#i do think this is good to note though with writing these dynamics - like rick's intentions vs execution vs consistent characterization

[aroaceleovaldez]

I was reading a post about CoTG and I realized: Rick has seemingly started to write every character pairing with the exact same dynamic, and he's not good at writing that dynamic and it doesn't make sense for 90% of the characters he writes it for.

It's that very specific dynamic of one half of the pair who is almost aggressive to the other party - "teasing" them constantly/insulting them, affectionately punching/judo flipping/maiming/etc, seemingly almost always exasperated with the other - and said other party usually just accepts this treatment or blanketly views it fondly, and may generally be framed as more incompetent than their partner and a little bit of a doormat (particularly relating to being insulted/teased/etc by their partner).

We start seeing this dynamic in HoO with Percy and Annabeth, as a sort of semi-inconsistent twist on their rivals-to-friends-to-lovers dynamic from the first series. Then the dynamic pattern develops further with Leo and Calypso. Then Magnus and Alex. Then Nico and Will, particularly in TSATS. And now in CoTG, it's Percy and Annabeth again but even more in this direction.

I know people have talked about Nico and Will's relationship over the series rapidly being shoehorned into Percabeth Two™, and it's extremely apparent in TSATS that Rick's doing it on purpose (including directly quoting Percabeth scenes but minorly tweaking them to be Solangelo). But recognizing it as an overarching trend in Rick's later books honestly reminds me a lot of how Rick started trying to apply the "Percy Formula" so-to-speak to nearly every protagonist in HoO (and then try to replicate similar character archetypes with Magnus and Apollo's narrations - moreso Magnus in being jaded and sarcastic, very much trying to be first series Percy. He only sounds unique because Rick failed at making him Percy 2. Apollo is more akin to later-series Percy characterization of being goofy and incompetent. Apollo [and Zeus] even got retconned to give Apollo a more similar backstory to Percy's). Rick seems to have decided that he thinks the audience wants this specific dynamic but 10 times over, except he's not good at writing it the first time because it's a bastardization of the time he did a different thing okay.

And Rick also seems aware of that too! Because he retconned Calypso and Leo at the end of TOA, probably because he realized how absolutely awful it was reading when they were written with that dynamic of Calypso just functionally hating Leo and constantly being aggressive towards him! The only time Rick's actually made the dynamic even semi-successful was with Magnus and Alex, because it actually fits within their characters, their dynamics with each other, and their environment. Alex beheading Magnus on the regular works out fine because there are no repercussions to that in Valhalla, Magnus will be fine, so it does genuinely come off as humorous. And Alex has been effectively established to be abrasive at times but have her genuine feelings shine through regularly, and that meshes well with Magnus' jaded-and-aloof-but-quietly-very-empathetic character. And Magnus has been established to, yes, not be great at combat, particularly compared to Alex. They are the only time that flavor of dynamic in that form was effective and cohesive.

Percabeth is no longer rivals-to-friends-to-lovers badasses on equal levels with shaky pasts who finally found some form of permanence with one another. Now it's super smart doting and affectionately aggressive girlfriend and her silly goofy 50%-of-the-time incompetent boyfriend who she judo flips/pushes off cliffs/etc - but affectionately~! Solangelo is trying to riff off of the early series "Poseidon & Athena are enemies" dynamic that Percabeth had but with Apollo & Hades being "opposites" but learning to accept each other, except it ends up with Will just coming off as a huge asshole and Nico being retconned to a complete doormat about it - when prior to that those characterizations would be completely contrary to their established characters (even just from TOA!). Calypso in HoO gets retconned from her PJO characterization to being snooty and aggressive, and Leo's false persona gets merged into his just normal personality except he just also becomes a doormat but more goofy than Nico with occasional haha-dark/depression-humor! Which Nico also got. Which was also a bastardized Percy trait that got redistributed.

It's exhausting. Rick write more than one relationship dynamic you can do it I promise

[practically-an-x-man]

Alright, writer's deep dive- What made you think of Eris as a character? What's your favorite thing you've written for them? What's some facts about her that you haven't shared before?

Ooooh thank you so much!!

First things first... I'm not sure what originally made me think of Eris. I first created them as a character right after watching The Suicide Squad in theaters, so it's been close to 4 years - and a lot of redesigns! The original Eris was a much more basic character (cis female, with a much more heroic moral code and simpler backstory), and I'm not really sure where they originally popped up.

But I can say with the redesign and the Eris we now know and love, I really wanted to go a different direction from my other OCs: the others are all in the general "hero" range, with the furthest branches out being Ophelia's antihero leanings. With both Eris and Nikoletta (since I introduced them at roughly the same time), I wanted to explore some more villainous leanings and more complex moral codes. So I gave Eris a revamp, took those risks that I wasn't comfortable with when I first created them, and decided on a darker and more historical-focused view on Themyscira and the Amazons.

As for my favorite thing I've written.... oooh, that's a tough one. I think Vestalia probably has the most dynamic emotions, and I'm proud of how that one came together - especially with how it relates to Eris in those quieter moments, and the depth to their character there. I also really love Broken Pieces as a whump/body horror piece, I think that's got some of my most evocative language and I reread it regularly.

As a whole, though... I think Let Us Prey is my top favorite. I poured my heart and soul into that one, it's the story I've wanted to tell for Eris since I first created the character (even before the redesign), and I think it's just such a dynamic piece. Even the scenes that follow the movie feel unique to me, and it's just SUCH a good piece for Eris' character, their relationship with Rick, and my writing style as a whole. I really wish that one got more traction honestly, I tried pushing it hard when I first wrote it but still barely anyone ended up reading it.

And as for facts about her... hm...

Eris' sense for conflict is actually more closely inspired by the Roman goddess Bellona than the mythological Eris/Discordia herself - they're similar gods, and it was said that Discordia would travel with Bellona to her battles, but Bellona was the one more attributed to outright war and bloodshed.

I also view Eris' sense for conflict as sort of a nebulous, magical thing rather than strictly an emotion or ability. Of course it affects their strength in battle (making them stronger, faster, and more regenerative when they're surrounded by extreme conflict), but it also plays a role on their emotions. Eris can definitely be understanding and empathetic at times, but that is much harder when they're around conflict- even if Eris doesn't engage with it or personally feel any strong emotions towards it. That conflict doesn't exactly make Eris angry or combative of their own right, but it does make those combative emotions more intense and muffles the gentler ones. This is why Eris gets a spike of jealousy in A Fool's Errand, in the crowded bar, and why they're able to have a calm heart-to-heart in Vestalia (if Rick had been caught off-guard by the breakup or reacted with anger, the conversation would not have gone NEARLY as smoothly, and that's part of why it's such an important piece for them)

And as another note on that: in This Phantom Life, where Eris is locked in Arkham with power-dampening tech lining the cell, they're not just lacking motivation because of grief - with the power dampening tech, his sense for conflict is also dampened, so they're less combative than they've felt in centuries.

Eris' sense for conflict is a bit of a tricky thing to write, because I really do want it to feel like this separate entity to their emotions: sometimes something they lean into until it almost seems like their nature, other times a force that they end up fighting against instead, and something that threads along in the background regardless of their emotions or the situation.

Thank you again for the ask!!

[riddlerosehearts]

🐍 same, there were many things i did not enjoy about HoO but leo is one of the highlights i will always treasure from it. in fact I made my OC just so I could make them be friends with him bc it's like an old childhood dream of mine 😭 it's several years late but i will do it anyway. have u ever made any pjo ocs?

I read your post and i agree with you so much!! EN did jamil so dirty and just the few changes they made to his lines flipped the entire dynamic between him and kalim and basically completely erased how tragic and difficult their situation is, and portrayed jamil as basically just someone throwing a fit over something easily changeable when it isn't. I play on JP so I was so surprised to see the changes EN made, it sucked seeing so many ppl hate my fav

oh nooo yeah if both riddle and jamil are in the athena cabin i have no clue who'd become the head counselor... this is so hard, if only we could have more than one :(. Kalim'd def be in a different cabin at least, but just him being around camp would make it so much harder for jamil to be himself, it hurts my heart. there are so many ways you can write this and it all has so much angst potential. on the other hand you're so right abt the missed leo nico friendship bc i always intuitively felt they could've be good friends without knowing why, but your analysis puts everything into words and makes me even sadder we had such a missed opportunity... like cmon rick....

idia labwear groovy but nico is actually so funny - nico ominously approaching cats with his hands out like the grabbing emoji when nobody is looking and completely unaware how scared the cats feel, meanwhile all he wants is to spend some time with kitty before the chain sneezing sets in

I love your ideas abt the outfits I think they fit super well!! if i get around to doodling the characters in a twst au i'd like to reference your ideas if that's okay with you! They'd both probably attempt to wear the uniforms as a full set in the beginning then decide it's way too much of a hassle/feels too stiff (totally not an excuse to want to draw them in the full outfit), then begin modifying things so it felt more like themselves, though at least I think they both would like the ignihyde uniforms better than the other dorms, igni's seems more casual and practical than the other ones imo. for some reason i feel like the savanaclaw colours would look good on leo, i just picture yellow being a nice colour on him - but leo in savanaclaw would just be like him stuck with a ton of jocks feeling confused why he's even there lool

also imagine leo meeting ortho, he'd be so fascinated that something like ortho was possible and be inspired to make a robot of his own (twst festus origin story?) idk if there's a robotics club but i could see that being leo's club of choice, nico maybe board games... which means he'd meet idia and azul omg, what do you think?

sorry it took me a bit a longer to answer this time. i haven't!! i don't make OCs super often in general, i don't even really have one for twst haha, but i love seeing all the creativity other people put into their OCs.

yeah exactly!! i do keep up with the JP main story updates and have read most of the JP events through fan translations, but i started by playing on EN. and i feel really lucky that i recognized the words for master and servant and could tell they were mistranslating some things, because i can imagine that otherwise i would've come out of it hating jamil for "betraying" kalim too. instead i loved him and was a little annoyed with kalim until book 5 showed more of his growth. i don't ship jamil and kalim but i do love both of them and it's sad that the complexity of their dynamic got watered down so much... i will note, though, that the app is rated E10+ on the google play store and 4+ on the iOS app store, so my guess is that higher-ups at disney thought the actual story wasn't kid-friendly enough.

something else to keep in mind with athena kids that i actually sort of forgot about until recently, is that they're all claimed from birth and therefore are pursued by monsters from birth :( and then also the fact that athena is a virgin goddess who just sort of gives babies to people who might not have been prepared to have one... i bet that would make things so much rougher for riddle and jamil. some other ideas i had are that if jamil's parent was a minor god, it could be nemesis (goddess of revenge) or terpsichore (muse of dance). and for kalim, if his parent was an olympian it would be either dionysus or apollo and if it was a minor god it'd be tyche (goddess of luck and fortune). like you said, there's so many different ways i could see their story going in an AU like this and they'd all be so angsty.

if you wanna see more analysis on how nico and leo fit together there's some stuff i've reblogged from others in my valdangelo tag! not all of it is necessarily romantic, i just basically use that for anything about the two of them--and a lot of the reasons why people like the ship are reasons why they'd work platonically as well. but yeah one of my biggest criticisms of HoO is how even though i like all the new characters for the most part, i feel like their relationships to each other were largely defined by romance (and i don't just mean the actual couples, but also the frank-hazel-leo love triangle for example) and a lot of potential was missed because of that!

oh yeah go for it!! feel free to use pretty much any of these ideas we've been brainstorming as basis for your own headcanons and stuff, i don't mind at all. and like i've been saying, if you did draw anything for this AU i'd love to see it. i can definitely see that about leo and nico both trying on the full uniform and then quickly deciding not to bother with it anymore lol. i imagined them both not wearing the tie because i just think nico wouldn't really want to and that leo might not even know how to tie one AFSKJGHDF. do you think leo would add any other accessories or personalization to his school uniform? also, i was thinking, i totally agree that they'd both like the ignihyde uniform, especially nico because it resembles the bulky jackets he normally likes to wear! but i wonder what nico would wear for a dorm uniform if he transferred to ramshackle... according to one of silver's voice lines at least, they canonically don't have one, so maybe he'd just wear, like, a my chemical romance shirt and call that a uniform lol. or keep his ignihyde uniform and confuse everyone.

omg, i love the thought of leo meeting ortho and being inspired to make festus because of him. he'd definitely be so fascinated by everything ortho could do. as for the clubs, i saved this excellent post about NRC's clubs for reference a while back, and since no other existing clubs were mentioned in either of the camp vargas events, i assume that that's all of them. but afaik there's nothing that says leo couldn't start a robotics club, and i'm sure there'd be people willing to join! out of the existing clubs i can totally see nico being in the board game club, i think that'd be a lot of fun for him.

[readingoals]

Mid Year Book Freakout (2023)

I wasn't tagged to do it but I did this last year so thot I might as well do it again this year lmao.

It's a little bit of a cop out maybe, but I think the best book I've read this year is Pride and Prejudice. It's about the hundredth time I've read it and it was my top book from last year, so it feels like cheating to say it. But it's also an edition that Lauren annotated for me so reading it was an entirely new experience too because of all her notes!

This one's easy because it's the only sequel I've read this year, and that is A Clash Of Kings by George R.R. Martin! I really love the ASOIAF series and I'm so enjoying this re-read.

This is tough because I've re-read a few books this year but I think I have to say Sylvester by Georgette Heyer. It's been years since I first read it but I'm so glad I revisited it. I had the best time reading it again and annotating it.

Just like last year, mystery is my most read genre so far. I've been continuing to make my way through all of Agatha Christie's books - one per month - as well as some extra mysteries on the side, so it's really not a surprise.

Aside from mystery, my next most read genres are historical and, much more surprisingly, romance, with three books each.

Oh, so many. But the ones at the top of my list are The Villa by Rachel Hawkins, The Cloisters by Katy Hays, Our Hideous Progeny by C.E. McGill, and The Adventure Zone: Eleventh Hour graphic novel by The McElroys.

For the first time in a long time I actually do know about and am looking forward to a couple of releases. I have Hopeless Aromantic: An Affirmative Guide to Aromanticism by Samantha Rendle on pre-order. It'll be released at the end of this month. And then I think Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson is due to be released later this year too.

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides was a huge disappointment. I'd heard so many good things but I just hated it so much.

I think the biggest surprise so far has been Sparkling Cyanide by Agatha Christie. Mostly because it started off a little slow and I thought it'd be one of her more ~okay~ mysteries, but it ended up being quite exciting and interesting and fun.

Either that or Victoria Frankenstein's Monster Cock by Broken Arrow because reading Frankenstein inspired erotica was not on my personal 2023 bingo card and it ended up being actually not bad.

I think I have to say my fave new (to me) author is Tirzah Price who wrote Pride and Premeditation (and the other Jane Austen Murder Mystery books). Partly because Pride and Premed was such a fun read and really well done. But also partly just because process of elimination leaves her as the only real option.

I've only read from 6 authors I'd previously not read from so far, and of those I hated 1, I disliked 2, and enjoyed 2 but not enough.

I think I have to go with Sylvester, Phoebe and Tom from Sylvester by Georgette Heyer. I just really loved their dynamic and they were so frickin fun to read about.

Runners up would be Jon and Rick from Bachelor Kisses by Nick Earls purely because they were such dumbass dickheads.

At first I was going to say nothing I'd read so far this year had made me cry but then I remembered that I re-read Daisy Jones and the Six. Even though I knew what was coming the ending still got me.

Bachelor Kisses by Nick Earls. It's set close to where I live, I find the characters and story so funny, and I love Earls' writing style. Re-reading it was an absolute joy.

But also Ace and Aro Journeys just cause it was nice to read something that related so directly to me.

There's a couple of books that stand out I think. Number 1 has to be the illustrated edition of A Clash Of Kings. I already owned AGOT and I'm excited to eventually have the whole series in a matching set.

I guess The Villa would also be up there - I love the colours, how bright it is. And then also the hardcover Penguin Classics edition of Frankenstein which was one I'd wanted for ages.

There are only a couple that I absolutely have to read. The copy of Frankenstein that Lauren annotated for me is top of the list. And then also Pride and Prometheus by John Kessel - I said I was going to read it all the way back in March and then didn't, so I'd love to actually pick it up.

I also want to prioritize reading my backlog books. I'm trying to read 5 of them this year and so far I've only read one (although I'm also currently reading one now), so I definitely want to pick up a few more in the second half of the year.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

The S11 Trailer - Analysis

Okay, let’s talk about the trailer. I’ll go through what I’m seeing shot by shot, and then focus on a couple of things that really stood out to me.

We start with Negan and Father Gabriel, with Negan looking distressed. FG asks him what’s wrong, and he says, “bad memories.” FG says, “of what?” We don’t hear Negan’s answer in the trailer.

Then we see the windmill in Alexandria, followed by horses running by Kelly and (I think) Magna. I think the horses will end up being important, as we see them again later. And this is really interesting. Take a moment to remember Buttons from S5, and I’ll come back to this.

Next, we see what I originally thought were overgrown street signs. But when I lightened this picture, I realized they’re not outdoor street signs. They’re indoor ones. Almost like the kind of thing you’d see at a massive mall or market or airport, directing you where to go. East Market. The “East” is jumping out at me as well.

Then we see Negan with a flashlight and other things in the underground tunnels from the sneak peek.

We see Daryl staring out over what I first thought as a mural. But when I lightened it, he’s really just looking down at a scene below him. If you look closely, below him on the left is a tank. So, at the end of 10x22, Carol said they were going to visit an old military base Daryl had found. I’m assuming this is it.

We see Judith, and then Daryl with mud on his face. This may be important. Keep this in mind. It looks a little like he’s covered himself either in red mud or perhaps walker guts.

Then we see various scenes of people fighting walkers and one person (we don’t see who) being bitten by one.

Then we see Negan dragging Maggie backward while she yells, “no!” I’ve mentioned this recently, but this is really interesting to me. It’s a nearly identical replay of Maggie being held back at the end of AOW (8x16) because Rick declared that Negan would live. Except this time, it’s Negan holding Maggie back from something else. The dynamic has changed. So, it makes me very curious to find out what he’s dragging her back from. It’s almost like he's trying to protect her.

There’s more fighting with walkers, and scenes from the underground subway tunnels. Most of these scenes are fast and it’s nearly impossible to tell exactly who is doing what or what’s going on.

This is also where we hear Daryl say, “I don’t leave anybody behind. Ever.” Because of Beth, we’re definitely side-eyeing that. In a way, it just proves that something happened to make Daryl believe Beth was dead and couldn’t be buried. This is him affirming that he would never have left her behind otherwise.

Then we see Kelly and Magna talking, and Kelly looking at a note that seems to have been written by Connie. It says, “Trapped with the dead. Walked with them for days. No light. No food. Little water.” Yeah, I’m kind of side-eyeing that note. It’s strange that Connie would write it and leave it but be nowhere around when Kelly finds it. (However, based on stuff we see later in the trailer, she does seem to have been kidnapped or taken prisoner.)

But more than that, the note feels thematic. Being trapped with the dead feels like a Beth thing. Walking with the dead is something we’ve seen a lot on the show. Michonne and her pets. The Whisperers, of course. Plenty of examples. And then the “no light, no food, no water” goes well with the drought and famine themes we’ve seen a lot. One of the most notable examples being in 5x10. I’m just saying.

Then more fighting with walkers, and we get the scene where Aaron says, “so you’re going to fight ghosts?” Followed by a teary-eyed Carol saying, “This is a path you don’t want to go down.”

My fellow theorists and I have discussed these a lot and who both Aaron and Carol might be talking to. I think there’s a good possibility that both may be Daryl. I’ve talked before about the possibility of him hearing something of Rick or Rick’s voice and wanting to go find him, but no one else believing him or that Rick is a live. Possibly questioning Daryl’s sanity. Both would go well with that idea.

Of course, that may be a little too convenient. Some people have suggested Carol might be talking to Maggie and trying to keep her from revenge on Negan. Or these could be secondary characters we won’t even care about overly much. No way to know.

Next, we see a person in a mask, with Dog standing near them, apparently watching Daryl. This is one scene that got our fandom very hyped up. I do have some things to say about it, so I’ll come back to it at the end.

We see lots of people running through the woods, a sickle hitting a tree. (I think it’s safe to assume that the sickle is a weapon/symbol of the Reapers.) And then a line of people in masks walking forward aggressively. Again, I’m assuming these are the Reapers. We’ve been told the trailer is misleading, so it may prove untrue, but I think it’s what we’re supposed to assume here.

We see more fighting and houses being broken into. Ezekiel fighting in a house and Eugene with bloodstains on his shirt. Then someone bound and hooded being dragged backward down a dark hallway. I’m thinking that’s Eugene.

Then we get a quick flash of what looks like feminine eyes behind a hood. These are what people assume could be Beth or Leah. And yes, they could be either. We do later see Maggie taking a skin mask off, so I think they could be her as well. It’s so quick, it’s pretty much impossible to identify them for sure.

The next scene is a super-tragic one. I’m pretty sure Dog is dying, guys. We hear what sounds like Dog whining in pain, as dogs do, and see a knife flash. Then Daryl turns around and screams, “no!” From descriptions of the episode, it sounds to me like Dog gets separated from the group and Daryl goes looking for him alone.

Some of us have wondered if this is when Daryl will “see” Leah again. When he’s on his own and it’s just him and her and Dog. That would, once again, suggest her being something only he can see. Just conjecture on our part as we really have no idea how things will play out, but it’s an idea we’ve batted around.

Anyway, it doesn’t look to me like Dog is going to survive. And while that SUCKS (poor Dog, poor Daryl ☹) because Dog is the embodiment of the Sirius symbolism, it does make a certain amount of sense that they might kill him before Beth reappears.

The other big deal about this is that it’s a clear parallel template to Beth. If Dog = Beth, she gets separated from group, Daryl goes searching for her, found her, but she apparently didn’t survive, dying right in front of him. (Or so he understands.) It kind of looks like the exact same thing will happen with Dog.

We then see a blood-covered knife hit the wall just under a frightened-looking Connie’s nose. She seems to be a captive or prisoner somewhere, and clearly her life is in danger. We also hear FG telling someone not to be scared and see what I assume is a Commonwealth soldier in an orange suit.

We also see a very decomposed walker tied to a tree. We’ve seen that pose a few times, and my mind always goes to the blond girl tied to the tree that Aaron and Daryl find in 5x15. So, chances are this will be very symbolic.

Then we see Daryl in front of some burning shipping containers, staring out at people. It’s not clear if the people he’s look at are members of TF, or perhaps enemies, but he doesn’t exactly look carefree.

Remember that in 10x17, he and Maggie and their group stayed in these same kinds of containers. Jadis also kept Rick in a similar once back in S8, so it’s a theme that’s been building.

We then here FG say, “God isn’t here anymore.” We see what looks like a walker but it’s crawling forward in a super creepy fashion, looking almost like a demon. Most walkers don’t move that way unless injured, so it makes me question whether this is a walker or a human pretending to be one.

We also see someone hung upside down by their ankles from an overhead pipe. I’m reminded of the Librarian guy in 6x16/7x01 who was hung over the bridge. Again, it’s just a theme we’ve seen before, but hard to interpret because the trailer gives us so little context.

More from the underground tunnels including what looks like it couple be corpses stuck in dried cement. And we hear an interesting line. “This a damn death march and you’re the pied piper.” So, Pied Piper theme. Something else we’ve seen a lot.

Then we see Connie and Virgil running through rooms. Now, I’d assumed that when Virgil found her, he took her somewhere or took her captive. I guess I didn’t really trust him even after Michonne sort of came to and assumed he was kind of a bad guy. But based on this, it could be that both were taken captive after he found her. They both seem to be running and trying to escape.

We see Maggie lighting a flare inside a subway train. Then, in quick succession, more masked eyes, Maggie looking distressed, and then someone’s fingers slipping from a handgrip, as though they’re trying not to fall but not falling anyway.

Then we see Maggie walking first through a parking lot and then some kind of defunct mall near an escalator. She says, “I lost something. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing that I did.” 

And then we see what I think is Maggie and Negan helping someone who is injured. Because we only see the backs of their heads, it’s hard to tell for sure. But I think the two on the outside are Maggie and Negan. I can’t tell who they’re helping. It doesn’t look like Daryl or Carol, but beyond that, I could say. If you look to the right, you can see department store mannequins, so this still seems to be in the mall.

Things speed up again and we see lots of people in masks, what looks like walkers invading Alexandria, Carol hugging Magna (forgiveness for Connie, perhaps?), people wielding weapons and running different places, etc.

We then see a bunch more of the underground tunnels stuff. People killing walkers in trains and such. We hear Negan say, “this only works if we trust each other.” And then Daryl says, “if you say trust him, I’ll trust him.” No idea who Negan’s line is directed to, as it’s just a voice over here. Chances are Daryl is talking about Negan, but again, no way to be sure.

Then Maggie says, “The woman who lived is not the one standing here now, so keep pushing me Negan. Please.”  When she says the final word, “please” we see her pointing a gun at someone with Daryl standing behind her.

A couple of things here. This is where we see her take off a skin mask, but that’s in daylight in the woods, so clearly, it’s a different scene than the subway with her and Daryl. What I’ll say is that, to me, this line from her feels very stilted, which means it may be spliced together. Remember back in the S5 trailer when it sounded like Gareth wanted to take Eugene to Washington to cure the virus, but in the show, he never said anything remotely close to that? The words really were his, but they just took lines of his dialogue and spliced them together. It was very misleading. I feel like this line from Maggie may be the same way. No way to be sure. I could be wrong. But it just sounds unnatural to me, like different parts of her dialogue have been spliced together. And who knows if the person she’s pointing the gun at is even Negan. We can’t see them.

I’m just saying, take it with a grain of salt.

Then we see the TWD logo. But it’s not over, yet. We see a coda, which is Eugene at the Commonwealth. We see a happy little “welcome to the Commonwealth” promo video, followed by lots of darkness and drama around Eugene.

Why is this important? Beth was the coda of the S5 trailer. For S6, it was Sherry and Dwight capturing Daryl in 6x06, which was replete with Beth symbolism. In the S7 trailer, it was Tara finding Oceanside. I could go on but, while Beth clearly wasn’t in any of the seasons after S5, the codas to the trailers tend to deal with symbolism or storylines that we’ve tied to her in HUGE ways. And we already believe she’ll probably come through Eugene’s story line when we, the viewers, first see her. So, it’s significant that they used Eugene, rather than any other character, as the coda.

I also noticed that in the CW promo vid, we see things like a mall or department store and a train station. Those are the same kinds of places we see Maggie and Daryl and the others exploring, except where they are everything is dark, defunct and overgrown, where in the CW video it all looks happy and functional and vibrant.

Not sure what that means. Are they meant to be the same places? Is there just a duality theme going on here? Are the Reapers and the Commonwealth connected somehow? We just don’t know, but it’s interesting.

I also notice behind the narrator is a monument with the words “The Great War” on them. Practically, the monument is probably referencing WWI, which was often called The Great War at the time it was happening, because it was the first worldwide war up until that point.

But I have no doubt that this monument is purposely placed by the writers and foreshadows the big, coming war, that we won’t truly see until the spinoff.

Okay, that’s pretty much it, but let me go back to that scene with the masked person and Dog staring at Daryl.

I think most people are assuming that it’s Daryl in the foreground (and I concur) and therefore the person watching him, who Dog is so comfortable standing beside, must be Leah. And it’s possible that that’s true. But keep in mind that, especially when Daryl isn’t around, Dog is equally comfortable with Connie and Carol. So, we just can’t know for sure who this is in the mask. I even think it could possibly be Daryl himself. I know that probably doesn’t make any sense to you but let me explain.

The angles and clarity of this shot are very suspicious to me. Let’s start with the angles. Clearly this is meant to be someone Daryl doesn’t see, but he feels he’s being watched, which is why he takes out his knife. But if you look at the angles, he’d only have to turn his head a fraction of an inch to see this person, so why doesn’t he? It just doesn’t feel like realistic positioning for the vibe they’re going for.

Secondly, the line between the right side (Daryl in the foreground) and the left side (Dog and the masked figure) looks a bit blurry and indistinct to me. And there’s a brown pole running down the center of the frame. At first glance, it seems to be a tree trunk, but if you look at it, it’s way too smooth and symmetrical to be one. I think it’s a metal pole. And what would that be doing in the middle of the forest?

Why am I telling you this? Just to show why I don’t think this is a “real” shot from the shot. Could Daryl be hallucinating? Sure. That’s one possibility. But I really wonder if this is just two different shots spliced together to create a creepy vibe for the trailer. So, one is the masked person standing next to Dog, and the other is Daryl in the foreground. And they’ve been put together with a computer.

That’s why I think the hooded figure itself could be Daryl. @wdway pointed out that this hooded figure wears a large knife very close to the center line of their body, and we’ve seen both Beth and Daryl do that in past seasons. Plus, remember that scene from the beginning of the trailer I told you to remember, where Daryl has either red mud or walker guts all over his face? I’m wondering if he’s just taken off a mask there. It would also explain Dog standing so calmly beside him.

And of course I could be totally wrong as well. Maybe it IS a masked person watching him. Maybe it IS Leah. There’s just no way to tell for certain. I guess my point is just to take everything with a grain of salt. We’ve been told this trailer is very misleading, and there’s absolutely no confirmation of who any of the masked people or random eyes are. Just keep that in mind.

Oh, I also said I’d come back to the horses. I didn’t write down exactly where, but at one point, we get a shot of Maggie walking up on dead horses. So, they’ll clearly play a role this season. Maybe it’s a matter of TF seeing some wild horses, and then finding them dead, and realizing this means there are bad people around. 

But remember there was a dead horse near Princess and Eugene’s group last season when they walked through the field of landmines. So, it’s something that’s been foreshadowed. And I can’t help but wonder if clear back in S5, Buttons might be a foreshadow of what’s about to happen in S11. Especially if it leads to Beth, which we think it will, I’m gonna say it was. But of course we’ll have to wait and see what that’s all about. 

Okay, I think that’s all I have for the trailer. Thoughts?

[mymadmedleyw]

Fic Writer Review

I was tagged by @dp-marvel94 (I am just saying this is my very first occassion to by tagged in a thing like that, so filling this made my day really, thank you!)

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

22 – wow, that sounds many…

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?  

206.997, and more than the half belongs under one idea – that’s creepy…

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?  

Oh, it’s many… once, I am into something, I have to write in that – surprisingly I am addicted to DP for nearly a year, and nothing else.

(But little bit of history, from the newest to the oldest: Danny Phantom, The Irregulars (that was really a short one), Guardians of Childhood/Rise of the Guardians (my very first finished multi-chaptered one was in that), Dark, Charmed (the old one, not the new series), Gravity Falls, Venom, Doctor Who, a crossover within Tangled: The Series and Milo Murphy’s Law, Death Note/Death Note: Another Note; and I had some ideas about a Rick and Morty and Gravity Falls crossover, and it seems I never uploaded here my concept about a not crossover Tangled: The Series idea, and either an independent one in Rick and Morty, hm… shame. Most of those are not finished. Okay, like 99% of it…)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Core (Danny Phantom), stand-alone, ~3k

What The Past Holds (Danny Phantom), wip, ~91k

Pitch’s Secret (Guardians of Childhood/Rise of the Guardians), finished, ~14k

We are not alone (Venom), really short one, ~1k

Phantom (Danny Phantom), stand-alone, ~2k

5. Which of your fic do you want more attention for?  

Definitely it’s WTPH. It’s my current work. The idea about it came in December, and since that, I am working on that constantly. At first, I had ideas for eight chapters, and nothing else. Now, it grew into this monstrosity: a side-line (Bonds Over Time), and a collection that contains the deleted scenes or ideas that appeared in my mind and could fit into the story (Bits Of The Past), and also an entirely finished concept for Vlad’s past (Certain Moment Of Time), that could be connected to it too.

I also put many headcanons in that, and ticks of characters, and parallels, and layers that I just love: like Vlad having a sister and some details about his family background, Dan having Vlad’s memories too, how the explosion in the Nasty Burger happened and how Dan turned out like that… some precious things, really, but I won’t elaborate much, in case of anyone wants to give a read to it. Overall, I tried to make the TUE-mess into a somewhat more reasonable logical mess – if I managed to do that at all. I don’t know I’m just like a mother with a new-born with it: look, it’s my child! I made it! I developed it! here, hold it! and love it too, as much as I do! (Sorry, I don’t know how that metaphor came…)

6. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Even if it’s a kudo, or a keysmash as a comment, I write back. I mean, if someone writes – literally anything – and spends time with it, I write them back too. (And my very bad habit, that sometimes, if the comment hits an interesting thought, I tend to explain the background behind that more, and accidentally spilling some things I shouldn’t yet... In many cases, it’s like a brainstorming, and then I use that idea. I mean as, for example many of @dp-marvel94’s comments on ff, made me to realise some things, and how then I fixed those forgotten parts made my story along with it much better – once, I will list them, and you’ll be surprised how long is that list, and how obvious things I forgot about entirely…)

7. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Okay, I don’t have many finished story – shame on me. So, I’ll count the shorts. I think it’s then Phantom. It rolls around the idea what if in Forever Phantom, Danny can’t change back to Phantom, and his parents blame Phantom for the disappearance of Danny, and they start chasing madly the ghosts, making them leave the human realm once and for all – which means, Danny has to go with them. It’s really a short fic, but I very like this idea, and it was my very first in this fandom. (I was watching DP that time, I mean, getting familiar with it, but this idea got stuck in my head as I watched that episode, so that was my introduction here. Also, I watched my very first DP episode that time, which means, less then a year ago, so, I am that newbie here…) I am not spilling the end of the story, but it doesn’t have a very happy end I could say.

8. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Uh, yes? I have a crossover within Tangled: The Series and Milo Murphy’s Law. It’s unfinished, but that time I thought Milo and Varian have the same vibe, including clumsiness. It was only a short idea that time, but it’s definitely worth once to continue or finish somehow. I have a crossover within Rick and Morty, and Gravity Falls. That is standing within my very big idea, but it’s halfway written on my original language and English and that’s like after how a certain trilogy end, but it has some mentioning of ideas I never finished, so yeah… it’s not even published anywhere. Maybe, once, I’ll decide what language I prefer for that, and translate the other part and then, hardly, but I’ll finish it some day... – or, never, it actually would be a very big bite if I try to imagine it.

9. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I don’t remember to that. I mean, my main story (WTPH) kind of not everyone’s preference, ’cause of Dan, so that’s already divides the readers and I haven’t got all in all many comments yet on my stories (kudos are appreciated too, I am shy too to leave comments on fics, so don’t worry, I get it), so I think I haven’t got any. But I'd be curious to experience if someone reads one of my stories and leaves behind a comment that then criticizing it. I mean, I’d be open to learn what part is not fitting, or just too much. (I am surprised that no one ever mentioned my ’weird’ sentences. I mean for me those make sense, but those make sense for a native English person too? I’m always worried about that…)

10. Do you write smut? if so what kind?

Uh, yeah, I did. Not very proud of it, though I don’t have a heart to orphan that work. I mean, it belongs to me too. Sometimes I wonder to delete some of my works, but then I realise, no, that’s me, I won’t pretend where I came from, and shove into the dustbin my mad thoughts... All in all, my stories now, for a while, are much more family-friendly – if, anything within DP could be really counted as ‘family-friendly’…

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yeah, I was very proud of my story back then, called Metamorphosis (Death Note), and I had a crazy idea and tried to translate it. So now, the first chapter is out there both in English and both in my native language, but I got stuck at the second chapter. I couldn’t translate wisely and logically the title of it to give out the many meaning it has in English. And I once tried to translate California (Gravity Falls) to English, but that would be a hard work, so I left it behind – maybe once…

Over that I sometimes has a crazy idea to translate back and forth my stories, no, beyond that, I haven’t had a fic translated from anyone else. And I think I am the only masochist that it ever crosses my mind, I guess…

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, not really. I’d be curious to once do that – maybe, but I’m not sure...

(To tell the truth, I’d be worried about that. I’d be glad to do that once, but I am anxious if I could understand my co-writer, or not. I mean, do you have any idea that I have to give five reads to any longer comments to understand it? I understand those (and I really love getting those!), but I have to give many reads to make sure I understand those well, and then, making sure, I answer back right, and my sentences make sense. My fics have ’fancy’ words, and I love working in English, but sometimes it’s a curse it’s not my native one. So then, I’m constantly worried about interactions, if I receive well something, and if my sentences are understandable for others or not. So, in short, you can see my struggle here… same reason I don’t do Invisobang, but I am considering it...)

13. What’s your all time favorite ship?

I’m not very much a ship-type. But I count Danny and Sam, as a fix point. (Danny and Val was nice and I’d have been very glad to see them in more episodes, but let’s face it, that wouldn’t work, because both of them are too stubborn to choose their other life and if once, they would face with each other, knowing everything about the other, they’d remain allies or at most very good friends.) If, the question is, what are the ships in my head (but not necessarily just ‘romantic’) that I prefer to read, well, it’s Dan and Valerie. I love their dynamics, especially in Deliverance. I don’t know why I just love reading it. 

For other reasons I ship Dani and Valerie. Though I can’t write romance and stuff like that, but in one of my planned ideas they are dating - sort-of...

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Okay, there are many. Surely, it’s my Gravity Falls story, called California, but that’s a huge one, and the first one in a trilogy (plus some additional side-lines), and mainly in my head for years, so yeah… I think I won’t ever reasonably finish that as it should be finished. A Tale of Fords (Gravity Falls) could be count as one too. Oh, and Envision and ties (Doctor Who). Sad to say, but yeah, I am always saying, “maybe once”, but I am not sure when…

15. What are your writing strengths?

Okay, this is a funny thing, but I’ve realised I can’t deal with many characters at the same time. So, I think my strength are dialogues and interactions within two people. And I get into their thoughts, so I guess if I have to word it somehow: it’s character-studies then.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

Can’t handle more than two people. No, seriously, somehow it always turns out, the third is unconscious, sleeping, leaves the room, and so on. I’ve just recognised it recently, and it was a hilarious recognition…

I am also bad at actions, like very very bad, I don’t even try that, because my brain just simple can’t come up with fight-scenes at all. I think I only can write character-studies, and nothing else.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Oh, man… does it count I am not a native English-user? So, technically I ‘always’ write dialogues in another language? But jokes aside, sometimes, I have ideas that the people use another language, and I am like “are you aware, you can’t even write English slang?”, so then, I gave up. Right now, though, I am planning to add ASL in one of my future ideas. I am wrecking my mind, how to do that nicely – but that’s only a forming plan, and dated for next year, currently, I am only collecting ideas for that.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?  

Does it count my very first fic was a fanfiction of one of my friend’s fanfiction in high school? She wrote a really good story – not shared anywhere, we were just giving each other the hand-written exercise book (oh, the old days…). If I remember well, it was a crossover within Supernatural and Queen of the Damned (the movie, not the book). I had no idea about Supernatural, but the story was good, but I was not satisfied with the end, and in secret I wrote another end for it, to myself. I’m not sure where is that anymore, but I clearly remember that was my very first written stuff, and that’s how my origin story began and how is I am here now.

(Oh, and once, I wrote a H2O fanfiction short story to my sister as a name-day present, in which she was a mermaid, discovering her powers during a holiday at a beach (we were at that time in Croatia in a family holiday, so the timing was fitting), and that was one of my very first fandoms to write in it too… God, I have no idea why I wrote it down, it just crossed my mind, and I remember I thought it was cute, I think she was eleven or twelve that time, so I am not sure she appreciated as much as I found it fun to write that…)

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?  

This is mean… anyway, currently it’s WTPH, for obvious reasons. But I am very proud how the Angst Week turned out (my work for that is called Certain Moment of Time). First of all, I doubted I would be able to write for every day, since I planned to do the whole DannyMay, but things turned out differently and I am still sad, I haven’t done many. But I did not just managed to write for all days, but all could be counted under one idea, and also each of the chapters could be read independently at the same time. It includes a little bit of background story about Vlad, about a rewritten time, his struggles at the hospital, things around Danny’s birth, how Danny managed to survive the Portal incident, how Vlad was informed about the Ghost Boy, and that actually Danny’s separation was just a ‘plan B’ that Vlad tried to avoid… it’s complicated to describe the many things in that, but when I feel WTPH an unescapable mess, and I am frustrated by the lack of proper words to finish the coming chapters, CMOT is my absolute favourite. And I love the whole idea about it. No, I’ll be honest, that’s my beloved so far (just because it’s finished). But I like so much too my idea about Dan and Dani in Bonds Over Time, how they try to live together a normal life… okay, let’s admit it, this question is mean, I seriously can’t tell, and I am thinking right now only my current ones…

20. What fic are you most proud of?  

Okay, this is mean too. I am proud of my old works as much that I always go back to them when I am in a nostalgic mode. (I haven’t read any of my old ones in ages, because I try to avoid distractions, and knowing myself, I’d start thinking about the continuation and never finishing my current works at all...)

I am proud of Pitch’s Secret, because that was my very first multi-chaptered one idea that I actually managed to finish. That in fact, gave me the courage to start working on a multi-chaptered DP one. (My original plan was to be brave and aim doing eight chapters, to top the five, and I would have been very proud of myself, but instead now it’s way longer than that original idea, and I seriously don’t know when it will end – twenty chapters maybe?)

I think, if I don’t include the previous question. (It’s the same, isn’t it?) I am very proud of the first chapter in my Doctor Who fic. That doesn’t tell anything about the plot or about anything, that just gives a very good atmospheric background. Every time I read that, it gives me shivers.

---

okay, I don’t know who to tag, anyone who feels like it, serve yourself, I am curious... :)

[omegatheunknown]

AEW Double or Nothing 2021

In which the spirit of WCW is alive in confusing and delightful ways and we are left to parse whether overbooking and extracurriculars are offset by having actually very good wrestling happening at the same time.

- Lessons learned from Revolution on the production side? Maybe just cool it on pyro, though the rappelling adventure in the Stadium Stampede showed some of that now-characteristic 'trust us it'll look better on TV' flair. Hot crowd tends to paper over most woes, and the crowd was pretty hot. My one gripe is that the casino theme is hanging around like yesterday's takeout containers. Nothing wrong with clinging to a theme, I just think it's time for season 2. My suggestion? Under the Sea.

*Pre-Card Serena Deeb (C) v Riho for the NWA Women's Championship (***1/2) - Serena Deeb's star has finally risen. She's a remarkably consistent technician and she can get a match out of anyone at this point. She's working at the level of Mercedes Martinez or Madison Eagles at this point, it's amazing that she was overlooked or considered fit only to be a coach for so long. With the NWA belt she has this new swagger, she's basically everything Tessa Blanchard might bring to the table with none of the downsides (Serena has a lot of friends and seems like a lovely person, even!) - Riho's back and here to stay. Her time in Stardom didn't do much for my evaluation of her, which is that there are many better wrestlers that would be better representatives of the joshi style and she's merely pretty good. - The match was very good. Serena showcased a champion's aggression against a sympathetic Riho, they really work well against each other, Deeb's technical prowess against Riho's flexibility led to a very dynamic finish.

*Main Card Hangman Adam Page v Brian Cage (***1/2) - Here the shenanigans start. Brian Cage is on Team Taz, Team Taz has nothing else much to do tonight, so why wouldn't Team Taz flex their muscles, bait us with HOOK, etc? (Because it would be nice to have some variety in the card in terms of a match where one competitor stands across from another competitor?) - Hangman is (checking notes) yeah, still over as fuck, as befits the Anxious Millennial Cowboy. Cage terrifies me, he's a child's drawing of a body builder. He do be very agile for a man of his immense musculature tho. They match up well, Page is biggish for a flyer, Cage loves to play catch. Nothing much to write home about, other than Hangman's beautiful moonsault to the floor and what was overall a very good curtain jerker. - Okay fine, I am curious about Cage's reluctance to lean on the goons, Starks can't come back soon enough.

The Young Bucks v Jon Moxley & Eddie Kingston (***) - I will not be referring to Mox & Eddie as (The) Wild Things because it gives me 'he calls it the wacky line' flashbacks for some reason. - The Bucks have to cheat and abuse Rick Knox's attention span constantly to be on even footing with Mox & Eddie, which is a clever sort of thing that gets washed out by the appearance of LG and Karl Anderson, which again, is cool in a vacuum but was the story of the evening. - Pace was weird - repetitive in eliminating Eddie, then Mox fights back, failed hope spot, Bucks team up, Eddie saves x2/3 in a row. - Mox, unlike Cody (in so many ways,) will probably actually be taking some time off with Renee, which is the kind of thing I would prefer not to know in terms of booking, but they really uh, put him down on the canvas here, and it felt pretty finale-esque.

Casino Battle Royale (n/r, but on the balance pro) - Any changes to the theme of the PPV would likely include changing up the nonsense suit format of these largely joyless slogs. - Obviously anticipating a NJPW talent, or... I dunno, actually -- Lio Rush was a surprise. Got in a quick demonstration of his otherworldly quickness, and you know what, there's probably a fun place for him in AEW. He'll need some friends, of course, feel like Team Taz might fit his temperament. I wonder if he was aware of the Mark Henry news... - Christian does not need to win this kind of match to get a title shot, obviously, but that said it was super lovely to use him to give Jungle Boy the shine. Jungle Boy would be a license to print money if he was even as big as Hangman. - Could register some continued griping about how Penta is not getting his due in AEW but he also literally was dressed as the Joker so I'm low on sympathy on this one particular night.

Anthony Ogogo v Cody Rhodes (*) - I did not like this. It's hard for me to read jingoism as a face move to begin with, and Cody's was egregiously tone deaf and kinda silly yet delivered without a trace of irony because Cody doesn't do irony on purpose, ridiculous neck tattoo aside. - Great argument to be made that Ogogo just isn't experienced enough to be winning matches against Cody. But like, what are we doing here? Cody needs to take some time off, maybe. I thought that's what was happening when he had his mini feud with Penta that really just ended in quick decisive Cody win. I though maybe Cody was being turned when QT and The Factory snapped-- sure, they're a group of impotent player 2s, but Cody is an out of touch elitist with a callous and manipulative streak. Alas, also no. America #1. - Cody is approximately 8 times as tough as Billy Gunn based on his weathering of the one punch man. Match ran a bit long given how little there was to go on. Cody gigged? Quelle surprise. - Cody had the best match on the card like, 3 out of the first 4 AEW events or something, and that was all booking and storytelling. I do hope Cody follows Moxley's lead into a little sabbatical.

Miro (C) v Lance Archer for the TNT Championship (**1/2) - Card's hossiest hoss match, a quick burst reminiscent of a car wreck. Absolutely hit on what it should've hit on but a little slow moving considering it went all of 10 minutes. - I will not complain about Jake the Snake, who I love. And also the gimmick spot, with Miro very astutely yeeting what was definitely a snake in a bag (surely.) back down the tunnel.

Dr Britt Baker, DMD v Hikaru Shida (C) for the AEW Women's Championship (***) - Picked up a lot of steam toward the end but seemed a little toothless (heh) until the last five. - Shida 'deserved' some more time as champion in front of crowds but also it's time to let heel Britt reach her peak, I can't even imagine how obnoxious she can be as the champ, it's going to be great.

Sting & Darby Allin v Ethan Page & Scorpio Sky (***1/2) - Such is the power of STING that I feel like I might be underrating this match... I mean it was an okay match about very simply getting some revenge and the sixty year old man did a very subdued Code Red and a slightly less subdued dive. He's also Sting. They missed an opportunity in calling it the 'Scorpio' Death Drop, but the main takeaway here is you see something like this where it's The Icon and you start to understand why WWE trots out their legends to come out of incredibly still kick ass without bending their knees. - The difference, I guess, is that Sting is absolutely being used to build up Darby Allin, whereas it's not like the fed brought back Goldberg and his attendant aura to pump up... anyone but Goldberg?

Kenny Omega (C) v PAC v Orange Cassidy for the AEW World Championship (****) - Off the top I have to say I'm very sad that the rest of the Galaxy's Greatest Friends were seen only very briefly, nice of them to bring OC's backpack. - Also have to point out that PAC's promo featured one of my favourite jokes, that Kenny must be short for Kenneth as a sort of legal/birth name belonging to a professional wrestler. (See also: Samoa Joseph) - And Mr Cassidy certainly did try in this match, ragdoll sells and all. Kenneth and PAC are absurd talents who bring aerial, power and technical maneuvers in equal measure and OC is not doing any of those on the same level, but he picked his spots, showed his genre savvy and hung in there to the point that he wasn't just the fall guy. - The extracurriculars continue in a match that was already a little overboard for silliness due to asymmetry... I think if you're the Invisible Hand it would've made sense to save up all your tricks for this match, but who am I to question the golden goose? - Sure, Kenny and Don ran the classic heel manager interference spot and taking out the ref in desperation spot but having to take out the ref because PAC wouldn't break the hold is fun, as is the stupid/inspired sense in running the 'smash opponent with the belt' spot four times so as none of your heavy gold prizes feel left out. (I love that AAA Mega Championship, they weren't on TV so we get to see it?) - "Fuck You, Don," indeed.

The Inner Circle v The Pinnacle in 'Stadium Stampede II' (***1/2) - This one had to grow on me for two reasons, first that it's usually pretty unforgivable to co-opt the main event spot from the championship match, and second to law of diminishing returns on dumb gimmick matches. - But grow it did. There's a full on meat locker? Commentary will refer to a cardboard cut-out of Shahid Khan as Tony Khan's father (that's canon now,) and Jericho will lovingly pat it? Konnan happened to be the DJ at whatever night club there is a Jaguar Stadium? Spears surrounds himself dramatically with chairs and his hoisted by his own petard? - Ultimately it comes down to letting Sammy shine. His involvement with the Inner Circle has sometimes come at the cost of being able to showcase that prior to AEW he was an ascendant talent in PWG, on his way to Ricochet level feats of acrobatic excess. Still feel like Sammy could've/should've been the one tossed off the cage a few weeks ago, but even better is being the guy getting the pin in the ring.

[madbucker]

Silhouettes | Daryl Dixon.

Daryl Dixon x female reader.

I. 

Loosely based on the song We Will Become Silhouettes by The Postal Service.

Summary: After Rick’s death Daryl pushed himself away, but he still had someone who would check on him. Y/N cared for him and wanted to make sure he was okay. This works as the presentation of their dynamic, it’s very simple. I will dig deeper, I promise. The chapters won’t be in chronological order, but I will make sure to list it that way too in the masterlist. First part of who knows how many.

Warnings: language, gore stuff (twd style), mentions of death. Will add more warnings depending on the chapter’s content. Let me know if you think it needs some other warning!

Word count: 2.6k

Author’s note: First things first, I’m not a native English speaker, so bear with me! You can send me a message or an ask pointing out some mistakes so I can edit the post. Also, it will help me learn the language, so don’t hesitate! Now that I got that out of the way, this will start as a one shot, but I probably will add more parts to it, digging deeper into the character’s relationship with Daryl and the entire group. I don’t want to do a rewrite because I’m not patient enough and I’d want to jump straight into season 8 or something, lol. If you have any questions or want me to write about a situation in particular (like how they met, runs, the prison, or whatever you come up with) just send me an ask and if I feel like it fits with the story, then I’ll write it! Anyway, if you are into simple writing and limited vocabulary, then I hope you like it and as I said before, I’ll gladly take constructive criticism! ♥

Half a dozen years (or so you thought) of human beings not messing with nature were enough for it to come to life again. The woods had never been greener, the sky had never been more beautiful. The dead were fewer since it was harder for them to walk through such thick undergrowth without them getting stuck in a bush; it was safer to wander around and you could not be happier.

Sometimes, when you looked at the sky at sunset, or even at its darkest time, you would stop thinking about those you had lost. You would never forget them, that was out of the question, but you could enjoy things a little more. Perhaps you were getting used to the guts, the smell, the constant danger… perhaps you had realized your life was not going to change, and that the apocalypse was definitely not a dream, you might as well start seeing the beauty in all that mess.

You sat uncomfortably on the log while looking at the sky. It was full of stars, the Milky Way shining brighter than ever, and sometimes, if you concentrated and were lucky enough, you’d see a shooting star, never missing the opportunity to make a wish.

The fire next to you was dying out and as soon as the first shiver made you jump slightly, you tried to keep it alive. If he came back to the camp he would bring something to cook, you thought. And if he didn’t kick you out or tried to convince you to leave, he would appreciate that you spared him the trouble of starting a fire from scratch.

Right?

You weren’t sure. Hell, you weren’t convinced at all. When Rick died, you witnessed how he closed in once again. It had never been so bad. Not since Beth, anyway. And even then, he had never left the group for that long. He was out there looking for something. So was Michonne, you had seen her walking out of Alexandria’s gates so many times you stopped counting. And you’d follow her without disturbing her, not making a single noise nor making small talk. Sometimes you wondered if she even knew you were there.

She did, of course, you knew. At least most of the times. But, once again, you were there just in case and stayed as far away as you could.

The truth is, though, you were looking for the same thing as her. Rick’s death had broken you too. Not that it could be compared to Michonne’s suffering, or even Daryl’s, but Rick Grimes had been your best friend, your mentor, the one who taught you how to live in this world. He was the one who kept you alive until you could fend for yourself. You loved, owed, and missed him like crazy. So you never stopped looking.

Rick Grimes had died almost a year ago. And Daryl was still outside the walls. He had stepped foot in Alexandria a few times but left right after checking in on everyone. And when it was your turn to trade, or when you just wanted to visit The Hilltop, they informed you he was also going there from time to time. But he left each and every one of them.

Still, you tried to keep him company sometimes. Most of the times he refused, told you to go back and stay safe. And you didn’t fight him, not even once. You weren’t trying to push his buttons, you just wanted him to know you cared.

He did. You knew he knew. But you also knew him, and a little reassurance would never hurt. 

As your mind wandered, your eyes started to feel heavy. It had been a long day, you had worked your ass off fixing some broken sinks and making sure all the cars were, at least, not about to explode. Your body ached and the thought of you doing the same thing the next day without getting proper sleep was not so attractive. And sleeping there alone was definitely not a good idea. You had to go back, even if he didn’t show up.

You forced yourself to get up, ignoring the pain on your legs, and started rummaging through your backpack, looking for the sheet of paper and the pen you had brought with you. It wasn’t the first time you had to leave without seeing him, you had to be prepared. You wanted to let him know you came.

“Water bottles in the bag. Be safe.”

A couple of weeks went by. Your work in Alexandria had kept you busy and exhausted, and Michonne forcing you to take care of Negan while Gabriel was out on a run had also mentally drained you.  You couldn’t be in the same room as him without getting overwhelmed by the memories.

Not good ones. Not at all. But somehow, you managed to get in and out every day without having the urge to kill him, which was an accomplishment.

Once Gabriel and the others were back, you grabbed your stuff and headed out, expecting to be luckier this time. It was still early in the morning, so you were sure you’d be near his camp in the afternoon. Earlier than last time, maybe he hadn’t even left yet.

Without running into any inconveniences, and as you pictured, you sat on the same log as the last time around three hours before sunset. Days were getting shorter and colder, which made you wonder if Daryl would choose to stay in Alexandria the next winter. 

You placed your backpack in front of you and took out the water bottles and the two unlabeled cans of food. You had come prepared to stay the night waiting, it had been almost a month since you last saw him and you just had to make sure he was alive. 

Of course he is, you thought, Daryl can’t not be alive. Last man standing, right?

The sun hadn’t set yet when you heard steps behind you. You expected to see Daryl yet you grabbed your knife just in case, but there he was.

He had three squirrels attached to his belt and looked as tired as he could be. His expression remained blank while looking at you. You got up and stood in your place as he walked around the camp leaving his stuff and preparing to skin the squirrels.

“Took you long enough,” you said, grinning. He was okay, he was back there and despite his appearance, him being there with you was more than enough.

He sat on the log you had been previously sitting on, with his back facing you, and started working on his next meal.

“Could say the same to you,” he said calmly. He wasn’t complaining, you knew. “Working a lot?” He stopped what he was doing and turned around lightly, almost expecting to hear bad news. Maybe someone had died or run into some crazy asshole, perhaps a herd was getting close to Alexandria. He had gotten used to bad news, you all had.

Walking around him, you sat cross-legged on the floor next to the log he was on, facing him.

“Sinks, and cars, and weirdly normal stuff. Kids are okay. Nothing happened, just too much to work on while some others were away.” You stretched your arms behind you and locked your eyes on the movements of his hands. You had never learned how to properly skin an animal, even if you tried your hardest. At least you compensated it with your surprisingly great aim.

You both stayed there for a while, just him skinning and you moving around and finally trying to start the fire, and for a little bit, you let yourself forget that you’d leave in the morning and not see him again for weeks.

It wasn’t like old times where small talk was still a common thing between you two, but you were more than grateful that he was there, and that you were able to take care of him the way he took care of you so many times in the past. He had been there for you after your sister’s death right after the quarry. In his own way, of course, Daryl Dixon was not one for hugs and slowly caressing arms, but he was there. He had asked you to go with him while searching for Sophia and let you talk your sadness out, and made sure you had somewhere to crash at night when sharing your tent was just too much to handle. You had become friends. Great ones, too, because you understood each other in a way you had never understood anyone before. You knew when to stay, and when to leave; when to speak up, and when to stay quiet and just… be there.

You respected him, also. You were loyal to him and believed in his motives as the good man you knew he was. He was to you what Beth had been to him: the person who showed you that there were good people left in the world. It wasn’t a surprise for you, either, when you caught yourself watching him in a different light. Catching feelings for him came almost too easy for you as if you were meant to care for him. It wasn’t unexpected, you knew, you had always known. But it scared you.

It was terrifying to even think about the chance of losing him, or him losing you if something happened between you. You loved him, and you were certain he was aware of it, at least to some extent. He knew you cared for him, the romantic side of it was what you tried to hide as much as you could. You were loyal to your friendship and to the bond you shared. Both of you were safer that way.

You had seen Rick losing Lori, Maggie losing Glenn, and then Michonne losing Rick. You didn’t want to be the next one to experience that kind of loss. Getting close enough to imagine a future together and then them dying in your arms was the last thing you wished.

When the squirrels were fully cooked, the sun was out and the night sky was starting to get cloudy. The temperature had heavily dropped and you could almost smell the upcoming rain. In no time you would be soaking wet and wishing you were back at Alexandria with a roof over your head, but it was too late to go back, and you would have to spend at least another hour trying to convince Daryl to go with you.

And on top of that, you knew you wouldn’t manage to.

“Kinda missing umbrellas now,” you said scanning the sky. He imitated you and scoffed, biting into the last pieces of his meal.

“‘s not gonna be bad,” he scrubbed his hands on his jeans and stared at you, “you stayin’?”

You knew you were going to stay, you would find a way to do it, but his question still took you by surprise. It was the first time he suggested it himself instead of you deciding to stay on your own.

Looking at him and lightly tilting your head to the left, you smiled.

“Am I your friend again then?” You joked and he rolled his eyes.

“Shut up,” he said mockingly as he got up to put out the fire. You got up too and stretched your legs, considering keeping watch first so he could get some sleep. He looked exhausted, you figured he needed to rest, and you being there could maybe help him relax since he wouldn’t have to pay attention to every little sound.

“I’ll keep watch,” you took the gun from your backpack and checked your knife, just in case. Looking around the perimeter you also confirmed the wires and metal cans Daryl had put up were all in place, you would hear the walkers before they could get near you. “Go ahead, get some sleep. I’ll wake ya up in a few hours.” You approached his tent and sat near the entrance, making yourself comfortable with your back pressed against a tree. 

Once he finished putting out the fire, he walked towards you and sat down next to you.

Shoulder to shoulder, keeping watch. It instantly reminded you of the never ending nights at the guard tower back at the prison. You remembered how you would nonchalantly talk about your life before the dead walked, how he would listen and comment on it without talking about his own. 

You remembered, too, when he opened up to you for the first time.

It had taken him a couple of years of knowing you, but he finally did. And you listened carefully, as quiet as you could be and giving him all the time in the world to speak. It had been on a night like this one, keeping watch like this time too. He had told you everything: Merle, his dad, his scars, his mom. You used to be so close it ached to realize that that was now in the past. He still trusted you, but it wasn’t the same, and sometimes you wondered if it was ever going to be that way again.

Suddenly, as the first thin raindrops touched your skin, you felt a knot on your throat that you drowned with a chuckle. How long had it been since you felt like crying? Months. Probably more. You didn’t have to turn to look at Daryl to know he was staring at you.

“Dixon I swear to God,” you spoke, trying to find something to say that wouldn’t give you away, “if you catch a cold…”  jokingly threatening him, you then looked at him. The drizzle making small raindrops land on his hair. You noticed how long it had gotten, making a mental note to bring some scissors next time.

He snorted, “what?”

“I’m draggin’ your ass back to Alexandria,” you stated, smiling widely.

Your smile didn’t last long, though. His face expressionless the moment you mentioned the place. You knew why. You felt like that sometimes too, but it didn’t matter who was there, it was still your home.

“‘m not goin’ back there. Not for a while.” He fidgeted with his fingers and then with an arrow. “I tried, but every time I go, knowin’ he’s there-”

“I would’ve killed him already if I didn’t have so much self-control.” You cut him off; he was right, it had taken him all of his strength to visit Judith and baby R.J. without going to the cell and finish what he swore he would finish. “Then I’ll drag your ass back to the Hilltop or the Kingdom.”

“I was thinkin’ of spending the winter there. At the Kingdom.”

Smiling, you reached for his arm and squeezed lightly, him not flinching at your touch the way he did when you first met all those years ago. That was still a thing, at least, his comfort with your touch.

“I’d love that.”

Not much was said after. He had given up and gone to sleep while you kept watch for the rest of the night. You had given up too when you realized he wasn’t waking up; you decided you would take the day off, Alexandria could do without you for a day while you recovered with a long, much-needed nap. Hearing his snores made you realize: that man hadn’t gotten proper sleep in weeks.  It didn’t matter to you when the rain got heavier, though it was never unbearable. You were glad that you were there and that you could help him some way. The only way you could.

[colourshot-draws]

Cup

Birthday celebrations are brought to a grinding halt when a cup is broken. By Vyvyan. Which doesn’t seem out of place. They soon find out this is much more than just a cup. Can you tell I enjoy writing comfort things involving Neil? I think he’d be decent at it, good vibes and all. (Mild Trigger Warning for: Kind of implied past abuse and a panic attack).

** Neil was happy for once. It was his birthday and his friends were actually celebrating it. If he had stopped to think about it too much, he might have thought it odd but the dynamic in their house had changed ever so slightly. It wasn't calmer by any means, there was still a good chance that Vyv would stick your head through a wall at any given moment but there was a silent understanding that they were there for each other - if they really needed it.

And thank god for that.

Vyvyan had been helping set the table (something that surprised everyone), in fact he'd insisted on doing so. He'd been making a mighty effort to be kind on Neil's birthday, only playfully scaring the man so bad that he'd fallen down the stairs and almost broken an arm. Still, Neil couldn't complain (and that was what he was best at), Vyvyan had undergone quite the personality switch overnight. Which is why what came next was all the more jarring.

“FUCK” A loud crash and swear punctuated Neil's rumination. He immediately looked up, eyes landing on Vyvyan standing over a (presumably) dropped cup. The noise had jolted Rick into alertness, even Mike had looked over (although seemingly unbothered). Neil immediately rushed forward, assuming he'd be the one clearing it up. He mumbled a quiet "Heavy, even on, like, my birthday?" before bending down to pick up the pieces. He didn't however, expect the small whimper that left Vyvyan as he moved towards him. Neil cocked his head up at him, hardly believing his ears. Vyvyan had stepped back, face going white and an awful had shaking begun to take over.

"Vyv?" Neil questioned. Vyvyan didn't answer, seemingly too panicked to say anything. "Vyvyan?" He tried again. Still nothing. Until...

"Fuck." Well that was something. It was quickly followed by a few more swears, all in quick succession - each one more panicked than the last.

"Vyv, it's just a cup, man." Neil moved towards him, reaching out. Vyvyan practically jumped away.

"NO!" Vyvyan exclaimed, perhaps a little harsher than intended. "No, no, you don't understand. I was trying to be all nice and-" He exhaled shakily. "-And I messed it all up like a fucking idiot." He punctuated the "idiot" with such venom that Neil realised this was not just a cup to him. Neil's expression changed to that of concern.

"I...I swear it's okay. You didn't mess anything up, right?" Neil kind of kicked some of the broken shards away to illustrate his point, even throwing in an attempt at a smile. Vyvyan remained unconvinced, his shaking hadn't stopped. "Vyv, you break things all the time, what's different about this?" That had not been the correct thing to say, Vyvyan's face darkened.

"YOU don't understand! I was trying this time, really trying and I still can't manage to get it right-" Vyvyan’s voice went up a few notches, perhaps unintentionally. He looked a sight, yelling while simultaneously shaking like a leaf.

"Vyv..."

"NO, Neil, you don't-"

"Vyvyan!" The hippie never raised his voice. At any other time, this would have been enough to shock the punk into shutting up but this was not a normal situation. He just continued to rant, only becoming more panicked by the second. Rick and Mike were looking on in disbelief, not daring to make a comment. They hadn't seen the punk look anything close to vulnerable before. "Vyvyan. Listen to me" Neil said firmly, trying to get his attention. It wasn't working. "Oh floppy disks...VYVYAN!" Vyv stopped, looking if anything, more afraid - a few tears collecting in his eyes. Neil immediately felt guilty for yelling. "I'm...not angry at you for, like, dropping a cup. I promise." Neil said, much softer this time. Vyvyan's brow furrowed, seemingly unable to fathom someone not being terribly angry at him for this kind of thing.

"You're...not?" He managed to croak out after a few seconds of silence. "Of course not, man." Neil swore he could hear the gears turning in the punks head, mulling this piece of information over. Neil didn't want to consider why Vyvyan needed to process that, let alone hear it in the first place but if it helped his friend - he wouldn't argue with it. He tried to slowly approach Vyvyan once more, watching fear flit across his features again.

"I won't like...come near you if you don't want me to, man. I just want to help." Neil may have looked like he was handling this well but truth be told, he could hear his own heart beating in his ears. There wasn't anything stopping Vyvyan from reacting violently...Neil had never dealt with scared Vyv before. But Vyvyan didn't react with violence, more the opposite, those earlier few tears now turning into a cascade. Well that had been the last thing Neil had wanted to do, god he wasn't very good at this whole comfort thing, was he?

Vyvyan on the other hand, wasn't much focused on Neil worrying about his comforting skills. As he stood there, fists clenched, hot tears running down his burning cheeks and a messy mixture of anger and fear contorting his features - he became keenly aware of everyone's eyes on him. That they were all staring, holding their breath, terrified that he'd lash out at any second. By god, couldn't they tell that he was utterly terrified as well? He hated that he couldn't move, his body wouldn't let him and as his teeth sunk into wobbling lips - he was reminded of how pathetic he felt (and must have looked). It didn't help that Neil was looking at him with such pity in his eyes, it made Vyvyan feel like being violently ill. Please for the love of god, do something you bastard, help me - just stop staring- Neil granted his wish, although unknowingly. Vyvyan felt Neil lightly touch him on the arm, perhaps to try and comfort him. That was enough to make his skin crawl and without thinking he grabbed the hippies arm, pushing it away. Neil didn't react, he just silently stared at Vyvyan. That look of pity had been replaced by... concern and his usual mopey expression had become softer - albeit still sad. Neil wasn't angry at him, hell he didn't even look scared of Vyvyan. He just looked like he cared. And Vyvyan felt a little of his inner defences crumble at that. He relaxed his grip on Neil's arm, hardly realising how harshly he'd been holding it - although the hippie hadn't complained. Watching Vyvyan soften slightly made Neil do something he'd never thought he'd do.

He hugged Vyvyan. And Vyvyan didn't push him away.

Neil wasn't confident in too many of his skills, even cooking and cleaning (which was his main job and still he wasn't too sure about that). However, he knew he was a good hugger. Vyvyan seemed to agree in some way because as his arms transitioned from hanging limply by his side to embracing Neil back, he could feel how much the punk had needed one. Vyvyan wasn't a loud crier so the only noise that punctuated the air was a few soft sniffles as he buried his head in Neil's shirt. No one said anything, no one could. Neil didn't even complain about Vyvyan’s studded forehead poking into him.

It was only when Vyvyan let go did everyone seem to regain their ability to speak. "U-Um-" Rick piped up, Vyvyan could hear his voice wavering. He looked up, over at the poet, noticing that he'd gotten all teary. Bloody hell. "I was wondering if y-you'd like to watch Bastard Squad or something…" He was making an effort to hide the fact that he'd been upset but Vyvyan could hear it in his snivelling tone of voice. He made a mental note to tease Rick about it later. Still the offer was nice...wait it was still Neil's birthday!-

"No, no way." Vyvyan rubbed his eyes, trying to erase any evidence that he'd been crying at all - though he knew there wasn't much point. They'd all watched what had happened. "It's still Neil's birthday. He probably has some dumb hippie show he wants to watch or something…" The hippie comment went unnoticed, Neil was too busy breaking into a warm smile - it looked a bit out of place on his face.

"I, like, don't mind. Not at all." Neil really didn't. A hint of Vyvyan's signature grin returned as he nodded.

"RIGHT!" He jumped onto the couch, settling down, seemingly forgotten about his earlier gripes about it being Neil's birthday. The rest joined him, although it took a little rearranging to get them all to fit (no one felt like leaving each other out this time around). That's how Vyvyan ended up next to Neil, head lying on the hippies shoulder. Mercifully none of the guys pointed that out, in fact they didn’t seem to actually care. Vyvyan had underestimated how much his...episode had affected his housemates. Even Mike, who currently had his sunglasses pushed so far into his face - in an attempt to sustain his cool guy look - that Vyvyan would be surprised if they didn’t leave terrible red marks.

“Thanks” Vyv had whispered to Neil, halfway through Bastard Squad. Neil hardly believed his ears, in fact he would have asked the punk to repeat himself but he was making a point of avoiding the hippies gaze. Neil decided against making it harder for the man and just nodded, smiling in response. Vyvyan grunted, a noise of acknowledgement, before turning his attention back to the tv. This certainly had been a day of firsts and Neil felt that was a good sign. After all, the hippies birthday should produce good vibes (and positive change, all that “frightfully boring hippie nonsense” as Rick would say).

[flightfoot]

What's your favorite Rick Riordan series between Percy Jackson, The Kane Chronicles, Heroes of Olympus, Magnus Chase and Trials of Apollo? (or like, if you can't choose, what do you like about the series you've read?)

Trials of Apollo, no contest. 

I liked Percy Jackson a lot, it was VERY well done. Percy was hilarious and relatable, but also just super awesome, his dynamic with Annabeth was fun to read, along with his dynamic with Grover, the quests had a lot of entertaining encounters, and it had some well-executed themes that tied in with the overall conflict nicely, mostly about how parents’ and adults’ negligence and even abuse can harm their kids, the overall effects of that, and just... generally trying to get the parents to shape up, as well as the effects of not respecting others in general, like with how the minor gods and by extension, their children, are treated by the Olympians. It comes up with Percy’s relationships with both Gabe and Poseidon, and most of the campers’ relationships with their godly parents, and that’s a MAJOR cause behind the entire conflict, and one of the major things that Percy tries to make better at the end of the last book.

Kane Chronicles... it’s been awhile since I read it. I don’t remember it having as prevalent a theme as Percy Jackson did, though there was definitely social commentary on racism, with how Carter was sometimes treated, and with how people had trouble comprehending that Carter and Sadie were full siblings, since while both are mixed, Carter’s pretty dark-skinned, while Sadie looks White. It was more of a background thing though, not a major plot point. I liked the characters and the plot fine, they were entertaining, and it was good overall - but it’s not a series I’ve felt a pressing need to reread either. Only real complaint I have about it is the romances centering around Sadie. Her and Anubis were kinda cute, but it would’ve been a lot cuter if she was older than 12-13, and he wasn’t a 4000-year-old god who looked, acted, and was treated as a 16-year-old. And then the whole thing with making it a love triangle with Walt who’s ALSO 16 and Rick’s method of “solving” the love triangle... look honestly I just would’ve been a lot more ok with the romantic shenanigans there if Sadie wasn’t a middle-schooler throughout it. Overall still good though, I’d be down for an adaptation of it, but it’s one of the few cases where I hope something IS flat-out changed to make the romances more palatable.

Heroes of Olympus is where I originally fell off of the Riordanverse. There was just so long between books and I could barely remember what happened between them, and with most of the books being like parts of the same quest (especially books 3, 4, and 5), unless you were constantly refreshing your memory of them via fandom, they were hard to follow, especially with several main characters and different character dynamics to keep track of. When I went back and read the whole set of them though, getting back into the series, it was WAY better, since I could read them as a coherent whole. I could tell he was struggling to juggle all the characters, but I thought he did a fairly decent job of it for what it was. I ended up liking all the characters - ESPECIALLY Leo, I thought he was great and relatable and funny, but I also wanted to hug him - and while the quest could drag on a bit at times, there were some interesting parts there. And Percy and Annabeth’s journey through Tartarus was GREAT. 

The themes for Heroes Of Olympus overall were pretty much the same as with Percy Jackson, but with less emphasis I think. It was mostly just “the gods (mostly Zeus, really) are being crappy again, but this time we have enough support among ourselves to manage, except for when a god is technically required to defeat a Giant”. A lot more emphasis was placed on individual character arcs and circumstances, which I think was a good choice, since with so many main characters, they needed more concentrated character development in order to put them up to par with Percy and Annabeth. Plus it allowed Rick to still go into some different themes a bit, like racism with Hazel, trauma with Leo, insecurity with Frank, etc, in a way that felt natural and relevant. It helped that they were broken up into different books for their introductions, so not everything was dumped in at once.

The ending of Heroes of Olmypus... yeah the final battle with the GIants was lame as all hell, and honestly the quest ended up feeling a bit like busywork, but screw it, I did LOVE one part of the ending. The imagery of big, bad Gaia, who even Zeus is so scared of he just wants to hide away with his head in the ground, physically manifesting and being about to take everyone out, everyone losing hope... and then screaming as Festus appears and snatches her up into the sky as Leo gives a shit-eating grin and hurls fireballs at her while insulting her the whole time is just GREAT. I always giggle, and I honestly found it a lot more memorable than the Kronos fight, even if it was technically less epic. It seemed fitting for her to be taken out in such an embarrassing way, by the boy she’d personally taken the most from.

Magnus Chase... yeah that’s the only one I didn’t finish. Quick note: its been over a year since I tried it, so I’m operating off of memory here. I wanted to like it, and after reading through Heroes of Olympus (which i originally stopped reading after Mark of Athena) and Trials of Apollo, I was all hyped up for more Riordanverse... and was disappointed. The basic elements were there, and the writing itself wasn’t bad, but... well, I never really got attached to most of the characters this time, I didn’t find the quest very interesting, and... well, you see how I mentioned about the themes in the earlier reviews? I thought Rick bit off more than he could chew with Magnus Chase, at least with the first book. (I slogged through the first book, got a hundred pages into the second book to see whether Alex, who I’d heard a lot of hype about, could save it, thought Alex was only ok but not someone who saved the book, and called it quits). 

So in Magnus Chase, Rick went DEEP into the social commentary on a lot of disparate subjects, trying to really tackle homelessness, child abuse (because no duh, that’s pretty much a staple, I think the only of his series that DOESN’T have major themes around that is Kane Chronicles), Islamophobia, ableism, and... I’m having trouble thinking of the exact term for it, but Blitzen was heavily looked down upon and derided for wanting to make fashionable armor and just being into fashion in general, so... I think it’s supposed to commentary on making fun of people for having interests that are generally seen as feminine? I guess? I dunno, it was definitely social commentary on SOMETHING, but I think the dwarves having their own particular culture here hurt whatever Rick was trying to say, since social commentary is very much tied to the culture it’s in, and we only have a small taste of dwarven culture, at least in the first book. 

In any case, all these things are fine to do social commentary on, but when you’re trying to go in-depth and really address them, it helps if they’re more tied in with the overall conflict in the book, and if each issue has room to breathe. As it was, it kinda felt to me like the characters were being paraded from location to location to confront some different social issue. I just thought it was too much, too crammed into one book, and the overall conflict had pretty much nothing to do with that. Like, at the end of the book Rick tried to tie it together with some sort of “we’re a band of misfits” message, and... well, a message based on NOT fitting in with society, isn’t one that’s very satisfying or cohesive. And the individual issues, while there’s certainly cross-sectionality between, aren’t intrinsically linked, so... they just don’t mesh together very well. Not so many, all mashed into one book. Plus I just didn’t care for any of the gods, and the only characters I liked were Magnus and Sam. Blitz and Hearthstone... they were just sort of “there” for me.

I can see why people like Magnus Chase, and it’s not BAD by any means, but it just wasn’t for me. Maybe I’ll take another crack at it at some point, but I’m not super optimistic about it. As it was, I just ended up looking up the parts where Magnus met with Annabeth and read those.

Trials of Apollo though, I ADORE. Apollo was hilarious (along with the books in general), it had a pretty focused message about child abuse and abuse in general, along with how a privileged position can blind you from the travesties that are going on around you, or that you yourself cause, and I just thought the themes worked very well. Rick went more in-depth this time on the exact consequences of child abuse and the ways that a parent could abuse and manipulate their child, something that wasn’t covered as much in his earlier series, as those were more based around neglect. I’m a sucker for a good redemption arc, and I was really impressed with how it was kinda slipped in with Apollo. Like, he didn’t even know he NEEDED one, and the good guys weren’t especially pressing him on that point, it’s a realization he slowly came to over the course of several books. And you can clearly tell that he’s conceited and has issues, but isn’t actually malicious... and slowly the reader comes to the realization that he has hidden depths, that not even HE knew he had. It’s really interesting how he did some pretty bad things (or DIDN’T do, a lot of it has to do with inaction and just being uncaring), but he never comes off as being like, evil. He comes off as being an arrogant, narcissistic person at first, but then slowly finding out that beneath that is a lot of pain and trauma, and part of that persona he’s built up has been to deal with this. Watching him slowly change and grow and discover himself during the series, in a way he never had before... it’s just amazing to read. Also puts a nice cap on the Greco-Roman saga, in that the past two series had a heavy emphasis on how the gods didn’t care enough and had to have their hands forced a lot, and Apollo sort of acting as a stand-in for those other gods, showing that yes, they CAN change for the better - something that most of the gods, and even other immortals, didn’t think was possible, even as they did it.

Well that was super long. But yeah, I have strong feelings on the Riordanverse, and Trials of Apollo is far and away my favorite.

[unholyhelbig]

Ever heard of the song Mrs Jackson can you make that into hizzie! Love you work in the hizzie oneshot series like seriously I live to read those oneshot's.

[a/n: Thank you so much, I still feel like I struggle with their dynamic a bit. I also can’t explain why this song made me think of this type of one-shot, but I for sure got this energy from it.] 

Read on Ao3 | Send me more Legacies Prompts

Title: Miss Saltzman

Ship: Hope Mikaelson/ Lizzie Saltzman

Hope Mikaelson felt the cool edge of drywall push up against the wet of her back. Her legs ached, the apron digging into her stomach as she sat in the small corner of the business office. Different sticky notes in foreign writing littered the walls and a small fan hummed in the corner- but all it did was circulate hot air.

“This has officially been the worst day of my life.” She mumbled into her hands, tasting the salt of sweat against her lips.

The hotel was in the middle of its busiest season; with graduations and regular vacations to the large amusement park that sat thirty minutes from the coast. Every single room had been booked up to capacity and more than half of them called down to the kitchen with ridiculous requests that could be fulfilled with one easy trip to the grocery store.

Penelope worked an easy hand through her sweat-dampened hair. “You’re telling me. Room fifty-four keeps calling down for fresh strawberries because she saw another room with them, and you know Rick is too cheap for shit like that.”

“Rick is too cheap for everything.” Hope moved her hands and put her head against the wall behind her, letting the cool air hit her neck.

Ebony Creek sat at the end of a long city block packed with bakeries wafting with sweetness. There was a bookstore and a small local grocer. All of it was overshadowed by the large sandstone building with emerald awnings and fresh-cut roses.

The kitchen was located towards the back of the hotel, facing an alleyway where her coworkers would pull in heated breaths of nicotine. There was a cool breeze seeping in through the office, the door propped with a plastic bucket once used for large quantities of ice.

Three monotone rings echoed through the small space and Hope had to fight off a groan. Penelope sighed and grasped the phone from the hook. She listened silently for a moment, nodding as if the person on the other line could see her. “Yes ma’am, I’ll send her right up.”

There was a beat of silence after Penelope put the phone noisily back on the hook.

“Hope,”

“No”

“It’s room 237.”

Her breath caught, and it felt like lead in her throat. Hope had grown dreadful of the calls, and that very floor; but the guests there had a permanent stay in Ebony Creek. They paid a good sum of money to have keypads on the doors from the stairwell, to have a personal elevator that brought them to the fanciest rooms that were more like apartments. They rented month to month, and most of them nodded politely at the staff but never made use of them.

Most of them weren’t Elizabeth Saltzman.

She was a modern heiress with extreme taste when it came to extravagance. She enjoyed the post-modern art that hung on the walls of her hallway and deep gold crown moldings at the corners of her rented room.

Lizzie barely ordered anything from the kitchen; but with each phone call, she would request Hope. And each time Hope fixed her a vodka soda with barely any seltzer and bring that with her on a metal tray. Her hands would shake and the ice would clatter.

“Can’t refuse that,” Hope sounded out eventually, rubbing the sweat from her collarbone.

“No, I suppose not. Don’t take too long, alright? We can’t afford to be without you.”

Hope pulled herself to a standing position, not paying much mind to how her legs burned, or the good amount of wetness that built up behind her neck. She quietly mixed Lizzie her drink and pretended not to notice the cooks staring at her with curious eyes- despite knowing the weekly ritual by heart.

Hope set the crystal glass on a tray and walked through the double doors into the shocking coolness of the hallway. She could smell the chlorine of the indoor pool and hear the hum of the vending machines that were marked up in price when all you truly got in return were stale chips and out of date chocolate.

She got into the elevator that leads only to the second floor and found herself pulling out her hairpins with her free hand. The sweat had dried and her palm shook under the metal tray, the ice sounding like fairies that were robbed of their gold dust. All of this, she ignored too- all the way to room 237.

Hope schooled her shoulders, knocked three times (loud and sure of herself) before losing that nerve and stepping back like a timid child delivering cookies, or passing out pamphlets about the church of Christ.

Lizzie took her time answering the door, but when she did, Hope could swear she had to swallow her heart because the heiress would be able to hear her in a moment. She was dressed modestly in a nice blouse that cut too low and a pair of gray slacks. Hope knew from experience that the matching blazer would be slung against the back of one of the chairs in the room.

It was a rare occasion to see the woman smile, but each time the corner of her lip turned into something of a smirk, Hope’s legs would lose their feeling and her mind would run faster than any living creature could.

“Miss Saltzman, here’s your drink.” Hope balanced the tray and Lizzie took the glass as if it were a formality, and neither of them could fool one another, it was. “Is there anything else I can get you?”  

“You can come inside, let me grab a tip from my purse.”

The first time, nearly two summers ago, that Elizabeth Saltzman asked Hope to follow her into her room, she hesitated. The year before that she had delivered pizza’s and the golden rule was to always stay on the porch unless you wanted a knife in your back or a healthy dose of hoarders syndrome.

But it was a classy hotel, and there were cameras in nearly every hallway. Penelope had told her to always make sure the guest had everything they wanted; and if someone as powerful as Lizzie asked her to wait in the little area by the door in order to collect a tip, she would.

Hope tucked the metal tray under her arm and obliged.

Lizzie had the AC on and that seemed to do nothing to appease the intense burning across the skin of her cheeks. She felt the exhaustion of the day and the cool metal that pressed close to her side. More than anything, she felt the closed door against the skin of her back the second that they were locked away from the rest of the world.

A knee was between hers and the tray clattered to the carpet with a dull thud. Lizzie’s nails dug trails of acid across the back of her neck and their lips met with all exhaustion forgotten. Lizzie tasted like mint and bourbon.

“I had a rough day,” Hope said as the woman nipped slightly at her jawline, and then a little further down. “So if you can go a little easy on me-“

“I can have whoever wronged you fired on the spot.”

Hope scoffed; Lizzie wasn’t one for affection, not the ordinary kind and after a while, Hope realized that. She had fought hard to carve out a place in the city for herself and her brand. People found her brash and power-hungry, but her words were always calculated and both of them knew that it was a sign of how much she cared.

She found herself consumed by the woman in every aspect. How soft her movements were, how much she smelled of fresh-cut flowers, how she had just enough arousal built up inside of her to get her through the rest of her shift.

Lizzie led her to the small sofa that was a deep crimson and shuttered gold. She lifted Hope’s shirt above her head and took with it the scent of a kitchen, of freshly peeled garlic and sink water. She was being straddled and the coolness of the couch mingled with the heat of her skin.

“God, you’re gorgeous,” Lizzie growled, soft like the purr of a motor, before unhooking Hope’s bra and throwing it to the corner of the room with her t-shirt. “It’s a shame that you’re trapped in that hot kitchen all day long. Aren’t you just begging for some kind of release?”

Hope was, in fact, close to biting her tongue to keep herself from whimpering requests. She writhed under Lizzie’s touch and let out a small gasp when the woman ran her tongue over her nipple delicately. She liked to tease, and part of Hope didn’t have the patience but knew never to rush her.  

Lizzie palmed Hope’s other breast and kissed lightly down her stomach until she reached the waistband of her pants. Each movement felt like a new form of lava as energy pulsed through her. She lifted her legs, allowing the girl to pull her jeans down to her knees, taking her underwear with it.

Lizzie was attentive and tender, biting ever so slightly at Hope’s thighs as a wetness slowly formed between them. She moaned at the sensation, at the anticipation that overwhelmed her in every sense of nature.

“For fuck's sake,” She mumbled, biting down on the edge of her arm. The walls were the only expense that Ebony Creek didn’t double down on. They were thin and every single staff member took bets on which room was seeing the most action- Hope always knew it was 237.

“What was that?”

Lizzie’s breath was scalding against her center, and Hope wanted nothing more than to push herself further down the couch for any type of contact. “Please, Miss. Saltzman.”

Her southern manners were something prided in food service, and the same expectation carried to encounters like this. They weren’t on a first-name basis. Hope was the help even though sometimes it felt like the other way around, depending on who did the pleasuring.

Even with her quickness, Lizzie was gentle. She moved her tongue against the length of Hope’s sex, soothing the innate energy, if only for a moment before she got to work. Hope found her nails digging into the red fabric, leaving little crescents in the cushions. Her other hand guided Lizzie evenly, fingers laced into blonde hair.

“Holy shit,” Hope purred, waves of satisfaction rippling through her as Lizzie latched onto her clit.

She suddenly forgot all about the stress in the kitchen; the way seven meals had been sent back, and how room fifty-four wanted fresh strawberries that still needed to be defrosted from the furthest reaches of the freezer. The only thing that mattered was the skill of Lizzie’s tongue and the vodka soda that chilled on the table by the door.

Hope suddenly tensed, that build-up of pressure inside of her was releasing. She felt the tremors move through her body and bit down on the side of her cheek hard enough to draw blood. Despite herself, she was successful in muffling the sounds of her own satisfaction.

Lizzie pulled away, clearly impressed with herself. A dumb and prideful smile sparkled against her lips, even as they met with Hope’s once more. Her palm was on Hopes collarbone, both of them could feel the strength of her heartbeat as it pounded close to her ribcage.

Hope could taste herself, masked with vanilla, on Lizzie’s lips.

“You always tip me the most,” Hope panted

“You work hard.” Lizzie frowned and then focused her stare back on Hope’s, those deep indigo eyes. “You deserve it.”

[wclsh-a]

CHARACTER STUDY META.

so, this is mostly a post for my followers who aren’t familiar with twd / shane walsh, and are wondering what kind of character he is. please note that i’m writing this based on how i personally view shane, so some of this might not be actual canon, although i try my best to stick to canon as closely as possible. however, even if you are familiar with shane as a character, i’m hoping this post will give a bit of an idea of how i write shane. anyway... putting this under a read more bc it got kinda long

alright, let me talk about my portrayal of shane walsh for a moment. shane is a guy who starts out being neither entirely good nor entirely bad. i feel like when it comes to shane, a lot of people see him as either or, but what i love about the walking dead is that most of the characters aren’t just all ‘good’ or all ‘bad’. the so-called “good guys” of the series actually do bad things at times, and the “bad guys” of the series actually do good things at times, or at the very least comes off as good at some point or another.

and with shane, he kind of goes through a change throughout the first two seasons. he starts off more on the scale of a “good guy sometimes doing bad things,”  but as the series goes on, things gets more and more blurred for him to the point where he ends up more as a “bad guy sometimes doing good things.” i’m not going to go into too much details about what brings about this change, but tl;dr; after believing his best friend, rick, was dead, shane fell in love with and entered a relationship with rick’s wife, lori, and after rick turned out to be alive, lori left shane for rick, while rick basically took over the leadership of the group that shane had been leading and kept safe up until then, and so shane started to blame rick for putting their group in danger and people in their group getting hurt and killed from rick’s decisions (or at least shane sees it as rick’s decision making being the fault,) and shane also struggled to accept and come to terms with how lori was suddenly treating him like he had only been hurtful to her and carl and acted like she never even cared about him to begin with and told him to stay away from them, etc.

.... anyway.... that whole thing’s a mess so i’m not gonna go into that any more in this post.

from before the outbreak, all the way up to when rick came to the atlanta camp, and even a little after rick showed up, shane was shown as someone who cared about people and their safety. some might disagree here, and bring up scenes like where shane refuses to go after and help the people in their group who got stuck in the city as shane not really caring. but when you look at it, the people in the group that was still in camp with shane, was people who either a) was old b) didn’t know how to use a gun / how to fight c) got frightened / terrified / panicked at the sight of walkers and / or d) were just kids. to take any of them into the city where they knew walkers were in large herds in an attempt to save the others? to shane, that seemed more like sentencing them all to death. shane also knew that those in their group who was in trouble in the city was more equipped to handle themselves and had a better chance at figuring out a way to save themselves, and also since shane and the others weren’t able to stay in contact with them over the radio due to poor reception, shane had no guarantee that they would even stay where they were by the time shane and the others could’ve reached them if they did try to go after them. all in all, shane had plenty of reasons to not try to help them, and no reason aside from it ‘being the right thing to do’ to try to help them. 

it’s not that he didn’t care or didn’t wish he could help. to him, it just wasn’t worth the risk.

some examples that he did care about others than himself, is how he selflessly put his life at risk to try to help his best friend, rick, who was in a coma at the hospital during the outbreak, and, when he realized there was nothing he could do, he still put a bed against the door to the room rick was in, in a desperate last hope of a miracle that rick could somehow survive. another example, is how shane looked after carol and sophia, even more so after noticing how carol’s husband abused his wife. he always made sure to check up on them, and when carol apologized on behalf of her husband for something her husband did, shane assured her she had nothing to apologize for. and when he finally caught ed in the actual act of trying to abuse his wife, shane intervened and brutally beat him up, warning him to never lay a hand on anyone again. another example is how he looked after jim when he had a sunstroke, making sure he stayed in the shadow, and got enough water and was able to cool down, and when jim got bit, how shane was one of the people who expressed that he didn’t want to kill him and that it didn’t feel right leaving him behind even though jim had asked for it himself. 

one thing i’ve noticed is that shane constantly talks about his disapproval when it comes to taking risks that puts the group’s safety at jeopardy, and i mean, if he truly didn’t care, he wouldn’t constantly worry about putting the group’s safety at risk.

that being said...

he also has a lot of flaws and issues. 

shane has a mindset where he thinks he’s always right, and struggles to understand other people’s opinions if they’re at odds with his own, even after hearing them out. this goes back to even before the outbreak, but it wasn’t as noticeable back then as post outbreak, as he was more willing to “agree to disagree” in order to maintain the peace, because back then, disagreements rarely meant the difference between life and death, so he could live with swallowing his own pride more easily because it rarely came at much of a cost, whereas decisions after the outbreak often did...

this mentality, especially on top of his strong desire to keep the group safe, can quickly bring out a lot more negative sides to shane when people start disagreeing with him. best case scenario, he’ll think you’re just a naive idiot who he doesn’t much care for or care to listen to (this is usually the case if he thinks you don’t have much influence / power over the rest of the group, like with dale.) worst case scenario, he’ll look at you as a great danger to the group, one that needs to be dealt with to keep the rest of the group safe (this is usually the case if you are in a leadership position, like with rick.) either way, people disagreeing with him can quickly lead to shane becoming frustrated, hotheaded, etc, especially after rick takes over leadership of the group and he starts to feel everyone shift towards supporting rick and no longer listening to anything shane has to say.

also, while shane wants to keep the group safe, he is not always a person you can rely on if you ever get yourself in a pinch. in fact, chances are he’s not going to be willing to risk himself or others to come back for you, unless there’s a really goddamn good chance of success or at the very least a really low risk for others getting hurt / killed. and even then, he’ll be hesitant about it.

he has also proven to be willing to sacrifice a good, decent person to save himself and someone in his own group, as proven when a man not in their group, named otis, accidentally shot rick’s son, carl, and carl ended up needing medical supplies to survive. so when shane and otis went out to get said supplies, and got crowded by a herd as they tried to leave, otis rescued shane, however shane ended up shooting otis in the leg to draw the herd to otis, giving himself an opening to save himself and get the supplies back to carl. he didn’t take any pleasure in doing it, and struggled with it afterwards, but he justified it to himself by the fact that sacrificing otis had ensured that shane had managed to get back with the supplies and thus saving the kid.

shane also has a whole bunch of other issues that are connected to his dynamics with rick and with lori, which includes an obsession with lori, jealousy of rick and lori’s relationship, a growing hatred / resentment towards rick ( partially because of said jealousy, but also partially because he genuinely thinks that while rick has good intentions, he is a danger to the group, especially since the group seems to blindly put their faith in rick and has stopped listening to shane at all.) but that’s a whole different story and this post is already getting too long, rip

[caltropspress]

FEEDBACK LOOP #1: Armand Hammer’s “Flavor Flav”

What are the Black purposes of space travel?

—Amiri Baraka, “Technology & Ethos”

Black futurism is a temporally troubled matrix Black futurism is a temporally troubled matrix that thrives on opposites and oppositions, flowing lines and nonlinearity, conflict resolution and asymmetrical warfare. It prefers the mad dash on shifting sands while in pursuit of higher ground and safe havens.

—Greg Tate, “Kalahari Hopscotch, or Notes Toward a 20 Volume History of Black Science and Afrofuturism”

Welcome aboard our spaceship, it’s so nice to have you here. —Newcleus, “Space is the Place”

Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day but      for all times, sees races, eras, dates, generations, The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together. —Walt Whitman

I’m so tired of being forced to promote the myth of white supremacy by performing works by old white men like Whitman who said blacks...didn’t have a place in the future of America. —Timothy McNair

Today is the shadow of tomorrow, today is the future present of yesterday, yesterday is the shadow of today. —Sun Ra, “Secrets of the Sun”

This highly allusive track from billy woods and ELUCID toys with itself—that is, allusions are a figurative means of collapsing time in and of themselves. Past and present history & culture don’t contend so much as support one another. A set of stilts to do the Dance of Death on, if you will. “Start downhill running.” The Seventh Seal hilltop silhouette danse macabre steez, though. The whooshing, metal-creaking beat—with all its haunted psithurism charm—is the backdrop for this sleeper Shrines track.

The name “Flavor Flav” is used metonymically here to mean time. This isn’t a braggadocio, low-key threat in the spirit of OC’s “Time’s Up.” This isn’t a Grandmaster Flashian “You Know What Time It Is” (though the hands on the clock tower do spin clockwise and counter-). Neither is this a Kool Moe Dee-esque rhetorical “Do You Know What Time It Is?” Armand Hammer are frustrated by time, by the “ideals and dreams that don’t work.” woods laments his “time machine [that] don’t go backwards.” This no-good lemon of a H.G. Wells contraption he’s steering. This isn’t some Christopher Lloyd-cum-El-Producto Delorean. There’s no Great Scotting going on, just stubbornness.

Progress isn’t made. Time stagnates. Like the “list of ill-fated quick licks under ’frigerator magnets.” And that “school trip permission slip”—likely a bus ride to a museum: a carefully curated collection of artifacts, most notable for its colonial muscling. The question remains: What is left out? What is excluded? What is ignored, discarded, or co-opted so as to not withstand the test of time? woods’ short-i assonance speeds the delivery up only to slow it down:

list | ill | quick | licks | ’frig | nets | trip | mis | slip | lick | split | skin | spliff

billy woods, son of a revolutionary, redefines Afrofuturism (re-re-re-defines—its brilliance is in how it remakes itself unconditionally). Afrofuturism becomes about birthing the next generation of Black revolutionaries, so he subverts the line and expectations when “big hand captured” refers to the clock, but “little man [not hand] chasin’” refers to a youngin. (Try to keep up.) Put the faith in the youth when our “ideals and dreams” stall out—when the days, months, years are fleeting and forceful (“It do tick faster / The hour coming rough”). The spliff that’s “[skinned] like an onion” turns the cypher into Perrault fairy tale “pumpkin,” Cinderella style.

“Don’t come ’round with that ‘Go slow’” is in conversation with Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam,” of course. It’s Nina who said “[she] can’t stand the pressure much longer,” who objected to those who “keep on saying ‘Go slow,” who had her band ironically chanting Do it slow. billy woods, like Nina Simone, decries reformism, incrementalism. Don’t do things gradually. We’re at the point where Nina stands up from her piano bench and shouts That’s it!

Forego the telephoto lenses, he insists, this is the “Battle of Algiers with the GoPro.” Urban guerrilla warfare uploaded and disseminated via YouTube. Again, time collapses. The struggle to decolonize continues. Watch for the This video is no longer available dead-end.

billy woods’ Nietzschean “loathing and fear” reverses the hallucinogenic time-warp of Thompson’s (and, in filmic relation, Gilliam’s) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. “History is hard to know,” Thompson writes, “because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash.” That flash will reappear in ELUCID’s verse.

If “all roads lead to Rome,” we’re settling into the inevitability of our moves. It’s a fatalistic shrug, but homophonically, all roads lead to roam—that is, the journey is prolonged interminably. It’s nomadic. Much static. So, naturally, you’re going to “[shake] the hourglass like a snowglobe,” distort time, and splurge on the “JC Penny Timex,” which is appropriately “flooded with rhinestones.” Flooded, because no more water: the fire next time. Don’t “lose track” and don’t “get trapped in the future.”

The chorus quotes the Rolling Stones’ “Time is On My Side,” but it ain’t that simple, no. The history is as messy as we’ve come to expect amerikan music to be. “Time is On My Side” was originally penned by Norman Meade (Jerry Ragovoy), and trombonist Kai Winding first recorded it. Jimmy Norman, a Black songwriter, fleshed out the lyrics significantly, and Irma Thomas recorded that version in the same year as the Stones. The song followed a path similar to that of “Strange Fruit”—a composition written by a white Jewish man under a pseudonym (Abel Meeropol as Lewis Allan) but popularized by a Black female jazz singer (Billie Holiday). As author Jess Row has said about jazz—hip-hop applies, too—it is “by its very nature multi-racial, intermingled, and collaborative across color lines.” But this cognizance must always be contextualized with views of Black artists like that of Art Blakey: “the only way the Caucasian musician can swing is from a rope.” Hip-hop has always had its Paul Cs and Rick Rubins, but the racial heterogeneity of a genre, or even a single recording, can’t cloak the power dynamics still in play. The Stones’ version of “Time is On My Side”—undoubtedly the most popular version—is a rip-off of Irma Thomas’ version. Mick Jagger even jacks Thomas’ ad-libs, which is to say, her rawness and spontaneity. Even the band’s shadowed faces on the cover of 12 x 5, the album on which the track appears, suggest the racial problematics, the minstrelsy heist. Armand Hammer mock the British Invasion blues filchers by adding “they” to the chorus line: “They said time is on my side.” They being white institutions (especially within music publishing, production, and recording industries) who promised enough airtime for everyone. They who urged patience. (Go slow!) But, as history shows, the profits only lined certain pockets.

ELUCID begins at the “golden hour,” which is both the photogenic beauty of the sky after sunrise and before sunset—a beauty too good to behold. It’s the sun glare shining in your face on the winter commute from work. It’s your high-speed accident and then the golden hour is the paramedics and doctors trying to salvage your corporeal existence. ELUCID’s verse is a hypnagogic jerk, gasping for breath as he takes a “portal to Orangeburg, ’68.” It’s a reference to the campus shooting of young people in protest—South Carolina State University. Unlike Kent State, which came afterwards, Orangeburg didn’t get the attention keening white women in Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs do, despite “live ammunition,” three dead, 28 injured, and “nine acquitted assassins.” Unnoticed. Black invisibility. Not that H.G. Wells type of invisibility—the Ralph Ellison kind.

We’re told what this is: it’s the aggregate stress (“the load of the allostatic”) of Black life. It’s one’s personal Extinction Agenda, the “post-traumatic” of the gunfire “flashes” that double as flashbacks. The pain, stress, the brain that can’t rest, the pressure on the chest.

“The center won’t hold” lets us know this isn’t all PTSD reverie—it’s a rebel poem: surely some revolution is at hand. ELUCID channels Achebe channeling Yeats. Things might fall apart but not without struggle. The “Flavor Flav clock spins centrifugal,” as a gyre, as an apocalyptic (91…) voice. Turning and returning. The words have an air of insurrection, proclamation.

He misses “watching how a flat circle fold”—it won’t budge, won’t wrinkle. We’ve been here before: on “Hunter,” on Paraffin, when billy woods was on that “time is a flat circle” shit. That Nietzsche eternal recurrence shit:

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain…will return to you. […] The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!

“Can you find the level of difficulty in this?” suggests game playing, arcades. Calls to mind more Walter Benjamin’s Arcades, though. billy woods and ELUCID are gleaners and magpies of cultural cadavers in Benjamin’s way. Their bars are play and critique both. We’re left with a modicum of optimism at the song’s end. Even “only [moving] the pen six inches” is something, is struggle. The “pale faces beyond the fire” are ever-present, though. The “flinching, panic, [and] confusion” are committed to continue.

Is it the fool or the insurgent who thinks time is on their side? We want the life we live to be “more brilliant than a sunbeam.” That’s to say, we don’t want to wait for the golden hour or the golden years. We want what they say we can’t have. We want what they say we shouldn’t imagine. But Armand Hammer helps us take solace in the “drum skin stretched”—the rhythm, the rebel. The oft-quoted Douglass gem, If there is no struggle, there is no progress, is played out for a reason. The reason is because it needs to be played again, and again. Like a mantra, like a song.

Images:

Sun Ra’s Space is the Place (screenshot) | Flavor Flav (detail), courtesy of archivist Sean Stewart | Grandmaster Flash “You Know What Time It Is” music video (screenshot) | Kool Moe Dee “Do You Know What Time It Is?” single cover | Nina Simone live at Antibes Juan-les-Pins Jazz Festival 1965 (screenshot) | The Battle of Algiers (screenshot) | The Rolling Stones 12 x 5 album cover | Flavor Flav, courtesy of Stewart

[pan1418]

Happy Holi

When I told people that I was traveling to India they would always ask me the same question; "What are you going to do there?" My answer was always the same. "I don't know" I would say. I knew that I was being guided to practice living life in a different way. A way in which my mind did not think it knew what was going to happen because it was not actively involved in planning any preconceived ideas of what I imagine would unfold. This has left me very much open to follow synchronicity and allow my journey to be experienced from a place of curiosity and pure awareness.

The interaction of explaining to others that I didn't know what I was going to do or where I was going to stay, lies at the heart of my experience here. I can see that we as humans are very much conditioned to believe that we should know, ahead of time, everything that we are going to be doing and why. I've been challenged by this dynamic inside my own consciousness. A good example of this is that I felt as though I should at least have a hotel reserved and idea of what to do when I landed in the middle of the night in Delhi. Then my training began. What I had planned to happen completely changed and I was immediately thrust into a present time situation where I had to redirect my energy and follow the path that felt most harmonious in that moment.

There are many other smaller circumstances that have been occuring in the same way. I get an idea that I should go somewhere or do something, and when that is not what ends up happening, I have watch myself get down on myself and come up with some reason why I wasn't strong or brave enough to do the original thing I had planned. I can also feel the amount of energetic resistance that appears in my body and how uncomfortable I become.

This has led me to an internal investigation on the nature of this inherent relationship with mental control and the fear and resistance that is connected to the preceived lack of achievement by enforcing this control. That is why when people ask each other what they are doing and why, they expect there to be a sound, logical, and explainable reason for every action or behavior. The longer I have been here in India I can feel these inner forces losing their controlling influence over my behavior.

There is a story that over two thousand years ago, India had a ruler they called a demon king. He was obsessed with power and control. He commanded his people to worship him as if he were God. Failure to give him the respect and admiration he was commanding resulted in death. People were by and large too afraid of him to stand against him and therefore the ruler was worshiped as God. The demon king even commanded his own son to worship him. However his son would not. His son maintained his own connection to God. This enraged the demon king. He tried to kill his own son many times. He made him jump off a cliff but he was unhurt. He poisoned his son but the poison turned to nectar in the son's mouth. The king commanded that he be trampled by elephants but again the son remained unharmed. Finally the demon king made his son sit on a bonfire pyre with him. The demon king had a magic cloth that would protect him from the flames. As they sat together and the pyre was lit, the magic cloth flew from the demon king and surrounded his son instead. The demon king was destroyed and the people celebrated. This celebration continues to this day. It is called the Holi celebration and it celebrates the victory of good over evil. On the full moon towards the end of February or beginning of March, the celebration begins and carries through the entire next day.

I have made some unexpected changes in my daily life since I have been here, such as only eating one meal per day. Given how the food is so delishious and the culture is organized around cafes, this was very surprising. Another change has been to limit my travelling by rickshaw or taxi. My intention has been to walk everywhere I can. This feels like it keeps my awareness open to more things in between destinations. I find myself feeling what my attention is attracted to. For instance if I am hungry then I will head in a certain direction and see what sign I may be drawn to. Sometimes I think I am heading to a certain place and I find myself drawn to another.

This practice has led to being more aware of where I am in the moment and who happens to be around me. It seems that this practice would just parcipetate random circumstances but my experience is just the opposite. It feels that there is stangly more orginization and orchestration to the flow of events then if I was to construct and follow a plan. For instance I was walking down the street with my friend Lukas as we were heading to his hotel for a warmer jacket. On the way he spotted his friend Rick that was sitting a local cafe and we decided to stop in. After a couple hours of great conversation another man walked in. And based on the content of our conversation the newcomer, who also was named Rick although much younger, joined in what we were talking about and we became aquatinted.

The following day I was headed out of my room at the guesthouse I was staying, and I ran into my friend Leizel who recommended me the room. She was headed out for lunch, as was I, so we decided to go together. The last time Liezel and I went out for lunch we could not get into her favorite cafe because it was too busy so we went somewhere else. On this day we decided to go to her favorite as there were less people today. As we were chatting and having lunch, in walks young Rick! He was promoting a Holi party that his friend was throwing on the following day. I took a flier from him and felt how the synchronistic connection brought me a opportunity that I otherwise was not considering. (On a side note, as I am writing this, I feel that I have to go to the bathroom. As I peer around the corner to look for a restroom there is the older Rick! The chances of seeing the same people in different places so regularly is astronomically low. There is obviously another force at work here.)

On the day of the Holi celebration I hear children outside squealing and hollering as if it were Christmas morning. The main tradition connected with this holiday is that everyone procures bags of different brightly colored paint powder. As they pass by each other on the street they throw clouds of the different color powder at one another. There is also the tradition of squirting each other with water guns. My fist image of this event as I emerged from my room was smiling people in every direction, young and old, completely covered head to toe in an exploding rainbow of color and chaos. I will never forget the first stranger who walked up to me and smeared a handful of the paint powder right across my face! It was amazing! Any care or concern of my own cleanliness and appearance instantly dissolved into pure joy as I entered the citywide festival. All of the normally consistently operating shops are closed on this day and every one takes to the streets with their friends and family. They shout Happy Holi in greetings to one another. With no regard for color or ethnicity they greet one another with the most vibrant enthusiasm. Ironically there does not appear to be any acquisition or goal of the holiday apart from ceasibg the normal daily routine in favor of singing, dancing, squirting water from unknown locations, and smearing each other silly with color. I think this is my favorite holiday of all time! I had the thought that once everyone's head and features are completely covered in paint, you could not tell if people are of a different ethnicity at all.

As I made my way to the pickup point there was a caravan of shuttle taxis to take people to the Holi party. It was said to be situated along the rivers edge about 6 miles outside of town. They ferverntley packed as many people in each SUV sized taxi and we all hung on for our lives as the taxi sped off towards it's destination. After a few weeks of aclimating to the Indian style of driving I have developed an implicit trust in the fact that if they had been driving their whole life and not killed themselves yet, then they would, most likely, not kill me now. Then it really chocks it up to the adventure to surrender and let go into the flow of what is happening. Life can be so fun!

The party was amazing. It was set inside the grounds of Riverside resort. They piled up the biggest speakers they could find and put out plates full of powdered paint in every color. What ensued was raging trance driven dance party where everyone was dawning their biggest smiles and a face filled of different colors. Many people I met had either travelled from other parts of India or neighboring countries to take part in this celebration because they claim that the culture of which they come fron is not as able to let go and have this much fun! The reccuring theme that continues to impress me is how the common intention to be open minded, open hearted, and open to new connections and experiences is what generates the amazing synchronistic energy that unites us all in this place.

Every day, more and more, I awake with the fresh feeling of optimism in the face of the unknown. Simply allowing my intuitive feelings guide my movement and my curiosity to turn each corner and explore the next step. More and more I am feeling victorious as my Heart and my Soul are receiving my attention and directing the movement of my life. More and more I am able to observe the inner workings of my mind and allow it to surrender it's ideas about the way things should be. My mind is a beautiful tool and loyal companion. But I see now that my mind was never built to know what is going to happen next. Nor can it truly protect me from unforseen circumstances and events. It cannot possibly aquire enough understanding to finally fill any void of value or self worth. It is just meant to be a recording device or rather and administrative assistant to the Heart. It takes notes. It follows along. It creates stories. It plays with meaning. It contemplates purpose. But by itself it cannot control life. It can only watch.

This is what I feel is hidden in the story of the origin of the Holi celebration. In the story the demon king was obsessed with being worshiped. He wanted to believe that he was God. He believed that if he forced everyone to treat him as such then he would finally achieve the reality he was wanting to create for himself. But no matter how much control he had and how many people did treat him in the way he wanted, his son was not convinced. His son knew of his own connection and followed his own path. Even when the demon king tried to destroy his son and prove his authority, ultimatly he could not. And his attempt to eradicate his son on the pyre only resulted in his own demise. I see this as a metaphor for these unconscious workings within the mind. The mind is unknowingly attempting to conquer the world and dominate it's circumstances. It attempts to aquire what is wanted for itself and seeks to eradicate what it feels threatened by. It secretly wishes to wield the power of God. To be seen as God. The son in the story represents the Heart or the Soul. It knows it's true connection with God. Nothing can separate the Heart from God no matter how hard the forces of control may try. And in the process of the demon king trying to solidify his own power, he finds he is only bringing about his own destruction and the release of control.

This struggle that occurs within each human being is also being played out on the larger scale of political, economic, or social events. Anytime we are seeing situations of injustice, victimization, protesting, or mass epidemics, what we are actually seeing is the battle between the Heart and the mind of each of the people involved. The mind of these people are scared. They are terrified of losing their illusionary sense that they are in control and can keep themselves safe. The mind will try to eradicate what it preceivs as the cause of the threat. The Heart already knows that there is no conflict. The Heart knows it is truly indestructible and that everything that is occuring in every experience, without exception, is proceeding according to a very divinity orchestrated set of circumstances designed for it's own evolution and expansion. There is a perspective shift underway. Each conflict is guiding every person more and more out of the fearful perspective that their mind is holding, and into the peace filled perspective that resides in their own Heart. What is being asked for is a willing sacrifice. That each individual sacrifice and let go of what they believe should happen and why. To truly surrender to the Divine Grace of God's truth and walk into the eternal corridors of the Soul where life unfolds unexpectedly and is full of unknowns. Each person is learning how to make themselves feel at home in this realm of uncertainties. Only then will we be as children again and ready to enter the kingdom of heaven. When children come to live on Earth, they open their eyes wide in wonder and marvel at every small miracle that occurs for them. They may be upset one minute and completely joyful the next. They have not yet developed a fully mature mind and they have no need of reasons or justifications for how their behavior. They are innocent and authentic. No expectations or agendas. This is our training and return to the innocence of the Heart. It may not look the way that we thought that it would, but every Soul is incredibly excited for the new opportunities of our long awaited reunion with God.

There is one more teaching I recieved this week that I would like to share. As I was laying in bed one morning before rising I was shown the clear vision of how energy is playing out in our lives at this time. This vision showed me that the pure energy that moves from the source of all Creation, through our Soul, and expresses into our human consciousness can be felt as inspiration, passion, or excitement. It is our driving force and let's say it is the language of the Soul. The word inspiration is based on the word Spirit. When we are connected with our Source and our Soul we can feel the excitement and inspiration move through every experience we have. Even if that looks like relaxing into a bathtub, going to a dance party, or buying flowers for your partner, it is all the same inspiration coming and it is all coming from the same Source. Now as this vision continued it showed me that when passion and inspiration is not flowing into the expression of human consciousness, it is turned inward and becomes compassion, or compressed passion. It is the same energy flowing from Source but expressed in it's passive state. What this vision showed me is that when we see someone else suffering, or we ourselves are suffering, what we are actually seeing is how the energy and the language of the Soul, the passion, is not able to flow through the consciousness of the individual and is experienced as suffering.

Now as I have said many times there is no mistake in this. Every experience in both expressions of polarity can and will be experienced by consciousness. We will all live each story through for better and for worse. We are amazing in our ability to gather information and expand our conscious awareness through the experience of contrast. That means that the more of one side of a situation is experienced it is actually making way for more opening of the other side. Experiences of sadness make openings for more joy. Experiences of hatred make more openings for Love.

Experiences of compassion make more openings for Passion. By seeing this clearly we can more fully understand that the challenges we are to face in our own lives and the challenges that we watch others endure, are opportunities to stimulate and activate our relationship with compassion. Instead of flying off into the story that the mind will create about why we don't understand that challenging things are happening, we have the ability to see the higher perspective. We can see that the suffering of another, or ourselves, is an opportunity to connect with the light and language of the Soul. We can feel how the passion and excitement has been surpresed and denied within the individual, and the experience of feeling compassion is making room for the inspiration to return. The experience of going inward and connecting to the compassion, without telling a victimized story that there is a good guy and a bad guy, nurtures and activates the passion within them and within you. There are not two or more different kinds of passion/conpassion in different people. It is all the same passion/compassion in everyone. We have many different Souls and bodies but there is only one Light and one Love that flows through us all.

As we face the uncertainty of the coming experiences here on planet Earth we need not fear. We can utilize all challenges and challenging emotions to our advantage of nurturing the seed of new life that is breaking ground towards the sun. Just as the compost of dying material is fertilizer for the growth of plants or the catapillar is in the process of transforming into a butterfly, there are many analogies to describe what we are seeing happen on our world at this time. But the one that I've been shown is that the pure Light, Love, Power, and Inspiration of Creation is returning. And it is moving through our Heart and our Soul. Any place that this energy cannot move into our lives will be experienced as suffering and act as an inclination in an attempt to control our lives. This suffering stimulates great compassion within us as a means of nurturing the dorment Inspiration untill we have completed our experiences of being separated from the Universal language of the Soul, passion. Through the power of contrast we will have purified our desire to follow the path of dillusion, and surrender the controlling tendencies of our mind and activate the dorment Passion waiting to move more fully into our lives. This will feel as if a a cosmic springtime has come. We will watch ourselves as we explode into new growth and burst into brilliant colors like wildflowers erupting in the medeow. Joy will ring from the highest mountains and we will meet one another in Love and joy. A great celebration will ensue in response to our victory. Children will laugh and play in the streets. All we will need is the magical Now moment in all its simplicity and synchronicity. Everyone will be excited to be there, expressing their passion, together. Happy Holi ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤

[twdmusicboxmystery]

TWD 10x10: Stalker - Details

Let’s talk some details! I’ll start by mentioning all the little things we’ve noticed, and then I’ll get into connecting it all. You might want to grab a beverage. This will be kinda long.

***As always, spoilers abound below for 10x10. Don’t read until you’ve watched! You’ve been warned!***

So, we start by seeing Beta jump into the pit via the RV. Both of those are huge symbols. The RV is a symbol of time that we’ve often associated with Beth. And Beta pretty much went into a dark tunnel…and emerged through a grave. Hmm. No better resurrection symbol than someone digging their way out of their own grave, Dean Winchester style

Then there’s Rosita’s dream. Seriously creepy, no? I knew from spoilers that it was a dream, but if I hadn’t, I definitely would have been freaking out. The thing is, it foreshadowed Beta walking around Michonne’s house, looking for Gamma. That part LOOKED just like Rosita’s dream. So that was a foreshadow of what happened later.

I couldn’t help but notice that when Daryl is following Alpha, he starts out in the dry riverbed. He gets up out of it, but then Alpha comes and he hides in it again. Then later, he attacks Alpha and the other Whisperers right next to the river. I’m wasn’t sure exactly what to read into that at first, but I’ll come back to it.

And Alpha actually led part of the horde out of the caves. It’s not very many—maybe a dozen or two dozen walkers—but they’re with her and the other Whisperers when Daryl attacks them by the river. Again, that’s important.

Also important to note that this season is moving relatively slowly. They made a point of saying in this episode that it’s only been 2 days since Siddiq died.

When Gamma tells FG to get her a map and she’ll point to where the caves are, I slowed it down to look at the map. It pans by very fast. I notice some Xs, but there are lines through them, which makes me think they might be train tracks. I can’t read all of the writing, but near the cave location, it says “unsafe zone.”

I also noticed the caves are 14 miles away. On the one hand, I thought of episode 14s through the seasons. Often Sirius/Beth related characters die in those episodes (i.e. Lizzie/Mica, Noah, Denise, etc.). Or this could be pointing toward ep 14 of this season. We’ll have to see what that brings us. But I looked it up in terms of biblical symbolism, and I found this:

All sound like Beth related stuff to me. And if the caves are 14 miles away, and that represents salvation and deliverance, that’s just another indication to me that Connie and Magna are just fine. They’ll survive the caves. Perhaps be “saved” by someone. ;D

My fellow theorists and I have been discussing the whole Rosita/FG/Eugene dynamic. At various times, we’ve felt that one or all of them might die. I felt that way this episode, too.  The symbolism around them is so muddled, and they’re all so interconnected, that’s it hard to say. For one thing, when FG leaves Alexandria at one point, he gives Rosita his hat. 

He does return to her after that, but it kind of felt to me like when Carl passed his hat to Judith, you know?

A group leaves Alexandria at the end for Hilltop. Rosita goes with them so she can see the doctor (apparently there’s still a doctor there) so I’m assuming when she arrives, that’s when we’ll get the scene with her and Eugene. But she also keeps talking about her fear that both she and Gabriel will die, leaving Coco an orphan. I don’t know if that’s a foreshadow or not, since it’s very on-the-nose, but it may be.

There’s also a part where Rosita looks up at the windmill and the camera focuses on it for a moment. People are speculating it’s a death omen because Siddiq woke up on its platform not long before he died. I think they might be onto something there, because in the opening credits, we see three turns of the windmill along with Rick’s bridge scene. And while we know Rick isn’t dead, the characters in the show believe he is.

I was also thinking that it might indicate a Whisperer trick. When it happened with Siddiq, Dante was in Alexandria, messing with his head. And in this episode, the Whisperers lured Gabriel and many others out of Alexandria so Beta could enter and get Gamma. But this is still conjecture. We’ll have to see how it plays out.

The gas station:

Everything is red, yellow and blue. There are “wings” on the main sign that look a lot like the Phoenix wings in the moonshine shack. And Alpha passes and old, analog gas pump with some interesting number on it. I’m seeing 32, 8 and 26. Not positive what to make of those, but 3+2 = 5 (for S5, perhaps?). 2 + 6 = 8, So that’s two 8s, which might indicate 16, or just the 8 years it’s been since Coda.

@frangipanilove​ noticed a rack full of car air fresheners. Just the kind of thing you’d find in a gas station. But what shape do fresheners often take? That of CHRISTMAS TREEs. So yes, there are Christmas trees in this scene. We also noticed some old soda coolers (think of @frangipanilove​’s blue cooler theories. It indicates the Sirius/return symbolism.)

Also, there was a yellow mop bucket behind Daryl at one point. 

And one of the walkers had fungus growing on its legs. We saw the same thing in Still and with Morgan in 6x06. I don’t know if I’d ever researched this before, but I looked it up and found THIS article that makes for interesting reading. This kind of fungus on trees suggests that the heart of the tree is rotten. That makes sense because each time we see them, the characters are in an emotionally bad place. Daryl, after the prison fell. Morgan, before Eastman helped him. And Daryl here, as also evidenced by when Alpha asked him if he could see past the darkness, and he answers, “No.”

He also uses a fire extinguisher to kill one of the walkers, which is also a Beth symbol.

Overall, it also reminded me of the burnt out greenhouse we saw in 6x06.

And I do have to say that I found the amazing things Daryl did with his leg injury to be…less than realistic, lol. Really not bashing anything, but he was putting all kinds of bodyweight on that leg with the knife still in it. And when he pulls it out, the thing spurts as though he’s obviously hit an artery. We don’t see that he has any way of bandaging it or treating it, yet somehow he lasts the night like that without bleeding out. Yeah, injuries like that REALLY don’t clot all by themselves.

But hey, it’s Daryl and obviously I don’t want him to die, so I’m cool.

And of course the other option is that it’s purposely unrealistic for symbolic reasons. That’s the kind of thing I’m trying to figure out. Like maybe this is meant to be a symbolic parallel with Alpha being Dawn and Daryl being Beth, and the spurt of blood represents her getting shot in the head and—against all odds—surviving. I’m not sure that entirely works out. Just throwing the possibility out there. But if it did, then Lydia could dually represent Beth saving Daryl and also someone else—like maybe Morgan?—who saved Beth after she was shot.

There’s another really interesting shot that instantly jumped out at me. At one point, we see FG preparing to leave Alexandria. He gets into a box and unwraps two, red shotgun shells. It was really the color that caught my eye at first. Next to it is a silver pendant with a cross on it. It’s not in the shape of a cross. The pendant is round but has a raised cross etched into it. (It’s actually the crest from his original church in S5, which is probably purposeful.) So it reminded me of the cross Beth wore around her wrist in Coda and of course there are those bullets. Annnddd… FG is a Sirius character. So once again, does this portend his death? I’m not sure.

What really caught my ear in the scene where Gamma talked to Judith was that she used the words ‘remember’ and ‘forget’ very close together, and I wondered if we would hear all the titles from 5b/Dale’s time speech. We didn’t, at least not in this scene, and I didn’t notice them anywhere else. But it still struck me as interesting.

There’s an “echo” theme in the episode. The other outpost that tells them there’s horde coming, but it’s a ploy and all the people from that station are actually dead, is called “Echo Station.” And when Gamma talks to Judith she says she has only echoes of memories of her previous life. I’m not entirely sure what that’s all about but I just thought that we’ve had nothing if not echoes of Beth over all the seasons since S5.

She also says that she and her sister made very bad decisions after the virus broke out, and then met Alpha (evil) and Judith says that if they’d met her mom or dad, Gamma wouldn’t be in this situation. So that’s just another way that Gamma and her sister are opposites of Beth and Maggie. They ended up in a good place because they met Rick, rather than following an evil, brutal leader.

Judith also says, “you don’t look like a monster to me.” Seems like we’ve had the monster theme in past several episodes.

When Beta goes into get Gamma, he says something kind of interesting. She’s arguing with him that Alpha lied about what this place was. He says it doesn’t matter. She’s Gamma’s Alpha and needs to be obeyed. Then he says, “You think you’re still alive. You were dead the moment you came to us.” 

So the Whisperers actually believe they are dead. They don’t want to live as the living do. But we could relate that back to Beth’s theme of “you call this living” and a few others.

Later, when he gets her outside of Alexandria, taking her back to Alpha, he says, “You will fall. You will rise. You will walk with your sister again.” Yikes. Talk about a resurrection/sister theme. And you know, Maggie is returning, so… ;D

I gotta say that Judith shooting Beta was pretty damn awesome. You know, in the way Judith is pretty damn awesome.

There’s also the fact that Alpha wanted Lydia to kill her. So, we could call this a suicide arc of sorts. And when Alpha wakes up in the morning, she says she’s no longer weak, which is a parallel to Beth. I thought of that while watching it. Just the fact that she talks about not being weak anymore and Beth’s “I am strong,” you know?

People in my group noticed that they used some Dutch angles (with the camera askew) when Lydia walked in. Another reason to believe she’s a proxy for Beth returning.

And then there’s also Alpha singing. I don’t have tons more to say about that, but we all know why her singing is significant. And again, all the dialogue just jumps off the screen at me. “Kill me.” Lydia says no. Then Alpha sings. And says “They’re waiting for you to lead.” Beth anyone?

Lydia carved into a table, “your way is not the only way,” right? Well, the shape of the letters looked a LOT like the graffiti from S5 that says, “Wolves Not Far.” We’ve already talked about how the Whisperers were forerunners to and foreshadowed the wolves, but I started thinking about that idea more deeply. Like maybe that writing, while it did foreshadow the wolves (cuz obviously) also foreshadowed the Whisperers.

And think about that. We first saw that that graffiti in 5x09, which Beth was in, and there was an 8 next to her. Now, 8 years later, the Whisperers are here. So, by extension, Beth should be too. Back to that in a minute.

I thought it was interesting that Alpha says to Lydia “I want you to…” And then she passes out. She doesn’t get out the word, “stay” until morning. So, Lydia never heard her mom ask her to stay. Lydia would have just heard the first part of the sentence and assumed it would be a negative request, like “kill me and lead the whisperers.” But she wakes up and says “stay” and Lydia and Daryl are already gone. It just struck me as very tragic. And at first, I didn’t see it as a TD thing, but I’ve reconsidered.

Even when Daryl wakes up and talks to Lydia at the end, it struck me as a possible Beth parallel. Daryl says, “You just been out here this whole time?” Sounds like something he might say to Beth.

Finally, at the end, when Alpha starts reciting her end-of-the-world chant, it pans out. This is the top of the gas station from a birdseye view, with the road next to it. I immediately felt like maybe we should be reading into this shot somehow. I just didn’t know exactly how. The blue colors and greenery might indicate Beth. But I had to put together more thoughts about episode before it really made sense to me. It’s part of the hell theme, which I mention below but won’t go into in a lot of detail here. (The gas station = hell or dark tunnel, and the curving path shows that the character’s arc changes course because of the hell they endure.)

Okay, so this is most of the details I noticed. But the thing is, the details are actually incidental. Or at least, they’re just there to prove the bigger parallels.

I feel like this entire episode is one big foreshadow/parallel. 

And it’s probably not possible for any of us to put our fingers on everything it points to, but the more I think about it, the more interesting it becomes. I’ll try to lay a few of them out for you.

1. So the most obvious thing this represents for me is what I talked about yesterday. It’s a replay of Coda and sort of a re-telling of Beth and Daryl’s arc. Daryl stabbed Alpha in the shoulder and then sustained an injury to the head, just as Beth stabbed Dawn in the shoulder and then was shot in the head. Also notice how this happens by the river (water = Beth). So Daryl represents Beth in this analogy and we then see him staggering around, injured, and in a very dark state of mind. I’m willing to bet Beth went through something similar after being shot and left behind. Or it could be literal, as we know there was a walker horde involved. So Daryl fighting off Alpha’s walkers and trying to survive could literally represent something Beth went through once she woke up, surrounded by walkers.

In that case, Lydia represents someone coming to help/save Beth. We don’t know who that is, but I’m sure we’ll find out eventually.

2. This also represents Daryl’s arc after losing Beth, though in that case, it’s emotional. After she got shot, he was sort of stumbling around in the dark emotionally, and unable to come out of his depression for a long time. With this interpretation, Lydia sort of represents…herself. Because Daryl didn’t truly start to come out of his depression until he started parenting her. So Lydia did help save Daryl emotionally.

3. I still think this represents something for the future as well. I think Lydia represents Beth returning and saving Daryl in some way. Will it be physically? Emotionally? My money’s on both. I think one thing this foreshadows is Daryl going into a dark state of mind again for some reasons, so even if she saves him physically, she’ll also save him emotionally by default.

And that brings up some interesting questions about Daryl’s crossbow, I gotta say. My group has been discussing this the past few days. We thought it was odd that Daryl dropped his crossbow before going into the cave in 10x08. Because he still had arrows and he had no obvious reason not to bring it with him. Now, of course it would have been VERY cumbersome when crawling through the tiny passages of the cave, and the writers knew that, which is why they had him drop it. But DARYL couldn’t possibly have know that, so it didn’t make much sense. It was obviously something the writers had him do with something in mind. And now Lydia has found it and brought it back to him.

A lot of us have had head canons about Beth doing something like this over the years, so again, this makes me…kinda happy. ;D

4.This obviously represents the hell/dark tunnel arc. I may end up doing an entire, detailed post about this, but here’s the basic gist. We already know the gas station represents hell, because in S4, the gas station Daryl and Michonne’s group went to had the word “hell” written on the marquee.

So I often talk about the dark tunnel symbolism representing the characters having a great trial, and that’s true, but you could also describe it as them going through their own personal hell.

So no matter how you slice it, we once again have a representation of what happened at Grady (stabbed in shoulder, injured in forehead) followed by the trial/hell/dark tunnel. For Daryl, for Beth, for Alpha… it works across the board.

It always starts with either a terrible injury, a death or a death fake out. Or sometimes literal imprisonment to a villain (i.e. Negan, Alpha, etc.). That’s followed by a period of time in which the character struggles through deep emotional darkness. (The dark part, as Maggie said.) Then, when the sun rises again, everything is okay. And what that “okay” looks like depends on what the first event is. If it’s an injury (think Carl’s eye in S6) then the person finally recovers or starts to recover, but it’s obvious they won’t die. If it’s a death fake out (think Glenn in S6) they show up alive. Other times, it might mean the death of the character themselves. (I’m thinking of Sasha. Yes, she died in S7, but she died so the group would have a fighting chance to win the war. And she was okay with that sacrifice. So we saw a sunrise.)

And let’s just appreciate that, if Lydia in this episode does represent Beth’s return to Daryl, she arrived in the night, kind of during his darkest hour. By the time the sun rose, they were away from the darkness, away from Alpha, and…together in the sunlight.

And the more I thought about and put together all the components of this sequence, the more I realized just how MANY times we’ve seen it. Like I said, I’ll do a more detailed post later, but it’s amazing to realize we’ve been seeing this all along, but for the most part only picking up pieces of it at a time.

(The reason I said the thing above about Alpha not finishing her sentence until the morning being a TD thing is that it’s a representation of someone “falling asleep” as it were and waking up along. You could say that this was Alpha entering the dark tunnel, much as Beth did--through injury--and when she wakes up, her family (Lydia, in this case) has left her behind. Right after that, we see the graffiti-like writing. We saw it with Beth in 5x09, right after Coda. And we’ve already seen plenty of parallels/anti-parallels between Alpha and Beth. Just saying.)

Let’s talk about Beta invading Alexandria for a moment and then I really need to shut up for today.

This is obviously a different sequence than the gas station, but I feel like it foreshadows something yet to come. First of all, it reminded me a lot of the Wolves invading Alexandria in S6. And I’m not saying that foreshadowed this (overall, this thing with Beta was less epic than the wolves) but I feel like both of them perhaps point toward something yet to come.

Let’s look at it with some distance. We have a major resurrection symbol (Beta crawling out of the grave) followed by an invasion in which Judith and RJ were in danger and many people died. So, I wonder if there will be a larger invasion where this is the case.

And honestly, it looks like this might happen with Alpha’s horde next episode, so maybe it just points to that. We’ll have to see.

But there’s also the resurrection symbol. So, I’m wondering if it points to a resurrection happening during this invasion. (And understand I’m just making observations here. I have no idea what it’s pointing to.) And maybe, given that Beta is evil, I’m making this symbolism too positive. I don’t know.

Also remember though that Beta is an anti-parallel for Daryl. (We saw him fighting with two knives in this episode, like Daryl does, so I was reminded of that.) And when Beth is resurrected physically, Daryl will be emotionally too. So there’s that.

So this is super conjecturey (totally a word) but remember what I said above: the first episode in which we saw “Wolves Not Far” was 5x09. Beth was in that episode, along with tons of symbolism about what might have happened during that missing 17 days, and what we think was trying to say that she would return in 8 years (in other words, now, in TWD timeline). And now, the Whisperers are here, which is probably what the wolves foreshadowed. (There were also interesting clocks in that episode, and the deeply foreshadowing radio voice broad casts. Yes, I need to do another post to show you guys this stuff. It’s just too much to put here today.)

So I guess what I’m thinking/hoping for is that at some point, the Whisperers will invade Alexandria en mass (or one of the communities; if this does point to next episode, pretty sure that’s happening at Hilltop) and during that invasion, Beth will show up to “save” everyone.

Now, here’s hoping this totally goes down next episode. My good friend @frangipanilove​ would be ecstatic, as ep 11 is the one she always focuses on, and here’s hoping she totally right. (Cuz, you know, that would mean Beth’s return next week. ;D)

But it’s also possible this is bigger than what’s happening in ep 11 and it will be more of a season finale sort of thing. Or… I could be interpreting this totally wrong and it won’t go down this way at all. This is just the stuff rolling through my head since watching 10x10.

One other thing: my fellow theorists and I talked about how we think this is setting up for three returns. Father Gabriel made the three reference to Gamma, and you could argue that Lydia got a return in this episode. She wasn’t really presumed dead or anything, but we hadn’t seen her in a while.

We also know Maggie will be back sometime soon. So that would be two returns. The third would of course, be Beth. But then there’s also Connie to consider. So who knows?

Yeah, this episode was totally packed with stuff. I doubt I’ve even truly hit on everything here. Lots of hidden gems. And next episode just looks, you know, totally badass. So I’m excited to see what comes next. 

Thoughts?

[bringmecoffeeandroses]

So, I did a stupid thing and re-watched 9x09.

And, while I think I’ve said my peace on the mistreatment/use of one Paul Jesus Rovia (actually, no, I haven’t, I never will because my sweet badass boy is dead and it was all a waste and tragedy and I die on this hill, okay?) I do think there were a few things I wanted to make note of. Go no farther if negativity or Adaptation spoilers/content bother you.

So, here goes my long-ass post:

I said this when I first saw the opening minutes, but I’m so glad AMC took the time to show us Paul’s dead face and blood gushing out of his chest. Definitely not a sign that they’re recapping the last episode for the people that didn’t tune in to 9x08.

Also, thank you for exploiting the hell out of the “shock” of Paul’s dead body but giving the brain stab so little time it was hard to figure out what the hell he was doing. It’s really important to leave that in though or I wouldn’t have thought anyone was smart enough to do it. ‘Cause these people haven’t been doing this for ten years and you’re assuming your audience is too dumb to realize anything happens off screen.

Why would they not have a permanent guard on Negan? Like I get it, he’s been locked for years but they weren’t even doing it back when Rick was alive and I gotta tell you, that’s fucking insane. Like, we’ve literally seen that Maggie wasn’t the only one who wanted justice, what would stop someone from Oceanside agreeing with Maggie and going off to murder Negan??? (It also might have been nice to see a real situation in which Negan escapes with an act more direct than Father Gabriel being a dumbass but whatevs. (No, I don’t care if the comics did this. In comics, Maggie came after Negan after he escaped and assuming that one of the Saviors wouldn’t take the opportunity to bust him out or someone from one of the three communities he terrorized wouldn’t come to kill him is a kind of interesting dynamic - protecting everyone from Negan but also protecting Negan from everyone else. Just...more interesting.)

Negan walking around with a shovel in a house where he might meet Judith or Michonne makes me itchy. Unless he’s planting sunflowers, that shovel can stay the fuck away from my Grimes girls.

Still think you should’ve just shot him, Jude.

Okay, Negan’s speech about how Alexandria is a wonderland is fairly easy to follow. But part of what Rick was trying to teach everyone was that you need other communities, the saviors could be saved, ect. It’s definitely not like the comics in that Negan learns the lesson about civilization being “protecting the weak among us” but my biggest problem is that it’s all kind of moot in that TV!Rick was wrong? Like, the communities have nothing to do with each other, particularly Alexandria? And the Saviors are dead or gone? This is the problem when you try to shove too much into a ton of character exits and time jumps AND you try to follow comic storylines without applying the message/main character arc from it. You might think I’m over-exaggerating but it’s half the reason Negan contrasts with the Whisperers and ends up killing Alpha. He’s showing loyalty to Rick, yeah, but he also identifies the reason he is different from the Whisperers. They give no mercy to weakness and that’s what makes them animals - that’s the lesson Rick Grimes was trying to teach Negan by saving him.  

(I’m just saying, Negan’s redemption arc is gonna be damn hard without Rick and Judith  - who has no connection with who Negan was and is still not developed - is not a character that can show that narrative.)

I know that Eugene talking in riddles is a quirk but can someone tell the writers that some quirks are not necessary in every damn scene and are obnoxious and mood-breaking? Just let Eugene be silent and terrified please?

I should also note that I see no head wound on Paul and I am completely and utterly okay with that.

So, I have serious issues with the “Jesus chose to be out there”/ “It was bound to happen” lines. Like yes but also no? Paul might have been reckless in the past by going out but that had little to no bearing on why he was out now? He was rescuing Eugene. You were out there for the same reason, Aaron. He didn’t die on a picnic in the woods. An enemy snuck up on him. Period. And the alternative was either you or Daryl or someone else from your group dies because they get surprised by them. Or you leave Eugene to fend for himself in the barn. Which I’m all for if it meant Jesus would be around but. you know. I’m all for a grieving person thinking this way - a lesson learned in fear - but that better be resolved, if only for Aaron’s sake. 

Ugh, I hate that no one’s crying over Paul but Tara putting her hand on Jesus makes me really fucking weepy. It’s almost like they could have developed this relationship to a point where it fucking mattered... -_-

10/10, Tammy is getting too much screentime and going to end up on a pike. Caling it now.

Can I ask what happened to the walkie-talkies? They were solar, right? There weren’t a limited number of them in the world, right? Why is this not still a thing? Did I miss something? That would make this Luke/Alden situation moot.

You know, if they wanted to give someone a romance with Rosita, I wouldn’t have complained if it was Tara. I never hardcore shipped it but it would’ve made more sense and this pregnancy thing wouldn’t be an issue. Or, if it was, I’d care more. lmao.

This writing is so stupidly on the nose. Gee, could Henry’s questions also be what’s going on inside Daryl’s head? ~~~The world may never know!!!!!!!~~~  

Weird side note: I love The Dream Team/Jaaryl and all but I feel like the show kind of dismisses the fact that Aaron is (presumably?) a single dad? Like, I love seeing him out there and I’m all for the end of cooping up my precious gays but whats happens to Gracie if he dies? She has no other parental figure.  He is the only person she has and I feel like “making it back to Gracie” is a fear no one considers, not even Aaron? Like, leaving an orphan in this world would be fucking awful, especially since her OG parents were already murdered. Just...this is why this cast of thousands doesn’t fucking work when you don’t explore the communities rather than just a couple characters.

Listen, I give Michonne her due but I firmly believe that Tara could run this place on her own. The show took all that time saying that Paul was a shitty leader that left all the time, the least you could do is point out that Tara has been handling it like a single leader this entire time. Tara handles her shit, man. TARA FOR HILLTOP 2019.

I choose to believe that Daryl going hard on Lydia is redirection of his grief and no one can stop me. Daryl Dixon repressing his feelings is pretty much a life motto for him and I both love him for it and want to hog tie him and drop him into therapy.

I’m deeply not into the Whisperers so far and am kind of glad to be out from TWD’s viewership (hopefully for good) but this reminds me of the odd hope I had watching Fear The Walking Dead. Once upon a blue moon, I’d hoped that FTWD was prequel-ing the Whisperers in TWD. Like, Madison and Alicia would end up being Alpha and “Lydia” and we’d get to really get a feel for the characters in TWD. Lame idea, I guess, but that’s what I wanted to happen. Not that FTWD has been a waste of a show that barely connects with TWD or anything. IDK, I just wanted to share that because this Whisperer storyline is going to be the worst and I honestly hope it all burns.

So, yeah, just a few notes for those who are bored enough to read them.