#the way he kicked harrow's wheelchair

[twicetolivetwicetodie]

"Hoy te toca perder."

-Jake Lockley

[ragsy]

Please tell me who Puppykicker McGee is

The Tale of Puppykicker McGee is a saga involving bad choices, bad rolls, amputation(s), cannibalism, puppy kicking, and what happens when tabletop RPG players learn that their actions have consequences. Content warning for… all of the things I just listed.

THAT SAID. First, some context.

I run a Monster of the Week game for some friends of mine, set in modern day UP Michigan. For those unfamiliar with MOTW, players work together to hunt monsters, solve mysteries, and uncover conspiracies by means of roleplay and dice rolling. The main difference between MOTW (or other games on the Powered by the Apocalypse TTRPG engine) and D&D is that D&D operates on a binary success system. You roll the die and you either hit the monster or you don't. It's a yes or a no.

MOTW, however, has three possible outcomes for every dice roll: Success, mixed success, and failure. When a roll is successful, your action happens as intended. When you roll a failure, your action not only doesn't work out for you, but it more often than not completely backfires in your face. If you roll to wrestle the monster and you fail, it kicks YOUR ass instead.

But the mixed success…? OOoooohoHOHOhhohoh, the mixed success is what makes me rub my little gamer hands together like an excited raccoon!! The player's action still happens as intended, but there's always a tradeoff. They might have to make a hard choice, or the effect isn't as strong as they needed it to be, or maybe someone else gets caught in the crossfire. It turns a hard "no" into a "no, but" or a "yes, and" and it makes me SO excited.

So you can imagine my joy when player character Madame Irena, Local Psychic (from the Spooky playbook) got a mixed success on her magic roll to lift a 40ft wide concrete slab over her head. The spell didn't last as long as she needed it to, and she lost her grip on the slab. I had her roll to dodge out of the way as it fell. Mixed success again. She gets most of her body out of the way, but the slab lands on her foot and just COMPLETELY obliterates it.

One thing leads to another, she gets rushed to the hospital and has her foot amputated. She's incapacitated for days, but after a daring hospital breakout involving a wheelchair, a Siberian husky, and the world's most put-upon medical intern, she decides she wants to use magic to grow herself a new foot. But that kind of magic in MOTW always has a cost, and it always has risks. For this particular spell, she's gonna need to transmute herself a new foot out of something else's flesh. But let's put a pin in that for a second.

Let's go on a side tangent about the Dogman. This is not Puppykicker McGee, but we ARE getting there, I promise.

So anyway. Player character Tatara (from the Wronged playbook) has been on a revenge quest to kill the Dogman, who is a human vessel possessed by an evil spirit that turns the vessel into a murderous, rage-fueled, man-eating dogmonster whenever they get overwhelmed by strong negative emotions. The Dogman can only transform back into their human form after eating freshly killed human flesh. It also turns out that the current vessel was an NPC on her monster hunting team the whole time! His name is Mark. He did not know he was the Dogman until very recently.

So Tatara, Mark, and player character Pip (from the Crooked playbook) just got back from a harrowing trip through the Backrooms and are all extremely high strung. This is very shortly after Irena went to the hospital.

One thing leads to another, the group gets into an argument, and Mark begins to get angry. Tatara, being the Dogman expert, sees the potential danger and decides to take preventative matters into her own hands. By which I mean a baseball bat to the side of Mark's head.

Dice roll. Failure! Uh oh!!!

Mark catches the bat, turns into the Dogman, and the Dogman goes fucking berserk. Player character Art (from the Monstrous playbook) manages to restrain and contain the Dogman in somebody's basement, but now the party has a problem: they need to turn Dogman back into Mark, but that requires feeding somebody to the Dogman. It also happens that Irena wants to use part of that somebody's body to transmute their flesh into a new foot for herself. The party has ruled out stealing a corpse from the morgue, so in a unanimous decision that would make my freshman ethics professor shit himself, they decide to find the worst person in town and kill him.

Enter: Puppykicker McGee.

Now, anyone who's ever run a TTRPG game knows that sometimes players will get murder in their hearts and there's nothing you can do about it. You can play up the morality angle, you can dangle a treat over their head to guide them elsewhere, but it doesn't always work. Sometimes you just have to play along and invent a guy from scratch who nobody will feel bad about feeding to the Dogman.

Puppykicker McGee hangs outside the local dive bar, harassing customers and kicking puppies. His legal name is actually Puppykicker McGee, but he picked up the puppy kicking thing separately. This is where his character complexity ends. The monster hunting party (minus Irena and Mark) jumps him in an alleyway and knocks him out in the first fully successful rolls in AGES.

But here's the thing: They get cold feet. They decide they don't actually want to kill him, they just want his leg.

At this point, I am NOT prepared to have this guy be a part of the continuing canon of this game. Puppykicker McGee was built to be disposable and I WILL dispose of him. I say yes, that's fine, they can have his leg, but they have to leave the rest of him with the one person they know who will remove the leg for them, and that person is shady as fuck.

Somehow, they're suspicious of this. This group of people who were super duper chill with homicide a few minutes ago are now a little worried of leaving Puppykicker behind with a woman who has a collection of human souls. I tell them tough nuggets, you made your decision. They say "yeah sure that's probably fine actually" and leave with a plastic garbage bag full of Human Leg Meat.

They go back home, feed the thigh to Dogman, and use everything else below the knee to transmute Irena a new foot. Irena is still a little nervous about doing magic since the last time she did it was the whole reason she lost her foot. She's worried that if she fails, she's going to have to just graft the foot onto her own leg. This leads to the single greatest sentence I've ever heard out of context in my life:

"Hey, quick question, how big are Puppykicker McGee's feet?"

[terreisa]

Let’s talk about our boy Jake Lockley kicking that wheelchair for a moment, shall we? There’s something about it that sticks out.  Not because it’s violent (it is), or because it’s unnecessary (completely), but because it shows that he just doesn’t give a shit.  Up until that point we only know for certain that this man is a killer and we also know he’s confident he’ll get away with it, the bodies him and Harrow pass on their way out are a testament to that. It extends to him tossing Harrow into the limo but in a different sense, the audience knows Harrow’s number was up the moment Khonshu ordered his death so his rough treatment is earned. Then comes the scene with the wheelchair. He could have easily pulled it away from the limo and let it keep rolling or just shoved it away from him but no, he’s gotta kick the thing out of his fucking way.  No reason for it, just because he felt like it. What gets me is that it was another huge piece of who Jake Lockley is.  Later in the scene there’s an overhead shot that shows multiple other people milling around outside the hospital.  He most likely knew that someone would notice him but he clearly doesn’t care, which makes him all the more interesting and dangerous.  He’s got the Khonshu seal of approval and it seems to him that means he’s got carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wants as long as he gets the job done. Which, of course, we find out moments later that he absolutely will and with relish.  Marc and Steven are definitely going to have an interesting time dealing with him.

[friezagirl]

I'm back here to talk about Jake Lockley, the one and only. Why? Because yes. I miss the series, okay? XD This time I'm going to talk about this scene, the post credit one, when he kicks the wheelchair. I want to give an explanation. Because it's not like Jake kicks things for no reason or he does that because he loves drama, okay? All right, let's get started. And I want to point out already that, in my opinion, the slain guard and nurse that are shown were Ammit's followers, who were there either to take Harrow and the goddess or to protect them. Or both, but maybe, I think, it's more likely they were just there to monitor the situation and spread their goddess and their leader in case of need, because they were few, they only show us two people in fact. So perhaps, they were Ammit's followers keeping Harrow safe while the rest of the cult searched for a way to free Ammit from her body. They show us there were only two in the psychiatric hospital, or a little more, but only because they were aware that Moon Knight didn't kill Harrow because he didn't want to, so they had no reason to keep their guard up and have more men there. It would be plausible, but they are just my assumptions. And the fact that they show us that Jake only killed two I find it an important detail, there was not a trail of blood or a trail of corpses. And while he didn't hide the bodies, I think Jake took them by surprise and killed them instantly, again in my opinion. Which is great, because he's not one who tortures or enjoys doing harm, but he's one who just wants to get the job done quickly and efficiently. (So yeah, those two were Ammit's followers, because Jake can't and isn't one who kills just for the fun of it.) In fact, we see him killing Harrow in the same way, quickly and accurately, although obviously he enjoyed the moment of revenge for what he had done to them.

Now, going back to the wheelchair scene, I have an idea of ​​my own, he did it for a reason: he was mad at himself, disappointed that he wasn't there for the system when they needed it most. He must have felt so guilty Jake, because maybe he felt he could do it, that he could stop those bullets from hitting Marc, that he could help and protect them from death, from memories, from pain, from the Duat. Because I remain of the idea that Jake couldn't fronted but he was there to see everything. In my opinion he saw everything even if it was inside the sarcophagus, because, I mean, Steven and Marc were the only ones to cross the Osiris gate but the fact remains that Jake did not cease to exist for this, perhaps the sarcophagus was just a way to balance hearts. If they released Jake they would learn of everything, they would travel the journey that would lead them to acceptance as they did with Marc and Steven, and hearts would balance without Steven ending up in the Duat.

And yes, that's it, I only accept this reality because I can't believe and accept that only Marc can achieve eternal peace because he doesn't "need Steven anymore". It doesn't make sense, Steven is a person, super adorable, he can't end up in the Duat, but he only ended up there because they didn't know about Jake and so the scales kept showing their imbalance.

That said, Jake will have seen it all through Steven and Marc's eyes even though he wasn't there physically as they looked at their memories, and it must have been difficult and exhausting for Jake not to be able to step in to help his alters. So Jake had to put up with the fact that they died, that he was locked up in a sarcophagus, that he couldn't help Marc and Steven deal with their memories; and beyond this super heavy load of regret and pain, then they were resurrected and Jake will no longer have understood what was happening.

Suddenly he will have awakened with Layla in danger and under fire from Harrow's followers, Harrow himself attempting their lives a second time, and more complete chaos around. He didn't understand anything and just stepped in to help Layla and the system, but soon after he was kicked back again, and bho, I just think it was quite exhausting, frustrating and painful for Jake having to put up with all this agglomeration of chaos continuous.

I don't think that after they came back to life he was aware of what was happening to the body, same thing goes for before they died or he would intervene (At least until a second season/movie comes and they explain Jake better, but I think only a few times he succeeds to see what his alters do, except when they were in the Duat, thanks to the fact that they were in the afterlife and that it was all magical, there Jake could perpetually observe what was happening through the eyes of Marc and Steven. At that moment he was present with them just mentally for that then he doesn't stop existing when they go through the gates. Because only Marc and Steven go through them, and Jake had to be in their mind or I don't know how it works.)

Back to us and the wheelchair, in my opinion Jake was just agitated and full of fury and also upset and really, really full of pain and regret for not being useful for the system. He had to release the tension somehow, he had to deflate all the nervousness and so kicked the wheelchair.

I don't think it was mentally healthy for Jake to have to put up with all this, especially on his own, so maybe kicking whatever objects was just a way to lighten his shoulders a little bit of the overweight. And maybe it didn't help much either but he couldn't do more because he had a job to do in that moment. He was in the middle of a mission, and frankly I'm sorry because I don't think Jake has time for himself. He is in charge of defending the system and carrying out Khonshu's missions, now more than before, and then otherwise leaves control to his alters. He deserves more attention, and I hope Marc and Steven find out and accept Jake into their family soon so Jake could be fine, because in my opinion he is the one with the most emotional and mental load overloaded with problems and pain, and the fact that he's the one who has the least control over his body and also has to stay hidden… It doesn't really have to be healthy for Jake, no, and I'm very sorry. :C

Although I don't think Jake is always hiding from Marc and Steven, maybe just recently, or maybe he's not really like that but he can't get in touch with them. I would really like to understand and know.

All I've written are just hypotheses anyway, huh.

Aside from all this, I think it was also a quote from the comic. I had read one in which, Jake, frustrated by so many things that had happened and that he could not fully understand (if I remember correctly, that is, it has been a long time since I last read it and I would not be wrong), rolls a kick against a bin to let off steam.

I am hoping for a continuation of this series, I need to know more about Jake. Give me answers. And I want my puppy again, Steven. And Marc, all three of them. I need it badly. <3

I want more Moon Knight. TvT

[ultimavolatusrpg]

ACCEPTED // OAKLEY PEMBROOKE

41 years old, 72nd Hunger Games, FC: Emily Blunt

Captivating, Dynamic, Ingenious, Loyal, Resilient

tw: death

THE ARENA

The arena of the 72nd Hunger Games launched at the edge of a massive canyon.  The cornucopia was right at the edge with a mile long drop. In front of them was canyon.  Overhead blues skies and fluffy clouds painted the picture of a beautiful warm day. The breeze was warm and it would have been beautiful if not for the dark reason the tributes were there.  Paths made in the side of the canyon allowed the tributes to descend into the depths of the true arena. Those who turned away from the canyon and ran when the countdown ended, soon bounced off a forcefield.  They had two options, stay on top with the cornucopia or descent into the heart of the canyon. Those who were able to reach the bottom were rewarded with an abundance of fresh water as the river cut through the canyon.  The water was too dangerous to swim, making it near impossible for tributes to reach the other side.

When the bloodbath began, tributes fought over weapons while others ran into the canyon, braving the winding rocky paths while seeking safety and a chance to regroup before facing the other tributes.  Tributes paired off into ally groups and the Gamemakers unleashed the mutts. Vultures circled overhead as a continual reminder of the death all but one would face before the Games concluded. Lizards, spiders, scorpions, and snakes were a constant risk for the tribute.  One sting or bite and it could all be over. Baking heat during the day brought forth cool nights and the howling of coyote mutts, eager to rip tributes to shreds or chase them until they fell to their deaths from the numerous pathways along the canyon walls.

After the mutts had done their work, there were limited tributes remaining.  In the end, Oakley was left to fight it out with the boy from District Nine on a crumbling path near the base of the canyon.  It felt like it lasted hours, but soon the final two were falling. They hit the ground with a sickening crack as the vultures circled above them, waiting as the minutes ticked by for the final cannon to sound, a slow death ending the boy from Nine in one of the most anticlimactic finales of recent memory.

BIOGRAPHY

Life for Oakley had always been average.  Save for the story of her mother escaping District Eleven as a teenager, leaving her world behind in the hopes of finding a better future.  Pepper Monroe did find that better future when she stumbled into District Eight after weeks in the wilds. So when Pepper found love with a factory worker named Bobbin, everything was looking up.  Oakley was born, a name chosen to honor both her mother’s native district.

However, it was the story of her mother’s harrowing escape through the wilds, those weeks she spent trying to survive, that had ignited a spark of adventure inside Oakley.  She was curious, always looking to have an adventure or tell another exciting story. Her parents encouraged it, and that was the world Oakley grew up in. She had her parents, and eventually she had her baby sister.  Her father worked hard in the factories and her mother worked as a midwife and nurse. Oakley learned a lot from her mother watching her work, but her parents were busy and much of the responsibility fell to young Oakley’s shoulders.  She didn’t mind it though. Oakley knew it was preparing her for life.

School was something Oakley enjoyed.  She liked learning and it gave her a chance to have fun with her friends.  Her friends were a chance to have some fun beyond the expectations and responsibilities she had at home.  She could just be a kid, if only for a short period of time. One of those friends was named Taylor. When they were fourteen they started dating and at sixteen Taylor was reaped for the Hunger Games.  

While the Hunger Games was always something that had been on her radar, Oakley never paid much attention to it.  She always assumed the Capitol’s reach wouldn’t touch her. Oakley cried hard as she hugged her boyfriend after the reaping.  Even if Taylor stood a chance, the odds weren’t in his favor. By the time the train pulled out of the station, Oakley knew she would lose her first love to the Capitol.

She was right.  Taylor died in the bloodbath.

Things couldn’t possibly get worse.

Until they did.

Oakley’s name came out of that bowl the very next year.  She was seventeen and terrified. She wasn’t strong enough.  Sure, she knew how to use a knife and knew some basic medicine, but the careers would get her.  Oakley thought all she could do was bide her time. Even thought she wanted to go home, it seemed impossible.

When the Games began and Oakley found herself at the edge of a massive canyon, she did the only logical thing.  She ran. Escaping the bloodbath was the smart choice, and in the aftermath of that first day, she found the young boy from District Six.  The pair became allies, though she was sure people back home questioned why she decided to ally with a twelve year old.

They stuck together until the Gamemaker’s coyote mutts chased them into a career boy. He was strong, lethal, and Oakley knew in that moment she had to stand her ground.  If she tried to run, he’d kill her. So, the pair fought while the boy ran off in the chaos. Eventually the career’s long sword sliced open her arm during the fight and Oakley lost a lot of blood, but she tripped him and got the sword away before she drove it into his abdomen. Oakley took the sword as her prize and stumbled away.  She sat while blood poured from her arm, ripping off a piece of her shirt to try and stop the bleeding before a second gift arrived. It was enough to bandage the wound and at least stop the bleeding.

She saw her young ally’s face in the sky some time later and cried again.

The rest of the Games moved quickly until Oakley realized it was only her and the boy from District Nine left in the arena.  He cornered Oakley on one of the rocky pathways along the side of the canyon near the bottom. The sound of rushing water had been too tempting for Oakley to ignore.  Her sunburnt skin and dehydrated body had been called by the sound of the river. Luckily, both tributes lost their weapons early in the struggle, so Oakley and the injured boy scuffled on the edge of the cliff.  Pushing and shoving, kicking and punching. It felt like hours but really was only a few minutes. The boy grabbed her and Oakley thought she would die, but she struggled just enough that he stumbled backwards.  

Suddenly they were both falling.

They both hit the ground hard.  While her life flashed before her eyes as she fell, she didn’t see the light.  Her breathing was shallow and she couldn’t move. The boy didn’t either. Oakley didn’t hear a cannon.  Was she dead? Wouldn’t it be nicer if she was? Ever so slowly, the pair laid there broken at the bottom staring up at the high canyon walls and the vultures circling overhead, desperate to claim the final victim.  Minutes ticked by and everyone watched with bated breath. Who would die first?

What felt like hours for Oakley was less than five minutes before the boy’s cannon sounded.  Almost immediately the hovercraft appeared just as Oakley lost consciousness. The Capitol couldn’t allow them both to die.  What would the Games be without a victor? And live Oakley did. When she woke up she was told her back was badly damaged. Surgery to stabilize her spine had been performed, but it did little to stop her pain or the numbness in her legs that made the mere act of walking difficult some days.  

After her Games Oakley was forced to come to terms with her newfound disability. While many victors turned to morphling for the high it brings them, Oakley was forced to use it to manage her pain.  On good days, Oakley can walk. On good days, her pain is manageable. On good days, she can do the things she wants to do. On bad days she can barely get out of bed. On bad days she can’t leave her wheelchair.  In some ways, Oakley’s life has become dependent on her family to help her. She can’t simply do things like she used to be able to. A warm bath to soothe her back on a bad day is a two person project. It’s the unfortunate reality she’s forced to face.  The once independent and responsible girl, curious about the next adventure, had her wings clipped far too soon.

But eventually her wings grew back.  Upon moving to the victor’s village, Oakley became friendly with one of the other victors: Birch Pembrooke.  He was from District Eleven and had one a few years before she did. He was nice. It was nice to have someone to talk to about everything she felt.  After all, her parents didn’t understand what she went through. Birch did. And eventually, the pair started dating.

Oakley hadn’t thought anyone would want someone like her, broken as she was, but Birch did.  He saw her as a whole person and made her feel special. It was love she never experienced with Taylor.  Birch was her home. For the first time since her name left that Reaping Bowl, Oakley wondered if it happened for a reason.  Maybe everything was fated to happen this way, so they could find their way to each other.

When Birch proposed, Oakley was over the moon.  They were happy. She was loved. Everything seemed right for the first time in her life.  And the day they got married was the happiest she had ever been. At least until the birth of their first child.

There were concerns about pregnancy and Oakley’s disability.  How would pregnancy exacerbate her chronic back injury? Would it be fine?  Would it paralyze her? It was something they had to consider. But Oakley’s first pregnancy went incredibly smoothly.  Oliver Pembrooke was born screaming and Oakley couldn’t believe how much love she had for such a tiny person.

Three years later, after another smooth pregnancy, Paisley Pembrooke joined the family.  Again, Oakley never thought it possible to love someone so much upon first meeting them until she held her newborn children in her arms.

They’d always wanted a big family.  It was something they discussed even before Oliver was born.  Birch had one and Oakley always wanted one. The house should have been filled with the laughter of children, so when Paisley was three they started trying again.

This time, the pregnancy wasn’t smooth sailing.  It was hard and painful, a struggle for Oakley compared to the first two.  She knew before the halfway mark that this would be the last one. If pregnancy would be like this now, instead of as easy as it was with Ollie and Paisley, then she couldn’t put herself through it.  It was too hard on her damaged body.

But that didn’t mean Oakley felt less overwhelming love when Clementine was born.

For a while their family felt complete, but eventually both Birch and Oakley decided they needed to expand their family.  The couple decided to adopt a little boy from District Eleven, which meant Birch would be alone in deciding which child to bring home to their family.  When he came back with a little girl named Summer that stole his heart, Oakley wasn’t the least bit upset. She was thrilled to have another daughter to care for and dote on.  Clem was especially pleased to have a new sister around her age. Things were good. They were lucky.

Now Oakley is happy.  It’s been a few years since Summer joined their family and things are good.  Oakley and Birch have been married for nearly twenty years. She couldn’t have been happier, but she’s always worried.  Whispers of rebellion have Oakley concerned about what will happen to their children, especially since the houses were vandalized in the village.  The sense of unease she feels is not easily handled, but she wants to make sure that no matter what, her family is safe. Things are good now. Why would she rock the boat?

PENNED BY: MADI

[one-of-us-blog]

The Doctor Falls (Doctor Who S10E12)

Today Drew is forced to watch and recap “The Doctor Falls”, the twelfth and final episode of Doctor Who’s tenth series. Things are looking dire; the Mistress has reunited with her former incarnation, Bill has been transformed into a Cybermen and the Doctor is stuck on a ship stuck on the brink of black hole. Can things get any worse? More importantly, can they get any better? Can the Doctor save the day this time, or will his adventures finally come to an end?

Keep reading to find out…

Eli, your last recap was a real show-stopper! I agree that by this point in the series it’s really easy to feel burnt out on Blanche’s relationship drama, and I remember feeling like that ground was already too well-tread when I first got this episode. I got a kick out of Rose sticking to her guns, though, and seeing Dorothy and Sophia both throwing some barbs at Blanche is always a lot of fun. You did a great job, buddy, and I can’t wait to get to read your next recap! For now, though, we’ve got a series to wrap up!

Buttocks tight!

Episode directed by Rachel Talalay and written by Steven Moffat

After a quick recap of the harrowing events we saw transpire last episode, we start off on Floor 607, a rural and pastoral floor of the ship where people live simple lives and some disabled Mondasian Cybermen are chained up like potentially sexy scarecrows. An alarm rings out and the people of the floor arm themselves; Mondasian Cybermen shamble toward them like zombies, but the capable farm folk quickly load them full of lead. The next morning a shuttle rumbles up out of the ground from the floor below, and a more advanced-looking Cyberman appears with the Doctor cradled in its arms.

After the opening credits, we jump back in time and find the Doctor tied up as he’s tormented by the Mistress and the Master. They ask how many times he’s died, and in how many different ways; he vaguely remembers the two of them knocking him out while Nardole barely escapes. The next time he wakes up he’s still bound up in a wheelchair, and the Mistress and the Master are sharing a selfcestuous dance together and the Master tries to figure out how he ended up as the Mistress. He assumes she’s the regeneration that comes right after him, but she’s pretty foggy on the details and doesn’t really remember how she ended up in their current form. The Doctor wants to know where Bill is, and it turns out she’s right behind him (still in Cyber-form). The Master and the Mistress savor torturing the Doctor by letting him know how excruciating the upgrade has been for Bill.

The Doctor points out that the last time he saw the Master he was bound for Gallifrey, and deduces that the Time Lords cured drum-related madness and kicked him out. He kind of sucks at flying a TARDIS, and wound up stuck in this ship. He killed a lot of people and took over the city until the people rose up against him, forcing him to live in disguise as Mr. Razor. The Master gloats over his victory, showing the Doctor that the entire floor has been turned into one big factory for producing more Cybermen. The Doctor’s not really surprised; he says they’re as inevitable as sewage and Donald Trump, they always show up sooner or later where there are people. They’re what happens when you mix people and technology but take out the humanity, and right now they’re coming for the Master and the Mistress. The Master says this doesn’t make sense, as the Cybermen are only programmed to track down human life signs. The Doctor does a bit of his own gloating; earlier, when the Mistress walloped him, he fell against a computer and managed to do a bit of quick hacking. He altered the programming of the Cybermen, making it so they hunted for beings with two hearts instead of one.

Ruh-roh!

Mondasian Cybermen flock toward the Time Lords, with the Master and the Mistress barely keeping them at bay with their respective sonic devices. The Doctor says he’s the only one who can stop the Cybermen, but the Mast refuses to ask for the Doctor’s help. The Mistress is a lot more practical, though, and she knocks her former self out and frees the Doctor. She says she was secretly on his side the whole time, and he demands to know if that’s true. She… well, she honestly doesn’t know, and she’s pretty flustered by all of this conflicting morality. Now free, the Doctor calls for Nardy, who managed to get his hands on the shuttle we saw earlier. The Doctor has the Master and the Mistress head up to the shuttle, but then the Doctor is grabbed by a Cyberman and electrocuted. The Mistress rushes to save him, but before she can do so Bill blasts her fellow Cyberman with her head-laser-thing. The Doctor collapses, and the Mistress prepares to leave him behind. The Master tries to get Nardole to leave the Doctor, but Nardy’s not having that.

Luckily Bill stops the shuttle from leaving on her own. The Doctor wakes up long enough to swear to Bill that he’ll find a way to fix this and get her back. Jumping forward, we’re back on Floor 607 and Nardole announces this is as far up as they can go since the shuttle’s shot. Nardole asks a local girl for help, and we jump ahead two weeks. A woman very timidly provides Bill with some blankets, telling her she has to stay in the barn because she frightens the children. Bill doesn’t remember anything that happened or how she got here, and she still sees herself as a human. The lady lets Bill know the Doctor’s injuries are being tended to, and very quickly leaves Bill alone. The next day the same girl from earlier arrives in the barn, declaring she’s not scared of Bill. Nardole organizes the locals to defend themselves against the spread of Operation Exodus, and the girl brings Bill a mirror. Bill is… not thrilled at what she sees in the mirror. She becomes distraught, frightening the girl and causing her to run away. She runs right into the Doctor, who gives her a jelly baby.

Bill and the limping Doctor have a long-overdue talk. The Doctor asks what she remembers from her time on Floor 1056; she says she remembers a lot, because she was down there for about a decade. She doesn’t quite remember being upgraded, though, even as she starts to recognize her body’s new Cyber state. The Doctor is in awe of how strong Bill is; her mind has built a wall around itself, protecting it from the identity-erasing programming that wipes individual thought from the other Cybermen. He credits this to her time living under the Monks’ rule, which taught her to hold onto her own identity. Bill continues to insist that she’s fine, but she catches sight of her shadow and becomes enraged at the situation. She lashes out at the Doctor for leaving her alone for ten years, and her anger causes her head laser to fire off a blast and blow a hole in the side of the barn. Nardole gets the townsfolk back to work, but Bill can see how afraid of her they are and this devastates her. She cries an actual tear, which the Doctor says she shouldn’t be able to do.

The Master arrives to be as big a dick as possible, as usual, and behind Bill’s Cyber façade she’s brought to tears by his cruelty. The Master says he and the Mistress have found something important, and he brings the Doctor and Bill to have a look. Bill notices that the Doctor is still hurting in a major way, and she notices the glow of his regeneration energy before he manages to suppress it. Bill remembers the Doctor swearing that he could fix this and get her back to her old self, and he says that while he wasn’t lying he also wasn’t right. Bill says they’re not going to make it out of this; she can feel the Cybermen programming beginning to wear down her defenses, and she says she doesn’t want to live if she can’t be herself. The Doctor says that she’s already breaking the mold, as it shouldn’t be possible for a Cyberman to cry; he says that where there are tears, there’s hope.

The Master wonders why the Mistress doesn’t remember any of this; she explains that the two of them in one place is screwing with the timeline, and while he’s around and in possession of his memories she can’t have them, too. He’s not particularly pleased with his future self, noting that she seems to have developed the distasteful trait of empathy. Bill and the Doctor arrive, and the Mistress reveals that she’s found the hidden elevator shaft leading to the next floor. The Doctor says they have to use it to evacuate the people on Floor 607, as the Cybermen are going to make their way up here in force sooner or later. The Mistress calls for the elevator, but the Doctor points out that the elevator was downstairs and could be carrying a load of Cybermen up to them. Bill tells them to let her handle it, and the Doctor tells the Mistress and Master to do as she says; the Master’s pretty fed up with people still referring to Bill as a ‘she’ now that she’s a Cyberman, and wonders if the future’s going to be nothing but women. The Doctor says they can only hope.

The elevator arrives and it is, indeed, chock full of Cybermen, now in their familiar, sexy form. What a sight for sore, horny eyes! Bill’s laser, along with sonic blasts from the Doctor, Master and Mistress, manage to take it down, and just like that this episode got a lot less interesting. The Mistress says they need to take the elevator to the bridge and escape in the TARDIS, but the Doctor says that won’t work; remember that whole time dilation thing? The closer they get to the bridge, the slower time moves for them, and time will be moving so fast for the Cybermen further below that by the time this ragtag group actually reaches the bridge the Cyberdads will have had thousands of years to work out a plan to stop them. There’s just no safe way to reach the TARDIS at this point.

Right on cue, a siren blares throughout the whole ship. Down on Floor 1056, whole flocks of sexy Cybermen and I’m-sure-they-have-great-personalities Mondasian Cybermen come together (what a dream) and fly up toward the ceiling. The Doctor says the sirens are the Cyberhunks’ way of announcing their arrival, and Operation Exodus is in full swing. A lady tells Nardole all his preparations are pointless, but he keeps on working. The Master and the Mistress sit around not helping in any way, and the Mistress realizes that while the Doctor’s TARDIS is at the top of the ship, the Master’s TARDIS is at the very bottom. The Doctor takes Bill below a house and has her use her laser to blast open a service duct, and Nardy manages to upgrade the farm folks’ weapons they can destroy chunks of the holographic scenery of Floor 607. The Doctor says that if it fooled the humans it can fool the Cyberdads, since they’ve got human brains in their sexy, sexy heads.

The Master explains to the Mistress that his TARDIS doesn’t work, but luckily this experience left such an impression on the Master that the Mistress always carries an extra TARDIS part that they need to get the Master’s hunk of junk running again. The Doctor explains his plan to the girl from earlier; the Cybermen are so deadly because they’ve removed all of their fear and doubt, but he’s going to give it all back to them. That night the villagers wait for the arrival of the Cybermen, and one of the farm ladies gets pretty flirtatious with Nardole. Bill arrives, and the woman is so startled that she shoots her a few times. The woman apologizes when Nardy intervenes, and Bill understands. Bil; joins the Doctor outside just as the Cybermen arrive. The Master and the Mistress are preparing to leave, but they ask the Doctor what his plan is before heading out. He says he’s going to try to get all the children and as many adults as he can up to the next solar farm five floors up, but the Master points out that the Cybermen will get there sooner or later. The Doctor knows he can’t win here, but that’s not going to stop him from trying.

The Master and the Mistress head off, but the Doctor chases after them and says it’s time to hash their shit out. The Doctor says he’s not doing any of this because he wants to win, or because it’s fun or easy. He’s doing what he does because it’s right, decent and kind. If he runs away good people will die, but if he stays and fights there’s a chance some of them will get away. Maybe they won’t last long and maybe there’s no point to any of this, but it’s the best he can do so by golly he’s going to do it until it kills him. He points out that the Master is definitely going to die someday, otherwise the Mistress wouldn’t be here. What’s he going to die for? Who will he be then? The Doctor is where he stands and where he falls, and he asks the Master to stand with him. He asks the Master to be kind, just once, at the end. The Master’s a big dick, though, and he’s not interested in the Doctor’s speech. The Mistress, though, listened to what the Doctor said. He asks her to stand with him, and says that’s all he’s ever wanted; she says that’s all she wanted, too, but when he reaches out a hand toward her she says no. She thanks him for trying to rehabilitate her, then walks away as a fleet of Cyberbabes approaches.

Nardole and the girl manage to blow up a chunk of them, but more and more Cyberdads are on their way. The Doctor says that the Cybermen are going to rethink their attack now that the townsfolk have done some damage; they’re going to think of the people as a military target now, which means they’ll stop targeting children to upgrade them. The Doctor tells Nardole and the townswoman who’s hot for him to get the children out through the service duct he had Bill blast open, but Nardy doesn’t want to go. He thinks the Doctor’s going to wait until Floor 607 is evacuated and then blow the whole floor, killing himself in the process. The Doctor denies this, but Nardy knows better. He’s not interested in babysitting a bunch of humans, but the Doctor finally convinces him to survive with the humans. Bill says she’s not going with them, though, as she’s not particularly interested in surviving as a Cyberman. Nardole gives both Bill and the Doctor a heartfelt goodbye, and leaves to take the children to the next solar farm.

The Master and the Mistress head for the elevator and the Master’s ready to head down to his TARDIS, but the Mistress calls him over to her. She tells him she loved being him, but she doesn’t feel the way she used to. She stabs him in the back, and he congratulates her on an assassination well done. Back at the farm, Bill and the Doctor prepare to keep the Cybermen busy while the humans and Nardy escape. The Doctor reminds himself of what it means to be good; without hope, without witness and without reward. The Mistress helps the Master into the elevator, telling him he’ll survive long enough to get downstairs and reach his TARDIS just in time to regenerate into her. He asks her why she’s doing this, and the Mistress says the Doctor is right. The time has come to stand with the Doctor, but the Master says that’ll never happen. He shoots her in the back as she walks away, saying the blast was so strong that she won’t be able to regenerate when she dies. They both laugh at their perfect, inevitable ending; they shoot themselves in the back. The Mistress falls down and dies alone in the woods while the Master cackles in the elevator heading down to Floor 1056.

Nardole and the townsfolk reach the elevators as sounds of the Doctor’s battle against the Cyberdads explode around them. He reflects on all the times he’s beaten them as he blows them up left and right, but then he gets a blast in the back from a Mondasian Cybermen. He has time to tell them that he’s the Doctor, then gets blasted a few more times and his regenerative energy begins to swell. He’s not interested in regenerating, though, and tells himself to let go. He blows Floor 607 to smithereens with himself still in it, and as he lays dying he laments the fact that he can’t see stars in his final moments.

Above, Nardole stands in front of the elevator and tells the girl he doubts that the Doctor or Bill will be joining them. He says the Doctor destroyed most of the Cybermen, so it’ll take a while for what’s left of them to get up this far. That’ll give Nardole time to make up a plan for how to deal with them when they get here. Back on Floor 607, and badly damaged Bill limps toward the Doctor’s body. It begins to rain, and in a puddle Bill sees the face of Heather staring back at her. Holy smokes, it’s been a while since we’ve seen her! She pulls Bill out of her Cybershell, restoring her to her previous self and making her into a liquid-based organism like herself in the process. Bill is alive, but in a different way than she used to be. Heather says she found Bill through the tears she left her when they parted all those episodes ago, and now it’s time for the two of them to finally puddle off into the sunset together. Bill says they can’t leave the Doctor, though, and Heather assures her they won’t. Using Heather’s crazy travel skillz, they zoom the Doctor’s body right up to the TARDIS. Bill says this is the only place where he might rest in peace, if that’s something he’s capable of doing. Heather shows off that as the Pilot she knows how to fly anything, including the TARDIS (and Bill), and Bill wonders at her new state of being. This is her first time not being human, so it’s a bit of an adjustment. Heather says she’s pretty OP so she can make Bill human again if she wants, but she’d prefer Bill to take her up on that puddling off into the sunset thing.

Bill’s not ready to spend the rest of her life as a magical puddle creature, but she is pretty keen on the idea of romping around the universe for a bit with the new hyrdogirlfriend. Before she leaves, she tells the Doctor that she doesn’t believe he’s really dead; sooner or later, people are just going to need him too much for him to be gone. She kisses his cheek, and tells him she hopes to see him again. One of her tears lands on him, and she reminds him that where there are tears, there’s hope. Bill and Heather hold hands, and step out of the TARDIS and into the universe.

When they’re gone, the TARDIS gets to moving and the Doctor begins to regenerate again; he thinks back on all the companions and friends he’s met over the last ten series; Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy, Clara, Bill, Nardole and River Song all flash through his mind. Heck, even Captain Jack Harkness, Sarah Jane Smith and the Paternoster Gang get cameos. He finally thinks of the Mistress and gasps back to life, recounting a few of his previous last words. The TARDIS rocks and rolls around him, and he tries his darnedest to stop himself from regenerating. The TARDIS lands, and he demands to know where it’s brought him. He declares that he doesn’t want to change again, and that he can’t keep turning into someone else. He says that where he is, that’s where he’s staying. He exits the TARDIS and falls to his knees on the frozen planet we saw at the beginning of last episode.

Just as he declares again that he won’t change, he hears an old man muttering that he won’t change, either. The Doctor identifies himself, and the old man says that while he might be a doctor, he can’t be the Doctor. You see, this guy is the Doctor; the First Doctor. The Twelfth Doctor stares at his first incarnation in shock as the old man grins at him.

The End

~~~~~

Jeez Louise! What a capper! That ending got me so hyped for the next Christmas special, and I can’t wait to see what these two old geezers get up to together. I was pretty surprised to see Heather again after all this time, but I’m glad Bill got to stop being a Cyberman and get reunited with her space girlfriend in one fell swoop. I thought the deaths of the Master and Mistress had a nice sort of poetic justice to them, but I was bummed the Mistress got iced before she got a chance to tell the Doctor she’d decided to stand by him. I’m not sure why they made a point to say the Mistress wouldn’t be regenerating, because we all know damn well they’re not going to stop using the Master in some form or another. They’ve killed him off before, but they can’t help bringing him back for another round. I liked that Nardole got to live out the rest of his days (I’m assuming) with the farm folk, and I hope they weren’t given too much trouble from my beloved Cyberbabes. I liked seeing the Doctor not wanting to regenerate this time, and his feeling that he just couldn’t keep on being someone else forever. He’s already regenerated one more time than Time Lords are supposed to be able to, and I can see that wearing him down. And that last shot! I don’t have any real experience with the Doctor prior to his Ninth incarnation, so I’ll be really excited to see the First Doctor in action. The Christmas special can’t get here soon enough!

I give “The Doctor Falls” QQQQQ on the Five Q Scale.

Check back soon as Eli will grapple with a few different takes on motherhood with his recap of the next episode of The Golden Girls, “Even Grandmas Get the Blues”, and then I’m going to post my recap of the final bit of Who I’m going to be covering for this blog, “Twice Upon a Time”.

Until then, as always, thank you for reading, thank you for changing and thank you for being One of Us!

[findbeggar84-blog]

The Halloween List: A Quiet Place, Emelie, and Hereditary

I'm kicking off The Halloween List this year with one of my favorite hidden gems, and two of the biggest Horror movies of 2018. 2018 has been so long that it's easy to forget A Quiet Place even came out back in April, right?

All three of these films attack the family in very different ways. A Quiet Place is about family surviving in a country that's destroyed; Emelie is about a family that thinks it's safe until they hire the wrong babysitter; and Hereditary is about a family haunting itself. Each is powerful, but which kind of conflict is the most effective on you?

A Quiet Place (2018)

I have been waiting a damned long time for A Quiet Place. Horror has a troubling history of relegating disabled characters to the roles of villains. I wrote about that phenomenon for Fireside Magazine last year. You can take solace in the well-meaning portrayals of Wait Until Dark and Silver Bullet, but those are moves with abled actors cripping it up, and screenplays that pander. They could never get beneath the surface.

Millicent Simmonds is a deaf actor, and she’s the emotional core of this movie. She plays Regan, the oldest child in one of the few families to survive an invasion of monsters. The monsters hunt on sound; they can hear a toy space ship from miles away, and be there in seconds. Regan has saved the family, because since they all know ASL, they know how to communicate and live without speaking. They walk into town to scavenge on paths of sand to quiet their footsteps. They have adapted.

What’s even more rewarding about this disability rep is that Regan isn’t defined by her disability. If a monster is coming, she can’t hear it behind her, but that’s a peril of a moment, not a constant agony. Regan is defined by her grief that she thinks she was responsible for the loss of a younger sibling, and she has some very creative ways of expressing that. It’s not grief about being disabled, or grief that makes her curse it. This is a relief in contrast to a hundred movies about disabled people who curse being trapped in wheelchairs, or wish they could see the sunrise. Disabled people are going to live lives, and regret openly, not narrowly. A Quiet Place gets this.

The movie is strongly constructed, naturally never giving us an exposition dump on where the monsters came from, or how life has been. We can tell what their lives are like by what they keep around the house, and what chores we see them do. It’s at its best when there’s minimal music, letting us sit in the same terrified silence as the family. They have a baby on the way that won’t be easy to deliver in this world, and the kids are restless to live bigger lives. We see them pushing against the boundaries forced on them with a healthy naturalism.

At under 90 minutes, the movie is tight and knows what it wants to do at all times. Its big set pieces, like the kids falling into a corn silo and the threat of drowning in it, all click. The moment you see a nail sticking out of a step in the stairs of their the basement, you know what’s coming. What comes is harrowing. It’s all worth it, too. It yields one of the most cathartic endings in modern Horror.

Emelie (2015)

   Emelie is a movie good enough to kill your career. It is so unsettling that it might have been more commercially successful if it had been worse. I can see some studios not wanting to work with the people involved because they were willing to make this thing.

Emelie is also a great response to John Carpenter’s Halloween. Halloween is a babysitter’s worst fear: that someone will come in the night when no one older is around to help and attack them and the children. But that isn’t the fear of children. Children’s deepest fear is that the babysitter will hurt them. Emelie is about that fear.

Following a disturbingly casual opening sequence in which a babysitter is kidnapped in broad daylight, we meet a small and intensely believable family. There are three kids, the youngest of which is so naturalistically sweet and excitable that he might just be a six year old that the director gave some sugar to and let roam through the set. Here we have a brooding pre-teen older brother who doesn’t want to spend time with his siblings, and a controlling middle-sister who constantly comes up with costume ideas and games for the youngest and most impressionable of the kids. Their parents are going out for a special dinner. They’ll be gone late. At the last minute their sitter has been replaced, but surely she’ll be fine. What could happen?

From there, Emelie would be a much more comfortable movie if the babysitter (guess her name) whipped out a steak knife and chased these kids. But it’s not a conventional Horror movie. She has the kids pose for photos that seem like a game to them, but are inappropriately morbid to the audience. There’s a scene where she invites the oldest boy into the bathroom with her that isn’t explicitly sexual or violent, but is palpably uncomfortable because even the boy knows this isn’t normal. Scene by scene, the movie pushes you to guess what she’s planning to do to them. The suspense is almost Hitchcockian, except she’s more of a black box than most of Hitchcock’s villains.

The older brother has to pull it together and find ways to call for help when the sitter hasn’t technically done anything explicable yet. It’s surprisingly effective character growth for the kid, who begins the movie as a pouting brat, and who wouldn’t be equipped to stand up to an adult no matter what his attitude was. He’s the only line of protection and he’s intensely vulnerable – perhaps the most vulnerable because Emelie reads him like a book from the minute she steps into the house.

I can’t recommend this to most parents. Many of my friends are having kids now, and for most of them, the natural fear for their children is going to make the tension of this movie too much. Again, it’s not a movie that has them eaten alive or smashed by a hammer. It’s the slow menace that will be too much. It’s easier and more escapist to fear that a werewolf, vampire, or even a serial killer will come in from outside your neighborhood and go after your family. Emelie is a movie about someone you think you can trust.

I spent so much of the ending of this movie yelling at the TV. No movie has sunk its teeth into me like this in years.

Hereditary (2018)

This is Ari Aster’s debut film. You know you’ve done well when critics argue whether the first movie you’ve ever made is a masterpiece. The guy has an entire career to turn in his masterpiece, but sure, let’s work ourselves into a froth now.

Anything Hereditary does well at all, it does masterfully. If it had a different ending, it’d probably be my favorite movie of the year because of how powerful the rest of it is. Instead it’s one of the best movies that I don’t feel like rewatching.

There are few pieces of art in any medium about an abusive family member dying before anyone gets catharsis from them. You probably have someone in your family who died before someone else got closure with them, and if you’re lucky enough not to, you definitely know somebody whose family has that kind of suffering. Hereditary wallows in the discomforting legacy of a grandmother who traumatized both her daughter and granddaughter. She’s dead, and her shadow is still longer than that of any living member of the family. She haunts them figuratively, and eventually we’ll wonder if she’s doing it literally.

Toni Collette deserves all the praise for her performance that she’s gotten. Nominate her for stuff, and write her fan mail. She lays bare this damaged mother who knows she can’t let go, who hates her mother for always interfering in her parenting, and demeaned her daughter for not being a boy. At the same time this life has made her so uptight and repressed that she can’t talk to her kids honestly without exploding. It took one scene to sell me on this movie, when Collette’s character went to a grief support group and her hatred of her own insecurities flowed out of her. This is not a stock Horror character with stock Horror angst. This is something real and festering, that makes you wish exorcisms worked on trauma.

And suspense? The clucking of a tongue here is scarier than the rev of a chainsaw in another movie.

It’s to Hereditary’s credit that act one pivoted the film somewhere entirely different than I’d expected. This isn’t a “and there are also ghosts!” pivot. This is a demolition of the family’s status quo mid-grieving process, which is the sort of curveball I could only expect A24 films to support. Suffice to say that this family goes through a Hell that, even without the eerie and horrific elements, you can’t expect any family to be equipped to deal with.

If this movie had come out in the 1980s, it would be a part of the canon right next to The Shining and Rosemary’s Baby.

It’s 2018 now, and I’m not surprised that mainstream audiences hated it.

It is an unpleasant movie with an unpleasant view of both family and the supernatural. The characters lack agency because the themes of powerlessness before death and grief are so important, and that builds to an ending that is both tricky to understand and, once you understand it, doesn’t feel worth sitting through an entire movie to get to. It has more to say about who we are as people than the average Horror movie, but the actual payoff of its climax is just another example of an overwhelming trend that I’m sick of. No matter how well executed the rest of your story is, the ending needs to satisfy. Hopelessness is not its own answer.

Come back Friday for Slice, Summer of '84, and the new hotness that is Nicholas Cage's Mandy!

Source: http://johnwiswell.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-halloween-list-quiet-place-emelie.html

[friezagirl]

So, so… Let's talk about Jake in the last episode. :3 Frankly, the first time he appears in the sixth episode is to protect, as always, the system. Marc is in danger, he suffers from Ammit's magic stick, Steven can't do much more and then they see that Layla is also at gunpoint. In short, here is a chaotic, stressful, heavy, agitated and dangerous situation; so Jake had every reason to lash out at everyone and kill them. He remains in the violent character even though he always does it only to protect the system and to save Layla and, in this case, the world, that's it. Instead, much more difficult to frame is the post credit scene, both because not much is explained to us and because things are shown to us in a mysterious way. We see Jake take Harrow and head outside, he's the aggressive type so he kicks the wheelchair, so far so good, the problem is I can't understand why he killed the nurses and the guards. The only reason I can think of is that maybe they were Harrow's followers, maybe they were just there to get their leader back; because if this were not the case it means that he killed innocent people for no valid reason other than just because they didn't let him through. I don't even understand why the nurse allowed Jake to leave with a patient without making sure everything was okay, but okay, good for Jake that he can be so amalient (?), ahahahah. Maybe she thought he was a relative, but boh. Oh, maybe, actually, since they'd let him in anyway and no other doctor or nurse seemed to object to it, she too decided it was okay. After all it's a psychiatric hospital and they don't let everyone in without a reason, so the nurse must have understood that it was a family member, also because it was always Marc or Steven who brought Harrow to that place, so they had already seen him. Now, instead, speaking of the limousine, it's a nice quote to the comics, as well as Khonshu who has an elegant dress, but he put me a couple of doubts: in the comics, it's Steven the rich one, playboy and all Bruce Wayne style with a Alfred butler, etc; even if the plaque shows the surname Spector there too in the comics; but, I mean, why does Jake have a limo? If he has the plaque with Marc's last name and Marc knows nothing about it, it means it belongs to Jake, so is Jake rich? XD I realized it's a comic book quote, I really appreciated it, not to mention Jake's confirmation that he literally made me scream with joy, but I also want to understand the meaning of the scene, hahaha. Jake only drives a taxi, he likes to be discreet, not to be noticed because he takes information, but if he now he has a limo he means that he does a different job, right? I'm curious, please, give me a second season, a third, a fifth, a trilogy of films… Everything.

Oh right, I was digressing too much and forgetting the main point of the scene that I appreciated because of the meaning I decided to give it, which is Jake killing Harrow the same way they were killed by him. Two gunshots straight into his chest, and so I see it as a clear symbolism where Jake wants to avenge Marc and Steven; Harrow made all three suffer, with those two gunshots he was aiming at Marc and Steven, so Jake felt right to give them back. In my opinion, Jake must have felt all the pain that Steven and Marc had to go through in death reliving all the memories again, and then Steven ended up in the Duat, and then they came back and all, but they suffered, they had to relive again all their psychological pains, and Jake sure must have watched as aloof and not physically present. Jake must not have appreciated, either for himself or seeing his alters suffer again. They are a system, even if we didn't see Jake, he was there, because I mean, only Marc and Steven went through the gates of Osiris, but despite this Jake went with them, so he must have witnessed all of theirs torments as they saw the memories. And Jake blamed, of course, on Harrow, because he was the one who had brought them all to that place. Of course, it was a psychological journey that helped Marc deal with pain, accept it and overcome it, same thing for Steven, who also discovered and faced reality. But Jake's in charge of protecting them, in my opinion he's a self-imposed task, huh. He lets them live their lives, he doesn't intrude, he doesn't talk to them, he's like their guardian angel; he only intervenes by order of Khonshu and to help his alters. So he decided to take his revenge for them by killing Harrow. I reiterate that I would really like to know more about his story about him, about what he must have gone through, and when he appeared. In the comics Jake came right after Steven, so it must have been because his mother beat Marc too much and couldn't take him anymore, so, without knowing it, he created an alter who could handle him. Sad. :C

Beyond all this then, the most obvious reason is precisely that Harrow killed them, and Jake has to protect the system, he has to help them, must take revenge, so, in my opinion, it was more a personal motive of Jake rather than Khonshu, even if the two things crossed each other. By this I mean, then, that if it wasn't because Jake wanted revenge, I doubt he would have killed him. And it's just a hypothesis of course, knowing the Jake of the comics at least. I want to clarify that I am speaking like this, giving a sense to the scene but from my knowledge of comics where I was able to read and understand Jake's thoughts and motivations, my knowledge of DID is not much, I just read wikipedia and saw some videos of people who have it and who explain it but I'm not an expert at all. In this post, as in the others where I talked about Jack, I have discussed just trying to make sense of Jake's behaviors, right now I'm not referring to their disorder, okay? I'm just analyzing the character. If I have said wrong things I apologize and I will be happy to read any answers and explanations about it. :3 Lastly, I find it interesting that each of them can speak two different languages: Marc can speak Arabic and American, Jake can speak American and Spanish, and Steven can speak English and French, as well as to the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Nice, really cool, I wonder how and where Jack learned that language. And I hope I have explained it all decently, I don't wish it had been chaotic.