#cue also the bonus comic about telling ghost stories about the caves

[unproduciblesmackdown]

So happy someone else defaulted to "oh wouldn't it be funny if Mordecai lived in the caves?" lmao it would explain how he had such easy access to the armory too

Bonus points if he sometimes hits a toe on a rock/has to hunt some spider or rat and the peeps at Lackadaisy just think it's a ghost

lol yeah once i was like "hm did mordecai have enough familiarity with the cave network there to know of some Secret Entrance since he got to the armory," but earlier viktor just notices the garage entrance trapdoor was unlocked, and we've seen mordecai keep lockpicking since....but hey it doesn't mean he Can't know of any secret entrances, and have also literally cleaned out somewhere else like "actually the secrecy of living in a cave is worth the effort / inconvenience" lmao

we sure can also appreciate a Gothic Genre Analysis applied to things out here where we have a murder and a mystery (which isn't a whodunit so much as a key to all these other Secrets) which is probably this case of the [how have these instances & manifestations of violence been incited, sustained, compounded, inherited, enforced, etc....] theme manifesting in this Central Unknown with atlas lol like, someone who was at the heart of all that & Something Happened in such a way that it seemingly came back to him like "me reaping: what the fuck. this fucking sucks" but who yet knows....bunch of mysteries, conflicts, murky painful pasts and similarly threatening futures, figurative ghosts, the haunting through histories, legacies, the manifestations of established/enmeshed power that's consuming things in hidden ways &/or seemingly suddenly erupting into view when lashing out from some threat. it's so funny but also genuinely so interesting that mordecai is the one tasked with doing some [quietly kill people] but he's also like ummm. sweating. what's going on

also there's Mood & Style which is important for anything but it also helps when you pick anything up like "is this gothic?"

it's also funny, which isn't counterproductive to any genre or style or effect if you're doing anything right lol. and it's both Very Gothic and Very Funny of anyone to be living in a cave where there's already secrets, darkness, bones, more murders, and some compulsive dusting which is funny and is also "raise your hand if you're Not characterized by violences in your past that may have been both immediate and interpersonal or too vast and immense to have been meaningfully understood as being a manifestation of some individuals' actions (e.g. crowded tenement immigrant life, for one)"....and a real classic if someone thinks there's a haunting, but then it's just some guy, except maybe there was also a haunting and maybe Some Guy's haunting is also like, damn, it's Like if there was a ghost who was murdered, where this person's life could be less ghostly if they weren't figuratively killed by certain forces....this is Just like phantom of the auditorium, of goosebumps the book series, or goosebumps the musical based on the book........in turn based on the musical, based on the book, at the time disappointing some readers who were like "what do you mean it was just some guy"....oh hey, lon chaney phantom of the opera was a '25 release. i've been staying completely on track the entire time

anyways running with it yeah i think mordecai would be sufficiently Particularly Ill-Suited for enduring his cave living that it would be like, a quick scooby doo investigation's worth of solving that mystery lol. like you don't even solve it, he just gets sick of it on his own & emerges from the darkness & proceeds to Just Walk Out, He Can Leave. > if (itSucks) {hit (dabricks!!)}

on the other hand, it wouldn't be very Thematic of him, when this is all about people in an "it sucks" situation & why they (a) are in it & (b) as yet can't, won't, &/or simply haven't just walk/ed out, Real Winners Quit style

BUT....it would be funny. and mordecai's quite the flexible & active character out here, being at lackadaisy after atlas's death(tm) sucked so he just walked out (& shot viktor)....work....social thing....cops if your quick....friend ships....and now marigold goings on are also a problem so he's doing his own mystery on mystery on mystery investigation....if it weren't for how it would bother him too much, truly, he could comically get up to some secret cave dwelling and zanily make people think there's a cave ghost