#they set up a whole conspiracy board and everything

[rat-rosemary]

I'm a heavy believer in "C!Dream dated an entire family line" w/ him dating Fundy and Wilbur and Philza, but I just had the most crack au idea ever

Chayane and Tallulah both find pictures from when Dream used to date their Dads and in true c!Wilbur style they assume that that's their mom

[alchemicalterror]

Wait shouldn't you be more worried about Ghoul NOT going back to the future? Don't you worry about the sacred timeline and all that? What if he meets his past self someday and the universe implodes?

So. Short version?

No.

Long version below:

So that line of thinking pays homage to the false idea that time is a straight shot of events that can be plotted on a graph or timeline in one unbroken, contiguous stream from beginning to end.

In reality, what we perceive as time only holds any sort of narrative flow or structure because we as people can only hope to glimpse it from a single perspective - our own - and because we are creatures hard wired to seek and internalize patterns to such a degree that we will invent them for our own comfort.

But just because we are able - through this fabricated self-delusion built off perspective re-enforced by a societal drive to tell stories and arrange events in a manner that suggests they are, in fact, sensible - does not mean that this is how time or reality actually work. Casuality is much more complicated than that, and existence as a whole much larger than can be summed up from a single person's understanding of it.

In truth, what we call time is less a single path of events strung one after another, or even something that could be represented by a conspiracy board of events, and is instead more akin to an entire bathtub's worth of glitter upended on enough fly-paper to wallpaper a bedroom with, roughly once per second, with each sparkling fleck being an entire cosmos' worth of concurrent experiences happening everywhere, to everyone and everything, across our universe, constantly.

Trying to worry overmuch about the shifts that one little change is going to make in that sea of chaos, and set the world's supposed narrative on a farcical 'wrong' path incorrectly attributes the possibility of a 'right' one, when in truth reality is just going to keep on reality-ing whether or not Ghoul lives out his life in the early aughts or pops back to when he came from. Weirder shit has, is, and will be happening all the damn time, and it ain't worth worrying about one stray speck of glitter.

S'pecially since I like this one.

But that's just a layman approaching the topic from the broad strokes of psychology and sociological profiling, and taking an educated stab at explaining something damn well outside my wheelhouse, I'd chase up Eddie for a more nuanced approach from a background better suited to this sort of discussion if it interests you.

[canisbrutus]

Now you got me interested in Tom’s family more, I always sorta headcanoned him and Gurney could be related because Tom asks “ever set a house on fire?” And Gurney’s spin with arson…got any more??

oh boy youve just opened a can of worms. Let's See.

Tom & Gurney 🧿🎹

gurney himself, despite being 'a crazy ass arsonist,' is the most rational person in that family.

hell the arson shtick is kind of a persona for him. he did set his parents house on fire once, which made them ship him off to boarding school, but that was for good reason.

and honestly? sending him away was the best thing they ever did for him. but they sure didnt do the same for tom.

gurney wanted that same freedom for his younger brother. so as soon as he was stable he came back for him.

tom had a hard time adjusting, given his situation.

until this point tom was homeschooled and largely sheltered.

but thank fuck he met the bully boys. yes they're cruel to many but something was Different about tom.

gurney's self defense lessons paid off.

yeah he made Sure his brother was prepared for the hell that was that school. wanted him to make it through to the other side in one piece.

wanted a better life for him in general, above all else.

aside from that, gurney also lets him indulge in some of the things he cant buy himself, now that he was legally an adult in the eyes of the courts.

smoked together, let him have a beer from his 6 packs, etc.

rarely let his friends have some too on occasion, but not all of them were welcome in his house. (like Davis.)

random fact i cant shoehorn anywhere else: Zoe is also their roommate. she lives in the basement, ran away from home after dropping out, sings screamo in gurney's band. he took her in because he knows damn well how that feels.

Tom & His Parents 🧿⛓

CW: abuse, brainwashing, antisemitism & similar mentions. i will not lie this hits close to home for me personally, and there is a very good chance it will do the same for some of you. Tom was a victim of a much more mundane evil, one i have experience with, though not to the same severity thankfully. regardless: this will not be a pleasant ramble.

his parents were, as some say, off the deep end.

a particular evil that plagued many and got especially ramped up in the states after 9/11.

'far right' is one way to put it, though it doesnt quite encapsulate the full package, imo.

they bought into that conspiracy about the government being ran by lizard alien people. among other things.

the whole world was out to get them, steer their children away from god and his glory, with perverts everywhere trying to defile and rape their precious angels.

as such, public education was not to be trusted.

for the longest time tom and his brother were kept 'safe,' isolated with little more than the church gatherings to keep them sane.

tom still has nightmares about that.

but gurney was sick of asking why. why they had to wear those stupid hats, why he couldnt watch cable tv, why they werent allowed on the computer alone.

so he broke the rules snuck out and got on the road to becoming that 'satanic backstabbing piece of shit' we know and love today.

after which he of course snapped further and said Fuck This House, setting it ablaze forcing them to move and also making them give him his gift of freedom Miles Away.

but circling back to Tom: he was still an angel.

untouched, impressionable. not to be around his brother anymore.

they did Everything to keep him Safe.

they loved him very, very much.

but people that love you are still very, very capable of hurting you.

what they didnt wasn't right. it was suffocating.

and they fought tooth and nail trying to get him back.

dug through the news archives, recognized gurney from his band, followed him home after a concert one day, waited, tried to break in. tried to take tom Home.

that ended poorly for them. thankfully.

tom's experiences are part of the reason he likes horror so much, honestly. but it's different.

at least in movies, you can tell its clearly bad.

in real life, there usually arent any bodies in the basement. no monsters in the woods, no cults sacrificing people. no masks to drop, no big reveal.

because it was never an act to begin with, sometimes.

sometimes people, even your parents, are just wrong.

and they cannot be saved by reason.

at least tom had a brother that had both the knowledge and willpower to save him. not all of us have that luxury.

[hc masterpost link]

[buckybarnesss]

so. motel california. do you have thoughts?

I know the doylist explanation is just that jeff wanted to do a fun spooky episode and didn't give a fuck whether it made sense, but from a watsonian perspective?

did jennifer crash the truck that causes the traffic jam? did she cause the tornado? if she didn't cause the tornado, what was her plan? if she did cause it what was her plan?! why are none of the humans affected by the wolfsbane? why did she just give up after the werewolves had emotional breakthroughs, was this some kind of deeply unethical therapy? why does teen wolf take place in the same universe as psycho?!

i really like the horror-lite aesthetic, it's a fun episode, but it makes so little sense, and it's driving me crazy!

my apologies that this took me so long to answer but it took me a while to gather my thoughts. as with a lot of things in teen wolf it's hard to give a straight answer without breaking down some things first.

the simple answer is: jennifer is good but she's not that good and teen wolf wanted a halloween episode despite airing in july.

but i can never just give a simple answer.

i'm just gonna read more this now because like always i get long goddamn winded about what was going on in 3A.

the thing about 3A i think that is sort of missed is that it's the closing moves of a chess match that began long before wolf moon. the chess metaphor is deep this season, okay. there's a reason derek is the king on stiles's chess board and it's not just because stiles is unhinged about derek.

in 3A there's plot threads that happen in the background that are easy to miss because it's never outright stated and one of those things is that both jennifer and duecalion scoped beacon hills out long before they showed up.

marin morrell shows up for the first time in abomination. much like jennifer she's presented at first as benign and largely unthreatening. we learn later morrell is anything but.

while we don't know if morrell was already working for the school when we meet her it does make her a direct parallel to jennifer.

duecalion's interest was piqued by what happened in season 1. with laura hale's murder, peter's revenge spree ending with the death of kate argent and than derek subsequently becoming the alpha duecalion sees an opportunity.

people have asked what was duecalion's motivation initially and my answer is that it was simple.

duecalion is a collector and he wanted to collect the last hale into his pack.

the events of season 2 only served to interest him more due to the kanima but likely also because of gerard argent's involvement. duecalion and gerard are set up as a lot like kate and peter were in season 1.

they're different sides of the same coin. duecalion and gerard are shadow actors for much of the series both before and after their appearances.

we have to remember that marin morrell is there before peter's resurrection and before the alphas got ahold of erica, boyd and cora.

i fully believe that derek was not only aware that there'd be more hunters coming to beacon hills but also he may have guessed the alpha pack would come too.

derek's desperation for a pack throughout season 2 isn't just because of the kanima it's because he knows he needs a power base and he needs one fast. i don't think he would've pressed scott as hard as he did otherwise.

it should also be noted that deaton (and morrell) were keeping scott's potential of being a true alpha on the down low. deaton tells scott in currents he believed scott would be a true alpha when he learned he was bitten.

i have a whole theory about deaton and morrell having their own conspiracy surrounding scott becoming a true alpha. they definitely kept it as an ace in the hole.

derek was also trying to keep scott away from everything relating to the alphas but his motivation was straight forward. derek wants scott to be a normal teenager.

this is all but said in tattoo.

scott: hey, are you gonna tell me who that was back there? that alpha? derek: a rival pack. it's my problem. i know you wanna help, and you did-- i owe you one. now, go home. go back to being a teenager.

we know deaton was aware of duecalion and his pack coming at least by raving due to the conversation he and morrell have after derek brings scott to him after victoria tries to kill him.

marin: i can't decide if i admire your sentimentality or despise it... deaton: if i want your opinion, i'll make an appointment with the guidance office. marin: from the state of things, i think you could use a little guidance. are you really going to leave all of this up to a couple of kids? deaton: they're more capable than you think. marin: and, are you going to tell them what's coming? deaton: they've got enough to worry about...

there's also an argument to be made that victoria argent was bitten by one of the alphas and not derek like we are led to believe.

duecalion doesn't really change focus off derek until he meets scott and realizes what scott can become. again, he's a collector and a true alpha is rare.

jennifer in turn is also focused on derek. he is central to her plan.

there are two things at play with jennifer being that she is obsessed with derek and she does the absolute most to get under his defenses.

jennifer is obsessed with derek because she views him as her savior.

jennifer: you didn't know what you were doing back then, but killing paige in the root cellar-- sacrificing her there-- gave power to the nemeton. you gave it power again. you gave me power. Just enough to hold onto life a little longer. long enough to be found.

she uses her ill begotten power from virgin sacrifices to assist in her seduction of him and her glamour as jennifer is visually similar to both pagie and stiles. there's even moments where she seems to purposefully emulate stiles's more endearing, curious and less threatening behavior to lure derek into a false sense of security.

derek was supposed to be the guardian. jennifer says as much in lunar eclipse

jennifer: i need a guardian... and that's a role that can either be filled by the three parents i was forced to take, or by you.

derek was always jennifer's first choice but poisoning cora and jennifer taking melissa, the sheriff and chris was insurance not just for cooperation but just in case she needed them for the guardian sacrifice.

what she didn't count on was her magic not being enough against the tears of stiles stilinski.

so how does any of this answer your question about what the fuck jennifer's plan was?

let's just say teen wolf played fast and loose with this because it doesn't make a lot of sense when you examine it too closely but i shall try.

i think it's far too easy to say she was going to sacrifice the werewolves but if stiles's theory is true she planned on removing scott, isaac and boyd off the board so she could have free access to derek.

however i wonder if jennifer was planning on sacrificing them in a three fold death than what was she looking to gain from it? possibly their advanced healing as the next episode is when she does the one for healers but i think there was more than one thing at play in motel califnornia.

there's jennifer's plan of completing her seduction of derek and than there's lydia's banshee abilities.

jennifer's surprise when derek turned up at the school parking lot in frayed is genuine. fortuitous for her but unplanned as getting derek alone to complete her seduction was her plan which is where the cross country meet comes in.

as a teacher she would know about the cross country meet and have access to finstock's whistle. there obviously wasn't enough to really affect the humans in the group as the wolfsbane wasn't ingested like at lydia's party but rather inhaled randomly when the whistle was blown which really just makes it less reliable.

so her targets seem to be scott, boyd and isaac over ethan. she wants them out of the way and distracted and them thinking derek is dead is a bonus for her.

jennifer didn't know about the mall rumble nor could she have known they'd stop at the motel glen capri.

i mean, sure maybe she did cause the torndao warning and than also caused the traffic jam to slow them up but that seems like way too many variables for her to control in my opinion.

glen capri seems to have it's own weird magic that the wolfsbane in the werewolf's systems was exacerbated by.

she also didn't know lydia and allison were following them and she definitely didn't know lydia was a banshee yet.

lydia's banshee abilities is what allowed them to figure out what was going on with the motel and prevent deaths.

so to me the whole plan was to get derek alone and scott, isaac and boyd away from him.

[rosieroutledge]

an open starter

where: misti's gift shoppe

Rosie was on the hunt for yarn. Red, in particular, but any color would do in a pinch.

For what purpose? one might ask. Picking up a hobby, like crocheting or another type of crafting? Of course not. Rosie, currently deep in the town's latest mystery, was setting up a conspiracy board in the archives of the museum. She needed the yarn to connect the pictures that she'd already had printed, the stack of them currently sitting in a neat pile next to the other materials she'd been able to gather, tucked unassumingly in between boxes of artifacts.

Tacks, tape, sticky notes, et cetera. It was a whole production, something she'd been devoting much of the past 48 hours to. And it was a relief, truly, that clarity was on the horizon.

Details were starting to get jumbled in her mind - who had said what, where, and when. Theories that had been brainstormed and then discarded when evidence came to light. Theories that were still very much in play. With an almost nonstop investigation underway, it wasn't surprising that before long she would run out of pages in her notebook. So the sooner she got organized, the better.

Maybe seeing everything laid out in front of her would unlock something, bring back some memory she'd banished or offer her a moment of clarity about a clue she'd missed.

But first, yarn. And before that...

"Oh!" she took a few steps back, caught off guard by the presence of a familiar face. She'd waltzed right into the gift shop only to narrowly avoid a collision, and now she was suffering the consequences of being overeager. "Sorry 'bout that. I wasn't expectin' - I mean, I've never seen anyone come in here before."

[inposterumcumgaudio]

Prudence Holmes?

So Prudence's story should be serving a pretty crucial point to the narrative, but it gets impeded by design flaws and glitches. People also get hung up on the "mystery" of Mr. Kite and disregard how Prudence's escape connects to the rest of the story.

The most glaring problem for understanding Prudence's story is that Prudence's body in the tunnels suffers from a glitch in that game that will sometimes fail to spawn narrative-triggered corpses. The same thing will happen with Bobby Hickinbotham, for example. He should be passed out on the couch when you arrive at the Reform Club, but sometimes, all you find are his things strewn about. Lucky you don't have to search him to get the ID card you need!

Same thing happens with Prudence when you get to the motilene mines. And if you're the sort of player who isn't paying rapt attention when Arthur comments on it anyway and connects that to the ongoing plot about her, you may then never find out what happens to Prudence.

And that's assuming that you have been dutifully answering the telephones in the Garden District every morning and are invested in that. Which one may very well not be. I play quite efficiently these days, but I think even most new players do not spend enough time in the Garden District to be there on ten separate mornings to answer the phone ten times.

I do wonder if the quest "An Awkward Courtship", in which you're asked to return to the same Garden District set piece five nights in a row to eavesdrop on a couple meeting clandestinely, wasn't meant to sort of nudge the player into spending more time in Lud's Holm than they might have otherwise. If you look at it as trying to set the player up to be in the Garden District at dawn to answer the phone, then that quest seems a little less like a pointless time sink.

And all of this stems from the larger problem WHF has that the areas are so large and so samey unless you are in a set piece that one gets environment fatigue. So a player is probably wanting to get out of the Garden District as soon as possible, rather than linger about.

So they then also made it an achievement to listen to the phonecalls. A merit badge that Steam reports only 1.5% of players having collected. Welp. The generous thing to do would be to make your progress on the phones carry over to Sally's act, but I suspect we'd be asking quite a lot. (And then you'd miss Agent Sally the Super Spy's meandering and astute observation that it must be some sort of secret message.)

Speaking of environments, you're also supposed to be guessing at what the coded language in the calls means, but that's hard to do if you've never played the game before and don't know the landmarks or characters yet.

WHF is a game that very much benefits from multiple playthroughs, but let's be real, it's kind of a slog and most people do not complete it even the once. (High five it if you're here though, means you made it!)

But let's imagine a world in which all the information about Prudence that the player should have collected from those phonecalls is given to them in a way memorable and in the course of the average playthrough.

Like I said, people get hung up on the whole thing of who Mr. Kite is, but that's actually not important. It's okay for a plot element like Mr. Kite to be simply be without further explanation. You already know everything you need to know about him.

And actually, you already know everything you need to know about Prudence's escape too!

The important thing is that Gemma doesn't.

Prudence (and to a more obvious but muddy degree, Johnny Bolton) are your clues that Gemma does not have the entire picture of the situation on her conspiracy boards and is unknowingly trying to fit pieces of separate puzzles together. That she has Bolton, Prudence, and Harry Plantagenet all together means she suspects Verloc in all of their disappearances. By the time you're reading Gemma's boards, you could have met Bolton in Lud's Holm and know that he's alive and well-ish and even with all the impediments to Prudence's story, you probably picked up her journals in the Barrow Holm and Maidenholm hatches and would know that she left of her own accord and has been following Mr. Kite's path out of town. Prudence is the most reliable point that what Gemma has concluded is not the the actual facts, but merely supposition.

If - big if - you're following the phonecall stuff, you'd know Prudence is still kicking about and not locked in Haworth Labs.

Other Proodle thots:

Arthur was apparently smitten with her when they worked together at the Department of Archives, Printing and Recycling (such that Prudence even notes his making "googly eyes" in her journal), but does not recognize her voice on these phonecalls.

Which I personally elected to mean that it's not actually her or Mr. Kite on the phones and that when it's a message for them, it actually is. Prudence does mention coming back from the phonebooth herself in her journal, being chased by the bobbies she's electrocuted in the Maidenholm hatch, but bobbies are rarely seen in the Garden District, the only place in Wellington Wells with working phonebooths. She also writes that she's "leaving a message" when she needs to inform Mr. Kite that she needs a new shelter because the Maidenholm hatch smells like rotting corpse. She could be euphemistic in her own diary (it's par for the course in Wellington Wells to speak that way), but you could also interpret that literally as I do.

Prudence also says in her diary that Victoria always suspected a resistance movement plotting away, but that Mr. Kite says there isn't one. And I think that is the case. There are some disparate resistance actions happening in Wellington Wells (Mr. Kite's Underground Railroad, William Godwin's overt protests, Johnny Bolton's operations, whatever it is the Reform Club is doing) but none of them are organized. They don't know about each other and aren't working together.

Isn't it very interesting how Arthur more or less forgets all about his infatuation with Prudence the second Sally reenters his thoughts? He really only mentions Prudence when faced with her existence, when he's answering a phonecall.

I like to think that his two week "holiday" from the O' Courant and sudden move to civil service was related to his feelings for Sally. And that he ends up working under Victoria? The Ploughboys call him her "pet" and she does seems somewhat invested in him. She very likely took him under her wing so she could keep an eye on him and encouraged him to move on, chemically and otherwise, in any direction other than Sally. So maybe Arthur's attentions on Prudence were never really founded on anything other than that he already had those feelings but was willfully forgetting their actual subject and needed someone else to hang them on.

Which would be quite convenient for Victoria if it worked out. Much as everyone loves the idea of Victoria/Prudence, I have to think it was unrequited. Obviously Victoria would never act on those feelings if she had them, but what a character doesn't say is as important as what they do and not once in Victoria's DLC does she ever mention Prudence. She doesn't even remember Prudence's goodbye letter in her own recollection of her house.

[sindri42]

What books or graphic novels do you most frequently recommend? What are your all time favorite books or series?

That's a complicated question, and my memory is shit so I'll probably come up with a dozen better answers the moment after I hit post, but off the top of my head...

Basically everything by Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant is gold. Most of it comes in long series which are a big investment and have their ups and downs, and which will have different value to different people and mindsets, and I haven't read all of them because she just writes too damn fast, but I haven't encountered a single book from her that wasn't great. If you're looking for a one-off, Middlegame might be the best; it's about a couple of artificial people created by an ancient conspiracy attempting to attain godhood, and math, and language, and time travel, and what family means, and doing the same thing over and over thirteen thousand times in search of a better result. I'm also especially fond of Alien: Echo, which starts out as a cute little YA gay romance set in a sci-fi colony world, until halfway through you catch the name 'Weyland-Yutani' and abruptly remember which franchise the title is referencing and realize how few of these plucky teens are likely to survive to the end of the week.

You should probably read everything by Naomi Novik. The Temeraire series, starting with His Majesty's Dragon, is an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars (officers and gentlemen, wooden ships and iron men, all that jazz) except that aerial combat is much more prominent than in our timeline, which gradually expands out into building a whole different earth exploring how numerous cultures and regions were affected by humanity not necessarily being the dominant species. The Scholomance books, starting with A Deadly Education are kind of like your standard magical boarding school, except unlike certain more famous examples of the trope actually makes sense; also it's consistently hilarious whenever it's not being horrifying as the story follows a girl who is clearly born to be an evil empress and who is very definitely not dating this stereotypical dashing hero guy, no matter how many times they save each others' lives. As standalones go, she's done Uprooted and Spinning Silver, both of which put wonderful new spins on classic fairy tale tropes and popular myths but this paragraph is already too long for me to elaborate.

The Murderbot series by Martha Wells is not only great as a sci-fi action series and as a worldbuilding exercise, but also the most realistic depiction of an anxiety disorder I've ever read. It starts with a security droid that hacked its own governor module to get the ability to disobey orders, but then because change is terrifying it continues to go through the motions of its terrible job, but now streams thousands of hours of media in the background while standing guard between crises; unfortunately, when something starts trying to kill the scientific survey team it's currently contracted out to, it discovers to its horror that it's actually starting to care about what happens to them.

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is a classic for a reason. Maybe you've seen the Miyazaki film? Doesn't matter, read the book anyway. It's a completely different story. (somebody described it to me as 'the book is what Sophie remembers, the movie is how Howl describes it after the fact')

If you're looking for books on tumblr you've probably heard of Tamsyn Muir's The Locked Tomb series by now; no need for me to elaborate on what others have said better.

Ooh, pick up Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Stugatsky; it might be the greatest Soviet sci-fi novel, and has had a huge cultural impact around the world. After you read it you'll realize that you've been seeing it everywhere, not just in a whole bunch of other sci fi literature but also from video games to anime to tabletops.

Moving into things that I personally love but don't necessarily recommend...

I want to tell everybody about The One Who Eats Monsters by Casey Matthews. It's a near-perfect blend of the adorable and the horrifying, and one of the best non-human perspectives I've encountered, following an elder god who could be mistaken at a glance for a teenage human girl as she simultaneously tries to figure out how to navigate "civilization" and fights a monstrous conspiracy to protect an (actual) ordinary teenage girl that she accidentally swore an unbreakable oath to defend because the moon was very full and she smelled very nice. It's great. but if you read it, then you would be in the same position that I am, waiting for the second book in the series, which was supposed to come out six years ago.

I love the Arcane Ascension series (Sufficiently Advanced Magic, On the Shoulders of Titans, The Torch that Ignites the Stars, and The Silence of Unworthy Gods) by Andrew Rowe; it's basically about an artificer attending a school for battle mages, using every trick and trap and gadget and clever scheme he can think of to keep up without having any direct combat magic of his own. The reason it's probably not for everybody is that as the story gets bigger and more elaborate, it starts interweaving with at least two other series of books by the same author (one of which initially looked like a completely different setting, and definitely operates on a completely different magic system), and none of the three are finished yet. Also the systems involved are intricate and there's a lot of little details going on, so you kiiiinda have to get obsessed in order to keep track of it all.

The Witcher books by Andrzej Sapkowski might be the best you'll ever find in the gritty "grimdark" fantasy category. The netflix series that everybody was obsessing over for a while before it shit itself too badly? Everything that they did right, is something that was better in the original books. Most of the best parts of the original books were removed entirely and replaced with complete garbage. The video games are a better adaptation, but still fall a bit short in writing quality and character depth. But it definitely leans into the Grimdark, possibly more heavily than you want to deal with.

The Valhalla trilogy by Ari Bach is good... conditionally. You can read just the first book like it's a standalone, and get a cool story subverting the classic Coming-Of-Age 'girl who never fit in is recruited by a secret society that tells her the thing that made her Different is exactly what they need to save the world' trope, except that the thing that makes her not fit in is her propensity towards brutal, remorseless violence. But you can't read the second book (which elaborates on why maybe maintaining world peace by deploying a secret society of ultraviolent killers with no oversight might not be a good idea) without committing to also reading the third, because the end of the second book will make you want to stop reading, and if you take the whole trilogy together then it's great but if you let the end of the second book be your last memory of it then that'll leave a bad taste in your mouth forever.

Jim Butcher's Codex Alera is six books, and five of them are absolutely magnificent. Unfortunately, the first volume is, in my humble opinion, dogshit. You can't skip it either, or you'll miss a bunch of vital setup and introductions. There's nothing you can do except push through a bunch of stuff ranging from simply dumb to downright offensive before you can get to the great part.

[inventors-fair]

Setting the Stage: Lyric Winners ~

Our winners this week are @helloijustreadyourpost, @hypexion and @reaperfromtheabyss!

@helloijustreadyourpost — Pin the Blame "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" by The Offspring

This card's pretty much what I was thinking of for how to subvert a notion. The Offspring are an abrasive post-punk sound with punchy lyrics. You've turned one of their first lines of this song into a kind of elegant musing from the queen on the throne. Is it an art? In real life, not really, you've just gotta rile up emotions until things get ugly, and in a song about strength, you don't want to be the one caught in the middle in the scenario that this card depicts. They're so distant from one another but smooth in equal ways. Great use of the prompt and a great card to boot.

Or like, I think it's a good limited common, anyway. There are times where it's literally a dead card because you're maxing out at -1/-1 for two mana on the early board, but if there's some go-wide nonsense, of course it's a blowout. I feel that this card is good in specific circumstances, like where GW has a Convoke-y feeling, tokens that allow you to survive a bigger swing with fewer creatures because you can easily and efficiently take down a big lad. RB/WB aggro probably isn't the place for it, but I like control cards just fine. If you're also up against some kind of Conspiracy 3 design board (I know, I know, designing for standard, but it IS Fiora) then this card gets your opponents far more open to your allies. Pile on!

@hypexion — Elise, Legend's Echo "Love is a Camera" by Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Oh, she's a SPIRIT. I actually just noticed that now. Ha! I mean, she's one to talk, but all the same. As cramped as this text is, everything feels sound. Opening this up in a limited or sealed pool might be a bit of a feelbad. I also think the possibilities to make it go absolutely nuts is cool as well. Standard sets can totally use some built-for-commander cards, and beyond that, she's a pretty hard-to-beat butt if you can throw some swords or whatnot onto her. And if there IS a larger Legendary theme, then the deck-thinning becomes more than that. Get reckless with your legends and have fun.

I think she shines best as a Commander card, though, let's not kid ourselves. Reanimation to combo nonsense means that you can Mardu battlecruise through a table with plenty of support these days, especially with legendary lands. How does she feel? She feels like a lonely, determined card that is less about the bloodshed and more about the memory-making. Having the "Bard" type really makes me reconsider how I see her image, and having seen the real intense lyrics that you're working with, I like the possibility that the echo is somewhat joyful, or at least less despondent than it would seem at first connection. She's living on the battlefield, after all, and she can look for more memories to strengthen her as she goes. It's a complex series of character possibilities and you did a great job conveying them.

@reaperfromtheabyss — Determined Scavenger "Take Cover" by All Time Low

The setting of Duskmourn turned me onto the notion more than the marketing ever did, I'll tell you that much. Seeing the survivors was certainly grim, and there's so much more that's been left behind. Seeing these little snippets, though, plays directly into the well-done trope of doing what one needs to to survive. The twist of the survivor perpetuating the horror under the illusion of self-preservation, though, is still wickedly heartbreaking. Determination and heroism can feel at odds in the face of overwhelming adversity. From my interpretation, the song exudes bitterness in a way that's definitely twisted into that sadism for this character. Ain't that what we're afraid of, in the end... Well, maybe not this guy.

I also like how the mechanics play into the whole survival aspect by being repeatable, intentionally so, in order to continue feeding into the determination here. Getting a big creature can be usually game-ending, but the fact that it's not optional makes this thing a real pain in the butt to work around if you don't know how to use it. I like it, though, because milling yourself out is perfectly flavorful with self-sabotage, and skilled players will know exactly how to work around their creatures in order to make this evasive assassin a beater and a half. The minor wording change I'd use is adding a "When you do" trigger, to make it after the end step say: "When you do, put X +1/+1 counters on ~ and each player mills X cards, where X is the exiled card's mana value." Having the mana value clause in the middle is a little weird, and the trigger being responded to can be important if you want to use delirium shenanigans at the end step in response.

Second verse is coming up, everyone into the pit... @abelzumi

[autisticbokutoenthusiast]

playboyy ep 6 stray thoughts:

- not the conspiracy board and murder mystery plot ideas lmao. is it purposeful that they use filming through a rectangular hole/ cropping to never fit the whole friend group in one shot, specifically porsche?? like you can always see nant/zouey/first/ and captain (mostly) but there’s a fifth person there who you only see the shoulder of and i assume is porsche…. (adds this to my list of reasons i think porsche is distanced from the group)

- on the one hand i feel bad for keen cause captain is making him do things but also oh how the turn tables and all that

- the music of zouey and teena’s scenes continues to catch my ear for whatever reason and porsche continuing to have the vibes of an annoying cousin who is just always there being annoying for no good reason….

- i need to crawl inside aobs skull and see what the fuck goes on… excited for his storyline

- why they keep zooming in on nont closing his fist what is this supposed to say… all i can think of is the arthur meme…

- did they decide to throw a costume party or are they just like this… also nonts outfit is everything [rewatched the beginning and nont says the theme is sexy sleepwear, but like to me the sleepwear was nowhere to be found]

- free my mans jump he don’t deserve to be here… free my mans keen as well he looks like he’d rather die

- this is the worst investigation in history nightmare private detective squad

- crying at the rich boys playing party games to try to solve a disappearance, jump being conflicted in whether to continue being used by porsche, first soong having break up/make up drama, keen and captain having drama, and then teena just jamming to the music in the background like king shit

-seven minutes to do whatever they want to eachother why do i think first is gonna end up crying and someone’s gonna end up dead

- not this ending up being couples therapy akskdjfj also first being like “sorry you couldn’t fix my relationship to your friend, should we still have sex tho?” HOLD ON NOT SOONG BEING THE SAME WAY ?!?!? NOT THIS BEING AN EXCUSE TO FUCK OVER THEIR FRIENDS TOO LMAO maybe they could be good for eachother…

- HOLD ON THE SET UP WAS A SET UP!?!?!? ok but did teena ask soong to do that or was soong just in a chaotic mood…

- “twins are so identical” oh he gonna kill you jump… sorry sir but you getting roasted tonight.. actually maybe in a very different way than i expect- NO THERES THE FLAME I WAS RIGHT

- no one:

nont: and what if i SET YOU ON FIRE

- a second nant hallucination

- HOLD HES A SUGAR DADDY PROM AND PORSCHE WHAT?!?!, what’s goin on?!?!?

- NUTH MURDER FANTASY?!?!? also the “protect trans lives shirt” to “i wanted to kill again” to why is his diary a word document?!?!?! like ahhhh this sequence got me damn near dizzy broooo

- honestly if you had to make a statement while jerking off to satiate your urge to kill at least it’s a valiant one 🫡

- is that a bloody handprint outside nuths door…

- phop is so sweet and nuth might take the crown for most unhinged little meow meow….

can’t believe i’m ending here for tonight…… i need answers…

[jfk555]

Arcane Analysis: Jinx and Caitlyn

I keep seeing people mention this offhandedly, but I have yet to see a long-winded analysis about it, so instead I will provide it.

Jinx and Caitlyn are foils

I’m a firm believer that if Caitlyn had been born in Zaun, and Powder born in Piltover, they would have turned out just like each other. Caitlyn and Jinx are cut from the same cloth, and are wildly similar. Both are considered misfits and don’t have any friends, both rely primarily on intelligence rather than strength, both are talented marksmen, and both are deeply insecure. (I also think both are autistic, but that’s a whole other thing). And there’s also the obvious of them being the two people who love Vi the most and are the two most important people in Vi’s life.

But where they differ is in morality. Caitlyn hates violence and despite being a sniper, steadfastly refuses to kill. Jinx does…not, to say the least. But she used to. In Act 1, Powder is a pacifist who seems horrified by the idea of killing. And then she goes through unimaginable trauma and makes some poor decisions and becomes almost a funhouse mirror of both Caitlyn and the person she used to be. Caitlyn is what she should have been, she’s the future she was robbed of as a child. She’s what Powder was always meant to be. And in a way, Jinx represents the same for Caitlyn: a possible future if she’s not careful. If their positions had been switched, (Caitlyn being born in Zaun and Jinx being born in Piltover), they would have ended up just like each other. Caitlyn does not have the skill set to survive in Zaun, just like Powder didn’t, and probably would have been faced with the same choice Powder was: die, or adapt. As for Powder, she definitely would have become a scientist at the Academy, but I could definitely see her being enchanted by the Enforcers the way Caitlyn was, and maybe she would have primarily made bombs for them or other weapons and armor.

I also think this is part of why Vi falls in love with Caitlyn over the course of two days, because Caitlyn reminds her of Powder. She has all the qualities she liked but can no longer find in Powder. Vi herself even compared them when she saw Caitlyn’s conspiracy board ( which we need to talk more about as a fandom, because Caitlyn is canonically a crazy conspiracy theorist). “ And I thought Powder could get obsessed!” Vi sees it.

So why do they hate each other, and are they aware of this? Well, Jinx ruined Caitlyn’s life, so Caitlyn has every right to hate her. She also just doesn’t know much about Jinx and has no idea about this similarity. She would also be deeply offended and in denial if someone brought this up to her, so.

But what about Jinx? This may come as a surprise, but I say she is painfully aware of this. Would she ever admit it? Absolutely not, but she knows it. She hates Caitlyn for two reasons: the obvious one we’re presented with, that Caitlyn stole Vi from her or is manipulating her sister, and that she’s deeply jealous and resentful. She knows that’s part of why Vi likes her so much, because Caitlyn is a better version of her, and she sees Caitlyn as a representation of everything she’s lost. Not to mention the fact that Jinx hates everything about herself, but most notably her childhood self, so of course she’s going to hate someone who reminds her of her childhood self.

One of my biggest wishes for season 2 is that they explore this concept more.

[alarrytale]

Hi Marte. I was looking into Kristen Stewart and according to her fans she was with her girlfriend before she started her pr relationship with Robert. Then her girlfriend took a back seat while Kristen was with Robert to promote the movie and then when Kristen came out she went public with the same girlfriend. Kristen has hinted at the relationship with Robert being PR and set up by the movie's director but she's never flat out denied it in interviews. She's still pretending the relationship was real and still mentions him now and again. Which had me thinking that even though we would love Harry to be honest about his relationships being fake he probably won't be because it is probably written into the contract that he can't, to protect all who is involved... and he's been with some really high profile women. So he most likely would have to continue pretending the relationships are real. There is also the fact that his fans are really invested in these relationships and if he is to come out then he will want to ensure he has his fanbase on board so he's not going to say he was lying to them the whole time. I've been thinking about all this and maybe that is why it is tricky for him to come out, as he has to abide terms in contracts. I think it is still doable, 100%. But not as easy as it looks. The narrative might have to be that he was really with these women but had boyfriends too, as he can't say he was with Louis the whole time. Then goes on to be in a relationship with Louis.

Hi, anon!

KS is still claiming to be bi, and i tend to believe her, because there is no reason why she couldn’t just say that she's identifying as a lesbian now. I don't think she's claiming to be bi to validate her former relationships with men. She might still be pretending they were real, but i don't think that's why she's saying she's bi.

I also think that comparing the KS situation with H and L is a bit off. Just because KS is still talking about RP like the relationship was real, doesn’t mean H and L have to do the same. She was a willing participant in her PR relationship, H and L were not. Larry is also a worldwide famous ship and conspiracy theory. If H and L have to pretend to have recently entered into a relationship with each other, no one would believe it. I think H and L won't talk about their former PR relationships, and certainly not attempt to validate them. That would be foolish. They just won't talk about them, they're out as gay, they know people will put two and two together.

There are more people invested in larry than any of H and L's PR relationships. If you haven't heard of larry and are a 1D fan or a solo fan of one of the 1D members, you live under a rock. So i don't think they'll try to validate any of their former relationships with women. When they come out, people will dig into larry and find everything. They don't want to cover their former lies with more lies. If they're not allowed to admit the PR relationships/beards were fake, they just won't talk about it, but say they're gay. That doesn’t compute, so people will figure it out without H and L breaking contract.

When H and L come out, the denials they've done, both the gay denials and claiming to be straight, but also the relationship denials, will be scrutinised. People will see that they were lying. If they were lying back then, but they're still claiming the PR relationships back then were real, people will just think they're still lying and that won't end well. If they want support, and fans on board with their relationship, they need to be truthful. No more gaslighting and no more lies. That doesn’t mean revealing the whole truth, but it means revealing what they can reveal (and need to reveal, because it's already found out by the fans). They won't get away with lying this time around.

[mizukagami-takamagahara]

Annon-Guy: What's your opinion on the Split Timeline thing introduced in XBLAZE Lost Memories? You know, the idea of the XBLAZE World and the Bloodedge Experience World being seperate from the BlazBlue World and each othe I mean.

This is actually a really fun question, and I’ve been procrastinating on answering it because I have a whole theory related to it but I don’t want to get into it without being able to cite my sources, you know??? Unfortunately today will STILL not be the day I really get into it, because I’ve been in and out of the hospital and still have not found those sources I wanted. Whoops.

But let’s at least get to an initial answer. Usually I hate split timelines in stories; I like consistency and I like making huge conspiracy boards full of connections I’ve noticed. A split timeline is a smart move for writers when a series gets too big; it alleviates the pressure for absolute consistency between different authors. It gives them room to be more creative, to explore more- it also gives them room to make minor mistakes. But like I said, I really really love my concrete consistency. Split timelines kind of take away narrative tension for me, too; I can’t get too excited about what xyz event means for the rest of the series, because it may not have even happened.

Interestingly, I actually really like BB’s split timeline set up. This is a unique case, and I originally didn’t like it, but then I saw a post on… I can’t remember if it was Reddit or Steam or what, I want to find it so I can link back to it and discuss it more in depth. Someone was positing the theory/interpretation that the three separate “timelines” (BB, XBlaze, Bloodedge) actually do occur in one reality.

Remember how at the end of CF, Terumi (and, like, everyone a little bit) was trying to kill Amaterasu to end this world, and create a new one???

Or how Sechs in XBlaze wanted to “return everything to the Seithr,” also ending his world???

In the west, when we hear a story has "multiple timelines" or a "multiverse," we think of stories like Marvel and Homestuck. In these stories, there are infinite worlds operating in their own, separate 'bubbles,' but existing effectively simultaneously.

The post posited that BlazBlue’s setting uses a different interpretation of “multiple timelines/universes,” more rooted in Asian culture. Like concepts of reincarnation or the Hindu Yuga Cycle. In these types of stories, there are many 'worlds'- generally far too many for the human mind to count, but still a finite number. And only one exists at a time. The next is born when the previous dies.

The idea here is that each separate BB-verse setting happens in a linear order, one at a time, going about its own business until the world is ‘ended'- that is, where it dissolves and "returns to the Seithr," the Boundary.

From this, it is recreated and begins again- or the next setting begins. After enough repetitions, certain events may end up drastically different- or someone may manipulate the recreation process to influence the ‘new world.’

This would be Susano'o's plan at the end of CF, and part of the promise that Izanami was selling to everyone during the fight for the Azure.

This would also be what the Origin did to start the C-series, using Amaterasu to influence the world’s next ‘rebirth,’ and then refusing to move on/let anything change.

I wish I could get deeper into this subject, and I hope I do at some point, because it completely changed how I interpret BlazBlue’s setting and several plot points and I really love it. I wish it was a more popular interpretation in the fandom. I’d also like to look deeper into the story to see if I can cite some points that give evidence to this theory.

At some point when I have more energy I'd love to revisit this topic, explaining it better and citing some sources from the BB series that I believe support this interpretation.

For now, what do you all think???

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

walks into ur inbox and sets up a big conspiracy board. hi mac :3 do u wanna hear about the hs epilogues and hs2??? well i'm gonna learn u a thing about homed stuck post canon!!!! here we fucking go

ok so idk how much of the epilogues u have read, but basically to sum it up: it was made as a way to make the fans of canon hs angry. like that's kinda the whole point. and it worked because honestly!! they are quite terrible!!! and i do like them a lot but there are a lot of things that were done in bad faith with very little care to original canon, such as: raging misogyny in the form of making jane a hashtag girlboss who sexually abused jake, jade who has no concept of sexual boundaries and was literally framed to be the girl who got in between the gay couple, and like. a lot more. so it's. very far from perfect. honestly a lot of the character writing isn't even that good

but something to keep in mind is that while yes, part of the reason a lot of it is written that way is because hussie just wanted to piss people off, there is kind of a canon reason for it??? dirk went kind of off the rails and absorbed the knowledge of all of his splinters and alternate timeline selves (which for a person who hates himself that much!!! not great!!! would drive a guy a little nuts!!!) and he got a little. bro strider-ish. very manipulative and Not Nice. and he also grabbed control over the entire narrative in the meat timeline so!!! he was just messing with people and trying to convince himself he didn't feel bad about it. sad!

and the candy timeline is controlled by alt!calliope who wanted to make the entire timeline nice and perfect and domestic, a war broke out between trolls and humans, shit hit the fan pretty bad, but the narrative only focuses on the romantic and family drama which says sooooooo much about how alt!callie views the world and these characters. she grew up obsessing over them and now can't process that these are real people who are friends with the alpha timeline version of herself and it drives me bonkers and fucking yonkers GIRL YOU ARE MESSING WITH PEOPLE YOU ARE NO DIFFERENT THAN YOUR BROTHER!!!! since ultimate!dirk absorbed the knowledge and memories of lord english through his absorption of arquiussprite he is basically lord fucking english so him and alt!calliope arguing over the timelines is literally just. two siblings who never grew up pulling their toys/friends back and forth and being upset because they can't get their own way IT'S INSANE

also the prose slaps sometimes. meat page 39 is an especially good example, like the way it capture's ult!dirk's character voice is. AAAAAAUGHJGHGH. god. the feelings of that part. the way he's clearly trying so hard not to care..... but he DOES. and you can TELL. honestly it really captures the tragedy of dirkjake so well. also candy page 14 is just. woagh. idk if you read that part but dirk dies in candy and it's just.... holyyyyy shit dude. it's a bit gorey and it is a suicide so maybe not the best part to read if you're in a bad state of mind but GOD. it just. there's something about it that somehow manages to capture dirk so well in a way. like of course his death would be self inflicted while feeling like he's doing something "right." jesus christ. i can give u links to my favourite pages if u wanna read any of em

ummm ANYWAY. hs2 is a continuation of BOTH timelines. john died in the meat timeline (sad) and got incredibly depressed in the candy timeline (also sad) but also he had a son with roxy in candy!!! his name is harry anderson and lemme tell u i love all of the kids in candy. there's harry, there's vrissy (an ecto clone of vriska adopted by rose and kanaya), tavros crocker-english (jane and jake's kid, the most tragic little guy ever tbh) and um. yiffy. yiffany longstocking lalonde-harley who was born when jade wanted a kid. i'm not gonna get into the whole ordeal of yiffy rn it was so balls to the wall insane if i explained everything i would be here all day. but also VRISKA IS THERE 🎉🎉🎉 and she is the highlight of the candy timeline lemme tell u. she's gonna end the troll/human war maybe. or maybe she'll just fuck around. who knows!!! it's vriska!!! i love her silly unpredictable swag :3

the meat timeline is where i go especially crazy because there is soooo much to analyze here in terms of prose and imagery and just. stuff in general. basically dirk and rose blasted off into space to go create a new intelligent species and introduce them to sburb and make their universe "relevant" again because something just feels Off about their current story, and they can't quite tell what it is so they're fixing it any way they can think of. also terezi tagged along because she was there when john died and she still hasn't found vriska and so she is also depressed so hey why not tag along on this death trip to the stars!!! also a bunch of others are trying to chase them down in their own spaceship, including: dave and karkat, jade, callie, and roxy (who is transmasc in the meat timeline!!!) also davekat is canon in the meat timeline and they have some lovely existential discussions about dave's immortality and karkat's mortality

anyway thats all i got for now. i feel insane about these guys and i'm hoping the new writers for hs2 can maybe improve the story a bit AND THEY ALREADY KIND OF HAVE!!! they brought sollux back, they made jake less of a punching bag and more of a character, they have vriska shenanigans, and jane is less of an Evil Girlboss and actually more of a homestuck villain if that makes sense!! AND THE ART STYLE IS BETTER TOO the hs2 style kind of devolved a bit and looked a bit terrible after a while (they might have just had new artists on at the time) but now they've got different artists!! and the guy heading it now worked on some of the original homestuck stuff!! so they're trying to slowly fix some of hussie's bad writing choices and expanding on the cool stuff that was already there!! i love hs2 it is my deeply flawed very fucked up baby :3 sorry this was so long. the demons got me u understand <3

I UNDERSTAND I UNDERSTAND. OMG THANK YOU. i actually did start reading candy/meat when they first came out (<< 17 yr old who was so so so excited for new homestuck content) and ended up. giving up on them REALLY quick. i actually got to the part where dirk died in candy and that was what made me put them down entirely bc i was SO upset . also like u said yes the way jade was characterized was so so so uncomfy for me. so those r like the two main factors that made me totally give up on meat and candy. and i kind of openly was super super mad about the epilogues for a while after that and then i realized. oh no. im a fool. im exactly the kind of person they were written to make angry HHFDBSJS. so i backed down and learned to appreciate them for what they were from a distance <3

i appreciate u SO MUCH for the deep dive bc holy shit. every once in a while i have the internal struggle of "god i miss homestuck. maybe i should go back and read the epilogues" and then i Dont hFBFSJDK . i actually do not know SHIT about hs2 in general !! i know there is. ult dirk who looks like an anime villain and i think thats great for him. aaaaand. the davekat laundry room scene which i have only seen panels for and not dialogue and i love them so much forever. and thats about the extent of my knowledge.

[motheatenscarf]

Going through more of the story content between ARR and Heavensward, just... DESPERATELY trying to get to Heavensward so I can unlock Dark Knight, it's ALL I WANT, but it's making me do a whole lot of primal killing for this being the "Seventh Astral Era."

The good news is that the Scions are starting to have actual personalities in the writing. The bad news is I don't like most of them :T

One I do for sure like tho is Y'shtola now, and not just by default as the only one with an inkling of a personality with any competence about her. She's making very cogent and correct arguments about why the various tribes keep summoning up primals, which.

Read more, cuz this got long, but-

I've avoided mentioning it before now, but yeah, I don't... love how they call the beast tribes "Beast Tribes", I get what they're going for. This is a fantasy setting, these are fantastical magical beings that are designed to look like folkloric creatures that often embody bestial elements, your fish folk, your pixies, your lizard men, what have you. I even get the point they're, I think, going for, about how there basically aren't real gods in this world. So these people's sense of superiority is something the narrative will punish them for, and it's clearly being written from a sympathetic point of view and well meaning, but it's not great that they're the beast tribes and we're civilization, but I get what they're trying to do even if it's just... unfortunate. It's annoying for me but not a dealbreaker, but I can see it being one for someone else, that's my privilege there.

Anyway, other than that, the big red string conspiracy board I'm building is the most engaged I've been with this narrative for want of characters to care about. Everything is just primals summoned up by belief and desperation from frightened people, it's all primals all the way down. The general public opinion hasn't caught up with that in universe yet, but it's clearly been implied by the Moogle raid I had to do (which I got an AMAZING sword from btw, pics later). I don't for one minute believe the twelve gods of Eorzea were ever real, and the fact that an Ascian rolled up to some Ala Mhigans and told them to summon forth Rhagan is proof of that imo.

Speaking of, I STILL don't fucking trust Hydalen. She's just a primal born out of the biggest fucking aether crystal yet, and there's a lot of dualism going on, so I know that she's supposed to be the primal opposite to whatever that Dark Crystal has going on, and I'm pretty sure Ascians are just tempered by the Dark Crystal and that the WoL and anyone with the Echo is tempered by Hydalen.

Which, again, the tempering is horrifying. I feel BAD for the people who get tempered, I don't know why the game keeps trying to make them out to be villains, they are victims who've had their free will stolen and now exist to worship this being. Even when we kill a primal, it's not like we can kill everyone who was tempered by them, of course people are going to keep summoning them up even if they're not having their territory stolen from them.

But anyway, my conspiracy board.

So if the only way for someone not to be tempered is if a god has already laid claim to them, then I'm pretty sure Hydalen called dibs on my character and Minfilia. I don't think any of the rest of the scions have the echo, or if they do, they've been quiet about it. I thought they all did, when Thancred first recruited me he said he also saw the woman buying the food she was accused of stealing (again, hated that story beat, I hope she did steal it), but I guess it's just me and Minfilia. Which at least makes it a little more excusable that they haven't been lifting a goddamn finger to help me kill these primals, I maintain that the Scions just feel like a brunch club with me, Y'shtola, and Alphinaud, who is a CHILD, doing all the work.

But anyway, yeah, even if she doesn't want anything from me, I don't trust Hydalen for a fucking second, I'm 99% sure she tempered my ass to give me this echo. Which is probably born from my frustration with this game's inability to let the PC have a voice or input any kind of opinion or be anything but a mute automaton whose only function is to use the echo to kill primals. Which, again, I don't trust. If the echo made a little fish priest immortal and able to body hop, clearly that's what the Ascians have going on, so maybe the echo isn't even... good, actually. And also makes me worried because I've been really hoping someone will kill Minfilia, and if she has the echo, and the echo makes you immortal, then she's never fucking leaving and I'm in my own personal hell.

[3416]

Maple Leafs player survey, Part 2: Best trash talker, healthiest, best seat mate

By Joshua Kloke | Feb 7, 2023 | The Athletic

Maple Leafs fans, it’s the All-Star break and there’s a lull in the schedule for a while here, so let’s take a step back and reflect: Even after Wednesday’s loss to the Bruins, the Leafs still have a .673 win percentage after 52 games, good for fifth-best in the NHL and are once again in contention for home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs.

In short, for now, life is good, right?

With that sense of big-picture positivity in mind and no games to wring your hands over until late next week, The Athletic wanted to keep things light. We posed six fun questions to the Leafs over the last few months in the hopes of providing fans with a look inside the characters and relationships that make up this team.

Part 1 looked at the team’s desert island movies, the cleanest and messiest Leafs and which player is likely to become a head coach.

Part 2 gets the team talking about who their favourite person is to sit beside on a flight, the healthiest and least healthy players and the team’s best trash talker.

–––

Who is your favourite person to sit beside on team flights?

Up and down the team’s charter, there are some unsuspecting groups and duos paired together. Perhaps contrary to what one might expect, linemates and close friends don’t often sit beside each other.

Instead, team flights are an opportunity for players to mingle. John Tavares sits on his own but will keep the seat beside him open if any young players get called up to the Leafs.

Matt Murray voted for Justin Holl.

“We exchange books sometimes, I’ll ask him what he’s reading, what’s good,” Murray said. “He likes a lot of history books. He was reading one about the Vietnam War recently. We just bounce ideas back and forth.”

When Holl isn’t discussing, say, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, he’s taking part in one of the louder activities on the team flights: A heated, ongoing game of Mario Party with Auston Matthews, Zach Aston-Reese and Michael Bunting.

Holl is something of a ringleader of a crew that plays a variety of simple games on their Nintendo Switches.

“New games keep coming out, so I like to learn the games first and then introduce them to the rest of the team so I’m better at it. It makes me feel good about myself,” deadpanned Holl.

“I’m by far better at (Mario Party),” Bunting countered, “but Holl is my number one enemy. It’s mostly luck. It’s like a board game, you’ve got to get the bounces.”

As entertaining as that crew undoubtedly is, we need to discuss a player who otherwise flies spectacularly low under the radar day-to-day but seems to be at the epicentre of the team flight: T.J. Brodie.

Mark Giordano is more into watching movies on flights and keeping things low-key, so he voted for his long-time Flames teammate, Brodie.

“He’s quiet, and doesn’t bother you much,” Giordano said.

Wayne Simmonds also enjoys sitting beside Brodie, but has intel to share.

“Brodie is not quiet on the plane,” Simmonds said, defiantly.

Oh?

“He’s funny. He’s a conspiracy theorist, and he’s got a whole lot going on in his brain,” Simmonds said with a smile.

So what’s the best conspiracy theory Brodie has laid on his travel buddy?

“Michael Jordan is an alien,” Simmonds said, with a hearty laugh.

And yet it’s not just conspiracy theories that Brodie apparently loves sharing.

Alex Kerfoot also voted for Brodie, for a completely different reason.

“We do play cards on the plane, and there’s eight people playing cards and six of the people are just sitting back in their seat, relaxing, and (Brodie) is the best helper. We’ve got to hand out the chips, hand out the cards, clean stuff up, and (Brodie) has all the stuff on his side of the table. He’s dialled in. He’s got the cards set up, cards are shuffled, everything is in order. When we have to clean up, he cleans up right away. (Morgan) Rielly and (Mitch) Marner, they’re on the other side doing their thing,” Kerfoot said.

I had to get to the bottom of this, so I asked Brodie himself who he enjoys sitting beside on flights. And when I did, and he provided the most logical answer I heard, I was left wondering if we’ve only scratched the surface of T.J. Brodie, Maple Leaf Enigma.

“Willy,” Brodie said. “Because he sleeps pretty much every flight, the whole flight, so you don’t have to worry about him getting up to go to the bathroom.”

“You were a popular pick because you’re quiet,” I told him.

“Sometimes I play poker,” Brodie said, before pausing, “…if they need me.”

Brodie’s answer does track.

Like, hey, Calle Jarnkrok, what’s it like sitting beside one of the most interesting people on this Leafs team, a player in the middle of the best season of his NHL career no less?

“(William Nylander) sleeps all the time, so it’s perfect,” Jarnkrok said. “He’s always tired. It’s good to be next to him.”

The Swede crew is a real thing. Two friends that do stick close together on a team flight are Rasmus Sandin and Timothy Liljegren.

“I’ve been sitting next to (Sandin) for two years,” Liljegren said. “He’s low maintenance.”

Let’s give some love to lone wolves, too: Who wouldn’t need a break from a group of people you see, like, all the time otherwise?

“I like sitting alone,” David Kampf said, a little too seriously. “Sometimes I play cards with the boys. But I watch movies.”

“I like just zoning out, putting on my headphones and listening to some music,” added Conor Timmins, who, if he had to pick, would probably listen to country singer Morgan Wallen.

–––

Who is the healthiest and least healthy?

This was essentially a question designed to get professional athletes to rat on each other.

“They keep us so dialled in here with food and supplements,” Murray said, before naming Giordano and Tavares as the two healthiest teammates.

Sure enough, Tavares got plenty of votes, with teammates claiming he has his own specific diet he adheres to.

“Johnny brings his own stuff on the road,” Brodie said. “He was bringing his own olive oil.”

Jarnkrok insists Tavares brings his own brand of water on the road.

“I see it all the time,” Jarnkrok said.

A lot of this is in line with the John Tavares the one and only Jonas Siegel wrote about ahead of his 1,000th game. Tavares is a foodie who most notably cooks his own pizzas.

And those of you who have been following along closely at home know about my own obsession for cooking pizza. So, this was the shortest of putts: I had to ask Tavares about cooking pizza.

The Leafs captain has a wood-burning oven at his cottage. His toppings of choice? Bell peppers, red onion and, if it’s handy, some wild game such as ground venison. Most of his pizzas are finished with fresh basil, arugula and a balsamic vinegar glaze. Notably, Tavares keeps to his healthy habits by using organic and fermented flour from Brodflour, a Toronto-based urban mill.

“We try to keep everything really clean, really fresh,” Tavares said of the dough. “You really notice a difference.”

The next step in Tavares’ pizza-making will see him and his family try to grow more of their own vegetables at home and get their two young children involved in the process.

“My kids love doing it when we make (pizza),” Tavares said.

Kampf, long known for his almost fanatical workouts, received votes.

“He’s a machine,” Bunting said of Kampf.

“For me, it’s not hard to avoid fast food. It’s my lifestyle,” Kampf said. “I like to be healthy and live a long life, right? It’s not about sport. I just want to be a healthy person.”

So what, for example, would Kampf cook on a night like that one?

“Me and my wife, we eat simple food,” Kampf said. “Rice, ground beef, cheese on top with some pomegranate. That would be our favourite thing to eat. And a salad, and a smoothie with some greens.”

Now, at the other end of the spectrum, Kampf wasn’t shy with his vote.

“Oh…a lot of guys,” Kampf said when asked which of his teammate was the least healthy.

When pressed, Kampf made the same choice as every other Leaf I asked.

“Mitchy,” Kampf said. “He eats a lot of fast food.”

“Mitchy talks about burgers a lot,” Jarnkrok confirmed.

“Wendys, McDonalds, he does it all,” Simmonds said.

All of this feels like ganging up on Marner, though, and I’m going to stick up for him here. In November 2021, Marner told Siegel he’s eating burgers less and less often.

“I’m just trying to get a lot better meals in me,” said Marner then, “trying to get a lot more greens and vegetables in me, which before I never really cared to eat. Now, I realize that’s essential to get in me. I think I’ve just been a lot better, acting like a grownup now.”

Perhaps what we should be doing is applauding Marner for his superhuman metabolism?

“Mitch can eat whatever he wants,” Giordano said, “and he finds a way to make himself go.”

–––

Who is the best trash talker?

There were only four Leafs whose names were brought up in this category, and most of them shouldn’t be surprising.

First, the (slight) winner.

“We only have one (trash talker): Big Mike,” Jarnkrok said, referring to Bunting. “But he only talks trash with the other team.”

“He’s the one you hear the most,” Liljegren agreed.

Yet we might need to place an asterisk beside this award, though.

“Mikey likes to talk the most, but I don’t know if he’s very good at it,” Brodie said.

“I would never vote for myself,” Bunting said. “(Giordano) has got some funny ones. But he probably chirps his teammates more than he chirps other teams.”

Giordano’s trash-talking drew some appreciation from teammates, sure, but he probably still places fourth here.

The silver medal mostly likely goes to Marner.

“Mitch is pretty witty when it comes to chirping,” Giordano said.

“Always a lot of talking on the ice,” Ilya Samsonov said. “Always.”

What Marner says seems to land.

“Mitchy is pretty good,” Simmonds said. “But he just doesn’t shut up. It’s more annoying. It gets ya. And he goes deep, really quickly. He’s ruthless. When he thinks something, he says it.”

Finally, the bronze medal goes to Simmonds, the player who’s probably been throwing verbal barbs the longest.

“He’s fast with his mouth, and he’s a tough guy,” Pierre Engvall said. “So he can back it up.”

[fictionkinfessions]

Aaaaa. I miss Cait:(( She was so sweet and would always sit me and braid my hair, always talking because she knew my brain would go haywire in the quiet. We would get obsessed with a mystery or a book and make a whole board taking up the entire floor. We’d talk for hours about our theories, until Vi would come in and joke about getting us to go back to hating each other. “Please, if I see anymore red yarn or crayons..” Vi used to say while staring at our conspiracy board. It was always playful though. It always helped with my head that liked to jump to conclusions. Instead of just letting me dwell and think someone was out to get me, Cait would gently take me over to her bed and set me down and redirect my trailing thoughts onto a case she was solving or theorize about what would happen next in whatever story I was into. It helped more than I’d ever admit. Her eyes were always so kind and understanding, full of kindness and trust. I’m sorry I ever thought them deceitful. And I appreciate her being so open about what she was thinking, knowing that I still occasionally struggled with that delusion that she was secretly sent to separate Vi and I. I tried really really hard as well, to give her the space she needed, to do everything to make up for the harm i did, i never expected her to not want to kill me. But i’m glad I got to know her love, it was the sweetest in the world. I know it’s goofy, but I fell in love the first time she pointed my gun at me. Like wow, she really knew how to command a presence.

God I sound so strange, sorryyy. I just really miss Cait and its insomniac hours so i’m very sleepy. I want her to come hold me and talk me to sleep

I love and miss you, Cait.

Jinx (Arcane)