#but i guess if you want it to also reference the whole reedus being on twd then hahahhahaha

[krissmnasi]

Asleep between the living corpse and the walking dead

[semi-imaginary-place]

more random death stranding thoughts

finally back to death stranding. the whole BB thing is real disturbing also where's everyone getting their food from??? if its grown below ground that a lot of energy needed.

also been analyzing the map and while some seem like actual cities dc and la. theres also one in yellowstone???? theres denver and then theres some mountain in volorado ? and the middle of nowhere in south dakota wat

hey... death stranding... why is oxytocin an essential

Yeah was thinking about oxytocin being labeled an essential... how many people live in some of the places sam visits. They're called cities but what does "city" mean in the post apocalypse? Some of the points really do seem like one person or a small family. Doesn't help that i mistook oxytocin as oxycontin for the first couple hours. It made sense in my head since delivering painkillers (abit highly addictive narcotics) to a terminally ill patient makes some sense. But yeah oxytocin is involved with social bonding and regulating that whole thing in yer brain. The fact that everyone is on it to functiom is kinda yikes though 

i have... questions 

ok this might just be me but im getting the impression that death strandings art director really wanted the game to be set in iceland instead of america. the music... the lanscapes...

why doesn't everyone in death stranding dress like bloodborne characters. shares the same purpose: stop direct contact with skin 

does snow count as timefall?? 

the one thing ive learned from death stranding is that you should never get pregnant or know anyone who is pregnant. bad things happen to pregnant people in this world

ok... so its alleles that are selected for not genes... and that not what an evodevo biologist does. evodevo is reference to how evolutionary patterns are often mirrored in developmental ones. like if you look at the fetus of any mammal early enough they all look the same. and if you go back further in developmental time all mammal fetuses will also resemble bird and croc fetuses, back to the last common ancestor. and if you go back even further in a fetuses development, all vertebrates are indistinguishable to the untrained eye. so yeah at some point you looked the same as a zebra fish (which is part of why they are used often, also easy to care for and fast generation time). oh and humans grow tails and then loose them. this of course is also mirrored in an organisms gene expression patterns. if you map out gene expression over time and compare that across species, it moves with he evolution of genes in that lineage. take for example hox genes are how they control body planning 

you get a bro bonding moment with higgs of all people... 

ahhhh the classic this doesn't make sense at the end part. Ok so why did fragile have to transport 3 people back east give she says next that its too dangerous to warp sam there. I mean thematically its so you have to retread your entire journey and end where you started, but wow does this feel forced. also did die hardman cliff and amelie just chill for like 3 days on the beach (or however long that is in beach time since it seems to move faster???) 

Wish you got the option to kick higgs while he's down. Bring a gun to a fistfight (and still lose) 

Amelie has a bunch of names too! Amelie, Samantha America Strand, Amerigo. at the beginning I was like "what idiot names both their children Sam, oh right the president of the united cities of america, that's who"

oh. huh. i thought it was weird that Amelie never aged... 

its after an extinction event not before. post extinctions you tend to see massive adaptive radiations to fill in empty niches. but that happens in response to an extinction event. not before one. Also its just damned hard kill bacteria and archea like just really really hard to get rid of absolutely 100% of them. a lot of speciation events yeah. but its after 

what is happening

oh no a kojima game has confused me uwu this has never ever happened before

a good scene

ok so a pediatrician and other health workers should always be on site for a preemie. if BB's are stalled at 28 weeks then that's about 7 month old, Lou's admittedly a little weird but the devs didn't change Lou's model. You should absolutely not take any baby out in the rain without insulation and protection. we you are that small its hard to regulated body temperature. Also babies cant move their heads until a could weeks and they certainly don't have the strength to push themselves up like lou did until much later 

I guess that concludes hideo kojima’s norman reedus mpreg piss simulator....

In all seriousness I really like this. Its thematically cohesive which is a big personal preference of mine. The game did trick me into thinking there were branching endings. Linear games are underrated and Death Stranding definitely stuck its landing.

Also, the whole twist that Amelie isn’t Bridget Strand’s daughter because she had uterine cancer is bullshit, have you never heard of adoption???

[waynedunlaptheorgandonor]

alpha/beta are carol/daryl foils: an analysis no one asked for; twd s10 spoilers, obviously

hoo boy. okay, so i’ve been intending to write this for days, but i had to let it marinate, and also i haven’t been sleeping and couldn’t concentrate long enough to write it down, but whatever, i digress. “we are the end of the world” was something, wasn’t it?? it is so weird to have a plotline in twd that’s like...good? and SO refreshing to have a villain who isn’t a macho, rapey, white dude. i personally believe that all showrunners should be women from now on. oh, i’m digressing again, my apologies.

here’s the actual content, under the cut bc it’s a fucking novel:

so, from alpha’s very first episode, when i saw her shaving her head, i literally thought, “oh, so she’s carol’s foil and they’re going to have an inevitable showdown, huh?” guess who was right? this bitch. but what i didn’t catch right away was how beta is also daryl’s foil, and how the main focus of this season is alpha/beta vs carol/daryl.

let’s take it apart individually first, yeah?

carol vs. alpha:

like i said, the scene that made me instantly aware of what they were setting up was when alpha shaved her head. carol’s hair was a big thing in season 9, and the fact that we had just had henry talking about carol growing her hair out long, juxtaposed with alpha shaving hers off, is what set the alarm bells off for me. i have said over and over that i don’t believe kang does anything unintentionally, and girl loves her symbolism, so those two opposing scenes was a taste of what she was setting up.

carol and alpha are both near-indestructible forces who also happen to be mother’s suffering the loss of their children at the hand of the other. (carol isn’t directly responsible for lydia, but she’s included with “the others” that took lydia from alpha, so i think alpha still sees her as part of it.)

carol and alpha both have transformed themselves to fit within the confines of the world they currently live in, while recognizing that their children weren’t meant for it, even within their own grief. let us refer to figures a and b (lol) below.

figure a:

here in “the grove” we have creepy girl who i hate and am terrified of asking carol if sophia died because she was weak, and carol straight up is like, “yes.” she doesn’t even sugarcoat it. she accepted that her daughter wasn’t going to survive from the jump, because “there wasn’t a mean bone in her body.”

figure b:

here we see alpha losing her goddamn shit, because she’s having a come-to-jesus moment with beta about losing lydia, because she can’t have lydia and be the alpha at the same time, because lydia “is not like” her. 

conclusion: carol and alpha both mourn for their daughters, but have accepted that to be the people they need to be in the apocalypse, their children needed to die (or in lydia’s case, be dead metaphorically). in short, carol and alpha are two sides of the same coin. they’ve both found ways to survive, except one is for the good guys, and the other is for the bad guys, and now they’re head-to-head, and it is d e l i c i o u s.

moving on.

daryl vs beta:

idk why the parallels didn’t occur to me when they had daryl fighting beta. i blame henry, he was distracting me by being a delightful idiot (rip my dumb bitch), but that seed was planted in season 9, too. go kang for continuity. who knew twd could do that? anyway.

the big thing that compares daryl and beta is who they were before they found carol and alpha respectively. we obviously don’t know a whole lot of details about beta’s life, but we have enough to extrapolate and compare, and extrapolate and compare we shall.

alright, so we got our favorite lovable, filthy redneck, who grew up abused and isolated, and then here comes the apocalypse, and the only person he has left is his brother, and that’s what defines him until he loses him, both when rick chained him to a roof, and then again, after a brief relapse, when merle sacrificed himself. 

next we have beta, who again, our info is limited, but he does not become “beta” until after whoever that walker alpha puts down is gone. judging by the size, approximate age, and the closeness beta had to him, i’m betting on, you guessed it, his brother. 

observe:

figure a:

figure b:

these are both turning points for these men, where they Fully Become the dudes that we know. daryl couldn’t be the daryl we know and love until merle was gone for good, and whatever his actual name is couldn’t become beta until smiley face shirt guy was smooshed. 

(side note: how fucking rank does that t-shirt have to be by now? at least the mask dries out, but do you think that t-shirt is just like, melded into beta’s skin at this point? gross.)

so time for the fun part.

alpha/beta and caryl in season 10:

season 10 finds both duos in similar circumstances, by which i mean, alpha and carol are losing their minds, and beta and daryl are like, “uhhhh, you ok?” the men are these women’s confidants, their person, the one they trust and love above all others. carol saved daryl and brought him into a community, and alpha did the same thing with beta. you want more visual aides? well, sure thing, scout!

figure a:

we’re carylers, we already know carol’s the reason daryl has the confidence and self-esteem to become part of the group, but juxtapose this with the following pic, which i will label

figure b (again):

and you will see that alpha sees something in beta that no one else does. she sees this lonely, talented man, who’s adrift and in solitude, and she essentially calls dibs. sound familiar? inorite?

so daryl and beta are now loyal to a fault to their women, and this season already has them being wary of how they’re acting. yes, i have more pictures. i like taking screenshots, okay?

figure a:

one of the first scenes we get with caryl is daryl asking carol if she’s still thinking about alpha, and if she is Dwelling, which is interesting, because...

figure b:

...that’s exactly the same thing we get with alpha and beta. the first scene in “we are the end of the world” with the two of them in present day is him questioning her motives, and then later on he’s like, “fuck, are you Dwelling?” 

and both women immediately are like:

and neither dude knows wtf to do about this, because they’re used to the women being the strong ones. carol’s whole, “you’ve got to feel it, but not me, i’m good repressing, conceal don’t feel” thing, mixed with alpha’s, “we’re living like the dead and the dead don’t feel emotions so obviously I Am Fine” motto is what their boys are used to, but suddenly carol is hallucinating dead children, and alpha is making shrines, and our poor dudes are like, “plz stop???” esp bc they know these women are FUCKING TERRIFYING, and should never be left to their own devices if they’re being crazy crackers.

ergo, both men are clinging to the hope that they can bring the women back from the brink. my last visual aides, yes i know, how sad:

figure a:

figure b:

both scenes have these dudes reaching out to their women and essentially expressing, in their own way, “i’m worried about you, can you plz stay within eyesight at all times, ilu,” bc neither daryl nor beta is equipped to have a nice long sit down conversation about feelings, and obviously carol and alpha wouldn’t bother to entertain it in the first place, so like  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. they tried. 

will it work? unlikely! because after that showdown at the end of both eps 1 and 2, these bitches ain’t about to stop for nothing. they just straight up made enemies for life, and they’re going straight harry potter with this shit, neither can live while the other survives, someone has to die, and while beta and daryl are not super on board with this whole “being bonkers and bent on revenge” thing, you better bet your ass that they’re going to make sure their woman is the winner, which means they automatically are paired up against one another as well.

so in a nutshell: we could have just stuck goatees on mmb and norman reedus, cast them as alpha and beta, and called them mirror!verse caryl (star trek reference, yay/nay?), because they’re mother fucking foils setting up for the mother fucking fight of the century, and oh my god, can you feel it in your bones how exciting it is that it’s not going to be a rick + negan dick measuring contest again? i am So Hype.

and ofc, as a hardcore caryl shipper, i obviously have to throw in that alpha and beta are totally in love (which is esp fun, bc whisperers aren’t supposed to feel love, uh oh, vulcan violation, yes i made another star trek reference, bite me), and if they are paralleling caryl, well...extrapolate from the evidence.

i love kang, you guys. i love how she tells a story. i love that she knows how to tell a story. this show is good again, and idk how she did it, but damnit, she did.

thus endeth my pointless critical analysis. forgive me. i was an english major and have absolutely no other use for my degree.

i’m ashamed too. 

that’s all. tomorrow is the early release of the caryl episode, i mean the new episode. looking forward to dying a valiant death with the lot of you. until then, friends.

deuces,

-diz

addendum: i was editing this, and was trying to think if there’s a parallel to the bracelet scene, and the only thing i could think of that alpha gives beta is his mask. she encourages him to take the face of his brother(?), and that keeps him grounded, which is interesting, bc my prediction for the bracelet is that it’s going to end up being a grounding device for carol when she’s dissociating. i don’t have a solid conclusion drawn there, but i thought i’d mention it before posting, just to plant the seed. 

k, done 4 real, bye