#tagging you too since I think I made this discovery initially when I reblogged one of your gifsets!

[bethanyactually]

okay hold up hold up hold up. is the lost city alan's last name canonically CAPRISON?? like ... the beloved-by-kids stab-it-with-a-straw fruit "juice" beverage??

He doesn't have a last name on IMDb or the movie's website, but his name is cited as Alan Caprison in multiple articles about the movie, and it's actually in the title of this one! And I choose to believe that is his name because I like joy.

[barnesandco]

Ayesha’s 1k+ Writing Challenge!

Writing Challenge Submission Masterlist

Hey, everyone, I'm so happy to be back online - I think I was only gone for a week so that announcement was very extra of me - and to be introducing my first writing challenge! I'm so honored and flattered that so many people enjoy my work, and I'm incredibly grateful for your support since I joined this community. Tumblr is my greatest escape, and you've made it a very welcome and comforting one. 

A sense of community and friendship is particularly important in these trying times, and I extend my heartfelt prayers to everyone struggling right now. I'm here to listen if there's anything you need to say, and I'm sorry I can't do much more than be a metaphorical shoulder to cry on, and to offer this distraction as a brief reprieve from whatever you might be going through.

In order to present a gift of relief, and to share and create more stories of heroism - not that any of it can ever compare to the courage displayed by our health professionals and essential workers these days - and to honor and promote our collective of Marvel fanfic writers, I've decided to host a writing challenge. You don't have to follow me to participate - although that would be appreciated - you just need to follow the rules I've outlined under the cut. If you need clarification on anything, don't hesitate to ask! I hope you'll join, and I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with. 

Rules:

Your fic can be about any character(s) from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You can also include original characters that you create. If you want to write a romantic fic, I think it goes without saying that it shouldn't be underage (or having an excessive age gap), non/dub-con, incest, abuse, power imbalance/manipulation (e.g. employer x employee or teacher x student), etc. 

The sky’s the limit when it comes to the type or genre of the story, so let your imagination fly! You can write reader-inserts, pairings of pre-existing characters, OCs, or even just solo fics about the character you've chosen. I'm open to canon fics, AUs, fluff, smut, angst, romance, platonic fics, and whatever else you guys can dream up. (If you're writing smut, please let me know, as there are some additional guidelines I'm setting for that.) 

Word count is minimum 250 words, and anything above 500 words must have a keep reading tab. Multi-chapter fics will obviously be accepted - and with a lot of enthusiasm! - but please make a masterlist for any such series.

Kindly include any and all warnings that apply to your story.

The deadline for submission is the 31st of December, 2020.

Please tag me @barnesandco​ in the completed fic - and in every chapter of a series if you've chosen to write one - and also tag your work with #ayesha1kwritingchallenge. If I don't acknowledge that I’ve seen your work within a week of you posting it, please DM me.

One entry is allowed per participant, and you can send in an ask or a DM to participate, in which you should mention the one prompt you would like to use and for which character(s) from the list below.

Prompts

Dialogue Prompts:

"You fell asleep on me." --Taken by @lancsnerd

"Screw you." --Taken by @need-a-fugue

"I've got this." --Taken by @filia-sapientiae​

"I'd never forgive myself for it." --Taken by @oreostars​

"I trust you." --Taken by @readerandcinephileingeneral

"Oh, I'm so offended." --Taken by @iamthe-shadow-on-the-wall​

"Who, me? I would never." --Taken by @kaunis-sielu

"I don’t want to hate her/him/them." --Taken by @suz-123

"I can't explain it, but loving her is just… easy." --Taken by @littledarlinwrites

"You're my everything." --Taken by @chrisevansdaddycap​

"Leave me alone." --Taken by @constantaking​

"That's disgusting." --Taken by @ruffalomakesmyday​

"What on God's green earth was that for?" --Taken by @sweetwritesx​

"Is that a threat?" --Taken by @glxy-otter​

"Promise. Please just- promise me." --Taken by @blue-like-barnes​

"Oh, I could kiss you right now, you brilliant, brilliant woman/man/person!" --Taken by @megthemewlingquim

"You know that'll never work on me." --Taken by @allaboardthereadingrailroad​

"I'd let you if you asked." --Taken by @wordywarriorwrites

"___, I swear to God, if you do that again, I'll feed you to Tony's stupid robot." --Taken by @nekoannie-chan

"You can't do this." + "Then I'll die trying."

"You're stronger than anyone I've ever known." --Taken by @companionjones

"How did I get here?" --Taken by @thestorydetective​

"Why are you smiling this wide this early in the morning?" --Taken by @tinymalscoffee​

"What's the worst that could happen?" --Taken by @phant0m-queen​

"I can't believe they haven't caught us yet." --Taken by @indyluckycharlie​

Song Prompts:

Watermelon Sugar - Harry Styles --Taken by @softpeachbarnes​

Finally//Beautiful Stranger - Halsey --Taken by @shield-agent78​

To Build a Home - The Cinematic Orchestra --Taken by @whistlingwillows​

Floating - Alina Baraz ft. Khalid --Taken by @chuuulip​

Summertime - Ella Fitzgerald

Wind Beneath My Wings - Bette Midler

To Die For - Sam Smith --Taken by @hailhydra920​

I Scare Myself - Beth Crowley

Speechless - Dan + Shay --Taken by @captain-kelli​

Growing Pains - Alessia Cara

Levitating - Dua Lipa --Taken by @samingtonwilson​​

Ain't No Sunshine - Bill Withers --Taken by @mermaidxatxheart​

Human - Christina Perri

10 000 Hours - Ella Mai

Despacito - Luis Fonsi ft. Daddy Yankee

Let's Do It - Ella Fitzgerald --Taken by @smediumsmeatbae​

Honey - Raveena --Taken by @opalsandlace

Talk Too Much - COIN --Taken by @subtlebucky​

Put a Little Love on Me - Niall Horan --Taken by @buckysbest​

Thinking Out Loud - Ed Sheeran

Meet Me on the Battlefield - SVRCINA

Centuries - Fall Out Boy

Titanium - David Guetta ft. Sia

Stay - Rihanna ft. Mikky Ekko --Taken by @jalapenobarnes-main​

Eyes Open - Taylor Swift --Taken by @helahades​

One-Line Prompts:

Recovery is tender, straining yellow-blue over his/her/their shoulders and delicate in the shadow of his/her/their smile. --Taken by @iced-capsicle

Laughter tastes like cotton candy. --Taken by @rogersumbra

" All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages." -As You Like It, William Shakespeare --Taken by @shakespeareanqueer​

How do you miss something you never had? --Taken by @shellbilee​

They're stuck, and it's all ___'s fault. --Taken by @buckybarney​

Gabe Jones' French skills come to good use. --Taken by @raindroptv​

Self-discovery is a path nobody likes taking, but sometimes, there is no other choice.

"Demons run when a good man goes to war." - Doctor Who, Steven Moffat --Taken by @harley-sunday​

Star-crossed lovers find a galaxy to take refuge in from the rest of the universe. --Taken by @sgtjbuccky​

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that everything goes from order to disorder. --Taken by @alyxkbrl​​

One-Word Prompts:

Sacrilege

Bibliophile --Taken by @nacho-bucky​

Soldier --Taken by @writing-mermaid​

Chrysanthemum(s)

Schadenfreude

Deja Vu

Picasso

Self-Partnered

Petrichor --Taken by @redhairedfeistynerd​​

Serendipity --Taken by @xoxoeeveewritez​​

Momentum

Equilibrium

Entropy

Resplendent

Anemone(s)

Effervescence

Sweetheart

Absolute

Echo --Taken by @wintersoeldiers​​

Nefarious

Picture prompts:

1. Taken by @infj-slytherclaw​

2. Taken by @starrysebastians​

3. 

4. 

5. Taken by @corneliabarnes​

6. 

7. Taken by @bucky-smiles​

8. Taken by @monarchofallisurvey​

9. 

Special thanks to the following authors, who not only inspired and initiated my desire to write, but then encouraged me, supported my work, and were - and still are - tremendously helpful. Others in the following list I befriended later on, and I'm so grateful that I did, because they've helped transform my experience on this site, too. Point is, all of these people are so kind and amazing and marvellous beyond what words can describe. Thank you:

@samingtonwilson @suz-123 @nacho-bucky @evanstarff @tropicalcap @kentuckybarnes @buckyreaderrecs @mermaidxatxheart @corneliabarnes @buckyland​ @bucky-smiles​ @sebbytrash​ @jalapenobarnes​

And thank you of course to my wonderful, magical followers who comment and reblog my stories, and give me all the praise I do not deserve. Thank you for your kindness and your enthusiasm - I cherish it and do everything I can to earn it. Special mentions:

@readerandcinephileingeneral​ @notsomellowmushroom​ @sonjashuterbugjohnson​ @anjali750​ @severelytinyeagle​ @redhairedfeistynerd​ @parmisaanowl @starnight-charmer​ @alyxkbrl​

I'd like to conclude by saying that I debated whether or not to host this writing challenge now, in a time like this. I decided to do so in the end because I need it. Call me selfish, but I need a reprieve. I need to feel like this disaster that has us surrounded right now isn't all there is to the world. And if I've learnt anything from being on this platform, it's that you're very rarely alone. So I hope that this activity can provide some semblance of hope for others that feel the way I do, and if not, then at least a little escape.

So my last but not least thank you goes to everyone who participates in this challenge and thereby makes this shelter from the world's storm, a little stronger, a little safer, and a little warmer. 

I’m excited to see what everyone comes up with, and I look forward to making some new friends. Thank you all and good luck!

[marcilled]

The Xylo ARG: a summary

Have you or someone you follow been getting cryptic asks like the one above? They always just say one of the two following things:

a303d61a3714b71b459a9e65921078 OR a303d61a-371-4b71-b45-9a9e65921078

Well, good work, you’ve managed to stumble into a new tumblr ARG which I’ve taken to calling the “Xylo ARG” or “Shiloh ARG”. I’ve already talked about this on my blog already, but I thought it might be a good idea to have a post summarizing what the hell is up with these asks and what the deal with this ARG is.

The main blog and focus of this ARG is here: @xylophonetic

If you haven’t already read my previous post about this, you should check that out. It includes some speculation and theories that I didn’t include in this post, most notably my theories about this string of characters being a UUID, as well as some observations that this hex number actually corresponds to 5 unique colors encoded in hexadecimal.

Since my previous post, there’s been some developments, but sadly I and the others I’ve been discussing this with over discord haven’t come up with any major leads, or if we have, they haven’t led anywhere yet.

That being said, I thought it might be useful to make a post summarizing some of what we already know about this. I’ve never done an ARG and don’t even really know much about them, but I was one of the people sent one of these asks so in a way I’m a small part of it now. I figured I’d make this post since I think I was the first person to really analyze what was going on here and notice that there’s an actual blog associated with these asks people have been getting. Obvs a lot of these discoveries weren’t made by me tho, I’ve not devoted much time to discovering things, there’s a few others involved in trying to figure this out too. (y’all, feel free to hop in the replies/reblogs if you want people to know you’re helping with this).

Anyways, let’s get onto the actual post. This might get lengthy, so it’ll be below the cut. Heads up- this post contains creepy imagery, depictions which might be described as “body horror”, as well as mentions of parental abuse. All posts referenced should have a link provided unless they were deleted before the creation of this post. Got it? Let’s dive in.

First off, let’s recap on how this all started, and how me and a few others came to realize that this was, indeed, an ARG we’re looking at. (Presumably, anyways- all of the happenings are too strange to just be the work of some crafty aesthetic blogger… probably.)

It all started with a couple of popular tumblr users getting asks like the one linked at the top of the post here. Just this cryptic hexadecimal string, sometimes with hyphens, sometimes without. It’s unclear how many people these anonymous asks were sent to, but if you look up the text you’ll find a couple other popular tumblr users that were sent the ask. It’s always anonymous, and I don’t know of anyone who’s received direct messages from the blog owner(s).

After pondering it a bit, I decided to look up the ask I got on tumblr, and noticed a blog which had this string of characters as its url. And that’s where things started getting interesting.

The blogs

The main blog relating to this ARG appears to be https://xylophonetic.tumblr.com/. Her URL has changed a couple times since we first discovered it, the url was originally a303d61a3714b71b459a9e65921078. From now on I’ll be referring to this blog/blog owner as “Shiloh”, as that is and has been the name stated on the blog. (Also- her pronouns are she/hers as mentioned here.)

There is also another blog relating to this story, which I hadn’t mentioned in the previous post (because at the time we did not know about it / it had not been created yet). This blog originally had the url a303d61a, but has since taken the previous URL that shiloh used: https://a303d61a3714b71b459a9e65921078.tumblr.com/

This new blog was originally titled “Safe?”, and doesn’t appear to have any name associated as far as anyone can tell, so from here on I’ll be referring to them as “safe”. It’s unclear if “safe” is a character that has been mentioned by Shiloh before, but it’s certain that they are associated with the ARG because they swapped urls with shiloh. At time of writing, the “Safe?” blog has had its title changed twice, first to a series of three emojis, then to an eye emoji. We will continue to call them “Safe” until there is a more appropriate name discovered/decided on.

There is also, technically, a third blog- this blog uses the URL previously used by Safe, and it appears that this blog may just be for keeping the url hoarded. However, there’s still some interesting things on this blog, and even some possible hints. The blog is https://a303d61a.tumblr.com/ and will go unnamed unless things begin to appear on that blog as well.

Okay, now that we know a bit about how this started, and what blogs to be on the lookout for, what is there to know? Well, if you take a look at Shiloh’s blog, you might not even realize what you’re looking at is a part of an ARG at first. From first glance, it honestly just looks like an average aesthetic blog. She reblogs lots of aesthetic type posts from various bloggers, a lot of which may not mean much in the long run, but some of the posts she reblogs do give a bit of insight on some of the different “characters” in this emerging story. However, she also sometimes posts very cryptic things- many original posts contain very strange and cryptic photos or text that’s been purposefully obfuscated or otherwise altered. The same string of text “a303d61a…” is present throughout the blog’s history. There’s also other posts from Shiloh that imply that she is (or, was) in danger, or that she was sick, that she’s afraid of certain other characters, etc.

So, these “characters”… who are they? There are quite a few distinct “characters” involved in this, some seemingly more relevant than others. I’ll give a brief overview of what we know about all of them, but first, I should say what is known about the central character here: Shiloh.

Shiloh

While we don’t know a lot about Shiloh herself, there are a few things we can say for sure. Shiloh likes to reblog things she likes or thinks are interesting, much like your run of the mill aesthetic blogger. However, she also posts her own strange, cryptic photos sometimes- often times with many filters and photo manipulation used to make them look strange or hard to decipher.

Shiloh seems prone to deleting posts often, for one reason or another- or posting things then rapidly deleting them. This has been noted to happen even late into the night without much rhyme or reason. The “Safe?” blog is sometimes used to archive some of these deleted posts, although not all of the important/noteworthy posts are actually saved in this way. Shiloh has even been shown to go back and frequently edit old posts, sometimes multiple times. Her (and the other blogs’) urls, titles, icons, blog colors and headers have been known to change at random.

She also seems to not have total control over her blog/account- she’s posted before about her url or icon changing out of her control, and seeming confused or upset by it. See here. She’s also posted before about how she’s “regaining control” and such.

As well, it seems that for a time, Shiloh fell ill with some unknown ailment. Or rather, unknown to her- “they won’t tell me”. It’s unknown who “they” is in this context, but Shiloh seemed sad that she could not see Nat any longer- and also that her mother was preventing her from going out due to this illness. Notably, after posting this, she posted “im not a monster im not”. Perhaps people, possibly her mother, were telling her her illness made her monstrous??

Yesterday evening (may 16), she posted that her fever is gone and she is doing better now. Perhaps she has recovered from her illness– although she still seems confused about what is happening.

Aside from those things, she has also posted a photo here, tagged as “#me”:

(original post)

There’s a lot of uncanny images like this on her blog, and I can’t include every one of them- but this is, supposedly, Shiloh. There’s also another post in her “#me” tag, but it is simply a reblog of some art. Not sure if it is important.

Safe?

I’ve covered most of what we currently know about Shiloh herself, but there are many other “characters” at play in this story. Most of these characters we only know about based upon things Shiloh has said about them, or posts she has tagged them in. “Safe?”, on the other hand, we only know about from their blog, and how they interact with Shiloh.

Safe is a bit of a mystery right now. It’s unclear if they(?) are even one of the characters mentioned by Shiloh or not, or if they are an outsider completely. Regardless of who they are, they seem hostile towards Shiloh.

Safe’s blog was not known until two days ago (may 15th) around ~4pm. When we discovered it, our initial thought was that the blog could be unrelated to the ARG itself, and it could potentially just be somebody who was following along and taking time out to archive the posts. Shiloh is known to delete posts sometimes after all, including ones that seem pretty important.

As time would tell though, it became clear that Safe is another actor in this story, although they seem to be even more mysterious than Shiloh.

Safe seems to reblog many of Shiloh’s original posts, sometimes adding tags or even editing the post in certain ways. We have reason to suspect that Safe is a malevolent force, as they have reblogged the photo of Shiloh and tagged the picture “#it”, in spite of her specifically requesting not to be called it. They’ve also reblogged posts from her that say “cold” and tagged it “freeze”, and a post saying “warm” with the tag “burn”, as if wishing harm on Shiloh.

Nonetheless, some of the most compelling clues we’ve gotten yet have come from the Safe blog. Particularly, it was the Safe blog which posted the following:

Sadly, the post was later deleted from both blogs, and there is no web archive of it, or fullsize versions of the right and left pictures. Here’s the fullsize of the center picture, though:

This post originally came from Shiloh’s blog, although I believe the images were not in the original post– Safe seems to have a habit of editing Shiloh’s posts and adding new things.

These pictures are tantalizing because of the caption: “room 371″. If you’ll notice, 371 is a subset of the string of text tying all of this together…

a303d61a-371-4b71-b45-9a9e65921078

The significance of this is currently unknown. However, there was some speculation that Shiloh may have been hospitalized due to her illness- these images do look somewhat like a hospital. However, this conflicts with what Shiloh herself has said- she is at home. So, what is room 371? We just don’t know, at the moment.

Another series of posts from Safe that just happened today only further the mysteries surrounding them. Today, they reblogged the post in which Shiloh said her fever was gone and edited the text to make it say “SHE MADE ME SICK”. It’s unclear who “she” is, in this context- but this seems important.

Also today, safe changed their blog title from “Safe?” to a series of three emojis- a safety pin, an old key, and a dagger. This is significant because of another thing I’ll bring up later. At time of posting, they’ve changed their blog title yet again to be just an eye emoji.

Beyond the posts about room 371, and other mysterious edits and reblogs of Shiloh’s content, not much is known for sure about Safe. There are some theories that Safe is actually Shiloh’s mother, or that they are a reflection of Shiloh’s inner thoughts and feelings about herself, but for the time being these are simply theories with not enough proof to back them up yet.

Other Characters (Nat, Melody, Zach, Brian)

Now, it is time to get into the other named characters in all of this. These other characters we only know about from things that Shiloh has said, or posts that she has reblogged and tagged in their name. For some characters, we only know of them at all due to her tags.

First, let’s start with “Nat”. Nat is one of Shiloh’s best friends, and clearly someone she cares about a lot. Shiloh was very sad when she could no longer see her after falling ill. A scroll through Shiloh’s Nat tag will show a variety of posts, although there seem to be some strong connections to love, tarot, and cats. Also, sometimes, space.

Something interesting to note is that in the tags of this post, Shiloh seemed to imply that Nat also has a blog, but “she changed urls”, and Shiloh doesn’t seem to know what her url is anymore, simply saying “weird”. While this is purely speculation, it’s possible that Nat’s blog could have been tampered with, in the same way that Shiloh’s was previously (possibly by the person who runs the Safe blog?)

After Nat, we have a minor character: Melody. It’s possible they could be more important, but right now, I can’t find any posts where Shiloh directly mentions melody- we only know of melody from various posts tagged with that name. Interestingly, one of the earliest posts on the blog (and an original post, too) depicts a pair of boots and is tagged as “#melody”. There’s a slight pattern of celestial bodies and plants, but nothing too significant to comment on here.

After Melody is another minor character: Zach. Here’s Shiloh’s #zach tag. A common theme here seems to be certain mammals (an opossum and a squirrel) and two pictures of pocket knives. Recently, Shiloh has posted that zach is a friend of hers. Other than that, not much is known of Zach.

That brings us to Brian- another interesting character. Here’s Shiloh’s #brian tag. There’s a few original posts here, with some cartoon characters dancing and hugging. There’s also the same pocket knives that zach was tagged in.

On the surface there might not seem to be a lot here about Brian, but in actuality I have reason to suspect that Brian may be Shiloh’s brother. I believe our first hint at this was this post:

It would make sense that her brother would be there at her home, albeit unexpectedly. Another post that re-affirms this hunch is this now deleted post:

the tag #brother was put alongside #brian here. Also, there is this post which also mentions there being a brother:

There may be other characters, as there are a lot of tags in use on the blog. However, these 4 are the most obvious ones, having names that are… just ordinary people names.

Mother and Father

Beyond the already named characters, there’s two more distinct characters mentioned on Shiloh’s blog- “Mother” as well as “Father”. There are very few posts about Father, but a great deal about Mother. I’ll just preface this right now by saying that Shiloh’s mother seems abusive and openly hostile/aggressive towards Shiloh. As for her father, not much is known of him, but he seems to be absent from Shiloh’s life, likely due to having divorced her mother at some point in the past.

If you take a quick scroll through her #mother tag, you can see that there is a strong association with birds. This seems like a very consistent thing- perhaps Shiloh’s mother is a bird. Or maybe she just connects her with birds for some reason. Either way, if there’s bird imagery, there’s a good chance that it relates to Shiloh’s mother (although there was one bird image tagged as #brian, too).

Some of the earliest posts on the blog make references to mother in this way, too:

Another motif in the photos tagged as #mother are glowing eyes:

As discussed before, Shiloh’s mother seems abusive. Here’s some posts showing Shiloh expressing fear of her mother:

As well as some recent posts from earlier today (may 17) which tell a lot about how Shiloh feels about her mother:

(source for the last one)

It has been stated that Mother doesn’t like any of Shiloh’s friends:

It’s also been shown that Shiloh’s mother tells her she can’t go out and can’t see nat anymore due to her illness. I also speculated earlier that her mother may have been the one to call her a “monster”.

Additionally, this cryptic original post is in the #mother tag:

full tags are #fear, #heart, #love, #mother, #love love.

There’s a lot of hidden text in this image, including the mysterious hex string, as well as phrases and words such as “fear of the heart of love”, “like anything”, etc. It is a bit hard to make out, and difficult to reverse all the filters done to make the text illegible to begin with.

Adding to the series of mysteries surrounding Mother, earlier today Shiloh posted a series of pictures that appear to depict a path to a river. When asked about them, Shiloh stated that “mom doesnt like the river”, and that “she thinks its dirty or something”. Curiously, she says that her mom is scared of fish.

There have also been some theories that Mother is the one running Safe’s blog, antagonizing Shiloh when she gets the chance. There’s credence given to this theory by taking into account this post, where Shiloh talks about having her blog changed without her control over it. In the post, you can see that her icon was changed to this image:

An edited version of the full photo remains on Safe’s blog. This is a photo that was created by a neural network (source), and contains many bird-like features, so we’ve taken to calling this picture “mother bird”. The fact that Shiloh’s icon was changed to this while the blog was not under her control seems to imply that her mother was the one messing with her blog. Considering how much urls swapped between Safe and Shiloh, it seems as though there’s a link between Mother and Safe, although, again, this is speculation.

There is also this post on Safe’s blog, which depicts feathers / knives side by side, along with a caption from Shiloh saying “she’s coming”:

The post is now deleted from Shiloh’s blog. Given the feathers/bird motif here, and referring to a hostile entity as “she”, it’s probably safe to assume that Shiloh was referring to Mother.

At the very least, we can say that both Mother and Safe are openly hostile/antagonistic towards Shiloh, if not the same person.

As for “father”, there’s only a few posts referring to a father, and only recently have there been any original posts. Shiloh seems to associate him with suited businessmen, and there are many posts implying that her parents had a very testy relationship. It seems as though they divorced, and now Shiloh’s father is no longer in her life. Aside from some possible resentment possibly stemming from him not being there any longer, it’s hard to say much about Father, other than that he’s not around any longer.

Other tags

There are many tags in use on Shiloh’s blog, many of them seemingly mundane, something you’d expect from any run of the mill aesthetic blog. Still, there are a few tags which incite some intrigue, or are worth speculating about.

One such tag is #home. Shiloh makes many references to “home”- never “my house” or “where i live” or any other word- only ever referring to it as simply “home”. The images in the tag are often very lush and green depictions of nature- they could just be pictures of landscapes, or sometimes they are pictures of humble cottages in the wilderness. Sometimes they can depict houses that are rotting and decaying. All these pictures seem to signify what “home” is to Shiloh, and I think that “home” is a specific location.

To back up this theory, there’s also the tag #camp. There’s not a lot in this tag, but it seems to evoke this feeling of some summer camp or something that Shiloh went to once perhaps. Maybe “camp” could come up again in later posts? I guess we’ll see.

There’s also the tag #you, which would seem to be the opposite of the #me tag. However, there’s just some songs and other various reblogs in this tag.

Misc. observations / speculation

The new(?) blog at the url https://a303d61a.tumblr.com/ may be otherwise empty, but the blog’s title and description are somewhat curious. As of time of writing, this is the entire contents of their blog:

My device doesn’t have a new enough version of unicode to support displaying some of these emojis, but the emojis in the title are:

safety pin 🧷 old key 🗝 dagger 🗡

The emojis included in the blog’s description are:

rainbow 🌈 tooth 🦷 scissors ✂️ wilted flower 🥀

Also worth noting, is that these three emojis were briefly displayed as the title of Safe’s blog earlier today.

I get the feeling that these emojis may be a pretty significant hint. Something that reinforces this suspicion in me is the fact that Safe made a post tagging Shiloh’s blog, similar to how this new blog made a post tagging Safe. However, the post Safe made includes a safety pin emoji, which is one of the three emojis included in this blog’s title.

This is purely speculation, so feel free not to believe me, or reinterpret it how you wish of course, but: Perhaps Shiloh’s blog is like a safety pin, holding the story as we know it together. But, what we really need to find is the key. The key will lead us further, until we find the dagger.

I also find the emojis used in the description curious, because Shiloh has posted pictures of scissors (actually, lawn clippers?) before. Additionally, Safe has made a post about teeth and eyes hurting before. Interestingly, this post was edited from the original– Shiloh’s post was about her mother seeming angry, but Safe changed it to say “teeth hurt eyes hurt”.

Another potential lead that @ skippsblipps discovered, was a pattern in this old post from Shiloh.

Aside from the obvious secret message mixed in amongst the text, there seems to be a pattern of when the “a303d…” string of text repeats, and when there is something other than the original “a303d…” string. In their words:

“if we count only where the code was exactly the original code, its 6 , 1 , 2 , 1 , 4 , 2 if we count where the code deviates, its 1 , 3 , 3 , 3 , 1″

There’s a chance that this post could be absolutely random nonsense, or that we were only meant to look for the words within the text, but perhaps there’s something more here.

Closing thoughts

I said it at the start, and I’ll say it again: I don’t know a damn thing about ARGs. And, hell, after spending hours compiling stuff for this post, I’m still pretty clueless about where this one might lead. My main hope with this post was to inform anyone who’s curious about this ARG about what we’ve discovered so far, as well as to fill people in who may have missed stuff.

Also, I’d like to apologize if this post jumps topics around a lot, or if it can be a bit hard to follow. Honestly I think that’s just a result of all of the different loose ends in this ARG being hard to follow themselves, although I tried my best. I had to keep updating this post as I typed it, because new posts kept coming in and new discoveries/speculation kept happening. So, sorry for any confusion.

Sadly, many posts on both blogs end up getting deleted, and never archived. That’s why I’ve taken the liberty to archive each and every single post and tag I linked to in this breakdown on the internet archive, which is also why this took hours to make this post because I had to ctrl+c and ctrl+v like a million times. If you notice any of the links I put in this post are broken, just paste the url into the wayback machine and you should at least pull up the archive that I took at the time of typing this post. I couldn’t archive every single thing on all these blogs, just the stuff that I thought was relevant.

If anyone else is inspired to hop in on this ARG because of this post, please feel free to add your thoughts/speculation in the replies, reblogs, whatever. Also please don’t expect me to answer all your asks & speculation, I did this post because it seems like nobody else is paying attention to this and I thought it was cool and deserved some time and attention. I fully expect people smarter than me to outpace me and discover all the secrets and that’s cool with me, I’m just along for the ride. I hope my post helped. Thanks for reading!

EDIT: I’ve made an update to this post here, go read it!

[sharkiegorath]

On Elias

[this is the third (3rd) time I’ve tried posting this since Tumblr’s mobile search/tag search keeps eating the post. because it’s perfectly fine with showing untagged personal posts and spam whenever you search for something, but randomly decides when to show Actual Content]

ok look I know people don’t always read the OP’s tags but I keep getting “I’M SURE HE’S EVIL” comments on a pair of gifsets with fairly obviously positive parallels and reblogging something just to definitively say “that mysterious character is eviiiiiiil” is Not Cool, even if it’s in the tags.

Yes, recent commentator, Elias definitely broke into the house. It's probably why he suggested that the Johnsons go out in the first place! But the common assumption is A) that he planted the books and B) that he did so for a malicious reason. It seems as obvious as it could possibly be while remaining unconfirmed. It seems so obvious in such a twisty show that I think it isn’t that straightforward.

Gosh, where to begin? Firstly, names and etymology are pretty good theory fodder and Easter eggs, e.g., ‘Hap’=haphephobia and all its ‘hap’-prefixed variants; ‘Khatun’ is both an old title of nobility and a modern word referring to any woman. 'Rahim' means ‘merciful’ or 'servant of the merciful'. 'Elias' is a cognate of 'Elijah'. Elijah was the Abrahamic prophet who sort of had a special connection with women and children; who was cared for by an angel; who resurrected the dead; who entered Heaven without dying at the end of his earthly life; who is sometimes believed to have become an angel. All of this information is available on Wikipedia! So even if Elias did plant the books, I don’t automatically assume he’s malicious.

There’s this interesting bit in an interview with The Atlantic:

Marling: [...] I think one of the original stories that was influential actually comes from Jewish mysticism. Do you know it?

Kornhaber: Is this leaving the door open for Elijah at Passover?

Marling: Yeah. It’s so beautiful. I think it’s amazing to try and use that as a reminder of trying to stay open. I struggle with that all the time. You get scared and you close the door. But I think The OA, she’s inviting them to let a new thing in.

(Principal Gilchrist's first name is another cognate of Elijah - 'Ellis' - and his surname means 'servant of Christ'. People have made the connection between Ellis and his "water under the bridge" comment to Ellis Island and the nearby Statue of Liberty, plus he has a snow globe of the latter.)

Elias’ potential connection with an ‘evil’ Rachel was probably debunked early by Zal Batmanglij on Twitter: the plants in her cell died because she refuses to water them as an act of rebellion. I'm too lazy to go through the whole thing about why her name being on the office wall in large Braille doesn't automatically mean she works there in the first place. I think she and Elias are connected (because of his car crash analogy and the “[My brother] never got to hear it”/”I’m a listener” lines), but I doubt it’s as evil agents.

Elias is shocked and defensive when he bumps into French in the house - but the scene follows French, so of course we aren't shocked and suspicious about French’s presence. Basically, the audience has had the same reaction to Elias breaking in as Elias initially has to French breaking in. Part of what makes Elias seem suspicious is his reaction. IMO Elias doesn't even imply or confirm that the OA was lying  - he just doesn't correct French. The other 'suspicious' thing he does is...move his eyes while hugging French, which isn’t incriminating on its own since the emotion is ambiguous.

There's confusing reasoning behind why Elias would place the books in the first place. The books seem tailored to match major aspects of the OA's story. The immediate assumption is that if someone planted the books, they meant for the Crestwood Five to find them and conclude that she based lies upon them. But if that's the case, Elias likely had no way of knowing that French would break in, go to her room, thoroughly search her room, and look where he did. There was no guarantee that any of the Five would find the books, jump to the conclusion that OA was lying, then share the discovery with the others.

Alternatively, you could argue that Elias planted the books intending for someone else to find them during an investigation and use it as proof that OA was making up stories, and the Five would fall for it in the process. But in that case, why did he let French leave with all of the books? And remember, Buck kept one and the rest let him. It’s possible that they submitted the other books to the FBI offscreen, or that Elias replaced the books. But I’ve never seen the theory cover what happened to the books after the reveal, so I won’t play with that hypothetical situation here.

Maybe Elias planted the books for someone else to find and didn’t know French took them. After all, we don't know what happened after the hug. But that introduces a new set of logical problems. How would French sneak a big, heavy box out of the house? He could take it if Elias had already left or wasn’t watching him...but why would Elias leave French unsupervised? Does anyone think that Elias ensured French left, then French broke in again not long afterwards and took the books, all offscreen? And couldn’t his presumably nearby car be a potential giveaway?

So, the books don't make much sense as an attempt to disillusion the Five. Some people think French's reaction stretches audience suspension of disbelief, right - I think it's an even bigger stretch that the FBI would predict a break-in and his reaction. To a lesser extent, the books also don't make sense as an attempt to frame OA, because they end up with the boys and don’t seem to play a role beyond breaking their faith. As for how French took the books while Elias was there, Elias advocates strategic passivity and avoids direct persuasion; I don't find it outlandish that French would say something like "I need to show proof to the others" then take the box, and Elias wouldn’t protest because it's not part of his agenda either way.

The next most obvious explanation for the books is if they really are OA’s. They weren’t necessarily used to construct a lie.  

In the previous episode, OA had a conversation with BBA about how cultures that suffer more loss tend to have more totems. OA knew this because of an exhibit that she loved so much as a child that she made her parents take her back twice. It made a lasting impact on her, as evidenced by the wolf hoodie that reminds her of Homer’s. BBA is not with the boys when French reveals the books, so she doesn't even have the chance to recall that conversation. We don’t know if BBA learned about the books after the boys did. And the books were specifically stored beneath the wolf hoodie. The Five may not be aware of the hoodie’s significance; Elias wouldn’t know the hoodie’s significance unless OA wore it to a session and he asked why she has a hoodie with a wolf on it, or she spontaneously told him, both of which seem a bit far-fetched. (Onscreen, at least, she never wore it to a therapy session.)

Ehh, miscellaneous notes:

It’s uncertain that OA can read English text. But the conversation with BBA says that the Thing Itself isn't as important as what it symbolises. (“Objects carry meaning in difficult times.”) She doesn't need to be able to read the books in order for them to mean something. Anyway, she might’ve been bilingual from a young age; she was 7 or 8 when she went blind and she seems fluent in English by the time we see her in the American boarding school. (There might be proof that she can write in English, since she signed the bottom of the note she left for her parents? It’s been interpreted both ways so idk.)

The Five getting discovered in the abandoned house probably wasn’t set up by Elias. BBA had previously slipped and told Principal Gilchrist about it while driving to save Steve.

I don’t strongly rule it out, but I don’t think Elias spied on the Five, because he only realises who French is when he tells him his name. Unless he’s pretending.

Why were the books under OA’s bed, under the hoodie? Maybe she hid her totems in case her parents found them, since Nancy already thought she had delusions that could easily be linked to The Oligarchs and The Iliad. It’s unclear to me, but there might be a moment in the first episode where OA shoves the video camera under her bed (starts at 29:15-ish), foreshadowing that she might’ve done the same thing with the books later.

The issues I have with my own theory are:

According to the label on the Amazon box, the books were delivered in September. That's at odds with how OA's video was posted in February 2016. But the FBI (or another organisation) ordering the books also doesn't make sense: they would’ve been planning to discredit her months before she returned or assembled the Five or told her story. Even if they knew about the experiments, Hap dumping OA on the road in February seemed entirely spontaneous; that itself was the result of a seemingly random event (getting caught by the sheriff). More importantly, I’d question why the boys didn't notice the discrepancy in dates, and why the FBI didn't realise it themselves. (Like, all they had to do was remove the label or use a different box.) How can they predict a very specific chain of events yet not be smart enough to remove a label? It’s not impossible in the broader scope of the story - maybe they have reality-warping powers, maybe there’s time travel involved - but right now it’s a big stretch just to support the basic theory that Elias planted the books. So I suspect the label is a minor production oversight. Considering exactly how briefly the date is onscreen and difficult to read even when the scene is paused, I think it wasn’t meant to be read by the audience. (Compare the length of the date’s visibility and its readability to earlier in the scene, when French looks at the newspaper clippings, or whenever a phone/computer screen takes up the frame.)

How did OA order the books? The hardest part is how she went online, but she could’ve placed the order sometime in the first episode before the router was taken away. It’s possible to order things from Amazon without a credit card and have them sent to a pickup point or post office, so that’s not a big issue if she had money somewhere (or stole it from her parents, which is 100% in-character for her). Sneaking the package into the house is another problem - but, then again, she’s cunning and her room is conveniently located so things can fairly easily go in/out of her window.

Elias suggested that the Johnsons go out for a family dinner. That somewhat complicates the timeframe he would’ve had for breaking in; if the outing had gone 'normally' they would've returned home before it was very late, yet still at an unpredictable time. (Again, he probably had no way of knowing they’d choose French's workplace, that it’d go badly, etc.) He was unable to break into the Johnsons' home on the night the OA finished her story, which is why he broke in later on, when French did. I guess Nancy and Abel went home after the incident at the Olive Garden and Elias saw the house was occupied, so he waited, and luckily for him they left the next day?

I’m not sure whether Elias lies when French asks if OA told him about Homer, the mine, and Hap’s studies. She told Elias specifics about the first and third premonitions, but it’s unclear how much she explained the second, Homer wasn’t mentioned by name onscreen, and we don’t know if she talked about the movements and angels. It’s worth noting that right after their last session, Elias does lie. OA explained her dreams, including the previous night’s. Afterwards, Nancy assumes Elias knows what happened last night...but he says no, seemingly to see how Nancy explains it. He’s capable of minor lies to Learn Things for ambiguous reasons. (Does he lie to Nancy for OA’s benefit? Or is it because he doesn’t trust OA, or is it simply an effort to hear different sides? I think the tone of the scene suggests he’s trying to help OA, but you might think it’s deliberately misleading. Anyway, they’re not all mutually exclusive motives.)

If the books really were OA’s, what was her reaction when she returned home and they were missing? She probably wouldn't tell her parents. But what would she think happened? Possibly she might be able to put two and two together since she’d previously helped Steve sneak into her room. Maybe she doesn’t seem sad right before the shooting because she deduced that the Five wanted to help her, and she didn’t know that the boys concluded she was lying.

We might be able to get general sense of where The OA is headed by examining Brit and Zal's previous work. Sound of My Voice is the most similar. One of the most common (and plausible) theories for SOMV is that Maggie was telling the truth and the 'FBI agent' wasn't actually an FBI agent. But there are other reused elements that were subverted: OA is much less intimidating and more personable than Maggie; the Five are inclined to believe her without being cult-like; the agent was trying to catch Maggie without her knowledge instead of possibly pretending to help her. I kinda hope it's a meta Red Herring planted for people who've watched both.

Elias was in the house for a reason. I think the video camera and all of the tapes might be a Chekhov's Gun. Brit Marling said something along the lines of "it’s worthy to question Elias’ motives"; he doesn’t necessarily have Good intentions. However, him planting the books isn’t a sure thing and we know nothing about whatever he did in the time gap before the shooting; there’s no indication that he helped or hindered OA in any way, if they’re still in contact, etc. So I think it’s a Bit Much to leap to "ELIAS IS EVIL" Not everyone who thinks he planted the books assumes he’s evil, which is nice. But it's Tiring seeing the evil accusation treated as if it's rare or a new theory, especially considering the depth of analysis that the rest of the show receives.

[tuckerfuckingdidit]

Carwash

YES. IT’S TIME. strap the fuck in, you knew this was gonna be a doozie when you sent it. obligatory tag for @capricornfraud.

when I started shipping it if I did: this started as a weird preoccupation with why no one else shipped it, and how it would work. like, wash is shipped with doc, who he held hostage, and donut, who he shot. i figured carwash didn’t work because their power dynamic is imbalaced in a pretty clear-cut direction, but then tuckington happened! so i assumed it was the Memories that made it weird, and carolina not going back for him. but honestly, ships with History that they need to work through are my fucking weakness—i have an entire tuckington au where tucker is a freelancer for this very reason. 

second, relationships aren’t always easy to put in boxes. “wash has memories from carolina’s father, so all of his feelings for her are familial.” uh, no. wash has come a long way from his initial implantation with epsilon—he knows he is not leonard, and he had a relationship with carolina before he got those memories. there’s no way his feelings are that easily defined. there’s admiration and resentment in there, and that’s just on his side, before you start to fill in the blanks with headcanons.

i ship it because it stands to arguably be one of the most complicated relationships between two living characters on the show. there’s so much there, and i think the writers have shied from carolina and wash having certain Conversations because they don’t know how to tackle them—or had no interest in doing so because they felt it was Too Serious.

my thoughts: i started out not really paying them any mind and now I LOVE IT!!!! i’ve yelled at freddie a lot in the past two weeks, but just. there’s so much there. a lot of people write them as giving each other a wide berth because they have a lot of similar scars—some that they gave each other. you have to remember that it’s not just that carolina didn’t go back for wash: from her perspective, wash put a gun to her head over strangers (who she later came to love, but they were strangers at the time!), and even though he had seen epsilon’s memories of what the director had done, wash stayed with the project. of course he had his reasons, but when carolina’s discovering that everyone is in the wind except for south, wyoming, and wash, she doesn’t know what shape his recovery has taken. all she knows is that he’s still with them. 

but i think it’s also important to bear in mind that they’ve moved a great deal past that. i talked in my carolina post about how i see her as moving full circle, not reinventing herself. i think the reason there aren’t more carwash shippers is because we aren’t given much of a foundation for them during the project for them to circle back to. we see it happen when they’re fighting, but nowhere else. and with carolina having called the freelancers family, i highly doubt carolina and wash only interacted in drop ships and battlefields. 

there’s a lot of empty space to be filled regarding the freelancers, but simply put, i think carolina was tactile, and wash was affection-starved. wash isn’t given a face because we’ve already known him for three seasons when the flashbacks start, so his helmet never comes off, and we miss out on one of the biggest headcanons i have—the team ruffled this kid’s hair constantly. before leonard realized everyone had gotten too chummy and the board was put into place (because what hurts more: people who were always fiercely competitive and shitting on each other abandoning each other, or a family with genuine camaraderie turning into strangers?), you could catch these two half on top of each other in the rec room every once in a while (which conveniently could be a great reason wash seems to rub york the wrong way). like, if you listen to the tone of voice that carolina teases wash in, she obviously thinks wash is adorable. i refuse to believe she wouldn’t have gotten a kick out of flirting with him just to fluster him.

this portion is getting way too long oh my god. basically, the carwash you get on chorus (and going forward), depends largely on your pfl era interpretation of them. that’s the ground work. just because the writers didn’t take the time to develop their relationship doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. do i think they go through the motions of Falling In Love? no. but i do see them as reluctant to ever let go of each other again. like, ever. especially if there’s really no epsilon anymore. they’re each other’s only relic from the project, and that history puts them in a prime position to be the other’s Person—if the work was put in. if you just write them as never talking, then there’s nothing of note to them, and red is a sad panda. but where’s the fun in that?

What makes me happy about them: her fierce determination to never lose him. her starting to reach out for him physically again on chorus, and wash surprising even himself, because holy shit, he’s not flinching. carolina’s quiet mix of amusement and happiness at the (re)discovery that wash still turns into a goddamn cat if you can get him to relax. her foot hooked under his ankle in the mess hall while she talks to the reds. wash deciding he is Done with his food early so he can jam his helmet on his head, because he can’t stop fucking smiling. 

and in restoration AUs where the reds and blues stay on chorus, once the fighting is over? oh my god. have Some Things:

the first time carolina gets her fingers in his hair and he nearly falls asleep on her

her utter dismay when he proceeds to go back to his room and not sleep at all. 

the fact that she would totally take scheduling a Communal nap super seriously if he started to look really exhausted. 

him showing up at her room at 3 in the morning the night he finally cracks and admits to himself that he sleeps best next to her.

the super chill, seemingly impenetrable bubble forming around them that follows. absolutely no one else understands it. they barely understand it. “are they fucking? wait, what if they aren’t? are they gonna get even more obnoxious when they do?” 

^ tucker, probably. it’s ok tucker, just come squeeze in if you don’t have kai.

and when epsilon is gone, carolina has someone who won’t allow her to wall herself off from everyone else, even if it means they just sit together and don’t talk about it. sometimes they do, but most of the time, they don’t. wash just doesn’t want her to be alone. he knows what that feels like, and he doesn’t want that for her. 

just. the sheer amount of forgiveness and trust that is required for them to even function together will never not Get Me. i love happy, healthy stories, and the idea of the two of them healing together will always be something i am here for.

but they’re also not perfect. she’s still going to be protective, and try to take on too much on her own to lower his level of risk. he’s still a fucking spaz. they’re going to get on each other’s nerves. there will still be days neither of them knows how to say the right thing, and days they both keep saying the wrong things. it wouldn’t be Them if it wasn’t awkward. but that just makes when it works so much better.

What makes me sad about them: there are bad days. days when it’s hard to look at each other. when their silences aren’t so companionable—both of them locked in their heads, mulling over past mistakes, could-haves and should-have-beens. 

the days wash can’t quite meet her eye, no matter how much carolina wants him to. 

the days she doesn’t want him to.

also?? if they get closer when epsilon is still around/alive/himself, LOL. awkward.

things done in fanfic that annoys me: there is no carwash fic to come to my attention so far, which is an annoyance in and of itself. *puts on captain hat*

things I look for in fanfic: FOR IT TO EXIST, CACKLING. but i like it when writers understand carolina’s opinion is one wash trusts, and vice versa.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: yorkalina, kimbalina, tuckington, suckington, and mainewash are all Good Shit. oh, also mainealina. how did i forget mainealina?

My happily ever after for them: if the reds and blues are all getting houses in the same cul-de-sac, carwash doesn’t just live under the same roof, their rooms are right next to each other. tucker, junior, kai and caboose can live next door. they’re loud. wash may be used to the blues, and carolina had church in her head at all times, but at the end of the day they still need a place to retreat when wash flinches at every loud noise and carolina can’t stop grinding her teeth. 

it’s really important to me that they have somewhere they can go be Quiet together ok, no matter where/when they are. i do love the idea that they never really slow down though. carolina’s not really the settling type, and i’ve always read wash with an inherent need to be Useful since serving as recovery one.

who is the big spoon/little spoon: carolina is the official big spoon. she is not the smol, fight me on this. first of all i literally cannot reblog art where she’s shorter than him—thank u rt, for giving us absolutely no tall women in the pfl arc Because Reasons. but snuggly naptime carwash and post-coital are two completely different animals. at first they can’t even both stick around after sex, and then when they start to, they plant themselves right on each respective edge and Do Not Move. 

you can tell the second they relax though, because they slide closer to the clothed, snuggly arrangement, which is less spooning and more wash on top of her with his head on her chest and her hand in his hair.

what is their favorite non-sexual activity: the exact above arrangement with clothes on. lmfao. NAPS, BRAH. but also don’t underestimate the value in them just Sitting Quietly and being present together, because i neeeed it. i crave it ok. it keeps me up at night.