathing including entering a relationship with Jake which doesn’t go well and he eventually breaks off since he knows his overbearing and manipulative behaviour is Not Cool and Pretty Toxic but doesn’t know how to shut it off. Eventually he reaches the God Tier as a Prince of Heart, gaining the power to literally annihilate souls, which he never actually uses since he gets yeeted into deep (Paradox) space and then everything goes to shit. Except none of that happens because of the Retcon (aside from the God Tier bit) and we don’t actually see how that shit progressed in the canon timeline. I think. Dirk’s arc, as it were, doesn’t really come full circle- while he does assist in Dave’s character…growth? he really isn’t the focus of that conversation. This immediately precedes the action climax and there isn’t literally any dialogue after that so that’s what we’re left with.

I like Dirk in Homestuck a lot. It’s hard not to, considering the flashes heavily featuring him (Unite/Synchronise and Prince of Heart: Rise Up) are genuinely excellent, along with many of his music themes being absolute bangers. He gets to interact with Caliborn a lot, with a pretty great banter, there, and the whole splintered personality thing is a really interesting hook for a character. I think he’s my favourite of the Alpha kids, a controversial pick considering I know everyone loves Roxy so much. I think, I’m not as in tune with the fandom as that statement implies I am.

And then the Epilogues/Homestuck 2 came.

Now I read the Meat half of the epilogues first, but that’s more interesting, so we’ll tackle Candy first (this is going to get real confusing for those who haven’t read this comic, huh).

In Candy, Dirk almost immediately kills himself, citing the irrelevance of the timeline as cause, an act considered by whatever mechanism governs God Tier deaths to be Just because he hates himself (and also bc of things we’ll get into), so it actually sticks. This isn’t super relevant for the discussion, but that’s just kinda so unbelievably fucked up? Entirely? I’d imagine if you read Candy first you might get entirely turned off by this, which I’m sure a lot of people did.

Meat is where the, well, meat of post-canon Dirk is. You see, a concept very quickly introduced in the tail end of the original comic is the Ultimate Self, an idea where you somehow encompass every different timeline iteration or alternate version of yourself. This was pretty clearly tacked on to make it so characters whose arcs all happened in the retcon timeline could have their not getting an actual arc explained away, but it didn’t land then and it sure doesn’t land for me now. Anyway, in Meat, Dirk becomes his ultimate self, making him near-omniscient and able to control the fabric of the story himself- for much of this story, he is the narrator. And he uses this power to fuck with all his friends really distressingly without their knowledge (or consent), including breaking up a marriage, in order to further his own goals which largely appear to be just keep the story going so to not fade out of relevance. It’s a plot that makes no sense with his previous characterisation, but I guess now that he’s the Ultimate Self he’s a different person? But I liked old Dirk, and I don’t like New Dirk. He’s a villain now, but he made a much better anti-hero.

But this would be fine if he (or the epilogues, or Homestuck^2) were written well. But they aren’t. Dirk’s dialogue is long, painfully drawn out, with tangents that tend to amount to pure wank, misused literary references and pointless metaphors that go on and on, filling the screen with a bright orange screed that hurts to look at as much as it does to comprehend. It’s not fun. And we’ve seen Dirk communicate before, obviously, the story of Homestuck is built around chatlogs, but it wasn’t like this. He was sarcastic, dryly witty, blunt at times. Even when he was literally talking to a different version of himself it didn’t get that masturbatory.

I was so confused about what the hell happened to Dirk, because I had no idea what the hell someone writing this character was thinking when they turned him into this. And then, the 21st page of Homestuck^2 dropped.

And it all came together.

What Ultimate Dirk and Terezi are referring to is Pony Pals: Detective Pony, a children’s book about some girls who hang out with ponies and solve a mystery. It’s a real book, buy it for your 5-year-old.

Except they’re not referring to that, they’re referring to the Homestuck Canon version of Detective Pony- a birthday gift from Dirk to Jane, heavily edited and to be much more obscene and eventually developing into it’s own story, stated to be “tough, emotionally draining, but cathartic in all the worst ways possible”.

Except the quote “Remember Longcat, Jane?” and references to philosophy, dead languages, and ancient earth culture aren’t referring to the three pages of the Dirk-edited Detective Pony we see in the actual comic itself. That quote doesn’t appear there.

That image is from Detective Pony, by Sonnetstuck- the 40,000 word fanfiction from 2014 that serves as a completed version of Jane’s copy of the book. An expansion of what we see in canon. And it’s a tough, emotionally draining read, but cathartic in all the worst ways possible.

It’s a very good fanfiction.

In the later bits of Detective Pony, we can start to see the origins of what would become Ultimate Dirk’s signature style of writing. Long blocks of rambling text, orange dripping down the page, references to philosophy and history and language that go on and on. And it probably does look familiar to those who read the Epilogues and ^2. 

But there are a couple of key differences here. First of all, it’s just better written? The way these rambles circle back on themselves is so excellent, the absolute absurdity of this being written on top of a pony book for little girls, the humour (beyond some of the more immature stuff), it’s just a really well-written piece of fiction. Hell, you don’t even need to be familiar with the character of Dirk to enjoy it. It’s a harrowing piece, but it’s also self-aware- because it’s not supposed to be tough, draining, cathartic etc. just for Jane- it’s clearly that for Dirk himself.

The second part is, of course, that this is a fanfiction. It’s not canon, it’s not official, this is by someone who really likes Dirk for people who really like Dirk. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, so if you bounce off it (and I’m sure a lot did), then you don’t have to keep reading it, it’s fine, thanks for playing. As much as Homestuck^2 tried to doll itself up as “dubiously canon” it’s still the official continuation of the story, and that means if it’s as difficult to get into as Detective Pony, that’s going to be a problem for a lot of people.

The other part of it is that Detective Pony’s exploration of Dirk’s character is, well, in character. When the man himself steps in as a character in his own book, the explorations of what he is as an author, who he is as a person, make perfect sense for what we see of him at the start of the comic. He is that manipulative, blunt person, and he is aware of his faults. He’s the kind of person to hide a lamentation on his own failings inside an impenetrable maze of a story layered on top of a book about fucking ponies. Ultimate Dirk does not act like Dirk, outside of the “manipulator” angle, something that Dirk was aware of and trying to improve in the comic. But I guess people don’t have arcs, right?

It’s so interesting to see the seeds of Homestuck^2 laden within Detective Pony- because the meta angle that and the epilogues take is also represented in said fanfiction. While the nature of canon is a facet of the work, the idea of authors and narrators fighting for control of a story, different ideas in mind for the characters, one being more personally connected to them than the other, it’s all there. When I wrote about Fallout 4 in the past, I mentioned being worried that Bethesda took the wrong lessons from Skyrim- seeing something successful and trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle. I think Homestuck^2 is an extreme example of this- the writers of the comic saw Sonnetstuck’s masterwork and thought, yeah that’s great, we can do that. But they just can’t. And with the comic crashed and burning, the probably won’t ever get a chance to. Dirk is forever stuck as this amalgamation of himself that looks nothing like any individual version of him ever did.

At least we will still have Detective Pony, and many other excellent fanworks, for actually good Dirk content. I admittedly haven’t looked into much fanfic written during/post-epilogues, and I’m kind of afraid of what I’ll see- I can only hope the fanbase didn’t take the same wrong lessons as the official team did.

[felassan]

Some wee scraps from various recent articles on the subject of the next Mass Effect game (not MELE):

[Kym Hoy, VA of Kasumi Goto] is also aware of Mass Effect Legendary Edition and the next Mass Effect game headed by BioWare veterans. When asked whether she’d reprise her role as Kasumi, Hoy lights up, “I would! I would leave my hole in Mexico, and go to Los Angeles, no problem... Or I could do it from a home studio here, which would be even better. But I would love to continue to work on this franchise. It's a lot of fun.”

For the longest time, Hoy didn’t even know she had fans until she poked around the internet. And for that, she’s grateful and loves all the people who have enjoyed her work through the Mass Effect series. She also wanted to give a shoutout to BioWare, saying that the studio can contact her agent to get in touch with her again for the next adventure in the series.

“All means, by all means, tell them that Kasumi is ready to be at your service,” she signs off, picking up Kasumi’s voice as if it’s as natural as breathing. [source]

---

Interviewer: Would you want to score the music for the new Mass Effect game coming down the pipeline that was teased during The Game Awards?

Mass Effect composer Jack Wall: I'm always open, BioWare! [source]

---

I thought it would be worth asking [former ME/BW devs] if they'd ever return to Mass Effect. In most cases, the answer was yes - but it often came with the same condition. While almost everyone I spoke to answered with some variation of "yes, if..." three different developers specifically mentioned that they'd love to work on a game like Elite Dangerous, but in the Mass Effect universe. For what it's worth, these answers all came independently of one another - none of these developers knew that their former colleagues had the same idea in mind.

"Under the right circumstances, yes," Mass Effect 3 senior gameplay designer Patrick Moran tells me after being asked if he'd return to the series. "The technology exists now to really connect the world seamlessly, with examples like No Man's Sky, Elite [Dangerous], and even Everspace 2. I'd love to have a more seamless transition through the world than navigating a map.

"I also believe AI is a big unexplored area for triple-A gaming. Rimworld is a great example of tracking history between characters, having personality traits, and allowing the player to develop deep connections to those characters. I'd love to explore a similar system for generic NPCs, so they are more than vending machines and dialogue tree bots. I believe the next 20 years will result in NPC AI which will dwarf anything we thought possible."

"I would work in the Mass Effect setting again," Mass Effect 2 and 3 writer Jay Turner tells me. "It's a fun setting to think about and populate with characters. I'd love to see an open-world game where you're a trader/pirate type, like Elite Dangerous but in the Mass Effect universe." You'll probably be interested to know that Turner was the writer who created Kasumi, and also worked on Omega alongside Neil Pollner. What I mean is, he's definitely qualified to write person to write a "trader/pirate" narrative in Mass Effect.

It's worth noting that we recently reported on a Han Solo-inspired Mass Effect spin-off that was cancelled prior to Mass Effect 2, which would have likely fit this mold perfectly. But, as Moran says, the advancements in tech and AI mean that a modern or future game based on a similar concept could be much better, meaning that the fact this game was never actually made could be a blessing in disguise.

Dorian Kieken, who was development director on Mass Effect 2 and 3, before becoming franchise development director in the early days of Andromeda, also said he'd return to the series. He said after a decade working on Mass Effect, he developed a certain kind of franchise fatigue - but now, enough time has passed that he'd like to work on a new adventure in this universe.

"I like the idea of exploring a 'grayer' character, akin to a smuggler/pirate type in the Mass Effect universe," Kieken says. "It also allows [us] to see the world from a different point of view than the one of the chosen super soldier. It's a bit like exploring the Star Wars universe without being a Jedi or the Warhammer 40k universe without being a Space Marine."

When I told Kieken that other devs had mentioned similarly grey, smuggler-esque characters, he said he wouldn't be surprised if these people were on the team that explored the Han Solo concept.

"I think having 'grayer' types of characters, defined as not being aligned with the universe's good or bad guys, and also not attached to any major factions like pirates, allows you a large breath of exploration that you don't have when you are the savior of the galaxy," Kieken explains. "Think of the story freedom you have in TV series like the Mandalorian or FIrefly thanks to mercenaries or smuggler character archetypes."

As it stands, none of these three people work at BioWare - however, all of them have said they'd be more than happy to return under the right conditions (as many other devs have also told me), and they've already got an idea for the exact kind of Mass Effect game they'd like to make. I'm not sure about you, but I'm 100% here for "Elite Dangerous, except it's Mass Effect." [source]

[tiramisiyu]

【未定事件簿】Tears of Themis: Main Story 6-16 Translation

Translation Masterlist | Video

Chapter 6 – Tiger’s Accomplice Ghost (Parts 1, 2): 6-1 / 6-3 / 6-5 / 6-7 / 6-9 / 6-11 / 6-13 / 6-15 ♦️ ♦️  6-16 / 6-18 / 6-20 / 6-22 / 6-24 / 6-26 / 6-27 / 6-28 / 6-29

--

NXX Base

On Wednesday morning, Lu Jinghe pushed open the main door to the base’s meeting room.

Lu Jinghe: Hah, I haven’t seen wrong, right? You’re surprisingly here, Mo Yi.

Lu Jinghe lifted his hand and looked at his watch, his meaning self-evident.

Mo Yi: If I said that I have not slept all night, would you also run outside to see where the sun has risen from?

Lu Jinghe: That wouldn’t be necessary. No matter how the sun rises and sets, it all won’t affect me.

Xia Yan: Sure enough, the transmission of data on this wristband has problems.

As if he hadn’t heard Lu Jinghe’s and Mo Yi’s dialogue, only after Xia Yan had finished with the work in his hands did he greet Lu Jinghe.

Xia Yan: You came pretty early.

Xia Yan: Why are you dressed so formally? NXX doesn’t have formalwear work requirements, right.

Lu Jinghe: I’m about to go hold a board meeting at the company – just taking the time to come to the base first to check some materials.

Mo Yi: There are results on the wristband inspection?

Xia Yan: Mhmm. Based on the hardware, the wristband we got from Wang Han doesn’t have any differences from typical health wristbands.

Xia Yan: But looking at the direction of data transmission, it doesn’t only collect in the Heirson examination centre’s cloud health system.

Xia Yan: I’m still tracking the exact recipient address, and I’ve already set up a program to crack it.

Xia Yan: Although it’s hard to estimate how much more time needs to be spent for now.

Xia Yan: If the data flows outside of borders, the time spent on inspection will increase by several times.

Mo Yi: I’ve already done comparative screening through the night on the examination centre’s examination report you gave me yesterday.

Last night, Xia Yan cracked the Heirson examination centre’s encrypted database, getting an examination report that had been partially specifically encrypted.

Mo Yi: From just the chemical experiment indicators, I can preliminarily estimate that the portion of participants with abnormal mental states is very high.

Mo Yi: But there is a very large discrepancy with the severity of their symptoms and their exact illness.

Mo Yi: I did a simple comparison to the cases of abnormal mental states already listed in “X-Note” and was able to find some coinciding people.

Lu Jinghe: So for the next step, you intend to directly contact the people in the cases and investigate their relationship to Heirson?

Mo Yi: That’s right. If we consider Mu Ziyou as a single piece of evidence, we might be able to find more illness cases.

Xia Yan: Lu Jinghe, you… ss…

Xia Yan stood up from in front of the computer, and was about to walk towards Lu Jinghe when he suddenly clutched at his left waist and sucked in a breath.

Lu Jinghe: What happened to you?

Mo Yi: …

Xia Yan: I’m fine, I’m fine. I pulled a muscle from suddenly standing after sitting for a long time.

As he spoke, Xia Yan took out a subdivided medicine container, held up a cup, and ate two pills.

Mo Yi: I saw you eating this medicine last night. What does it treat?

Xia Yan: Medicine? Oh, you’re talking about this?

Xia Yan waved the medicine container.

Xia Yan: This isn’t medicine to treat illnesses. It’s used to wake me up – a Ministry of Security secret formula.

Xia Yan: Agents are also normal people; we’ll also get tired if we haven’t slept all night.

Mo Yi: …

Lu Jinghe: Could you give me two pills? I slept late yesterday, and if I fall asleep at the board meeting later, I’m afraid I’ll get on the news again.

Xia Yan: I can let you eat some, but I can’t let you take the medicine away.

Xia Yan: Who knows if you’ll take it to Pax Pharmaceuticals to analyze the formula and mass produce it? Then I’ll have leaked its secrets.

Lu Jinghe: Aiya, you saw through me. Then I won’t randomly eat those medicines.

Lu Jinghe’s words were said meaningfully, and he also specifically shot a glance at Xia Yan’s medicine container at the end.

Xia Yan: How about you talk about the investigation progress on your side of things.

Lu Jinghe: With Heirson manufacturing illegal medications, Qin Shan wouldn’t be the only person in the know in the entire company.

Lu Jinghe: The backbones of the company, his aides, would probably know.

Lu Jinghe: It’s very hard for Qin Shan to regain consciousness now. I plan to start by checking on the people around him.

Lu Jinghe: And I also have an initial direction regarding exactly how Qin Shan was “poisoned”.

Lu Jinghe took out his phone and displayed a news article on its screen.

Mo Yi: The incident of Heirson staff members jumping from a building?

Lu Jinghe: Correct. A few years ago, news on Heirson factory staff committing suicide due to unbearable work pressure were revealed, one after another, online.

Lu Jinghe: But it seems like it was all heavy thunder with little rainfall. After the news passed its peak, no one ever mentioned it again.

Lu Jinghe: Zuo Ran’s been tracking the Xu Ping case this whole time. Xu Ping was also a Heirson staff member, and he also committed suicide.

Lu Jinghe: Then could there also be something strange about Heirson’s suicide cases from before?

Lu Jinghe: I came to the base because I wanted to check if I could find a list of names on related staff members.

Xia Yan: Speaking of which, we don’t know how the investigation on Zuo Ran’s side is going.

Just as the sound of Xia Yan’s voice fell, the three people took their phones with unplanned, identical timing and opened the chat screen…

--

City Police Station

Today morning, I came with Zuo Ran to the city police station. Yan Wei was still dealing with official business, so he had us wait a bit for him in the office.

MC: I looked through the briefing that Leader Yan sent on my way here.

MC: Xunye’s boss, Zhang Zhian, collaborated with others to rob armored vehicles in non-local areas 15 years ago.

MC: It was also 15 years ago that he fled to Stellis City. After that, the name “Zhang Zhian” disappeared, and it was replaced with “Qing Zhian”.

MC: The person who created a fake identity was called Gu Wei.

Zuo Ran: This Gu Wei is the deceased husband of Chen Hanzhang, and the founder of Wiley Financial.

MC: Deceased husband?

I had never paid attention to Chen Hanzhang’s marriage status, so it was somewhat surprising when being brought up now. I was just about to ask Zuo Ran when my phone suddenly vibrated several times in succession.

MC: What’s the matter…

I turned on my phone and took a look – Xia Yan, Mo Yi, and Lu Jinghe had sent messages to me individually.

Zuo Ran: What is it, have you encountered an issue?

MC: No, it’s just that the three of them all sent messages, asking me how the investigation process was going.

Zuo Ran: …

MC: Weird, they could’ve just directly asked in the group chat, so why’d they send messages individually.

I held up my phone and directly responded to the three of them in the NXX group chat.

--

[MC]: Morning everyone.

[Xia Yan]: Morning, have you eaten breakfast?

[Mo Yi]: Good morning. Are you already working?

[Lu Jinghe]: Morning, jiejie, where are you right now?

>I ate breakfast >I’m already working >I’m at the police station

[MC]: Of course I’ve eaten breakfast – Lawyer Zuo specially made it for me.

[Xia Yan]: So it looks like you ate breakfast on the way? That’s not too good.

[Mo Yi]: Mhmm, I agree about that.

[Lu Jinghe]: If you said earlier that you would be eating on the way, I could’ve had the chef at my place make some and sent it over to you.

[Zuo Ran]: The next time you want to know about the investigation progress, then directly ask in the group chat, so communication will be more efficient.

 >I ate breakfast >I’m already working >I’m at the police station

[MC]: Mhmm! I’ve already started work. Lawyer Zuo and I came to meet an important witness.

[Mo Yi]: Witness? Looks like Xu Ping’s package isn’t that easy to get.

[Xia Yan]: Do side issues keep coming up?

[Lu Jinghe]: Can you confirm that package is in Xu Ping’s hands? Don’t get deceived.

[Zuo Ran]: The next time you want to know about the investigation progress, then directly ask in the group chat, so communication will be more efficient.

  >I ate breakfast >I’m already working >I’m at the police station

[MC]: I’m with Lawyer Zuo at the city station – there’s an important witness we need to meet.

[Lu Jinghe]: Going to the police station this early? You’re working way too hard.

[Xia Yan]: Is your work schedule really reasonable? You got back that late yesterday, and you’re running around so early today.

[Mo Yi]: If you stayed at the base to organize data, you might have been able to relax more.

[Zuo Ran]: The next time you want to know about the investigation progress, then directly ask in the group chat, so communication will be more efficient.

>Case progress

[MC]: Since you were all asking about the case progress, I’ll just tell you all together rather than responding to you all one by one.

[MC]: Xu Ping’s package really is with that person called Zhao Fei, but he refuses to directly give it to us.

[MC]: We’re investigating a case related to illegal drugs. After we figure it out, we should be able to get the package.

[Zuo Ran]: There is an account record of Heirson raw materials in the package – it’s very important evidence.

>Ask about everyone’s progress

[MC]: Has everyone’s investigations been smooth?

[Xia Yan]: Of course it’s been smooth. I’ll tell you about the battle results after you return!

[Mo Yi]: It has been very productive, but the upcoming investigation will require your assistance.

[Lu Jinghe]: I’ve noticed something new. I’ll update you on the info after you’re done working.

>Leader Yan has come >NXX is lacking in manpower

[MC]: Ah, Leader Yan is here, let’s chat later.

[MC]: Lawyer Zuo and I will head off first to meet the witness.

[Mo Yi]: I hope it goes smoothly.

[Xia Yan]: You absolutely must not work too hard – pay attention to your health.

[Lu Jinghe]: Jiejie, remember to give me a call if you need me to help anywhere.

[Zuo Ran]: We’ll head off first. Leave a message if you all have something to say.

 >Leader Yan has come >NXX is lacking in manpower

[MC]: Everyone’s work is quite saturated. I seriously think we need new people.

[Mo Yi]: It’s not just anyone who has the qualifications to join NXX. I’d rather we lack than have shoddy options.

[Xia Yan]: I think it’s fine. We can absolutely deal with the work amount we have now.

[Lu Jinghe]: As long as we schedule it reasonably, the people we have now is sufficient. Jiejie, don’t worry.

[Zuo Ran]: Leader Yan is here, so we’re going to go meet the witness. Leave a message if you all have something to say.

--

MC: Morning, Leader Yan.

Yan Wei: You two have arrived – you’ve worked hard.

Yan Wei, who had arrived at the office, had an expression full of weariness – he’d probably been dealing with cases the whole night at the police station without resting.

Zuo Ran: You just finished a surprise interrogation?

Yan Wei: We’d finished interrogating the person a long while ago, but while suspects can sleep, the police cannot.

Yan Wei: Time’s tight. I’ll tell you both about Qing Zhian’s situation first.

Yan Wei: Beyond our expectations, he was cooperative. Too bad that he doesn’t know much – he’s likely just a peripheral person in Chen Hanzhang’s gang.

Yan Wei: Plus… Zuo Ran, have you heard of the “Tiger’s Accomplice Ghost”?

[aspiestvmusings]

WV 2: QUESTIONS

The things that were never fully explained or answered on the show.

Some will be answered/revealed in future MCU projects, but some might forever remain a mystery. 

QUESTIONS THE SHOW NEVER FULLY ANSWERED FOR ME, SO I “ANSWERED” THEM MYSELF:

                             *************************

BEEKEEPER: 

What happened to the beekeeper from ep 2? Did he become one of the characters on the sitcom? Was he thrown out of the hex like Monica? Did he get erased from existence? Was re has “rewind” aka went back to the sewers & has been looking for a way out ever since? Is it possible that she turned him into a poster in the library...seen when Visions enter the library for their “word battle”? (because this is the only bee reference I’ve noticed & that poster was not there during the ep 2 neighborhood watch meeting, so...) Did he turn into the ice-cream guy in ep 3? 

                             *************************

MISSING PERSON: 

Who was the missing witness protection person Jimmy was searching for? Why did he or anyone else mention him again? Did the “sitcom case” take priority or what? Did he see the person on the show, but never mention it..to others/viewers...because he has to keep their identity a secret? Did we never see the person?

Unless it’s random...just to get the story starting, I see three most likely options:

a) Ralph Boehner - he is an actor or his new identity is an actor. Is he a skrull? (people keep saying he cant be the witness protection person, cause the headshot indicates he’s an actor & when you’re “in hiding” you don’t get assigned a cover/alias where you go out & be visible like actors on auditions. But... that headshot was old...of younger “Ralph”, so I’d say still possible & his cover-story is that he was an actor, but failed, and he doesn’t do that anymore)

b) mailman - he seemed sketchy to me til the end. Is he a skrull? Is he the witness?

c) “Vision” or “Wanda” - it was just one of Hayward’s tricks....to have  a reason to set up the camp  & all that. Hence why Jimmy couldn’t find any info on him...why no-one he contacted knew anything.

                             *************************

WV DOESN’T EXIST: 

What was the “memory loss” of those two cops & the missing persons relatives/associted all about? As Monica put it: why did these others people have no memory of WV or the missing person, but she & Jimmy did? Who & how was controlling those people or why didn’t they remember? (the cops thought the place is EastView, & a place like WestView does not exist. And others thought that the person X from witness protection does not exist even if he was supposed to be their “family member”) Why did some remember & some not? Everyone on the base seemed to be aware of the place, but pehaps it was somehow erased from everyone elses memory and/or existence?

Is it some sort of memory loss? Brainwashing? Wanda’s/someones mind-controlling? Something else? Agatha’s doing? Maybe she erased their memories/made them mix up things when she arrived to the hex & wanted time to investigate on her own before others arrived?

                             *************************

FIETRO: 

Fietro is Ralph, Agnes husband? The house is his, Agatha just took over & made him move to the “man-cave attick”? But who is this Ralph anyway? Does that headshot indicate he’s an actor? And that he was just cast in a role...much like Trevor Slattery was in IM3 (I personally loved that twist...maybe cause I love Ben Kingsley!). But perhaps there is more to him...than just a joke name? Or does he have that headshot cause he’s the witness protection person? Is his cover-story that he’s a failed actor (who has old headshots of himself,  but doesn’t act anymore)? 

                             *************************

THE NOSY NEIGHBOUR: 

What’s that gonna be like? What will Ralph think of this stranger living in his house, calling him her husband... Did Wanda trap her into the same house & role? Did she cast that spell correctly - will it work after hex is gone (based on her quick learning curve I'd say yes...the made sure the role extended also outside the hex). How will the townspeople react to her? Will they recognize her as an outsider... if she really did come there only after Wanda created the hex? Or are they only mad at Wanda & see Agnes as their hero? Will they remember the events of WV anomaly...or not? Based on Wanda’s promise “no one will bother you”, I’d say everyone will just remember Agatha as the nosy neighbour Agnes & no-one will know/remember seeing her fly & do witchy stuff?

How will that work? Were the peoples memories not wiped, so they know/remember that they saw this person fight Wanda, saw her powers? Will they know she's  witch, even if one "locked inside a character"? Will they then see her as their hero, freeing them from Wanda & try to free her from this "punishment"? Is there a witch among them who will try this? Will they go look for someone who could do that?  Does the line "no one will bother you" mean that everyone will act as if she is Agnes & that's how it'll work. And where will "Agnes" live? And what will she do? 

Will Jimmy & Monica handle that side? Giving her a "fake identity" (Is Agatha the missing witness protection person that no ones ever heard of? And Jimmy's search was a scene cut from the future, trandsported to the past/present?) Cause unless  Monica & Jimmy handle that side it's just gonna be weird...a 400-year-old witch with no ID just showing up in a random guys house climing she's the wife & "moving in" just like that...

But...since she seems to known a lot about the book & darkness then I’d say Wanda needs to consult her at some point. Or...since the broach was still part of her outfit...perhaps it serves as a key to help break Wanda’s spell and set her free. Maybe she’ll get help from someone?

                             *************************

AGATHA’S BROACH: 

When Wanda turns Agatha into "Agnes, the nosy neighbour" to play the role...forever, why does she not change her broach/why does the broach not change along with the rest of her outfit? Did she decide to not change it or did something prevent it from doing so? It's the broach Agatha took from her mom (a wicth) after killing her, it's the one she's worn throughout her stay in Westview.

                             *************************

AGATHA’S ARRIVAL: 

IF Agatha told the story correctly & she arrived to WC after Wanda created the hex...cause she sensed the magic, then how did no other witch seem to sense it & why was she able to enter the hex and do it without it altering her mind? Why exactly did the hex not affect Agatha in that way? How Was Agatha able to come there & bring her book with her?

When did she set up the secret witch-cave in the basement? Was it just an illusion...created as a show for Wanda? Or did she do all that during the frist episodes/days? Or was the basement real & already there? In that case...whose house is it & what’s that all about?

                             *************************

HOW DID AGATHA KNOW SO MUCH ABOUT WANDA? 

She seemed to know certain details. Were those all public knowledge (death of her brother, etc) and hence she could access the info? Did she “see” it through Wanda’s dreams & nightmares...that every person in the city was “watching in their heads”? Or did she use some kind of magic or tricks? Or have some ..sources? 

Though she seemed to know some details she was also unaware about many others, so...IDK. Possible that she knew of the bits that were public knowledge... from news, newspaper articles...

                             *************************

THE BUNNY: 

Was the purring & insect/bird eating just one of Agatha’s illusions/tricks, or is there more to that cerature? If it wasn’t just your regula pet then my money is on it being a Flerken (Goose...because Scratchy!)...which would make either Agatha and/or Ralph a skrull...in disguise. Or some sort of familiar or scary monster...turned into a bunny by Agatha. Cause no way that’s a regular pet bunny... it eats insects/birds! 

PS. The creators have confirmed that there were plans for the rabbit. There was a scene shot that revealed its true identity. The bunny was supposed to turn into a demon. But that scene was cut...for reasons. 

                             *************************

SKRULLS: 

OK...we got one more skrull revealed (one of the FBI is a skrull) in WV. We got two in FFH...which happens 8 months from now in MCU. Who else?

But are/were there more...and we just don’t yet?

                             *************************

MAILMAN/DELIVERY GUY?

What was really up with the pizza-delivery-guy turned into messenger (aka Wanda’s script csting her in several roles & him doing three jobs at once, being always on the move, never getting to rest - mailman, courier, delivery guy...for different companies)

I do not know if the mailman is also Jimmy's witness protection person (a courier/pizza delivery person might be a nice low-key job they would set up for such person?], but it does seem that Wanda cast her in all "delivery" roles. So he was pulling tripple-duty: mailman, courier... so he was exhausted, because he was always delivering something somewhere. Working many jobs at once. But... mostly I think the mailman was one of the chracters on a loop. While the people at the edge of the city were on a short loop...repeating the one move over & over, he seems to have been on a wide range loop. He was circling the town all the time. 

But... mostly I think the mailman was one of the chracters on a loop. While the people at the edge of the city were on a short loop...repeating the one move over & over, he seems to have been on a wide range loop. He was circling the town all the time. But mostly, his lines were on the loop. In the final episode he repeats his very first line. Meaning he was fed only like 5 lines of dialogue and after each was used once, he started from the beginning again. This is why he says "Don't shoot, I'm just the messenger" in ep 2 & again in ep 9.

                             *************************

DOTTIE: 

Was Dottie a red herring presented to the viewers in reality & MCU reality? By shows creators for us & by Agatha for Wanda and those watching Wanda’s broadcast? Was Agatha just trying to mess with Wanda, draw direction  away from herself by pointing to someone? Cause she claimed Dottie is the key to everything in WV? When she wasnt...based on what we learned. Was she really just used as a misdirection by Agatha...to fool Wanda (and us)? 

Based on the Season Finale it seems she was just a misdirection? But perhaps there is a reason that she seemed to be the one & only WV person, who after being freed from the mind-control didn’t attck Wanda right away, but instead tried to “bargain” - she was just asking to be able to hug her daughter. She wasn’t afraid of her like the rest - she even suggested their kids could become friends... She seemed to be the only one of “main cast”, who somewhat understood her. Why? Only other person who did was Monica - other superpowered individual who had just experienced loss & was grieving. Is this was connects Dottie with Wanda? Is this the reason she tries to talk it out first? 

I found it kind of interesing & weird that when they identified Phil Jones (the piano guy) as Harold Proctor they did not automatically identify Dottie (the wife, Sarah), too? Cause they put Jones info on the board, but Doddie does not get any identification. Why/How? Did they not think of at first assuming that "couples stay together", so first to check the identified peoples family members? Or did they try to do that, and in some cases it turned out to be not helpfull? Meaning that in some cases couple/familys were not kept together [would not fit Wanda's sitcome fantasy world as perfectly?] I just found it so strange.

  I do think the identification data was kept from the board for one reason only... to have that Agnes/Agatha reveal be "surprising" to regular viewers. because comic fans & TV-viewer detectives could sense that twist coing, but regular viewers probably could not.

                             *************************

DARCY: 

Where did Darcy really go at the end? Why did Darcy actually not stick around after hitting Hayward with the car? What is she really doing? Is she one of the people who are actually skrulls? Was she missing in the end just because they tried to keep the cast to minimum, so room for “side characters” cause so mjuch was hapening? Or is there a plot reason?

Yes, this was the result of real-life scheduling issue...due to covid. But...will they also write it in as something more/other in a future MCU project? Claiming she left early for a bigger reason?

                             *************************

HAYWARD’S PLAN:

What was Hayward & SWORD really up to? In the past few years he'd changed the focus to creating/buiding sentient weapons instead of just observing. What else were they building besides "new vision"? That hangar could fit a whole spaceship or more... And why does it seem that Hayward got his hands on some Stark tech (or something similar), considering the triangular "stark reactor" on his re-built Visions forehead. How did he get his hands on all this tech? Did Stark trust Rhodey, & Firy, who trusted military & Maria & SWORD, and hence certain things were made available to them? And who works for Hayward when they were able to re-build Vision in week (from parts to whole, paintjob done, arc reactor added to head...), cause someone who knows their stuff must work for him. Who, how? Who is the "scientist" who connected that "stark reactor" to re-constructed Vision's head...in a way that it works?

  Why do some viewers keep saying that Hayward shooting the kids came out of nowhere, and was like turning the helper to a villain in that moment? Um... can a story really be interpreted in so very different ways or did they miss something? The dude tried to use a "missile" on them already in episode 5! His goal might've been to get Wanda, but the target was not alone. In that specific scene the twins are right by her side.

  Hayward is not the good guy, because he planned this all along, he tricked Wanda & the others. He lied about things, he edited footage to manipulate facts. (yes, Wanda did the same with her broadcast, I know & understand). He had his own secret agenda & he manipulated Wanda, using her grief (he admits he knows what state she is in) to manipulate her to bring Vision back online/to life. He put on a show for Wanda & tried to get her to "feel" to get her to use her power to power up his new weapon. When she doesn't do so, he has to find new ways to get her to use her powers to get what he wants. And in doing all this he goes against Sokovia accords & Vision's will. 

Sure, part of his behaviour seem to come from fear (about the threats that universe hass seen) & desperation regarding the chaos the world had been past years, but his motivation is made cler pretty early on - he wants that pat on the shoulder from big boss. He will not stop at anything to create a sentient weapon, manipulate info/date...etc. His manipulation directly lead to the hex events - he put those ideas into Wanda’s head...but he was willing to take the risk. Just like with White Vision...he was aware they might not be able to control him (still under our control? yes, still ours) but he wanted his weapon so bad he was willing to risk it...knowing that Wanda’s powers often backfire & cause trouble. 

                             *************************

THE STORK 

Who caused the glitches during Wanda's pregnancy & while she was giving birth? Was it Wanda (her subconcious...her losing control of the illusion for a moment)? Was it Agatha trying to mess up things? Was it (partially) the kids already presenting their powers...from the womb? Was it the secret big bad that was never introduced within the show (Agatha's partner/master)? 

If we assume that the red she tried to use to make the stork disappear represents her magic then it not working suggests that it was the kids behind it, because she cannot control the kids. (though she probably could't control Agatha's "messing up everything" magic either)

                             *************************

FOR THE KIDS: 

“This is all for the kids...” I do not think this had anything to do with Wanda’s kids. After the finale it seems to me that those chants were all about the kids trapped in their bedrooms... kept away from their loved ones. The kids Wanda put in isolation/quarantine...for the duration of her sitcom (minus letting then out for Halloween..) 

The “actors” were just begging her to let them see their kids. They were playing their roles, and doing it all for their kids. Since she didn’t cast any other kids, but everyone asked about chid characters she created two...whote the parts for her twins to enter the story. To me this is confirmed by “Dottie’s” plea to Wanda..

But for Wanda’s mind it translated to a different message, too, because Agatha wanted to plant ideas in her head. So while the “cast” was taling about doing it for their kids, Wanda got the idea of kids of her own thanks to Agatha’s meddling and planting those ideas into her head (she’s like a marketing department... making her buy into the ideas she planted in her head thoughout the show...to write them into next episodes...)

                             *************************

VISION AT SWORD

How & why was he there, not in Wakanda or some Avengers or Stark facility? 

I do think that why he was there makes sense. Vision died in Wakanda during the Thanos Snap battle. Tony was in space then...and would not return for the next 3 months. Bruce & all other Avengers were defeated & the world as a whole was in ruins & in chaos.

  IF the Sokovia accords dicdated that the Visions body (vibranium) belongs to US government, then that is how & why he went to SWORD right away. But it is possible that initially he stayed in Wakanda (til Tony's return) or was kept somewhere else. But even though Tony & Avengers were not always agreeing with the government, then SWORD was lead by Monica's mother Maria back then, so it is possible they trusted her, cause Fury trusted her. That's the first reason why it makes sense he wold be kept there.

  I do think that since Tony & Avengers considered him as their friend, and "human", and he had a lliving will, and they knew that Wanda was his next of kin, and she had been dusted, then that is why they did not "bury" Vision. It was not their decision. It makes sense they would keep him hidden until Wanda's return, who would give him a proper burial when she'd return. Because the team, together & seprately were all quietly working on solutions how to undo the snap...

Also...since they considered Vision "human", then I dont think any of them wanted to keep his body in ther home or office (why he wasnt in Tony's garage or at the Avengers HQ probably). Because bad guys would probably come looking for the 3 billion dollars worth vibranium there first & they probably did not have the energy to deal with that. Also...they might have decided to not simply bury the vibranium simply because of the worth. Cause they did not want some bad guys dig him up & sell him to parts...for the vibranium.

  There are several options why he was at SWORD. But I think it makes more sense that Tony & co did not bury him (not their decision..it was Wanda's & Vision's decision...and we do not know what exactly his will said about that). It also makes perfect sense why they did not keep him at Avengers HQ. Because based on Hayward's comments he wasn't moved there after Endgame battle & destruction of the headquarters, but had been there all this time. I’m prerty sure Tony & co honoured Vision’s wishes not to be brough back to life AND to leave the funeral for the “widow” to arrange...since they all were hoping for & working for the return of the blipped...

                             *************************

WHAT WAS HAYWARD TRACKING INSIDE THE HEX?

He was tracking Vision & vibranium all along. He might not have known how there was a Vision in the hex, when he had the actual vibranium in his lab, but he saw a Vision, and since 6 million worth of vibranium is better than 3 million worth of vibranium, and 2 sentient weapons is better than one (he probably was not aware that they weren't completely real?). Since Wanda "created" an actual body made of vibranium, wires, blood, bones... it was possible to track it. And I guess Hayward did bring the best to the scene, cause Darcy figured out a way to see inside the hex (discovered the broadcast), but other experts in that "clowncar"seemed to have figured out things, too.

                             *************************

WHITE! VISION: 

What happened to White Vision? Where did he go (when he flew off)?  This is the original Vision - the one made of vibranium, a mix of Jarvis + Ultron + Tony + Bruce + other elements....minus teh mind stone. The one Wanda fell in love with. He has the physical body, he has the memories. He had his memories, but could not access the file...until Hex Vision unlocked access to that file & those memories. He remembers everything...up until Thanos. The only part missing is the Mind Stone...but as we learned in A3... he can survive without it, cause theres still a lot of “him” left without it. But he is probably still missing one element...the emotional connection w. Wanda (”soul”), hence I don’t see WV reuniting right away in next fim/project. What is he now? He recognized that he is (a) Vision & he, too, is the real one.

Did all the data coming in at once just overload his operating system & he needed to cool down? Did he go to find answers to Wakanda...where the vibranium in his is from, where he “died”, where he remembers Shuri separating the differents parts of him....to regain the missing bits...)? Did he go on a search for a mind stone? Did he still have that command “destroy Vision & Wanda” on his to do list Hayward gave him...and he went to destroy...himself? Did getting his memories back make him realize that if he wants to re-connect to Wanda, he needs the mindstone? Because while the team theorized in A3 that he can exist without it, I kinda think that Wanda & Vision connected “through” their shared element...the mind stone. I do not know if it has to be physically on his forehead. Maybe the “energy” from the piece inside Wanda will be enough? But...I do think that just like with the disassembled Vision at SWORD Wanda can not feel the White Vision...hence they had him leave, not stick around. 

Based on his eyes changing from robot to human after he gets his memories back I’d say he is free of SWORDS control. This is why I think he just went to search for the truth/answers. Because... when Hex Vision wanted answers, he went to look for them from the “outside world” & to do that he had to go past an OCTAGON - the “stop” sign before the hex border. And the Colourless Vision flew through an OCTAGON shaped glass ceiling to get out of there. Hayward said “He really wants out, doesn’t he?” when Hex Vision was trying to break free from Hex & “Wanda’s control” to find answers and to help people. I think this is exactly what this new version of Vision did. And the similar shape as an “exit point” symbolises this. “I want to break free” was the song paying inside his head. 

My main guesses are:

a) this Vision either went to Wakanda...where the vibranium his body is made of is from...and where he died... and since Shuri is back after the Blip, he might go for his “scan”... cause Shuri can provide him with more answer on himself. 99% 

b) that he followed the command from Hayward & since he know knew who he was (I am Vision), he destroyed himself. He now knows that he is Vision (he realized that he is Vision...which is more than original Vision did. His identity at first was I am...), so he is self aware...  0,1% possibility

c) or other options are that he just needed time to process everything and/or his returned memories told him he must leave Wanda time to go through some things... Too much data process at once, system overload...when Hex Vision overflooded him with all the memories...

I am still unsure how to read the moment where Hex Vision awakens White Vision... was he just giving him access to the secret memory dat/files or was he also trnsfering his own memories with Wanda/his soul into the version he knew would remain while he would be gone?

But if we are to believe that just like we the MVU universe doesn’t know about him until months later (Spidey 3, Dr. Strange 2), then most likely answer is Wakanda.

                             *************************

THE TWINS: 

What is the origin of Wanda’s kids really? We saw that she actually did create vibranium for Hex Vision’s body. Cause the two Vision were equal in every way & SWORD tracked two vibranium objects, so...he is a copy of the original in a way. So she can create things from “nothing” (unless it’s actually not nothing, and she’s pulling the materilas from somewhere or something... cause even in MCU laws of physics should exists/apply?) So did she create the kids from “nothing”? Or are the kids real in a way that 50% of their origin comes from Vision. We know Vision can take human form. We know this Hex Version had maybe even more human in him (of blood and bone) than original? And...we saw Vision CRY. He can cry, so if he is able to produce tears...whose to say he can’t produce other bodily fluids? To get technical about it. Maybe in this fictional superhero world things that are impossible in real world aren’t so? Maybe “robots” can evolve to be able to actually have offspring...even if said robots themselves are confused about how that’s possible (ep 3)?

But...then we have Wanda thanking the kids for choosing her as their mom &  that post end scredits scene with SW reading the darkhold & hearing her kids cal her for help. Was it her memory? Was is a dream? Were they actually calling for her help..cause they’re stuck..somewhere (other dimension?) This, along with all the devil/nightmare etc references throughout WV seems to hint towards the MCU taking more than just loose idea from the comics. Maybe Wanda did...knowingly or unknowingly use "Devil’s” soul to create her kids? Cause... Fietro was under Agatha’s control, and she knows the history, so why would Fietro make those “demon spawn” references otherwise? I’m thinking the MCU & MOM might go that route...that this is how they were created...

But... I do think that even if this is the route MCU takes (copying comics), the end scene of WV showed something very important. Wanda, Vision, Billy, Tommy...they became a family. And if they are not actually biological offspring of Wanda & Vision, then that end scene showed us exactly what makes a family, and a parent. Who did the kids call mom & dad? = Wanda & Vision. Because these are the two people, who are their parents, because biology doesn’t make one a parent. 

And we saw Wanda seeing what a wonderful dad Vision was. From the “proud Papay-a” joke...til the “I’m proud of you” & good night kiss... His journey was complete - he was experiencing the loss of  loved one (throwback to their old conversation on grief)

                             *************************

THE TWINS - POST CREDITS: 

Where are the kids? What did Wanda hear in the end credits scene? Is it her nightmare? Is it her “imagination”? Is it real & the boys are “trapped” somewhere & actually calling for her & she can sense them...from another place & time (whoi took them & where are they in that case)? Is she trying to bring them back/re-create them...but this time without the restrictions of the hex (get the spell right, not cast a flawed one that had limitations)

                             *************************

HEX! VISION - FATE: 

If the boys are “alive” then what happened to the Hex Vision? Does he, too, exist somewhere is some form? Is he trapped somewhere, too? Or...is he now just a memory...without a physical form (until she re-creates him, again, too...when she’s learned how to do it without flaws like tying his existence to a dome)?

                             *************************

DR. STRANGE?: 

Where was Dr. Strange during the events of WandaVision? If Agatha could sense the hex/spells, then why & how could Strange not? Why was he not there? Why wasn’t he monitoring the situation? Or...if he was (just not shown to us yet) then I hope we get his POV on the situation. Or was Wanda somehow blocking him from sensing the anomaly and/or her? (then we have to wonder how Agatha sensed it or is she sensed it at all..cause how did she enter the hex & remain herself & uncontrolled? - can & does that happen/apply only to “superpowered beings”?) Cause I was surprised that we did not get a direct reference to him (no post credits cameo) considering his role in MCU... And I cannot wait for it to be explained in MOM.

Was he aware of the events? Was he busy with bigger issues and hence didn’t intervene? Did he monitor the situation from afar? Did he not intervene for a purpose (cause he looked further into future when he still had the time stone & knew how it ends etc)..because he needed this to play out..just like he needed Endgame events to play out? Perhaps he was playing the long game, and did not deal with it, because he needed Wanda to become the Scarlet Witch.... a more powerful being that he is? Pehaps he is aware that he needs her on his team to fight aginst a threat he alone cannot win against? So he had to let everything play out as it did...for Wanda to accept her true identity & become SW?

                             *************************

COTTAGE - END CREDITS: 

What is that cottage about? Is it supoosed to be more like Thanos retiring to countryside after “doing the universe a huge favor”? Or more like the end of 2008 Hulk film, when HUlk goes to a cottage in the middle of nowhere to learn to control his power (anger)? Or is it more like a reference to Evil Dead and the cotttage in the forest with a “dark” book inside. 

The heroes & villains in superhero stories always end up living in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, kind of “off grid” after “the big event” - Hulk at the end of 2008 Hulk film, Thanos after his Snap, Tony after losing to Thanos, but getting Pepper (and Morgan) back.... and now Wanda after Westview...

Is this supposed to be the mountains from the comics? Is this supposed to be Wandas MCU homeland? Or is this suppsoed to just represent a secluded location where she learns about herself, her abilities, etc?

                             *************************

WANDA’S AWARENESS: 

When did Wanda start to realize what she’d done & when did she become fully aware? This was not fully answered/exlained, but based on everything I’d say the turn happened in ep 3 with birth of twins + mention of reality + throwing the outsider out. Though she censored the broadcast already in ep 2 & she & Vision  both started to wonder why they can’t remember things in ep 1 already, I thought that both the plot and the commercials suggested the turn happened then. She loses control of some of the things as the birth takes a lot of energy from her. Then she hears a reference to past & reality, and that awakens her. But I think that only after she looks at her hands in a “what have I done” way when she sees the destruction after throwing Monica out does she start putting the picture together...that she did this.

But...she does not understand or know the real effect of it on the people, and the ramification of her actions until that moment in the town square in ep 9 when Agnes has freed the cast from her mind control. Her eyes are opened to the truth only then. And the moment the truth hits her...she takes action: first she attacks herself for what she did (but since everyone feels everything she feels then by choking herself she is also choking everyone else) & she starts tearing the hex down. First attempt is interrupted...for reasons. But she sets things right: she can’t take it back, but she can stop it from going on. Even if it’s not a happy ending for everyone. For people of WV it’s just like a bad dream..when it’s over they realize none of it was real. But for her & her family.... it’s not that kind of a show (with happy ending).

She goes through the stages of grief with her take on the sitcom reality: first denial, then anger & bargaining, and in the end acceptance.

                             *************************

WANDA - MoM: 

What this story told us is that Wanda is a fast learner. And though she doesn’t have an actual teacher/guide, she learns “on the move”. Agatha reveals her secrets & trade secrets to Wanda by bragging about her knowledge & tricks... which Wanda quickly learns to use against her,

I am still unsure if they’ll go "Wanda becomes evil” or “Wanda chooses to be good” route. Will her story copy Agatha’s or will she do as she said she’ll do... that she is not like Agatha. Her mom realized she cannot be good. But Hex Vision knew she can be good & even tells her “Be good” in ep 6. And she herself, after realizing the damage she’s causing, immediately tries to fix it (taking the hex down when she is told her pain is hurting others) I can still see it going either way.

I’m not sure if she as a fast learner will be able to fight the darkness or if her maternal instinct will make her make rash decisions. Will she attempt to help her kids & cause another “accident” & hence Dr. Strange must come to save the day? Or...will she turn to him for help/he will offer his help to her? But either way...seems that MOM plot will be linked to her trying to save her kids from whereever they are trapped/bringing them back...safely (remember: Agnes hinted that there was a way to bring Vision & Kids to life in a safe way...without making their existance dependant of the hex....she will try to find out what that way is.

I kind hope she will be good... not turn full villain. Because... her origins story and whole storyarc, to me, seems done so similarly to Tony. Both considered threats & villains by many - govermńments, civilians...who they’ve unintentionally hurt. Both journeys strongly connected to loss & grief. Both carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. Tony turned his life around when he became aware of the concequences of his actions...even if he still made mistakes on the way... and I think they’re gonna go similar route with “Wanda”

But I think her role in MoM depends mainly on one thing - if MCU/Feige considers the TV show to be part of the full story, or separate. If it’s part, then IMO she won’t be the villain. definitely not intentional, and possibly even not unintentional (cause that’d be having her go through the exact same arc she did in WV). And I hope they dont follow the comics story here in detail, because that’s not surprising. If they’ll do what happened in comics after she “lost her kids”, then we know exactly whats gonna happen, but I expect to be surprised. And since MCU likes to do their own twist on the stories, not copy everything exactly as in comics, I hope we get a surprise twist here, too. Cause I’d be more impressed if they kept her on “learning to understand & control her new abilities to not make the mistakes shes made in past” route instead of repeting the same mistakes she’s already made (letting a villain mislead her). 

                             *************************

MAKE HEX SMALLER?

Why did Wanda not leave  a small hex around her family & the house...keeping the fake reality up? At least until she figured out a way to keep them alive outside?

I am not 100% sure I understood why that was. But I believe it was explained with two things mainly: Agatha’s lesson on magic that explained some things & the fear of outsiders. Agatha told her that the fake reality she created was & would always be broken & one a spell is cast it cannot be changed, so the only way was to “undo it”, because “changing” was not an option.

And secondly...next outside force like Hayward would come & try to get their hands on her creation - the millions of worth vibranium, the superpowered individuals they could turn into weapons. And..she also knew that their happy home could not be there anymore, because in the eyes of WV people she/they were the evil, so they’d turn on the mini-hex.

Also...though she created Vision & the twins (whether in their fake reality the boys were created "naturally” or she used some kind of magic... is irrelevant here) she cannot control them - they were separate of her since start, and had free will. They would not stay inside the hex & fake reality...they would search for way out... for example, because they were looking for answers...beyond the world they were restrained to...

Sure, it seemed that when Agatha freed the townspeople from Wanda’s control during the final battle & the hex was still up, they were free of her control, so it kinda seems it would’ve been possible to untangle the hex & mindcontrolling of the people from the rest? But...IDK... 

                             *************************

WANDA = “HERO OR VILLAIN”?

I think that this is another philosophical question...just like “which ship is the real one” & “which Vision is the true one?”. There is no one singular answer here. She is made of chaos AND order. She, like every human has good & bad in her. And I think seeing her as only/just either 100%r good or 100% bad means not looking at the whole picture. There is no singular “answer” here...for none of the characters. 

I think Vision was able to explain it the best to us...throughout the series. She did not intend to do this, she was not aware of doing it, and it all being subconsious...but despite that what she was doing was wrong.

The people of WV see her as evil/villain. Should they? Shoud they fear her? How & Why was no-one beside Monica able to empathize with her? Has none of them lost anyone? Was the mind-controlling worse than anything other they’ve experiences in their lives? Why did they UNINOMOUSLY turn against her? For them it was a week of “pain”, and there was an end to it. 

I can understand & “empathize” with both Wanda & people of WV. Both have suffered & been hurting. 

What she did was wrong. The people should not just forgive her right then & there and move on ike it was nothing. But if this was the final push for her to start to understand her power, then good can come of it. What happened is simply because she did not understand or know how to control her powers. She did not anticipate that by simply crying or “feeling sad” she can change reality. That her feelings affect reality essentially. Normal people when grieving sometimes lash out on people around them...she cannot do that....cause when she does it “imprisons” peoples minds and makes them her puppets...without her knowing this happens....basically.

After she became aware of it, partly, she kept the freality intact for a few reasons: she had to grant him his final wish...to grow old together, she had to finish the script/story. No one else mourned Vision, no one else “cared”. Secondly...she was not fully aware of what it did to the cast of her show (it only become obvious to her at the end). And thirdly...as Monica said: theres no knowing what will happen if they make rash decisions (what will happen to those inside & those outside the hex)...Wanda probably didn’t know either. 

IF they make her the villain, then how about this twist (not following comics) - why not make her NIGHTMARE? Because it’s “her thing”...she intentionally or intentionally gives people nightmares. Others can feel her feelings & see her nightmares... Just use the name, but change the villain.

                             *************************

WHY DID WANDA “RUN & HIDE”? 

It’s the same reason why IMO she can’t just keep the hex intact just around their dream house...because there will always be another Hayward. Another government and/or villain, who wants to use Vision and/or her (superpowered individuals) as weapons, etc. 

Especially now, when Tony is not alive anymore, and the Avengers have been “disbanded”, she could not stay & be used as a “weapon”. So she fleed, and set up her own quarantine stacation. And I truly believe that her plan was to learn to understand her powers first. She did the only thing that would not hurt innocent bystanders... she removed herself from the world. Cause her powers aren’t contained by prison walls. And until she learnbs to understand & control them being on trial or prison might make her feel strongly gain and accidentally cause the next hex event. To avoid that happening she must learn to control the powers first... 

But I do believe that either unintentionally or intentionally (cause she tries to take shortcut to get her kids back) she makes mistakes along the way. The book “overpowers” her or something... That is a possibility.

To draw parallels to our real world.... I know families who have been separated because of the current state of world and who have not been in the same house, city, country or even continent...for months. Separated by “quarantine”.

                             *************************

AGATHA’S HOUSE: 

As Billy noted in 1x07 Agatha's house is quiet & Agatha herself is quiet on the inside...meaning he cannot hear her, he cannot read her mind inside the house. And he likes being in there because elsewhere it's "noisy" (in his head...as he can read minds). We know that Wanda cannot read Agatha's thoughts & cannot control her...like she does with other WV people, but it's never explained how or why. And as Fietro/Ralph notes in 1x09 to Monica - no-one can hear her screaming... from inside the house...and I think it applies to the whole house not just to the "soundproof" man-cave. 

Meaning...he is aware that the house if protected from the outside. But how  & why is that? How did Agatha protect the house from Wanda's spell/hex? How does that all work? How was she able to presumably enter the hex (without being changed), and create a space free of the spell within the spell? How did her book help her accomplish this?

AGATHA’S BASEMENT: 

Speaking of the house... why is there a safe room (man cave) in the attick? And a witch cave in the basement? Did Agatha create both environments or were they there when she moved in? Whose hosue is this really & why are there weird rooms in there? If this is Ralph's house then why does he have those places in his house? And what happens to Agatha's items after hex goes down? (the witch books, the rabbit..)

  I do not fully understand these comics themes like magic and such. So I don't fully understand what the show is telling (this fantastical magic is a myth, not science-based to me) But...if we assume that Agatha told the truth when she said that once cast, a spell cannot be broken then, then that still does not mean that other magic cannot happen within the hex. All the  powered characters proved that - Wanda & Agnes were both able to add or change things within the hex. So this is how & why Agatha was able to put her own spell on Ralph/Fietro, and their house. This is how & why Wanda could expand the hex. It didn't erase the original spells code errors, it just added more code to the spell.

It just did not change the original spell where she re-created Vision, and tied his existence to the hex...which became the stage for their sitcom. It didn’t affect the spell connecting the existence of her family to mind-controlling the “cast” into playing the roles written for them.  

                             *************************

IT WAS AGATHA ALL ALONG: 

No, I'm not looking into the things she messed up during Wanda's sitcom filming. Instead I am looking into the similarities & differences between Agatha & Wanda. And whether Agatha is the "bad guy" or the "more neutral teacher". Cause their stories are similar, it's obvious they made them similar in many ways. In 1693 Agatha has gone & misused her powers because she doesn't understand them enough (it's left unclear if on purpose or by accident). This is essentially what Wanda does in 2023. Agatha's own mother does not believe she can be(come) good. Wanda's guide in all things (her moral concience) Vision never loses his faith in her and that even though she has misused her powers she must not have meant it, and that she can fix it ("Be good, Wanda.") Agatha, on the other hand, seems to urge her to use her chaotic powers...which, as we know, she knows all about...so she knows the issues that come along with them.

  So while in many ways she's been a teacher, and a guide, and a (grief) concellour to her during the hex, it does seem that she has only taken those roles for self gain. She is after the power, because that is how she becomes more powerful, and because she thinks she is more deserving of it that her/others. Even after she finds out that Wanda is destined to become the Scarlett Witch she manipulates her into using her magic. Her main motivator is left unclear - does she want Wanda to use her power and bring on the chaos the prohecy in the book says OR if she wants to become the SW herself. We saw that in 1693 her own mother was about the receive a "witch crown",  but Agatha drained her of her power...yet not receiving a crown herself. Now history repeats itself. She sees yet another witch get the crown instead of her.

  And part of me thinks that one part of her motivation is jealousy of these others being chosen insted of her. Though at the same time there are also references about her being just a messenger - doing the simple work for someone else (either she's a willing partner, being "blackmailled" into doing so, or used without her knowledge). She seems to want to avoid Wanda making her mistake of using powers beyond her knowledge...not repeating her mistake. She also seems to envy her cause what has taken her centuries to learn through hard work, she can do without even trying. And she also seems to at times "grieve" and want to bring someone important to her back to life, too. I get so many different and a bit conflicting readings from her. I am still unsure what her real motivation and plans are. Or what role she really played.

  Her plan is to "steal" Wanda's power. That's her goal since the start. But...first she must learn more about what it is she's encountered. Who is Wanda, what her powers are about, and so on. This is why she meddles with the sicom. She is doing everything she can to  make Wanda use/show her powers. She also sets the snowball rolling on the kids theme. For an undisclosed reason she needs to know what powers Wanda has, and if she can create things/life from nothing, and/or bring back the dead. This is why she reads her the women's magazine article & manipulates her to think about kids (the seduction techniques article, making Dottie & everyone chant "for the kids"). She, for whatever reason, wants Wanda to show her powers, and create life/kids. We're left to assume she needs to see them grow up fast, too. She kills the dog just to see if the kids will age themselves up again and to see if Wanda can/will bring back the dead. We can assume why she wants all this, but the real reason/plan is never revealed to us.

  Agatha promises a solution - how to fix the hex, and she knows Wanda is easily tricked, because of her denial & state of mind. She misleads Wanda, because unlike Wanda she knows there is no fix, because "once cast a spell cannot be changed/fixed". Agatha's behaviour is strange. At times it seems she made these mistakes herself, and is now trying to guide Wanda, to not repeat her mistake. Though for some reason she also does not explain what it is that she did, or why & how to not epeat her mistakes (in using magic you've not  mastered yet) Agatha is just like a vampire, but instead of blood she feeds on others powers. I though that in a way Billy & Tommy discussing if Uncle P. was a vampire can be considered a litte funny nod to this idea. Because she is essentially a "power-draining vampire"

Agatha was behind many of the things happening inside the hex (which itself was created by Wanda). She manipulated events to keep it going longer. She kept hinting at kids so that Wanda would create them. She "started rumours" (hinting at Dottie being the key, Monica being outsider), making Wanda question Monica, etc. She came up with tricks to make Vision more suspicious. She did everything she could to separate Wanda from others (divide & concour) - she sent Vision to look for answer from beyond (The Truth Is Out There! such a Mulder thing) She had her kick Monica out. She "hypnotized" Ralph & used him as a pupet. When everything else failed, she kidnapped her kids, and then trapped her in the basement where her powers wouldn't work. PS. The fact that Wanda fell for such trick (a villain using her mother instincts and her kids to trap her) is why I am not entirely sure that fan theories about MoM are correct. Would she let another villain trick her again...even if the Darkhold makes its reader "mad" & hence not logical at all... 

Also, I'm thinking it was Agatha who deleted the cops memories of Westview (if we assume she really did come from outside the hex then it makes sense she "met" the cops who came to investigate...)

I do think that Agatha's mother was correct - she is not good. Maybe she let the Darkhold compromise her, maybe she just chooses to be not good, because no-one saw her as such, so she started not just seeing herself as "not good"; but became such way. She discovered the hex and she (unlike Wanda, the SWORD team, Vision, townspeople) knew what had happened since the moment she arrived, yet she shared the info with no-one & didn't try to help anyone...because she had her own agenda. She constantly kept messing with the hex & events, which lead to more hurting to people. She caused the rift between Wanda & others, she made Vision go looking for answer, which lead to Wanda expanding the hex. This was Agatha's goal all along. She needed her to use her magic as much as possible, to show her what she can do, to give her evidence on who she is & what she can do (how she did this, how she was able to do this). None of it was cause she really cared for the townspeople, or Wanda, or her family. She's the bad guy...with a few good sides. But mostöy she helped because it advanced her own plan & end goal (get more magic for herself, become more powerful by making those she deemed unworthy powerless)

IMO her goal was not really to get Wanda to the moment when she lets everyone go & frees everyone and ends the “torture”, but to get what she herself was after. It doesn’t seem that she did the “therapy” sessions and all with the intentions of the townspeoples wellbeing in mind. Though she and her motives remained unclear, it seems that she did...all of the things she did...for her own personal gain. Cause how dare some baby witch with no training or studies do better than her...someone who has had to spend centuries studying to achieve even a fraction of what Wanda can do without any effort?

                             *************************

RALPH:

It seems that this house is Ralph's house, because the bills are in his name (with water/eletricity usage going way up just recently...after long low numbers...suggesting that the house was unhabited...so he was dusted & just came back). But what's up with the house? Why would he need a man cave like that, when Agnes is not really his wife & he is actualy the only person living in that house...until hex? And why does he have that weird basement? Who is he really? And what's his story really? [Or was the basement an illusion Agatha showed Wanda & it doesn't really look like this?] 

And if that's his real name, why laugh at it? Something is definitely up with "Ralph". Is he the witness protection person & that was his file...for him to learn his new identity, and not a reference that he's an actor and that's his headshot? And his powers were never explained. We're left to just assume that Agatha gave him the ability through the necklace. But we've never actually told if she can do that kind of magic. That's why I don't think he's just a random Ralph. But I don't also think he's "from multiverse". Though it is stil possible...

  There are things that suggest he's the witness protection person. And then there are things that speak against it. The funny name (or...is he an adult film actor, and hence the name?), the strange safe room in the house (unless Agatha created it & moved him there & soundproofed it, then it was already there...). The overdue waterbill (with spikes on usage in Feb & Sept-Oct 2020?...when i's supposed to be around Oct-Nov 2023...) seem also interesting. If the wrong year is an error from props, then ok. But if it's not, then this guy just took over some guys house & identity who used to live there..until 3 years ago... around the time SWORD changed their meaning...

I do think that unless they're trying to double-trick everyone & a reveal is coming in further future that he was actually the other Pietro, it's most likely that he isn't & was never meant to be. But I also think there's more to him than just some random Ralph, whose house Agatha took over just because it was next to the one Wanda created. I do think the name might be the directors nod to a character on a tv sitcom he used to be part of the cast (creators love to add little nods to people & things they know & like into their works). But putting his name + Agatha's bunny + her comment that there's no taming Agnes comments together... that's a tripple adult joke...

And, untimately, I think this character being just Ralph was supposed to be about the viewers going through the same experience as Wanda. Wanda is pretty messed up, so when a stranger shows up to her door, and claims to be her brother, she at first embraces it. Because she really wants it to be true. But slowly logic takes over, and she becomes suspicious, and questions the actual truth. For Wanda he kinda looks similar, and he has the brothers abilities. So she accepts the lie as the truth...for a second (they did the same with White Vision in ep 9...when for a moment she thought it's her Vision...because she wanted it to be true..so badly). I do think that this was one of the reasons behind this character. I do think that within this show it was always supposed to be about the veiwers being confused together with Wanda. Which...does not mean there's not more to him that'll be explored in the future. And they might still turn it into a multiverse plot twist, but for now, I think it worked the way it did. Especially since they did leave it open with all the little weird details (laughing at his own name, etc)

And it worked...we, like Wanda, wanted to believe “the lie” so badly that we convinced ourselves into believing he is Fox Quicksilver. This is why I personally loved this reveal. And I don’t get the upset. Because this works so much better with the shows theme. It shows how powerful “suggestion” is, and how easy it is to trick the human mind. 

                             *************************

AGATHA’S ACTIONS: 

If Agatha is able to free everyone from Wanda’s spell (as demonstrated in the finale), then why didn’t she do it sooner/right away?

Is it cause she didn’t fully understand what was going on soon enough? We know that Vision didn’t free everyone right away after ep 5 was because freeing them meant causing them feel pain, and Vision is all good. But what’s Agatha’s excuse/explanation? If she considers Wanda’s mind-control as wrong, then why did she not help the people if she could? Because she had her own agenda...she needed her to keep up the illusion in order to get what she wanted. And she was doing it all knowingly.

Agatha has no right to judge Wanda here. Vision & Monica do/have. People of WV can. The damage Wanda caused was an accidental byproduct of her grief (when she cries everyone feels it & cries..without her knowing...she can’t affect others emotions), but Agatha planned everything with full knowedge of what she was doing. She is the villain who seems to have good intentions. Wanda is the hero, who seems to have bad intentions. One lead by good, other by evil.

                             *************************

WANDA VS MONICA/"GERALDINE"

I think that the reason Wanda seems to be hostile towards Monica, while she seems to be determined to help her at any cost (to herself) is all about reality vs hex-ality. If you pay attention then the moments that "anger" Wanda during this sitcom freality are the ones where something from actual reality gets through to her freality. Jimmy's radio message in ep 2. The beekeeper in ep 2. Mention of Ultron in ep 3. The drones. Since Monica represents the reality that is ruining her fake reality, does not fit in, is a deviation from her script, then she is trying to edit it out. Monica is trying to connect to Wanda because of the grief connection (she has similar experience due to what happened with her mom & the blip). Wanda is also probably not completety sure she isn't on the same team as Hayward is. She might focus her anger towards her cause in her mind she represents SWORD.

  Also...some bits are making me think that Wanda sensed that there was an outsider in her dream-world. That there was an enemy among her neighbours/friends. But...she either could not identify them, or Agatha mis-directed the suspicion at others on purpose, making her mis-identify the threat. Cause what Wanda tells Geraldine before she kicks her out is actually, in reality, applies to Agatha.

Also...from production POV...the reason they had Wanda physically attack Monica, and not others is because shes the only "random" person with powers. So she's a worthy match. And they used this to set up her powers, and showcase them. Once it was decided Monica was part of the shows story, and she'd get her powers, that was it. She had to exit the hex (2x enter + 1x exit), and Wanda is basically the only one who could make that happen (throw someone out). So from that POV it was just a means to an end. The ep 7 fight was to show us & Wanda more of her powers.

                             *************************

THE STATE OF WESTVIEW: 

Did Wanda see WestView as being in ruins & people all alone & sad when she was driving through the city becase of her own mental state (when she arrive there)? Was she projecting her own feeling to others & hence saw her own feelings in others? And in reality the city was not in the state she saw it? Because based on the finale the people of WV did not seem as sad & city as much in ruins as it looked to her? Did she accidentally project her feeling on others...for real? Is this what happened? 

When the hex goes down the city is still “rusty” (boarded up houses, no shine), but the people might not have been as un happy as she perceived? We won’t know...

Was her perception accurate or incorrect?  Not answered, really...

                              *************************

THE AEROSPACE ENGINEER?

Though it seems that the engineer friend was the lady she met up with, who brough Monica the vehicle to enter the hex, I am still a bit unsure about her not being just the messenger, because Monica originally says “guy”...which kinda hints towards a male. So that, to me, was also left a bit open ended...

JIMMY’S FRIEND CLIFF?

Who is this other FBI agent Ciff who Jimmy calls to help. Who is this? I don’t think it’s anyone important. I just think that this is yet another meta joke. He is calling Cliff Hanger. #Cliffhanger lol 

THE END 

[vaguely-concerned]

The Mandalorian Fic -- And we are kind to snails

Gen, 3700 words. Story time on the Razor Crest! It was obviously way too early to introduce the kid to combat training, but there were other ways to prepare a child for the world, surely.

If that meant Din was occasionally stuck trying to imitate animal calls for the enjoyment and edification of a delighted and indefatigable one-person audience, so be it.

Can also be found here on AO3

--------------------------

Din had, he was slowly becoming aware, created a monster.

“Da-wah,” the baby announced, reaching his arms out to be picked up and dropping the holodisc next to him in Din’s lap once he was safely positioned.

“...oh,” Din said faintly, slumping back a little in the pilot’s chair as he kept the baby steady with one hand. “Again?”

The baby turned wide expectant eyes on him, and Din — who had in fact been planning to troubleshoot the concerning noise one of the engines had been making the last time they took off — sighed. Well, he supposed that would be easier to get done uninterrupted once the baby was asleep anyway.

“Right, again,” Din agreed, and went to activate the ship’s holoprojector on the dashboard before sliding the disc in for the second time that day.

The reading had been a bit of a shot in the dark. It was obviously way too early to introduce the kid to combat training and he may never be suited for it in a way Din would be able to teach him, even in maturity — and for all Din knew about the kid’s species that might not even be within his own lifetime, it didn’t seem worth holding his breath on this one. There were other ways to prepare a child for the world, though, surely. It was probably a bit on the premature side for engineering too, since the kid still had a marked tendency to put everything he could pick up into his mouth at least once, which ruled out most of Din’s own expertise.

He’d mulled it over for a few days until a half-buried memory of his parents reading to him had presented itself for consideration. He no longer recalled what exactly they’d read — only the feeling of sitting nestled between them, his mother’s fingers running through his hair, the way his father’s voice had taken on a specific cadence when he read aloud. That they would sometimes switch off doing the voices for the dialogue so it became almost like a real conversation.

It was… well. He still remembered some of it.

Recognizing in himself no great talent for acting Din had elected to aim for something more practical, at least to begin with. In the end he’d chosen something he hoped would be both suitable for a kid and something useful to teach him and gotten, among a few other things, a holodisc that included information on and pictures of a great variety of animals from around the galaxy. Despite the breezy assurances of some people who were born and raised in the tribe, Din suspected that there was such a thing as too early an age to be introduced to the bloodthirsty treatises of Mandalore the Conqueror.

As it turned out the kid had taken to the whole thing with so much gusto that getting him to go to bed without reading at least a little first was starting to become a minor diplomatic incident. It didn’t seem to matter so much what they actually looked at — Din sometimes wondered if he could have gotten away with reading the ship’s manual aloud every night and had the same entranced reception. But for that space of time every night and sometimes during the day, the kid was glued to Din’s lap and poured his full undivided attention into whatever was set before him, and filling that time with anything less than worthy of that attention felt unacceptable.

If that meant Din was occasionally stuck trying to imitate animal calls for the enjoyment and edification of a delighted and indefatigable one-person audience, so be it.

The holoprojector sprang sluggishly to life and the image flickered until Din leaned forward to give the dashboard a succinct and practiced thump. He really should open that up and take a proper look at it one of these days, it’d been acting up for years and the components were likely older than him. “There we go. Okay, then. What are we looking at today?”

In the flickering light of hyperspace illuminating the cockpit he squinted at the small hovering icons that served as previews for the full articles, looking for one that seemed interesting or failing that an old favorite. Before he could settle on something the kid leaned forward and pointed at one of the icons with an intent yelp, so Din opened that one and gave a surprised huff of laughter when the large four-legged bulk of the creature rose from the holoprojector, its horned head immediately familiar where it was lifted in a silent roar. He hadn’t realized the disc included extinct species. The kid glanced up at him, waiting for him to start the normal routine of saying the animal’s name.

“That’s a mythosaur,” Din said, unaccountably pleased the kid had zoomed right in on it. “Our people used to ride them, a long time ago.”

The kid made a long intrigued coo and reached out towards the hologram, moving his hand like he meant to stroke the mythosaur’s horned, ferocious head.

“Too bad they’re extinct or we could’ve gotten ourselves one,” Din said, genuinely a little wistful. “Wouldn’t that have been something?”

Apparently the kid got just enough of that to fix Din with a wide-eyed look, ears perking up in breathless expectation.

Regretful to burst his bubble Din was forced to clarify: “I don’t have one. They aren’t around anymore.”

After a moment’s pause the baby took this revelation with somber dignity, turning back to the mythosaur. “Bah-ta,” he intoned, waving his little hand at the hologram like he was bidding the creature a solemn farewell.

“You still got one here, though,” Din said, in the hopes of softening the blow, tugging gently on the mythosaur skull pendant the kid wore around his neck most waking hours. ”See how they’ve got the same horns?”

The baby grabbed the pendant and glanced down at it, then between it and the hologram a few times, before holding the pendant up for Din’s inspection with a triumphant happy cry.

“Yeah. We keep the important parts,” Din said, grinning a bit at the enthusiasm.

The baby absentmindedly stuck the pendant in his mouth, small toes wiggling in contentment as he turned back to the hologram, clearly awaiting what was next. Biting his lip Din added ‘toy mythosaur?’ to his inner list of things to look out for in markets when he went to resupply and then read off the sparse information the holodisc’s compilers had thought worthy of inclusion.

“Remind me to find a more exciting version of this for you one day,” Din said as he closed the article. “There’s gotta be some better stuff about them out there.”

The baby gave a garbled sound around the pendant, idly swinging his legs while Din picked a new article at random, coming up with something aquatic and vaguely frog-like from a planet covered almost entirely in shallow oceans. The kid’s eyes sparkled.

“I think you’ll find that’s a lunch buffet too big even for you, buddy,” Din told him, moving through the different pictures of the sort-of frogs flitting between corals and strange tentacle-like sea plants. “They’re at least twice your size and squirt poison. Which apparently has psychedelic effects for some species. Huh. Let’s definitely steer clear of that, then.”

Quite apart from anything else Din had no idea how much the baby’s inexplicable mind powers were controlled by conscious thought and how much was purely instinctual — Din already felt out of his depth enough as it was with this, he could only imagine with dread the results of any unforeseen variables. If Din had already wondered whether the kid could lift himself into the air as well as things around him, it was only a question of time before the baby’s inventive and ever-active brain came up with the same idea. Din tried to keep it out of his mind most of the time, outside of the involuntary planning for endless contingencies he engaged in when he couldn’t fall asleep at night. One particularly fevered evening he had, for a while, seriously considered padding the entire ceiling of the interior of the Razor Crest, just to be safe.

After the frogs were duly ‘ooh’ed and hungrily ‘aaah’d over they continued through a few types of bugs until Din used his veto by right of being the person in control of the holoprojector to get them over onto something else. He never knew the universe contained quite so many beetles or that they all looked basically the same. The Naboo guarlara got a raucous reception, though Din suspected this might have more to do with the fanciful and brightly coloured costumes of the royalty depicted riding on them than the animal itself.

Hm. Maybe hunting down a history book or two might be a good call, actually, and not just for the kid. Din had never had much of an interest in the subject himself — surely the world was bleak enough without going around dredging up the muds of ancient strife and suffering to cloud the waters even further. But these Jedi were currently the best lead he had on finding anyone like the baby out there, and if they had once been powerful enough to challenge a Mandalore… they had to have left tracks somewhere. He couldn’t imagine the Empire having tolerated information about formidable sorcerers, however ancient, being freely available, and sometimes knowledge faded surprisingly quickly if it was stamped out hard enough. Off the top of his head he was having a hard time coming up with anyone among his established contacts who might have an interest in banned literature on the side. People in his line of work did not tend towards bookishness, by and large. But then again they might have clients who did and who had the credits to back it up. It could be a useful trail to pursue, anyway, and less risky than trying to ask around about such a loaded subject in person.

What he’d do if he actually found these people was a bridge he’d have to cross — or burn behind him while fleeing blaster bolts, he could only wryly extrapolate from recent events — if he ever managed to get to it.

Still half-lost in thought Din switched to a new animal at the kid’s urging, then startled out of his distraction when the kid sat up straighter in his lap and gave a call of accusation and reproof that came straight from the depths of his little body.

“Huh? What’s wrong?” Din blinked at the hologram of the round-faced fuzzy creatures and tried to understand what was freaking the kid out about them.

“Eh!” the kid insisted, gesturing hotly at the hologram.

Realization finally dawned; Din had to push down a laugh. “Oh yeah, you had a little run-in with one of those on Sorgan, didn’t you. It’s called a Loth-cat, it’s a type of tooka. It’s not dangerous,” he added, chuckling a little despite himself when the small body in his lap remained rigid with outrage and resentment. He wrapped his arms more securely around the kid and stroked a calming hand over his side. “Some people keep them as pets.”

The kid still scowled distrustfully at the image of the Loth-cat like he found this very hard to believe, but burrowed closer against Din’s chest, tucking himself into the crook of his arm.

“See there,” Din said, pointing out the kittens cowering behind the bigger animal. “It has little ones to take care of. That’s why it’s hissing, it’s protecting them.”

Blinking slowly the kid seemed to consider this, his tiny hand wrapped around one of Din’s fingers. He gave a quizzical sound and looked up at Din, pointing at a kitten too.

“Uh-huh,” Din said. “It’s a baby. Like you.”

Softening slightly the kid lowered his hand again and tilted his head to one side.

“That’s the parent,” Din said, indicating the adult. “Buir. And they’re its children. Ade.”

He still couldn’t quite tell how much language the kid actually understood yet, but it felt like the right sort of thing to do, so he kept going.

“Together they’re a family. Aliit. I, uh. Don’t know if they really do clans, but it’s the same word.”

The kid gave a thoughtful sound and fumbled for a handhold on Din’s armor. Din gave him a squeeze, stroking his head when he butted his forehead against his palm to ask for it without taking his big dark eyes off the hologram.

“Every being gets scared and angry if its children are in danger,” Din said quietly, rocking the child gently on his lap. Since this one had sparked an interest, and to give the kid some time to get used to seeing the animal without fear, they read all the information provided, going through galactic prevalence, social structures, speculated planet of origin for the tooka, anatomy and behavioral patterns, history of domestication and hunting strategies. Din was almost sure most of it went right over the kid’s head, but the attentive tilt of his ears never wavered and he seemed to listen the whole way, even glancing questioningly up at Din when he fumbled a little in getting to the next page at one point and left a pause in the flow. Maybe the facts weren’t the most important part.

The last image of the article was of the Loth-cat asleep, its kittens tucked close all around it. Apparently reaching a place where he was ready to bury the hatchet and extend a gracious hand of peace the kid finally leaned forward and tried to pat the Loth-cat’s head like he’d done with the mythosaur, making a soothing sort of warbling sound.

“Yeah, we’re not gonna mess with its babies,” Din agreed. “It doesn’t need to be scared.”

“Nahwa-lah,” the baby babbled sagely, sitting back and leaning against Din’s side again.

“Well, while we’re on things you’ve already seen before...” Din did a quick search and found the large one-horned head he’d had the dubious pleasure of surveying from extremely up close several times.

The baby stilled in his arms, ears perking up.

“You remember this one too, huh. Guess it’d be hard to forget. Well, it’s called a mudhorn,” Din said. “In the capacity as your father, let me take the opportunity to advise you to learn from my mistakes and leave their eggs the hell alone. My vision still goes double sometimes if I turn my head too quickly.”

“Aaah,” the kid said, imperiously waving his hand in the way that meant he wanted the next page of the article, then let out a squeak when the next picture was a mudhorn contentedly grazing with its calf, plump and with a head nearly comically oversized, the horn only about the length of a human hand. The baby pointed to the calf, his excitement so radiant that Din had to smile.

“Yeah, that’s another baby. Actually...” Din knitted his brow as he scanned through the article until he found the section about anatomy and brought up a hologram of the mudhorn’s skull in profile. “Look familiar?”

The baby’s mouth turned into a little ‘o’ of surprise; he glanced up at Din, stretching up as far as he could to tentatively poke the edge of a shoulder pauldron.

“That’s right,” Din confirmed, twisting a little so the kid got a clearer view. “That’s our signet. Which you should rightfully get most of the honour for, honestly, I wasn’t doing so hot on my own.”

Running a three-fingered hand back and forth over the edge of the signet the baby babbled away, his free hand gesturing towards the hologram. Din nodded and ‘uh-huh’ed dutifully along until the kid’s story culminated in him throwing both his arms up with a shout and looking up at Din in a ‘can you believe it?’ sort of way.

“I did go flying a couple of times back there,” Din hazarded while sitting up straight again, and was rewarded with a firm nod. The kid chattered some more and patted Din’s breastplate as if in reassurance, pressing his small round cheek to the smooth metal and blinking cheerily up at him.

Din’s chest did some strange twisting things he didn’t quite understand.

“How could I be worried out there when I’ve got you watching my back, huh?” Din said thickly, cupping the back of the baby’s head in his hand and stroking his thumb along the downy crown of it, making his ears droop in contentment and his eyes slip closed as he craned into it.

Clearing his throat Din turned back to the hologram and indicated the bundle of nerves right behind the mudhorn’s jaw on the anatomy cross section. “Anyway, it went down so quickly because I managed to get it right here after you incapacitated it. Cut that connection and it’s lights out right away. Odd quirk of anatomy, but there you are. You’d do better to snipe it from a distance, though, under normal circumstances — if I didn’t have a set time I had to be back with the egg it probably would have been smarter to lie in wait until it emerged from the cave on its own, shoot it before it even knew we were there. Even tossing a few grenades into the cave would be a better choice than taking it on up close, if you don’t have to worry about the state of the egg. I’m sorry, I realize it is probably a bit on the early side for tactical reviews for you,” he added apologetically, as the baby blinked at him in what looked like well-meaning and attentive incomprehension. “...I’m not very used to having conversations about anything else. I’ll work on it.”

Thankfully the kid was already a far smoother conversationalist than Din and simply tugged on Din’s hand insistently until they could go back to the mudhorn calf, squealing happily as he spotted it again, so Din rather assumed he was forgiven.

The next animal was another bug, so Din quickly skipped it while the kid looked the other way. They detoured through the squills of Tatooine, who despite being largely composed of leathery skin, teeth, aggression and generalized malice got a much friendlier initial greeting than the small fuzzy Loth-cat had. Go figure.

Then they reached one that made Din trail off mid-sentence and grow quiet.    

The creature itself was something small and pointy-faced and furry that lived in the high mountains of Alderaan — or at least it had, before, well. There was a twinge of something he couldn’t place in his gut; he’d heard about it, of course, since he hadn’t been actively living under a rock at the time and the destruction of an entire world is the sort of thing that fights itself to the front of people’s minds no matter where you go. It had seemed nearly absurd, though, hard to really imagine, enough so that he hadn’t thought much about it one way or another until he’d seen the look on Cara’s face when she heard the name of her homeplanet spoken by the wraith-like shade of the empire that destroyed it. She had looked the way Din felt hearing ’Mandalore’ from Gideon’s mouth.  

This holodisc must have been put together a while ago. The creature wasn’t marked down as extinct yet.

Din glanced down at the kid, who was already looking up at him, getting a bit heavy-eyed but otherwise perfectly cheerful, not seeming to suspect anything was amiss. A collection of memories stirred in the depths of Din’s mind, though mercifully vague and transient — something about the beginning of the war, his parents’ voices, low and worried, conferring in the kitchen when they thought he’d fallen asleep, the slight brittleness to his father’s smile when he called him home from play in the evenings, just a bit earlier than he would have before. He wondered now if they’d been planning to leave or if they had surmised, probably correctly, that there would be nowhere truly safe to go and that the only thing they could do was to shield him from the worst of the fear.

He’d been frightened anyway, of course, but they’d tried. It seemed to him an ancient, unspoken sort of pact, that trying and that fear. A bittersweet creed all its own.

“Let’s skip this one for now,” Din said, as lightly as he could manage while he skipped the article and wrapped one arm more protectively around the baby. “Maybe another time.”

The kid didn’t seem to mind, only gave a contented yawn and turned towards Din’s chest in that way that meant drowsiness was finally catching up with him, his ears fluttering languidly. Din found a smile tugging at his mouth and started on the next animal anyway, in the knowledge that it would probably do the trick.

Din’s hunch was right; between the rdava-bird’s colouring and their mating calls the baby’s eyes were starting to slip closed every so often and he had curled himself up completely in the crook of Din’s arm, sucking absently on the pendant while he fiddled with the edge of the cloth of Din’s gambeson. Finally, in the middle of a description of the bird’s favoured habitat, his head drooped towards his chest and Din decided it might be time to call it.

“Time to sleep?” Din asked, stroking his thumb over the kid’s forehead. The baby gave a weak cry of protest and struggled to sit up a bit, managing to keep his eyes open for all of five bleary seconds before they fell closed again. “Sssh. Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere, you can sleep. I’ll be here.”

Whether because of the words or simply the cadence of his voice the baby relaxed, gazing up at Din with soft-eyed sleepiness and the perfect trust that still made Din feel a little dizzy if he let himself think about it too hard. He swallowed and stroked the baby’s ear, rocking him slightly when his eyes finally slipped all the way closed and stayed that way.

“I’ll be here,” he repeated quietly, holding the kid for longer than he probably needed to before getting up to place him in his seat and tuck him in.

You have no idea how desperately I NEED Mando having to actually tackle a children’s picture book about mythosaurs and being persuaded by big hopeful eyes to do the voices, I’m probably going to have to write it for the sake of my sanity if nothing else

Title is from Fleur Adcock's poem 'For a Five Year Old', because the combination of that poem and this show, what is the word... absolutely devastates me emotionally.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[from the article]

But I didn’t have to interview Manos in the end. He showed me exactly how it worked. His pedagogy in that moment was all about contrast.

He pivoted from verbally assaulting me to commanding the class to “go within and find your centre point of stillness.”

The room went from the dead silence of discomfort and fear to the dead silence of self-surveillance. I felt everyone stiffen into perfect meditation posture. It was picture-worthy. It could have become the Abode’s Facebook cover photo.

I could feel the palpable relief that the attack was over and that it hadn’t fallen on anyone but me. This seemed to create a strangely serene and floating sensation in the room.

Manos then guided the class through a remarkably detailed, intimate, and subtle internal meditation, while we were lying in corpse pose.

So: after verbally attacking an invited guest, Manos put the whole class into a vulnerable position, guiding them into a hypnagogic state with a voice that had just been yelling, but was now meant to be internalized as a source of guidance and care.

I found it impossible to pay attention or feel much because my heart was pounding and I was flooded with cortisol, and physically afraid. I’m willing to bet that most of the room was also defensively aroused by the attack.

But because they weren’t specifically targeted, perhaps some could use their own cortisol for heightened attention and awareness. I imagine that this felt slightly confusing, but also invigorating for many of them.

In general terms, this pivot from chaos to care is at the heart of intimate, sustained abuse. The caregiver terrifies you, and then seems to love you. And because you depend on him, you’ll go through a lot for those moments of love and support.

In this particular context, the hyper-detailed instructions of Iyengar Yoga are freighted with the task of restoring order: not just to the body or mind as-they-are-generally, but also to the person who has just been disrupted by the attack. The countless cues for how to orient the bone, muscle, skin and even hair are like step-by-step instructions for how to restore yourself to social safety within the classroom.

The feeling for some might be: if I follow these steps perfectly, I won’t have to be afraid.

In researching my book I discovered that it’s not only that certain powerful men in the yoga world have figured out how to spiritualize a psychological abuse dynamic of arbitrary fear and care, and that this may resonate with students familiar with that oscillation in their personal histories. It’s that bodily care after bodily stress can feel incredibly sweet and addictive, on a biochemical level.

Among those who practice bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism, I’ve learned that the most important part of any “scene” of consensual eroticized pain exchange, is the “aftercare”. A scene — the term evokes theatre: participants know their roles, and know it will end — may seem violent, but if it resolves with the dominant partner holding, cuddling, and soothing the submissive partner, the full impact of the encounter can be metabolized into care. It can even be felt as a healing reversal of past traumas. This is not only because it is consensual, but because the aftercare strengthens the trust of the relationship.

I now believe that part of what made the elite pedagogy of B.K.S. Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois so powerful and murky is that it is playing with intense mechanisms that BDSM culture make conscious: the oscillation between stress postures and care, played out in dominant-submissive dyads. This dynamic may also constitute a form of unrecognized post-traumatic play.

There’s no clarity, or dialogue, or notion of consent in these spaces of dominance. The activity is not understood as theatre, but as the vital transmission of the knowledge of salvation. The yoga itself — the breath, the relaxation poses, and the spiritual promises — stands in as a proxy for the conscious aftercare that BDSM practitioners recognize as the key to preventing re-traumatization.

As I packed up my things at the end of Manos’ class, some of the other students gave me apologetic looks. Others avoided eye contact. But several devotees approached me to say hello and wish me well, like unconscious recruiters.

One woman cornered me to tell me about Manos’ miraculous healing powers. I was listened patiently, feeling rage smoulder way down deep.

After I edged away, another woman touched me on the shoulder from behind. I turned around to find her beaming at me.

“I hope you had a great class,” she said, effusive.

“Well, after a welcome like that…” I started.

My voice trailed off as her face darkened. I went from feeling snide to guilty to sad.

“It’s just that… he is a hero to so many of us,” she said, choked up. “And we want you to love him as much as we do.”

[didanawisgi]

“After I wrote Why it's time for a new social networking platform and how to make it successful, I was contacted on Twitter by an account I'd never heard of. The account was Minds, and they invited me to give its social networking platform a try.

Minds was launched five years ago by Bill Ottman; since then, the site has continued on in the shadow of the Facebook juggernaut. With a nod to irony, a large portion of Facebook users complain about the service on a daily basis--some even go so far as to say they'd leave Facebook if only an alternative existed. It seems that alternative does exist.

Case in point: Minds is surprisingly similar to Facebook in layout and features, though Minds isn't a simple clone of Facebook. Minds offers much of what I detailed in my previous article about a new social networking platform.

It's open source and transparent.

It offers free and paid accounts.

Its ownership and management enforce no political or social bias.

User data is not monetized.

It offers all the features users are accustomed to.

It minimizes hate speech without infringing upon free speech.

Minds uses cryptocurrency that users can earn and spend. The earned tokens can be used to boost posts, and a paid user account costs five tokens per month. The paid account earns users features like:

Access to exclusive content;

The ability to become verified; and

The ability to banish all the boosted posts from their feed.

Users earn tokens by:

Posting;

Commenting;

Receiving upvotes (similar to Likes on Facebook); and

Inviting others to join the platform (referral link).

So my curiosity was piqued. I created an account and began to poke around. After a few days, I drew the conclusion that Minds could very well be that social networking platform we've all been waiting for. To that end, I reached out to the CEO of Minds, Bill Ottman, to ask the questions that were on my mind about the site.

Jack Wallen: What made you start Minds?

Bill Ottman: I have always considered it an absolute necessity and historical inevitability that a free and open source social network rises up to become competitive with the proprietary tech titans. The top global communication platforms of humanity need to respect the freedom and voice of the community; otherwise, we end up where we are with a status-quo of surveillance, algorithmic manipulation, and exploitation. We knew we could not possibly be a sustainable network without building an independent social engine from the ground up, totally non-reliant on big tech APIs.

Jack Wallen: What is it that the likes of Facebook and Twitter are doing wrong?

Continuously audit configs and get alerted if a device is out of compliance. Be able to remediate vulnerabilities through bulk config deployment. Help prevent unauthorized network changes through change delegation, monitoring, and alerting.

Bill Ottman: There's minimal transparency with regards to both governance and software. Proprietary software should not be acceptable from our top networks, as it is impossible to audit. Their content policies are essentially indecipherable, inconsistent, and subjective. They prevent you from reaching your audience with hidden default algorithms. We are not anti-algo, but believe users should decide if they want to use them or not. They pretend to care about your privacy, offering a number of visibility controls, but ignore the ability to be invisible from them.

Jack Wallen: What is it that Facebook and Twitter are doing right?

Bill Ottman: The UX and design is excellent. Clearly they have brilliant developers and product designers who are able to build out robust features from live streaming to messaging services all interoperating cross-platform. They have vast resources to make acquisitions and deeply understand the functionality that people want. Unfortunately, the foundation of everything is upside down.

Jack Wallen: Explain, to the uninitiated, what sets Minds apart from other social platforms?

Bill Ottman:

We try to push the boundaries with radical transparency with open source code and even financials.

We are community-owned from an early stage with over 1,500 users who actually own stock.

We have implemented revenue-sharing and monetization tools to help people earn money, both fiat currency and crypto.

We believe that you should be rewarded for your contributions to the network and the engagement that you drive.

We don't require any personal information and encrypt any given.

We want to minimize hate speech with free speech, not censorship. In fact, we launched a whole initiative about this at https://change.minds.com. Research shows censorship may in fact cause greater polarization and radicalization than facilitation of legal civil discourse.

Jack Wallen: What made you opt to go the crypto route?

Bill Ottman: Prior to moving to Ethereum, we had a centralized virtual currency called points. This was one of our most popular features, as 1 point=1 view and could be used to Boost posts for greater reach, which people were losing on Facebook at alarming rates. You earned points for many types of engagement. Once Ethereum emerged we saw every reason to migrate the wholereward system to it, as this allows the token economy to become decentralized where users can hold their tokens in their own wallets and transact on-chain, which provides greater transparency as well.

Now, users can accept fiat (via stripe), Bitcoin, Ether, and Minds tokens which are ERC-20. The crypto community typically adheres to values aligned with internet freedom. You can't and shouldn't run everything on a blockchain , but we are committed to the P2P route everywhere that makes sense and isn't an impossible UX. Providing people with options and control is paramount. Do I want to publish this post to an immutable distributed system or not? That's a choice we want to provide rather than forcing a particular path.

Jack Wallen: How will Minds deal with some of the issues that have faced other platforms such as hate speech and groups that espouse such speech?

Bill Ottman: We launched the Change Minds initiative with our advisor Daryl Davis, who famously deradicalized over 200 members of the KKK through open discourse, basically, befriending them. This human approach, based in free expression and civil dialogue, is much more aligned with our values and peer-reviewed research than blanket ban policies. The goal is to provide a breeding ground for changing minds via civil discourse as Daryl has proven can work, even if it takes years. We also built a jury system for the appeals process to bring the community into the moderation structure. Our approach is long-term and synced with the First Amendment. We care a lot about building tools for people to not see anything they don't want to see as well as reporting truly harmful content. We think policies involving censorship should be data driven. What actually works?...”