#the audience has the clues to solve the puzzle but we are never given an answer. that’s the point.

[furinafontaine]

I feel srsly so out of it going on bsdtwt and seeing ppl argue with asagiri who’s not even saying anything we didn’t already know

[cenobittten]

Gregory is sus: A Security Breach analysis

A spoilery leak-informed introduction to why I am doing this - for theorists & hardcore fans

A non-spoilery link to all analysis parts - coming soon.

No spoilers, game evidence only

PART ONE - GAME OPENING

So, from the beginning of the game, Gregory always puzzled me. So much so that I have been building a theory for a whole year based on him being sus.

Join me as I rewatch the game and highlight some things you may have missed.

Today, we'll cover the opening of the game up until the start of daycare. You may think there isn't much to say here but… surprisingly the game opening does a LOT of heavy lifting with setup. So much so that I boldly promise that you'll be given enough to realise Gregory is sus af by the end of this post.

The game's opening never made sense to me. From a storytelling perspective, why would SW have the game open with us in Freddy's room? Out of all the beautiful game settings they could have opened with, you start in a tiny room side room. Things are already confusing. Gregory has mysteriously come from Freddy's hatch - he claims he crawled in there when Freddy was asleep. That was extremely suspicious and my writer's senses were tingling. I had a suspicion that this was a writing technique called "In medias res", where the narrative begins partway through the story in the middle of the action and that this might be a clue in and of itself.

Protip: I highly recommend rewatching the opening to Security Breach before reading this or clicking the accompanying clips. Dialogue tone is extremely important.

The clues

(Covers 1-4)

1: Gregory hiding in Freddy's hatch:

Lets start at the very beginning. Now, what kid in their right mind climbs into a switched off animatronic? Especially after it has been glitching wildly on stage? Most kids would find the prospect terrifying but Gregory seems surprisingly unbothered by it. What or who is he hiding from? What drove him to hide somewhere so dangerous?

The mystery goes deeper though. To solve it, we need to channel our inner Benoit Blanc. Time to play detective:

Gregory claims he got into Freddy's hatch while he was sleeping

However, Freddy was on stage when he glitched. Presumably he was still on the stage when he switched off.

We know from the Fazwatch note 'Party Foul' that Freddy was out of commission for the rest of the day. He missed a kid's birthday party.

This means we have at least several hours between Freddy crashing and the game starting. This presumably means there could have been time where Freddy was out of action/asleep and Gregory could have climbed into him as he said.

When though? Freddy malfunctioned in public view in front of a big audience. There is no way he could have got into Freddy without someone noticing unless no one was around. He would have been stopped by staff. And presumably, Freddy was transported by a staff member back to his own room. When could Gregory have snuck in?

This is where SB fans say 'Simple. He got into Freddy's room and snuck in there'! Now, its possible I am wrong here but I think the game is hinting at that being impossible. Why? The game goes out of its way to tell us Freddy can't get out of his room. His door is locked, requiring someone with a party pass to open it from the outside. If Gregory has no security badges at all, how could he have gotten into Freddy's room independently? How did he get the chance?

This made me wonder if Gregory was lying and covering up how he'd come to be inside Freddy. By its own, this line of thinking is a bit thin but stay with me and you'll see why I made a big deal about this.

Quite the puzzle. Reminds me of the old 'locked door' mysteries! It also raises the question: Was Gregory actually already inside Freddy before he glitched? Could he even be the reason for said malfunction?

2: Gregory's narrative set up:

I also want to point out that we see no hint of Gregory's backstory or how he came to be in the Pizzaplex. Despite being a lost kid in a shut-down Pizzaplex, he isn't upset or scared. He doesn't talk about wanting to go home. From a storytelling perspective, this immediately stood out.

3: Gregory's rude introduction:

Gregory's first line of dialogue is "Shh! WILL YOU SHUT UP?!". Kinda rude for a lost kid, huh? He's scared of Vanessa the Security Guard coming over, sure. But why? If he hasn't at least met Vanessa in passing before, how does he know she is 'trying to get him'? Either Vanessa has shown herself to be a threat to him (which she shows no sign of to the player) or Gregory is hiding something or making an excuse. I also noted that he almost sounds frustrated and annoyed at Freddy for asking questions.

4: NO RECORD OF GREGORY:

This clue is super important! Freddy scans Gregory. He has no guest profile. He then asks for Gregory's name. Freddy proceeds to try and notify the main office and he receives a connection error. Ergo, there is no way that anyone else in the Pizzaplex can or should know his name. Remember this.

5: Gregory makes accusations/deflects:

Omg I titled this clip wrong lol. GREGORY'S REACTION TO VANESSA

Gregory immediately blames Freddy's connection problems on 'her'. "She cut you off", "She's trying to get to me. She's not going to let you call for help until she finds me." The player presumes he's talking about Vanessa.

Freddy responds with "Who? Your Mother?"

I personally think this is the game foreshadowing but that's for another theory.

It's telling that we never get an answer in-game. Gregory distracts by talking about footsteps approaching. This could be read as deflection.

6: G's reaction to Vanessa:

Freddy tells him it's the security guard and 'she can help!. Gregory responds in a panicked way. "NO, NO, I don't trust her." "I don't know who she is but she's trying to get me!"

Again, what is going on here? Think back. Gregory just said he doesn't know her but earlier he 'knew' that she'd cut communications and that Vanessa was after him. Why doesn't he trust her? (At this point, my mind was whirring. Things don't add up.)

Unless, of course, he's referring to a different 'she'...

7: Gregory expresses no verbal desire to exit the pizzaplex:

This fact gets lost in the Fazwatch intro sequence but - believe it or not - it is Freddy who prompts the walk to the main entrance. Gregory says nothing about escaping, leaving or his motivation at all. Why? That's rather plot convenient.

8: Freddy assumes Gregory has a party pass:

After climbing out of Freddy's room via the vents, Gregory tries but fails to open Freddy's door. He needs a party pass.

Freddy says: "Apologies, I assumed you had one already…" Why would Freddy assume this given Gregory didn't have a guest profile? Well, because Freddy knows Gregory could not have entered his room without it. Again, a surprisingly telling dialogue choice.

Freddy sends Gregory to find a complimentary pass in the lobby so he can get Freddy out of his room.

Clue 9: Gregory's dialogue reminds players of Afton:

Party pass achieved, Gregory reunites with Freddy. Freddy says that he has figured out how to get Gregory out of the Pizzaplex and says he'll take him to the main entrance. Freddy proceeds to suggest that Gregory travels in this cakehatch.

Gregory says yes: "But you better be careful moving around, I don't want to be crushed and twisted into a meat pretzel."

This could be taken as innocent fear but… it's delivered a little dryly for that. The imagery reminds the player of Springtrap. And the fear is sort of belated, isn't it? Given he already hid in there earlier.

Clue 10: Freddy's sudden detour to First Aid:

I don't know how else to explain it but Freddy starts behaving quite strangely as soon as he exits his room with Gregory in his hatch. He says about taking Gregory to the main entrance, they need to hurry before the doors shut. Then unexpectedly Freddy announces randomly that "You are broken" and he makes an impromptu trip to first aid despite Gregory's protests that he is 'fine' and they "Don't have time".

The first aid room, as it happens, is located in the Staff-only utility tunnels in a dark room with danger signs and sparking wires. Bit odd, huh? Why isn't First Aid in one of the guest areas? This doesn't seem like a typical place to bring customers.

Plot happens:

As soon as the duo get to the First Aid Station, they are interrupted by Vanessa. Gregory hides while Vanessa tells Freddy off. The following scene plays out:

Vanessa: Freddy! You're supposed to be on lockdown.

Freddy: Officer Vanessa! I do not know how I got here!

Vanessa: Well you totally blew it tonight you know. Your system crashed and you ruined the show. Now Parts and Service have you on reduced power! They said it's a safety precaution. Just one more thing to deal with...

Freddy: I apologize.

Vanessa: Ok... Look, we're like 15 minutes from closing and some kid is sneaking around backstage. If you see anything notify me immediately, I already alerted the others. Now go back to your room.

This is important context and establishes a few things. "Parts and Services" have put Freddy on reduced power, meaning he requires recharging every hour. Additionally, Vanessa at least appears to know very little about Gregory other than the fact that he exists.

Gregory says: "I told you she was after me."

This voice line implies that Gregory and Vanessa have at least had one run in with each other.

Freddy promises: "I said nothing. I will keep you safe. Let's go."

11: Gregory doesn't receive any first aid:

I kid you not, I laughed the first time I realised this. After all the fuss that was made, Freddy doesn't even look Gregory over. They just leave immediately. Is this a plot oversight or a clue?

Unrelated(?) detail you may have missed:

As Freddy and Gregory move through the Utility Tunnels, Freddy explains they link to every area of the building.

Freddy says: Fazer Blast, Monty Golf, Roxy Raceway, they are all accessible to S.T.A.F.F - with high enough clearance of course. Guests are never allowed down here but yours is a... special situation.

This scene provides confirmation that the First Aid Station Freddy took Gregory to isn't usually used by guests. Hmmm.

Additionally, there's another notable piece of flavour text. The S.T.A.F.F bots need security clearance to go around the building. Why? If S.T.A.F.F bots are just generic AI/personality-less robots, why would they need individual security clearance?

It's also worth noting that - as this line is delivered - we pass a scene behind a chain link fence. It is of three S.T.A.F.F bots standing around a broken colleague.

Then, a short walk later, this poster is displayed: "100% of fatal accidents involve human beings."

It feels like Steel Wool might be trying to imply something here.

Plot:

About two seconds later, Freddy draws to a halt because he ran out of power. So helpful. Gregory is on his own again but Freddy promises to direct him via the Fazwatch. Gregory sets off for the main entrance.

12: Animatronic dialogue:

Gregory wanders around a bit and triggers a playable cutscene where Roxy, Chica and Monty begin to chase him.

I'm going to cheat slightly here and use this as an opportunity not only to review their dialogue in this scene but their wandering around dialogue as it boils down to the same point.

During the chase, the animatronics say the following.

Monty: There you are! (Friendly tone, like he's found you after playing hide and seek)

Roxy: Are you lost? (Dry voice, could be read as sarcasm or a genuine question. Ambiguous)

Chica: Lost boy over here! (Singsong)

You can also find the rest of their dialogue text and audio here.

None of these voice lines sound threatening at all. They sound pretty reasonable on the whole honestly. In some cases, they even sound friendly or like they are just doing the task assigned to them as part of a Pizzaplex lost kid protocol. Or directions from Vanny/Vanessa/an unseen force. But whatever is driving them, they don't seem very murdery.

Some patroling dialogue lines that stuck out to me:

Monty: "You can hide but you can't hide!", "Hey kid, come on out! We're only tryin' to help." (That first one… what does Monty mean?)

Chica: "Your family is looking for you.", "Your parents want you to follow me.", "Don't worry, you're safe with me." (How does Chica know who Gregory's parents/family are?)

Roxy: "Why are you hiding from me?", "Hey kid, come on out. We're only trying to help.", "I can help." (Roxy has some more spiteful-sounding dialogue like "Sneak away, little coward" and "Nobody will miss you" but none sound threatening or aggressive)

Plot again:

Gregory escapes but doesn't make it to the door in time.

"How unfortunate Gregory. You missed your chance but there is still hope. You should be able to escape when the security doors reopen at 6:00am. Until then, keep moving and try not to draw attention to yourself, there is another way out. I will help you find it. I promise."

13: Chica knows Gregory's name:

So now, Gregory begins to find a means to upgrade his Party Pass so he can enter the Pizzaplex. During this time, Chica patrols the area.

Hey, remember how I pointed out that:

Gregory has no guest profile?

Freddy couldnt access the mainframe to report his name?

Ergo, there is no way that anyone other than Freddy who can know Gregory's name?

THEN HOW DOES CHICA KNOW GREGORY'S NAME?

Before people say "Vanessa hears Gregory's name through the Fazwatch via Freddy." That scene happened at 2am. This clip is LITERALLY from 12am moments after the door shut. It's several hours before that scene even happens. Vanessa is still calling him 'little boy' and 'some kid'.

How was this missed by much of the fandom? Well, I have a theory. In Matpat's GT live playthrough pre-release day patch, I'm pretty sure Chica has a different set of voice lines. As far as I can see, she also never says Gregory's name at 12am. But on Markiplier's - post patch - playthrough, she says it continuously. There are even different iterations of her saying Gregory's name, one of which is reminiscient of the special voicebox screech used to access the Burntrap boss fight.

This was my jaw drop moment while watching my second playthrough of Security Breach. How does Chica know Gregory's name? In that moment, I 'knew' that Gregory could not be unknown to Chica. He knew more than he was letting on and I was on the lookout for more inconsistencies.

And I realised Chica is super important - after all, Chica's beak has always been lore significant.

14: Freddy's strange response to Gregory's gift magnet:

Gregory goes to find an item with which to 'hack' the Party Pass machine. He finds a 'Free Mystery Gift' box conveniently located in the gift shop. He opens it to find - in his own words "a crappy Mr. Hippo fridge magnet. Lame"

Freddy responds to his magnet disappointment with: "I am sorry, Gregory. I am truly sorry."

He sounds as if someone just died. What is this dialogue? Who says that in response to a kid expressing dismay at getting a character magnet they don't like?!

15: Freddy's tone deaf response to a setback

After this, Freddy directs Gregory to use the magnet "hack" the machine to get a party pass. The machine unexpectedly spits out a Daycare pass instead.

Gregory is dismayed but Freddy says, "That's good news" as if totally tone-deaf. He does not explain WHY it is good news, just tells Gregory to meet him there. It's almost like he is stalling for time...

Are you convinced something doesn't add up yet? Let me know in the comments! I'll add additional notes to this section if anyone has any questions/suggestions/evidence.

Next time, we'll move on to Daycare and the clues will start to add up...

[heizuha-queen]

Hello! It's that girl who doesn't know when to stop coming up with more headcannons at 2am in the morning again.

Another idea sparked in my head.

You know how it's common for K-pop idols to have solo activities such as joining a variety show?

Have you heard of Busted! ?

Not sure if you've heard about this variety program. It airs on Netflix and currently have three seasons. The cast members consists of various celebrities ranging from comedians to actors to idols. Exo Sehun and Gugudan Sejeong are actually members of that show as well. (Btw, Sehun even low-key dressed up as KID once. It was a masterpiece. Period)

The show is a mystery/detective game program. The cast have to solve puzzles and search for clues to complete the missions given. The best part of the program is that the production team doesn't make the cast solve stupid, kid puzzle games.

They have to solve actual, scary, cases. Murders. Robbery. Conspiracy stuff.

So....

What if... Kazuha joins a program like this as a cast member?

I believe she would actually be perfect to join the show for several reasons:

1. Her intelligence

We've seen that she is actually very smart. Her deduction skills may not be as sharp as Heiji's, but we were shown in canon how Kazuha is actually very intelligent, even able to decipher the dying message of the victim in the Heiji Vs Kazuha episode. (If you remember, even Kogoro & Ran weren't able to solve it)

Not just that, remember how in the 7th Movie, Kazuha was able to come up with a really smart way to save Heiji from getting killed by that masked man by just using her sock and rocks?

If she were to join the cast, she'll be a valuable asset that could help them solve the missions much more quickly due to her wits.

2. Her physical prowess

Okay, to be honest, it's not necessary for the cast members to be proficient in martial arts. However, her aikido would definitely be a huge bonus. Imagine a scene where the cast members were all scared and being chased by something (like a villain, criminal,etc) As everyone is running away to not get caught and lose or something, Kazuha just stands there like a badass and back flip the villain like... Wouldn't that be totally awesome?

The production crew may or may not advise Kazuha to not repeat that so the staff members won't turn down their job as future villain roles.

(Also, ever since the back flip incident, the internet may or may not vote her as the most badass K-pop idol to live)

3. Her popularity

Since I think everyone on your blog agrees that Kazuha will be extremely popular, imagine the viewers she would attract to watch the program. It wouldn't be just the Korean audience. Her international fans would watch. Her Japanese audience would watch. Her group's fan would watch.

Of course, most importantly, Heizuha fans would loyally watch every episode as they pray that Heiji would miraculously guest on one of the episodes since they're thirsty for any Heizuha interaction.

(Even a cameo phone call would be enough tbh)

4. Her experience

I strongly believe that no matter how hard Kazuha's agency tried to avoid scandal by hiding the fact that Kazuha has been to a lot of cases and crime scenes (because of Heiji), the internet still discovers it. Hence, the producer of the show believe that she would perfect since she has experience and know how to ACTUALLY act when trying to do detective work. Her attitude would make the (fake) murder case looks real and legit, hence bringing more quality to the show.

5. Her relationship with people who are in the field

I think that, over time, people would discover that Kazuha is a daughter of a very notable and respectable police officer. Due to that, in a way, I think people would trust Kazuha's instinct more on the show, and indirectly, she would unconsciously lead the cast members to solve the mystery without being explicitly bossy nor pushy.

I would also LOVE to imagine that in those EXTREMELY RARE instances where a mission becomes extremely hard, for instance, they've spent longer time than necessary on a clue, the production crew gives them a chance to call someone and ask for help. (Tbh the production crew could just straight up tell them the answer, but where's the entertainment value in that?) Most of the time people would ask Kazuha to call for help since she has connections to a bunch of smart people who could solve the clue in just a few minutes. ( ie; her dad, Heiji).But of course, (for the sake of entertainment lol), the cast prefer if she calls Heiji for help. (Hence, why Heiji makes some cameos on the show through phone calls)

Let's be real, the production crew and cast members are (low-key) hardcore Heizuha shippers.

6. Her personality

She may be hot-headed at times, but that just adds charm to her personality you know? It also sometimes help the cast stay in check to help out with the investigation. At the end of the day, her determination to complete a mission yet adorableness in her interactions are really what makes people love her so much. Her frankness and straightforwardness also helps her forge genuine friendships with the rest of the cast members and production crew. From the show, people could see more than a properly-trained K-pop idol on stage. Rather, a smart individual who is also a human. People get to see her as herself, not just a celebrity.

Of course, I don't think she'll immediately join the program as a rookie K-pop idol. Maybe 5/6 years after her debut, where members of her group are all exploring their own individual solo career?

Although on another note, can you imagine how Heiji would react when she's on the show.

I bet Heiji watches every episode of the show but never admits it. He would also get frustrated when everyone on the show takes too long to find a hint, but have this huge proud smile on his face whenever Kazuha solves it.

Of course, Heiji would tease Kazuha for every small thing she did on the show when they facetime or call each other in private. Just because~

I also imagine Kazuha having to change Heiji's name on her phone to something neutral that doesn't indicate that they're dating. Ever since joining the show, she also has to change the lock screen of her phone since she could be asked to call Heiji for help without any warning. (Better safe than sorry)

I guess that's all for this random shot of headcannons. I hope you enjoy them!

Ps; By the way, if I do end up writing Heizuha fanfics (WE DESPERATELY NEED MORE!!), I'll let you know 😊

Umm PLEASE NEVER LEARN TO STOP BECAUSE I LOVE READING YOUR HEADCANONS!

I really love the idea of Heiji appearing in phone calls and I can imagine him watching every episode. It’s a routine that no one can break for him😂😂

[adamwatchesmovies]

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021)

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is an improvement upon its predecessor thanks to it being able to jump into the action immediately. None of the potential victims are all that well developed and if you can’t swallow the premise, nothing this film does will win you over but the puzzles are inventive and fun to solve. In a film like this, that counts for a lot.

Determined to expose the Minos Corporation, Zoey Davis (Taylor Russell) and Ben Miller (Logan Miller) follow a series of clues that lead them to their New York City headquarters. Before they know it, their search has backfired. They are put in a game of life-and-death with fellow escape room “champions” Rachel (Holland Roden), Brianna (Indya Moore), Nathan (Thomas Cocquerel), and Theo (Carlito Olivero).

“Wait. Didn’t the last movie end with Zoey on a plane revealed to be a trap set by Minos?”

“You’re right, and the movie ‘explains’ this by showing that Zoey and Ben suffer from escape room-related nightmares.”

“Sounds like the writers couldn’t figure out what to do and just retconned the ending.”

It’s true, but this movie's premise helps it recover from this decision rather quickly. I don’t mean the idea of this organization with sci-fi tech that can do whatever it wants, including kidnapping people, hiring legions of actors, hijacking public property, and building immense facilities underground; I mean the winners from previous escape rooms being brought together for another round. The intricate puzzles-within-puzzles are the film’s highlights. It’s kind of a shame they’re given time limits with each room and have to rush through them but it’s not supposed to be easy or 100% survivable so that’s fine. Each new room means a wide array of inventive dangers.

While it’s a shame that we don’t really get to know anything but the basics about the characters, you learn to care for them for three reasons. First, they’re smart. The movie shows you all of the pieces necessary to escape. Granted, you can’t handle them like these people do so you’re at a disadvantage but even so, it would be difficult to solve things as fast as them. Secondly, they care about each other. These people know teamwork is the key and unlike Jigsaw’s victims, they never turn on each other because they think “there can be only one winner”. Thirdly, the kinds of death promised by these rooms are sufficiently horrible for you to not want ANYONE to suffer them.

But let’s not get crazy. This would’ve been a better picture if the characters had been given more depth. Maybe then a particular contestant's special skills would’ve felt less like an afterthought. Then, there’s the ending. It’s standard fare for horror films to have “the evil live on” but that tactic can get tiresome, particularly since the first Escape Room - retcon or not - revealed that no matter how smart the characters might be, Minos has thought of everything. They can be beaten, which means the heroes can’t win, and if they can’t win, what’s the point? This won’t disturb fans but general audiences? It might. Me? I'm looking forward to Escape Room 3. (Theatrical version, November 23, 2021)

[thewatsonbeekeepers]

Chapter 2 – Look up here, I’m in Heaven: the height metaphor

[The chapter title comes from David Bowie’s Lazarus. Lazarus is a cracking song, and you should listen to it. X CN: death, disturbing imagery]

It’s worth stating here that this whole meta has a cn for death and suicide – this one is analysing the literal peaks and troughs (height is important in this episode) that Sherlock goes through in order to look at how close he is to dying throughout.

In my reading, EMP theory begins once Mary shoots Sherlock in HLV – I’ve linked the reasons for this in Chapter 1 X, so I’m not going to run through them again here. I think Sherlock comes the closest to death that we see him in the EMP at the end of HLV – if you remember, he’s been put on a plane in ‘exile’ by Mycroft, but in reality is being sent to his death. This plane/height image is really important. In the Christian tradition (and therefore majority Western tradition that the writers are writing in), the sky is associated with heaven – Sherlock’s plane taking off being synonymous with his death seems a pretty straightforward metaphor in that regard. (It’s even one that’s used in Cats, though I don’t know if that’s a good thing.) Further to that – it ties in nicely with Sherlock being ‘high’ through a lot of s4, which represents the moments in which he is most repressed and his repression is most tied to self-harm. We have further ideas to buttress the height/aeroplane metaphor with, however – do you remember the plane in ASiB?

Sure, as I recall it never gets off the ground. But everybody on it is dead. Aeroplanes have an association with death already in this show, and the choice to put Sherlock on a plane rather than lock him up for four minutes or anything equivalent – and probably less expensive to shoot – suggests a deliberate throwback. We’re supposed to think of it as a kind of metal coffin.

[Obviously, there’s another, more notable use of an aeroplane in the programme – you can see where I’m going here. But bear with me – there’s more first.]

I want to quickly talk about what grounds Sherlock’s aeroplane. Moriarty appears on screens everywhere, and then we have the following exchange between Sherlock and Mycroft. I’ve already made a post about this that’s done the rounds on tumblr X, so if you already know this bit you’re ahead of the game.

As far as I can tell, nobody ever tells Sherlock that Moriarty is back. It’s possible Mycroft tells him offscreen, or that he googles it from his phone, given that he’s already breaking flight rules, but given that it’s the entire trigger for TAB, it seems a pretty odd thing to leave out. In EMP theory, it’s also the thing that downs his plane – in terms of the plane metaphor as well as literally, it stops him from dying. It’s pivotal, but we don’t see it. I therefore want to hypothesise – what does it mean if Sherlock is never told that Moriarty is back?

The first thing it tells us is that Sherlock is in his Mind Palace, because he knows that Moriarty is back without needing to be told. But the second is that Mycroft, the brain, is waking Sherlock from his dying stupor to tell him that England needs him, meaning that Sherlock’s brain equates Moriarty coming back with the word ‘England’ in some way. Perhaps this is a tenuous link, but the seed is planted back from ASiP, when we’re taught to associate John with his armchair.

Don’t mind me, I’m just crying. Basically, Sherlock knows that John is in danger and that’s what pulls him back from the brink – and we know it’s serious, because Mycroft, the brain, is warning him. Via call.

The fear of Moriarty coming back might sound like a tenuous symbol for John being in danger, but when we probe deeper the two are actually quite obviously equivalent. The only threat that Moriarty has ever posed to Sherlock is a threat to John’s life – the Semtex, burning the heart out of him, John Watson is definitely in danger, the sniper at the fall. This is Sherlock’s pressure point, and by getting rid of Moriarty, he’s getting rid of any danger to John – we know from his drug abuse etc. that his regard for himself is much lower. So Sherlock being woken from the dead to save John makes complete sense. He died for him, and now he’ll resurrect himself for him.

There are several layers to how John is in danger – the bottom one, which for me s4 is about getting to the heart of, is that without Sherlock John is suicidal. This was established in ASiP, and I believe is the metaphorical plot of TLD (see Chapter 9 X). However, there’s also the problem of Mary, newly discovered as an assassin, and Sherlock trying to work out who she is and where she comes from – more on that later, but there’s certainly a chance she’s linked to Moriarty, given the Morstan/Moran connections. ‘Did you miss me?’ works for both of those layers – the danger John is in from criminals is something that was really apparent in s1 and 2, but John’s endangerment from suicide is also something that was there at the beginning of the series. Sherlock changed these things – and didn’t realise he was the changing factor, but something in his subconscious is telling him that with him gone, John Watson is once again in danger.

So, his plane comes back to the runway – still in his mind palace, of course, but coming down. TAB – of which more on later – seems to be about the return of Moriarty, and Sherlock puzzling through it, which is jarringly absent from TST and TLD if you’re reading it on a surface level – it takes TAB for Sherlock to puzzle through this and to pull him down from death, as he comes to understand the Moriarty threat. This all sounds pretty vague – the TAB chapter will deal with it in more detail. For now, let’s move on to the other places where the height/heaven metaphor comes into s4.

One thing that several meta-writers have pointed out is that Ella’s office is… fucky. It’s not the same office as John repeatedly visits outside the MP – it’s possible that Ella has moved premises, but it’s a weird thing to draw such obvious attention to by the weirdness of the room. This isn’t a subtle change, like John and Mary’s place, it’s a really dissonant one, and the oddness of the room pulls our attention towards a character and space that by rights belong in the background of the story. It’s a really odd move – and that’s why I’m so convinced that it’s important.  

It looks like Heaven, for want of a better description. The window with the light streaming through looks like the very top of a church window, and the beams suggest that the ceiling is like a kind of spire – and the spire in a church is meant to be closer to heaven, that’s part of the imagery. So there’s that side of things, and I really don’t think that’s a coincidence. However, the even weirder part is the partitioning of the room, for want of a better word. The wall ends at about chair height, and from there to the floor is – nothing? These aren’t mirrors because the chairs aren’t reflected. I have never seen a room partitioned like this, and nor has anyone I’ve shown the image to – again, it draws attention to itself. If the creative team had wanted us to take this scene at face value, they would have put Ella in an office. This is not a psychiatrist’s office. The partitions mean that it isn’t even private.

I don’t know if I’m right about the partitions, but there’s only one thing they remind me of, and that’s a closing door. It’s a trope in an adventure film – I first saw it in Indiana Jones, but it’s in many a movie. It also features in Doctor Who on multiple occasions.

It’s the moment when the door is coming down and you only have a few seconds to get under it, otherwise you die. Indiana Jones famously goes back for his hat. That one. That’s what the space under the partition looks like. Sherlock, thinking he’s solved the case of Norbury and therefore Mary (more in Chapter 7 X) is ready to pop off – he’s nearly gone. But in a moment of self-interrogation – making sure he got everything right, that John’s safe now – he realises he isn’t, and so he comes down. That sinking downwards is represented by the water imagery, as he sinks deep into his subconscious – LSiT has written a fantastic meta on water in S4 which you can read here X, as I’m loath to take credit for this idea!

I’m going to talk about water a lot more in the chapters on TFP, because of John in the well and pirates and so much, but the obvious thing to talk about now is the plane in TFP.

This is a point where surface level plot breaks down – because this cannot be in Eurus’s mind. When we watch film/tv, we make one of two assumptions – either we have the omnipotent view, like in most films, where we’re guided by the director but everything we see is ultimately objectively true, or we see through somebody else’s eyes (rarer). These can be played with – think of a film like The Usual Suspects (please skip to the next paragraph if you haven’t seen this film because it’s fantastic) where the film lets the viewer rest on their laurels and slip into normal, objective viewing patterns when of course it’s a subjective, flashback narrative, which Kevin Spacey is deliberately obscuring to trick an audience. This rug pull can be fantastic, but we don’t have such a rug pull here. Either it’s a poor man’s version, or there’s something else going on. Mug drop.

New paragraph – spoilers gone. Moments where the perspective was actually subjective and we missed it or forgot it are great rug pulls, because the clues are there but we don’t spot them. We love a good unreliable narrator. This isn’t the case here. The plane scene, as visualised, exists only inside Eurus’s head. Eurus is emphatically not our narrator during TFP, so when it comes out that the girl on the plane isn’t real, we just feel lied to.

If we accept that s4 takes place inside Sherlock’s MP, this makes more sense, because all of the characters are manifestations of different parts of Sherlock’s psyche and so he can jump between perspectives. It also means that the terror of being on a crashing plane that Eurus has felt ever since she was a child is not hers – it’s Sherlock’s. If we remember that planes are synonymous with dying in this show, an association that’s reinforced because of the “sleeping” people on the plane, a clear throwback to the dead passengers in ASiB, the climax of S4, when Sherlock is trying to save John and work out his repressed memories, is all fuelled by a child’s nightmare of dying, a terror that has resurfaced.

I think Eurus represents Sherlock’s queer trauma, and I’ll explain that in more detail in Chapter 5 X, which is completely devoted to Eurus. Her representing trauma, though, makes a great deal of sense in this situation. The problem of the plane, the threat that she hinges on, is one that has been repeating and repeating, though repressed, inside Sherlock’s consciousness, and he breaks through it with not only kindness, but the recognition that it is all in Eurus’s (and by extension his) head.

This doesn’t diminish the trauma that Sherlock experiences – one of the things I begrudgingly like about the ending of TFP. Sherlock can’t get rid of the problem and possible danger that is his trauma – but he can stop it from careering to the point of destruction by recognising it, he can learn to live in harmony (see the violin duet) with it, he can accept its existence.  Pushing through that trauma is what makes him able to abandon the plane and (we hope) return to the real world.

The positioning of the aeroplane problem in relation to the John-trapped-in-a-well problem is also pretty important. I’m of the firm belief that Eurus represents queer trauma, and this is the trauma that throughout the entirety of series 4 is both pushing him towards John and blocking him from him. Sherlock needs to wake up to save John, and has to push through the trauma to recognise this – but the trauma is blocking his way. She’s stopping him from helping John – it’s a terrible moment when Sherlock is telling John that he’s busy whilst John is drowning in the well – but it’s also pushing through the aeroplane moment that allows him to save John in the MP. This is the paradox of queer repression, right, and the paradox in Eurus’s behaviour – she’s simultaneously blocking Sherlock and leading him on to the solution.

When Sherlock finally reaches Eurus’s room, he tells her that he’s on the ground and he can bring her down too – and what is most striking is the way Eurus is sitting. She’s actually incredibly grounded, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and given that the house is burned it’s likely that this is the ground floor as well. The dark room is a far cry from the bright lighting of the plane – everything suggests that she’s been pulled back. And of course, the lovely touch that all she needs to do is open her eyes. That’s all the creators have ever been asking people to do – open their eyes to what is hiding in plain sight – and Eurus is allowing Sherlock to see things afresh for the first time. But also, this final breakthrough is what’s going to allow Sherlock to open his own eyes, right? So that phrase is doubly powerful.

And there was me hating on TFP for three years. That’s a brief journey through the highs and lows of series 4, though if anyone can explain the planes in TST to me that would be wonderful! The next chapter will do a run through of HLV before we move onto TAB and series 4.

[odanurr87]

My thoughts on... The King: Eternal Monarch

Lee Min-ho as Lee Gon, and Kim Go-eun as Jeong Tae-eul.

Release date: April 17 - June 12, 2020

Episodes: 16

Available on: Netflix

Plot synopsis: On one fateful night of December 1994, the king of the Kingdom of Corea was brutally murdered by his illegitimate brother, Lee Lim. The king’s son, Lee Gon, was spared a similar fate thanks to the timely intervention of a mysterious saviour, who only left behind an identity card belonging to one Lieutenant Jeong Tae-eul. 15 years later, King Lee Gon finds himself transported to the parallel world of the Republic of Korea where he meets Lieutenant Jeong Tae-eul and together they work to uncover a conspiracy across their two worlds.

Rewatch meter: Medium to High

Introduction

The King: Eternal Monarch is the latest work by writer Kim Eun-sook and, since I enjoyed two of her previous works (Descendants of the Sun and Goblin), I was quite looking forward to it. I didn't know actor Lee Min-ho at the time but I recalled Kim Go-eun from Goblin so I was relatively excited to see her in another main role. The pilot episode of the show was great, deftly introducing us to a host of characters and setting up several plot threads in a total runtime of 70 minutes, already incorporating the concepts of time travel and parallel worlds, not an easy task and a much welcome departure from most kdramas on air. Since I am a fan of sci-fi and modern fantasy however, that meant I'd put this show under the microscope so how did it fare?

Related reviews: Goblin

Characters

From left to right: Lee Jung-jin as Lee Lim, Jung Eun-chae as Goo Seo-rung, Lee Min-ho as Lee Gon, Kim Go-eun as Jeong Tae-eul, Woo Do-hwan as Jo Yeong, and Kim Kyung-nam as Kang Shin-jae.

The show enjoys, and suffers from, a host of characters on both worlds, with many actors playing dual roles because of the concept of parallel worlds. This (over)abundance of characters results in most having to play second fiddle to the two leads. In hindsight, a tighter cast would've worked better. A fair few of the characters (e.g. the detective hiding something from his wife, the pregnant lady, the mother of Lee Gon's doppelganger, god kid, and many more) did not ultimately justify their presence other than to set up (underwhelmingly resolved) mysteries to keep the audience engaged. More important characters, like Prime Minister Koo and Lee Lim, sadly never reached their full potential to my mind, being relegated to play more stereotypical antagonist roles in the end. While I can understand this decision with Lee Lim to an extent, it was a shame Prime Minister Koo’s character wasn’t more nuanced. While Lee Min-ho's characterization of Lee Gon has taken some flak I found him to act more or less in line with how a (fictional) king would, one excited at the prospect of having found the woman he's been searching for for most of his life. Kim Go-eun as Jeong Tae-eul was the one who truly delivered on the emotional end of the spectrum, as we all knew she would. Sadly, the character of Luna was more undercooked, and the show could probably have done without her.

Pacing

The all-out battle at the end of Episode 11, with Lee Gon showing off his skill with the sword, is one of the highlights of the show.

While the pacing of the show ramped up considerably towards the end it actually started rather slowly. Lee Gon discovers the Republic of Korea at the end of the first episode, yes, but it is not until the end of Episode 4 that he returns to his kingdom, with a skeptical Jeong Tae-eul in tow. Then, it is at the end of Episode 9 that Lee Gon and Lee Lim have their first encounter, with an all-out battle with Lee Lim's henchmen at the end of Episode 11, and the reveal of the identity of the savior at the end of Episode 13. I was quite satisfied with the show's pacing up until that point but a little worried about how they would tie everything up with 3 episodes left, worries that proved to be justified, as many plot threads were left unresolved or rushed to conclusion without living up to the expectations built up after several episodes. Considering the last episode of the show solves the main conflict in the first 20 minutes, I don't think this faster pacing was justified.

Execution

It is difficult not to conclude the execution of the plot wasn't nearly as tight as it could've been. The show continuously introduced new questions, new mysteries, and new characters, to keep us guessing, to keep us engaged, sometimes to the detriment of the overall storytelling quality. Who is this new character? How does s/he factor in Lee Lim's plan? Who's sending this stuff to PM Koo? What is the significance of the scars? There is no doubt these questions succeeded in keeping us engaged and I have to give it props for that. However, the execution was dragged down from indulging in superfluous characters and plot threads. Park Moon-sik's nightly escapades from his wife are a perfect example, a plot whose resolution was needlessly postponed till the final episode. Removing such plots could've open up time better served to further develop characters, like PM Koo, or explore Lee Lim's plans more thoroughly, an aspect where I feel the show dropped the ball, as these turned out to be contradictory and contrived, helping out the writer more than Lee Lim himself.

Time Travel

Sadly, the execution of time travel is a direct casualty of continuously trying to surprise the audience with new twists or for the sake of pulling at our heart strings. Up until Episode 13, its depiction of time travel lined up perfectly with the concept of a causal loop (e.g. Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban), but then Episode 14 had characters remember new past events in real-time (think of the movie Frequency, with Jim Caviezel and Dennis Quaid), and Episode 15 resurrected a character who should've been dead, among potentially more problematic issues. Time travel is a fictional concept, but even fiction is guided by certain rules and, sadly, the depiction of time travel in The King: Eternal Monarch does not hold up under further scrutiny, what deflated my engagement somewhat. Here I was, trying to understand how the writer had put together the puzzle only to realize some of the pieces didn't line up or were from different puzzles altogether. This was not entirely unexpected, as few stories have used time travel consistently in the past, but I was mildly disappointed, particularly given the writer’s excellent work and attention to detail in Goblin.

Romance

Another highlight of the show, especially if you understand exactly what is going on in this scene.

While I can believe Lee Gon could’ve developed feelings for Jeong Tae-eul after searching for her for 20+years (fans of The Expanse will recall Miller also developed feelings for Julie while searching for her), the beginning of their romance in Episode 5 felt a bit forced. It also struck me as odd when Jeong Tae-eul was the one to declare her feelings of love for Lee Gon in Episode 7 instead of the other way around. In fact, it isn't until Episode 10 that Lee Gon admits his feelings for her in one of the most emotional scenes of the show. Perhaps if the two had switched around their declarations it would’ve made more sense.

In any case, their romantic relationship was cemented from Episode 10 onwards for me, although they had cute couple moments in earlier episodes, with Episode 6 featuring the most heartfelt conversations and interactions. For my part, watching their relationship continue to unfold was one of the highlights of the show, and it certainly delivered in the following episodes. Lee Gon's unyielding quest across time and space to find Jeong Tae-eul again and again was moving, though more powerful in Episode 14 than 16 to my mind, perhaps because of the music, editing, and added emotional impact of Jeong Tae-eul knowing Lee Gon is on his way. Perhaps if Episode 16 had dedicated more than 5 minutes (count them) of its runtime to show Lee Gon constantly leaving the palace to search for and meet different versions of Jeong Tae-eul throughout the years it would've been a lot more impactful, and potentially heartbreaking. Tying it to his appearance at the end of Episode 10 would've made it perfect.

Music

I hesitate slightly to say the soundtrack for The King: Eternal Monarch is on the same level as that of Goblin (time will tell), but if it's not, it certainly isn't far behind. Songs like "Gravity," "Orbit," and "Maze," or instrumental tracks like "One Day," "My Love and...," "Into the Fantasy," and "The Fantasia of Another Dimension," are a sample of this album's best. Sadly, not all tracks featured in the show are included in the album, such as the variant of “The King” that plays at the end of Episode 15 when Lee Gon bids farewell to Lady Noh. If you're a soundtrack aficionado like I am, I'd suggest you keep this album in your Spotify library or equivalent.

Conclusions

The King: Eternal Monarch is, by no means, a perfect show. It is technically not as good as writer Kim Eun-sook's previous Goblin, which overall covered the topics previously discussed better than The King did. However, that is not to say The King: Eternal Monarch isn't an overall good show as it is, one that boldly incorporates interesting concepts like time travel and parallel worlds to its narrative with ultimately mixed results. The music is great, production values are top notch, and all of the actors’ performances were on point, though a tighter cast would’ve benefited some of their performances. While the romance between Lee Min-ho’s and Kim Go-eun’s characters may be a hard sell for some, at least initially, it ultimately worked for me.

If you haven't watched the show yet and are reading this review now, then I'm sorry that you've missed out on the experience of watching the show week to week, discussing and dissecting it with other viewers, and rewatching episodes scouring for clues, a process it easily lends itself to as opposed to other kdramas. If you're into sci-fi and modern fantasy, then I'd encourage you to give it a watch, bearing in mind the previously discussed caveats. If you're into romance kdramas, set your expectations accordingly. If you're looking for more recommendations on modern fantasy+romance and have already watched Goblin, then allow me to recommend the excellent Hotel del Luna (which I’m currently in the process of reviewing after watching it, what, four times now?). For my part, I'm looking forward to Kim Eun-sook, Lee Min-ho, and Kim Go-eun's next projects.

[marginalgloss]

There is no doubt that the elegant formulation of a clue for a cryptic crossword has a poetry about it. They are simultaneously so much more and so much less complicated than the words suggest. They are an intensely serious form of play; a test of will between a setter, invariably concealed behind some mysterious codename, and their audience, who are sometimes far more like a community than one might assume. 

The problem is that I find crosswords intensely interesting in the abstract, but I have never been any good at solving them. There is a part of me which resists the whole exercise in the same way that I once resisted my maths homework. Often when reading the explanation for a clue I’m tempted to fling the whole puzzle across the room. Too often I feel like I’ve been tricked, as if by sleight-of-hand. I can see that the answer must be hidden somewhere, and I’m vaguely aware of how it has been done, but perhaps I just don’t have the patience to work it out by myself? 

Except that a patient, attentive, methodological approach often isn’t enough either, because cryptic crosswords aren’t like mathematics. Many clues rely on a certain kind of lateral associative thinking which is difficult to teach, let alone learn via reverse engineering. Like most people I can get perhaps halfway through a ‘quick’ crossword (where the definitions are essentially literal, and you either know them or you don’t) but I am left utterly stumped by the strange verse of the classic cryptic still beloved of the British broadsheet papers.

I think I was expecting Two Girls, One On Each Knee by Alan Connor to be something more like a guide to solving these puzzles for the general reader. This isn’t what it is at all; it does devote a chapter to introducing some of the typical forms of clues and how to approach them, but this feels somewhat rushed and general. As we will later find out there isn’t really any single formula that one can adopt when tackling a clue. Veteran solvers will notice signs and signifiers everywhere, but even if one has a basic idea of what to do, many clues require a considerable leaps in deductive reasoning, not to mention a dash of humour. (Incidentally, the answer to the clue that is the title of the book is ‘PATELLA’; as in the bone found ‘on’ each knee; and as in ‘Pat’ and ‘Ella’, two names for girls. Of course! Of course.)

For the most part this is a book about the history and cultural importance of crosswords, aimed at the general reader. Famous setters and solvers both real and fictional, media depictions from Brief Encounter onwards, the role of crosswords in espionage, the various crazes for crosswords and social concerns this brought up. The book even touches upon the different approaches and personalities of some of the most prolific setters, and it offers plenty of clever and amusing clues that demonstrate different facets of the setter’s skill. Some are rigorous in terms of the ‘rules’ at work, with no word nor punctuation wasted; others are freewheeling, anarchic, and sometimes extremely rude (even I can tell that much from the crossword in the back pages of Private Eye magazine). The answers to all the clues in the book are given in an appendix in the back, but I still found myself mystified as to how many of the solutions had been reached from the clues on offer. 

There’s a certain tendency here to wave away the difficulty of some of the most infuriating clues with the suggestion that this is all part of the mystery and magic of the game. And it is. But at times it’s difficult to avoid the sense of being swindled. To take a random example, at one point the book deigns to explain the clue ‘Relaxed when lying in grass (topless) (5)’ — we are asked to remove the ‘top’ letter of ‘reed’ and insert ‘as’ for ‘when’ to make the answer: EASED. But this only reads like half of an explanation. (Where has ‘reed’ come from, again?) There’s a sense throughout of ‘it’s easy when you know how’ that anyone aspiring to actually learn the art of solving is likely to find frustrating. 

And this, I think, says something about the contradiction that underlies the nature of the cryptic crossword. Because they are more about wordplay than general knowledge, in theory anyone can learn to do them. It’s no longer the case that a classical education is a prerequisite for the average clue. And yet for the most part they remain something of an exclusive pastime. In fiction, they are still a signifier of genius. To an extent the format preserves its own rarified status, in that the average serious crossword offers little to nothing to the reader who isn’t prepared to put in the hours to study its arcane art. This being the case, I wonder how many more years we can expect to see them in the media; to some extent they have already been overtaken in popularity by number games like Sudoku (and digital variants like Picross). 

But those games operate according to rigorous, specific rules, the nature of which is always clear to every player. Solving them is simply a matter of completing an equation, parts of which are already known. The charm of the cryptic crossword is that it resists this kind of straightforward processing. It is, as far as I can tell, an entirely unique form of art that has no close relatives in gaming or literature. That being the case, I suspect the nature of clue-writing will endure, even if it has to move to a different kind of puzzle altogether.

[christianslaterreview]

Way of the Wicked (2014) dir. Kevin Caraway

Synopsis:

Christian Slater portrays an excommunicated priest who has been tracking and studying a young man named Robbie after Robbie mysteriously killed one of his peers when they were both children. Father Henry (Slater) believes Robbie to be an incarnation of some cosmic and spiritual Evil that he subsequently dedicates five years of his life to researching. Vinnie Jones, portraying the town's local detective, joins forces with Father Henry to stop Robbie from wreaking demonic havoc after Robbie becomes the prime suspect in a murder of a local high school boy.

Review:

Christian Slater's ability to give a convincing performance despite a total lack of compelling dialogue, well developed characters, engaging cinematography, and an overall concise and trackable plot was the only small mercy that helped make this 1 1/2 hour film feel like 3hrs instead of 6.

My first disappointment was how little screentime Slater actually got during the course of the movie. With his face displayed on every poster and with every summary claiming Slater "stars" in the film, Slater probably only got about ten minutes of screen time total. Although every character felt entirely undeveloped even by the third act, Father Henry, despite being one of the characters with the most narrative potential, was regrettably left by the wayside for much of the film; only hopping on screen for a minute or two at a time to help quickly advance the plot. Every brief scene he was in his only purpose was to toss convenient morsels of context and information for the rest of the characters to wax expositional about in the next few scenes.

Father Henry is the first face that we see in the movie, but he spends the first and second act being a peeping Tom; never fully in shot and spying on all the other characters through leaves just to make sure the audience hasn't forgotten this character that has yet to be useful.

It's only after the plot begins to accelerate that Father Henry steps in with information about the evil entity, which the audience should have been provided in the beginning. Slater portrays one of the most interesting characters in the movie, but none of it is ever explored or used as a narrative point of view to create emotional stakes. We find out that Father Henry was exiled from the church (probably for his beliefs about Robbie) and has spent the last five years of his life consumed by his obsession with Robbie. But none of this is mentioned more than in passing! Additionally, he's just a bad fucking researcher, and for someone who should be an "expert" on whatever evil is inside Robbie (or is Robbie?) he sure does get himself easily killed off by being fucking strangled by his garish, solid gold rosary that's 9x bigger than it has to be.

His death scene was supremely disappointing 1) because I never want Christian Slater's characters to die duh, but 2) because it was tensionless, unnecessary, and over in the blink of an eye. His meaningless death only served to seal Father Henry as an impotent, half baked character although he was advertised as being some badass demon killer with explosions going on behind him.

aside: if this movie had focused solely on Father Henry and closely followed his character arc throughout the story, the plot twist reveal and his death would have been so much more emotionally impactful and compelling.

Besides the shortcomings of Father Henry in terms of character development, the writers did the audience a further disservice by making him the sole vehicle by which we get information about the evil.

For instance, when he meets up with detective Elliot he can't provide a clear answer to any one of Elliot's questions nor can he seem to provide any actual evidence of his claims (he just keeps repeating shit about how these "dates line up"). So, after impressing on Elliot that time is running out, he gives the detective volumes of assigned reading to do since he's incapable of explaining what he has devoted five years of his life to.

aside: the complete lack of any indications of organization and research (margin notes, highlights, color coded tabs, a goddamn corkboard with pictures and string) by Father Henry were some of the details this film was missing that made it feel so depthless and cheap.

As I said above, Slater's performance was the saving grace of this movie (only because I love him sm), which really is saying something as there wasn't really a well of rich dialogue or captivating cinematography for him to use (every shot of this movie was so boring and straightforward. The whole thing was visually reminiscent of a reality TV show). All the other actors performances were tolerable and probably would have improved considerably if the script was better. Almost all of the movie is tedious, expositional dialogue, resulting in all the characters feeling rehearsed. I didn't form any kind of attachment to any of the characters because each of them felt so formulaic and contrived. And I know it's not his fault, but I can't take Vinnie Jones seriously with his accent and he'll always ruin every serious role he's in (sowwy Vinnie).

Sadly, the backstory that actually got the most exposé was the obviously cloying backstory of detective Elliot's wife and Heather's mom (whose name we don't even learn) who died when Heather was a child. The mother's death does become relevant late in the third act of the film, but its reason is as convoluted and half baked as the rest of the film.

Which I think is my main issue with this movie: there is no trackable plot, defined stakes, or clear point of view. The movie begins with a scene that takes place while Robbie is still a boy, right after the murder of one of his peers. Father Henry opens the film by questioning Robbie and his mother about the incident, clearly convinced that Robbie murdered the other boy with his powers. After the opening, I was expecting the movie to follow Father Henry throughout. Showing us his research, giving us a consistent storyline to follow, providing us with a character to invest in to give the film more depth, etc. But no, the plot jumps forward in time five years (the time jump also wasn't super clear to me, but that could have just been because I was high) when Robbie has moved back into town and then jumps back and forth between Heather's, detective Elliot's, and Father Henry's respective storylines. The result is jarring cuts and sporadic shifts in pacing. Certain scenes seem to drag on forever although they're contributing nothing to the plot while pivotal moments feel rushed and secondary.

Overall, the plot felt like following the writer's train of thought, darting back and forth between plot points to fill in the holes left earlier. Rather than using Father Henry to establish the signs and clues the audience should be looking out for and following (such as the "two angels"), he just keeps popping up every two scenes to give information we should have had right off the bat. The whole "two angels" shit doesn't come in until the last fucking five minutes of the film, but this crucial part of his research is never explained in the start nor even really at the end. It could have been a clue that would have kept the audience guessing and interested, ultimately setting up the plot twist at the end. But nope, this shit that Father Henry should have memorized like his own address, he can't even bother to explain until the scene before it becomes relevant (if we get even that much notice).

In the end, we're never really given any info from Father Henry about what precisely this Evil is, why it chose Robbie, what ancient texts predict it, or even what the hell this demon thing wants. The stakes just seem to be that Robbie's going to do somethin' bad. He isn't even given a lazy motivation like "he wants to end the world" or "he needs a womb to spawn his demon army." We literally have no clue what the specific stakes are, which in turn, means that Father Henry and Elliot have no plan on how to stop him. They just kind of stalk Robbie and threaten him. There's no exorcism they need to perform or esoteric ritual they need to perform to banish him to The Demon Realm™️. The only concrete info we're given is that two angels are supposed to be relevant somehow ("one of the stone and one of the flesh") and somehow Father Henry knows the two angels are the stone angel at the cemetery and Heather herself. Unsurprisingly, he does not offer any evidence of why he thinks that is. We also never really know what qualifies as an "angel" since neither Heather nor the statue are celestial benevolent beings. This is one of the many things that could have been established at the start of the film, giving the audience a puzzle to solve.

And then there's the plot twist.

The plot twist you had to know was coming because this film had no choice but to make one last, desperate grab for the audience's imagination within the last two minutes. Ooooh shit ooo ahhhwooww oh fuck hoooo mybiggiantbrain is explodinggg because Heather was the Evil THE WHOLE TIME AHHHHHH !!!!!

This is the shit that really offends me. I can't believe the audience is deliberately mislead with zero clues that allude to the truth and then we're shit all over with a cheap underwhelming plot twist that never previously existed in the story or actors' performances until the moment of the reveal. If you're gonna do a plot twist, you have to unveil the story in front of the audiences eyes while sincerely attempting to mislead them, all while giving them a chance to discover the twist for themselves! Audiences don't like being tricked, they like being surprised.

God knows I love going back and trying to find all the things I missed that I could have noticed the first time around. Even better, I love when I pick up on them and end up predicting it correctly.

But in Way of the Wicked, the audience isn't given any of this. From the start, the story is played out exactly like Robbie is the anti-christ (or whatever), and the audience who hasn't been given any information, has no choice but to blindly believe the director. But in the end, our trust is shit all over and our intelligence insulted by a cheap "gotcha" ploy that we didn't even have a chance of besting. Even worse, the plot twist adds nothing to the story or the characters at all. Already I don't care about any of them because we've barely gotten to know anyone, so I still don't care about the plot twist because I was never invested to begin with.

Then literally a minute after the reveal, the movie "wraps up" and it's curtains. Detective Elliot straight up murders Robbie and the only tying up of that loose end we get is him nearly inaudibly explaining to another officer that it was self defense as we zoom out into an arial shot. And that's it. We have no idea how Elliot deals with his daughter being a fucking demon or if Heather's mom's death had anything to do with it or not.

This actually could have been an interesting story and it probably could have actually been a horror movie as Way of the Wicked was advertised (lmao) if they had any idea how to organize a plot, write dialogue, and create compelling visuals. Instead Kevin Carraway gave us a teen drama about a young woman navigating a life in high school after the death of her mother, which just so happens to take place while this wild af demon shit be happening.

Way of the Wicked gets a total of 0 Slaters out of a possible 10 Slaters. For no fault of Christian's by any means though. I was prepared to give it 3 Slaters but then they killed off Father Henry so I was pissed whoops

[blackjack-15]

Staying Tuned for a Soap Opera — Thoughts on: Stay Tuned for Danger (STFD)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: STFD, FIN, RAN.

The Intro:

Stay Tuned for Danger is another short game, though it owes its runtime more to the limitations of 1999 than anything else. Full of wacky, overwrought characters and hilariously over-the-top threats, puzzles, and ‘incidents’, STFD isn’t a smart game, but it’s a mildly fun one, and definitely improves as the second in a series.

STFD relies heavily on constantly rising action, meaning that things never calm down — the game escalates and escalates until it’s over, which encourages the player to finish the whole thing in as few parts as possible to get the full effect.

It does have its problems — way too many things to click on that are pointless, an obvious villain, frustrating and out-of-place puzzles, and the clunkiest interface known to man, but it saves itself from the scrap heap by embracing, rather than avoiding, its own campiness.

The Title:

Funnily enough, this title is actually straight-up ace. It’s a snappy take on soap opera clichés, and is the only game to have a four-letter abbreviation, lest we take Nancy into the world of sexually transmitted diseases.

Er…considering how Rick looks, make that further into the world of sexually transmitted diseases.

Plus, this game puts a heavy emphasis on the continually rising action of its events, so the “stay tuned” part works really, really well. A+ work here.

The Mystery:

Fresh off of the success of finding a killer in Miami, Aunt Eloise once again hears of trouble and sends Nancy Drew barking after it. This time, it’s off to New York to investigate some death threats that a soap opera star is being sent.

Hold the presses, I know.

With everyone working as hard as they can to be unhelpful, it’s up to Nancy to massively invade everyone’s privacy and discover who’s writing the threats (and making the bombs, and dropping the lights, and…) before Rick Arlen actually gets seriously hurt or killed.

Through a lot of snooping, after-hours sneaking, and clunky interrogations, Nancy manages to “figure out” the culprit when he presents himself at the end despite 90% of clues pointing to him, has to solve a puzzle in the nick of time, and treats the audience to a hilarious-looking “capture” of the culprit.

The Suspects:

Mattie Jensen is the one renting Aunt Eloise’s apartment, and the person Nancy first encounters. Not only is she the (co-) star of the show, but she’s also the only one who stuck with her original agent, Dwayne Powers. 

Her mother is too involved in her life, she moves like a plasticine doll, and is a Horrible judge of character, employing Dwayne Powers and having dated Rick Arlen, but Mattie seems genuinely concerned for Rick’s life, asking Nancy to help by snooping around, and offering her aid to the amateur detective.

Mattie’s not short on motive, having been dumped by Rick and having her career endangered by his anticipated contract-breaking in order to get into films and out of soaps, but she’s not really a “suspect” once you’re 1/3 of the way through the game.

This is one of Her Interactive’s favorite tropes — a suspect cleared early on so that Nancy can have a helper — and it shows up for the first time here. In this case, Mattie helps Nancy go undercover as a budding young actress in order to help her investigate more fully.

Rick Arlen is the other co-star of the soap opera (“Light of Our Love”), playing the male main lead. Tired of the small soap opera notoriety he has right now, Rick longs for the big screen, leading him to try to break his contract with Bill Pappas and leave the show.

Rick is a blowhard egomaniac who’s willing to flirt with any woman he sees — even the young amateur detective Nancy Drew — but that’s pretty much all the depth that he has. He dates a lot, but he’s too shallow to keep any relationship for long, either dumping them (Mattie) or being dumped (Lillian).

There might be a moment or two where you think he might be behind his threatening notes to give him an unimpeachable reason to leave…but then you remember that this is Rick Arlen, and he has No Shame, and doesn’t see anything wrong with breaking his contract.

He does send the first few notes, signing them with an anagram of his name (which somehow Her thought was brilliant enough to use twice in one game), but that’s it as far as his involvement goes — he’s not a man with a death wish; he’s an egomaniac. Pure and simple.

The only other thing about him in the game is that he ditched Dwayne for a better agent, which is treated as, like, the Height of Disloyalty. However, knowing that Dwayne is balls-to-the-wall nuts, not a great agent, and hates Rick for dating Mattie….I’d switch to a new agent as well. Sure, it’s not super kind, but it’s not at all an immoralmove to make, and it’s the best thing he could do if he wants an actual enduring career in showbiz.

Dwayne Powersis Mattie’s agent, Rick’s ex-agent, and all around bleeding psychopath with delusions of grandeur. He’s also one of the most obvious villains in the whole series (tying with…well, RAN), blames Rick for his failing business (when the truth is that he’s just not very good at it and has stopped trying at this point), and casts his Cool Alter-Ego Owen W. Spayder as his crimesona.

Dwayne isn’t diagnosably medically insane like the culprit in FIN, but he’s crazy all the same, from his Loud Speeches about hating Rick, to his skulking around the set in a hat and beard, to his ridiculous bombs and light-droppings, etc. etc.

He’s upset that he couldn’t make it as an actor himself, and resigned himself to helping others with their natural talents. Not only does he let this turn him into an attempted murderer, but he also gives this Huge Speech at the end…which lets us see, yeah, he wouldn’t have made it as an actor (and as if RAN needed to reinforce that point, it does anyway).

Dwayne is interesting in that he’s the only suspect to escape twice and the only villain to be the villain in two games, but…quite frankly, he’s not interesting enough to deserve those distinguishing characteristics. Dwayne isn’t enough to carry one game, let alone two, and it shows.

Lillian Weiss is the snappish, cold director of “Light of Our Love”, who is suspicious of everyone and has the clout of being one of the only characters who can fire Nancy without it resulting in a second chance.

She also happens to be the smartest and most likable character in the game (except for Bill Pappas, of course), willing to accept when she’s been wrong and call Nancy to come back in, who figures out who’s pulling these “pranks” around the set, and poured a pitcher of water on Rick’s head while dumping him. 

She also sent him poisoned chocolates which, knowing the guy, I fully condone. She gets to live out Rick’s dream by going to Hollywood, so that’s nice and karmic as well.

Lillian isn’t ever really nice to you, nor does she lose her snappiness, but she is a good guy, and she’s allowed to be smart and capable without being warm and fuzzy, and I personally think that makes her more multi-faceted than most early ND characters were allowed to be.

Millie Strathorn is the elderly owner and founder of WWB and prop master for “Light of Our Love”. She’s also not quite sane, mixing fantasy and reality at any given moment.

Her “motivation” is that she hates Rick and tries to keep submitting scripts to write him out of the show, and this show apparently doesn’t have a Writer (we’ve got a producer, director, and two stars + talent agent, but no writer?), but her scripts keep being rejected anyway. 

Probably because, once again, she mixes fantasy and reality, and definitely wrote a scene where Rick Arlen and “Rory Danner” face off and mud-wrestle, stabbing each other in the face.

Either that or a ménage àtrois between Rick, Rory, and Yuri (Rory’s “evil twin” in the show”. Which would be Very Tricky to shoot with 1999 technology.

Anyway, Millie makes you solve a few middling riddles and then pretty much effs off for the rest of the game, making her a crazy memorable (not to mention straight-up crazy) character despite her lack of screen time (and overall pointlessness).

William Pappas is the never-seen yet always entertaining producer of “Light of Our Love”, who is super pissed about Rick trying to break his contract is “Light of Our Love” and says that he’ll kill Rick before he let him walk out on him. This threat, of course, is just Bill venting, and after Nancy defuses the bomb in Rick’s dressing room, Bill is more than happy to help her out.

As a suspect, Bill sucks, wholly and completely — to the point where he’s just not a suspect. As a character, however, he is a Delight and a Treasure, bursting with pointless personality. I aspire to be Bill Pappas.

Ralph Guardino is the twice-seen security guard at WWB who gives you access to the building, then promptly effs off until he appears to arrest Dwayne at the end. And yes, his name is just “Guard” with “-ino” added at the end. I guess Her used up all their imagination on weird and wonderful pictures to photoshop their characters into.

Ralph, like Bill, isn’t really a suspect at all; he exists because the story needed a job done, so they created a character to do it. He’s also Bill’s cousin, so there’s some added “meaning” that’s actually pointless as well. There’s nothing offensive about Ralph, per se, but there’s nothing good about him either. He’s just kind of…there.

The Favorites:

The general soapy tone of this game makes it fun, and Dwayne’s villain reveal/speech is only matched in its dramatic campiness by…well, his speech in RAN.

Bill Pappas is my Hero and I wish he’d gotten more screen time (though I love that we never see him), and Nancy’s delivery of “Prop Master of DEATH” alone is worth the price of admission.

The Un-Favorites:

First off, the fact that they forgot to put in the desk key really bothers me. I know that the only stuff in there are fake fan letters to Rick from Mattie, encouraging him to stay (which doesn’t point to guilt at all, and so is pretty pointless), but like…it’s locked. It must be important.

I know Her Interactive wanted to advertise their 100+ “close up shots”, but it drags the game down to look at everything — especially since hidden in those 100+ are 5-10 that are Super Tiny and that you have to click on, even if they don’t tell you anything new, or you’ll get stuck and be unable to progress.

Nancy’s inability to see Dwayne as the villain even when it’s patently obvious is a pretty serious knock against this game. Neither Bill nor Ralph are considered actual suspects, Mattie is cleared early on, Lillian is too snappish with you (too obvious, to Her Interactive’s way of thinking) to be it, and Millie is too old to do the physical stuff (and, with her wanting Rick’s character killed off, is also too obvious) and so as early as 1/3 into the game you’re left with Dwayne and Rick. As Rick needs himself to live so he can go on to Star in Movies, you’re just left with Dwayne, who all the clues point to anyway.

The Fix:

Fixing STFD would require totally re-coding it to fix sound and playability issues on newer computers, updating the graphics, fixing characters so that they don’t look like blow-up dolls…all those Quality of Life improvements are super important and vital to a fix.

But fixing it would also require some re-writing. I realize that Millie is in the game as a nod to the original writer of Nancy Drew, and it’s…well, definitely an homage, if not a good homage, but taking her out would go a long way to streamlining the game.

There are simply too many culprits for Her Interactive’s general ability to write multiple fleshed-out characters who are all plausible suspects (especially with Nik being gone), and so the result is that the incidents, character traits, and character appearances are spread too thin for anything but blatant caricature. Millie is simply the easiest character to remove, along with Bill Pappas and Ralph (who only appears twice anyway).

You could fold Millie into Lillian without too much trouble, get rid of Bill (though it breaks my heart to say it), have Ralph’s name appear early but have him only appear at the end to arrest Dwayne, and it would lighten the load that the story breaks under considerably. I don’t think this would make it an A+ story, but it would at least be less cluttered, and STFD is cluttered enough without needing extra help.

[shogetsus]

Stripes of Auburn, Eye of Sapphire

12. Shingen

Read on Ao3 | Read on FFN |  Masterlist

Summary:  It’s not the beauty clad in exquisite coral robes what strikes him, but her face. It’s clearer in the daylight, with copper locks turning into all shades of bronze and deep orange where the sunlight reflects them, and a pair of sharp amber irises behind catlike eyes to match her splendor. It’s a picture Shingen couldn’t possibly have forgotten anytime soon.

For it’s, down to the most logical assumption, the face of a ghost.

Spoiler alert! - Shingen’s route.

Shingen

It may be chillier and dryer than how he’s technically used to, yet the weather never has stopped his march—today is of no difference. Besides, something about the cold air seems to make wonders for his health, pumping him with a newfound invigorating energy to face whatever odds come onto his way. In the end, it’s all about taking and giving a little.

However, it’s not the ability to fully enjoy clear air what Shingen Takeda misses the most nowadays.

It’s been some time ever since he placed a foot upon the crowded town of Azuchi, and he’d be a fool not to genuinely appreciate the prosperity on the rise its people appear to partake on in their businesses. Still, it doesn’t soothe his constant wariness and skepticism towards his new surroundings—but those burdens are only his to bear, and that’s a fact.

The truth is, the town is full of innocents; men, women and children who’d ever in their lives branded a sword or fought for the pride of their daimyo, or a greater cause. And honestly, who is he to blame them for the sincere smiles on their faces? The city may be living an ephemeral thriving time, but as long as there’s food on their stomachs and a place to call home, nobody would opt to ask for more.

And yet, not many are aware as he is of how luxurious it truly is to have the latter, though. Most likely, if there’s anything at all Shingen Takeda misses the most, it would be without a doubt his home.

Despite the city lacking the stunning landscapes he’s accustomed to, there are several other marvels and opportunities lurking around every corner—and chances he wouldn’t dare to miss. And so, he lets his intuition lead the way, conscious of it almost never have failed him, and strolls in long strides across one of Azuchi’s main streets; beige haori neatly in place, basking in the caresses of the morning sun upon his face, fleeting and just warm enough as a woman’s shy touch.

A petite beauty crosses his way, a delicate red pin in her dark hair looking quite familiar, and Shingen slows his pacing just slightly to be able to meet the lady’s feline eyes. Her tantalizing sway is telling, but her flirtatious wink and subtle tilt of her head to her right is even more so, barely brushing his arm as she casually strides past him.

Without further need of another clue, Shingen walks some more until turning to another road, leading to the merchant streets. The packed amount of travelers, traders of all sorts and customers allow him to blend in with ease despite his outstanding tall height. He shoots sweet smiles to and fro, idly putting names on faces, distinguishing locals from visitors—and because he may never know when to put it to use, mentally mapping certain tea shops and pleasure houses around the area.

Until he’s blessed with the opportunity he’s been looking forward to, coming straight towards him. And she may be barely a blur for Shingen’s sore eyes, as for making an appearance some streets ahead, yet her very presence—and that of her companion—is all but enough for several heads, if not all of them, to turn her way.

“Is that the Oda Princess?” A passing merchant voices his curiosity.

A girl tries peeking past her mother’s arm around her. “Oh, where is she? Let me take a look!”

“My, she truly is as beautiful as they say…”

Shingen follows the source of everyone’s attention, not daring to resist what it must be such a pleasant sight, a sense of anticipation making him hold his breath. It’s not several moments later until he forcefully rubs one of his eyes, blinking hard against the blinding illusion that approaches his way.

It’s not the beauty clad in exquisite coral robes what strikes him, but her face. It’s clearer in the daylight, with copper locks turning into all shades of bronze and deep orange where the sunlight reflects them, and a pair of sharp amber irises behind catlike eyes to match her splendor. It’s a picture he couldn’t possibly have forgotten anytime soon.

For it’s, down to the most logical assumption, the face of a ghost.

It takes him very precious moments to truly notice the figure accompanying her, realizing it’s no one else than the infamous dokuganryu of Oshu, Masamune Date. Thick auburn brows knit into a frown, finding it somewhat odd for the woman to have such an imposing escort for a guard, regardless of her stature. And yet, Shingen can’t truly blame the evident ogling the people shoot at the two of them, the stark contrast of their appearances alluring enough to catch anyone’s eye.

He wills his feet to get on the move, however, subtly placing some distance between the pair before being accidentally recognized. Luckily for him, Yukimura’s stall lays nearby, his long strides bringing him to his destination in no time at all.

“Oh, my Lord,” Yuki quirks a surprised brow at him as he elegantly takes a seat before his wares, mindful of his haori, “I’d thought you were taking a morning walk. At least I wasn’t expecting you here this early…”

“As a matter of fact, that’s what I was doing, Yuki,” He flashes his young vassal a reassuring smile before darting a fleeting glance past his shoulder, “I had to take a detour, though,”

“Look, it’s Lord Masamune!” A woman nudges her lady friend’s side, happily waving their way. “Oh, is that the beautiful Princess everyone’s talking about?”

“Aaw, they make a lovely couple!” The second woman appears to squeal in delight.

Yukimura appears to get the gist fast enough, and to Shingen’s relief. “Oh, I see…”

As the throng of admirers crawl closer and step aside of the couple’s way, he looms over Yuki’s merchandise table, pretending to be giving a close inspection to a particularly pretty hairpin. His aide opts for taking a step back and further into his stall, subtly shrouding his face among the shadows, the blazing glare he shoots at the Dragon of Oshu only for Shingen’s eyes to see.

An easygoing laughter drifts by, followed by some longing sighs from the female audience, and soon enough the newly appointed Princess of the Oda and her guard are out on their way. Yuki seems to wait until the coast is clear and the street resumes its regular chattering before stepping out of his hiding spot.

“So… that was the mysterious Princess people’s been talking about, huh,” Yuki muses to himself, arms crossed and staring warily at the end of the street. “I don’t know how, but I think I’ve seen her before…”

Shingen quirks a curious brow, “Does she ring a bell to you, Yuki?” He tries prodding, straightening up and following his vassal’s eyes, pondering to himself. If Yuki recalls her face as well, that would certainly confirm some of his suspicions and cut the odds shorter.

He shrugs dismissively, “I… can’t say for sure, my Lord,” As smart as he knows Yukimura Sanada to be, it’s somewhat disappointing seeing him give up on such an intriguing matter just as easily, “What’s with that look, though?”

It’s alright, though. After all, it falls on him to solve the puzzle that is the enigmatic Oda Princess. I can’t bring more burdens onto Yuki than strictly necessary. He’s young and with a full life ahead of him…

Landing a reassuring hand on Yuki’s shoulder, Shingen cracks an easy smile. “I’m inclined to believe we do have some clues of who she truly is,” His smile widens into a full grin as he meets his eyes, brimming with sheer anticipation, “Only one way to find out, don’t you think?”

“… Why is it I don’t like the sound of that?” 

Turns out, having his Mitsumono in charge of a thorough investigation of the Oda Princess’ background appears to take more time than Shingen formerly anticipated. Adding up to the delay, his curiosity doesn’t get sated in the least with several of his spies reporting to him with regretful looks in their faces, not seeming to make a dent in their investigation of the strange lady.

The matter at hand gets more concerning as a week and some go by, and he barely has a name to put on the face and a vague story regarding her status. To everyone, Mai Mizusaki appears to be a visitor from the West, assigned as chatelaine of Azuchi Castle and elevated to Princess—the reasons of the latter most likely for her to become Nobunaga’s concubine in the certain future. Or that falls as the most reasonable assumption, given her close ties with the highest members in the Oda forces.

And her being under the constant watch of the very One-Eyed Dragon of Oshu, that as well.

Three days later Shingen makes up his mind, resolving to take the matters upon himself, arranging a meeting with one of his most entrusted Mitsumono in the area. To his relief, she doesn’t disappoint him, arriving on time in a secluded corner he’s saved for the two of them, at the back of an ordinary pleasure house.

Leaning casually against the wall, Shingen leans close to the maid beauty, toying with a loose strand of her dark hair. For whoever prying eyes could be about, he’s just a man wooing a lady, although he won’t ever complain at all for prompting such a lovely sheepish smile with his attentions.

“This may be your lucky day. I’ve heard the chatelaine will be running a last-minute errand for Lord Toyotomi’s vassal,” The maid says in a low voice, only for him to hear, “For what I know about Mitsunari Ishida, it’s most likely just an order for more books,”

“Sounds like it,” Shingen agrees with a disarming smile, indulging himself with the chance of brushing a finger against her soft cheek, relishing in the woman’s inevitable blush, “And do you happen to know where this store she’d be heading is?”

The very alluring smile in her face falters just slightly, not appearing to help to give him an apprehensive glance. “My Lord, I—” She worries her lip, hesitating, but eventually brings a folded paper from the hems of her kimono. “Please, be careful. If you’re spotted in this town…”

Shingen chuckles huskily, shushing her with a thumb over her lips, “Your concern for my sake never ceases to warm my heart,” Without further ado, he subtly saves the paper into his sleeve, leaning back. “But as much as I truly appreciate it, I’d like to ask you to not be, though. I am always careful,” Fixing his eyes on hers, he reassures her with an intent look, proving he genuinely means it.

“Of course. You’re right…” She appears to believe him, and he thanks her with a kiss upon her untouched cheek, fleeting yet meaningful all the same.

The paper the maid handed him ends up being merely a map with straightforward directions to the book merchant stall. And so, he spends the afternoon killing time while languidly strolling through alleys and shortcuts close to the area, basking in the warmth the day brings upon him.

It’s all too easy to spot his target as she makes her appearance, her copper hair and expensive kimono giving her away from the very other end of the street. If anything, her lively mood radiating off her most certainly puts her on the spotlight as well.

Yet regardless of her exquisite glow, a guilt cold as ice tugs at Shingen’s heart all the same. She’s just another innocent on the brink of falling onto the devil’s corruption. Why is the world so cruel to those who don’t deserve it?

Running a subtle expression check and adjusting the small auburn bun at the back of his head, he walks towards the Oda Princess in rushed strides, mindful of keeping his small token hidden from sight at the small of his back. She doesn’t seem to notice him right until almost crashing onto his chest—of which, to be frank, he’d hoped she ended up doing.

To his delight, Shingen still manages to make her fluster. “Excuse me, young lady?” He puts up his best warming voice, in that certain tone which had worked in his advantage so many times before. “Thank you for stopping. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to give chase…”

The amber hue of her gaze looks way more alluring at close view, traveling to his face, prompting a genuinely appreciative smile out of him. But for the matter, she seems clearly troubled with holding the reins of her tongue.

“I-I… was there, um…” She clears her throat but it seems about useless, “… hi.” It’s all the Princess manages to say, amusing him to no end. “Can, um, can I help you?”

“I’m hoping you can,” He smiles sweetly, relishing in the pretty blush creeping up her cheeks, “You see, something fell when you walked by…”

Those amber eyes go wide with worry, her flustering briefly forgotten. “Oh, dear, really!?” As she reaches around her to perform a quick pat check of her kimono, Shingen can’t take much of her misguided concern for any longer, capturing her hand in his free one.

He leans down in attempts to seize that sparkling gaze; youth and wonder and a glimpse of life beckoning him in, igniting something within he’d assumed long gone.

“It was me. I fell in love with you.”

To some extent, it’s not entirely a lie—how he could possibly make that up with that more than evident spark fluttering around them? “You’ve stolen my heart. But don’t worry, I won’t charge you with theft. It clearly wanted to be with you, so you may do with it as you like…” It might even be for the best if she does so, though, but he keeps that thought to himself.

The look in her blushing face is telling, her tongue not seeming to obey anymore, looking stunned and struggling for words. And yet, even when basking in such alluring reactions and predicting her every possible thought, there’s a gleam of something else crossing her eyes—something different and not so easy to read, beckoning him further and prompting his curiosity.

“As the owner of my heart, would you do me the favor of joining me for some tea?” Shingen’s flirtatious smirk widens into a grin, open and inviting, “I’d like to get to know you better…”

“Uh, er,” She tenses at the idea, growing bashful, glancing away with a guilty expression, “I don’t think I can. I—”

But Shingen had formerly prepared for a possible rejection. “Oh, my. Have I been stealing your time? How rude of me! Perhaps I can make it up to you with this small token?” Gracefully, he procures a pretty flower he’d hidden on his sleeve, daring to lean even closer and delicately tucking it upon the shell of her ear. Its beauty pales before the depths of her amber gaze, however, timidly returning to his face. “And those beautiful eyes are back on me. Tell me what I’ve done to attract them, so I can do it again,”

“Thank you,” The beautiful Princess worries her lip, biting down the shy smile tugging at her lips, “B-but… that’s not what I meant. I believe we’ve met before.”

Thankfully so, Shingen is skilled in the art of keeping a straight face; although he can’t say the same for his heart, skipping a beat, wariness pooling in his gut, “Oh? Have I been visiting your dreams? I’m more than flattered for it,” He chuckles amusedly.

“No, no! I, ugh—“

She drops Shingen’s hand as if his mere touch is messing with her head, winding a nervous hand to her hair. Her eyes flicker back and forth, appearing to try collecting herself somehow. But he’d already glimpsed the troubled look crossing her face and, for some reason, he’s lost for words all in a sudden—his control over their conversation slipping from his grasp.

“Takeda…” She says so low he almost doesn’t hear her, “You’re Shingen Takeda.”

In any case, his body certainly feels his name dropping from her lips, if his mouth going dry and the hammering of his heart is any indication thereof.  Strangely so—and for the first time in a long while—their roles appear to reverse, and is Shingen who then has to collect himself to the best of his expertise.

And be extremely careful from there on as well.

However, as inconvenient as it is for having been recognized, at least that clears one of his suspicions towards her. “… And you are not a ghost,” Plain honesty seems to be the best course to take—not that it’ll tell her more than he intends to lean her in, “Not now that I see you in the daylight, that is clear,”

It’s no small feat how, in spite of herself, she’d managed to turn the situation to her advantage; visibly more confident now that they’re somewhat on the clear. And as open and harmless Shingen knows himself to have acted with her, he can only hope she hasn’t changed her mind about him and opted on to try running away then.

To his partial surprise, she actually doesn’t, even turning a concerned look at him. “I don’t mean to intrude, but I have to ask,” She worries her lip once more, glancing around them to make sure there are no prying ears about, “What are you doing in Azuchi? Isn’t this place enemy territory to you?”

The pleased smile tugging at his lips is genuine—turns out, this unknown woman going by the name of Mai Mizusaki is just as sharp as she is beautiful. No stranger to danger, quick to connect the dots, and clearly not as helpless as she appears so; Shingen can’t help to grow more and more intrigued about her. How many secrets does she have up her sleeve?

“Would you believe me if I said I’ve come to find you?” Then again, that’s not truly a lie, and Shingen turns the newfound idea on his mind a couple of times before going for it. “You see, I’ve been meaning to make you an offer…”

“An offer? You mean, an offer to me?” Somehow, the look of sheer disbelief in her face manages to throw him off just so. Could her poise merely be an act? How does a woman of her stature would appear so baffled otherwise?

Although unexpected, that’s not quite a concerning problem, and if must be, he’ll see to make her know how valuable she truly is. “A beauty like you, in many means of the word, is way too wasted in the Oda forces. I want to make you an offer to come with me instead,” Unable to help it, Shingen reaches out to brush his thumb upon her cheek, feeling that spark once again and an ever so fleeting shiver running over her. “You may not be aware of it now, but Nobunaga corrupts everything he touches. However, I can save you from him,”

“Wh-what…?” As for appearing so visibly pleased with his attentions, for a moment it seems she’s having troubles to keep track of their conversation, her copper brows knitting into a frown. “Are you serious?”

“Very much so. In any case, you’ll see it soon enough.” Shingen shrugs dismissively, leaning away completely in spite of himself. “I’ll hold on to your answer for our next encounter. It will give me something else to look forward to,” Shooting a last dashing smile at her, he turns around before coming to regret it. “I’m afraid I must leave you now. I need to find a place to rest tonight, if not in the warm embrace of your dreams…”

While it’s not in Shingen’s nature to leave a woman so visibly disappointed, his duty—and the course of his plan—must come first in this case. “Hold on a moment,” He’d already managed to will his feet to get on the move, and still, the beauty tugs at the sleeve of his kimono, “What’s that about Nobunaga? You can’t just say that and leave me hanging,”

His blood feels like turning into ice, turning back without being able to help it; what is it about what, exactly? The look in her eyes baffles him just slightly, struggling to believe her genuine question. How does a Princess of the Oda appear so oblivious to her daimyo’s history of disgraces?

Who truly is she? What is the mystery behind Mai Mizusaki? And why can’t he figure it out already?

But his time has run out, admittedly out in the open for too long. Sadly so, only time may probably offer the answers he’s looking for.

“I see you miss me already? Don’t worry, I do too,” Shingen works his most charming smile before leaning down and brushing his lips upon the back of her delicate hand, placing a tender kiss there. “I’m trusting you to take good care of my heart in the meantime… Princess,”

Regardless of the result, Shingen walks through town in good spirits after his last encounter, the pristine picture of Mai Mizusaki’s face still lingering in his mind. All in all, it’s quite a lovely way to end the day, and he wouldn’t ask for anything more than the small blessings he’s been given.

With long strides, he enters the market, stopping in front of the sales blanket and spotting two acquaintances inside. “Were you waiting long, Yukimura?” He announces himself with an easygoing smile.

Yukimura snorts, appearing to struggle not to roll his eyes as he brings himself to view, past the shadows of his tent. “Not any longer than I expected to be, Lord Shingen. There are women here, after all. You’d walk faster through a field of ground spikes…”

His example prompts out the interest of their second acquaintance—and lately, one of the closest people in Yuki’s circle. “Should I need to work on a better prototype?” Sasuke wonders, mostly to himself.

Shingen’s young vassal shakes his head in partial amusement, not bothering to come up with a proper reply and turning to him once again. “Soooo,” He begins, giving him a knowing look, “Was it really worthy for you to go through that trouble instead of staying in Kasugayama as intended?”

He chuckles low, only for his acquaintances to hear, before kneeling on the blanket as if a customer would. “And then some, Yuki…” Shingen’s eyes don’t hunger for the baubles and hairpins in the display, however. “My apologies for taking so long. I’ve managed to find her, though,”

Sasuke purses his lips, seeming not to look forward to questioning his actions, although Yukimura does either way. “Her? You mean that mysterious Princess of the Oda?”

“And the same woman we met the night Honno-ji burned,” Shingen admits with a nod, “The one you saved from falling through a cliff…”

“Huh, really?” Yukimura turns pensive, yet not managing to hide his surprise, “So the rumors of her are true, then? She’s Nobunaga’s new mistress or concubine or… whatever?”

Despite Yuki’s more than obvious discontent, Shingen only smiles further. “It’s too bad, isn’t it? She seems too sweet to become a bride of the devil himself…”

For a spare moment, he lets his thoughts wonder—could he steal her away for her own good if she turns out to reject his offer? He would be content with just admiring her from afar, yet nothing’s too certain or kind in these war-torn times as it is.

However, Yukimura stops his train of thought with a groan. “I see that look in your face, milord. You’re playing with fire,” He frowns and glares hard, appearing to be reading his mind.

Sasuke feels like making a precarious comment. “I am partially inclined to agree with Yukimura. It is not wise to believe mere rumors,” The ninja points out with a thoughtful tilt of his head, “A course of action can’t be taken by hypothesis only. You probably would need further proof of these statements…”

Shingen snorts low in amusement, knowing the two youngsters mean well with their particular ways of showing concern. “Frowning like that will ruin your good boyish looks, Yuki,” He teases, looking forward to dismissing their worries towards him just as quick as they came.

“Fine, don’t listen to us. But hear just this, though,” Yuki shows an unusual hesitation to speak his mind, to Shingen’s brief concern, “Regardless of who or whose woman she is, I don’t think she’s the one to involve in this plan of yours. But—” He at least tries to excuse himself, “I know you’ve worked hard on this and thought everything through. So I’ll follow you to the end, no matter what.”

His comment touches Shingen’s heart. “And I thank you, Yuki. For your loyalty, your candor, and your tact… when you remember to show that tact,”

“Oh shut up…” He snorts once again before correcting himself, “—Um, my lord.”

[twatd]

Guided by Voices

Sliding in just ahead of the next issue like a fedora-grabbing Indiana Jones, here’s the second of our two essays on issue #38, looking at the two big monologues that dominate the issue.

Tim: When the first issue of this arc came out, my commentary noted the return of Persephone’s narration, and how its changing role in the series impacted the way we perceived her actions and motivations. Now, as we approach the end of this penultimate arc, her narration is one half of a pair of monologues that (almost) bookend issue #38. At the beginning, we have Ananke’s drunken ramblings to Robert Graves. At the close of the issue, we have Persephone’s cryptic remarks and her descent in darkness as she seemingly vanishes from existence.

These two speeches do more than frame the story in this issue though. The way the comic presents them, and the way we are encouraged to engage with them, speaks volumes about the two characters we’re dealing with. And, as we draw closer to the end of The Wicked + The Divine, I think they are not only guiding how we are supposed to interpret these characters, but the series as a whole.

Let’s start with Ananke and Graves. I won’t be diving so much into the content of her tipsy tirade or how it connects with Graves’ treatise on The White Goddess – Alex has already got your back there – but how the information is delivered. The page is a classic six-panel grid, and each panel replicates the same ‘shot’, with Ananke sat in Graves’ home in Devonshire. The lighting is soft, almost replicating Minerva’s candlelit shrine, and heavy shadows lurk just beyond our subject.

While the ‘shot’ may be static from panel to panel, the subject certainly isn’t. Ananke leans back and forward as she lectures Graves, aided by a rapidly-draining bottle of whiskey. The poses are immaculately chosen to remind us of a certain kind of drunken rant – the airy gesticulation in panel two, the circling glass in panel four, the accusatory point in panel five. We can almost hear the slurring slip into Ananke’s normally clipped tones, even though the text and lettering do nothing so brazen as to indicate that. Even when she’s three sheets to the wind, Ananke is still Ananke.

Most importantly, while there is continuity between the panels in terms of composition and colouring, the speech is broken up. We are dipping in and out of the conversation, catching snatches rather than the full thing. This is crucial.

Firstly, this is as close as we may get to Ananke performing a classic villainous monologue, and having a couple of pages where she simply explains who she is and what she’s doing would feel like an anti-climax after such an elegantly constructed mystery. This gives us a glimpse of an important moment in her long life without acting as a ‘spoiler’.

Secondly, we are placed in the same boat as Graves. While we are approaching the information from a very different perspective, both he and (currently) we don’t have the full story. Graves may be wilfully misinterpreting aspects or simply not have fully understood everything Ananke said, but we know that The White Goddess only makes up part of how she operates. Similarly, for all the glimpses we have been given, we don’t have the complete picture yet (though that doesn’t stop many of us putting together our own theories).

That fractured approach steers how we approach these pages. We know we’re being given important snippets of information, and so we start to pick them apart and look for clues. We piece together what we’re given with what we know, and what we intuit. The page is an intellectual exercise, not an emotional one. At least, not until that final panel, when Ananke asks Graves to leave a light on, reminding us that Ananke’s fear of oblivion has not gone away. It’s a humanising moment at the end of a speech that encourages analysis.

Let’s compare this approach with Laura’s narration at the end. As soon as we join her this issue, her narration is present, and in the first sentence, we’re quickly but subtly reminded that her commentary isn’t simply her internal monologue, but being given to an audience: “He’s weeping, as you’d expect.” More reminders slip in as the issue goes on, telling us that we’re listening to Laura describe all these events after the fact: “I couldn’t say it aloud yet, but I knew.” “I’m not sure I can explain. But I’ll try.” Like Ananke, Laura is talking to someone, but unlike Ananke, we don’t know who, and we don’t know why.

While the narration begins as soon as Laura shows up, it’s on page 19 that it becomes the focus, far more so than anything that’s happening on-panel. Laura is by herself, removing any distracting dialogue to complicate the flow of the text. More notably, the narration is separated out into its own panels, with Team WicDiv doing its standard trick of using black panels to eke out some bonus real estate within the comic. That extra space tells us to sit up and pay attention. This is clearly important.

Like Ananke’s monologue, there’s a wealth of ambiguous language here, wrapped up in metaphor and symbolism. Godhood is a “liferaft of bodies” on a river that carries you forward. Laura talks about giving up, the prize they are working towards, and that she knows what she is not – but these terms are never clarified, and there’s multiple interpretations we could apply.

Unlike Ananke’s speech, though, we get the complete thing. This isn’t a puzzle that’s meant to be put together, and the way that it’s presented, spread out over four pages, is the opposite of Graves’ information overload. The comic returns to a standard six-panel grid for this sequence, mirroring Ananke's earlier pages, but the layout is used very differently.

The way the narration is distributed over the pages, even the different font of Laura’s internal monologue, all of it is designed to slow us down, to make us consider each moment. While the imagery that Laura’s words conjure is open to interpretation, it is all relatively straightforward, compared to Ananke’s secret language of trees and divine poetry. It’s a view into someone’s head, not a discussion between two academics.

That, ultimately, is the difference between Ananke and Laura – the key distinction in how they approach the world, how we should approach them, and how we should engage with the series.

Ananke is a schemer, seeing the world as a set of pieces to be shuffled around in the service of her aims. Emotions are weaknesses that she can prey on and exploit in others, and she does not allow herself the luxury of having them if she can help it.

Laura engages with the world through her emotions – the joy of music, the rage of revenge, the hollow despair of grief. In the end, this is Laura’s story, and as tempting as it might be to try to solve the puzzle that the plot presents us with, it is the emotional journey that matters, and that will ultimately hold the key to understanding everything.

Like what we do, and want to help us make more of it? Visit patreon.com/timplusalex and pledge to gain access to exclusive blogs, ebooks, mixtapes and more.

[fortey]

4 Rejected Articles (at one low price!)

These were 4 pieces rejected from Grunge.  I was told if they needed too much work to get them up to publication quality they wouldn’t be used, so here they are in their terrible, unusable form. No pictures!

#1 Unsolved celebrity deaths that will keep you up at night

There is something about a mystery that is just incredibly compelling and irresistible to people.  Maybe it's the puzzle, the need to find a pattern in chaos that drives human minds to try to answer an unanswered question, to try to solve it at any cost.  Whatever the case, unsolved mysteries are absolutely fascinating to most people. That's why we had a show called Unsolved Mysteries!

While law enforcement officials do their best to piece together clues and unravel those mysteries that pop up now and again, some just seem to be unsolvable. We'll probably never hear about even a fraction of those, either. When the case involves a celebrity, however, especially a celebrity death, or even a murder, then that's the kind of thing that can haunt a person. People just crave celebrity news and gossip, look at social media on any given day. We can delve into the details of these things for years trying to figure out what went on. Who knows, maybe someday one or two of these ones will be solved and the whole puzzle can be put to rest.  Until then, there are entirely too many mysterious celebrity deaths to drive yourself crazy trying to figure out.

Jack Nance was beaten by mysterious strangers

The image of Jack Nance from the poster for David Lynch's Eraserhead is iconic at this point. A favorite of Lynch, Nance appeared in not just Eraserhead but Lost Highway, Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks amongst numerous other roles.  On December 30, 1996, he was found dead in his South Pasadena home.  The official cause of death was subdural hematoma cause by blunt force trauma, according to Premier Magazine.

The mystery around Nance's death starts the day before he passed. On that day, the actor went out to lunch with two friends. When he arrived to meet them, one noticed a bruise under his eye and asked him what happened.  According to Nance, he had been punched in the face after mouthing off to some kids on the street. His friends thought the story was a little fishy, but left it at that. The next day, Nance was dead on his bathroom floor, his injuries consistent with the blow to the face he said he suffered.

No one was ever caught for the death of Jack Nance, even though it was treated as a homicide, according to E Online. There were never any suspects identified and Nance's friends never believed his story, either, feeling it was inconsistent since the older and frail Nance claimed he had scrapped with guys in their twenties and held his own.  The mystery of what happened may very well have died with Nance himself.

David Carradine's death was labelled an accident

For most modern audience, David Carradine will always be known as Bill from Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill.  But part of the reason he even got that role was because of his incredibly long run as Kwai Chang Caine in the TV shows Kung Fu and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.  Kung Fu saw Carradine rise to fame as a star in his own right, carving a niche for himself from the famous Carradine acting family.

In 2009, Carradine was in Thailand shooting a film. A maid at the hotel discovered him in his room's closet with a rope, possibly from the curtains, around his neck, according to ABC. It was quickly linked to the practice of autoerotic asphyxiation, and as ABC later noted it would be difficult to determine if it was accident, suicide or murder.  

A year after Carradine's death, his ex-wife Marina Anderson wrote a memoir in which she concludes that Carradine had to have been murdered. She contends that while Carradine did enjoy things like asphyxiation, she never knew him to be the sort of person to do it alone. She believes another person must have been in the room when he died.

Based on the conclusions of the coroner and the fact Anderson has no idea if it might have been a stranger, someone Carradine knew or perhaps someone he hired, it's unlikely the truth will ever be fully known.

George Reeves was shot at a party

Superman has been portrayed on screen by numerous actors at this point, from Henry Cavill to Dean Cain to Christopher Reeve. But the first on-screen Superman dates all the way back to 1951 when actor George Reeves took on the iconic role. As the Telegraph details, Reeves was not entirely thrilled with the part. He felt trapped by it more than anything, and was typecast in a way that seemed to ruin his career. He was literally cut out of From Here to Eternity because they didn't want to be associated with Superman.

On June 16, 1959, George Reeves died of a gunshot wound to the head. He'd been injured months earlier in a car accident and had been taking a lot of painkillers, as well as drinking on the night he died.  Though there were several other people in the house, the official ruling was that Reeves had died by suicide. That determination has remained controversial since it happened.

No one checked the gun that killed Reeves for prints. No one checked his hands for gunshot residue, or even the distance at which he'd been shot to determine if it could have been self-inflicted or not. Worse, the actress who played Lois Lane got a call the night of the death from one of the people in the house saying it was a murder.

There were a number of suspects, but nothing ever came of it and to this day, no one is entirely sure what happened.

William Desmond Taylor was shot but not robbed

William Taylor was one of the early stars of Hollywood.  He directed 59 films in the silent era and was also an actor in some as well. On the morning of February 2nd, 1922, Taylor was found in his Los Angeles home with a bullet in his back.

As the Guardian points out, when Taylor was found, there were no signs of forced entry or a struggle. Nothing of value was taken so it was clearly not a robbery. Something else was afoot.

Based on the placement of the bullet holes in Taylor's jacket, the coroner concluded his arms had been raised when he was shot, according toBuzzfeed. So it wasn't a surprise, someone held him at gunpoint from behind. This happened only months after Fatty Arbuckle had been arrested for rape and murder, and Hollywood was primed to keep the scandal ball rolling.

Word is that police didn't arrive until 12 hours after Taylor had died, and when they got there studio bosses from Paramount were already on the scene, burning papers. The press had a field day with the story and it became such a circus that in the days afterwards, over 300 people confessed to the murder. How could anyone have hoped to solve the case with that working against them? It would have been, and was, impossible. The crime was never solved.

Jam Master Jay was shot in his studio

Jason William Mizell was better known to most of his fans as Jam Master Jay, part of the legendary hip hop group Run DMC. He was an amazing musician, SPIN ranked him at number 10 in their 100 Greatest Guitarist of All Time, and even had his own label.

On October 30, 2002, Mizell was in the studio working on a new album. An unknown assailant entered the studio and shot both Mizell and his friend Uriel Rincon.  Rincon, who survived with a shot to the leg, insists Mizell must have known the killer, according to an article reprinted in XXL. Rincon said he'd been hanging out with Mizell who had been armed that night. Mizell's phone rang and when he got up to retrieve it, footsteps alerted them to someone's presence behind Rincon.  He never even saw who shot him. All he saw was Mizell take a bullet to the head.

According to Rincon, Mizell would have used his own gun to defend himself if he thought whoever took the shot posed a threat. That means, in Rincon's opinion, Mizell knew the shooter.  But since Rincon never saw them, there were no definitive suspects. No one has ever been arrested for the crime.

Actress Barbara Colby was shot on the way to her car

Barbara Colby had barely begun to make her mark in the world of acting by 1975. A veteran of the stage who had done work both on and off Broadway, Colby had been in episodes of Columbo, Gunsmoke, Kung Fu and The Mary Tyler Moore Show amongst others. Her role in Mary Tyler Moore impressed the producers and they brought her character, a sassy prostitute, back for a second episode.  The initial episode even won an Emmy. Later, Colby was given a co-starring role in The Mary Tyler Moore Show spinoff Phyllis. She only filmed three episodes of the show.

On July 24, 1975, Colby was leaving an acting class with a friend.  According to The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes, Colby and fellow actor James Kiernan were on the way to her car when a pair of gunmen opened fire.  Colby died instantly while Kiernan lived long enough to make a statement to police before also passing.

Kiernan had said he didn't recognize either shooter, and neither he nor Colby had been robbed.  With no other witnesses and no motive, police were stumped. They chalked the crime up to a potential thrill killing and left it at that. No one was ever arrested and the crime remains unsolved.

Bob Crane was bludgeoned to death

If you ever saw the classic TV show Hogan's Heroes, you know Bob Crane. Crane's role as Colonel Robert Hogan netted him a couple Emmy nominations and made him a household name. Even though he never achieved that level of fame again after the show ended, he was still a recognizable personality and very much a part of TV's golden age.

In 1978, Crane was found bludgeoned to death in his apartment.  A friend of his named John Carpenter was arrested and initially let go due to lack of evidence. The case was reopened however and Carpenter went on trial for the crime in 1992.  He was ultimately acquitted. Along the way, the story took a number of bizarre twists and turns that made it the compelling mystery it is today.

Blood found on Carpenter's car is what implicated him in the first place, and it was type-matched to Crane. In 1994, it was DNA tested and proven to not belong to Crane. More exciting to the media was that the investigation revealed Crane had a habit of filming his sexual encounters with women, according to People. The Phoenix New Times pointed out that defense attorneys for Carpenter suggested a woman fearing blackmail or any number of jealous husbands could have been the real killer. No weapon was ever found, and with Carpenter exonerated, the case remains unsolved.

B.H. DeLay's plane may have been sabotaged

The name Beverly Homer DeLay is not well known these days, but once upon a time DeLay was an absolute boss of a stuntman. A pilot by trade, DeLay performed stunts during the silent era in dozens of films. He even opened his own stunt pilot school to train others in the fine art of doing crazy aerobatics. He revolutionized movie effects by demonstrating a real pilot could crash a real plane and survive, replacing the old and unconvincing method of using a fake model plane.

During a 4th of July show in 1923, DeLay was flying stunts before a crowd of thousands. He was flying a plane called a Wasp that had two sets of wings for use - one for stunts and one for cross-country flying. For some reason, the cross country wings had been installed on the plane that day.  As DeLay took the plane in for a dive, the wings tore off and the plane crashed, killing DeLay.

During the subsequent investigation, it was discovered that the bolts used to secure the wings were the wrong size.  According to the book The Crowd Pleasers: A History of Airshow Misfortunes from 1910 to the Present, this lead some to speculate foul play. There was no good reason for anyone to have used the wrong bolts, which were too small for the job. No one was ever caught, however, and the case is unsolved to this day.

David Bacon crashed his car after being stabbed

In an age when characters like Deadpool and Iron Man dominate the box office, it's good to look back at the roots of superheroes and appreciate the classics.  If you go way, way back you'll discover a character named the Masked Marvel, a superhero portrayed by Tom Steele in 1943. David Bacon played Bob Barton, one of the Marvel's side kick characters. Bacon's story is as mysterious and bizarre as any comic book.

It was September 13th, 1943 and David Bacon's sports car was seen driving erratically down a road in Santa Monica, California. He the road and plowed through a bean field.  Bacon staggered from the car as rescuers came to his aid, and collapsed on the ground. According to the new England Historical Society, his car was soaked in blood, though he'd hit nothing with the force that could have made him bleed so much.

The ensuing investigation showed that Bacon had been stabbed in the back with a 6-inch blade. The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes notes thatBacon was discovered wearing only a swimsuit. His car contained an unidentified wallet and a camera.  The camera film had one image - Bacon smiling on a beach. Police figured the killer had snapped the photo.

Bacon's wife would later suggest Howard Hughes as a suspect, admitting she was a lesbian and Bacon was gay, their marriage merely a sham to protect them both. She believed Hughes and Bacon were having an affair, but nothing was ever proven.

Athalia Ponsell Lindsley was attacked with a machete on her porch

Athalia Ponsell Lindsley was something of a renaissance woman known for a variety of things including modelling, dancing, activism and for hosting the game show Winner Take All. In her neighborhood she was also known for having a standing feud with a man by the name of Alan G. Stanford Jr.. According to the Constantine Reporter, Stanford had an issue with 6 stray dogs Lindsley had taken in that barked incessantly. This would be used to establish motive after Lindsley was attacked on her porch by a man wielding a machete. She was hacked repeatedly and nearly decapitated.

Neighbors heard the screams but were unable to accurately identify the assailant, though one saw someone and assumed it was Stanford.  For his part, Stanford was arrested, put on trial and acquitted of the crime.  Lawyers claimed there was no way the jury could have even properly reviewed the evidence - they only spent two and a half hours deciding the case and that included having lunch brought in. The police were also accused of doing sloppy work on the case, deciding right off the bat that Stanford was their man to the point that they didn't even investigate Lindsley's husband.

In the end, with Stanford's acquittal, any leads in the case ran dry and no one else has ever been brought to justice.

Venus Xtravaganza was found strangled under a bed

In the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning, audiences are introduced to "ball culture," an underground scene in New York City where gay and transgender performers were able to take the stage and walk in front of a crowd looking as glamorous and powerful as they possibly could. It was a competition where the winners took home trophies, admiration and validation. One of the performers in the film was Venus Xtravaganza.

Venus had been a performer for years but struggled to make ends meet. Rebel Circus delves into how, in the documentary, she hints at the idea that she's been escorting to pay the bills, which was obviously a risk. She said she was a hustler, and men would give her gifts and money for spending time with them.  She also admits to prostituting in the past, and how she'd had her life threatened by clients when they found out she was still biologically a man.

The documentary took several years to complete. During that time, on Christmas Day in 1988, Venus Xtravagaza's body was discovered in a hotel room. She had been strangled and stuffed under the bed, her body had been there for perhaps four days at that point.

Because of who and what she was, it's alleged perhaps the police were indifferent to the murder and put little effort into solving it. No suspects were ever named, no one was ever arrested.

#2 The saddest on-screen deaths that shook us to the core

(This one originally had a video embed for each one of the scene in question.  I like the idea it was unusable because.  Research?  It’s an opinion piece, so who knows.  Typos?  You let me know, I didn’t edit this any more after they rejected it)

Every so often a movie comes along that really hits you in the feels and you can't help but get wrapped up in the drama of it all, even though you know it's just a piece of fiction played out by actors.  Aristotle once wrote that the purpose of drama is to arouse the feelings of pity and fear in an audience. You purge these emotions through the process of catharsis and end up emotionally stronger in the end.  Drama, and feeling what the characters go through, makes you a stronger person. At least, that's the idea.

Now obviously everyone is different and some of us don't seem to be affected by tearjerker movies and their attempts to get us emotionally invested.  But man, some movies try really, really hard. Sometimes the writing and the acting is just so powerful that even though you know it's not real, when a character dies in front of you on screen, you can feel yourself being emotionally destroyed.  It's not every movie death by any means, some of them don't have that gravitas to them. But the best characters, the best actors, can make an onscreen death hit you hard and leave you feeling like a wreck. It's not a weak thing to feel that way.  It's just a sign you have a capacity for empathy and that you definitely need to put on a good comedy after you watch these scenes.

Ellie in Up

Everyone loves Pixar movies, a fact born out by the incredible success of literally every single film Pixar makes.  Even an unsuccessful film by Pixar standards is an incredible achievement in any other terms. Their films are incredible displays of animation technology with great storytelling and voice acting. If you need proof of that, you need look no further than 2009's Up, a movie that gutted its audience in the very opening sequence in a way few other movies would dare.

Up tells the tale of Carl Fredrickson, an elderly man who has lost his wife and plans to honor her by literally flying their house to South America. But it's the opening montage in which we meet a young Carl and his future wife Ellie, and follow their romance and life together that takes an emotional toll.  We go from childhood through adulthood and into old age until Carl finally loses the love of his life. Even though it's only a few minutes of screen time, articles like this one in The Guardian are quick to point out just how impactful that scene is. You become a part of Carl's life, you see how and why Ellie meant so much to him and you feel her loss as she dies.  It may be "just a cartoon" but the emotion is raw and real and is reduced many an audience member to tears.

Thomas in My Girl

After his big break in the movie Home Alone, Macaulay Culkin really branched out with a lot of roles, some of which showed an incredible diversity. The most famous of these was arguably the 1991 coming of age drama My Girl.

The film follows the life of an 11-year-old girl named Vada who lives in a funeral home and has a bit of a death obsession. Her best friend, played by Culkin, is a kid who is allergic to pretty much everything. They're both outcasts in their own way and their relationship is a sweet, innocent one. It also punches you in the gut when it comes to an end.

Culkin's character Thomas is trying to do something nice by finding Vada's lost mood ring in the woods, which she lost track of earlier in the day. As he does so, he runs afoul of a nest of bees, to which he is allergic. Our final images of the character are in the woods, swarmed by the insects, alone and terrified as he dies.  The next time we see him is at his funeral service when Vada breaks down upon seeing his body, wondering where his glasses are because he can't see without them. It's absolutely heartbreaking.

John Coffey in the Green Mile

Generally speaking, when you think of Stephen King, you don't think of emotional impact and any deep feelings.  He's a man famous for terror, not tears. But that's just the usual, not the rule. As King proved very well with The Green Mile, he can make you care deeply for a character.

The Green Mile is the story of a man named John Coffey, imprisoned for murder in 1935. As the story progresses we come to learn Coffey was wrongly convicted of the crime.  He's a simple man with a sweet disposition and a desire to help people, which he can do with an amazing, supernatural power to take pain and illness from others into himself.  Played perfectly by the late Michael Clarke Duncan, the character of John Coffey was railroaded because he was found with the victims and, being a physically imposing black man with two dead white girls at that place and time, his guilt was presumed.

Duncan's performance sells the role of John Coffey so well. He's so sympathetic and so likeable that seeing the injustice his character faces being played out is a visceral experience. And when the inevitable happens, when Coffey is taken on the walk down the green mile to his execution, it's brutal to watch and will leave you reaching for a tissue.

Glenn in The Walking Dead

Television's ability to make you care about a character is often underexploited. Unlike a film with a finite timeline, since TV shows can go for years, producers are often reluctant to kill off a character unless absolutely necessary. They're especially reluctant to kill a fan favorite character. That's not the case on The Walking Dead however, where it's a given that every character's days are numbered. Knowing that your favorite character could die at any time doesn't make it any easier to watch, though. Just ask fans of Glenn Rhee, played by Steven Yeun. Glenn lasted for 7 seasons on the show until he ended in the most traumatic way imaginable.

Glenn had been a staple of The Walking Dead since very early in the series. His character was funny, likable and heroic. He was one of those characters you can imagine yourself being friends with in real life, a testament to Steven Yeun's ability as an actor.

When season of the Walking Dead ended, the villainous Negan had just swung his baseball bat Lucille at an unseen victim. Rumors circulated that Glenn would be the victim, and when season 7 premiered audiences discovered it was Abraham. But then, in a cruel twist, Negan turned his rage on Glenn and in a brutally violent scene that even Yeun admitted was too much according to ComicBook.com, beat him to death also in a scene you may not want to watch with kids in the room.

Bambi's mom in Bambi

Few deaths are more iconic and more disturbing in people's minds than the death of Bambi's mother.  It's not that it's drawn out or gory; it's the opposite in fact. We never see what happens to Bambi's mother, we only hear it. A single shot in the woods, with an extremely heavy implication. She's been felled by a hunter leaving the little fawn alone.

The reason the death of Bambi's mother elicits such a visceral response from audiences is very much about context. Bambi came out in 1942, it's one of Disney's earliest hits. It also means nearly everyone alive today experienced Bambi's death as a child. The memory of that deer dying is very much tied to your understanding of it as a child, and for a lot of kids it's one of their earliest experiences is seeing death on screen. The movie is very innocent and inoffensive, a perfect film for children of any age. The death is a hard one to shake because of it, and it sticks with audiences for years.

Some may ask why so many Disney movies include the death of a parent, and Buzzfeed spoke to Disney producer Don Hahn, who offered up an incredibly heartbreaking possibility. After Walt Disney achieved a measure of success, he bought a home for his parents. The heater malfunctioned however, and though his father survived, his mother died of carbon monoxide poisoning, in the gift he had bought for them.

Han Solo in The Force Awakens

It's no secret that Harrison Ford famously disliked being in Star Wars and was no fan of his character Han Solo. As Screen Rant points out, he'd been arguing that Solo should die for 30 years, since all the way back in Empire Strikes Back. Not necessarily because he hated the character, but because he thought it was just better storytelling to have his character die of.  It'd lend some emotional weight to the movie. But marketing trumps emotion, and Solo lived on for decades.

It wasn't until Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens that Ford finally got his wife, his character dying at the hands of his own son. Many would argue that the Star Wars films have always been lighthearted, effects-laden adventures meant to do little more than entertain, but there is more to it. You can't deny the cultural impact of these movies. They're a legitimate phenomenon. Whether Harrison Ford intended it or not, his portrayal of Han Solo was iconic. He was a hero for more than one generation. And his death was likely welcomed by no one.  To be sure, it added depth and gravitas to the story, but that doesn't mean it's fun to watch. It's seeing a legend pass on, in many ways, and that's a hard thing to do. To understand that a story has well and truly ended is something no fan wants to experience.

Mufasa in The Lon King

Disney's ability to make you care for a character is unparalleled. That they can so quickly get you emotionally invested in the life of this creation, even an animated one, is nothing short of remarkable. And make no mistake, they are well aware of that power. It's used very well to give serious emotional weight to stories like The Lion King. Simba's father Mufasa's death is so impactful it's actually been named the most iconic death in cinema, according to Metro UK.

Mufasa only has a very short amount of screen time in The Lion King before his brother Scar murders him, but it's such a powerful scene.  We watch Simba practicing his roar which leads into the wildebeest stampede from which he needs to be rescued. Mufasa risks his safety to rescue his son and then just as it seems like he might make it to safety, Scar betrays him, casting him to his fate.  The layers of emotion pile up fast - Simba's panic and feeling that he is to blame for his father's death, Mufasa's selfless bravery and Scar's evil betrayal all run together. It's no wonder people recognize it as a gut-wrenching scene that haunts audiences long after the movie ends.

Marley in Marley and Me

In a very weird way, some people are more able to connect with animals than humans. Maybe it's the idea that any animal is inherently pretty good and innocent while humans don't always get the benefit of the doubt.  Whatever the case, if a beloved pet dies on screen in a movie, it's almost always tough to deal with. The movie Marley and Me hits you right in the chops with that idea, showing you the life of a family from the time they get a puppy to the dog's old age and eventual passing.

Even though Marley and Me is ostensibly about a couple finding their way and building a family together, the dog Marley is used as a conceit to tie the themes together. In many ways Marley represents the chaos and uncertainty of trying to establish your life, your career and your family, as well as the joys of all of those things as well.  Marley is the cornerstone of their lives, and when he grows ill the movie refuses to shy away from the one final part of life that we all must deal with - death. Knowing that Marley is ill, and cannot be saved, adds that one extra emotional layer to the whole ordeal, as his owners must choose to do what they can for the dog, and euthanize him to save him from more suffering, something any pet owner knows is utterly devastating.

Hodor in Game of Thrones

While it's a joke at this point that no one is safe on Game of Thrones, the remarkable cast and the engaging writing has ensured that when those deaths do happen, they're going to pack an emotional punch. What's surprising is just how the show manages to make it so much worse than you could imagine sometimes, as was the case of the unexpectedly tragic death of Hodor. Even if you went into the episode knowing he was going to die, when you see how it happens, how Hodor's entire life lead up to that moment, it's as jaw-dropping as any sequence from television can be.

Throughout the series, Hodor is often little more than a background curiosity character, the gentle giant who can only say his own name. In season 6, his tragic story is laid out for audiences when we learn that the character of Bran, who is able to warg into simpler life forms to control them, does so to Hodor and in doing so travels back in time inside him.  The stress of being overtaken by Bran, through time, while undead White Walkers close in for the kill, retroactively destroys Hodor's mind in the past. His final act is holding the door so the others can escape, cries of "Hold the door" becoming compressed as he repeats it again and again until he can say nothing but "Hodor."

Joyce Summers in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The episode entitled "The Body" in season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a standout episode for any number of reasons. The choice to cut music entirely for the duration offset it from every other episode right away, but it's the story that elevated it to something more. While Buffy was routinely chock full of death and mayhem, it was always that violent, action-movie style chaos. It was the entertaining violence audiences crave.  "The Body" was different.

The episode opens with Buffy coming home to find her mother dead on the sofa.  No monsters, no fight, no tragically heroic send off. Joyce Summers had died of a brain aneurysm;  a real world horror played out in the fictional universe of terrors. And for all of Buffy's heroism and power and bravery, this was a thing against which she was powerless. Watching a character audiences had come to admire rendered so shattered was brutal.  The hero of the show is left a shambles. Seeing the cornerstone of the series, The Chosen One as she was so often called, made as human as all the rest of us is heartbreaking. And because it's a situation we all have to deal with in time, the all too real death of a loved one, it hits home even more.

Wolverine in Logan

Who could ever have imagined that a character most famous for having knives in his hands that he uses to slash and kill his enemies would have such an impact on audiences? That's the reality behind Wolverine, also known as Logan.  Hugh Jackman had played the character through 8 films over a staggering 17 years and brought him to life as much as any character possibly could be made real.

Jackman's final turn as Wolverine in the darkly serious Logan has been considered the best portrayal of the character and elevated it beyond the previous films which always had a sense of goofy comic book fun to them.  Logan was something more, an oddly human tale about an oddly human character, in a sad and lonely future. Building off of all of Logan's backstory, we see him as a broken man who has one last chance to make a difference and one last chance at the family he seemed to always want to be a part of.

The addition of the X-23 character, thrusting Logan into a fatherhood role he never really wanted, contrasted with his own father/son-like relationship with Professor X, creates more drama than superhero movie audiences had ever seen before. Logan wasn't a superhero in this film so much as just a hero,an admirable man whose death before the eyes of the daughter who grew to love him cut as much as any adamantium blade.

Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street

Few things in this world are more wholesome and admirable than Sesame Street. While it seems like just a kid's show on the surface, the service it has provided for years now is remarkable. The constant effort to entertain, engage and teach children is so much more than what the vast majority of television does.  It has been a part of many lives over the years, and many people all over the world have grown up experiencing its messages of kindness and understanding.

While the Muppets like Big Bird and Cookie Monster have long been the stars of the show, the human co-stars have made their own impact and been just as important. So it was stunning for a generation of children to learn one day that the beloved Mr. Hooper had died.

Played by actor Will Lee who passed away on December 7, 1982, Mr. Hooper's death was addressed on air over Thanksgiving of that year.  The producers had decided the best course of action was not to ignore Mr. Hooper's passing, recast the role or say he moved, but to address it in a real way that children would understand, according to the AV Club. Big Bird is the character who represents the audience in the scene, and he learns not just that Mr. Hooper is gone, but why he's gone and what it means going forward. Even though he's just a big, yellow puppet, the emotion conveyed is raw and real.

#3 Adored reality TV stars outed as terrible people

It's very hard to put your finger on the origin of what you might call "reality TV."  No doubt it became very popular in the 1990s when shows like Survivorbecame the biggest thing on TV. In many ways that time period is considered, at least informally, the beginning of reality TV as we know it.  Realistically, reality TV, which is anything unscripted and supposedly just showing life as it is, is about as old as TV itself. The news is reality TV. Game shows are reality TV. There were hidden camera and talent shows as far back as the 1940s.

The modern era of reality TV has one pretty significant difference from older forms, and that is stars. We have recognizable reality stars these days.  These people are, at least as audiences are lead to believe, just real and unscripted and showing their lives on television. They can become as beloved as any actor in some cases, just look at the Kardashians, the Osbournes or the Real Housewives of Fill-in-the-Blank.  These people can be huge. And as the old saying goes "the bigger they are, the harder they fall." Sometimes reality stars turn out to be much worse than their TV personas lead us to believe. Some of these people are damn near monsters.

A Sons of Guns star was guilty of rape

In 2011, Discovery premiered a new reality series about Red Jacket Firearms, LLC. The company made custom firearms for places like law enforcement and private security as well as individual collectors.  They called the show Sons of Guns, because if your show doesn't have a clever name, it's not even worth airing.

Sons of Guns aired for five seasons and followed shop owner Will Hayden and his adult daughter as they crafted weapons and demonstrated them, sometimes unsuccessfully. The show tried to balance firearm safety with an interest in responsible gun ownership and the appeal of seeing cool, unique weapons .  But there was more going on behind the scenes than audiences realized.

In real real life, not scripted reality life, showrunner Hayden was less an admirable advocate of gun ownership than he was a reprehensible monster.  In 2017, as People explains, Will Hayden was convicted of two counts of aggravated rape and one count of forcible rape.  He had been tried and found guilty of sexually assaulting two preteen girls, two decades apart.

Hayden's arrested in 2014 was what actually what ended the show, and it took until 2017 for the trial to wrap up. The aggravated rape convictions carry with them mandatory life sentences. In total, Hayden was sentenced to three concurrent life sentences plus a consecutive 40 years. He'll never leave prison alive.

Dog the Bounty Hunter uses racial slurs

For a while in the early and mid 2000s, Duane Chapman, better known as Dog the Bounty Hunter, was one of the biggest reality stars on TV.  The show, featuring Dog and assorted family members hunting fugitives from justice, was huge. His life outside of the show has been riddled with controversy, however.

Prior to ever being a bounty hunter, Duane Chapman served time in prison on a first degree murder charge back in 1976. That conviction has been the reason he can't carry a firearm and the UK won't let him into the country, according to The Guardian.  Chapman has never hid that part of his past and has tried to be an inspirational story about turning your life around.  In 2003, Dog captured Andrew Luster, the infamous Max Factor heir and serial rapist, propelling him to international fame.

Based on his recognition from the Luster case, A&E gave Dog a show that proved very popular - Ozzy Osbourne even sang the theme song. But by 2007, things had taken a bad turn. Audio tape of Dog using racial slurs was released by The National Enquirer.  On the tape, Dog can be heard using the N-word in a discussion about his son's girlfriend, who was African American.  Dog later apologized, according to CBS, but the damage was already done at that point since Chapman had made it clear that he uses the word frequently.

Pawn Stars' Chumlee was arrested on drugs and gun charges

Pawn Stars premiered on the History channel in 2009 and quickly became their biggest hit, the number one show on the network in fact,  according tothe Las Vegas Sun. The show mixes some family drama with the oddly appealing world of pawn shops, where people bring in some of the craziest most unique items you could ever imagine to find out what they're worth.  It's like Antiques Road Show with some attitude and a goofy family backdrop. One of the stand out stars on the show is the man known as Chumlee.

Chumlee, whose real name is Austin Russell, was a childhood friend of Corey Harrison, whose family owns the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop.  On the show he was often depicted as a bit of a lummox, kind of a goofy, comic foil for the other characters who slowly grew to be a trusted and reliable employee.

Off camera, Chumlee has run afoul of the law when his home was raided in 2016. Police found crystal meth and Xanax as well as about a dozen illegal firearms, according to Global News. Thanks to a plea deal, he managed to avoid jail time but will be on probation for several years.

Alaskan Bush People's Matt Brown was arrested for a DUI hit and run

Alaskan Bush People premiered in 2014 and offered viewers a unique and cool look into the world of some people who seemed to live totally off the grid and were independent and self-sustaining.  The illusion was not long-lived however. In Touch Weekly has a rundown of a number of scandals that have come up in the show's history including word that much of what goes on is faked and the family never really lived full time in the woods.

More egregious than reality show fakery was the story that broke in 2015 about star Matt Brown.  The oldest son of the family, Brown had gone out for a night of partying in Juneau, Alaska. Brown chose to drive home after too many drinks and, according to witness testimony, plowed into a parked motorcycle in a Wal Mart parking lot in the middle of the night.  Instead of staying where he was, Brown drove off leaving the scene.

According to Radar Online, Brown was arrested on charges of both DUI and leaving the scene of an accident. The officer who pulled him over said Brown smelled and was acting weird, but denied being under the influence of anything.  Instead, he offered up Attention Deficit Disorder as an excuse for his behavior. The police weren't buying it, and Brown failed a field sobriety test as well as a breathalyzer, and was taken into custody.

Joshua Tel Warner of Deadliest Catch robs banks

Deadliest Catch has proven to be one of reality TV's most enduring and curiously engaging shows. Depicting the lives of crab fishermen, it's a mixture of drama and real-life danger as these boats face off with extreme weather and the unsafe waters of the Bering Sea to haul in crabs that can be worth a fortune.

While the show has been a success since 2005, it's not without some danger and drama on the land, too.  Joshua Tel Warner joined the crew of The Wizard, one of the crab boats featured on the show, back in 2009. He was a greenhorn on the boat, a rookie, and he quickly gained attention for all the wrong reasons. Warner had joined the crew after committing a bank robbery, and then proceeded to commit two more after he was featured on the show.  Surveillance footage ensured he was an extremely easy suspect to track down since he was on one of the most popular reality shows on television that you better believe law enforcement officials were also watching.

In 2010, as Oregon Live reported, Warner was sentenced to 9 and a half years for his crimes, leaving audiences to wonder how he thought he'd get away with it if he was on TV.

Ducl Dynasty's Phil Robertson made homophobic remarks

Few reality shows have achieved the fame and notoriety as A&E's Duck Dynasty. In 2013, the season 4 premier became the most watched non-fiction show in cable history with nearly 12 million viewers, according to E!.  It's safe to say that, for a time, Duck Dynasty was absolutely the pinnacle of reality TV success. Unfortunately, that success came with some controversy as the Robertson family at the center of the show began sharing some unpopular opinions.

Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the family featured on Duck Dynasty, was interviewed by GQ back in 2013.  It was in that interview when he made some extremely controversial comments about homosexuality, including basically equating it with bestiality and terrorism. He calls it a sin numerous time and tries to explain that he's not judgmental in any way.

There was an initial backlash against Robertson's comments with A&E actually suspending Robertson from the show for a brief time, according to FOX News.  The family stood by him and there was a counter backlash of support that ended up getting Robertson back on the show within 9 days.  As the NY Post pointed out, the network did try to distance itself from Robertson's specific comments, suggesting that he was just one man amongst many on the show and his views are solely his own.

Mama June rekindled a relationship with the man who molested her daughter

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo was a cultural phenomenon, an icon of cringe TV that showed up in 2012. The title comes from the nickname of child beauty pageant contestant Alanna Thompson, who became an instant star after showing off her frenetic and bubbly personality on the show Toddlers and Tiaras.

Honey Boo Boo and her family consisting of dad Sugar Bear, Mama June and sisters Chickadee and Pumpkin were the ultimate in trash TV. They were as rough around the edges as humanly possible - in one episode Mama June makes a dish called "sketti" which was spaghetti noodles slathered in copious amounts of melted butter and ketchup. But there was also a real sweetness to them at the core that kept audiences interested, or at least it seemed that way for a time.

Eventually Mama June and Sugar Bear went their separate ways and June did the unthinkable - she rekindled a relationship with a man named Mark McDaniel. McDaniel had been convicted of molesting Chickadee 10 years earlier, causing Chickadee to cut ties with her mother, as TMZ reported.  June denied getting back together with the man after he was released from prison, but TMZ had photos to prove it. The blowback was swift and TLC cancelled the show as audiences were absolutely disgusted that a woman would do that to her own children.

Toby Willis sexually abused his children

Piggybacking on the success of show like Jon and Kate Plus 8 and 19 Kids and Counting, The Willis Family was a show on TLC that chronicled the lives of a very large, very close knit family. Like both of those other shows, the happy face put on for the cameras hid a very dark secret when the cameras were off.

The Willis Family, who performed as a musical group called The Willis Clan, consisted of mom and dad Brenda and Toby, and their 12 children. They appeared as an act on America's Got Talent, presented as a family rooted in Christian values and wholesome entertainment. In 2016, that was exposed as a lie.

TLC cancelled the show in 2016 when Toby Willis was charged with four counts of rape.  In Touch Weekly details the story of eldest daughter Jessica opened up about what she had endured at the hands of her father. Toby Willis had abused his own children, when they were between the ages of 9 and 12 though Jessica said she could remember it happening much, much earlier in her life.  Willis plead guilty to the four counts he was charged with according to the Tennessean. He was handed four concurrent sentences which will see him spend 40 years behind bars.

Swamp People's Trapper Joe committed domestic abuse

There's been a tradition in reality TV to showcase the lives of people who are outside the mainstream, who live lives that are maybe more simple or rustic or old school than folks in cities. You can see it in things like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Duck Dynasty and, of course, Swamp People. It's a show about people who hunt alligators for a living. That's definitely a slice of life that's unique and interesting to most of the country.

Swamp People premiered in the year 2010 an has been fairly popular ever since. One of the show's stars who went by the name Trapper Joe was doing more than hunting gators, however. Back in 2012 Joe, whose real name is Noces Joseph LaFont Jr., was arrested on charges of assault and battery, according to TMZ. Witnesses saw LaFont and his girlfriend arguing and then LaFont punched her.

In 2015, LaFont was arrested again on the same charge. The Times-Picayune referenced the 2012 charge and also another 2013 charge, against for the same thing, but noted they couldn't find out if they were ever pursued. In 2015, however, a judge order LaFont to stay away from the victim after breaking two of her ribs.

Jon and Kate Gosselin turned their family into a circus

Jon and Kate Plus 8 was a massive hit for TLC back in 2007.  It featured the titular couple plus their 8 children - twins and sextuplets - and the everyday aspects of their lives.  It was instantly something appealing to a wide audience. But the parenting skills of both Jon and Kate has been questionable for years.

Jon and Kate Gosselin's troubled relationship became tabloid fodder incredibly quickly. By 2009, the couple had filed for divorce. Even from the beginning, the couple were at odds over who even wanted the divorce. Jon laid the blame on Kate, according to CBS, while Kate said Jon forced her into it, according to People.

Word broke that Jon had started a relationship with the 22-year-old daughter of his wife's plastic surgeon, as detailed in People. Then arguments over the kids resulted in cops being called in 2009, something that was still happening as late as 2017, as E! News reported.

In 2016, In Touch Weekly reported Kate was accusing Jon of dealing drugs in a report to the police, as well as kidnapping one of their daughters. Some of his children said they hadn't seen their father in years, which he again blamed on his wife, as detailed by NBC.  In the end, it's clear this couple has had years and years of bitterness between them with little regard for the effect it might have on the kids.

#4 False facts you always believed about World War II

There's no denying the impact World War II had, not just on the world at the time, but the world that survived and grew out of it. The toll to humanity from the acts committed during those few years, from camps in Germany to the bombs dropped in Japan to the soldiers landing on the beaches on D-Day, was staggering.  The world changed; the way wars were fought changed and the way we treated those who fought wars changed as well.

Since the war ended, our culture has been utterly fascinated with the history and stories about what happened. From the grand scale battles to the personal tales of soldiers and civilians, it seems like we can't get learn enough. You just have to look at this list of hundreds of World War II films compiled on Wikipedia to appreciate how much the war is still a part of our conscience and identity.  And yet, despite the abundance of information in the form of books and essays and films, there is a ton of misinformation. There' a good chance that what you think you know about the war isn't really what you know. Some of the most commonly quoted facts aren't actually facts at all.

The French didn't give up without a fight

It's a great disservice to the people of France that they've long been saddled with the reputation of being cowards.  Pop culture has really run with this idea; the Simpsons even included a joke once about the French being "cheese-eating surrender monkeys." Removed from the reality of what happened a generation ago, it can be seen as funny, but it's not as true as a simple joke makes it seem.

While France did surrender under the German assault, the reasons behind it are often overlooked. The most important thing to consider is the nature of the war being fought.  Germany brought the blitzkrieg- the lightning war- to France. France simply had no defense for the new tactics; they were outmatched by the Axis forces.

Germany moved quickly into France with armored vehicles and superior strategy.  France was literally using couriers to send messages to and from those in charge, while Germany was communicating by radio. The French Commander-in-Chief General Gamelin didn't even have a radio in his headquarters, according to the book War Made New.  How could France have ever hoped to keep up?

In the end, the Germans lost over 150,000 soldiers, 800 tanks and 1,300 aircraft in the month-long push, as noted on Second World War History, but they succeeded and France surrendered after being completely outmatched.

Hitler didn't become the leader of the Nazi party by one vote

If you have a friend or relative who likes to forward sourceless chain emails or make posts on Facebook that list quirky facts, you may have seen one meant to encourage you to get out and vote. This particular list goes into detail about the difference one vote can make and is supposed to be inspiring. It tells, amongst other things, of how Hitler was voted into leadership of the Nazi party by one single vote.  If only anyone else had stood up and said no, maybe the Second World War would never have happened! It's terribly untrue.

Mythbusting site Snopes looked into the popular forward which also claimed that English became the official language of America over German by one vote, and that Texas was brought into the Union by a single vote.  The so-called facts have been spread by Ann Landers in newspapers and even in a speech by Jesse Jackson.

While all the stories in the forward are fake, as it relates to the one vote victory of Adolf Hitler, it's not just wrong, but the complete opposite of what happened.  Hitler didn't get a single vote victory to lead the Nazi party, he had a single vote against him. 553 party members did vote for him to lead them, however.

The SS weren't all Aryan

The Schutzstaffel, more commonly known as the SS, were some of the elite troops of the Nazi military.  The regular German military were a separate entity. The SS were the more feared force; their subgroups included the Gestapo and the Waffen SS amongst others.  They ran concentration camps, enforced Nazi policy and fought in armed divisions. Despite their reputation as policing and enforcing the racial policies of the Nazi regime, not all members of the SS were Aryan.

The Blue Division were a group of Spanish soldiers who fought alongside the Nazis against Russian forces.  Also known as the Wermacht 250th Infantry, they took part in the battle of Leningrad and suffered massive casualties, according to Historynet.

The Tiger Legion, also called the Free India Legion, was a 3,000 strong force of Indian soldiers who aligned themselves with the Nazi party against Britain. The force was part of the Waffen SS, the armed division, and ended up retreating through France along with the rest of the German forces on D-Day, according to the BBC.

Other forces aligned themselves with the Nazis as well when the SS started foreign recruitment. Divisions existed from all over including Bosnian Muslims in the 13th Waffen SS Mountain Division, the Free Arabian Legion made up of African and Arab troops and the Ostlegionen which consisted of soldiers from places like Azerbaijan, Armenia and Ukraine. When it came down to the wire, the Nazis weren't committed to any principles.

We held Axis soldiers prisoner on US soil

Though the war was fought in Europe and no enemy force ever landed on US soil, it's not entirely correct to say no enemies ever ended up in the United States.  In fact, quite a large number of German and Axis soldiers found their way to America as prisoners of war. From 1942 to 1945, as Allied space was running thin over in Europe, the US took on over 400,000 Axis POWs. The men were shipped stateside and held all across the country in army bases and rural areas.  Many of them ended up working on farms, harvesting corn or baling hay. Others were put to work in factories and mills. Since so many laborers had been lost when US soldiers went to war, this use of POW's to bolster the labor force actually helped out the American economy.

The Smithsonian relates a number of stories from people who were just children during the war, who recall these POW laborers in their communities.  Some worked together on farms, one person even recalls how POW stonemasons build his family a concrete garage that is still standing today.

The prisoners were held in camps, hundreds of which were constructed through the Southern US and the Midwest.  They were fed and clothed and put to work and, by all account, treated as well as any prisoner could hope to be treated. Some even returned to the US after the war to become citizens.

The bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima weren't the worst ones in Japan

One of the most terrifying events of the war was the deployment of the two atomic bombs. Never before had the world seen such destructive power and to this day the fear of nuclear war keeps many countries' aggression in check. It's no wonder then that so many people believe those bombs were the most destructive part of the war.  But they weren't, at least not at first.

The blasts that laid waste to Nagasaki and Hiroshima should never be minimized, and their effect over time has been terrible, but it's also worth noting that the US attack on Tokyo was actually more devastating and caused more damage at the time.  On March 9, 1945 leading into the morning of the following day, US forces firebombed the city of Tokyo and razed nearly half the city to the ground. The death toll was over 100,000 while one million were wounded and a million more homeless, according to ABC.

Bombers dropped 500,000 cylinders of napalm and petroleum jelly on the center of the city. The intent was to force Japan's surrender and to seek revenge for the attack on Pearl Harbor. The effect was something beyond a nightmare, with one witness describing seeing melting bodies piled as high as a house amidst a storm of fire that was hundreds of feet tall. They called it the "Night of the Black Snow," in reference to the ash that fell in the aftermath.

The German Spandau machine gun was actually awful

If you're a war or history buff, you've probably heard of the German MG 42. Also known as the Spandau machine gun, it was a widely used weapon by German forces. Sometimes called "Hitler's Buzz Saw," it could cut through soldiers at a rate of 1,200 to 1,800 rounds per minute. Medium wrote a profile on the deadly weapon expressing just how bone-chilling it must have been for Allied forces to come up against one.  But were they really that terrifying?

On paper, the Spandau was a force to be reckoned with. In practice, things were different. For one, the rapid rate of fire caused incredible problems with overheating. Soldiers were told to not fire in bursts of more than 250 rounds, a far cry from its reported ability to fire over 1000 rounds per minute according to War History Online.

Author James Holland wrote about his misconceptions of the weapon, once believing it to be the best machine gun from the War. He was schooled by the head of the Small Arms Unit at the British Staff College. The gun, as it happens, was not particularly accurate.  It was over-engineered yet lacking basic functions that could have made it easier to use in battle. The insane amount of ammo users had to carry made it unwieldy and, by the end of the war, there were apparently very few soldiers on the ground who had any idea how to operate one.

Japan didn't surrender because of the bombs

It was August 6th, 1945 when the first atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.  The world had never seen anything like it before and no one has dared do anything like it since. While Japan surrendered shortly after the bomb at Nagasaki, it has been widely assumed the reason was solely those atomic bomb attacks.  Historians, however, have a different interpretation of events.

The director of Asian Studies at Tokyo's Temple University stated to ABC that the bombs would not have had the effect American forces believed. The American forces had already destroyed 66 cities by firebombing, so these new attacks made little difference overall. No one at the time knew of the long-term effects, after all.  In fact, what tipped the scales for Japan was not America at all but the Soviet Union.

Just after the bombing, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. As Foreign Policy argues, Japan was considering surrender while the second bomb was being dropped but days after the first. It was the Soviet declaration of war that tipped the scales.  Japanese historian Yuki Tanaka said the fear was that the Soviets would overpower the weakened army and kill Emperor Hirohito. The Emperor of Japan was regarded as divine, so to lose the Emperor would have been such a blow to Japan as to be unthinkable. So they surrendered.

Hitler would not have been defeated without the Soviet Union

The combined might of the Allied forces was absolutely integral to the defeat of the Nazis. Every one of the countries who sent soldiers into that war played their part. The contribution made by Russia, however, is often overlooked or minimized in the West when compared to America and Britain's involvement.  The fact is that the Soviets were absolutely integral to the defeat of the Nazis and they suffered far greater losses than any other force during the war.

While Stalin was no hero by any measure, his forces on the ground made an incredible sacrifice in fighting Hitler. As the Washington Post points out, the Soviets lost upwards of 11 million soldiers in the war.  What's more, 26 million Russian civilians also lost their lives. British historian Max Hastings put it this way - the Red Army suffered 95% of the military casualties endured by the three major Allied forces.

What was paid for with all those Russian lives? The German suffered three-quarters of their wartime losses at the hands of the Soviet army. This included the battle at Kursk, which was the largest tank battle in the history of the world.  The Russians caused irreparable damage to the Nazi war machine and allowed the rest of the Allies to overcome them in the end.

September 1st 1939 wasn't necessarily the start of the war

It's hard to discuss an event without having any clearly defined boundaries for it. You want to know when something started and ended to get a grasp on it and that's part of the reason why most history books will tell you that World War 2 started on September 1st, 1939. On that date, Germany invaded Poland which in turn caused Britain and France to declare war on them. That seems like a pretty solid "Oh crap, war!" moment. But it's not the only one.

There were numerous acts of war committed in the lead up to the generally recognized start of WWII in 1939.  On September 18th, 1931, the Japanese army invaded Manchuria. They took over the region despite Chinese protests, installed a new government and went on to clash with China over the ensuing years. By 1937, a clash at the Marco-Polo bridge near modern-day Beijing kicked off an undeclared war between the nations, according to the BBC.

Elsewhere in the world, fascism was gaining the upper hand in Ethiopia when Italy declared war and invaded in 1935. Though the League of Nations was not a fan of this, they were also powerless to stop it, which resulted in Mussolini and his Hitleresque views gaining some legitimacy, according to Britannica. This lead to increased tensions across Europe and bolstered the Axis nations. It was a series of events, not just one act, that lead to war.

The Frence Resistance wasn't as effective as Hollywood made it seem

Looking back on the war, especially in films, there's a recurring theme related to the French Resistance.  After France's surrender, there was naturally a movement within the country to stand against the Nazis and the Resistance has been heavily romanticized in film and novels like Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and even Inglorious Basterds.

Post-war, France declared they had been liberated from within but many historians are quick to arch an eyebrow over the claims that the Resistance was a massive, effective anti-Nazi machine.  Most stories of the resistance come from France, the very country reeling from the humiliation of surrendering during the war. They needed to save face and would readily give in to exaggeration about the accomplishments of the Resistance in the face of the enemy. According to The Telegraph, the most common train of thought in France at the time was to just wait and see.

Historynet points out that most of the French population wanted nothing to do with any war and upwards of 90% of them either supported the regime collaborating with Germany or, at the very least, were too scared to do anything about it.  Those that did resist were disorganized and lacked military leaders. They were intellectuals who opposed the regime through publishing propaganda and using their words - still bold at a time when such things would get you murdered. But they weren't Tarantino movie heroes either, for the most part.

Carrots did not actually improve the vision of WWII pilots

Did you ever learn in school that eating carrots will help improve your night vision? As the story goes, those carrots are chock full of vitamin A and vitamin A will give you the eyes of an eagle if you get enough of it in your diet.  Vitamin A is so good at improving your vision, pilots in the Second World War used to eat carrots like it was going out of style to give them the edge over their adversaries at night. It's a cool story in its way, but it's also completely fabricated.

The truth was that the Royal Air Force in Britain had just begun using on-board radar technology which was cutting edge stuff at the time. To hide the secret of why their pilots were so effective during night time fighting, the Ministry of Information released a bogus story about the efficacy of carrots in improving night vision.

The curator of the World Carrot Museum, which is actually a thing, told the Smithsonian magazine that he has no evidence this ruse duped the Germans in any real way. That said, he is aware that the myth is extremely pervasive in Germany as well, and there are unverifed claims that pilots in Germany gave it a try.  So even if the government didn't buy it, they were very well aware of it, and so was everyone else.

[myfriendpokey]

zine thoughts pt 2

where do you sell videogames? zine fairs, children's book stores, used record marts, from the trunk of a car like rudy ray moore, on etsy or on craiglist, with flyers on the wall of the local chip shop or library. through awkwardly hammered-together handmade electronic systems or the reverse, turning your game into a jumbled set of paper text and graphical fragments which can be sold in boardgame stores as some kind of reconstruct-the-narrative puzzle. you could make one-off bespoke games or game simulacra for movies that want to depict some kind of videogame being played onscreen without having to go through the licensing rights. you could ghost-develop games for wealthy people to put their names on ("american mcgee presents my life with princess diana by donald duck"). you could develop training games for the military-industrial complex, ha ha ha ha. you could get funded by the CIA to ensure the medium of videogames remains sufficiently arty and rehabilitated to function as propaganda for capitalism... i mean we already know they were involved with the paris review and iowa writer's workshop and all that jazz so they gotta have least a couple people on the payroll already, right, and we will all be treated to some very entertaining revelations following the inevitable freedom of information act request 15 years down the line. you could try connecting with the little self-contained fan communities for things like touhou, fnaf, undertale, m-minecraft, like those renaissance artists who had to drop their patron's face in the background of some religious scene except in this case it would be one of the homestuck guys. you could make "trainers" for more popular games, or demos that could show how they "feel" without a $60 investment. you could sell small games as assets for larger ones that want to have some kind of in-universe  playable arcade system without having to invent a whole new game from scratch. you could just make extremely specific forms of pornography, maybe not the worst option even, just make sure the very artistic sequences of the protagonist remembering his dead wife are broken up every now and then with scenes of him unhinging his jaw to swallow and slowly digest another, smaller sad games protagonist whole (with rumble function for controllers!!!). you could make games for all the people who are still on windows xp or earlier or have some kind of arcane video card setup that prevents them playing anything other than that one preinstalled pinball game. you could try selling them at street vendors. you could try learning another language and making games for non-anglophones that don't sound like an english-written game that was localised without much thought after the fact.   you could make games for kids in the hopes that they sexually imprint on them enough to support your erotic oil paintings of the characters 10 years later, just like nintendo. you could make an extremely interesting and thoughtful videogame and then offer not to release it if the donation threshold is met, thus sparing people the emotional obligation of having yet another thing on their should-play-this-eventually list. you could develop games with some bewildering system of in-game and real-world currency interactions and then sell it to the mob as a way to launder money. you could make videogames that robots record themselves playing to upload en masse which are then watched by other robots as part of some weird, ungraspably abstract SEO economy, or better yet make robots to make the videogames as well. you could make virtual cemetary plots either private (downloadable exe) or public (hosted on the server) with their own customisable mood-themes and weather settings (dark, stormy, remember-you-will-die; sunny, quiet, circle-of-life etc). you could make prosperity orbs. you could make games for office workers or call center staff which resemble excel documents or phone system frontends from a distance. you could make games which really ARE excel files, some dense collection of interlocking hidden formulas that change to display text and ascii characters as you tab your way through. you could probably talk your way into "adapting" any of those old IPs that still float around long after anyone stopped having any particular thought or feeling about them at all, like the flintstones or ziggy or something, maybe do like those 1960s superhero cartoons where they just filmed panels from the comics - just break a 2d flintstones cartoon into constituent elements and have them hover around in a little cutout diorama that you fly thru, possibly explained in-universe as representing the 4-d vision of the great gazoo. you could make games that play themselves, for the depressed. you could become a ghastly serial m**derer where after each crime you upload a new game to itchio which will reveal the  name of your next victim, and costs only $9.99, and of course everyone buys and plays it because the police have put up a reward for solving the crime because they can't get past the dinosaur on level three, and all seems lost until some plucky young computer student who found the game on a friend's hard drive manages to solve the riddle hidden within the game's structure, following the clues, to an old castle, she knocks on the door, it's opened by, yes, it's will wright, wearing a wizard outfit, who tells her that by dint of solving all the puzzles she is now invited to join that mysterious organization known as "The Elect" which is assembled from the finest minds in all game design with a view to secretly controlling the world economy (via "werewolf blood", somehow), that she need only complete the ceremony by sacrificing one untutored soul, he holds out an ornate knife, she hesitates........

the question is where to sell videogames rather than how because for the most part we already know how - there are a million more or less instructive articles out there about hitting up conventions or talking to the press, and it's not that they're wrong, exactly, more that they expect to be applied in an environment that no longer exists. but what should preface and qualify the idea of sheer volume swamping the indie games market is that, outside of a few small pockets, there never really was an "indie games market" to begin with - indie games drew and mostly still draw on the existing videogames market, rather than constituting a new one. it's telling that the glory days of indie games were just the ones where they were able to draw upon some of the same privileges larger titles already had in the ability to access that same audience - being frontpaged by steam, say, or making it onto a comparatively closed console platform, or generating earnest thinkpieces... you could say that they were tapping into structures the industry had already built but had not yet occupied to full capacity.

of course there are exceptions and various efforts to set up new economies for small weird interactive things (like patreon, or game bundles), and some efforts to reach outside the existing games audience likely were successful - but when we think of indie games "functioning" economically, whether that means supporting a small team, a single person, or just hitting minimum wage per hours spent, i believe we're mostly still talking about ones which are built around the existing games economy. which is fine, but i think it's also intrinsically precarious in ways which maybe get glossed over in discussions of the "indiepocalypse" - are all those new steam releases really causing a problem or are they just exacerbating a structural limitation which was already always there, a reliance within the indie game economy on a certain lucky-few-ism which just became grossly more noticeable the more disproportionate it got?

of course it's easier to be dismissive after the fact, and my fantasy about "where" to sell videogames is partly a fantasy of them having a location to begin with - of attaining something of the grounded and immutable appearance of the non-digital, as though brick and mortar stores  don't have a relationship to the likes of amazon as basically precarious as any online storefront. and there are also real and obvious reasons why the various videogame audiences all tend to clump together - similarities in terms of the hardware required, the inputs allowed, of visual and cultural reference points, to say nothing of the personal / professional histories of the people involved in each. we are all contained within "the medium"...

so maybe it's also a fantasy of starting to pick apart that conception of the medium. i think small game developers already have more in common with artists or musicians working on the fringes of their respective industries than they do with even moderately successful teams within the same format, and use similar language, engage in similar forms of practice - particularly as near everything  comes increasingly mediated by the digital these days. i think they already ARE working in similar spaces to some extent, whether it's social media sites or digital storefronts or meatspace stores pushed by necessity not to specialise. and without wanting to be paranoid (or moreso than the CIA thing, at least) i think we should be cautious of the way a certain focus on mediumicity can obscure these overlaps.  a "new medium" is one which inherently pushes against the image of one as grouded ahistorically in some eternal human verity or other (where each medium supposedly embodies some different mode of perception / medieval humour / ninja turtle etc) - it is to see firsthand the way in which supposedly eternal, neutral qualities are materially constructed, which includes seeing forms of social organisation and usage become mystified into extrahuman conditions.  and given their basis in technology that includes drawing from wider trends in the use of that technology as a whole - which specifically, in tech circles, can mean more and more tightly interlocking systems of proprietary knowledge and speculative capital, as well as "new mediums" constructed so as to be inseperable from some storefront, website or monitoring technology. i don't think anybody will necessarily break even taking their games to a zine fair (not that they're breaking even now). but i do feel like trying to build networks across those medium boundaries could be more valuable in the effort to build some sustainable environment for these things than any amount of reform within the house that tech built.

[PS: it occurs to me that you could plausibly argue that the very bagginess of medium-centric formulations is what makes them valuable, in forcing many different groups to butt against each other on one platform rather than just disperse into echo chambers. but i think exactly the reverse is the case: nobody really engages with each other's work in artgames because the stakes are simultaneously too small and too large. they're too small in that however much i might be picky about another person's work - and i think it's this vague pickiness or sense of not-quite-right-ness that drives the most searching critiques - it still feels pointless to pursue that instead of the glaring, omnipresent faults of the big AAA players, which means more complaining about far cry for all eternity. and they're too large in that most small game development is so precarious that it's not really worth the risk of knocking someone out of the circle over penny-ante shit. only with both economic security and broad similarity of outlook can a truly vital,  human culture of spiteful cattiness begin... our day will come]

(image credits: Eco Fighter, World Heroes 2 ,The Space Adventure, Nancy)

[aion-rsa]

Only Murders in the Building Theories: Who Killed Tim Kono?

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Hulu’s original comedy series Only Murders in the Building has a lot going for it, namely the outstanding acting of its star trio. Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez have found all the right notes to hit on comedically and dramatically to create a program that makes you feel warm inside while laughing your butt off. Let’s not forget what the main topic of the show is though: we’re trying to catch a murderer for God’s sake! Everyone loves a great mystery. The writers have done a clever job of giving the audience clues about who killed the victim of the show, Tim Kono (Julian Cihi), without ever getting close enough to the answer to spoil it for us. 

Each episode has flowed into the next with new puzzle pieces that contribute to the whole. New information debunks old myths, and speculation is always a healthy way to stay engaged during the days between fresh shows. With six episodes under our belts so far, it feels like a good time to investigate five potential culprits in this murder mystery. Let’s give it a shot!

Mabel Mora

Mabel (Selena Gomez) is an intelligent and introverted young woman who it is insinuated has kept to herself while living at the Arconia and has had an interest in solving crimes for the majority of her life. She hides from Charles and Oliver that she was a former friend of Tim Kono’s going back years and that the two of them used to engage in murder mystery explorations with two other friends, Oscar and Zoe, in a self-titled group, The Hardy Boys, named afte the hit novels. 

There was a falling out between Mabel and Tim when the latter wouldn’t tell her who he thinks was responsible for the death of Zoe four years earlier, leading to a potential motive of revenge for Mabel. But as Charles speculates in the fifth episode, does this young woman really have what it takes to kill another person? She loves solving true crime, but nothing indicates that she could ever be involved in one. She is as close to the murder as anybody in the cast so far, but there is a good chance that association has nothing to do with culpability. The next candidate has a rap sheet that Mabel doesn’t possess. 

Oscar (Tie-Dye Guy)

Oscar (Aaron Dominguez), also known as tie-dye guy for the colorful hoodie he tends to sport when seen in public, was also in Mabel’s Hardy Boys friend group and was convicted for the murder of Zoe. There isn’t a lot of detail given as to whether he actually was responsible for this death, and Tim Kono tells Mabel in flashbacks that he felt somebody else threw her off the balcony that led to her demise. His reluctance to expand on this theory led to Oscar’s conviction, and Oscar recently getting out of jail for a crime he didn’t commit certainly presents the most obvious motive for killing Tim Kono. This was the man that essentially framed him after all. 

Charles also saw Oscar heading up the stairs of the apartment complex the night everyone was being evacuated downstairs, and Oscar admits to approaching Tim’s door right before the crime happens. His version of the story is that he heard the fatal gunshot behind the door right before he was going to confront Tim for his cruel errors. It scared him off and he fled the scene with the rest of the renters. He seems like a trustworthy enough man from what we’ve seen, but his admittance of wanting to become violent with Tim and his lack of an alibi leaves him as a solid suspect at this point in time. One thing we’ve learned so far in Only Murders in the Building is to expect the unexpected. That leads us to our two most benign, but certainly still possible suspects.

Oliver Putnam 

How could ditzy, fun-loving Oliver (Martin Short) have killed Tim Kono? Well, for the thrill of the crime story of course! Nobody would suspect that a man who is more excited to solve the mystery than anybody else could possibly be a potential psychopath, but that’s exactly why it should be at least thrown out there for us to debate! Oliver loves control as evidenced by his past career choice to be a director. 

His passion for the subject areas surrounding thrillers and mysteries and his admittance that nobody, including him, liked Tim Kono leads to a theory that he didn’t think anybody would care if he died. Oliver has a lot to gain from the death. “Solving” the mystery for a podcast that he directs would be the career boost he’s always dreamed of, and this motive for individual gain would never be suspected by anybody else in the show. The only hold-up is that he didn’t know Tim Kono at all before the crime occured, so these motives listed above could be applied for him murdering anybody in the Arconia. 

Charles-Haden Savage 

Same problems here for ties to Tim Kono as with Oliver, but the personal payoff of committing the murder is even deeper for Charles (Steve Martin). He is a lonely man who has no friends or family in his life anymore. He has come to view Oliver and Mabel as the confidants that he’s always desired throughout his adulthood, the only real and substantial human interaction he craves. Killing Tim Kono and investigating the crime feeds him those friendships. 

Charles is also a former actor, meaning that he is no stranger to pretending to be someone else. Acting as if he doesn’t have any skin in the game would be fairly straightforward for him, and his skills as a performance artist somewhat creep Mabel out early in the series when he recites lines from his old show verbatim that he claims were instead authentic feelings for his family. He tells Mabel that only included this dialogue into his drama because it is based on his real-life, but it came off a little shaky. We all want to root for Charles to maintain these new connections he has gained, but hopefully it wasn’t at the cost of Tim Kono’s life. 

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Teddy Dimas

Teddy (Nathan Lane)  is the man financially sponsoring the trio’s podcast. We got a few more clues about his interest in the venture when he explained how his grandmother’s journey to America is remembered through coin mementos that Teddy elaborates on in the sixth episode to Charles and Oliver. Her name, Avangelia, sounds an awful lot like Angel, a person who we learned was in a dispute over jewel thievery with Tim Kono before the victim’s death. Tim was apparently trying to play good cop by taking back the stolen jewelry from Angel. 

The connections between the two parties coalesce quite well, actually a little too well. It would seem that Teddy might have had Tim killed to protect the illegal jewelry trade that he operates in, but was Tim really that much of a threat to the enterprise? We still need more information on this man to make too many more claims, but Charles thinks he is their prime suspect heading into next week! It couldn’t be that simple though, right?

Who do you think killed Tim Kono? Do any of these suspects ring true to you, or do you have other ideas in mind after watching the show? Let me know and we can keep solving this mystery together! 

Only Murders in the Building premieres new episodes every Tuesday on Hulu.

The post Only Murders in the Building Theories: Who Killed Tim Kono? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[possiblyimbiassed]

What happened to Sherlock? Part II – Re-living memories

What is it actually that we witness in the TV show Sherlock? Is it Sherlock’s and John’s ‘reality’? Is it John Watson’s perspective, as in ACD canon? Or is it something entirely different? After S4 many viewers – including hard-core fans – lost their faith in BBC Sherlock. The characters we had learned to love (or hate) were ‘failing’ in S4: Sherlock seemed to have stopped solving crimes, John had turned into a violent wreck, ‘Mary’ the Assassin was suddenly a hero and there was not a trace of anything similar to a coherent plot line. In many ways this series seemed to have reduced the whole show into a caricature of its former self, and not much hope has been given that we can expect some change in the future.

But everything is relative, as Einstein might have said. :)  What we expected of S4 was based on what the show had been to us up until then. So to comprehend what we’re actually looking at in S4, we need to first analyse what we were actually seeing in the first three series of the show – at least up until TSoT.

Picture source (X) 

This meta series is an attempt to look at BBC Sherlock with a ‘scientific’ approach; to set up hypotheses and predictions, test them and thereby try to solve the puzzles presented to us, the audience, by the show.  The methods I’m trying to use here are explained in the introduction. For this particular meta I’m also using a Word-transcript of John’s blog, where I have been able to use the program’s word count to compare the length of different blog-posts.

Hypothesis #1 was this: John’s blog is the most truthful account of the actual events. I did a couple of predictions and compared them to my observations.  My conclusion was that yes, this hypothesis does hold water. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true, but there is some evidence for it, and I haven’t seen it de-bunked just yet. So in the continuing analyses I’ll assume that Hypothesis #1 is true, that the blog is indeed more reliable than the TV show, at least when it comes to retelling the actual events (but not when it comes to John’s opinion of what’s going on in other people’s heads).

And now we get to the next hypothesis to explore, #2:

Hypothesis #2: The show up until John’s wedding is Sherlock re-living their story together in his MP, after reading John’s blog.

John’s blog is, in my opinion, rather straightforward in its description of John’s and Sherlock’s ‘adventures’. But as such, you could also argue that it is a bit dull; the blog does not quite live up to the ACD canon level of describing the events – far from it in fact. The John Watson that got published in The Strand Magazine used a lot more romantic and sometimes almost poetic language. 

In this meta I intend to go through the TV show Sherlock from ASiP to TSoT, and analyse the perspective that the episodes are written from. I will stop at TSoT, though, since I see many clear differences between the show up until this episode and HLV. But that difference will be handled in a future meta about Hypothesis #4 (see the full list in the introduction, scroll down to the bottom)

This is a loooong meta, but please bear with me, because I do believe this is important. You’ll find most of it under the cut.

First of all, I want to give full credits for hypothesis #2 to @raggedyblue, who presented this idea to me in a comment to another thread, where we were discussing how reliable certain scenes in the show are. When I read it, suddenly it felt like some important pieces were falling into place, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

Here is an excerpt from it: 

“We are in Sherlock’s MP and we see his version of history from the beginning, because he was doped and started re-reading John’s blog. Because he is a romantic bastard after all. Then he was taken away, lost his control, and now he’s looking  to return. In the show we never see any “real” scene. We’re in the funny, old Sherlock’s head. He’s reliving the facts up to where he was present, the wedding, and then he’s going ahead, trying to solve the situation in his head”.

But before this, the idea of us being in Sherlock’s ‘Extended Mind Palace from start’ had also been suggested by @kateis-cakeis, for example in this meta. Together with @ebaeschnbliah and @sherlockshadow, @kateis-cakeis has for example discovered that the Pilot is a complete mirror to ASiP! More about that in a moment. @sherlockshadow also makes a good and logical case for ‘EMP from start’ in this meta. Update: Thanks to @ebaeschnbliah, I also got the opportunity to read this interesting meta from @fandeadgloves, which makes a good case for why the whole show is probably seen from Sherlock’s POV.

Review vs analysis

But how do we know these ideas are not just wishful thinking? As I said in the beginning, it’s easy to get the impression after S4 that this whole show is something of a joke – if you take it at face value. If you believed it would be presented very much like ACD canon, albeit in modern England, you might have felt as disappointed as the guy who made this review video. And I think this is very important, because he is far from the only voice saying this. In fact I’d suspect that a majority of viewers might agree with many points he makes.

This guy has composed a long (almost 2 hours!) review of BBC Sherlock - the whole of it - and he makes a lot of interesting observations. Like for example the often overly dramatic music, the over-dramatized scenes, the excess of sound effects, but also that there’s a lot of plot holes. And he brings up all kinds of ‘baiting’ of the audience and the manipulative writing style with cliff hangers that never pay off. And – most importantly I think – the fact that the viewers are never given enough information to be able to actually solve the crime cases with their own brains; we’re forever left to just marvel at Sherlock’s greatness. So it’s obvious that he has indeed watched the show – and most probably done an amazing job collecting stuff for the review. 

But he also seems to automatically assume that the purpose of BBC Sherlock is to show the crime case solving that Sherlock Holmes does, very much the same way as in ACD canon, and in most of the following adaptations, only this time in a modern environment. He assumes that this is a modern detective story, rather than a story about a detective. 

But to me this feels a bit like reading John Watson’s blog, where Sherlock asks: “What about the analysis, John?”

I think Sherlock has a point here. The thing is that John, while good at finding clues, he never, as far as I can recall, really tries to analyse or deduce something. Except in TAB’s Victorian setting, which is definitely happening inside Sherlock’s head,

and in TLD, where a ghost starts to deduce things for him). John is mostly far too busy making assumptions and jumping to conclusions about people’s motives, at least on the blog: 

But this guy who made the video even recommends us to not analyse the details of the show too much! (at 49:51 minutes into the video). He is bitterly disappointed (and many with him, I imagine – I’ve seen a lot of criticism where people dismiss the whole show as ‘badly written’) that the show doesn’t give us more episodes where we can follow Sherlock Holmes’ deductive reasoning to solve crime cases. But at the same time, his own video is full of assumptions about the show-makers’ motives (very much like John’s assumptions about Sherlock’s motives), and he utterly refuses to use Sherlock’s method of deduction and logical reasoning himself, while looking at the show as a whole. 

Isn’t this a bit contradictory? Because if you find this many inconsistencies and crazy things in a show about a detective, I think you should ask yourself “why is this? What could the writers possibly have wanted to convey? What is actually going on here?” And then you go through each of these observations and try to figure this out, you try to make sense of them, preferably also trying to think ‘outside of the box’.

Example: According to this guy’s video the Pilot is far ‘better’ made than ASiP, for a series of reasons – most of them based on opinions about how a ‘good’ show should be constructed. But there’s no deeper comparative analysis between them that tries to find out why these episodes are so different and maybe suggest an alternative explanation. The judgment is done, end of story.

On the other hand, this video made by @kateis-cakeis  (also referring to @sherlockshadow and @ebaeschnbliah) is also about the Pilot and ASiP, but the focus is on the data, and what patterns can be seen. They do suggest an explanation, but it’s presented as a theory, not a final conclusion. They have gone through a long series of similar scenes in both episodes, one by one, and found out that they are (almost) perfect mirrors to each other. People and objects that are positioned at one side in the Pilot is placed at the other side in ASiP, and so on. They’ve found a very distinct pattern that is difficult to explain away as coincidence. That’s a scientific approach; you use detailed analysis and deduction rather than jump to conclusions based on assumptions. You look at the pieces of the puzzle and try to figure out how they can fit together, and you use your own (and your peers’) creativity doing it. You may not reach a definitive answer right away, but you will have collected sufficient data to have a much better foundation for your future conclusions. And once you publish your thoughts, others can use your data to do their own analysis, and so on.

So what does this mirror analysis tell us? Well, most of all I think it shows that this show can’t be just about the crime cases; there’s something else going on here - otherwise the show makers wouldn’t have arranged details in this manner. So maybe we have to look for answers about this show elsewhere than in the actual crime solving. Because if the crime cases are the important puzzles to solve, why are we looking at a series of therapy sessions involving the main characters, that are mirrored already in Pilot/ASiP and have an increasingly iconic setup throughout the show? What has that to do with crime solving?

I think it’s logical, though; we can’t follow Sherlock’s deductions about the cases because that’s not what we’re supposed to solve - that’s Sherlock’s job!! But we can use deduction to figure out what’s on Sherlock’s mind, why he and John need therapy. But then we have to think outside the box and imagine that we really are inside Sherlock’s head instead of our own.

You could argue, of course, that TV audiences shouldn’t have to be (almost) scientists or psychologists to be able to enjoy a show. But maybe we don’t have to be, maybe we just need to learn Sherlock’s method. There are so ridiculously many TV shows that don’t require a single thought “outside of the box” from its viewers. So why shouldn’t this one, which is the story about a genius detective, at least require some brain gymnastics from its viewers? Something new, not just the usual stuff?

OK, enough of ranting and opinions for a while – let’s start the actual analysis!

Testing process, fueled by more observations:

So – just like last time we’ll make some testable predictions, but this time regarding the TV show (compared to the blog), to see if we can figure this out. This time I suggest four predictions to test.

Prediction 1. If Hypothesis #2 is correct, then there might be some indications in the show that Sherlock has been reading John’s blog - reading it carefully. 

Observations:

Sherlock has made comments to John’s blogposts for a long time, but not in a particularly interested way; it took him two months before he discovered the first posts John made about their “adventures” together:

But here it says that he has ‘glanced over it’, which seems to mean that he hasn’t read it more thoroughly. He seems to be more focused on the form and grammar of John’s blogposts than on the actual content, and his comments are mostly rather brief.

In the show, he seems to express (or fake? ;) ) a certain indifference towards what John is actually writing.

Maybe Sherlock can’t seem to bother too much with such trivialities as making a good blogpost (actually I suspect he’s more interested in hanging over John’s shoulder.. ;) )?

And he doesn’t seem to notice how much the blog means to John.

But he does get annoyed when John is presenting him in ways that don’t please him.

But there are two occasions when Sherlock definitely has shown interest in John’s blog - and none of them are covered by the TV show. The first one was when he ‘went through’ the blog searching for someone who could help him with a case (Death by Twitter is the blog title) by opening a closed facebook account. And he found “theimprobableone” (Moriarty?), who apparently then helped to solve the case.

And the second occasion is directly after the wedding, when he hacks the blog under the pretext of uploading wedding photos: 

But he also adds a whole post about ‘sex holidays’, boredom and death and a string of comments at the course of two-three days. This time he really does seem to have nothing else to do than to read John’s blog and try to get some attention from its followers. I’ve written a meta about what I believe Sherlock’s messages meant here. John himself is on honeymoon, tells Sherlock to shut up and never writes a word about the wedding once it’s over, neither does he seem to appreciate Sherlock’s wedding photos, since he doesn’t even mention them. One might wonder why - wasn’t this supposed to be one of the happiest events in John’s life? Wouldn’t he even want to write a single line about it on his own blog? 

There are quite a lot of talk about memories in BBC Sherlock; @sarahthecoat has made a useful list of books and other kinds of memory storage devices here. Memories indeed seems to be one of the recurring themes in this show, which also is a factor in backing up Hypothesis #2, I believe. And the blog as such is perhaps one of the most important memory devices, since John has given a thorough account of his and Sherlock’s life together - it’s like a public diary over their relationship. So let’s do an imaginative experiment - here’s a possible scenario that would fit with Prediction #1 for Hypothesis #2: 

Let’s say that while John is on honeymoon for several days, probably about a week, Sherlock is at home in 221B - heartbroken, lonely and depressed. He has lost John forever (at least that’s what he believes), but he doesn’t quite understand what went wrong between them. He has quit working; he can’t really focus on anything else than John for the moment. And in his solitude, he begins to re-read John’s whole blog during this week, because he needs to know. He is not yet willing to engage with his own feelings for John, but in order to try and figure out ‘objectively’ what happened, he enters his mind palace and starts re-running the scenes from his memories, based on John’s blog entries. And this is the show as we see it from the beginning.

A wild idea, right? Is there really any evidence in the TV show to back up this scenario, to tell us that Sherlock was reading John’s blog during this time? Well, yes, I think there is. Apart from the ones presented above, I also think the show tells us about this specifically, it’s just that we see it after it happened, played out in an imaginative universe inside Sherlock’s mind palace: 

Exhibit A: In TAB, which I’m going to assume almost entirely happens in Sherlock’s imagination (see lots of evidence for this in EMP theory), Mycroft talks about Sherlock’s recent OD and his history of drug use and then says this:

This is Mycroft saying this - on a subtextual level believed to represent Sherlock’s brain, and on a meta level he represents Mark Gattiss, the storyteller.

But if (at least) the second part of HLV also happens in Sherlock’s MP, then there is no Sherlock murdering Magnussen, consequently no prison for Sherlock, right? Thus MP!Mycroft is referring to something else - and what might that be? I think he’s referring to Sherlock locking himself up in 221B for a week in solitary confinement, starting to re-read John’s blog and re-living all his memories with John - including the most heart-breaking ones. 

Exhibit B:  Before this moment in TAB, when Sherlock has just woke up from his gay Victorian fever dream OD and starts babbling about Emilia Ricoletti, ‘Mary’ grabs his iPhone and says:

And if this scene also happens inside Sherlock’s head (EMP theory again), this evidence from MP!Mary points in the same direction: yes - Sherlock has been reading up on John’s blog, the story of how they met and of how they lived together at 221B. And with this, assuming EMP theory is correct about TAB being mind palace, I think Prediction #1 actually passes the test, and we can go on and make a second prediction. 

Prediction 2. If Hypothesis #2 is correct, then some irregular patterns in the blog might have influenced Sherlock’s memory when he read it, and these irregularities would consequently also be reflected in the show. (If the show, on the other hand, shows us the ‘reality’, there would be no such corresponding pattern = 0 hypothesis). 

Observations: Let’s compare the blog posts with their representation in the TV show. 

Some of the more lengthy and thoroughly described blogposts are A Study in Pink (1742 words), The Blind Banker (1084), The Great Game (2323) and The Hounds of Baskerville (1373). Each of these has a whole episode in the show. I would also venture to say that they are all among the episodes with the most coherent plot-lines, easy to follow and not interrupted by much weirdness.

ASiB, on the other hand, is an episode that is partly divided into a series of flashbacks showing different cases that Sherlock and John worked with. The blog covers them as The Geek Interpreter (690 words), The Speckled Blonde (632), The Aluminium Crutch (1080) and The Six Thatchers (614). All these minor blogposts are shown very briefly in the show, more like news flashes, and The Six Thatchers isn’t shown at all (the events in the blogpost differ a bit from the later episode in S4, but the main structure is the same). 

The actual main plot-line of the episode is covered by the very short blogposts Sherlock Holmes Baffled, By Royal Appointment, Christmas, Happy New Year, Actually Happy New Year and The Woman. The title ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’ doesn’t even exist on John’s blog (maybe it’s Sherlock’s invention?)! And as we know, ASiB has a lot of weird scenes in it, with spinning images, Sherlock being drugged, a dream scenario with Irene Adler, a mystic sitting John who is not really there, a plane full of dead people, quick leaps between different places, The Woman attending a client, Moriarty blowing a rasberry like a child, etc, etc. None of these things are covered by the blogposts.

And - strangely enough - the mysterious Boomerang case did apparently not merit its own blogpost - I wonder if Sherlock even told John the solution to this case? It would have been a great story, and there was no secrets connected to it! But the only thing John says about it is: “So there I am, dealing with a mysterious death in the middle of the countryside when suddenly I'm whisked away in a helicopter and taken to Buckingham Palace”. And the whole dead-people-on-a-plane sequence did not make it into the blog (John blames this on ‘national secrecy’ of course).

On the other hand we have TRF, which has a long, exciting and very distinct plot line in the show, but all the blog says about it is this:

And then he adds that Sherlock saved two childrens’ lives, and that’s it. John has good reasons not wanting to talk about it, though, since Sherlock supposedly committed suicide after this. 

It’s definitely also worth noticing that apparently Moriarty both hacked the blog and broke into 221 B at some point between THoB and TRF, since he uploaded a video showing this on the blog. Jim pays attention to the following objects in 221B: 

Lot’s of notes:

Headphones on the bison head:

Abundance of books:

That Sherlock is emotional:

And - last but not least - Skulls!! I see you Arwel Wyn Jones

Jim’s break-in and blog-hacking is never addressed in the show, but I think it’s quite interesting that all these things seem to be recurring themes later in the show - including the fact that Moriarty shows up at 221B (I’ll get back to this is a later meta). I do regard this as more evidence for Hypothesis #2; if Sherlock has been reading up on John’s blog and is re-living the memories, Jim’s observations might have got stuck in his head for future reference.

Anyway, after TRF we have three short blogposts about cases that Sherlock had solved before TRF; The Deadly Tealights (410 words), Death by Twitter (452) and Murder at 'The Orient Express' (449). Non of them is mentioned in the TV show. The Inexplicable Matchbox (297), however, is briefly accounted for by Sherlock in his Best Man speech in TSoT. 

And then there is Many Happy Returns - 470 words on the blog. It’s short in the show as well, but at least a little longer than most of the other renditions of John’s shorter blog cases. The hiatus was long, however, so it makes sense that the TV show would show us at least some things from Sherlock’s doing in the mean time. Which John would know nothing about, of course. ;)

In TEH, when Sherlock comes back, the show has this irregular plot line again, with a series of different cases and even more weirdness than ASiB. At first we see Anderson’s ridiculously romanticized (and heteronormative) idea of what happened to Sherlock at the Fall, and Lestrade dismissing it. Then Sherlock is captured and viciously tortured in Serbia, but when he comes back to London directly after, he seems fine and healthy; just a bit of shaving and he’s ready to play jokes on John. Which ends with more violence. 

The time line is tricky to follow and the plot line is unfocused; when exactly was John kidnapped? How many cases did Sherlock solve before John saw fit to visit him? What was the whole terrorist plot actually about? And there’s a very strange interlude with Anderson questioning Sherlock about how he survived, at the same time as a terrorist bomb is about to explode in a subway wagon with John and Sherlock in it. 

But the interesting thing is that the show’s twists and turns are fairly consistent with the blogpost The Empty Hearse (828 words), which starts with “Where do I even begin?”. The post is all jumbled up and mixed with a lot of John’s feelings - many of them expressing anger, disbelief and a deep resentment towards Sherlock. And back is the ‘psychopath’ talk, which John had tuned down considerably during the hiatus. (How can he even publish such rubbish as if he were writing an interesting account of a huge case of national security they solved together? And after everything he had said in Sherlock’s defense? I’m appalled, and tempted to agree with Sherlock’s blog comment “I see you haven't spent the last two years working on your writing technique”).

Finally, TSoT. John’s blog posts don’t cover the wedding at all, which would be logical if John only used the blog to describe the crime cases. But he obviously doesn’t, so wouldn’t this be something John would be happy to describe? His own wedding?? And he would definitely have time, seeing as he’s letting Sherlock do most of the wedding planning and preparations! But there’s nothing, and the Stag Do seems to be censored even in Sherlock’s brain by John: “We'd just returned from a quiet, civilised evening in the pub when our latest client arrived at Baker Street”. Not even the show shows us this picture. ;) (promo X)

As we all know, however, the wedding stretches over a whole TV episode, much of which is telling us what Sherlock relates in his Best Man speech; he gives fairly brief accounts of a series of cases, and he has John’s blog open on his iPhone as support: The Poison Giant (695 words), Happily Ever After (577), The Elephant in the Room (150 words; censored) and The Hollow Client (396). Two cases he actually solves on site, though: The Bloody Guardsman (496 words) and The Mayfly Man (286). We also see a certain amount of weirdness, where time is sometimes played fast forwards (the dinner), and Sherlock has a long session in his mind palace shaped as a court room.

And, as the last post before the blog stops updating, there’s Sherlock’s own hacker post with the title of the actual episode: The Sign of Three (312 words).

Just one more thing about the wedding: what’s important is not just the stuff that’s in the show - it’s also what’s not in the show: the actual wedding! And I suspect we have a clue about that here:

We don’t see the actual wedding ceremony when John Hamish Watson makes his marital vows to Mary Elisabeth Morstan and puts a ring on her finger. Not even a flash of it! Sherlock does post some wedding photos in his one and only post on John’s blog, but none of them depicts the actual wedding ceremony. If the show would be ‘realistic’, wouldn’t this be just as important to show? Well, not if we’re inside Sherlock’s head, and the last thing in the world he wants to think about is precisely this moment...

So, do we have a general pattern here? Yes, in fact we do, I believe. The pattern is that when John describes a case at length and in detail on his blog, the corresponding episode in the TV show is also relatively lengthy and coherent. But when there are shorter case stories written, these events tend to merely get quick flashbacks in the show, if at all mentioned. And for ASiB, TEH and TSoT the main course of events gets split up into a series of different posts on the blog, while in the TV show they appear like a chain of events, full of suspiciously weird scenes.

My conclusion from this is that the show does vary according to the patterns on John’s blog. Which speaks in favour of the idea that we’re in Sherlock’s mind as he’s looking back on his days with John. It’s as if he adopts his brain activity to the blog pattern.

So, let’s move on to the next prediction:

Prediction 3. If Hypothesis #2 is correct, then there might be some tell-tale signs that we’re in Sherlock’s EMP, even if it’s not spelled out. 

The concept of Sherlock’s mind palace (MP) is explained by John to Dr Stapleton in THoB, at Baskerville’s military lab:

I think his MP is pretty thoroughly shown in the scenes that follow John’s explanation, in a manner that we then can recognize in the rest of the show. The usual ‘advertising’ of when Sherlock is in his MP is that texts and images appear on our screen and we can hear sound effects, and all this seems to have nothing to do with in-show ‘reality’. The contours get blurry and (sometimes rainbow-like) light patterns appear. And the whole scene is spinning.  

It’s just that sometimes these tell-tale signs occur separately even when it’s not obvious that Sherlock actually goes into his MP. The topic is treated in this meta, which has a lot of interesting contributions from different people in the additions. @gosherlocked pointed out, for example, that John and ‘Mary’s wedding photo was also a spinning scene - and that’s not supposed to be in MP, if the show is meant to depict ‘reality’, is it? And in fact, in this meta by @kateis-cakeis, we can see that there were spinning scenes already in ASiP - the very first episode.

I think @monikakrasnorada’s meta series “Hiding in plain sight” (8 parts in total) about the evolution of Sherlock’s mind palace is a very helpful tool for trying to sort out MP issues.  @monikakrasnorada points out, for example, that some scenes in TRF appear to be ‘stealth’ mind palace; it seems like we are indeed in Sherlock’s head, even though this has not been clearly ‘advertised’ by less subtle hints such as deduction text flowing over the filming etc.

In fact, if we start to count the number of occasions where rainbow-like, blurry lights are showing on-screen, or where text is flowing over the screen, I think we’ll have to stay here for quite a while. It’s just that we may have assumed a) that these are ‘just’ artistic expressions from the show-makers and b) that every rainbow is ‘only’ meant as a hint about gay feelings. But those readings don’t actually contradict the possibility that we might be inside Sherlock’s head, do they? 

But couldn’t we perhaps be in John’s MP (or mind cupboard or whatever)? Theoretically yes, but some reasoning and evidence contradicts this:

1. We have never seen any sign that John uses something similar to a MP – ever, neither does he ever mention this. On the other hand, there’s plenty of evidence that this is Sherlock’s method of using his brain, and John outright explains this in THoB.

2. There are scenes in the show that John couldn’t possibly know about. Like Sherlock solving cases in Tibet, New Dehli and Germany in MHR, when he was supposed to be dead. And Anderson being on his track. The blog post Many Happy Returns is about John stating that he has to put all these things about Sherlock behind him and move on. Dramatic crime cases in different parts of the world does not fit in with this. 

3. But the times when we see John alone are in situations where Sherlock could, with his MP and extraordinary brain power of imagination, deduce what John might have said and done. And unlike John, Sherlock has his friend’s thoughts and feelings right there on the blog, as a prompt to start his deductions and imaginations from.

So, I do believe that enough evidence is presented here for Prediction #3 to pass the test.

So, here is my fourth - and last - prediction for Hypothesis #2:

Prediction 4. If Hypothesis #2 is correct, then the TV show will have a more emotional, dramatic and exaggerated account of the events than the blog.

For one thing, there is certainly way more emotions swirling around in someone’s mind than what you can read from blog posts.You probably don’t want to publish the same amount of and intensity of feelings that you can register inside yourself. And now it has been established in S4 that Sherlock is actually very emotional (Mrs Hudson in TLD) and was an ‘emotional child’ when he was very young (Mycroft in TFP). We also know from the very first episode that Sherlock is a real Drama Queen, and he admits repeatedly in HLV and TAB that he never could resist a touch of Drama. 

But he would not tell John about his own feelings regarding the events, would he? It’s very rare to see Sherlock express feelings in the show - especially feelings regarding people. That’s precisely Sherlock’s biggest problem: he tries to repress Sentiment to a point where he appears to be a sociopath to others. So if we’re seeing the show from John’s POV he must have imagined Sherlock having a lot of emotions. Which would be inconsistent with his own judgments about Sherlock in the blog. 

Like I said in my meta about Hypothesis #1: many things in this show seem exaggerated in comparison to John’s blog. Things are not exactly romanticized, but rather dramatized and more ‘fanciful’, given a ‘splash of colour’, overly dramatic music etc. And some things seems so cut out of an action movie that I doubt they’re even supposed to be ‘real’.

Observations: Let’s look at some examples from the show of overly dramatic or exaggerated events that aren’t even mentioned in the blog - or if they are mentioned they’re not described.

I already pointed out in my last meta the rooftop hunt in ASiP as not consistent with John’s description in the blog.

TBB: While John is doing something annoyingly mundane - quarreling with a machine at the supermarket (just the kind of ordinary things Sherlock seems to avoid with all his might) - Sherlock is in a thrilling life-or-death fight in 221B. A masked criminal dressed entirely in robes and scarves is attacking an un-armed Sherlock with a sword. 

Some dramatic, oriental music is playing all over these scenes - even the supermarket one. But Sherlock takes the attacker on single-handedly and knocks him out completely in a matter of seconds. Strangely, by the time John is back from the supermarket, the unconscious man is already gone and Sherlock pretends nothing has happened. Nonchalantly, he offers John his credit card and sends him off on a second shopping-round - now with money. Not a word to John about the fight; why? 

Why do I constantly get the impression that Sherlock has watched too many of John’s action movies? (and horror movies, judging by S4). ‘Bond night’ was something John introduced him to already about the time of TBB, according to the blog. And after that we get ASiB, with Bond references that are never mentioned on the blog: Bond Air and flight 007. The exaggerated treatment of the cruel CIA agent who was dropped more than once from a 2nd floor window and survived is also an example of weirdness (covered in my  Hypothesis #1 meta)

And there’s more in ASiB that isn’t on the blog; Moriarty blowing a raspberry at a text he just sent, as if he could see it flying away? Who has the most lively imagination - Jim or Sherlock? And the Flight of the Dead audience - a Boeing 747 full of dead people that never took off. 

Not technically impossible, of course. But to keep so many dead bodies from their loved ones without any of those finding out? No media headlines about a huge number of mysteriously missing corpses? One single leak would have been enough to destroy the whole operation. A bit risky to come from Mycroft with the Brains, isn’t it?

The silly little things, like the café conversation between John and Mycroft; the fact that Mycroft says 'it would take Sherlock Holmes to fool me’ is suspicious. Why would Mycroft suddenly recognize his little brother as being his intellectual superior in any sense? Wishful thinking, Sherlock! ;) And then the event in Karachi; did Sherlock travel there without John even noticing? Why is the sequence transmitted with disturbances, like it was for a broadcasting, and who would send it and why? And the most ridiculous of them all, yet another case of ‘Sherlock the action-hero’: He manages to fight a whole gang of heavily armed terrorists single-handedly, with a sword? This doesn’t even seem like Sherlock’s memory - it’s pure fantasy!

Then there’s TRF and Moriarty’s weird visit at 221 B. Sherlock is not present at the final session of Jim’s trial, and yet is he reciting verbatim what’s being said by the judge. Perhaps not impossible but quite unlikely. When John calls Sherlock after the trial to say than Jim was found ‘not guilty’, Jim is already on his way to Baker street; Sherlock’s kettle has just boiled when he arrives (takes about 3 minutes). 

Now we’re talking impossible, though; how did he manage to get there so quickly? A London ambulance, according to Sherlock, takes 8 minutes to arrive (HLV), but Moriarty is there in 3? And why such a hurry? He was in custody - didn’t he at least need to ‘check out’ first? Weird. And of course, TRF is not covered by the blog, since John didn’t want to talk about it. 

When Sherlock comes back in TEH, we get this irregular plot line again, with even more weirdness than ASiB. Sherlock being captured in Serbia might of course have happened, but what we see is a rather unlikely scenario, and absolutely none of it is mentioned in the blog. The weirdness consists in a) that the young Serbian guard is wearing an old Red Army uniform from WWII rather than a modern Serbian one, 

b) that Mycroft would treat his tortured brother like a piece of trash, even when the torturer was gone, and c) that Sherlock got his back whipped, but shortly afterwards we see him being shaved lying on it. Is this Superman?

And then he’s immediately fit to go play a joke on John. Yeah, right... 

A more possible scenario I could think of (and this is mere speculation, but I still think it fits) is that Sherlock was suffering emotionally; it was torture to him to know that John had ‘found someone’ and was going to move on. Because that’s how John described it on the blogpost Many Happy Returns, which maybe Sherlock could read from where he was. It’s only a month between the MHR blogpost and the TEH blogpost. Which means that it took a relatively short time for Sherlock to finish whatever he was doing and return to London, once he learned that John was moving on. Love is a vicious motivator, I guess...

So, I think we’ve gathered enough examples now to say that yes, Prediction #4 passes the test; there is a pattern of overly dramatized and exaggerated events on the show compared to the blog. 

All in all, after all these tests, I think that Hypothesis #2 holds water; The show as we know it up until John’s wedding might very well be Sherlock re-living their story together in his MP, after reading John’s blog.

Another thing that occurred to me is something I believe @kateis-cakeis has said (don’t remember where - sorry): In ASiP (but not in the Pilot) Sherlock says to Lestrade: “But they take the poison themselves; they chew, swallow the pills themselves. There are clear signs. Even you lot couldn’t miss  them”. But no-one has yet told him that the victims had eaten pills, rather than having been injected with the poison or swallowed some liquid. How could he know? Well, if he was recollecting his memories, after confronting the serial killer he would already know, wouldn’t he?

In one of the comments about the last installment, @sagestreet pointed out a series of things that speaks in favour of this hypothesis (for which he invented the name ‘possibly-raggedy theory’ :) ) One of them was that this idea combines the EMP theories with a late entering into Sherlock’s extended mind palace (HLV) with those of an early entering (Pilot EMP), and also explains some POV inconsistencies. Another point was this:

“And, for any viewer who might feel uncomfortable with the idea that we’ve been in Sherlock’s head all along, your theory would also provide a nice little consolation: We would have seen everything play out from Sherlock’s POV, but it would still be close enough to reality to not make people completely freak out. I mean, it would be Sherlock’s recollection (and, at times, overdramatization) of the actual events, which as you argue, quite convincingly, would only be recorded in the blog.  But it would still be ‘close enough’. (I can totally see Mofftiss doing something like this, by the way.)” 

Well, it sounds about right to me. Possibly I’m biassed. ;)

The next installment will be about Hypothesis #3: The weirder scenes from ASiB to TSoT means Sherlock is influenced by drugs.

Tagging some people who might be interested: @ebaeschnbliah @sarahthecoat @sagestreet @tjlcisthenewsexy @88thparallel @fellshish @darlingtonsubstitution @gosherlocked @mrskolesouniverse @sectoralheterochromiairidum @csi-baker-street-babes @meta-lock

[storydays]

"Gods have mercy!" Scholar Vash cried. "Angus...Grenn..." Ezra placed his head in his hand. "Oh no.." Nia covered her mouth with her hands, before kneeling down next to Agnus' body, brown eyes glistening with tears. Her lips moved in a silent prayer. A faint golden glow surrounds her, and a warm breeze rustles the overgrown grass..but then faded away. 

"I can't help them, they're gone. Beyond the Light's reach." she said sadly. "I can't believe this. We saw them alive just last night." Ezra muttered. "With the adventurer, Mal! Y-You don't think..." Kade looked at his brother nervously. "Mal didn't do this. I can't know for certain but..I don't think this was his doing. There's nothing in it for him; neither Angus nor Grenn had anything worth stealing." Ezra said, firmly. 

"Yeah, I agree. I don't think this was him." agreed the younger. "But then...where is he? And who did this?" looking around as if the brunette was hanging around. Scholar Vash paced around, shaking his head.  "This is an affront to the Light! A blasphemy! Whoever is responsible has desecrated a place of worship. A holy place!" He ranted. 

"Ezra, what should we do?" asked Kade, looking at his brother hopefully. "I'm going to examine the area. There are bound to be clues around here." The thick, unkempt grass is difficult to see through, but after a moment, Ezra's sharp eyes could see a pattern emerging. His hand hovered over the faint trail of trampled grass, until he saw multiple pairs of footprints. 

"Looks like the victims were ambushed here. Probably by a group lurking behind this column, there's at least six sets of  ambushers' footprints. " He mumbled out loud, forgetting about his audience. "Six?" Nia squeaked. "And one of them is massive." The elf concluded. 

"Six enemies, one of them massive...not a fan of those odds. Do you think this has something to do with the relic?" Kade asked, running a hand through his hair. "Speak clearly now, boy. What relic?" Vash turned towards the teen, who shrugged. "I don't know! It's just something Mal said back in town! That he had a tip there was a powerful relic, and he was going to find it."

"Then it's true; I had to hope it was a myth, but by the Gods above and below, it must be true. I believe there is an ancient artifact hidden deep within this temple. Forgotten to time, relegated to legend. An Onyx Shard." The old man said mysteriously. "Seriously? The Onyx Shards are real?" Kade gaped. "You've heard of them? Kade, what's he talking about?" 

"They're the last relics that the Shadow Court left behind after the Great War. Cursed artifacts of terrible power. Very very very bad stuff." Kade explained. "I came upon the locations of the Shards in an ancient text last year. Seeing these bodies here, I may not be the only one who knows their location. Please! If whoever did this is after the Shard, we need to protect it. We can't let it fall into the wrong hands!" 

Ezra shared a look with Kade, noting his reluctance before clapping his brother's shoulder, then looking at Vash. "We'll accompany you inside to get this Shard. But if we bump into whoever did this, we're all running like hell. Understood?" "Let's just hope we find it before they do."Vash said gravely. Ezra drew his sword, and led the way to the main archway into the temple grounds. 

"This place isn't the best shape, is it?" Kade coughed. "Once it was majestic, regal. Packed day and night. Have we truly fallen so far from the Light?" Vash lectured. Ezra sighed at the sad vines; seeing nature so sad hurt his heart. The group stopped in front of the tunnels, one going left and one going right. "Stop...something feels off. Be careful where you step." Ezra warned. "Ezra? What should we do now?" Nia asked. 

"We should look for traps." He crouched to examine the floor tiles on the left side, noting one was raised an inch above the others and gave in slightly when he touched it. "That's a pressure plate if I ever saw one. I think this way's booby trapped." He glanced to the right looking at groove in the floor tile like centuries of feet have worn out the stone. 

"The right path looks well-traveled. Let's see where it leads." He decided. The group followed the path which began to slope down, spiraling in on itself. "Gods, how deep does this thing go?" Kade asked aloud. "Only the top level of the temple was open to the public. The lower levels, the catacombs, were for the priests and priestess." Vash explained. "To study and pray?" Nia wondered. "And to hide away from the dark." said the old scholar. 

Finally they reached the path deep below the complex. A stone door stands before them, but it was clearly forced open.  Ezra held the door open and gaped at the treasure piled up in the grand chamber. "I can't believe this has been here all along! If we explored this place ourselves, we could've become ri--" Kade cleared his throat, catching Scholar Vash glaring at him. "Ri....diculously pious adherents of the Light." Ezra snickered at his brother's misfortune. 

Vash approached a pedestal with scattered with golden chains and goblets. He gently picked up a large green crystal the size of a watermelon from the pile. "That is definitely not onyx." whistled Ezra. "No, it's not the Shard," chuckled Vash, "but it's still quite fascinating. I must bring it back to Whitetower with me for further study." Everyone was distracted looking at the treasure. Even Nia was admiring  a jewel encrusted old tome. 

"I can't believe it...how was here, all this time? And no one ever robbed it?" Kade furrowed his brow. "Maybe, no one knew it was here. Kade, we live a day away and we  had no idea." Ezra mumbled. "Yeah, well, it's pretty, but I don't like it one bit. If the people who murdered Angus and Grenn weren't after this treasure...Then what are they after?" "The Onyx Shard." Nia said solomonly. 

"We'd better keep moving." Ezra said, standing up. At the end of the room sits a heavy wooden fortified by twisting metal runes. Scholar Vash examines it closely before brightening. "Ah, yes! The ancient elves often used elaborate mechanisms to lock their secrets away. I've always wanted to solve one. They test your deep knowledge of elven linguistics!" He continued on to himself. 

Ezra rolled his eyes, Nia and Kade giggling at his dry remark. "That sounds....delightful." Scholar Vash ignored him and focused on the puzzle in front of him. "Seems quite simple...If I just press this...and turn this." 

Nothing happened. 

"Ah, well. I may need a moment." He admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. Kade cleared his throat quietly. "Psst, Ezra. While he's busy with that, what do you say we keep scoping out  this treasure room? I think there's some hidden rooms down the back! We could go check them out...see what else this place has to offer." "Oooh! I would be interested in that! I recall seeing some fascinating statues.." Nia and Kade looked at Ezra expectantly. 

"Let's do it. That sounds way better than just sitting around here. Let's take a quick look around and see what we can find." While Vash continues tinkering with the door, the three younger ones headed deeper into the vault.  "So Nia, any idea why this treasure is all here?" asked Ezra. "These are offerings. Believers used to bring them as tribute to their Gods." Nia explained. "So like..bribes? People paying off the Gods to grant them fortune and favor?"

"No, not like that. The offerings are given voluntarily, with no expectations of reward. They're a reflection of gratitude, of thankfulness." Nia smiled. "Huh, that seems wasteful." Ezra mused. "Wasteful?" Nia asked, eyes wide. "I'm just saying...think of how many people this gold could feed. Think of how many sick, and wounded, and vulnerable, it could provide. " Ezra bit his lip in irritation. Nia paused, deep in thought. 

"I do see your point. There is much practical good that could come from this wealth, but there are other concerns here other than the materials. Faith and devotion, for example. It's not enough to live; It's a question of what you live for." Her smile fell when Ezra scoffed slightly. "Tell that to everyone who's starving." Kade looked around, curiously. "Rationally, I know I should be way more scared given we're in an ancient temple and we just found two people brutally murdered..." he broke into a giant grin. "But I still can't really believe this is happening! We're on an adventure! A real adventure! Imagine what an amazing story this'll make!" He danced excitedly. 

"You really love telling stories, don't you Kade?" giggled Nia. Kade's smile dropped slightly, and Ezra's gaze soften. "Well, yeah. Stories are really important to me. They're how I see the world." He hesitated, a somewhat sentimental expression on his face. "I-I was a really sick kid. Bedridden until I was 6, on the brink of death. Stories were all I had, I read every book in town, and when I ran out of books to read, I started to write them." 

"Kade was a precocious kid." Ezra spoke softly. "I always thought that was how I'd  live life. Ezra was the adventurer, the dreamer. I was content to just read about things like that. But maybe I misjudged myself. Maybe I can be someone who goes out there, who has wild adventures, who sees the world." He peeked through his lashes shyly at Ezra who smiled with joy at his brother. "Maybe I be a hero." Ezra's grin grew wider. "Damn right, brother."

"Look! Over there! A passage!" Nia led the way into a vast hall with mostly crumbled ancient statues. "This is a Hall of Gods! It must be hundreds of years old." The group spread out, gazing at the statues. Ezra walked towards the statue of a winged monstrous warrior clutching a spiked club. Nia followed the elf warily. "I don't know this one...It isn't one of the Gods I recognize." Ezra blinked. "You don't know all of the Gods?" "If you go back far enough you'll find different pantheons and interpretations....But I've never heard of one like this." 

Ezra studied the statue's brooding expression, its marble eyes simmering with hate. "I don't like it. It's too realistic." mumbled the elf. "Me neither." Nia shuddered. "Hey!" The two turned towards Kade's shout. "Wanna see something hilarious?" The teen held up an old ceramic vase with a creepy face painted on, and tries to copy its expression, but drops it and winces as it shatters. "Oops." He chuckled nervously. The shards shake and rattle and a spectral shape bursts out, lashing through the air with tendrils of smoking flame. 

Ezra quickly ran over to his brother's side, hand on his sword hilt. The spirit hissed, clearly pissed. "What in the hell is that?" Ezra cried. The creature's body pulsed and swelled, hungry eyes boring into the white haired elf, before hissing angrily. "Wait! I know what this is!" Kade called from behind Ezra. "It's a vorglin! I read about that in the Tome of Beasts that traveling merchant had! It's a spectre that feeds off psychic energy, specifically fear! " he explained. 

"So," Ezra hummed, "What if we feel other strong emotions? Could that drive it away?" "Actually....yes! That just might work! Think about something other than fear! Think of a time when you felt something really intense!" Kade stated. The vorglin hissed, clearly annoyed. Ezra turned his gaze back onto the red spirit, one of his saddest, painful memories coming to mind. The day he and Kade had laid their mother to rest; their father passed a few months earlier and it seemed their mother couldn't bear to be without her love. 

'It was raining, cold and wet. Kade and I were standing side by side, in the field as they buried her, right next to her  love. She and Father were the town's best seamstress and farmer, and they would sorely be missed. I was so heartbroken that day, I shut everyone out, Grenn, Annika and I even shut Kade out for a few weeks. I remember saying goodbye.' Ezra blinked when the vorglin pulses, gorging on your emotions. It lets out a satisfied wheeze, before disappearing into a puff of smoke, dropping something on the floor with a heavy thud. 

Ezra cautiously approached what was on the floor and nudged it with the tip of his boot. "T-This is solid gold!" He exclaimed in surprise. "Then we're lucky! When a vorglin is fed emotions it doesn't enjoy, it transforms them into an elemental discharge! It's usually iron or brass...but gold? Jackpot!" Kade cheered. "Are you saying that orb is the creature's waste?" Nia exclaimed, disgust clear in her face. 

"Heh, it literally craps gold." Ezra snickered, before breaking out into a loud laugh, Kade and Nia laughing along with him. Kade picked up the orb and tucked it into his bag. "Are you all right with is keeping this, Priestess? It's not an offering, and it might be worth quiet a bit." Kade's green eyes shine with glee, and hope. Nia bit her lip before replying hesitantly. "I...suppose." She said finally. 

"Now then, let's head back before Scholar Vash realizes we're gone." Ezra said, leading the younger two to Vash, just as he traced a final rune, and the door swung open with a whoosh! The scholar laughed in triumph. "There you go! A piece of cake, as they say! Nothing to it!" He looked back at Ezra who was hiding a grin. "Thank you for waiting patiently, I do hope it wasn't a bother."  Gold eyes look over at Kade and Nia before looking back at Vash. "Not. At. All." He chuckled. 

Vash gestured ahead, and with a firm grip on his sword, Ezra led the way. "Wait." He murmured lowly. "Does anyone else hear voices?" Knowing his brother's hearing was sensitive, Kade quieted down, and gestured for Nia and Vash to do the same. Ezra motioned for the others to be quite, until Nia spoke up. 

"What is that?" she asked in a harsh whisper.

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