#worse than if he actually just died during his whole murder suicide bit

[fishing-for-blood]

I haven't kept up with mha in a while since I could see the downhill trajectory the story was taking for all of the villains from like a mile away, but god damn if the latest leaks regarding Dabi haven't exceeded my expectations in terms of the amount of pure disappointment and frustration that could fit into one character arc. What the shit

[ectonurites]

does t-shirt conner and 90s conner and new conner all feel like different people to you, or is it just me? i know things get written, rewritten and rebooted but. they all just feel like different characters. it's weird.

Like... yes and no? It's complicated.

(Sorry in advance I'm starting out with mostly text citations rather than images, but theres images later. Also this got incredibly long. Sorry!)

Because at a glance I definitely agree there are differences between each of those eras of Conner, things that are pretty clearly apparent when you just pick up a comic from each timeframe

But like, at this point where I've read a lot of Kon stuff and see like... the connecting points between these Kons with context, I think it's not hard to rationalize where the changes in personality come from (even if the writers might not have put that same amount of thought into it that I have tbh) which can make it feel more like 'this is a person who is changing over time as he goes through life because of specific things he went through' rather than just 'this is a completely separate character suddenly when the writers changed' (like... the separate writers thing is more how Jason feels than any other character to me)

90's Kon comes fresh into the world unexperienced but wanting so badly to prove himself and be Superman, but he's just not quite there yet because of his age and naivety. He knows a lot of things because of Cadmus-implanted knowledge, but he doesn't necessarily understand all of them. He's immature, kinda rude sometimes bc he purposefully bases himself/his personality on what's popular (something gone into in Superboy Vol. 4 #83 when he spends a whole issue lamenting that he's lost his coolness) because he cares a lot about how people perceive him, but has a good heart and wants to see the best in people (that's kinda how he got into the damn Knockout situation in the first place, he was so convinced she couldn't have actually committed the murder she was accused of. She took advantage of his trust/desire to see good in others). He's fun and doesn't take things too seriously until it comes down to the wire, and he knows that's a flaw (Superboy Vol. 4 #91, with the "I can't believe this is my life. Wake me up, please. This isn't fun anymore.") and eventually that 'living life his own fun way' thing bites him in the ass a few too many times.

It's the combination of a few things that'd happened earlier (Tana's death during Sins of Youth, The arc with Jim's death and rebirth + just generally everything with Amanda Spence, Bart's half-death thing during Our Worlds at War) with Superboy Vol. 4 #100 and Graduation Day, that all leads to/marks the specific change in him that leads into 't-shirt Conner' even before the Lex/Clark reveal takes stuff a step further.

In Superboy Vol. 4 #100, because he had been living on his own in Suicide Slum with his public identity... he ends up putting his whole apartment building in danger when someone targeting him plants a bomb there. That's why he agrees to move in with Ma & Pa and adopt a civilian identity, because his carelessness with his identity displaced an entire building's worth of people of their homes and cost someone their life. Then, pretty shortly after, Graduation Day happens. He's one of the people who jumps into the action which makes things worse (something Tim angrily points out in their infamous closet scene) and then things go further and Donna dies, Cassie disbands the team because she thinks them not taking things seriously enough got them into the situation in the first place. These things weigh really heavily on him!

Him being a lot more reserved afterwards and kinda shrinking in on himself a bit... doesn't seem that insane to me. All of them saw the events of Graduation Day as a time to grow up. I think Cassie & Bart's specific changes were the ones that made the least sense in this era (and then while Tim was definitely edgier in TT 03 it's also a far less noticeable change than Conner's) but the core of what was going on in Conner's life leading into him revamping himself again does make sense imo. (execution could have been better! far better. But the core idea itself I get). And then when you throw in the Lex/Clark retcon which makes him, already in a place where he's doubting how he's been living his life up to that point, question everything he knows about himself... it does make an amount of sense that he'd just feel different. But I do feel the need to reiterate, he's really not quite as different as I see some people act like and I feel like that stems from the YJ cartoon being the immediate association with 't shirt Conner', even though in the TT 03 run he's still definitely got way more of his personality than that.

Anyways then... ya know plot happens. Luthor takes over and makes him attack his team, Superboy-Prime comes and calls him a fake, he saves everyone but dies in the process during Infinite Crisis. These are situations where a person might not be feeling most like themselves.

Then he comes back, and when he's back is definitely an era I enjoy more in terms of 'times he's wearing the t-shirt' overall, because you can see that he's kinda taking a step back from the problems he was going through + not handling the best way early in the TT 03 era, and re-examining them from a slightly more mature lens. Like, he's not suddenly always handling things perfectly as evidenced by the whole 'List of what Superman does and list of what Lex Luthor does' thing, but it's definitely a slightly more rational/mature approach to dealing with that situation. He's not just going 'agh i was born evil......' now its more 'okay lets... lets see who I actually act more like-'

That arc specifically also does something that I think really rings true to an aspect I brought up earlier about his 90's characterization: puts a focus in on how he's trying to see if there's any good in Lex. That's why he's seeking him out in those first few issues. Obviously he comes to the eventual conclusion that no, there isn't this guy fucking sucks, but it's still that attempt to hope that really does feel like the same Conner when he's just grown up a decent amount. It's not blind faith like things were with Knockout, but a regular hope that someone could be better that feels like it stems from that same place inside him.

In the following stuff once he's thrown the journal with the lists out and come to his own conclusions about how he's never going to be like Lex, he's walking this new line of 'Okay, but I also can't just try to live my life as Clark, so how am I gonna live my life?' It's him wondering about just kinda... who exactly he is. What it is he's doing, what his sense of direction's gotta be.

(Superboy Vol. 5 #6)

The other day I'd made a big post talking about Kon's view on wanting to be Superman, and some of that feels relevant around now. Here Kon is at this point in his life where he definitely wants that title one day, but he's not in a rush to get there. And post-Boy of Steel he is acknowledging the distinctions between himself and Clark more, but he's still choosing to stay in Smallville and loosely follow Clark's path.

He also kinda re-defines his reasoning for coming to Smallville in this run to separate it from just trying to be like Clark in Boy of Steel, into more... looking for answers about how his life could have been if he'd been more like Clark.

(Superboy Vol. 5 #11)

This ending to me is him accepting that he's gotta find his own path rather than try to find answers about a life he didn't life. He's a hero and not normal and that's okay, he's gonna stay in Smallville and be his weird hero self with his weird friends and not worry about the stuff that doesn't apply to him. He's not Clark, but Smallville's his home now too.

Which is why what YJ 2019 then did with him is actually really fascinating to me. It builds off some of these different thoughts he was having in ways that like... sorta kinda almost make sense, it's like the last piece of the 'I don't need to live my life in a pre-defined way' idea clicked.

Like... if we consider the YJ 2019 flashbacks as picking up shortly after Superboy Vol. 5 ended (which is definitely the implication) then Conner has come to terms with that stuff I just said above, but he's still living his day-to-day life in a relatively unchanged way. He's still living at the farm and going to school and all that kinda normal life stuff outside of times he's actively being Superboy.

But when his teacher here talks it all really hits him that even though he likes living in Smallville, sitting around playing Clark Kent Jr. during the school days because he feels like that's the path he should be going down/the rules he thinks he should follow... just isn't the best use of his time. Kinda connecting back to that 'sense of purpose' thing from his talk with Tim, him feeling like what he was at the time doing in Smallville wasn't quite the answer. And he even reiterates he only started like going to school like this in the first place because of trying to be like Clark.

(Young Justice (2019) #3)

So this is kinda him having a taste of rebellion again, after spending a decent amount of time trying to more closely fit the mold of Clark's life. Not necessarily rejecting being at all like Clark or life in Smallville in general or anything like that, but making a choice to figure out his own path picking and choosing the bits he likes (Smallville itself, The farm, Ma) and leaving behind the parts he doesn't want (his secret identity being so similar to Clark bc that's the only way I can read him putting on a leather jacket again as he walks straight out of school, going to school in general)

That's I think a big reason why while he's stuck on Gemworld he decides to switch back into something more like his original outfit, it's him returning more to just what he likes and how he wants to do things which is closer to how he lived life back in the 90s, but going at it with some more maturity from having spent time more reserved trying to follow in footsteps. It's a full circle thing, it's arriving back closer to his original self but with more intent this time so of course it's not exactly the same.

i guess the tldr:

90's Kon was his own rebellious experimental thing but he also really didn't know what he was doing yet because he was so new to the world -> early 2000s Kon was so concerned with how others perceived him -> 2003 Kon was having to adjust to a new way of living and new revelations about who he really is -> post-resurrection Kon was trying to define who he was outside of just Lex/Clark's clone and figure out what path he was going to go down -> YJ 2019 Kon is re-approaching his original self with all the experiences he now has under his belt and kinda a new purpose especially in the aftermath of spending a decent chunk of time stuck separated from his loved ones

So like... because in my mind it just kinda clicks how all these different versions of Kon connect into one another, they don't feel quite as separate to me? If that uhhh.. makes sense.

[taramaclaywasaterf]

Hey guys, I know I said I was taking a break. And I am. I’m not actually, like, back back. I just need to vent, I guess.

For those who don’t know, my grandfather committed suicide. He’d been battling lung and stomach cancer for years, and the pain had gotten so unbearable that I guess he couldn’t take it anymore. He’d been in and out of the hospital for years, and the whole month leading up to his death, he was home maybe 4 nights total, the rest spent in the hospital. My dad found him. We’ve been grieving together. It’s been hard.

My family doesn’t really get along that well. Basically just me and one of my cousins are really close, but that's it. My grandfather was kinda the glue that was keeping everyone together. His death was kind of like the final string that was tying us all together being severed.

I don’t know. The police had to come. It was really really bad. They had to make sure he wasn’t murdered.

I just hope it was quick. I hope he’s with my grandmother now. That she was waiting for him on the other side, wherever that may be. That he’s not in any pain anymore. That he knows I love him so fucking much.

As for me, I just feel…I just feel fucking numb. This happened two days after the anniversary of the death of my best friend, and less than a month after the death of Trevor Moore, a comedian whose sketches made me laugh during the worst times of my childhood and whose sudden death really fucked me up.

I kinda just shut down. I didn’t really cry at all the first day. The second day all I did was cry. After that, its like my body physically stopped letting me feel anything at all. I’m just numb. And tired. And my fucking head hasn’t stopped hurting.

I walked around his house and got some things I wanted. Some old photos. Cards I made him when I was little that he kept all these years. Some love notes my grandmother wrote him when they were young. His favorite hat. I found a photo from his wedding to my grandmother, and its now hanging above my bed. Its crazy how much I look like her. How happy he looked to have her in his arms.

I also brought home his cat. I was terrified he wouldn’t fit in with my two cats and dog. But after a bit of a shaky start, and a lot of hours spent sitting with him trying to get him to trust me, he’s settled in. My grandpa rescued him from a shelter when he was a few years old. He loved my grandfather more than anything. I can tell he’s still mourning him, like we all are. But I like to think we’ve been helping each other get through it. I hope my grandfather knows I have him. That he’s not going anywhere. That he’s safe with me, and he’s happy and warm and loved. He’s curled up on my lap right now as I write this. He’s purring quietly.

I miss him. I wish I told him more that I love him. I wish I spent more time with him. I wish I could’ve at least said goodbye. I’ve been through a lot of grief in my life, and it never fucking gets easier. I wish I could take this feeling out of me leave it somewhere for a while. I wish I could fix things. I wish my dad didn’t have to see what he saw. I wish I could make it better for him. I wish this wasn’t how things were.

As for how I am right now, well, I’m laughing. Hysterically. And crying. A lot. I took a break writing this post because it was getting too hard, so I distracted myself by watching dumb videos on my phone. Until this video of Trevor Moore popped up in my Youtube recommended:

And now I genuinely can’t fucking stop laughing. Like, holy fucking shit, Trevor. You really had a way of making jokes that are flat out prophetic, huh? Here I’ve been, on the verge of relapse for the past month over how bad your death fucked ME up, and here you are, years ago, calling me out for how completely and utterly ridiculous I am. And the fact that I’m even writing THIS right NOW makes it even worse! Look at me, acting as if you fucking died to make me learn a fucking lesson! As if my own fucking grandfather died to make me appreciate life more! As if my best friend wrapped her goddamn car around a tree just to make me realize how precious fucking friendships are! As if the entire fucking universe revolves around deliberately fucking my life up! Its pathetic! Its fucking tragic and fucked up and absolutely mind-blowingly fucking pathetic! And yet here I am, writing on the fucking internet to you, Trevor, still doing the same fucking thing! And I can't fucking stop laughing, because this is the most Trevor fucking thing I can possibly think of!

Like. I don’t even know what to do anymore, guys. I know I said I’d be taking a break, and I still am. I just needed to get this out. I don’t want to bother my friends with it, they’re worried enough about me as it is right now. They're kinda treating me as if I'm made of glass right now, which I understand, but its still frustrating. I know they just want me to be ok, and just want to keep me from doing anything stupid and fucking up my life again, but still. Being treated like a paper doll at a waterpark is getting tiring. I guess it just speaks to how entirely not-great I'm doing- that even my closest friends aren't making jokes about this shit- they're acting like I'm some fragile fucking child. But yeah.

Again, I know they mean well, and they just really don't want to see me get sucked down into that fucking void again, but I want to be distracted from all the fucked up things in my life. I want to laugh about it, and not be constantly fucking reminded of how bad things are every time I catch them looking at me like I'm some sad little puppy dog they found on the side of the road.

Oh! to top it all off, I got a letter in the mail yesterday. From my mother. Who I haven't spoken to in around a decade, because she was an abusive addict who made my childhood hell. She wants to have fucking coffee and "catch up." Jesus fucking christ, why now. Seriously. Why fucking now? Nothings been released publicly about my grandfather yet- the only people who know about it is immediate family, and everyone on my dad's side of the family fucking hates my mom almost as much as I do, so there is no way in hell anyone told her about it. So this is just a total coincidence. A giant fucking cosmic "fuck you." (Oh, look, there I go again thinking my existence is meaningful enough to the entire enormity of the universe that it would target me specifically to fuck with! Jesus fucking christ!) Like, I swear to god this fucking woman has some sort of alarm in her brain that says "oh hey, my daughter is at one of the the lowest points in her life?? Time to drop on by and say hello!!!!"

Just...I don't even know. Fuck. I don't know how the fuck I'm gonna get through all this shit, yall.

Well. Anyway. Thats it for now.

Find Kony 2012, I guess.

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Lily (from "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus", what else?) and Lenin and maybe some other people? Watch "Heathers". Reactions? Or what they get transported there? Sorry, it's just that I'm in this Heathers-obsession phase and since I love your work so much (and the fact that Trotsky is kinda sorta like JD) I've been wondering about a crossover like that. I honestly have no idea what your answer to this will entail.

I’ve been musing on this one for a bit now but I suppose it’s time to dig in and answer.

First, I’m not usually a fan of the “X characters watch Y thing” so we’re going to avoid that. Also, to Wizard Lenin, it’d undoubtedly be yet another one of Lily’s weird 80′s movies that she loves so much and forces him to watch. It’s less gory than Predator, but dammit Lily, high school isn’t like this! 

Getting transported there is a similarly weird story. It’s such a muggle setting that it really doesn’t mesh well with the “Sisyphus” cast. Why would Lily and Wizard Lenin be stuck in this high school in Ohio? Would they even do anything besides go “That JD kid sure is weird” and “Wow, the death count here is higher than Hogwarts!”? Point being, I can’t imagine they’d get entangled in the true plot of “Heathers” and at best would be providing riff track commentary on this crazy high school. 

So, instead, let’s go the good old fusion route. Let’s make the world of “Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus” just a bit more like “Heathers” and see how it pans out.

Because “Heathers” is all about the destruction of society from within, we’re axing Voldemort. Sorry, Tom, you got stuck in a magical mirror, eaten by bears, or something after 1943 and are going to be Sir Not Appearing in this Universe. As a result, there’s no Voldemort, but the deep societal issues that Tom took advantage of very much remain and are flourishing. 

In this world, Lily is still a god, but is not immediately recognized as such by being the girl who lived. Instead, she’s just a strange, dangerously overpowered, nuisance that nobody likes. And her home life is trash.

I imagine in the world without Voldemort, Death Eaters, and a second war Lily and James’ marriage quickly crumbles. This is mainly due to the stress of marriage but also due to having a gifted, ridiculously intelligent, and creepy child. Within a few years, Lily Evans has the audacity to do what is never done: she divorces her pureblood lord husband and tries to vie for child custody. She loses, of course, as she’s a muggle born woman, and is basically banished from ever seeing her kid again.

James never really gets over this, Ellie looking so much like Lily Evans certainly not helping matters, and over the years grows very cold to her. She’s not a son so is useless to inherit, she’s nothing like him, and she’s just an all around disappointment. James very quickly gets remarried for political purposes, marrying a far less scandelous pureblood witch from pick your prestigious family, and they have a son meaning that Lily is no longer heir.

Lily thus attends Hogwarts as essentially the half-blood Potter. She’s for all intents and purposes a bastard child, one barely acknowledged by her father, and is also weird. As a result I imagine she’s bullied relentlessly much in the manner Luna is. For years.

I imagine Luna Lovegood is her only friend, as the pair have bonded over constantly having their stuff destroyed and being locked out of their dormitories. 

Enter Lily’s seventh year and thus the plot.

The outside world is looming and Lily effectively has no future. Despite being the daughter of Lord Potter, she’s in a similar position that Tom Riddle was. She won’t be hired into the Ministry or basically any position thanks to her dubious heritage as well as the fact that no one likes her.

Mostly, she just wants out. She wants out of the country where everyone knows exactly who she is and where she came from. Her best hope for this is employment with the goblins but she needs recommendations from a professor. Her best bet is Slughorn, but while he’s always been awed of her ability after seven years of Lily the charm has worn off. Lily has never received an invitation to the Slug Club.

Lily realizes that to get out she must become popular so someone can vouch for her to Slughorn. Not to mention her life might become slightly, slightly, less miserable. So, Lily approaches the Heathers. Much like in the film/musical, Lily offers her services to them for the fee of making nice, pretending to like her, and getting her an in with Slughorn.

This spirals out of control as the Heathers instead do the makeover and make Lily suddenly cool. She’s suddenly invited to parties, people talk to her, it’s a whole new world.

Around this time, Lily in the room of requirement happens to stumble across the diary (nevermind how he gets there, we’ll pretend Tom just never managed to smuggle him out of the castle). Tom has been trapped in there, dying, and Lily obliviously informs him that all his ambitions and sacrifices amounted to nothing. There was no dark lord after Grindelwald, she’s never heard of a Tom Riddle, and everything she describes makes it sound like nothing has changed.

Tom Riddle inexplicably vanished off the face of the earth leaving only the diary behind.

Naturally, Tom is very pissed about this, and sets about plotting how he can return, trying to get Lily to open up by asking her for help returning him to his body. Lily does him one better and just returns him to his body without any sacrifice, casually remarking that she’s always been like this as long as she can remember, fully accepting Tom to yell “SHE’S A WITCH! BURN HER!” to her face as everyone else does.

Tom, however, is floored and everything he’s ever known to be true is thrown out the window. He decides to make Lily his new pet project. 

Unfortunately for him, by this point Lily has a Slug Club to attend, only it goes horribly wrong. The Heathers have purposefully set about humiliating Luna, Lily’s only friend, and Lily has to very publicly break ties with them even though it means sacrificing her only real chance of leaving the country with gainful employment. Worse, the Heathers promise wrath the likes of which Lily has never seen before.

Lily, devastated and despairing, goes back to Tom and confesses all the shitiness of her extremely shitty life and how she doesn’t even know what the Heathers will do to her now. Tom finds this a little odd, as Lily has quickly proven herself the most powerful person on the planet, but he’s willing to play along. More to the point, Lily and Tom’s relationship goes from 0 to 100 as he is not only the first guy to show interest in her but he’s very very interested and very very hot. When Lily decides to beg Alpha Heather for forgiveness, Tom notes that he’ll come with, he’s better with people than she is.

Tom, having hit a low point of nihilist rage thanks to Voldemort having amounted to nothing, poisons Alpha Heather and dutifully covers for Lily by writing her suicide note. This works. There is an ecstasy of joyous grief throughout the school as staff and students alike confess how they never knew the true Heather. Lily is astounded, Tom is ecstatic.

Lily tries to return to life as normal, goes back to hanging out with Luna, but also has to introduce Tom to the school. Tom suggests she mind wipes everyone, that makes Lily uncomfortable, so she instead confesses what she believes is the truth in that Tom was trapped in an enchanted object. Dumbledore nearly has a stroke, but since Tom Riddle never became Voldemort, it’s more that this is a solution to an unsolved mystery and the castle is glad Tom isn’t actually dead. They’d thought he got hit by one of those muggle bombs during WWIII or whatever it was the muggles had going on. 

HA HA HA HA, but no, Tom says in response.

In the meantime Tom gets to witness Lily’s weird and strained relationship with her father, his friends, and her younger half-brother. Tom points out that Lily seeking out gainful employment is unnecessary. Lily doesn’t have to be a part of society, like all these worthless people around her, she’s so powerful that she can do whatever she likes however she likes it. She can simply leave the country, she could become a dark lord even, there’s nothing stopping her. Lily’s never thought of it like that before, to become a true part of society, to be accepted on some level by that society, has always just seemed like the obvious path to her. What else would she do?

Due to this, Lily and Tom’s relationship continues to grow as they’re really the first people to see each other as they are. Naturally, this is when shit hits the fan. Thanks to Tom, Lily’s invited to another Slug Club with him (Tom can still become minister even if he was trapped in a book for fifty years! Slughorn says). Lily gets hit on and nearly sexually assaulted by some of the boys there, Lily gets out, but the next day rumor circulates around the school that Lily was in a threesome with them.

Tom Riddle sets up a ridiculous scheme in which he fakes their murder suicide where they confess to being homosexual. Lily is increasingly horrified. The school, once again, is in an ecstasy of joyful grief over the loss of these two, beautiful, oppressed, gay souls. Lily realizes that Tom is A Bad Dude (TM) and tries to confront him. He easily confesses he cares nothing about these people and has decided he wants to watch society burn. These are the people who thought he had died in the Blitz and did nothing. They are people who cannot and will not change. They’re the absentee fathers who dote on far less powerful, pureblood, sons. Tom has officially, completely, given up on the wizarding world and now he will destroy it as quickly and horrifically as he can. Lily, not belonging to society, can pour the kerosene on with him.

This is getting a little too gnarly for Lily and she dumps Tom.

Unfortunately, he quickly becomes exceedingly popular thanks to his angelic face, his natural charm and charisma, and his understanding of people. He passes around a petition for suicide and bullying awareness that everybody and their brother signs. What they’re really signing is pages from the diary which, much like Death Note, promises him both their magic and their life force.

Tom confronts Lily and admits he’s going to murder everybody, an entire generation of wizards and witches gone in an instant, AND LILY CAN BE HIS DARK QUEEN! Lily and Tom get into a fight, Tom accidentally murders the shit out of her and is devestated, only of course for Lily to wake up later after he’s left because she was unwittingly immortal this whole time.

Rising from the dead, Lily hunts Tom down before he can blow up the school, and sucks him back into the diary. Upon graduation Lily makes up with Luna, still has no prospects and plans to go and be homeless in India, has hesitantly gotten in contact with Lily Evans, basically has no contact left with her father, and has a boyfriend diary named Tom who might be let out in fifty years if he promises not to blow up a school. 

[cupcakefactory]

Zens Bithday

T/W: Minor mentions of suicide and self harm

word count: 813

Your smile hadn’t been the same, no it had been far from it. Everyone in The RFA knew why you looked strange – they knew why you couldn’t bring yourself to brush your hair, have a shower. Why you had given up your kids for Adoption, why you pushed them away. They knew you were in pain – struggling daily with the thought of never seeing him again, everyone knew it. However it was worse today, probably the worst its been since you where told he was dead – it had officially been a year. One of the hardest years you have ever gone through in your life but at lass it had been a year.

 Today you went to the shops to pick up, Marigolds , that you had learnt from Saeran means Pain and grief and, Red roses , which means love. Both of these seemed to suit the situation you were in – he was never coming back – you swore on your wedding day that would love him “til death do us part” however it seems you love will go past that, You will never move on from him no matter how hard you try. Maybe that’s why you gave up your children? Every time you looked at that white hair and red eyes your heart seemed to bleed with loss as if it would somehow bring him back to you. 

Stupid right? Wishing that he would come back because you prayed for it, because your heart wanted him too. It was ironic really – you should be feeling some sort of relief that his death was an accident, people you knew had lost loved ones to suicide or murder. You told yourself this daily however no matter how many times you repeated it you still struggled to not feel sad, you struggle to not feel pain. You walk for a bit until you end up outside of a movie theatre, standing there you let the tears that have been welling up finally start to pour. This is where it happened, the accident that took his life. He was doing a scene in a play that needed him to be lifted from the ground and into the air, however the prop broke last minuet and sent him tumbling down – he didn’t die right then tho. 

No, he died 3 weeks later in the hospital after fighting for his life in a coma. You could see he was in pain during those weeks however you choose to ignore it, you wanted him alive! Maybe it was your selfish desire that led to him being dead, maybe if you had let him go in the first few days.. he would have woken up? You knew it wasn’t true and knew it wouldn’t happen however you needed someone to blame.. and aren’t you always the easiest person to blame? With a small sob you turn away and walk to the grave yard, Yes you blamed yourself. You told him to audition for this show, you supported him when he wanted to quit it and you left him in pain in the hospital for some selfish desire that he would wake up and be happy. It was your fault, you knew that – no matter how many times the RFA told you that it wasn’t, nothing could change the way your brain worked. You were depressed and felt more alone than you ever had before.

 Finally making it to the Grave you knelt down placing your marigolds and red roses on top of the grave, your fresh tears creating puddles and fertilising the old soil. “its strange my love, its been a year but why does my heart and mind make me think its been longer?” With yet another sob you fall to your knees, tears pouring from your eyes as raspy breaths escape your lips. Your hands on the ground to steady yourself as your mind starts to run with everything that had happened over the last year

 “I gave up our children, hurt myself and the RFA, quit my job and all for what? Im not happy – no im far from it.. Actually..”

 You pull some papers from your bag and stick them to the Grave stone, a small smile on your lips for the first time in probably this whole year – your mind was buzzing as you looked around. 

“ill be there soon.. my love” And just like that you where gone, when the RFA found the notes they knew what had happened – everyone saw it coming if you will. V and Jumin held onto the children you had given them as the rest of the RFA struggle to fight the tears. You had gone, gone too soon like your husband – however this time you had been taken by your own mind. 

 “Happy birthday zen.. I hope you are happy now they are in your arms again”

[pertinax--loculos]

[WIP Introduction: Hellbent]

Finally! Just one thing to note: I’m struggling with terminology, so a lot of the words I use in this intro are subject to change.

Working Title: Hellbent

Status: planning/first draft

POV: close third limited (alternating)

Featuring/Themes: acceptance | addiction | religion and spirituality | transformation | growth | self-love and self-esteem | relationships | grief | LGBTQ+

Content Warnings: drug use/addiction | violence | abuse | character death/s | potential suicidal ideation | (all excerpts will be marked)

Synopsis:

Raleigh Lukas’s life is privileged, predictable, and placid. As a member of the Church, he knows exactly what comes next; he’ll finish college, marry his girlfriend, Kennedy, and have kids. Probably a few of them, to satisfy the Church’s requirements that the true humans increase their numbers.

Dash is homeless, hopeless, and haunted by his past. He’d be happy to just numb himself with drugs and let life pass him by, except that his friend-with-benefits Alec is obsessed with the Partners, an underground movement that supports the brainbent - humans born with extraordinary mental abilities. Whilst most of the brainbent are imprisoned, in hiding, or dead, a small handful work alongside sympathetic humans to overthrow the Church’s stranglehold on the upper echelons of society.

A chance meeting of these two very different lives leads to a tentative friendship that is challenged by the arrival of someone claiming to be the nigh-mythical Dantalion - a figure of brainbent legend, said to be powerful enough to turn the tide of the nascent resistance. It’s a bold claim, and one that Dash dismisses with a certainty that only makes Raleigh more curious about his mysterious past.

As tensions rise Raleigh finds himself in the middle of a struggle he didn’t want any part of - drawn on one side to his family, friends, and blind belief, and on the other to a movement with principles that just keep making more and more sense - and the broken addict who makes him question everything he thought he knew.

Criminally expository excerpt under the cut. Brief character intro masterpost to follow.

[Excerpt]

“So what’s a Dantalion?”

Dash snorted. “It’s nothing. It’s a myth.”

“Well, tell me the myth then. I’ve heard you and Alec talking about it…” Raleigh trailed off as Dash cut his eyes to him. He felt heat start to spread across his cheekbones. “Sorry.”

Dash huffed, shifting a little against the wall. “S’alright. Doubt you’re gonna overhear anything worse than what you already have.” He quirked an eyebrow at him, just slightly, and Raleigh felt the heat in his face intensify. “Thought you would’ve learned not to eavesdrop.”

“It wasn’t on purpose!” The protest was probably a little too strident; Raleigh looked down in the vain hope of hiding his embarrassment.

Dash just chuckled, leaning forward to swipe his cigarettes off the table. “You really wanna know?”

Raleigh nodded, looking back at him. “I’m curious.”

“Alright then.” Dash paused, took a long drag, then nodded slightly. “So, I know that your cult has been feeding you lies for your entire life, but to really understand, you have to realise that that’s what they are – lies. The vast majority of people that are brainbent, as you put it, are telekinetic, prophecisors, or empaths. Telepaths are exceedingly rare, and manips – short for manipulators, those who can control minds – are even rarer. It’s statistically probable that you’ll go through your entire life without ever meeting a telepath, let alone a manip.” He glanced down as he tapped ash off the end of his cigarette. “Even if you live a life like me, where you’re not actively avoiding them.

“So not only are manips rare, but for most of the ones that do exist, their abilities have been insanely overblown. Even the term ‘manipulator’ is a bit of a misnomer; they don’t so much overtly manipulate as kinda nudge you in a certain direction. Like, if you were on a train, a manip could get you to get off at any station they chose, but they wouldn’t be able to get you on the train in the first place, not unless you were already planning to do it. As far as getting you to kill yourself or something drastic, it’s completely out of the question. A manip could come in here and tell you to go jump off a cliff, but you wouldn’t do it. It’s more like influencing, not outright control.”

“For most of them.” Raleigh hadn’t missed that little tidbit.

The corner of Dash’s mouth quirked up. “For most of them. There are manips that are more powerful. That’s where most of your stories come from. Those manips can – or could – get you to do whatever they wanted. Your classic mind control, if you like. They say walk, you walk. They say jump, you jump. They say go stand in front of that train…” He shrugged, taking another drag. “You’re a stain on the tracks.

“Now, two of these… Coercers, they were called, were really well known during the War. Married couple, Michael and Sarah Johns. They had a child together. Mind manipulation is actually a recessive trait, same as telepathy – that’s part of the reason they’re so rare. No matter what your cult may have you believe, the brainbent really aren’t that big on eugenics, so it wasn’t like telepaths only married telepaths or whatever. The fact that Michael and Sarah were together was mostly just luck – they just happened to both be Coercers. I assume you know how genetics work?”

Raleigh frowned a little, trying to recall his high school biology classes. “For a recessive trait to be present in the child, it has to be present in both parents, right?”

“Right. Like blue eyes.” Dash grinned, tilting his head so his eyes caught the light. Raleigh had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself reacting. They really were very blue. “And if the parent has one dominant allele and one recessive, they’ll exhibit the dominant trait – I could’ve had one parent with brown eyes and still ended up with blue. You need two recessive alleles to exhibit the recessive trait.

“Upshot being, the kid was gonna be a Coercer. If one of the parents had been telekinetic, there was a chance it wouldn’t happen, but it was guaranteed with two Coercer parents.

“Anyway, Sarah and Michael were killed towards the end of the War. I don’t really know the details, just that it was a bomb. Blew up the whole building. And this is where the myth comes in – some people, especially a lot of the Partners, believe that the kid survived. They think he was taken in by some fundie family, and raised without knowing about his past. So they think that kid’s out there, either unaware of who he is and his abilities, or hiding for whatever reason. They wanna find him, get him onside, use him as a weapon or whatever.” Dash shrugged again, carefully crushing his cigarette out on the floor beside him.

Raleigh waited a few moments, but it seemed although that was the end of the story. He cocked his head to the side a little, narrowing his eyes in thought. “But, then… isn’t it possible? That he is actually alive, I mean?”

Dash arched an eyebrow at him. “You tell me. You think a fundie family would be willing to take in some brainbent trash? What for?”

Raleigh shifted uncomfortably. If Dash really wasn’t aware of this, being the person to enlighten him wasn’t a pleasant prospect. “Well… I mean, um, I heard, or I know, that after the War, instead of sending young kids to prison, there was a program, which had families take them in, foster them basically, in the hope that they could be… re-educated, I guess, that being raised in the- in a different environment might help to, y’know… suppress the… abilities, I guess.”

Dash’s gaze was steady, a smirk playing over his lips. “Oh yeah? And how’d that work out?”

“Well… not great, from what I’ve heard. They discovered it was, uh, more innate than they originally thought. Weren’t able to stop the, uh, abilities from manifesting.”

“Exactly.” Dash leaned forward a little, resting his elbows on his knees. “So, if the kid survived – and, recall, that requires him to either a, survive a bombing that killed his parents, or two, be forcibly taken away from his parents, both of whom could control fucking minds – he’d be in Carcerum. I mean, I’m of the opinion that he died with his parents, but hell, what would I know?” He sat back again, rolling his eyes a little.

When he put it like that, Raleigh had to admit that it seemed improbable at best. And he was right; even if, by some miracle, the child had survived the murder of his parents, odds were that he’d just ended up imprisoned.

“So then, why do so many people believe that he’s out there?” he said eventually.

Dash shrugged, nonchalant. “Why do people believe in God? They’ve gotta have faith in something, no matter how improbable.”

Raleigh winced, but only a little. He was getting more accustomed to Dash’s lack of faith and casual blasphemy, but comparing some brainbent myth to God was still a little disconcerting.

Rolling the story over in his head again, another question occurred to him. “So why’s he called Dantalion? Was that his name, or…?”

A small line appeared between Dash’s eyebrows. “I actually have no idea. I don’t even know if the kid was a boy or a girl, actually – I don’t think there’s any proof either way, it was Wartime and not a lot of stuff got documented.” He raised a hand to his mouth, chewing on a nail as he thought. “Most likely it’s just a name someone invented and it caught on. I mean, it’s a bit too perfect, isn’t it? A demon against the followers of God, and he ‘reaches in and changes the thoughts of everyone’ or whatever it is.”

“‘For he knoweth the thoughts of all men and women, and can change them at his will’,” Raleigh murmured. For some reason that line had stuck in his head; it was part of what had made him so curious about Dantalion in the first place.

Dash raised an eyebrow at him. “Done your research, huh?”

Raleigh glanced down. “I looked it up after I heard Alec mention it the first time. It made an impression.”

Dash snorted again, stretching his arms out in front of him and then rolling to his feet. “Well, now you know. Don’t worry about it too much. It’s a myth. It helps some of the Partners get through their day. That’s all there is to it.” He stretched a hand down to Raleigh. “C’mon, let’s go get something to eat.”

[sick-raven]

Ghosts of the past - Chapter 4

Chapter 1 + warnings

AO3

Previous chapter

Chapter 4

Miranda felt like after a week-long party. Sure, she had to walk off even worse before and even now she put up her brave face, but in reality, she just wanted to fall into bed and sleep.

“Would you tell me what happened?” asked her professor Crane. He took her to his house. They had to look ridiculous, if any neighbours have seen them, they had to thought Crane is bringing home drunk woman for sure.

He fixed her. Let her sleep whole day. Just once he attempted to touch the bell. She punched him. Went back to sleep. Now they finally had a chance to talk over a hot tea. He didn’t even have visible bruise. Miranda had to be very weak when she knocked him.

“It’s Gotham. Stray bullet hit me.”

“Please don’t lie. Little honesty should be in place after I saved your cute neck.” Miranda realized she likes his approach. Jonathan was straightforward, didn’t let her fuck around and had enough sass to not sound like a complete posh jerk. Just a jerk.

“Someone hit me,” she explained. “I didn’t ask. I don’t know who. They just want me gone.”

“What are you?”

“An assassin.”

“I figured so much.”

Miranda drank her tea thinking. She didn’t like what she said next, but what the hell. “Thank you for helping.”

“You didn’t give me much of a choice.”

“I think you had plenty of possibilities.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve read about your university research.”

No change in his demeaner or tone of voice. “When?”

“Before I moved here.”

“And you decided to visit me anyways?”

She shrugged. “Yeah. I don’t have much to lose. And I’ve dealt with… shady people before. Nobody died during your experiments. They just went completely bonkers.”

“Those are dangers of science. It got out of hand. I am changed man since.”

“Now you are the one lying. What about the wannabe Halloween costume?”

Jonathan smiled a little. Then he intertwined his fingers. “Are you willing to test a medication I have made?”

“After this conversation?” Miranda laughed. “Sure, I guess, I have nothing to lose.”

He nodded. “You say you don’t feel fear. I am going to make you.”

“I doubt it, but you are welcome to try.”

He walked away. Miranda has finished her tea. She wondered why she even agreed to this. She knew it won’t help. Nothing ever helped. No medication can make them go away. Her brain was fried. Maybe Crane will fry it some more. That might help.

And partially she was really interested in feeling again. Anything. Fear would be nice change of pace.

Jonathan returned with his stupid mask on. Miranda noticed his eyes through rough holes. Home-sawed potato sack you would put on dummy at farm. He carried a small vial.

“You don’t have to be so formal,” she said.

And then he opened the vial and out flew gas. Miranda coughed, the smell was terrible. Even rotten eggs are pleasant compared to this. “Damn,” she commented, “use air freshener.”

“What do you see, miss Bradbury?”

Her head started to spin. She looked up. Colours, shapes… The hallucination was there. It seemed so real. Scarecrow’s face was burning, heated wax fell from it on the ground. She felt the heat as if her skin was burning. His voice sounded like screeching.

But the feeling of fear wasn’t there. Her sensors were overloaded, her brain wanted to shut down, her flank hurt, and the pain spread slowly through the whole stomach.

“You look wild, burning,” she said. She looked around the room and yelped. There! The ghosts! Shadows, standing, waiting!

“What is it?” asked the burning man.

Miranda didn’t answer right away. It was weird. She looked in their dark faces. There were no details and yet she remembered perfectly. The grimaces of pain and death. Miranda didn’t see them go. But that didn’t stop her imagination. Dying in an instant, took away, crushed by rubble, expressions of hate aimed right at her. She tensed, expecting them to get her. Choke her, kill her, take her among them.

“They are here,” she whispered as if the ghosts couldn’t read her mind. “But they are not real.”

“No, they aren’t,” agreed the burning Crane.

“You don’t get it,” she continued silently. “The feeling… it isn’t… I have the bell.” She shook her head and closed her eyes. “It’s not them. Not really.”

She smelled the rot again. The pain increased and spinning worsened. The hallucinations got crazy. The shapes rotated all over the place changing into fractals, colours burned her eyes. She though she will puke.

No fear, just disgust.

She started to laugh.

“What’s so funny, Miranda?”

“It’s nothing,” she explained laughing. “I’m just high.”

***

The wound was healed. It took a week of doing nothing and few days of hating herself for doing things that hurt her.

Miranda was at Crane’s place every day. Only result of his experiments was constant headache and weird taste in her mouth. Drugs gave her symptoms but not feelings. She trembled – without fear. She cried – without sadness. Nothing helped. She didn’t feel different. When she took the charm down, she was still dying.

She was losing hope. She had fun, yes, she actually liked visiting the weird doctor. She loved looking in his eyes and catching sparks of excitement in his otherwise cold demeanour. The small talks he tried to avoid also cheered her. But what’s that good for? She wasn’t getting better. Or worse. The status quo was driving her insane.

And the random shadows… She thought the hit continued but every time she ran to face them… nothing.

She was a lost cause.

“I am a lost cause.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Jonathan.

“You can’t help me.”

Jonathan stopped looking at a new tincture and raised his eyebrows. “I think I can. You just need to be patient.”

“No,” she disagreed. “It’s impossible.”

“No wonder you don’t get better. You give up right away.”

Miranda sighed annoyed. “Let’s stop this. You can’t help me.”

He started to look visibly upset. She hasn’t seen him like that yet. Glimpse of negative emotions here and there, but until this point none of them were real anger.

“I can help. There are many ways…”

“Useless.”

“What did you say?” he raised his voice. Miranda blinked in surprise. She didn’t expect reaction like this about something as silly as research.

“I said…”

“I heard you!” he snapped. “You shouldn’t have come if you think I am useless.”

“I…”

“Crazy professor with crazy ideas, that’s what you think?!”

Miranda didn’t say anything. She felt attacked but at the same time tiny silent voice in her head told her the outburst was not aimed at her. You cannot argue against that.

“Let me remind you I could have killed you. Am I useless? Lanky, stupid Crane? You should thank me for sparing you!” His face was red from anger, his eyes weirdly distant. He didn’t argue with her. But she had about enough.

“I think you also need professional help, Crane.”

“You bitch!” He jumped on his feet a tried to hit her. She expected that. Caught his wrist, bended his arm. He screamed, more from annoyance than pain. With a little kick under his knee she made him fall on his knees. Pacified, he tried to wiggle away but she stopped him. Grabbed him by hair.

“No, you don’t, you crazy bastard,” she told him. “I don’t know what your problem is but consider our cooperation over.”

“You will be sorry, Miranda.”

“Oh, spare me the theatrics,” she rolled her eyes. “I’ve decided not to snap your neck. Who should be grateful now?”

Jonathan grinded his teeth but said nothing.

“Good boy.” She let go of him, took her bag. “Thanks for the tea.”

“Burn in hell.”

“See ya there.”

She left, feeling weirdly bummed. It wasn’t his behaviour that got to her. No, it was… She didn’t think he can help her. But she really enjoyed their weird talks. When was the last time she could have been open to someone? Yeah, I kill people. I like it. No, I don’t have insurance, can you get that as a murderer? Sure, I will take new meds, doc.

“Fuck you,” she mumbled.

At the lamp stood a shadow. She walked to it and realized it was only her eyes playing tricks again.

***

At home Miranda found an envelope on the table. She weighted it in her hand, thinking. Nobody had access to her place. This might be a trap. Or the information she wanted.

Who cares if she blows up?

She opened it. Nothing. Just bunch of papers and a flash drive with little bat symbol on it. She scanned fast through the documents – photos of old texts and transcripts.

“Thanks, B,” she mumbled. She made tea and started to read. The text made her angrier every second. It was nothing useful just description of the ritual and its victims.

Before suicide missions people performed this. They drank and ate together, swore an oath and then tasted each other’s blood. The bound was complete with hallucinogens and night of dancing and sex. Then the ritual was done, and the group went to die while fulfilling their task.

It was said that if someone broke this bond, they became hunted by their former fellows. Most of the survivals died within a year. It was like a countdown going down. If they didn’t kill themselves, it took year and a day, and they just collapsed.

Miranda bit her lip. Year and a day. It fit. That’s when she got her charm.

No mention of anyone surviving as long as her. No mention of anyone healing this madness. Miranda sighed. She didn’t believe in magic. These stories were only that – stories. The guilt made itself into psychosis, that’s all. No magical base.

She set the papers aside. The day started horribly and ended on even worse note. Miranda was tired and annoyed. Sad? She wished. She would let this sink deeper and cry, but it wasn’t possible.

She just didn’t want to die. This was her source of energy. She would do anything to keep herself alive. Degrade herself, betray, beg even. There was no dignity in death! She cannot let them take her, can she?

It made her remember. She didn’t always feel like this. Training and suffering clouded her mind. Death sounded much better than continuing the way she was. Running away wasn’t an option. Tundra in the middle of nowhere would kill her, if League members didn’t catch her first. Those deaths would be more painful than anything she could inflict on herself.

The knife was the best option.

“Kill yourself? You are crazy, girl. You are too weak to do that,” her master laughed when she found Miranda in her room prepared to end it. “You belong to us, so does your life, you cannot take it and you know it.”

That angered her. They never took her seriously, as if she wasn’t a person. Just a tool.

But fear stopped her hand.

“See,” master laughed.

And then Miranda stabbed herself in the chest.

She regretted it immediately.

‘I don’t wanna die,’ she realized.

“Idiot can’t even kill herself properly.” These words were the first she heard when she woke up. And that’s when she decided to run when she gets a chance.

Fucking ghosts won’t get her! She lived through so much shit, she won’t give up now! She wanted life! To have everything! She might be crazy, she might feel like shit, and nobody can help her, but she needs to get her marbles together and figure out how to fight those fucking ghosts.

“Fuck you,” she snapped at her imaginary master. “Suck a dick.”

***

Next morning was blurry for her. She got ready for work, she went there, she smiled at customers, she was pleasant, she sold some toys. She didn’t feel any of that. Her mind raced in circles. The ritual wasn’t magical. She was just crazy. But if so, why wasn’t she fixable?

Maybe she didn’t want to get fixed. If she felt, she would have to stop killing because she would cry over her victims. If she felt, she would tremble in fear under the idea of losing her charm. Maybe she was content, and she shouldn’t fight it anymore.

The door bell chimed. She smiled to welcome a new customer, but her expression grew cold quickly. Jonathan Crane walked to the counter, bouquet in his hand. Miranda reached under the desk to hold a gun.

“Miss Bradbury,” he started without greeting. “I’ve come to apologize.”

“Apologize?” she repeated.

“Yes, for my behaviour the other day. It wasn’t appropriate and I was out of line.” His expression and tone were sincere. She never heard so much colour in his voice and it took her by surprise. “I hoped you will accept this as a peace offering. And also, invitation for dinner tonight.”

She was speechless. Carefully she looked at the flowers – they looked legit, no poisonous strings attached. Miranda let go of the gun.

“Yes, you were out of line,” she agreed. “I don’t know what memory I awoke in you, but you should know I’ve never meant you when I said useless.”

“I am aware, miss Bradbury. I thought over our conversation and I jumped to conclusion. That’s why I wanted us to talk like two almost sane and almost moral adults.”

That made her smile. “Damaged seek damaged, am I correct? Thank you, professor, I accept your apology and I will gladly sit with you.”

“Brilliant. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“I’ll be ready for you.”

Jonathan smiled and Miranda wondered whether he understood the raised finger. If he didn’t, it will be one hell of an evening.

Whole day she couldn’t keep eyes of the flowers and she was smiling like an idiot.

Next chapter

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: 4x07 Gimme Shelter

This is the first  of my favorite episodes of the season. The second half of season 4 is much stronger than the first.

The main event of this episode is the first “black rain” – radioactive, potentially fatal rain, which all the characters try to run and take shelter from, but the episode is very character-focused, with small, intimate scenes of characters interacting with just one or two other people (sometimes not even in the same location). There are some expected and some unexpected character pairings. The black rain is just a catalyst to see how the characters feel about themselves – some are desperate to survive, some feel that they don’t want to survive, some are desperate to save everyone and feel like a failure if they don’t.

Again, we have three main plots in three different locations, with different groups of characters: as people in Arkadia quickly ran back into the ship, but some remain outside, Bellamy goes in the rover, trying to save a Delinquent and his father who are far away from Arkadia;  there’s a development in Octavia’s relationship with Ilian, while they take shelter in a cave, which ends up having a surprisingly positive effect on her; and the third plot is focused on Emori and gives her a lot of screentime and development, as she starts fearing she would be made a guinea pig for the new Nightblood solution and is determined to do everything to avoid that fate. Harper also gets a subplot of her own, for the first time.

After the fake alarm about black rain that Jaha used in the last episode to save Ilian from an angry mob, this time the real black rain falls and causes the people in Arkadia to all quickly run inside in panic, and go on to wash themselves. (Realistically, they should have been washing their whole bodies rather than just the upper body – but this is a network show after all, and actors supposedly refused to take off their pants…)

In the chaos that happened when a bunch of people ran towards Arkadia, Harper didn’t help a man who tried to hold onto her, and pushed him away, obviously scared of falling down herself – but he fell to the ground and got exposed to a too big a dose of radioactive rain, before he was dragged inside when everyone else was already inside. After he gets severe radioactive poisoning and is certain to die, Harper feels deeply guilty. Kane tells her to go and tend to the main in the med bay, but this doesn’t help assuage her guilt, and after the man dies, it causes her to feel terrible about herself for the rest of the season, and was no doubt one of the reasons why she developed suicidal tendencies.

Bellamy’s storyline is simple but effective, due to really good acting and good writing. He takes a rover and a slightly torn anti-radiation suit during the rain to go find two people from Arkadia who have found themselves far away - a man called Mark Colton, who asked for help by radio, and his son Peter, who was one of the Delinquents, and who is already suffering effects of the exposure. This would be more meaningful for the audience if we had known Peter (most of the 100 were just extras that we never really got to know), but it is understandable why Bellamy is all the more motivated – he’s felt personally responsible for saving and protecting those kids, almost like he’s always felt responsible for his sister. Throughout this, Kane keeps talking to him on the radio, on a private channel, while Mark is calling him and desperately asking for help on another line. Bellamy’s mission fails because the rover gets stuck in the mud and Bellamy cannot get out to fix the problem while it is still raining due to his suit being torn, though he actually almost did that, before Kane managed to change his mind. He is desperate to save these two people now – “we save who we can today” – because his guiding motivation in life, ever since he was tasked with the responsibility for his sister at the age of six, has always been protecting and saving, and he feels he has failed to save or caused deaths of so many people. Most of all, he feels like he has failed with his sister – he is not even sure if she is alive, since she walked into the woods on her own, and he’s worried about what Octavia’s state of mind is now and that he barely recognizes her (“What is she now? Is she even alive?”).

Kane tries to convince Bellamy that Octavia can take care of herself, but also that he should stop trying to save everyone: “You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved”. Kane genuinely cares for Bellamy and tries to play a pseudo-father role to him, and though Bellamy, this time, shows a certain annoyance with that when he tells Kane (“No more lessons”), he does take Kane’s advice to heart – he repeats it at the end of the episode, and it informs the way he deals with Jasper and the rest of the people who choose not to survive Praimfaya in the upcoming episode. But when Kane tells Bellamy that his mother would be proud of the man he had become, and that he certainly is, Bellamy reminds him: “You floated my mother”. This is a very interesting moment, and one I’ve always liked, because it shows that forgiveness is not such a simple, yes-or-not thing for Bellamy. Even though he has accepted Kane as his mentor and forged a strong bond for him, even if he has maybe mostly forgiven him, he still refuses to forget and ignore the past.

Surprise, surprise, Octavia and Ilian run into each other in the woods again, or rather, he’s managed to find her again, and even though he is gruff and keeps saying she doesn’t need his help, he says he owes her because she didn’t kill him (?!), Huh, well, that’s an interesting point of view. “You could have murdered me, but you didn’t, how nice of you”. I guess Ilian must not have experienced much of actual decent human behavior, if these are the standards he judges people by. They are forced to run for cover and hide in a nearby cave together. Ilian seems to realize that she’s also damaged and messed up like he is, and talks about his trauma – constantly seeing his family’s faces everywhere, the memories of nicer times with them, and the awful things he did to them (he killed both his father and brother, as we saw, and cut his mother’s fingers, which is why she bled out from in the end). He tries to get her to talk about what happened to her, but she refuses and tells him that they are different and that she’s a much darker person: he feels the way people are supposed to feel when they kill someone, but she doesn’t feel anything. She is suicidal and walks out in the rain, and Ilian saves her. Then, as he is trying to stop her from running out of the rain, she kisses him and begs him to have sex with her to make her feel something. This “make me feel something” trope is pretty common, and it wasn’t hard to predict that things would develop that way between those two. Up to this point, nothing was unexpected, though it worked, due to really good acting – Marie Avgeropoulos sells dark!Octavia and suicidal Octavia really well.

After sex, Ilian prepares to go back to his farm, and invites Octavia to come with him if she wants. Octavia lingers a little, then throws her weapons in the fire and goes after him, offering to take him home by giving him a ride on her horse Helios to his farm. This was the first thing that was a bit unexpected to me in this story the first time I watched it. After how dark thing this relationship started, with Octavia almost killing Ilian to take out her issues on him, and with how generally edge-lordy she has been, I didn’t expect this relationship to develop in a more positive way, and so quickly. It’s not a rushed romance like so many others in the show because, for once, we’re not supposed to think they’re in love, they are just both screwed up and damaged, Octavia is grieving and having a rebound, Ilian has been through worse and has no one left, but they’ve bonded, he certainly helped her heal to an extent, and finding someone more messed up than he is probably has helped him, too. Octavia seems generally drawn to people who are gentle and with a positive outlook on life and who can balance out her anger and aggression, even though I’m not sure if anyone can really heal her, since she has been damaged all her life, due to the way she grew up. She was damaged way before Lincoln died, and way before she was sent to the ground, even way before she was arrested and her mother executed. But, at least for a moment, she chose to and genuinely tried to have a positive human relationship and go live peacefully on a farm, instead of using violence and murder to numb her feelings.

Clarke arrives to Becca’s lab and reunites with Abby, she learns some bad news about Raven’s condition, obvious from a scan of her brain (but Raven, just like Jasper, Monty and Jaha, doesn’t appear in the episode), and in turn, Abby learns the bad news about the lost barrel of hydrazine, which means they cannot go to space to synthesize Nightblood there.  But Abby tells Clarke about the new plan: they can make people Nightbloods with Luna’s bone marrow, but they would have to test someone in the radiation chamber to see if it works. Obviously, this is disturbing as they could kill the test subject, but Clarke insists they have to do it in order for everyone to survive. Abby is more tormented over the moral implications of it – Clarke has already been there and is already used to having to make terrible choices that her old self from early season 1 would have been shocked by. Later, Kane tells Abby over the phone that her humanity is her greatest strength, but: “We need to survive. Then we can all find our humanity back.” Words that will become Abby’s motto, and remains that for years.

After talking with her mother in the lab, Clarke goes with Emori to the residential part of the lighthouse, which feels very comfortable - Murphy is cooking, music is playing, and Clarke goes to take shower and finds a bed, and for a moment, she is enjoying it probably thinking about how nice it would be to have real, domestic, normal life, instead of this constant fight for survival. This is different from the makeshift rooms in Arkadia, or the palace-like glamour of Lexa’s tower – it’s like a regular home from back before the apocalypse.

But while the next episode is focused on Clarke’s and Abby’s moral dilemmas, this one is a big Emori episode. Emori has overheard Abby’s and Clarke’s conversation in the lab, and, immediately concluded that she will be the test subject, as the outcast, the one they don’t care or need, and is determined to avoid that fate. Whether they would have been able to make that decision on their own, we don’t know, and it’s debatable, but Emori is right that she seems like the obvious pick if they would have to choose someone as “expendable” – it wasn’t going to be one of the doctors or the king of Azgeda, Abby was obviously not going to want to test Clarke, and Emori had no real ties to anyone other than Murphy, who wasn’t exactly held in high regard by himself. I’ve always liked Emori because she was a well-written anti-heroine with a backstory that explained her personality – since early childhood, she’s been used to distrusting people, thinking that she is an outcast that everyone finds disposable and that she has to be really ruthless to survive – and I really liked that the show here showed both how ruthless and how manipulative she can be, while not making her into a villain.

This episode also has interesting interactions between Emori and Clarke – two characters who had barely shared scenes before. A thief breaks in, and Emori overpowers him, and claims he is Baylis, a man who used to torture her and her brother. On first watch, I completely believed her, and I bet most viewers did. Emori is that good at putting on an act – she has been practicing all her life, after all – that the audience is fooled alongside Clarke and Murphy, She uses truth for deception – telling Clarke that she, Clarke, with her privileged upbringing, and family who loved her and told she was special, doesn’t know what it’s like to be cast out, thrown away like garbage as an infant, because of the way she was born, and be forced to steal and kill since an early age. Clarke admits she can’t know that, but knows what it’s like to feel like you have to kill.

Emori asks Clarke if she has ever killed for revenge, Clarke shakes her head – this is true, she has never done it. It was always out of necessity - to protect someone, to survive, to free herself, or a mercy kill. Even Dante – that was about desperately trying to prove to Cage that she was serious. The one time she thought she could kill for revenge was Lexa in 3x03, for very personal feelings of betrayal, and she wasn’t able to go through with that. She even passed the opportunity to kill Emerson for revenge in Polis, because it could have jeopardized the peace she was fighting for, which was much more important.

But Emori is actually not looking for revenge here, either – it is out of necessity, too, or what Emori considers necessary. She beats up “Baylis” and acts like she is going to kill him, while he insists he is just a scavenger trying to find food for his family, but Clarke suggests they make him a test subject instead. If they have to potentially sacrifice someone – Emori has just made the decision so much easier for everyone: they can feel better if they know the person they are maybe going to kill in a human experiment is an abusive monster. He isn’t, actually – not that he is a good guy, either. He’s a thief who broke into the lighthouse and attacked a person and may have killed Emori… but by the same standards, Emori would be also considered bad, she’s also robbed and killed to survive, and so has Murphy. As “Baylis” is injected with Nightblood, Emori cooly admits to Murphy that she doesn’t know the thief and that he is not Bayli, she just wanted someone else to get tested instead of her. Instead of being shocked, Murphy admires her even more than before: “Now that is a survivor’s move”.

This episode makes for almost a two-parter with the next one, God Complex, where this storyline gets its resolution.

One of this episode’s biggest strengths is the amazing music - both Tree Adams’s score, and the song “State of the Art (A.E.I.O.U.)” by Jim James, which plays over a montage of various scenes near the end of the episode.

Timeline: Like most episodes, this one takes place very soon after the previous one – since Clarke, Roan and the barrels of hydrazine were on her way to the lab at the end of 4x06, and they get there at the beginning of 4x07. Which means this takes place about two weeks since the start of season 4/end of season 3 (i.e. the time when Clarke shut down ALIE and the City of Light).

Body count: As we find out at the very beginning of the next episode, 18 Sky people died from exposure to the radiation, including Louis (the man that Harper didn’t help), Mark Colton and his son Peter. 

Peter is the first Delinquent to die in season 4. That means 57 Delinquents have died so far, and 43 are still alive (including Clarke, Octavia, Monty, Jasper, Miller, Harper and Murphy).

Rating: 9/10

[bus-trash]

Peathers: Why Does Veronica Make Her Choice?

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR ENTIRE PEATHERS SERIES IN THIS POST. If you are on the fence about watching it or not, I strongly recommend at least watching two or three episodes before deciding. I have links if anyone needs them.

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“My entire life, I’ve always had someone talking at me, telling me what I’m supposed to think and feel and do. My parents, little dead Lucy, Heather Chandler, and now you.”

Grace Victoria Cox’s Veronica Sawyer is definitely one of the most mind-boggling protagonists in a drama series I’ve recently watched. Capricious, obsessive, and a bit hypocritical, for me she’s the most challenging and inconsistent character. Since watching the series’s shocking finale, I keep coming back to her character’s final moments alive, lying beside JD on the dusty boiler room floor, on the verge of a terrible decision. As she reconnects the explosive’s wires, what is it her character really wants, is aiming for? After some thought, I think I understand how I interpret Veronica’s character throughout the series. For the record, I still think she’s written in a way that’s pretty inconsistent, but this is my best effort.

The best way to break down Peathers’s Veronica Sawyer is with three basic principles. One: She doesn’t want to just move past labels, but prove to everyone she’s past them. Two: Her love with JD for her transcends labels. Three: JD’s murderous path does not ultimately transcend labels. It’s only a symptom of the system.

Veronica’s motivations are broadcasted with her first dialogue scene. She sits down with Mrs. Fleming, who asks her who she wants to be. Veronica answers that she’s “a good person.” When Veronica says she’s a good person, she’s not truthfully describing herself (We can clearly see through the series she murders and manipulates when it serves herself.), but she is describing a part of her motivation. Because she recognizes everyone at Westerburg as a bad person (The students and adults all participate in a system that drives students to violence and suicide.), her desire to think of herself as a good person is her way of saying, “I’m not like everybody else.”

The show makes a very clear point to show that this desire of Veronica to think of herself as a good person is so strong that it’s why she murders Lucy as a child, a Heather-Chandler-like bossy girl who sings, “You’re not, you’re not, you’re not,” telling Veronica she isn’t really her own unique person, a “good person,” but just as bad as everyone else. Veronica wants to be thought of as different so badly she will kill for it, which is why she strikes Lucy with a croquet mallet.

Her seething looks towards her parents in episode nine show how much she feels like they don’t see her for her, and just stick her in a box. Clearly this anger about the question of who she is goes way back.

But she doesn’t really want to be thought of as “a murderer,” so her outburst doesn’t truly solve the problem. It silences it for a short while, and Veronica grows up still in this pressure.

We meet Veronica when she’s in high school, and her main strategy to society’s, and Mrs. Flemming’s, constant questions about identity is to be close to Heather Chandler. She still expresses herself a little bit (with her clothes, even when Heather C calls them “Banana Republic,” and other style choices), and she doesn’t have to bear the actual weight of the label of “Heather,” so it’s a decent compromise. The only problem is, she has to be with a girl who constantly labels her.

“You’re nothing.” “Well, at least l’m a good person.” ”A good person? Grow up, Veronica. You’re Panera. You’re Sbarro. You’re Cheesecake Factory.”

Just like Lucy, Heather Chandler constantly suppresses Veronica’s desire to be whatever she wants to be, and not a label. Hence why in the first episode, Veronica fantasizes about burying her in the ground. “I just wish Heather would die so I can finally be free.”

When Veronica and JD kill Heather, it’s representative of putting a stop to Westerburg’s constant labeling and belittling of its students. Only problem is, it doesn’t work. Even in the first episode, Heather Duke and Betty Finn spar in Chandler’s absence for the privilege of being the school’s next big labeler. When Heather Chandler returns in episode two, it symbolizes that nothing at Westerburg will change. Whether Chandler lives or dies, the essential problem of how its students are treated by each other and by society will continue.

For Veronica, JD is a potential solution. He adores her, is jealous of “every drop of rain that gets to fall on [her] cheek.” He knows that she’s not just what Westerburg thinks she is. JD is the only character who sees Veronica as she craves to be seen–as something not basic, weak, or even popular, but someone amazing. Someone special. (Veronica likely feels that Betty Finn, even in her more genuine moments, still views Veronica as weak in a way or as part of Westerburg’s system of power.)

But JD’s love isn’t perfect. In episode two, Veronica is clearly disappointed when she flaunt’s her murderous act to JD (something atypical about her) and he’s oblivious to her true meaning, still seeing her as more basic than she really is. In episode three, Veronica becomes upset with JD’s growing nonchalance and how his political ramblings seem more important to him than she does. That he skips Heather McNamara’s funeral is a big point of contention. She can’t feel special through JD if he doesn’t show up. When she tells JD she likes how her date with Ram “felt normal,” I interpret she’s saying that his intense antipathy towards Westerburg isn’t solving the problem–it’s only illustrating it. The only real way to solve it is to care about her in a straightforward but passionate way, not to be some rebellious hero.

Veronica’s character veers off the deep end in episodes four through six. When JD handles the problem of Betty’s suspicions, I personally saw it as doing whatever it takes in his job in the context of his murderous relationship. However, Veronica doesn’t see it this way and sees his kiss as a betrayal. She sort of has a point–there was never any real danger of anyone believing Betty when she went to the cops. When Veronica blows up JD’s car and has him committed, she’s punishing him for underestimating her. For Veronica, the solution to her problems is for JD to put her first, period. All other plots and schemes come second. This is because what sets them free isn’t that they’re murderers. That is a label. What sets them free is the way they see each other. That goes beyond labels. They love each other as full human beings.

“Dear Diary: You have to hand it to America. We can even take something like teen suicide, wrap it in a pretty package, and sell it to the highest bidder. God, I’m starting to sound like JD. But so what? He’s the only one who makes any sense anymore. And you know what? I don’t care if what I’m about to say is so high school, it makes you upchuck: Our love is the only thing left that’s real. You can’t turn it into a poster or sell it to anyone with fifty bucks to spend, because it’s ours. Everything else is just photoshop.”

Thankfully, JD is only turned on by the extreme lengths Veronica goes to. JD values violence as a means to strike back against and potentially change society. At the beginning of episode seven, their love is at its height. Veronica never sees a world in which JD cares about something that isn’t her, and JD thinks that Veronica will be by his side as he moves towards not just killing Heather, but killing Westerburg, and thus ending all Heathers in America. This bliss only lasts the episode, however–the remaining episodes will prove them both wrong.

When Veronica decides to murder Mr. Waters, she’s largely already gotten what she wants. But she knows that Westerburg as a whole is still sick and wants to honor Heather McNamara’s memory as someone who wasn’t able to transcend the labels and ways the school got to her, including Mr. Water’s predatory behavior. While I think Veronica enjoys aspects of murder, she knows it’s not an end to her problems–as an act of violence it’s symptomatic of the system, and also just brings on her another label. At the end of episode seven, she tells JD that they’re past it, that they’re going to be something else now.

That isn’t enough for JD. And when he indicates he’s not taking her to prom, she realizes something she perhaps knew subconsciously all along: His love for her doesn’t overpower the way he labels himself with violence and antisocial behavior. She considers him a Heather–someone who wants to play his role (the “bad boy”) but doesn’t truly want to be something different.

Her decision in episode eight to recommit to the Heathers baffled me on first viewing, but in hindsight, Veronica’s character recognizes the bizarrely eternal meaning of prom: What happens there is what she will be forever. If she cannot be special by being there with JD, she’ll do the next best thing. And that’s being back to square one: powerful alongside the Heathers. Still kind of labeled, but it could be worse.

It’s Heather Chandler and JD’s ensuing actions that push her over the edge. First, JD murders Heather Duke, her last closest semblance to a friend, to serve his plan. Second, Heather Chandler has no reservations about stepping over Duke’s dead body for the prom crown. Veronica cannot stand to be along for the ride with either of their ways, both of which she views as corrupted and ultimately selfish. She has to go alone.

During the final episode, Veronica comes to a final decision about how she will and will not be labeled forever. She’s first stupified by JD’s plan, which is inherently much more radical and less humanistic than her usual philosophy. But when Heather Chandler describes to her what Veronica’s voiceover in the episode also affirms–that high school and prom are forever, that your labels here are what you’ll always be–she realizes that it’s now or never. If Veronica lets herself be nothing under Heather Chandler’s reign, then it doesn’t matter what happens in the future. Nothing she will always be.

“You know the best part, Veronica? Unlike you, they’ll never forget me. I don’t care if Dylan Lutz becomes president or if Driffany Tompkins cures cancer. No matter where they go, no matter what they do, no matter how high they fly, there will always be a small part of them that worships at the altar of Heather Chandler.” “You think too highly of yourself, Heather.” “I seem to recall that I got so inside your head that you tried to kill me. Doesn’t get more influential than that, does it, Veronica? I made you so angry that you wanted me dead. I revel in that every day. ... I’m already inside everyone at Westerburg.” “Like a virus.” “Call it what you want, but you and I both know that every moment of every day, every important decision, every relationship, every moral choice they ever make, I will be there, permanently in their heads, guiding them towards the truth that is the Heather Chandler Way. And then their kids, and their kids, and on and on and on and on, because that is what power is. Even after you and I are both long gone, I will live on forever, pulling the trigger on every decision in their sad, lonely, pathetic lives.” “Still beautiful, Heather.” “Well at least I’m not nothing like you.” “Find me in ten minutes and then tell me if I’m nothing, bitch.”

Sorry for the long dialogue pull but it encapsulates a lot about the show, including how murder didn’t solve the problem. I don’t think that Veronica’s anger is directed towards the idea of Heathers in every day and age–she is only angry at Heather Chandler, how Heather Chandler has affected her and everyone else at Westerburg, and she wants to change the narrative.

I admit I find Veronica and JD’s last dance to be a beautiful moment where once again their goals align. The song “I Think We’re Alone Now” indicates their nirvana–seen by everyone while embracing their love no one else can label, they can finally reach what they’ve always wanted.

But their paths sadly diverge again when JD learns of a school shooting and has to put a stop to his own tragedy. For Veronica, the power is in the personal, not the political, and if Heather Chandler’s prom night goes uninterrupted, it’s an injustice she can’t stomach. (Heather Chandler and Veronica’s remembered soundbites during the conversation also indicate that she is thinking of how Heather McNamara suffered under Chandler’s rule.) She accuses JD of being a Heather, caring more about the appearance than the real thing. I personally would only consider this true if JD’s plan wouldn’t work, but I honestly think it wouldn’t and he wants an excuse to end his and others’ lives in a spectacular fashion that his conscience would let him have.

When I first watched the finale, I was disappointed that Veronica and JD were doomed to suffer in afterlives of solitude–clearly a type of hell. However, when I think about it, it’s true that this does express the choices that the characters made. For JD, his heaven was being alone with Veronica after dying in a way that expressed his agony. While he wishes he could have accomplished his goal, he’s still content to die alongside her.

However, that doesn’t satisfy Veronica. She still has the image of Heather Chandler in her head, and she needs to upend her reign. So she does the unthinkable: She reconnects JD’s bomb and makes a social media post that will make her a star of suicide. And in a way, it does work: Now excluded from the violence that Westerburg and society craves, which once almost made her popular with her own attempted suicide, Heather Chandler’s fate is to be forgotten. But when she blows up Westerburg, Veronica blows up her relationship with it. Veronica and JD could have had each other. “Our love is God,” he offers. But she corrects him, “Our love was God.” She can’t escape the way Westerburg labeled her and has to relabel herself. In the end, JD’s love was not more powerful than the dehumanizing effect of the school. If Veronica had chosen JD, she still would have been remembered as “nothing,” having died under Heather Chandler’s label. Veronica’s act of defiance is at once both just the system perpetuating itself and her own personal way to be free. She won’t be what Heather Chandler says, and neither will anyone else for that matter.

But tragically, in deciding that JD’s love was not enough to set her free, Veronica chooses an afterlife without him, and his consciousness during her choice makes him aware he won’t be seeing her, either. She also knows that in the end, she only did what society was deep down wanting her to do as a student: Commit suicide. Ironically, she still is “nothing.” Even if she isn’t under Heather Chandler’s control anymore, she still did exactly what “they” wanted.

Peathers Veronica Sawyer is decidedly less likeable than the original film’s protagonist (in part due to the writing, and I don’t think Grace Victoria Cox is to blame, as I think she knocks it out of the park with a manner that’s somehow both poised and intense) with motivations far less noble. But even in her most outrageous actions, she is still in a strange way a relatable character, at least to me. Driven by societal pressures practically to madness, her first and last scenes are her confronting the issue: How do you answer the question of who you are when everyone tries so hard to answer the question for you? In a way, the answer is to say “fuck you,” even when you know it won’t change anything.

While everyone on Heathers is a bad person, I see a little bit of good in all of them, and all of them are pretty easy to feel sorry for, from Chandler overhearing her mother’s derisions to JD’s devastating loss of his mother to Veronica’s best social prospect being letting the queen bee treat her like a dog. I wouldn’t have ended with JD and Veronica doomed to misery, though it does make sense with the show and honestly the ending was fucking ballsy enough with Westerburg blown up without the people who did it having an ending that wasn’t unhappy. For me, the ending is with Veronica and JD on the dance floor. It’s true that they didn’t escape. But they saw hope of escape, through each other.

For me the show is far from perfect, but Veronica’s character is interesting if extremely frustrating. But enough about that basic cable bitch. Why did you read all of this? Get a life, loser! And remember: Tell your mom to spit out the devil’s jizz before you tongue-kiss her in hell.

Thanks for reading.

BUS TRASH

[dnmeinster]

Why The Last Jedi Fails

I've debated whether it would be worth spending time writing this, as I know there are many critical takes out there about The Last Jedi.  But I figure it's time to gather up all my critiques and criticisms of Star Wars Episode 8 and put them into one (hopefully) coherent post.  Warning: I will be praising some parts of this film.

After I saw The Last Jedi opening night, my immediate reaction was that I loved it.  It is a beautifully shot film with some great scenes.  My initial trepidations were ones I've come to accept: Rey's parents are nobodies and Snoke was killed off without a backstory.  However, in the hours after watching, my critical brain turned back on and started to dissect every other bit of the film.  After seeing it a second time, the problems became more apparent.

Let's start with the film's greatest problem and a huge missed opportunity: Canto Bight.  Everything surrounding this whole plot point and locale is misguided from the minute it's mentioned.  It starts by wasting Maz Kanata, a potentially interesting character who is given little more than a cameo to send Finn and Rose off to the casino world.  Even worse, Maz's short amount of screen time includes a dig at the prequels, when she dismisses any notion that they'd be interested in her union dispute.  Here, we get some insight into how this film will approach politics in the Star Wars galaxy.  But director Rian Johnson misdiagnoses what was wrong with the prequels.  Space politics can be interesting!  See:  Star Wars Bloodline.  Johnson's decision to shy away from it compounds the problems when they actually get to Canto Bight.

It all goes wrong from the moment they land.  Literally.  Finn and Rose "park" their ship in a spot they're not supposed to.  Then they enter the casino, in what is apparently an homage to the cantina but on a grander scale.  This diverse set of gamblers are apparently war profiteers, as is briefly mentioned.  But their only interaction with any of them is when they are approached and arrested for parking illegally.  Seriously.

In prison, they encounter DJ, who will eventually join them on their mission to disable the First Order's tracker.  But first, they have to go back to the casino area and release enslaved creatures so they can trample and maim these profiteers we are told are bad.  This is a very long sequence that ends with Finn saying how glad he was to hurt them.  Huh?  Hurt these people you don't know and haven't spoken to?

The entire Canto Bight subplot lacks any depth.  It's completely superficial, and maybe that would've worked if they didn't spend so much of the movie there.  But it ends up being a whole lot of time wasted on what amounts to finding a way to get DJ with Finn and Rose.  This could've been so much better.

HOW TO IMPROVE CANTO BIGHT

Honestly, this should've been caught when someone was reading Johnson's drafts, because we're basically stuck with a chunk a TLJ that degrades it while simultaneously expanding its running time.  But it could've been fixed, starting with Maz.

 Instead of having Maz phone in her appearance, they should have met her on Canto Bight.  Right there, we lose one prequel crack and give Lupita a slightly larger role.  While there, they interact with these profiteers, engaging in a moral debate about the First Order vs. the Resistance, while finding out how the conflict is viewed through the galaxy.  Were there a lot of systems missing the Empire?  How do they feel about the New Republic's destruction?  Eventually, that moral debate is what leads to fisticuffs and their subsequent imprisonment, as opposed to a parking ticket.

Johnson doesn't touch on any of this in TLJ.  His take on the morality of the conflict is restricted to two lines involving DJ.  First: 

DJ: Good guys, bad guys, made-up words. Let's see who formerly owned this gorgeous hunk-uh. Ah, this guy was an arms dealer. Made his bank selling weapons to the bad guys. (Hologram shows a tie fighter.) Oh... And the good. (Hologram shows an x-wing.) Finn, let me learn you something big. It's all a machine, partner. Live free, don't join.

And second, when DJ betrays them:   

DJ: They blow you up today, you can blow them up tomorrow. It's just business. 

Finn: You're wrong. 

DJ: Maybe.

This is the extent Johnson is willing to go when it comes to morality in the Star Wars universe, and it's just not enough.  Either dig in or don't mention it.  Short changing it is a disservice, but that's exactly what happens.

If the entire Canto Bight sequence was redone, it would not only be a better Star Wars movie, but a better movie in general.  It doesn't have to be exactly as I think it should be, but it needs vast improvements.  If Disney were to ever special edition the sequels, then Canto Bight should be singled out.  And yes, I do think they should special edition them, along with the prequels.  But that's for another time.

MOVING ON

The second greatest issue of The Last Jedi is how immensely it fails at being a sequel to The Force Awakens.  I am undoubtedly biased when it comes to discussing TFA because JJ Abrams is one of my favorite directors and I absolutely loved his take on Star Wars.  Now, one of JJ's favorite things to do is to approach plots as mystery boxes, whose contents are slowly revealed over the course of a TV series or movie.  And don't say he didn't have any clue as to where TFA was going, as he had an outline prepared for the sequel, and an idea for who Rey's parents were.  Along comes Rian Johnson, who, instead of opening that mystery box, takes a hammer to it.

So much of what is hinted at, left unsolved, or teased in TFA is either ignored, brushed aside, or poorly answered in TLJ.  This is a problem.  TLJ is supposed to be a direct sequel, not a spin-off or an unplanned continuation.  When Yoda suggests there's another hope in Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi provides an answer to who that is.  Imagine if it didn't.  Well, I suppose you don't have to cause this basically happens with TLJ.

There was a lot of set up in TFA, but Johnson used TLJ to tear all of that up instead of building on it.  Rey's lineage, strongly hinted to be significant through multiple scenes in TFA, is made to be meaningless in TLJ.  Maz Kanata teased having a story about how she came to possess Anakin's lightsaber, but that's ignored in TLJ.  Snoke is treated like a disposable villain, even though he somehow managed to stitch the Empire back together and tempt Ben Solo to the dark side.  The Knights of Ren are mentioned in an offhand comment in TFA and are completely missing in TLJ.  I could go on.

Okay, I will.  Why would Luke leave a map for his friends to find him in TFA if he went to Ahch-To to die?  And why did Luke leave it with Lor San Tekka?  (Johnson's answer:  stfu, Luke is emo now.)

The Last Jedi also feels like a smaller movie.  There are two new locations introduced: Canto Bight and Crait.  It revisits Ahch-To from TFA, and the rest takes place on ships.  This is not necessarily a problem, except it fails to show both the dominance of the First Order and the scope of their battle with the Republic/Resistance.  Star Wars is a big universe.  Shouldn't it feel that way?

And then there's issues with some of the returning characters.  Finn is tied down in the wasteful Canto Bight plot that doesn't do much for him.  Leia spends most of the movie in a coma.  Ackbar is murdered for no reason and with even less fanfare.  Poe gets an expanded role, though somehow it doesn't lead to much character growth.

And I can't forget Phasma.  A character with so much potential yet given such short shrift in both TFA and TLJ.  She feels tacked on in this film, when she could've been given a meatier role given how underwhelming all of Johnson's original characters are.  Which brings me to...

THE NEWBIES

The Empire Strikes Back introduced us to Yoda, Lando, and Boba Fett.  The only memorable addition to The Last Jedi are the porgs.

Johnson gives us three new characters in TLJ:  Admiral Holdo, DJ, and Rose.  There isn't that much to say about them, because, well, they're not very memorable and they're certainly not iconic.  Holdo is a one note character meant to serve as the adversary to Poe.  Her entire role consists of antagonizing him and withholding information.  She's much more interesting in Claudia Grey's novel, Leia: Princess of Alderaan.

I've already mentioned the role DJ plays during Benicio del Toro's criminally tiny amount of screen time, so that leaves Rose.  She's...okay?  Sticking her on Canto Bight certainly doesn't help her.  The most memorable thing she does is interrupt Finn's suicide run and plant a kiss on him, both of which come from almost nowhere.

It really feels like these characters are underdeveloped and the actors are wasted in the roles, and that's a shame.  But then, that's the story of the prequels as well.  It's just that it was less surprising when George Lucas was doing it.

THE WORST MOMENT IN THE LAST JEDI

Luke Skywalker is far from the Luke we remember in RotJ.  At least until the end of the film, when he leaves Ahch-To, joins Leia and the Resistance, and takes on Kylo Ren and the First Order on his own.

Except he didn't really leave Ahch-To, it's a Force projection, and the stress of creating it kills him.  What?

Han Solo's death makes sense given his son's role in TFA.  Luke Skywalker dies because Rian Johnson chose to kill him.  There is not a single reason plot-wise for Luke to die in this movie.  The Sequel Trilogy should not be about killing off a member of the original trio in each film.  And it didn't have to be.  What were they thinking?

When Carrie Fisher passed away, and it became clear Leia was not going to be in Episode 9, that should have convinced the powers that be to change the last three minutes of the film and allow Luke to live.  Yes, he can return as a Force ghost, but that's not the same.  They would've only had to cut Luke's disappearance and a line from Rey and BAM, Luke's still alive for Episode 9.

His meaningless and arbitrary death ruins this film.  (And after they spent a whole film trying to find him, no less.)

THE GOOD

Now that I've rattled off some of the major flaws I perceived in TLJ, let me list some of the good.

The Yoda Scene:  Easily the best moment of the film.

Luke tossing the lightsaber:  A hilarious and unexpected moment before there were too many "hilarious" and unexpected moments.

Hux:  The one minor TFA character Johnson does an excellent job with.  He may be my favorite character in the film.

Rey and Ren:  The development of their relationship is the strongest element of TLJ.

The Caretakers:  See Damon Lindelof's Instagram.

The Porgs: Adorable pests/wookie-fodder.

Luke flashbacks:  We needed more of these.

Artoo: BB-8 is stealing his thunder, but he can still get in a cheap shot.

Threepio: He's also in this film.

Praetorian Guards: That's some good lightsaberin'.

The Cinematography:  Seriously, this movie is gorgeous.

It feels like a Star Wars movie (minus one ridiculous ironing scene).

FAILURE

Yoda tells Luke how failure is the greatest teacher, laying out one of the themes of this film.  The other, a quote played over numerous TLJ trailers, is "Let the past die.  Kill it, if you have to."  Let's explore.

Weeks before Max Landis disappeared from Twitter following sexual harassment allegations, he described how every character in this movie fails:

REY - Turn Kylo - Fails KYLO - Turn Rey - Fails FINN - Turn off tracker - Fails POE - Save Revel Fleet - Fails SNOKE - Kill Rey - Fails LUKE - Train Rey - Fails HUX - Usurp power - Fails LEIA - Escape - Mostly Fails ROSE TICO - Turn of tracker - Fails HOLDO - Evacuate to Planet Secretly - Fails

That's a lot of failure.  Ironically, you can add one more:

RIAN JOHNSON - Make a great Star Wars film - Fails

But this theme is not why TLJ doesn't work.  It's the other one that drags it down.  The whole idea to let the past die.  If this was Episode 9, and Disney was about to start fresh with a new series of Star Wars films, perhaps it would work.  But this is the middle chapter.  The past, especially TFA, should not be killed.  It should define the entire Sequel Trilogy.

After all, this is a culmination of everything in the OT and PT.  The First Order is born from the Empire.  The Resistance is born from the Rebellion (and then turned back into the Rebellion?  Guess you can't let the entire past die, huh?)  Most of the characters come from other movies.  This is their last time to shine.

Johnson subverts expectations too many times in TLJ.  It works at first, with Luke tossing the lightsaber, but by the end, it has become trite.  Rey's parents are nobodies.  Snoke's dead.  Luke's dead.  The entire Resistance can fit on the Millennium Falcon.  (And Kylo Ren’s awesome mask is wrecked.) He's killed the past without building anything for the future.  That's left to JJ in the single remaining film in the trilogy.  Come on!

The Last Jedi is so polarizing because there’s so much to nitpick, whereas The Force Awakens mainly had only one general complaint leveled against it (it was too much like A New Hope).  One fan may be okay with Leia's Mary Poppins scene, while also despising how Luke became a cranky hermit.  Each potential negative has to be overlooked to come out of it with a positive view, but it’s a lot easier to focus and harp on the negatives.  And that's what's happened online, and, yes, in this post.  Also, killing off Luke for no reason was dumb.

Before I go, I want to mention how overrated Looper was.  Interesting concept, but it falls apart at the farm.  And they gave that director a Star Wars film, while taking one away from the guys who did the Jump Street movies and The Lego Movie.  Sigh.

If JJ sticks the landing with Episode 9 and churns out a terrific film, perhaps TLJ can be viewed in a new light.  And opinions do change over the years.  But even though Revenge of the Sith was pretty good, no one looks back fondly at the prequel trilogy.

[aros001]

First time read through light novel vol. 12. Random thoughts.

Right off the bat and I love this illustration

of the aftermath of Subaru's various deaths. Just at a look and you're able to tell which loop and death it was. From left to right:

After the Witch Cult slaughters Emilia, the mansion, and villagers and Puck goes out to destroy the world. Though not sure if this is the loop where Puck and Subaru got to talk or it this is a loop before that.

Rem tortures and Ram mercy kills Subaru, likely lying and covering up their actions afterwards to Emilia.

Rem dies from the Shaman's curse and Subaru commits suicide, unfortunately doing so right in front of Beatrice and Ram.

Elsa murders Subaru and Emilia. Subaru's very first death.

Subaru is possessed by Petelgeuse and has to be put down.

I wasn't sure about this one at first but later in the book seems to imply this is after Subaru killed himself after Rem fell into a coma.

Echidna speculated that Subaru's save points were based just on what'd help him be most likely to overcome whatever killed him and that Satella likely didn't care about anyone else in his life. But with the black shadow devouring everything, save for Garfiel, and seemingly heading for the mansion next, I wouldn't be surprised if Satella actually is choosing the points that get rid of others who are important to Subaru so she can have his love all to herself. Rem's in a coma and Subaru can't go back further to save her from that fate and the only reason Emilia is still around is because a lot of the events that kill her tend to also kill Subaru, like Elsa and the Witch Cult, so her death wouldn't exist in a timeline where Subaru also gets to live. In arc 3 Subaru's save point was set after he and Emilia had that big fight and went their separate ways. I wouldn't be surprised if Satella set that point specifically because the two were driven apart and she didn't want Subaru to get a do-over.

Watching Ram, Ryuzu, and all the other people he cared about get swallowed whole, vanishing within the shadow.

But even after so many precious people were stolen from him, Garfiel refused to use revenge as an excuse to throw all decency aside. He wouldn’t tolerate any talk about a victory that involved sacrificing Subaru.

I like to think this is a little bit of a callback to some of Subaru's loops during arc 3, specifically when he was so lost in his selfishness and later his rage at the Witch Cult's massacres that he was somewhat blinded to everyone else and was throwing away his decency; something Garfiel is refusing to do. Again, I don't mind that Subaru has had moments where he's not a good person and has very serious character flaws because the story is about him continuously growing into a better person.

“In this world, when I heard ‘I love you’ spoken seriously to me for the first time...it gave me, an unredeemable bastard, enough power to make me think I could become a hero.”

He was a piece of garbage, twisted down, broken, and ready to flee from everything, but those words had made him believe he could face the future head-on, never giving in—to challenge it once more, over and over, however many times that it took.

As sad as I am that Rem's not in the story anymore aside from being a near lifeless husk, I am glad that her importance on the story and Subaru specifically is still strong. Honestly, all shipping aside, I'm mostly upset that, because of the coma, all of Rem's character development has pretty much been put on hold. I was enjoying seeing her grow and the ways she was reacting to events in the story. For the audience, having her be in a coma is maybe worse than her being killed because there's that hope she'll come back and you're continuously waiting for her to do so; waiting for that part of the story to be allowed to continue.

What could he say, what should he say, that would rub the Witch the worst way? There was no one better armed to get under someone else’s skin than Subaru. So he knew.

Accordingly, Subaru gave a shallow, cruel laugh, turning a look of scorn toward the Witch.

“—I’d rather love Echidna and the other Witches than you.”

...Yeah, that oughta do it. Seriously though, I almost felt all the sound go out in the world at reading that line, that's how much of an "Ohhhhh shit." moment it was, with there being nothing Subaru could have said to piss the witch off more.

I suppose Satella (and Subaru) consuming and becoming one with everything can relate to envy. No need to be envious of what others have when you are both them and what they possess.

He had seen the Witch’s face in the moment just prior to Return by Death —and it was the same face as Emilia’s. After straddling death to come back, he had dragged along a fear of the Witch that stuck with him.

It's temporary but I do like this. For a moment Subaru is in a similar position as those who naturally live in this world. He knows that Emilia is not the Witch of Envy, just as most people in the world could obviously understand, but because of the strong resemblance (and Satella possessing Emilia's body) he can't not see Satella when he looks at her and feel that fear. Obviously it's still wrong to have that prejudice against Emilia and other half-elves whom have done nothing to harm anyone but having even Subaru feel that fear, even for just a moment, does make it very understandable why the people of this world have trouble letting go of it.

I know this is bothering me more than it should and it's not a criticism towards the series, but I always feel bad that Subaru has this perception around him of being a little bit of a crybaby, or at least easily upset and needing to be soothed. Don't get me wrong, I make no demands that the MC always be seen all ultra-masculine manly but from the perspective of others it does seem like Subaru breaks down easily. In the mansion arc with Subaru working himself sick and crying into Emilia's lap to the White Whale arc where Subaru gave up and asked Rem to run away with him to now where Emilia is needing to comfort him inside Echidna's tomb. We the audience know these breakdowns are VERY well deserved after the horrors Subaru has been through and he really needs the comfort, but the other characters don't know and it just looks like he's cracking over nothing. I like Subaru and it sucks that he keeps getting seen as a bit of a crybaby, especially in front of the woman he loves. Emilia doesn't make a big deal of it and Subaru has done plenty to prove his worth and bravery before, but I still can't help but feel a little bad for the guy.

I'm wondering if there's an implication that Emilia's doing better during this loop is because she now feels she's fighting/being strong for Subaru? Kind of like how Subaru has found strength in fighting for her and the others he cares about.

“I did think about it, so I asked Ram to keep him occupied. In the meantime, it’s a date between you and me, Ryuzu.”

“I am unsure what it is you mean by dayte...but I cannot defy you at this point, Young Su. You may do with me and the girl here as you wish.”

“That’s giving in a little too much!"

What is with people continuously thinking Subaru wants to defile them?! Is it the eyes? (It's probably the eyes)

I've heard tales before that Subaru comes to be known as the Lolimancer. Given he now has authority over Ryuzu and a practical army of replicas, I can kind of see that. And it's glorious. Nothing crushes your enemy quite like their opponent throwing a little girl that them...and winning.

Then, after a momentary pause, she slowly nodded and said, “—Ahhh, I understand now. Betty is probably entrusting you with her final moment because...”

Once he heard the answer, there was no going back. —He was certain of it.

And yet, his decision came too late. He had realized too late. It was too late for everything.

“—Sorry to intrude mid-conversation, but...”

A voice he should not have heard spoke. Hastened by a terrible chill, Subaru flipped around.

Then he saw her.

“—Is it all right if I become That Person for you, I wonder?”

Carrying a black curved blade in her hand—a kukri knife—the black- clothed Bowel Hunter stood at the archive’s entrance.

F**K! OFF! ELSA!

Crystal arrows were thrust through her entire body, half of it shattered like inorganic matter. Such was Elsa’s death.

THAT'S WHAT YOU GET, BITCH!

Beatrice’s eyebrows fell as she let out a breath of instantaneous relief, forming a thin smile in the process.

—The tip of a black blade was poking out of her chest.

“—My, what an odd feeling in the hand. A spirit’s belly really is different.”

DAMMIT!

“The letter...that’s right. I wrote a letter. I wrote everything on it, that’s why. I really meant to tell you about everything, but...”

“Tee-hee.”

Ohhhhhhhh no, that's never a good sign. Dark tomb dedicated to a witch, everything else outside going wrong, and Emilia just gives a little giggle like that, talking about how lonely she was and how much she loves him? She didn't even comment on how he's MISSING AN EYE.

Funny enough, for this part I am being reminded of a reaction I had while reading the Goblin Slayer light novels. "Oh, thank goodness this character was only severely beaten and about to be sacrificed to summon a demon old god into the world." "Oh, thank goodness. Emilia's not possessed or under some terrible curse. She's just cracked from mental strain and trauma." It's just one of those times where I have to take a moment and think about what kind of series I'm reading where I'm relieved a major character has only gone insane.

It is kind of cool how she's in a way going through a similar experience as Subaru has. Repeatedly going through a continuous loop of failures she can't overcome but feels she has to for the sake of others, until she finally just hits her breaking point.

I do like how even just Roswaal talking about RBD is enough for the witch to grasp Subaru's heart, even though Roswaal figured it all out on his own. I'm also glad I saw the "Memory Snow" OVA because it does add a nice (and really messed up) layer to Roswaal's manipulations. That even a happy and completely innocent time like that, seeming to exist for no other reason than to give the audience a nice breather before arc 3, was something he figured out how to use to his advantage. It makes him feel like even more of a devious bastard, that he'll be taking such a pleasant and pure memory and using it to get the villagers to fear Emilia.

“The current you is insufficient to bring about the future indicated in the text. Any discrepancy with that recorded requires a correction.”

That makes me curious about how specifically the book works. Before Roswaal and Beatrice were making it sound like the book foretold futures that would happen no matter what, but this line implies that Subaru currently is unable to make that future come to pass, making it sound more like the book describes the specific ways required to make the foretold future happen. Then again, Subaru isn't from this world, so is he maybe somewhat exempt from the book's prophecies? Or is he a requirement for fulfilling them? Roswaal caught on to Subaru's looping because of the book, but how? Is the future changing every time Subaru loops and because Roswaal has read ahead he knew what the future originally was and thus noticed when it changed? Subaru also speculates that Roswaal has the ability to inherit memories like Echidna and thus he can remember the previous timelines, but I feel like he'd be able to understand that the loops were caused by Subaru dying then, since that's the common trait among all of them. Roswaal also says there's no point in talking about thing since he will not be the same Roswaal Subaru meets when he loops again, so I'm assuming that means he can't inherit memories or the new Roswaal, while not the same as the previous loop, would remember his and Subaru's conversation and be able to continue it.

So to recap:

Rem, Petra, and Frederica are murdered after Subaru sent them to the village to keep them safe

He has to watch as Elsa murders a suicidal Beatrice

Elsa cuts out his left eye

He's caught in a harsh snowstorm wearing only a ripped up tracksuit

Emilia, the woman he loves, has a mental breakdown

Roswaal murders Ram and Garfiel right in front of him and admits he deliberately drove Emilia into isolation

Roswaal tortures Subaru in order to try and get him to loop

Rabbits eat Roswaal alive right in front of Subaru and likely are doing the same to the rest of Sanctuary, save for those whom chose suicide by fire rather than being eaten

The replicas are killed defending Subaru under his orders and he still got half-mauled in the process

His first kiss was at the very moment of his death by an insane Emilia

All in all, today's been something of a bummer for Subaru, hasn't it?

In all seriousness though, SOMEONE GIVE THE MAN A HUG!!!

And let's just keep the pain train rolling with Subaru being shown the aftermath of his death after Rem fell into a coma. Seriously, that was heart wrenching, between Emilia's sobbing to Wilhelm's desperation to save him and unable to understand how someone he genuinely respected could take his own life like that.

I kind of suspected this already given the first trial made Subaru confront his past, or at least a version of it, but now with the second trial being "the unknowable present" I'm assuming the three trials are based around past, present, and future respectively.

“—Goodness, can you even stand anymore? Subaru.”

...

For she was the girl who knew Subaru was not strong yet had said to him anyway, “I love you.”

“—Rem.”

“Yes. I am Subaru’s Rem.”

REM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't care if it's the Witch of Lust trying to trick him, the story made me need that as much as Subaru did.

“If I was stronger, if I was wiser, if I was a man who could do more...no one would have to suffer, to be sad, to go through hard times like that...”

It would have been so much better if Subaru had been strong enough to do everything, all of it, alone.

Emilia’s sadness, Beatrice’s loneliness, the calamity befalling Petra and Frederica, the menace of the Great Rabbit, Garfiel, who was desperately protecting something... He should have been able to do...something.

Everything, all of it, every last bit of it was Subaru’s fault.

That was why, to balance out his weakness, Subaru had to pay by shaving away his life. —That was what he’d thought, and yet...

“Have I saved...anyone...?”

“Subaru.”

“If those worlds continued after my death, how many times I have I abandoned everyone to die?”

“Subaru.”

“How many times...did I make you die? How many times...do I have to kill you?”

Seriously, why do so many people hate Subaru? And I'm not talking about in-story, I'm talking about how often I see people online just crapping on the guy and really just having such firm dislike for the character. Yeah, he has a bad tendency to shove his foot into his mouth, especially early on, and he most certainly has been selfish and entitled. But he's continuously growing, continuously being made to face his faults and try to overcome them. Most important, at the end of the day he's just a guy who doesn't want anything bad to happen to the people he loves and he tries despite how utterly powerless he is, holding himself to his failures to the point of self-destructiveness. He's far from perfect but he's a good guy who's being continuously pushed to be a better one.

“I’ll show you my weakness. I’ll show you my vulnerabilities. I’ll even show you how I’m a petty, irredeemable bastard. —But the one thing I won’t show you is me giving up.”

Rem had once said...Subaru was her hero.

And Subaru Natsuki had decided to be Rem’s hero.

Again, I don't dislike Emilia at all. I don't even dislike the idea of her and Subaru as a couple, since I can clearly see why Subaru loves her and why Emilia is likely falling for him. But these books have most certainly done nothing to temper how much I love the Subarem ship. How important Rem is to him not only helping to pull Subaru out of his despair over his long string of failures but also how much he wants to be the man she sees him as breaking him out of the Rem-deception. I'm not sure if what I said makes any sense but it's beautiful nonetheless!

The funny thing about Echidna's idea for potential immortality, hopping from one body to the next, is that it's an idea I feel like I've seen many times in fiction and yet I'm drawing a blank on many specific examples. I'm curious if implanting memories into a new vessel is how her tomb works, like she placed herself literally into her tomb and thus why her dream castle exists even after her death?

I am really enjoying Echidna so far. You know Subaru probably shouldn't trust her but she's very good at making herself someone you kind of want to trust. While it's a bit grey to say if she is an outright villain, I think she makes for a very good one.

I feel like I may have a misunderstanding of how Beatrice's pact works. She's to guard the library of forbidden books and sometimes the story makes it sound like she can't leave it, or at least can't leave the mansion, but she has left it a few times now, the furthest being Subaru's suicide jump of the cliff. So is it the overall estate she can't leave or that she can only exit the grounds on certain conditions? Because she and Subaru did have a pact when he went to the cliff.

Next volume should prove interesting, given Subaru seems like he's going to form a pact with Beatrice and Satella just showed up for the tea party. Next volume comes on sale on July 21, so I've got a couple of weeks to wait, unless anyone is aware of any websites that've translated the light novels (not web novels) like Overlord and Konosuba have.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Re_Zero/comments/ho60yc/novels_first_time_read_through_light_novel_vol_12/

[caithyra]

Review: The Hanover Square Affair (Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries #1) by Ashley Gardner

So, I’m binging on historical fiction and thought that maybe I’ll make a few reviews. This particular review came about because the author trained the readers to read a certain way and then did not realize the implications when the a reader would read the whole book that way and not just the scenes the author wanted them to read like that.

I am of course talking about the character of Louisa Brandon, who is, according to the summary of the fifth book in this series, Captain Lacey’s good friend even after five books, even though he should have cut her out his life years before the this book and at least have cursed her out and never talked to her again halfway through this book. Yeah.

Quick Spoiler-free Review: 4/10. First Person POV but with little interior life of the POV character beyond complaints. The mystery ended up being of secondary concern to the Louisa annoyance for me in the end. All the characters and the narrative cannot stop praising Louisa Brandon when they should hate her. The first two chapters are basically filler because the characters speak in cryptic remarks instead of like normal people... You get the idea.

But let me rant a bit about Louisa Brandon. And I will do so in a way that’ll hopefully be helpful for other writers who might make the same mistake.

SPOILERS AHOY (But not of the mystery’s conclusion, because that’s got nothing to do with it)!

Basically, we are told to read more into what the characters say/write than what they say at face value, which is a given in mystery stories, but in this particular story, doing such means understanding the solution of several parts of the mystery (a maid obviously being infatuated with her murdered master while claiming she was not; a missing girl’s letters to a friend mentioning something in a previous letter yet the previous letter does not contain it, suggesting that her friend left a letter between out to hide this something, but the friend refuses to admit it).

Now, for some backstory about Captain Gabriel Lacey, Louisa Brandon, Aloysius Brandon and Janet Clarke. This is a very abbreviated, as close to spoiler-free version, I could get:

Basically, Louisa is married to Aloysius Brandon. Aloysius, Lacey’s commander, took Lacey under his wing during the wars in the army and they became the best of friends (Lacey continually thinks about how they loved, yes, using that word, each other). Janet was the wife of a lower ranked soldier who died, and became Lacey’s lover, and they were happy. At some point, Louisa’s honor was threatened, Lacey did some calling out, Aloysius became jealous and sent Lacey on a suicide mission, Janet (some point before the suicide mission, I think, I was sort of glazing over by this time) went home to take care of a sick sister (no promises made between her and Lacey) and married Clarke (who died before the start of this book), Lacey now hates Aloysius but could not take him down without ruining Louisa as well so he now lives on half-pay and most of his thoughts are about how much everything costs and how depressed he is and how his temper gets away from him (he’s been traumatized, betrayed and discarded, basically, by the Brandons).

Also, Louisa continues to hound Lacey to forgive her husband so that everything can go back to the way it were before when Lacey loved her husband and her.

Anyway, in this book, Lacey runs into Janet, who is being courted by another former soldier from his troops, and they rekindle their relationship. Lacey is happy when he is with Janet, and he talks to Janet about everything and she cheers him up when he’s depressed and whatnot (like, sex with her literally brings him out of his melancholic spells, and she apparently always had this ability and did it back in the army days too).

Then, some chapters later, we get this scene which begins with Janet and Lacey making love and then Janet breaking up with him:

She looked down and away. “Mrs. Brandon told me what you have become. I can’t be a burden around your neck, Gabriel. I won’t. You have burdens enough of your own.”

I stilled, anger filling me. “What I have become? Dear God, what the devil did she tell you?”

“That you are hurt. That you were broken.”

And then Lacey’s anger and pride takes over and yadda, yadda and then his female neighbor (who eavesdropped) who steals from him (even when she’s come into a larger amount of money, which he arranged for her) says that Louisa Brandon was right, that Janet was just using him (hello pot, calling someone a kettle when Janet’s not a kettle) and being a burden and whatnot (even though this is never, ever shown in the text. All Janet is shown to want in the text is a happy relationship with a husband who cherishes her, which Lacey most certainly does. It’s everyone else who says that she wants something Lacey can’t give, not Janet nor her behaviour at any point in the book).

But look at that scene and read it with the knowledge that what isn’t said, but implied, is just as important as it is with the letters and maid.

So... The wife of a superior officer of Janet’s late husband/future husband/lover, who is also richer and of higher social status, basically tells Janet to abandon her lover because he’s too broken to carry the burden of Janet (who happens to be the only good woman in this entire book who unreservedly made Lacey happy).

How, may I ask, did the topic even arise to discuss between the two of them? Like, how? The only reason why anything pertaining to such a thing would come up is if they discussed Lacey and Janet hinted that she rekindled their relationship, and then Louisa went ham on breaking them up, uncaring as to what their relationship truly is (at this point, it has only been shown as positive to Lacey, with the only negative being the period they were broken up), since there’s no way Janet could (or would) tell anyone but her most intimate friend details, and Louisa is not that friend.

Louisa really, really don’t want any other woman in Lacey’s life, is what I got from that scene. And it is reinforced as instead of comforting himself with Janet and talking to Janet, Lacey then derives comfort and talks to Louisa. Who is married, and not showing any inclination to leave her husband, not even temporarily, for an affair.

And then the last scene of the book compares Louisa’s forgiveness of Lacey with God’s forgiveness as she kisses his brow (still being married and in love with the man who tried to kill Lacey in a fit of jealousy and sent Lacey into a life of half-poverty). Both by Louisa and Lacey.

And it hit me that Louisa is just like those Female Best Friends (tm) of boyfriends who are totes friends with the girlfriends, they just try to monopolize the boyfriend’s time, suggest to one or the other that they are incompatible/better/worse than the other/spread rumors in social circles and so on. Heck, Louisa might be a full blown narcissist forcing her husband and Lacey to play pick-me games (hence why she wants them to reconcile; it is easier to play them against one another if they actually interact).

Basically, by the end, I believed that Louisa Brandon loves having Lacey and her husband fight over her as an ego boost, and she doesn’t care how she must ruin Lacey’s life to keep it that way (after all, being obsessed in a one-way infatuation with her is better than being in a loving relationship with any other [lesser] woman, in Louisa’s opinion, according to my read on the situation).

I went online to read reviews to see if anyone else caught it.

And then I found out that in the fifth book’s summary, Louisa is still Lacey’s good friend.

Wat.

So, apparently I read the book wrong, then? After following the instructions in the supposed main plot of the mystery? Or this is a “slow burn romance” in which Louisa systematically depriving Lacey of options over a period of many books is considered romantic, and that I should somehow root for their relationship?

Or maybe the author just didn’t realize what she wrote, when she wrote the Janet break up scene and the comparison between Louisa and God by Louisa herself, and with Louisa coming out on top (giving the forgiveness Lacey worries God will deny him). Also, there was very little hints (if any, I don’t remember any except exclaimations) that Lacey had any religious leanings until he went to GodLouisa for forgiveness.

And that, I think, is where other writers can learn from the mistake of trying to take the expedient option (Janet referring to Louisa as an authority on what poor, broken Lacey needs), which implies things that the author never meant, instead of actually doing the work to show what was meant (showing that Janet uses Lacey, have Janet break up with Lacey in favor of her future husband because she was just having a bit of fun or something, actually have Janet tell Lacey that he can’t give her what she needs in a husband, et cetera. There are so many other options than “Louisa, who is a third-party whom we never tell our intimate details to yet somehow is an expert on you and our relationship told me to break up with you!”).

Also, the way the female characters were written (except Saint Louisa) was... Yeah, it wasn’t great.

Also, a sixteen year old street prostitute is not practically elderly in her profession, OMG! Plenty of women in their 40s and 50s walked the streets! I do not know any sex work history in which the workers that walked public streets were considered old at sixteen!

And that was one of many other iffy, ahistorical things in this book (chiefly, because it was so unnecessary, being that Janet wouldn’t tell Louisa any pertinent details to make Louisa’s meddling justified and not just a fit of possessive jealousy. Like, imagine telling your late spouse’s boss’ wife the intimate relationship you have with a former employee of her husband’s that quit after the husband abused him, and then going “alright!” when she tells you to break up with him).

[cult-of-kai]

The Sword of Swift Justice

Thoughts on episode eight, ‘Winter of Our Discontent’:

This episode was like the ghost of predictions past for me…

The promo picture called Cheyenne Jackson’s character ‘Dr. Rudy Vincent’, but his name in the show is Dr. Vincent Anderson. Surely this was done to preserve the surprise reveal. Right away, we find out that Vincent is innocent of all but being a lousy shrink. But even then- wait. Is he a lousy shrink? He’s exasperated by Ally, to be sure- but so were we. So was Ivy, for all that she had other issues as well. Rosie, beaming, said that Vincent cured her and he responded by praising the work she’d put in. I thought he had to be loading Kai up on Adderall if nothing else, but nope. Kai steals prescription pads from him. Vincent’s eventual fate stings because it comes right when he’s trying to atone for mistakes he is just realizing he made. I reasoned early on that Vincent might not actually be involved in the cult, but I kind of assumed I was overthinking the whole thing. Nope again. Although… there was something a little creepy about the description of “pinky power” (which sounds even sillier than pinky promise), in my opinion. At any rate- RIP, Vincent.

I guess Bebe Babbitt… went missing? I don’t know, but the ladies of the cult are still pissed about being pushed aside. It’s gotten worse, actually, because now they’re stuck cooking for and serving Kai’s army of blueshirt drones. Ivy mentions The Handmaid’s Tale, which I’ll get back to later, and Beverly relates how Kai is manipulating the city council into going along with his decisions. The bit about the gated community is decent class-war commentary. Then it’s time for story time with Winter.

How did Kai-That-Was become the Kai we know? I think it was after the trailer’s release that I called Kai a manipulative whackjob with a messiah complex. But then back in ‘11/9′, we were given the impression of relative- if perhaps dreary- normalcy until Ms. Anderson commits a murder-suicide. This definitely effects him. A mutual of mine (@loonyloomis) pointed out that this was when Kai stopped cutting his hair- Adam Sheppard tease!- and he later gets into peddling fraudulent prescriptions. But he seems to bounce back for the most part, despite living in a house with two rotting corpses. Then the two younger Anderson siblings go to Judgment House on a lark, which Winter presents as the defining turning point in Kai’s life. Symbolically, it makes sense. In a twisted parody of a church, a horror *house of judgment*, Kai is stripped down to his essence- and found wanting. His first instinct upon realizing that Pastor Charles is torturing and killing people is to rescue them, which he does while Winter runs to save herself. This is Kai at his most genuinely heroic. He saved four people, including Winter, from terrible torment and death- not to mention any other victims Pastor Charles would have found. Now just take a minute to imagine how differently things might have gone if Kai had done as the female victim suggested and called the police. But he didn’t, because the better angel of his nature fails. Instead of shining a light on a great evil, he becomes it. He denies Pastor Charles’ victims the justice they choose to do as Winter suggests and kills him, becoming a killer. This- not his parents’ death- is the crack in Kai’s soul, the fissure in his mind. Everything since has been psychodramatic fallout and Kai bringing others down with him. He’s trying to convince himself and everyone around him that he’s on the rise when he is in free-fall.

I’m not sure how prevalent they are overall, but (fake!) Judgment Houses do definitely exist in the South. I specifically remember going to one that was split between heaven and hell. Everyone kept wandering back to hell because the heaven side- white sheets with scripture written all over them- was boring. Parts of Judgment House reminded me of ‘Se7en’, specifically Sloth. That’s undoubtedly deliberate, especially since Winter already name-dropped Fincher last episode. And randomly, AHS co-creator Brad Falchuk dates Gwyneth Paltrow. Others have mentioned similarities to the ‘Saw’ series, but I’ve never seen any of those. Rick Springfield was fine, but Pastor Charles would have been a nice little role for Denis O’Hare.

Anyway. Winter wants to try to reach Kai, because she believes that can happen. They’re all members of a murderous clown cult, but what do I know? Ivy and Beverly agree to give her some time. Winter and Kai meet, and we learn that Kai definitely knows how Harrison died and doesn’t care. They do a pinky power session and shit gets strange fast. Kai has decided, apropos of nothing, that they need to have a messiah baby. And for whatever reason, Winter has to be its mother. Logically, one’s mind goes to incest. But no- it’s going to be so much weirder than that! Kai says they’re going to have a threesome with Detective Samuels but somehow Winter will remain pure. At first I thought maybe Kai was just looking for an excuse to have sex with Samuels, but later events in the episode turned that idea on its head. Winter eventually calls the whole thing off because it gets to be too much nonsense for her. (I mean, it wasn’t until then?) Between the robes and the song and the behavior of all involved, it was undoubtedly one of the most bizarre AHS scenes ever- cringy as hell, but also hysterical and… oddly fitting in a satirical way? In the popular imagination and in reality (to a lesser degree), cult practices are often oddly sexual, cobbled together, and perversions of religious rituals. Kai has a degree in religious studies. Is he trying to sanctify what he and the cult are doing? His opening salvo during pinky power might lead us to believe he’s simply testing Winter, but I don’t know. The whole scenario also evokes ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, a modern classic about women’s disenfranchisement via reproductive slavery.

As for Winter, what’s her deal? Why was she trolling “social justice warriors” with Kai? Sibling bonding? She seemed to be enjoying it. Was she perhaps also changed by Judgment House? Was her response to the trauma a hard left turn? But she swears to love and be loyal to her brother, who is politically on the opposite shore. In ‘11/9′, she told Ivy she wants to serve someone powerful. It’s all rather baffling. Regardless, Winter wearing a dunce cap and throwing recycling on the side of the road because Kai “doesn’t believe in global warming” is one of the funniest damn things I’ve seen all season. The following confrontation between her and Samuels- especially the line about losing when Hillary did- might suggest she would get more radical and truly join forces with the other women, but that’s not what happens. Instead, she… sells Beverly out? What? In turn, Beverly reads both Kai and Winter for filth.

We *finally* get a little backstory on Samuels, which I’ve been waiting for despite not caring about the character. I suspected he was a Nazi type way back in ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’, and I was right. He was also a dirty cop pre-cult, although it’s a little rich for Winter to accuse him of being a criminal when- once again- they’re both members of a *murderous clown cult*. He life is complicated by being gay and internalizing homophobia. Kai sees this and immediately goes to work, feeding Samuels a line of misogynistic bullshit and then fucking him for good measure. Kai seems particularly into it as well, which is interesting. I rather wonder how Evan would describe his character’s sexuality. So did Samuels just not care about Harrison at all? It didn’t seem like their involvement was only physical. I specifically remember them cuddling on the couch and discussing their favorite housewives. Eh. RIP, Samuels.

Finally, we have Ally to consider. We see her holding one of Oz’s toy trucks before inviting Kai over to rat Vincent out. She claims to be afraid of nothing now, and that’s after Kai has already noted a change in her. Their little exchange about Manwich is cute, as is her deliberately calling Speed Wagon ‘Aerosmith’. (Seriously, where did the drones’ names come from?) In the final scene, we see that that some drones have taken to wearing the masks of fallen clowns. Ally, staring Ivy down, is wearing the mask of Kai’s former “favorite”- the only one who impressed him. That’s no coincidence. Rise, Ally.

[novantinuum]

oH MAN so I have to share this… y’know how there’s the general fandom view that Ford’s influence was technically with us the whole time “through the journal,” right? 

well, I was ruminating over this today and sort of spouted a bunch of ideas @witete (sorRY ahahah XD) and we bounced some things back and forth and came up with an awful angst AU and I’m vaguely proud of it so okay here we go…

The sum of all of it: Ford’s trapped in the mindscape forever after Bill Cipher basically murders his body, but Bill’s threat still remains and Ford ends up learning to manipulate objects around him (i.e. like the journal) to try and warn people of this. Things do not go well.

I’ll babble on more under the cut. XD

oKAY so this likely takes place in some sort of rare universe where young Ford- post betrayal- actually asks for Stanley’s help to dismantle the portal rather than just hide the journals to preserve his “life’s work.” (I still think Ford wouldn’t tell Stan about Bill in shame, though… this will be important later on.) They’re a good long ways into dismantling it when one day Ford goes missing… and when Stan finally ends up finding him hours and hours later his brother is lying prone under a fresh layer of snow, frozen to death or something. (That’s the fate witete came up with! Thanks for the really heckin’ unnerving imagery, duuude…)

In reality, Bill ended up possessing Ford when he got a little too tired, and basically threatened to kill him (with one of the few things he still had at his disposal that Ford couldn’t get rid of- nature.) if he didn’t stop dismantling the portal. Gave him an ultimatum. Bill’s mistake, however, was wrongly assuming that Ford was selfish enough to put his own self-preservation above the safety of the entire dimension. He doesn’t quite realize how damn stubborn Ford is. 

Stubborn enough to die just to spite him. To cut him off from his one physical point of contact with this world, and this dimension itself.

So Ford dies. And Stan mourns. Stan still doesn’t understand how this happened. It’s been labeled by everyone else as suicide, but it just doesn’t make sense. Ford might have been a bit off his rocker, but he didn’t seem like he’d do… that.

Somehow Bill ends up contacting Stan within dreams, and spins some great elaborate lie (I’ll be honest I’m still not sure what said lie would have to entail to convince Stan) about how what happened to Ford was a tragic accident and that he can help him create some device that would be able to pull Ford’s “spirit” back into this world and allow it to manifest physically. (A.K.A take a mindscape dwelling creature and allow it to take physical form in the real world, which is exactly what Bill needs- but of course he doesn’t tell Stan that.) The little shit’s just trying to manipulate his way into this dimension again, as per heckin’ usual. Sighhh.

If Stan does smell a con, he doesn’t bring it up with Bill or deny the agreement. At this point, he’s utterly desperate to get Ford back, whatever it takes- which will eventually be his downfall. He’ll juggle the consequences when he gets to them, but damnit he’s gotta rescue Ford.

So he begins constructing Bill’s machine from the gutted parts of the portal. And much like in canon, it takes the good part of thirty years to get it near completion.

Meanwhile in the mindscape, Ford’s discovered that in his present state, he’s essentially tethered to Gravity Falls. He also discovers that while he does inhabit what is seemingly the same mindscape that Bill used and occupied during their old partnership, Bill is nowhere to be found. Is it possible that he’s somehow slipped into a pocket dimension due to his soul being permanently shucked here? 

But Ford begins to observe what’s going on in the world around him. And when he notices Stan beginning to build something from the old guts of the portal he freaks out because he just KNOWS that Bill is behind this, that he’s still trying to push into their dimension, that he’s manipulating Stan, he’s gonna hurt him he’s gonna betray him and oh god what if he kills him like he killed me?? Ford knows he has to stop this however he can, but there’s a big problem:

Unlike Dipper in Sock Opera, Ford’s connection to the real world at this point is so weak, diluted, and untested that he can barely influence or affect anything whatsoever. He’s stuck. He can’t communicate.

Over the span of multiple years, Ford very slowly begins to build up this connection. He starts trying to attract Stan’s attention in small ways… a stray gust of wind here, a slammed door there. This actually helps out Stan’s Mystery Shack a lot- because then he can claim it’s haunted. By the time Dipper and Mabel come along and Dipper finds the journal, he’s starting to learn how to affect the world in more complex ways. He grows particularly attached to Dipper, and helps him in his adventures by flipping the pages of the journal open to the exact bit he needed at any moment. There’s also been times where Dipper found himself in a pinch without his journal, and then turned around and saw it right there on the ground in front of him, brought to him by Ford via mindscape. 

Ford tries communicating with Dipper by spelling out words with things, but much like the “bewarb” thing from the first episode the messages are almost always muddled because he can’t quite get a grip with his mindscape abilities yet.

Summer moves on… Stan’s machine is almost finished… Dipper begins to suspect something is fishy with this magical journal of his, and his ultimate summer mystery is to crack the mystery behind it.

Then, there comes a point where Ford suddenly realizes that he possesses the ability to enter and influence dreams, much like Bill. He takes the first opportunity he can to enter Stan’s dream to try and warn him of what Bill is truly planing. Things do not go well, ofc. Come on, these are the Pines brothers we’re talking about. XD 

I’m gonna directly quote @witete here, because you put this perfectly:

So maybe Stan’s dreaming at one point and he just thinks it’s a regular dream of Ford (he’s had many of those before) but this one’s different- more… tangible in a sense. Ford seems more real. Dare he say alive (god that hurts Stan to say).

Stan quickly comes to realize that this Ford somehow MUST be real, because this Ford is pushing too many of his buttons all at once to just be a dream, idealized version of him. Ford demands that he stop construction on this machine, and warns him that Bill seeks to use it to enter the dimension and cause untold suffering to its entire population. Stan outright refuses, and basically says that he’s more than willing to bet the universe if he could have a chance at saving the life of his twin brother.

Desperate, Ford ends up going to Dipper in his dream next… hoping that he might be able to understand, since he already suspected the journal to be magic in some way. That he might be able to help him. Dipper’s pretty surprised at the whole situation of Ford manipulating the journal from a sort of pocket dimension- but accepts it pretty readily. However, just when Ford’s about to warn Dipper about the machine, Mabel wakes him up and the connection is lost. By this point, Ford’s so exhausted by TWO dream entries in one night that his energy is spent for a few days. He can’t do anything.

Dipper agonizes over what the important message could have been for the next few days, staring at the journal as if it could suddenly form words at any moment and tell him.

Even when Ford regains enough energy to try again, Stan still outright refuses to give up saving him. And even though he finally is able to fill in Dipper on what’s going on and instruct him on how to shut the machine down, it seems they’re gonna be unable to do anything in time… 

And while Ford doesn’t actually understand how he did it, in blind desperation he somehow ends up rushing towards Stanley within the mindscape, hoping to do anything to stop this, ANYTHING… and ends up accidentally shucking Stan out of his body and into the mindscape. He manages to shut the machine down. But it dawns on him afterwards that he has NO idea how to reverse it and push himself back into the mindscape where he belongs.

Even worse, he realizes that he’s essentially just cursed Stan to the same existence he suffered in loneliness through for thirty long years. He possessed his own brother, stole his body, without his consent. In this way, he’s just like Bill- and that sickens him. Furthermore, it took him years to figure out how to manipulate his surroundings, but Stan doesn’t have that experience. They HAVE to find a way to communicate with each other, but how??

And y-yeah that’s all I have for now. I have no idea how this ends or how things are solved right now, although Ford is definitely still dead physically however this plays out whoOPS.

To finish, please take this lighter, ridiculous idea witete proposed from just after Ford accidentally possessing Stan:

So I imagine that the kids never really notice the difference at first so after all the shit has gone down Ford just fucking starts… yelling at the air because he knows that Stan’s there. He’s saying shit like “just fucking… I don’t know… slam me into the dirt like those men from WWE!” The kids are so scared and confused. (Idk the idea of just Ford yelling desperately into the air at presumably nothing just makes me laugh)

What a beautiful image to end on XD

[missingmorethanmyskull-arch-blog]

Tox’s (and part of Arum’s) Life Story, and music

This gon’ be long so I’ll put it under a readmore

(a bit of comparison to Red and Boss too so I think I’ll reblob this to them)

This is me rambling to my dear @r0astet0aste but I took out everything that’s not actual rambling to shorten it if only a little

I've got to get up an info page for Tox

-slams hands down-

LISTEN I'M GONNA DUMP ALL HIS SONGS ON YOU

OK SO

ARUM NEVER PAID ATTENTION TO HIM. EVER. EVER EVER. NOT UNTIL THE WAR

HE WAS FAR TOO FOCUSED ON BEING GASTER'S ASSISTANT, AND THEN TRYING TO GET HIM BACK

THE SCIENCE DAD AND SON IGNORED THEIR 'UNINTELLIGENT' SON/BRO

TOX GREW UP FEELING INFERIOR AND NEGLECTED AND STUPID

SO HE THREW EVERYTHING HE HAD INTO PHYSICAL ABILITY IN THE HOPES IT WOULD GARNER HIS BROTHER'S ATTENTION

AND EVENTUALLY STARTED TAKING OUT HIS FRUSTRATION BY ABUSING ARUM

BUT ARUM DIDN'T GIVE A FUCK

HE TOOK THE PUNCHES AND KICKS LIKE "are you done throwing a tantrum, bitch? yes? good bye i'm going back downstairs"

Basically he was enamored with his dear old daddy and considered Tox a waste of space

So getting beaten up had the same effect as Tox wailing annoyingly as a small child. That "ugh stop" effect

Meanwhile poor Tox just

Wanted attention

Yes he beat up his big bro but all he wanted was attention

So there's this song for his feelings on Arum pre-war

Diary of Jane - Breaking Benjamin

Keep in mind he doesn't remember G

So all he knows is Arum ignored him for science for no reason

And so he was desperate for attention

He got it in the royal guard

He was good. He was powerful. He was Undyne's favorite

He fell for her of course

So they got together

(Arum has been with his Grillz, his Alphys, and the shopkeep bun in terms of real relationships I just need to figure out the order. Alphys first I'm p sure)

Then

The human fell

Arum fell for her gradually, put his trust in her, believed she'd break them free, etc

That didn't happen

King died. Six souls were destroyed

Toriel returned to the throne

Undyne didn't like that

Because Toriel instilled a mercy policy to fallen humans

But Frisk had told Arum that the human population had grown immensely in the last several centuries

Breaking free and initiating war - Undyne's plan, just like Asgore's - would result in monsters being eradicated

Arum was always on Toriel's side

When Undyne challenged her, the civil war broke out

Tox felt loyalty to his lover, ofc, but he also realized Arum and Toriel were right. War was a bad idea

Besides, the last thing they needed was their ruler to be another Asgore

Who was ruthless and made the underground hell

So he was torn

He eventually settled on a side - Toriel's

There's this song for when he had to fight Undyne

Headstrong - Trapt

Then

then

well, keep in mind

none of this was actually Frisk's fault

Everyone thinks it was but

In reality, she was trapped in the void by Flowey during his omega battle

Flowey felt horribly guilty for fucking it all up

He started rewinding time, again and again

Arum was the only one aware of this

He experienced the resets and reloads

So the Civil War, which stretched for idk a few decades probably

was actually much longer

Tox died

When he was killed the first time

Arum had a meltdown

He realized then that

despite everything

Tox was the only family he'd had left

And none of their fighting mattered, did it?

He'd wasted his brotherhood. He'd ignored the only person he had that was family

First mental break

This song

Not Gonna Die - Skillet

ISN'T IT GREAT?

the last thing i heard was you whispering goodbye... and then i heard you flatline

Arum was an absolute mess

Then time rewound again

He tried to warn Tox not to fight in that battle

Tox didn't listen to him ofc

so he died several times in the war

So I've got a few songs about that

Soldier Side - System of a Down

Battle Cry - Skillet

Not Afraid to Die - Written By Wolves

And my favorite for the Civil War time (aside from Not Gonna Die)

IS THIS ONE

Rise - Skillet

(by the way, yes, in every Skillet song on his playlist, Arum is the girl singing)

I mean

technically Undyne is the one revolting from Toriel's rule but

Toriel's rule is basically a revolution from Asgore's reign of terror

They're fighting on Toriel's side for a semi-peaceful life

They can't wage war on the humans

They obviously won't be breaking the barrier any time soon, back at 0 souls

All Toriel and her followers want is for the death to stop

So the last 40 seconds of this song?

With the phone call and the news reports and all that

They're all things that would've happened in Asgore's reign

Monsters breaking into each others's houses and dusting them for EXP

People being left on the streets to die

etc

AND THAT LAST MALE VOICE?

"You're such a failure!"

"What is wrong with you?"

"You're worthless!"

"You can't do anything right!"

"I wish you had never been born!"

All things Arum has snapped at him throughout his life

So he's got shit like that playing in his head

But he's still fighting to protect

and by this point

Arum has lost him so many times

He just

He wants to take it all back

He synthesizes a carefully measured solution of determination

Aware of his and Alphys's failures with the amalgamates, he realizes pure determination would only make Tox melt

(Alphys has committed suicide by now btw)

So he works desperately to find a working determination amount, mixed with other chemicals, so he can stop Tox from dying without making him melt

Not much time to test it but he does his best

Keep in mind Tox can't remember any of his deaths

All he knows is his brother has flipped his fucking lid ever since the human left

And keeps talking about time shit that he doesn't understand

Arum forces the determination mixture into him

It works

Tox survives the battle he kept dying in

Drawback: Tox's body distorted

It didn't melt but

It had to shift and change to account for the DT

this is why he's nine feet tall

The civil war continues

Inevitably, Toriel loses and steps down

She returns to the ruins

Undyne takes the throne

Tox is one of the only survivors on Toriel's side

The brothers return to Snowdin and Arum attempts to explain the whole time shit

(He pointedly does not attempt to explain Gaster or what he was always working on)

But he apologizes for everything

So ok Tox doesn't really get it all

He's still just... not very bright

But he realizes that Arum has lost everything and is trying to change

So things for sure aren't perfect, but they at least stop hitting each other and attempt to communicate more

Arum's first mental break and the endless resets within the war has left him not enitrely stable

Arum was a mess

He put his faith and trust in Frisk and look where it got him

Look where it got the whole underground

He returned to working desperately to try and get his dad back

He somehow convinced himself if Gaster was back, everything would be okay again

Honestly he put G on such a high pedestal, it's crazy

He consistently believes he could never measure up to him in terms of scientific ability, though he's been monitoring and repairing the core personally ever since G was cast into the void

He's probably surpassed G by this point but he can't believe it

he's got Red's failure complex honestly

He just shows it far less

Oh I should mention his HP was never 1

He always had over 200

Physically, he was always stronger than Red

He just didn't use it

Bigger, stronger, he didn't have the defects that Red was created with basically

anyway after that, whenever a human fell, they'd kill the human and purposefully crush their soul into little bits

so Undyne couldn't take the soul for herself

a few slipped through the cracks, tho

current time, Undyne has 3

Flowey kept occasionally fucking with time

The magic in the underground soured

Crops began to fail

Soon, food became very scarce

the monster population had basically halved due to the war but still

Hunger began to take control over everything

Tox came up with the clever idea (for once) of slowly conditioning himself and Arum to be resistant to most poisons

They started to poison their own food stores to deter people from stealing their food

But the fact is they started to starve slowly

Another human fell

In a fit of hunger, having lost himself, Arum killed and ate the human

well he set half aside for Tox but

yeah he tasted meat for the first time that day

Cue another mental break afterwards, when he realized the brutal, horrifying act he'd just committed

He'd killed only a few times in his life, and only in self-defense

Tox had dusted many in the war, but that was war

This was him murdering and eating someone in cold blood

and he really loved the taste, too

He was sickened by himself

Tox, too

But they didn't really have a choice anymore

Tox had long since accepted that the world was fucked up

Arum was new to the idea, having locked himself away in labs for most of his life, he was far more sensitive to this shit

This was around the time that Arum first became suicidal

So here's another Tox song as he started to realize Arum was in even worse mental shape than he thought

Never Too Late - Three Days Grace

Arum is growing ever more desperate about getting his father back

On a very bad day, he attempted to use the machine he was building, before he had finished it and properly tested it

Oh boy did that backfire

He reached into the void with a flawed machine and the void yanked payment

You've seen Fullmetal Alchemist, right?

Them boys reached into the void asking for the impossible

Arum reached into the void asking for something very possible, but he did it in a flawed way

He didn't have enough power or control in the machine

So first of all it exploded and took a chunk out of his skull manually

Now that could be healed with green magic provided you have all of the bone material with you

But what the void took wasn't all physical

It took chunks of his mind

Not only that, it soured and rotted his soul

His soul reached 0/0 HP but he did not die

His soul was permanently rotted and changed. He's already at 0, but still there, so he can't die

His magic soured too

You recall his dark, dark red magic color? Almost brownish black?

Wasn't originally that color

The hole in his skull destroyed one eye but the other began to glow permanently

He can't teleport, he can't die, he can't conceive a child, he can't even soulbond

He's essentially a zombie

And he looked the part for a while, too

Tox heard the explosion and rushed down there to find Arum unconscious with a chunk missing, tendrils of voidy shit being battered back by vines

Flowey probably saved them all from more damage

Tox attempted to heal the wound in Arum's skull but it didn't work

His body no longer accepted green magic

The basis of green magic is healing HP and at 0/0, there is nothing to be healed

Green magic hurts Arum about as much as being attacked does

Both make his soul glitch the fuck out like an amalgamate's

Anyway, Arum was unconscious for a damn long time

Days

But finally, he woke up... And he couldn't remember anything. He couldn't focus his gaze on anything. He couldn't speak and could hardly move

He was completely catatonic and only vaguely conscious

Tox had to take care of him the same way you might take care of a baby or doll, minus the crying

He fed Arum by hand, carried him around the house, manually moved his joints so Arum's body didn't entropy

Attempted to communicate in any way

Eventually Arum started to be able to recognize sign language again, and at least nod or shake his head in response to simple questions

He slowly regained control of his body, then speech, and at last, his memories began to come back hazily

He's still missing chunks of his life but he made a pretty miraculous recovery over a period of several years

He remembers, vaguely, the feeling of time resetting

But he can no longer experience resets properly

He doesn't remember them and they give him intense migraines

He never remembered the events of the day the machine exploded, and seeing as Tox has no clue what happened, he still doesn't know

He's just sort of... Assumed the machine is fine

And hes always like "oh yeah i should get back to building it some day" but hasn't gone to the basement since and he doesn't know why

Flowey ain't around

I mean they were never friends

Arum and Flowey fought over resets before, though Arum's mostly forgotten it

And they've talked about Alphys or about science briefly but

Theyre acquaintances at best

But Flowey, guilt ridden yet again, hasn't been around and won't tell him what happened

Anyway

The period of several years where Arum was 100% dependent on Tox stuck with them

Their shaky bond has evolved into a full on dependency on each other

Arum needs Tox desperately because he's a fucking mess mentally, and often he'll have bad days where he can't remember anything and goes semi-catatonic again

During which days Tox babies him and ensures his safety and comfort

Tox needs Arum because now he has a purpose

He's not only wanted but needed

It's like they never fought

They're as close as brothers can get

(Without being incestuous lmao)

They rely on each other 100%

Arum is there for Tox when he has war-induced PTSD flashbacks and needs comfort. Arum feeds them both with humans and other food he can steal.

Tox mans puzzles, patrols, keeps them safe from Undyne and is there for when Arum's mental health deteriorates

They split food evenly down the middle

Arum would give Tox more of his share since he can't starve to death, but Tox refuses

Arum is still often suicidal

He's honestly tried every method in the book to die

Overdose on poison he's trained himself to survive. Bullet to the head (ow). Trying to crush his own soul. Starving on purpose. Drowning. Freezing. Setting himself on fire. Hell. There's a Reapertale Sans rp blog ( @jokingdeath ) that Arum went up to and was like "touch my hand and kill me"

He literally shook hands with death and it didn't kill him

And nights when he's attempted or wants to attempt, and knows it's all useless, and is just a sobbing mess

Tox is there for him 

Here's the last two songs lol

Also both Skillet

Fire and Fury - Skillet (I realize this is a love song but platonically okay)

The Last Night - Skillet (not all of the lyrics fit but you get the gist of it)

Oh i fORGOT MY OTHER FAVE!

why isn't it on the youtube playlist how dare

wait there it is lol

Ok so this one, The Last Night, Rise, and Not Gonna Die are my top 4 for Tox

honestly I can't rank them they're just my top four

Fix You - The Offspring

She sees a million stars like holes in the sky

Arum has a far more bitter take on the surface world than Red does

all God's tears for her they cry, and I am in her rain

Arum is just

you think Red is in bad shape depression wise?

hAH

The difference is Arum puts up a far better "i don't give a fuck" front than Red

Arum laughs at his own pain far more. He makes death jokes and dead baby jokes

(His laugh is not sane anyway)

He kills mercilessly, without hesitation

With a smile on his face

(His smile is not sane either)

Gore makes Red vomit

it makes Arum grin

Red has at least a modicum of faith that they'll get out some day

Arum knows damn well he's never going to be free

Honestly they're both Underfell!Sans but they are vastly different

They were vastly different long before Frisk fell

And they had vastly different lives from the beginning

Arum's Gaster was a good man

Yes, he neglected Tox terribly, they both did

But Dros created them to be his children

As the last skeleton alive, and not interested in a romantic relationship, he created Arum and Tox in a similar fashion as how Erebus created Red and Boss, bot for the opposite reason

He also didn't fuck up with Arum

Red's physical body came out wrong

He formed too small, too frail

He always had 1 HP

Yes, it was in part due to his pessimism, but physically, his body can't hold much HP in the first place

If Red's HP were to rise (and it will) I think I'd cap him at 50

My 5 foot smol was born with the short end of the stick

slaps knee

short end

Boss was born with the long end slaps knee again

Boss's body was always too big

He couldn't control his magic properly and his body was pushed too far

which made him a very sickly child

but as an adult he evened it out with endless training

They're both on one end of an extreme

Whereas Arum and Tox were both quite average. They were evenly leveled, physically

Arum is 5'6", he's completely normal

He just happened to have inherited Dros's extreme intelligence

a fairly common thing in humans, genius can be hereditary

Meanwhile Tox... didn't

Boss was born with strength that he had to hone. Tox was born average and created his own extreme strength through willpower and desperation

Red was born with a too-strong mind that was further distended with experimentation, and had to hone and focus his intelligence once they escaped. It left him with so many emotional issues

Arum's inherited intelligence was carefully guided by his father and he was an average genius, also made extreme through willpower

All of his emotional issues are because of his fucked-up timeline 8,D

Ahhh I love designing characters

Red and Arum as as different from each other as they're both different from Chaos

who is also an Underfell!Sans

Who just happens to be female

and just happened to go insane and kill her entire timeline due to a certain brat :3c

BUT THAT'S RAMBLING FOR ANOTHER DAY

[galaxys-child]

The murder of Magnussen and the lack of consequences

What angered me in the beginning of the “Six Thatchers” was the lack of consequences of the murder of Magnussen, especially after Moffat and Gatiss have talked so much about the fourth season being full of consequences.

I have nothing against the notion that someone’s getting away with killing someone. John did kill the cabbie in the first episode but the circumstances were completely different: First, the cabbie was a murderer who forced his victims to take a poisonous pill. John knew that. Second, he has seen Sherlock standing in front of the murderer in the other building and believed Sherlock was in imminent danger and about to die. Then he quickly reacted and shot the cabbie. Not in the heart. Not in the head. But in the shoulder which didn’t lead to his imminent death. (I am of the belief that the cabbie could have had a small chance of survival if someone phoned an ambulance immediately and the paramedics were quick enough. But Sherlock’s stomping on the wound quickened the process of the cabbie’s death (just my interpretation).

Nevertheless, what John did was definitely homicide to prevent an innocent from being killed. Sherlock even said so that John wouldn’t go to prison for killing the cabbie.

Magnussen, on the other hand, was a black mailer. He didn’t kill people. The only evidence we have of someone’s death was the suicide of Lady Smallwood’s husband. Magnussen was probably indirectly responsible for it because he threatened her husband so gruesomely that Mr Smallwood didn’t see a choice other than killing himself. But still, it was Mr. Smallwoods choice to end his life, not Magnussen’s.

Moriarty, on the other hand, was a consulting criminal. People came to him for advice to plan a crime (which also included murder). Moriarty himself put explosives on people as part of a game and let them killed if Sherlock wasn’t fast enough to solve the case.

So, Magnussen was killed and Moriarty wasn’t?

I have watched HLV several times and thought about it over and over. I do not see the justification of murdering Magnussen when compared to Moriarty. And especially when Mary Watson was a murderer herself. She told us in HLV, for what she did she would go to prison for the rest of her life. Magnussen blackmailed her and threatened her to call all the relatives of the people she has killed. Of course. But still, I find Moriarty was much worse than Magnussen.

And: Magnussen didn’t put Mary in imminent danger; he “just blackmailed” her.  (He just said that he has the numbers of the people who hate Mary for what she did. He didn’t call them. He wasn’t even about to call them.) He was unarmed and Sherlock shot him in the head. Magnussen didn’t have a chance of survival. He died immediately.

Compared to John killing the cabbie it was outright murder (and to me, less justifiable)

Recently I have watched my favourite Sci-Fi Show “Babylon 5”: During the beginning of the fourth season an emperor is murdered. He is a gruesome man who takes pleasure in torturing others, he loves hearing their cries of pain. There is a scene when we see him sitting there in his throne watching a guard whipping a prisoner with an electric whip. He counts how often the whip is thrown at the body with a pleased grin on his face (for the record: It was forty times and yes, I had to watch it in every detail). There is a scene where we see him plucking out the victim’s eye with something looking like a spoon because he didn’t like “how the prisoner stared at him.” (A scene which sent shivers down my spine, especially when said prisoner is one of the main characters of the show). But this is not everything: the emperor in “Babylon 5″ believes he has the qualities of a god and is justified to decide over life and death. He betrays his own world to the enemy. He is willing to let millions of people been killed by the enemy, willing to let everything been destroyed by a great fire to usher a new aera afterwards (Compare him to emperor Nero from th Roman Empire). “Let it burn!”, he screams joyfully, “Let it all end in fire!” -  A complete insane and scary psychopath (I was scared by him myself) who is unfortunately too well protected by the subjects at the court. But: a small group of people plans to put an end to his reign. The murder is planned methodically. First, they have to play along with the emperor to gain his trust in order to get closer to him. Then, the plan is to inject a small amount of poison into his chest which causes his heart to stop and would later be undetectable. It woud just look like a heart attack. The plan works (not directly how they originally wanted to, but still) and they get away with it (nobody even suspects them). For me, that murder was completely reasonable (The murder of Magnussen not so much)

The aftermath is also well handled in “Babylon 5″. The person who killed the emperor never killed anyone before in his life, couldn’t forget the face of the emperor and was seized with remorse (and therefore starts drinking). It is adressed that it is very hard indeed to end someone’s life (especially if it’s your first kill and especially if you’re not a sociopath or psychopath which is basically the same, by the way) and one cannot go back to normal after one did such a thing. But they still adressed that it was completely nessecary because if they wouldn’t have murdered him, millions of innocent people would have been dead instead. They saved many lives with that act although it was an ugly thing to do.

A bit of some acknowledgement like that I see at the end of “A study in Pink”: Sherlock asks John if he’s okay because he just took a life. John answers with “Yeah, I did. But he wasn’t a very nice man.”, than they have a giggle about it. I have nothing against black humor. Even in “Babylon 5″ they make some jokes before the murder of the emperor takes place to lighten the mood but it’s still an ugly thing to do and they know it and adress it.

But in “The Six Thatchers”…

Well, long story short: What angered me about the first episode of season four was the lack of consequences for the murder of Magnussen. Sherlock did it in front of numerous witnesses and everyone seems to be okay with it. Nobody judges him. Magnussen is remoted from the earth and everyone seems to be like “well, he was nasty and didn’t deserve to be alive anyway.” (Well, the emperor in Babylon 5 was also nasty and had to be killed, but they face that fact within the show.). In “Sherlock”, they make a fake video to say “now this is the reality” so that Sherlock is “off the hook” and they all continue with their dayly businesses as if the murder has never happened. (Okay, Moffat and Gatiss  also never acknowledged John’s killing of the cabbie again, but John’s act doesn’t weigh as heavily as the murder of Magnussen, especially when Sherlock and John are the only people who know what really happened at the end of “A Study in Pink” whereas Magnussen’s death has many witnesses, and especially when John’s killing is, to me, more justified, well I explained it already).

And what about Magnussen’s heritage? He was a business man, known in public, he sold news. So who is the new chief of his newspaper? What happened to Appledore? Who heirs his residence? I assume he had many people under him. Moriarty’s network was dismantled. What about Magnussen’s? What about the people who worked for him? There is not a single hint. In “Babylon 5″ they show what happened to the followers of the emperor. In “Sherlock”? Nothing. Magnussen just isn’t a part of the story anymore. Let’s go on. Where is the next case and the next big bad?

And what angered me, too, is Sherlock’s attitude towards the whole meeting in the beginning of “The Six Thatchers”. No sign of regret or remorse (okay, I get that he considers himself a sociopath who’s not supposed to have a conscience but I believe it is long established that he isn’t really a sociopath). There is no sign of any acknowledgement at all. Sherlock sits there in his chair, watching the fake Magnussen Video while eating a ginger nut without any single facial expression which could lead to the assumption that the murder affected him in any way. He doesn’t seem to acknowledge that he got away with a crime others would have gone to prison for. He doesn’t thank his brother or the government for releasing him. Instead he is disrepectful, annoys his brother, is completely arrogant and continues to disparage the people around him (“All people are stupid” he says). He goes back to Baker Street and continues to solve cases as if the murder has never happened. How can he catch murderers who are of the belief that their murders are justified and sent them to prison when he is a murderer himself who believes that his murder was justified? It seems to me, he is incapable to fully realize what he has done or to fully realize that he has received a mercy not many people would after such an event (and he should be grateful for that!). He is incapable of any form of self-reflection whatsoever. And I, myself, began to lose every respect for the character Sherlock.

The thing is that I do not understand it. Right after Sherlock has killed Magnussen we see him, guns are pointed at him, his hands are over his head; he is crying. Well, that’s a form of realization. Sherlock has killed someone in front of multiple witnesses to protect the people he cares about. He is clever enough to know that his life would never be the same again, that there will be consequences. That’s why he’s sad (my interpretation). Why show something like that when it has actually no meaning? Why show it when it’s clear in the next season (and in “The Abominable bride”) that it didn’t affect Sherlock in any way?

Now back to TST: I understand the notion of Mark Gatiss to put some comedy into the story before it gets dark with murder threats and an actual murder of a (main) character. I had the impression he wanted to gain a similar effect as in the beginning of “A Scandal in Belgravia”: Sherlock solving a few minor cases before Irene Adler shows up. Funny and entertaining before the real story starts and it gets emotional. But I couldn’t laugh in the beginning of “The Six Thatchers”. It just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Murdering Magnussen was already a very dark moment. Couldn’t they have continued with that story line? At least a little bit? Moffat and Gatiss talked about consequences, wouldn’t it had been nice to show the aftermath of Sherlock’s act in one form or another?

Well, what do you think? Feel free to comment if you like and forgive my errors in the text. ;-)