#episode 48 renovations

[caligasolus]

Welcome to Night Vale episode 48: Renovations

Still pissed at strexcorp. let the picnic end!

I think Josie/ mayor might be taking things over?

The kittens D: don't hurt them

Let the Eldritch horrors beat Kevin and Lauren. Someone is here?

He's holding a CATTTTT!!!!! OMG Cecil! I MISSED YOU!

Weather is very good

God I missed his voice... even though it was 1.5 episodes.

DANA?? appeared? and oak door??

DANA SAVED CECIL???? I love her! An army? Angels named Erika?

I missed this voice so much T-T

Oh Moriene helped figured this out, and John peters (you know the farmer) figured it out too!

Josie and angels helped!

My beloved cat is back!

Rip daniel. he will not be missed

WAIT CARLOS IS MISSING??? D:

"We will not be controlled by a smiling god, we are in our own way free." You tell em cecil

[pjshermann]

Jude's Timeline

Since there are no dates or determinable time period (beyond the fact that it's set in the 21st century) in A Little Life, I love trying to figure out the timelines of the characters themselves. So here's Jude.

Newborn

Born in South Dakota

Abandoned as a newborn and taken in by the monastery

5 years old

Received a fossil from Brother Luke for his birthday

7 years old

Had his hand burnt by Father Gabriel

Sexual abuse by the Brothers began

8 years old

Given a set of wooden logs for his birthday

Abducted by Brother Luke and forced into prostitution

11 years old

Began cutting himself

12 years old

Rescued from Brother Luke

Placed in a boys group home in Montana

13 years old

Meets the Learys

Beaten by the counselors, causing life-long scarring on his back

14 years old

Runs away from the group home in Montana

Abducted by Dr. Traylor and held captive for four months

15 years old

Run over by Dr. Traylor, causing his life-long disability

Rescued from Dr. Traylor

Meets Ana

Begins living with the Douglasses

16 years old

Ana passes away

Briefly lives in an emergency shelter

Has a summer job at a bakery

Leaves Philadelphia, and starts his undergraduate study at an unnamed college in Boston

17 years old

Met Andy Contractor

Gifted a model house by Malcolm

18 years old

Began working as a classics professor's amanuensis

Dr. Traylor dies in prison

20 years old

Graduated from his undergraduate study and goes to France for the first time

Began Law School at (presumably) Harvard

Began his Pure Math Master's degree from MIT

Met Harold Stein and Julia Altman

21 years old

Stayed at Harold and Julia's house for the first time and imagined they were his parents

Had an unspecified internship during the summer

Invited to Harold and Julia's summer house, Truro, for the first time

22 years old

Learned to drive (from Harold)

23 years old

Graduated Law School

Graduated Masters at MIT

Began his clerkship in Washington, living in the living room of an unnamed legislative assistant

24 years old

Given keys to the Cambridge house by Julia

25 years old

Moved to New York, living at Malcolm's parents' house

Began working at the U.S Attorney as an assistant prosecutor

Moved out of Malcom's parents' house to Lispenard St

26 years old

Has his first episode in front of Harold, who sings to him

Willem finds out about his cutting

Jumps off a roof with his friends at Lispenard St

27 years old

Broke the mug that Jacob made

Attended Andy's wedding

29 years old

Began tutoring Felix

30 years old

Adopted by Harold and Julia <3

31 years old

First contacted by Lucien after working on case for Thackery Smith

Finalized the contract for a job at Rosen Pritchard, after the elevator broke once more at Lispenard

Contacted by Rob Wilson (Some unknown from the home)

32 years old

Bought his Green Street apartment

35 years old

Became a partner at Rosen Pritchard (the youngest one in the firm's history)

36 years old

Picked out a suit for Malcolm for his wedding that would happen that year

Began the renovations for Greene Street

37 years old

Broke off his friendship with JB after the latter mocks his disability

38 years old

Scolded by Harold out at dinner for working at Rosen Pritchard

40 years old

His former Master's advisor, Dr. Kashen, passes away

Attended his former classmates, Lionel and Sinclair's, wedding

Began dating Caleb Porter

Broke up with Caleb Porter

41 years old

Attempts suicide and is briefly institutionalized

Goes to Morroco

43 years old

Caleb port a potty dies <3

Began dating Willem

45 years old

Has his big fight with Willem and tells him about his childhood

46 years old

Buys a flat in London on Harley Street

The last time he would truly walk on his own. No aides, no prosthetics. This is during a trip to Bhutan

47 years old

Starts getting lots of wounds on his legs and bone infections

48 years old

Gets his legs amputated

49 years old

Starts walking again

50 years old

Set up scholarships for Julia and Harold at their respective universities

Loses both Willem and Malcolm (and Sophie) to a drunk driving accident

51 years old

His loved ones hold an intervention for him

52 years old

Went to Rome

Taught Harold how to cook

Asked to be the chairman of Rosen Pritchard

53 years old

Took his own life :(

If there's anything here you think should be added let me know. And of course this isn't every single thing that happened to Jude, just some main events or events that helped pinpoint the timeline. So if there's a scene/event/anything that you'd like to know the timeline of, let me know (inbox)

[elletromil]

He is holding a cat.

- Episode 48 "Renovations"

[thegalaxypanda1996]

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE YEAR 2 REVIEW

This is a little out of date I actually finished year two a while ago and I'm almost done with year 3 there have just been dips in my listening where I'm just not really in the mood to listen to any podcast so there could be days or even weeks in between me listening to one episode and the next Plus I binged like two other podcasts that were really short intermixed with episodes of night vale so it's been a mishmash of audio during my work days

Anyway I really enjoyed year two things are really picking up between relationships forming and the actual background plots gaining steam and culminating in such big narrative arcs it's really interesting seeing all of these loose thread slowly being weaved into a very complicated tapestry that is still being made even to this day because I have heard of even now things that were said or done in these first couple Year's are still being picked up even in current episodes so I'm really excited just to see this keep going All in all I really love this crazy little town and I hope one day I'll actually catch up lol

Favorite Episodes

27 First Date 😍

30 Dana

33 Cassette

36 Missing

42 Numbers 😢

46 Parade Day

47 Company Picnic

48 Renovations

49 Old Oak Doors

Live Show Condos

Live Show The Debate

[lullabyes22-blog]

Forward, but Never Forget/XOXO - Ch: 5 - Payment

Summary: Zaun is free—and must grow into its unfamiliar new dimensions. So must Silco and Jinx. A what-if that diverges midway through the events of episode 8. Found family and fluff, politics and power, smut and slice-of-life, villainy and vengeance.

AO3 - Forward, But Never Forget/XOXO

FFnet - Forward, But Never Forget (XOXO)

Playlist on Youtube

Chapters: 1| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48

CH 5: Silco and Jinx. A slow-motion reckoning.

TW: Codependency, PTSD and unhealthy parent/child dynamics

I see the world through eyes covered in ink and bleach Cross out the ones who heard my cries and watched me weep.

~ "Cradles" – Sub Urban

By midnight, Silco rises homeward in the elevator.

His suite is in the same building as his new headquarters. The tower was once a lodging-house for middle-class families. Its construction began with a fanfare of Piltovan philanthropy fifteen years ago. Midway, it stopped due to stymied funds. Typical. Topside was happy to demolish a faulty factory or a teeming tenement. But a replacement was seldom put up in its place.

Amputation was cheaper than cure.

It was an old song and dance. The Undercity's anatomy would flare up with infection. Septic sewage; fire hazards; overcrowding. The Council would shrug—Screw it. The poors will tough it out. Then crisis erupted. Cholera, conflagration, collapse. When the story hit Piltover's press, finger pointing commenced. Lazy muckrakers. Do they enjoy living in squalor? The pedigrees, exempted from such vulgarities as suffering, would toss loose change with a snobby noblesse oblige. At Bridgeside, they would speechify for the charitable optics. A memorial would be erected: bearing the name of its patron, never the victims.

Then Piltover would wash its hands of the mess, and move on.

Silco's headquarters are different. Everything has been renovated on his own dime. The interior is burnished to a cold sheen: floor, walls, hallways. In the absence of the electrical grid, they'd been running on generators. He'd ordered the unoccupied floors powered off—except for the basement with Singed's lab, the offices on the twentieth floor, and the rooftop atrium.

His and Jinx's suite.

Silco crosses a claustrophobically clean corridor. At the door, he lets himself in with his key. No blackguards here. The entire floor is already patrolled by them. Their presence at the threshold of his most private space strikes Silco as… unnatural. Something civically stuffy that he doesn't fully adhere to.

Here, he's not the First Chancellor of Zaun.

He's a fucking exhausted father.

The suite was dubbed the Bridgewater View by the architect. Its décor doesn't dwell in the neutral zone of creams and beiges common to Topside—but in shades of azure blue and seafoam green. The rooms are large and decently furnished: two bedrooms with their own palatial bathrooms, one guest room, a parlor, and a kitchen overlooking a wide balcony with a sunken-in pool. Everything is flooded with the nightscape ambience that pours in through the triangular atrium. It lends the suite a disorienting underwater glow.

Silco wonders if this is how sharks feel inside aquariums. A gut-level sense of exposure.

Doubtful.

Sharks are predators, not prey.

Dropping his coat on a chair by the foyer, Silco says, "Jinx?"

One word. Yet it passes from his throat on a bolus of pain. What follows is worse.

Silence.

Still, he says it: the reflex of a routine greeting when he and Jinx lived together above the Drop. Back then, Silco could predict the exact moment he'd get cannonballed by a cheerful blur—five-foot-two with hair of blue. She'd been at that age when he'd gently catch her shoulders and murmur that she was getting a little too old to fling herself at him this way. Seventeen and newly out of girlhood. Bright as a star, with a mind to match.

Silco wishes she'd fly at him like before. Not with a hug, but a hand-grenade.

Everything in the suite is tidy, with the cold efficiency of place cleaned by invisible staff. A surfeit of chemical scent lingers in the air. Letting his keys fall with a clatter in their bowl, Silco goes to the window. He jerks the latch and wrenches the shutter open, so the smoky night air shoots up his nostrils.

Gods, the whole blasted place smells like it's been doused with bleach. So different from the olio of odors he was accustomed to at the Last Drop: spilled alcohol, burning coal and factory smoke.

Breathing deep, Silco stares out into the cityscape. With the Old Hungry in ruins, his clock is the phosphorescent foulness of the sky. But he keeps time perfectly by the moon's orbit as it crests over the rooftops. The souls awake at this hour are no different. Streetwalkers and scavengers and sentinels. The eyes and ears of his network. In the fog-laced street below, they are unseen. The only sound is the humid susurrus in the air. There might as well be ghosts waltzing across the cobblestones.

Silco's ear buzzes. He turns to stare at a green-sheened insect—a dragonfly?—fluttering off the window-sill. It lets off a sweet stinging hum. Silco bats at it. It snaps its wings and flickers into the darkness.

Curious, Silco stares after it. At the rooftop opposite, a movement catches his eye. A boy—the same age as Jinx—smoking a cigarette. One of his look-outs. He waves at Silco. Not a greeting, but the coded signage used by all of his network.

All clear.

Silco signs back. Then he tugs the cord on the blinds, and shuts everything out.

At the foyer mirror, he consults his reflection. His skin is pale as a marauding vampire's, the left eye a sickly reddish hue. Tonight, it feels hot as a blowtorch. Silco thumbs the scarred ridge around his eye socket. A flake is peeling at the corner; when he plucks it off, pinpricks of red bloom.

Blood.

Blood on Jinx's body at the Bridge, gluing her hair to her skull and darkly limning her teeth. Next he sees Jinx's pink-shimmering specter in the same spot, Fishbones slung over her small shoulders and her braids helixing blue through the burning night. He sees Piltover aflame, its stone monuments glowing and its towers lighting up like candles, while the bodies of Enforcers thrashed into effigies at her feet.

(A child to do a man's job.)

Topside had treated Zaun's rebuff to their treaty as a tantrum. By the month's end, they'd reevaluated. Silco's chem-soldiers had struck in the dead of the night, while Piltovans slept peacefully in their beds. Nobody saw the war coming. Eyewitnesses described the contrails of Jinx's missiles like firebolts spiraling out of nothingness.

Piltover had a bigger army. In a war of attrition, they'd flatten Zaun.

But Zaun had better aim. In a game of strategy, they'd turned the tables.

First, they'd burned down the battlements that bordered Piltover's gates. The sky around the city hung with a haze of flying embers. Next they'd torched down the fire stations and the police outposts. Half the law enforcement thrown into disarray while Piltover's finest still dozed in their cups. The highways followed. Topside couldn't deploy armored vehicles if their destinations were unreachable. A thousand roadblocks popped up—not jurisdictional but literal, the tarmac folded-up by grenade blasts like pleats of a broken accordion.

Enforcers were deployed along the length of the Pilt, their headquarters bivouacked at the riverhead. But what good are Enforcers in the Fissures without their masks? At midnight, their supplies were blown sky high. The brave men and women leapt into the Pilt to escape the blaze. Some choked on the quagmire of toxic runoff. Others couldn't breathe in the ambient gases. They'd suffocated to death.

For decades, Topside had treated the Undercity as its pisspot. They'd fancied themselves safe in their tower; above the rest.

For their hammerlock on hubris, they'd paid the price.

Silco loosens his cravat, tugging free the silk knotted at his neck. His reflection in the mirror shows the blotched ring of fingerprints. Not Vander's; they are too small. Too fresh. Yet the remembered agony is nothing like drowning. The opposite. It is the irradiated ache of being dragged back to life.

His own price.

Paid in secrecy, but paid all the same.

(Are you prepared to lose her?)

Rage explodes around the edges of Silco's control. A flashback from last night shreds the fabric of the present. Jinx rocketing down on top of him, her blue hair cascading everywhere, the sharpness of her cheekbones glistening with pink-tinged tears. Hands so small, yet seizing his throat with a mindless strength.

"Fuck!"

Silco kicks the table at the foyer with his boot. It topples violently, the cultivair lilies in their antique vase crashing in a glittering spilth. He stomps at the wood and glass and disintegrated blooms. Yet the crunch under his heel is the opposite of satisfying. He wants something harder.

Skulls and bones. Blood.

Vi.

Gritting his teeth, Silco forces himself to stop. His body vibrates like a deepsea quake. Since the war, he finds himself in this state without provocation: the familiar root of darkness in his chest blossoming out into every part of him, like ink bursting into water. It scalds and it freezes and it shows no signs of diminishing—a primal violence at once unnerving and unnervingly natural.

Silco grinds his teeth until it subsides. Calm. He must be calm. This isn't something he wants near Jinx.

She is the more fragile one. The Shimmer may have magnified her physical strength. But it has also deliquesced her mind. Her inner monster is now entirely unmoored from control, whereas Silco's own revels in the dark tortures of its delineations. It leaves his instincts always at war—the sharp edges saying, Cut down the threat—while the secret softness begs, Not my child, never my child.

Last night, the softness won.

Tonight?

Silco takes a composing breath. Then he smooths his hair back, and goes straight to Jinx's room.

The door is shut. He doesn't knock; there is little need. He turns the knob with a muted click and goes inside. The chamber is closed-curtained and impeccable. In the Drop, Jinx's room was always a mess. But it was like a fantastical fever dream; beneath the chaos lurked the purest imprints of her psyche. Unlike other teenagers whose walls were covered in posters, Jinx decorated hers in riotous graffiti—every square inch branded with tiny, incomprehensible letters in multicolored ink that garbled into geometric schematics and then shattered into violently-hued caricatures. All the things only Jinx's bespelled eyes could see.

There was always a spark of sorcery in her. It reminded Silco of the legendary patronesses like Janna. His own little witchling. His wonder.

Who else could conjure such magic with the Hex gem?

Here, Jinx's room is an antiseptic tomb. None of her gadgetry or adornments are in sight. No toolboxes, no stuffed toys, no drawings. Her pastimes are a thing of the past. Anything that might hamper Singed's ministrations or hinder Silco's aftercare has been removed. The atmosphere runs thick with sickness—the narcotics that Singed nightly injects into Jinx's arm, the beef tea Silco daily spoons past her cracked lips—and with the fog of Jinx's exhaled breaths.

Suffocating on her own loneliness.

Silco switches on the lamp. In its muted glow, Jinx lays sprawled across her bed as if washed ashore. A sheen of sweat glitters on her skin. She is always sweating lately: drugs, dry heaves, day terrors. Still lovely. She'll always be that for Silco. When he'd first met her, she'd been a gangle of childish imperfections—all knees and elbows and fingers and thumbs. Yet the fierce lunacy in her eyes was the loveliest thing he'd ever seen.

Her face was his own face; her sufferings echoed his to the last syllable.

Silco takes a chair, deposits it near the bed, and sinks onto the seat. Jinx sleeps on, insensible to him as to everything else—the blackouts, the riots, the jubilations. She's kicked off the blanket. Her plain black chemise rides high along her thigh and low across her chest. Another girl's body, so purely young, eyed by a man as dissolute as himself—the outcome would be a lechery synonymous with cannibalism.

He'd eat her alive and spit out the bones.

Except this is Jinx.

All Silco sees is a little girl with gooseflesh rashing her arms and legs. His little girl. He reaches out and folds the blanket over her body, then smooths a clump of untied blue hair out from between her parted lips. She's been chewing on it lately—something she hasn't done since she was eleven years old.

Singed had advised buzzing it off to expedite her caretaking. Silco had glowered as if he'd proposed to mutilate her. Hadn't the butcher done enough damage?

(Haven't I?)

Silco swallows, and resists the gut-deep urge to gather Jinx close. Then he thinks—fuck it.

His arms slide under Jinx, encircling her against him, blankets and all. In sleep, she lets off a muted hum. Her scent, stale with drugs, sharpens all the subtle flavors of his own misery. She'd always had such a sweet aroma—dust and gun-oil and candied cherry overlaying a bloom of good health. He'd never allowed her more than a sip of whiskey or the barest drag of a cigarette. The chemicals bunged up the circulation, starving the body of oxygen. The Undercity already had so little to go around.

Let Silco drink like a fish and smoke like a chimney. Jinx deserved sweeter sustenance.

(Like being pumped full of Shimmer?)

Shimmer.

An unpredictable devil. Its effects on the brain are doubly so.

Singed had helpfully described it in mining terms that Silco could grok. External factors like flashfloods of stress versus the natural stability of a brain's slope. Shimmer heavily altered the mind's chemical landscape, yet the output was also massively reliant on physical factors: age, weight, health, past drug use. For instance, a high dosage pumped into a rough-living young man like Deckard, late teens and approximately 160 pounds, would result in a premature heart-attack within a week—if Vander hadn't pulverized him first. Silco, in his mid-forties at 157-pounds, medicinally microdosing since his early thirties, might survive that same dosage physically, but find his brain turning feral. Jinx, late teens, 110-pounds, no history of drugs and already on the cusp of death, ought to have keeled over on Singed's table.

She didn't.

Under the stress, her brain hadn't become tissuey, or torn itself apart. It had just …stalled, like an old motorcar in the scrapyard. Once in a while, if you twisted the key, it would sputter to life. But mostly it was like a junker that had to be hauled from spot to spot.

During the war against Piltover, she'd shot and spied and scavenged as Silco ordered: a dutiful death-machine. Afterward, she'd eat if Silco fed her, drink if Silco tipped a glass to her lips, use the bathroom if he guided her to the toilet. But other than that, she'd lay in bed with her legs curled up, her eyes staring at something Silco couldn't see.

If this was Jinx forever-after, Silco would've done the merciful thing.

Put a pistol to her temple. Then to his own.

Except without warning, Jinx could burst to life. Sometimes, the chemical fizz of Shimmer subsided. Old hatchdoors of memory swung open. She'd be the girl Silco remembered—not at her happiest, but her most hateful. A spitfire flinging rage into his face: the night he'd stabbed Vander and stolen her away, the night he'd upended the Undercity and remade it his own, the night he'd kept her in the dark about Vi's return to keep her under his thumb.

She'd pace the room, wrecking furniture and punching walls, her eyes exuding a ferocious hatred that she must've kept stymied for—how long?

Years.

There was no reasoning with her in those moments. She'd ignore his quiet reassurances, sobbing and raving. Last night's episode culminated in her lashing out at his fingertips on her arm. Silco had found himself, in the next blink, slammed to the ground with her tiny hands around his throat.

(Your fault ALL YOUR FAULT.)

Silco resists the urge to rub the bruises purpling his skin.

It is easy to forget that Jinx's ballerina figure now conceals a demon's strength. Yet her outbursts don't disturb him. They sadden him.

Silco isn't a man to default to physical violence. There are simpler psychological shortcuts to getting his way. Yet sharing the same roof as Jinx for six years, conflict was unavoidable. It seldom escalated to blows. With a boy, he'd have no qualms doling out a backhand; he'd gotten beltings from his own father, and worse from his mother.

Jinx was different.

We don't hit each other, he'd told her at the start, after she'd flown at him in a flailing temper because he'd refused to take her along on a stakeout. We don't do what they did.

They.

Vi and Vander. Two brutes fluent with fisticuffs and nothing else.

Jinx took the words to heart. With enemies, she was a hellcat. But as a daughter, she was pure devotion. Her spats with Silco were like a busted speedometer: running from hot exchanges to hugs in fifteen seconds flat. Well-aimed insults on tap. But never blows. After the argument reached its apex, she'd storm to her workshop to sulk, and Silco to his office to smoke. Later, they'd always make up over a shared plateful of eel pie.

No amount of eel pie can repair their relationship now.

The only mercy? Jinx's episodes never last long. One moment the rage pins her body to the spot. The next, she crumbles into a ball of tears, and remembers nothing. Just an aftertaste: a lingering throb in her knuckles and a pulsebeat's phantom under her palms.

Shimmer can salvage the body, or mutilate the mind. Jinx's own, Silco has been given to understand, is healing slowly. There may, according to Singed, be lasting damage, so she periodically veers between Jekyll and Hyde. Or else her system may acclimate to the drugs, her mind and body stabilizing. He may yet have her back: his perfect girl.

But it's difficult to predict.

(You can't leave me, Jinx.)

(I won't let you.)

The snarling pressure returns to his chest. Silco swallows it down. His sigh encompasses every iota of exhaustion from the past three months. Suffocating days of checking on Jinx every four bells, and sleepless nights of keeping vigil at her bedside.

In Jinx's childhood, it was different. He'd cared for her steadfastly whenever she'd caught a flu or a pox. But in the manner of a man who'd fallen out of touch with human tenderness: always a step removed. A cool word of comfort; never a head-pat. A spoonful of medicine; never a hug. Then somewhere along the line, his measured distance shrank. First the size of prison bars, then thin as crepe paper, then dissolving like sugar on the tongue.

Once, when Jinx was fifteen, she'd caught a hellish case of pneumonia. Silco had enlisted an orderly to tend to her. In the evening, he'd come home early to find Jinx dehydrated and half-delirious, and the idiot playing backgammon with the guard.

He'd had the guard shot on the spot. The orderly, he'd kicked down a flight of stairs.

Ten times.

Afterwards, deaf to Sevika's grumblings, Silco had camped on a chair by Jinx's bedside, among the litter of smeary tissues, and stayed there for two weeks. He'd tended to spills and tendered steam baths. Read her books and rubbed her shoulders. Plied her with obscure herbal remedies from his apothecary and viler medicinal philters from Singed.

Once Jinx was well again, she'd been cuddlesome as a kitten. Following him everywhere, rubbing her cheek against his arm at the least sign that it was tolerated. Staring down into her adoring face, Silco had felt a blistering ache in his chest. Never such a sensation for his old comrades. It even eclipsed the boyhood ache when he'd first stared up at Vander.

He should've understood, then, how much she meant to him.

(Are you prepared to lose her?)

It grates like a rusty knife between his ribs. This is his doing, isn't it? He'd put her in this bed. He was the reason she'd blown the Enforcers on the Bridge sky-high. For the Hex gem: his key to Piltover. The thing he'd desired with all the rage in his marrow, a rage he'd never wanted to lose, because that would mean losing the game. Trading his dreams for death, and Zaun's freedom in the bargain.

Because what was he otherwise? A scarred pariah with a bloody past.

And gods—the past had been hard. Things breaking. Family dying. Food disappearing. Synapses in his mind snapping and rewiring, over and over. Since boyhood, he'd always clutched at straws of control, and yet remained at the mercy of chaos. Always craved a moment's cessation—a sanctuary. Then he was told, You're a man now, and with came the death of such cravings, of growing calluses on his skin and his soul, of taking responsibility for himself and for others, even as Piltover relinquished responsibility over any of them.

The sea-levels of risk were always rising; he outswam them. The wolves of penury always snapped at his heels; he outraced them. The tongues of strangers twisted like snakes at the kill: he outsmarted them.

In all ways, he survived. Yet he'd never stopped carrying inside himself that craving.

Until Vander's betrayal cleaved him apart. Until the Pilt's baptism liquified the rest. The man who rose up out of the water was a different creature altogether—an incarnation of control.

Yet his core was chaos, so chaos crept from the corners of his every choice.

Jinx is chaos. Its purest embodiment—at his beck-and-call. The thing he's craved for as long as memory stretches, when he was fatherless and motherless and engulfed by the dark of the mines, their rough walls weeping the tears that he didn't dare shed. She is everything he'd worked angles and pulled strings for decades to achieve—a hundred disjointed elements that never cohered into the right shape.

Until the night he killed Vander—and a crying girl cannonballed into his arms.

Take me, her essence sang, Use me.

Love me.

So Silco did.

He'd taken her under his wing, and shaped her to his own deadly uses. Molded her and marked her with life-bitten lessons in strategy and warfare, with potent muscles and eye-popping tattoos, with a proficiency for mind-games and a prowess for massacres. Hers was a ferocity that lacked any conception of fear. A pure perfection that ate all the pain. Her pain, and his own.

In Jinx, Silco found his sanctuary.

And loved her.

A love he'd trapped within the same transactive dimensions of control. I care for you—now obey me. I need you—now kill for me. I love you—now build the weapon for me. To the last, he'd dangled love like a lure, when she'd every right to reach into his heart and pluck it out.

It already belonged to her. Like the entirety of his existence.

(Am I too late, Jinx?)

It was why she'd pulled the pin on her grenade, hadn't she? She must've decided, in her bones, that Silco's love was false-bottomed. It was why she'd chased after her cowardly sister. Despite Vi choosing a damn Piltie over her flesh and blood. Despite Silco not sharing a drop of blood with Jinx, and choosing her always.

Choosing—and squandering it.

Silco's head sinks heavily into his hands. His face spasms, but it's not an impulse to tears. His features contort into a rictus of hatred—the expression of a creature tricked out of its rightful taste of blood. Vi's blood, and her suffering at his hands. Payment for destroying his lovely child more thoroughly in a single night than Silco could in six years.

(I'll kill her.)

(Slowly, so she feels every second.)

The bloodlust sparks a mad craving for a cigarette. He withdraws the silver cigar case from his waistcoat. He doesn't light up; he clicks a switch on the side. A hidden compartment unrolls as if oiled. The twilit glow refracts off the blue sphere nestled inside, fractals shimmering off the walls.

The Hex gem.

Silco lifts it out between a thumb and forefinger. It has remained in his possession since the Bridge fell. He doesn't trust a soul with it. Not Sevika; not Singed. Turning it in his fingers, he is spellbound by the changing colors: pure blue liquefying into pinkness. As if the magic is of a piece with Jinx, sensing her proximity.

Just as Jinx senses the magic.

A charge fills the room like electricity before a thunderstorm. It stimulates Jinx; she stirs under the sheets. One moment insensate. The next awake. Her eyes flip open with the eerie prettiness of a doll's. Except the irises are no longer china blue, but pink as faded blood. Her whisper is a tiny rasp in the dark.

"…S-Silco."

The Hex gem is stashed away. He is up like a shot. "Jinx!"

Her lashes flutter in the paleness of her face. But her pupils aren't dilated into dreamland. She gazes back at him, bleary but shockingly alert. Her small hand reaches out. Instinctually, he catches it in both his own. One thumb finds a vein of pulse and checks its melody. It strums strong and steady.

Silco sucks in a breath. Steady. He must be steady in turn. Nothing will be gained in losing his grip now.

"Silco," Jinx says again.

"I'm here, child."

She swallows. "Are you—?"

"What?"

"Are you… real?"

Silco lets off one of those low rasping laughs that never quite leaves his throat. Then, he says, "Thirsty?"

She nods, waveringly.

"I'll get you some water."

He goes to the pitcher at the nightstand. Jinx stays where she is. Her face is half-hidden in the unkempt hair strewn across the sheets, a blue mermaid washed up on the shores of her own bed. Except her pink eyes, always so crazed and cored-out, follow him thoughtfully.

Silco dares not consider what it means. Her lucid states never last long; they either spike into hysterics or flatline into slumber. Yet each one squeezes the rotten ventricles of his heart. Silco hates hope; it's the opiate of those without a scrap of control. But with Jinx, every random act holds within itself the unpredictability of hope.

(Stay with me, Jinx.)

(Please.)

He props her up with one arm to tip the glass to her lips. She drinks from it like a child, cradled in both hands. Passes it back to him, empty, and wipes her mouth on the edge of his loosened cravat. It's an offhand intimacy that Silco never tolerates from anyone else. With Jinx, it is the opposite. A tenderness burgeons blackly in his chest.

Gods, he's missed this. Missed watching her drink. Watching her talk. Watching her breathe.

His arms encircle her close. Against his fritzing inner-thermostat—cold hands, overheated body—she's always felt pleasantly coolish. But now, dosed in Shimmer, her skin is almost fizzy. It powers itself off when she's asleep. But when she's awake, it's like catching at a cut power cord with a thousand volts crackling at the ends.

Silco doesn't care.

In the prime of deadliness; in the peach of health. He'll take whatever he can get. Just as long as she's better again.

"Hurts," Jinx mumbles.

"What?"

"My stomach." She winces, almost fretfully. "I think—"

"Hm?"

"I need the bathroom."

Drugged, she's never in full possession of her bladder. At clockwork intervals, Singed uses the awful catheter. Otherwise, Silco carries her to the toilet. Better not to waste time. Yesterday, he'd delayed, and within a minute the sheets had been drenched in piss. Afterwards, he'd had to strip the bedding, then help Singed haul Jinx into the tub. He tries not to think of it overmuch: the clammy sheets, the choking steam and Jinx under the pelting water, like a corpse being prepped for burial.

Scooping Jinx into his arms, he bears her to the bathroom. It is a green marble monstrosity: a glassed-in shower along one wall and, directly opposite, an old-fashioned clawfoot tub. The air here doesn't stink of bleach, but of lavender soap and smoky night air: the window is prised open a crack.

Gently, Silco sets Jinx to her feet by the toilet. Her arms are slung around his neck. She loosens them slowly, and finds her balance. It takes a while, but once she does, she rarely needs toting around afterward. Like always, Silco waits until she's steady before he exits and shuts the door to give her privacy.

Tonight, his hand is on the doorknob when Jinx says, "Um…"

Silco keeps his back to her; she's probably sitting down, "What's wrong?"

"I need a change of clothes."

"All right."

"And something for the blood."

Blood?

Silco's insides shrivel up. The memory that crashes is sudden and sickening. The Bridge. The burnt corpses. The blood on Jinx's cold skin. Dying people bleed. Sick people bleed. Yet when he'd carried Jinx here, he saw no wounds her wasted body.

Effortfully, he says, "Are—are you hurt?"

"I've got uninvited guests."

"Guests—?"

His gorge shoots up. Comprehension, then chagrin.

After a three-month dry-spell, she's resumed menstruating.

"Oh," he says.

"Oh," Jinx echoes tartly.

There is a silence. Then, in the spirit at pragmatism, Silco says, "I'll get what you need."

"What I need?"

"From your closet."

Jinx emits a faraway hum. Then she says, "I'll need your help."

"My help?"

"Getting the bloodstains outta my undies."

Silco chokes so sharply he needs to thump his chest.

"I'm screwing with you, Silly."

The mockery in Jinx's voice floats across the space to him. Ordinarily, he'd rebuke her. He's never taken to Jinx's sense of humor—largely because it's too similar to his own. The older she's grown, the more it's veered toward the transgressive and downright nasty.

Except he's bribed to bittersweetness by its evocation of better times

(How long will it last?)

He doesn't glance around. But he knows the relief is audible in his voice. "We'll not discuss this ghoulishness further."

"Ghoulish." She huffs. "You kept calling it a 'normal bodily function' during our Serious Talk."

"It scarcely warrants a running commentary."

She lets off a small Heh-heh that reminds him of those comic book cretins from his youth, the quintessential Undercity teenagers, Mavis and Mutthead. A sound he's not heard in months.

"You're embaaaarrassed."

Swallowing, wishing he could safekeep this moment despite its grotesquerie, Silco says, "I'll be outside."

From her closet, he retrieves a change of clothes and a sanitary serviette. Most Undercity women wear cheap menstrual belts; the rest use rags. Jinx's frippery is custom-made, the edges patterned with adhesive lace.

Eying them, Silco's discomfiture blends with bitter memory. Jinx-at-twelve. She'd gotten her first bleeds and howled like a dying thing. That's what blood was to her. The manifestation of death or its aftermath. Silco had to explain menstruation to her: a word she'd never heard of, nor seen in print. Vi hadn't bothered to enlighten her; perhaps the byproduct of an all-male household. Sevika loudly proclaiming Congrats on the curse hadn't helped matters.

Silco kept his own explanation succinct. It wasn't a curse; just a cycle. She wouldn't die.

Jinx's wretchedness left him reconsidering. He'd known women who fell prone to petulance; none who fell literally prone. Jinx did. Shivered and vomited besides. Sevika declared it wasn't standard. A physician was called. Silco remembers the old man looming over Jinx. His knob-like fingers prodding her groin. He couldn't see Jinx with the bastard in his sightline. But her wails ripped into Silco like knives: Stop! That hurts!

Silco had lunged to kill him. A purely animalistic response. You don't torment his child and expect to live.

Sevika had stopped Silco's attempted throat-slitting. Undercity charlatans, she'd said, were no substitute for a midwife. Silco had summoned one the same evening. She'd diagnosed Jinx with endometriosis. Likely, it ran in her family. Might explain the older sister's reticence in sharing details. No cure unless Silco wanted to cut Jinx open and tamper with her innards.

His response: No and Get out.

The first year, he'd coaxed cupfuls of poppy tea past Jinx's lips. By the second year, he'd gotten her the Demacian Pill. She'd fared much better.

We'll begin production on our own brand, first thing.

In the kitchen, Silco boils tea black as witches brew. Pours it into a cup, the rest of his concentration on Jinx's not-sounds in the bathroom. His instincts are always at war—the paternal concern of What if she's hurt? crosswired with the masculine reticence of She needs space—as do you. After a reasonable handspan of minutes, he paces back to the bathroom.

"Jinx?"

The door opens a crack. Jinx's neon-pink eye peeps out in a gloomy vignette.

"Hn?"

Silco proffers the cup and the folded-up toiletries. "Here. Do you need anything else?"

"Nuh-uh."

"You're sure?"

"Uh-huh."

Her hand reaches past the door. Instead of taking the things, her fingertips slide, gingerly, from his jawbone down to his Adam's apple. The splotching bruises show beneath his loosened cravat. Jinx's expression doesn't alter. But her eyes do: the pinkness has a way of diffusing to darker hues, a subtle sign Silco is starting to recognize. A backsliding from saneness to savagery, zero to sixty.

Then Jinx drops her eyes, and her hand.

"I'm sorry."

He'd braced for a blow-up. The apology knocks him off-balance.

"What?"

"I didn't—didn't mean to."

A silence. Hoarsely, Silco says, "You remember? Jinx, do you—"

"It's coming to me. Bits and pieces."

For a moment, her features resemble those of a creature so very ancient: an undying force trapped in the flesh of a child. Then she blinks, and they regain a distressing innocence. Tears pool at the cups of her eyelids.

"I was bad," she whispers.

"What? Jinx—no—"

"'We don't hit each other'," she says, their old maxim echoed in a little-girl voice. "'We don't do what they did.'"

"I'm all right. Honestly."

"Please don't—"

"Don't what?"

"Please don't hate me."

"What? Jinx—"

Snatching up his offerings, she's already stumbled back into the bathroom. The door closes with a not-quite-slam. Behind it, there are sobs. As Silco listens, they garble into something else, Jinx's rasping breaths interspersed with words, a disembodied soliloquy that makes the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

Her damned ghosts. Always creeping up on her.

Silco's own muscles are wired, his breath taut. It takes everything inside him not to kick the door open and snatch her into his arms. Instead, he exhales—and withdraws. It will do Jinx no good if he succumbs to his own irrational blasts of emotion; he needs to harbor his reserves, keep steady and keep ready. In the backroom of his mind, he negotiates with himself. Threats, barter, bribes.

Five minutes.

If she’s still not okay—

The door opens. Jinx pads out unsteadily, changed and cleaned, the cup cradled in both hands. Giving him wide berth, she slumps on the edge of the bed. Her head hangs low, unkempt strands of blue hair slithering off her shoulders. The defeated posture makes Silco likewise ache. Yet this is longest time that's elapsed between her bouts of incurable sleep and unpredictable violence. He ought to summon Singed from the basement laboratory. He'll want to examine her; make notes.

Except Silco will kill Singed if he interrupts. This uneasy stasis with Jinx is better than any restoration to awful solitude.

Watchful, he leans by the window. "How do you feel?"

Jinx swivels her head. Through the bluish veil of hair, her eyes are red-rimmed.

"Hurts. Up and down."

"Shall I fetch something from my medicine cabinet?"

"Like what?"

"Chlorodyne. Laudanum."

"It's shark week," Jinx rebuts with a touch of her old sassiness. "I wasn't bit by an actual shark."

Could have fooled me, Silco thinks. Still, her sass dispels his shadows. He doesn't smile, but the lines of his body relax a degree. "You know what I mean."

Jinx nods, and sips her tea. "I'm just tired."

"Let's get you fed up."

"Not now." Her sigh holds a deeper complexity. "Tired."

"Lie back down."

"Tired of lying down." She swallows. Silco can see her surfacing out of months of drugged-out displacement, and into a fuller awareness. Tears blur her eyes; her voice holds a blistering-hot clarity. "Tired of the dreams. They're making me crazy. They're all there. I hear them when I'm sleeping, and when I'm not. More voices the air lately, have you noticed? Flapping like crows, and that's what they pretend to be, but they're more than that. Always going wsss-wsss-wsss into my ears, down my nose, up my ass—"

"Jinx—"

"They were all on the Bridge. I saw them. Mommy. Vander. Mylo and Claggor and Ekko. Now the bricks have fallen and they’re with me all the time, wheelin’ and flappin’ in my dreams. Like crows. Or ravens. An unkindness of murders, or somethin' like that, right?" Her voice catches in her throat, a shapeless laugh that breaks into a sob. “It's the rot that's calling to 'em. Makes me think of the grave, and wiggly maggots. Better get the chem-barons behind that, Silly. Since Zaun's a big o'l graveyard now, maybe they can build a baseball stadium over it? Or a chocolate pie factory? I like chocolate pies. Or—hey! How about daises? Everyone loves daisies! They could design a hot-house garden. Zaun's memorial to the fallen. Everyone could pay it a visit. Everyone Jinx hasn't jinxed yet."

Silco stares at her. He hadn't known what to expect, but it certainly hadn't been this invective. Stranger is the way she speaks of herself in the third person. A soul divided.

"You didn't jinx Zaun," he says softly. "You saved it."

She laughs, a bright, bestial sound.

"I blasted everything to—to BBQ. Zaun. Piltover. Everyone. Now their stink and their voices won't leave me alone! They—"

"They knew the cost."

Jinx is wrenched off-course.

"What?"

"Zaun knew the cost of war, child. So did its soldiers. As for Piltover," his voice thickens in hatred. "They had it coming. For burying us alive. For leaving us dead."

Jinx twists a bitter smile at him. "Like Vander left you dead."

And like Vi left you, Silco thinks, but doesn't say.

He sidles closer. Then, impelled by a force he can't explain, kneels. Jinx blinks with wary bemusement. He's never knelt before anyone in his life; nor has she. They are Zaunites. Their pride is their armor. Yet the pose doesn't feel unnatural, or like a ploy. Nor does his stare: a rawness of honesty that belies the rage at its core. A rage Jinx has always matched with her own, the mirror of all his old hurts.

The mirror is darkened by cracks now.

A reflection of his worst sins.

"You're entitled to be angry at me," he whispers. "The burdens I placed on you... are unforgiveable. A child should never do a man's job. Yet you did. You fought for us. You built for us. More than that. You freed us. There's power in that, Jinx, and not the dark and bloody kind. Don't lose faith in it. In me, but not yourself. Never that."

"Never that."

Jinx's tone is loaded—hostile, sneering, miserable. An essential part of her seems ready to retreat into the shelter of her subconscious, because he'd run down his capital of trust the moment Vi returned. Without the urgency of a greater crisis—Zaun's survival or their own—it's easier to believe that he's used her heartlessly from the start. To believe they are both strangers to each other, and become a stranger to herself.

Unless Silco summons her back.

(I won’t lose my child again.)

Impulsively, his hand covers hers. Jinx's fingers spasm. For a moment he thinks she will wrench away. Then she folds her hand through his own. They twine fingers, knuckles sharpening. A shared ferocity that runs bone-deep.

Jinx whispers, "I don't understand…"

"What?"

"I don't understand why you're still… keeping me. You have Zaun. I played my part. Shouldn't you cut the marionette loose? You've got bigger strings to pull."

"No strings on you." Were there ever? "We've cut all the strings. We've blanked the slate. A nation all our own. No Council breathing down our necks, or Enforcer's boots crushing them." He lets off a twisted exhalation almost like laughter. "And yes. It's a mass graveyard. But just because the present is hell, doesn't mean the future need be. This thing of ours will yet find its feet."

She smiles faintly, before it fades. "This thing…"

"Isn't that what you call it?"

"Ours, huh?"

"Always." He squeezes her hand. "All the pieces are in place, Jinx. Everything's laid out—even if getting it right will take time. All it needs is you."

"Me?"

"You. A body is nothing without a soul. A nation is the same. You've done so much for Zaun. But there's still one thing I need you to do."

Jinx freezes. Under his palm, Silco feels the subdermal spike of her pulse. I need you—now build me a bomb. That is his pattern, isn't it? Passing the virulence of his expectations on to her. She'd always met them with a single-minded zeal that matched his own. Never expected him to go any easier on her than he was on himself. Never expected anything from him—period—except his love.

He'll give it now. Lock, stock, and barrel.

"I know you're suffering," he whispers. "You've endured terrible change. Inside and outside. But you must do this one thing. If you've any care for me, please don't forget it."

Jinx tenses. Beneath the layers of mistrust, her eyes glow with the softest ember of hope.

"What?"

Silco kisses her forehead. Rough and sharp as everything about him is, his lips are always soft. His voice is softer still with the strangling ache of love. "Remember. You are my lodestar. My perfect daughter. You always will be."

Jinx's throat works on a ragged sound.

Daughter.

The word has always hung unspoken between them. So different from the epithets Jinx adorned herself with at his behest. Marvel. Maniac. Monster. He'd taught her the power of persona, and the freedom of reinvention. But truth was a dangerous element to deal in. Masks could be locked in cold storage. The truth was harder to conceal.

Once it was out, it was out.

Silco doesn't care. Let his secret hang by truth's noose for the world to see. It doesn't feel like handing his most vital part away. This is his most vital part.

Jinx at her darkest and brightest.

The pinnacle of his pride and joy.

Jinx crosses her arms around herself, trying to lock the tears down. In the next breath, they are falling, and so is she, a sob working its way out of her body. Silco's arms pass around her, enfolding her against him. She doesn't jerk away; she flows into the embrace. His scarred cheek rubs along the curve of her head, a predator marking territory; her sharp little nails sink into his shoulders to mark him in kind.

He's seen Piltover's pride topple in a plume of ash. He's seen the jagged zigzag of his own signature on Zaun's declaration of sovereignty. He's climbed a staircase of his naysayer's skulls and sunk his blade into his backstabbing brother's spine.

Yet there is no greater sweetness than this.

Jinx in his arms.

He lets her cry herself out. The tears subside into slow bubbling hiccups. She sags against him; groggy, disoriented. The poppy tea has done its trick. A heartless trick in other circumstances. In these: a mercy. Stepping past her room's threshold tonight, Silco had made his choice. Singed will not be allowed to sedate Jinx again. In the meantime, let her enjoy an undisturbed rest on her last night as an invalid.

Jinx isn't sick. She is suffering.

The least Silco can do is suffer alongside her.

Gently, he guides her dazed body under the sheets. Jinx's head sinks like a stone into the pillow. Her cheeks are pink-mottled from emotion, a replica from her childhood. Tonight's brew will lull her away from its sad shores—and into a dreamless sleep. The clock on her bedstand shows it is nearly two in the morning. With luck, Silco can catch a few winks himself on the chair, before returning to the daily grind of gameplaying.

Creeping back, Silco encounters Jinx's outreaching hand.

"Don't go," she begs.

"I'm right here, my lovely."

"Stay." Her fingers twist into his sleeve. "Please."

In the old days, Silco often let Jinx sleep in bed with him. He's never once shared her bed. It isn't what the Demacian psychickers—he imbibes their literature time and again—would dub ideal childrearing. Then again, he needs a psychicker's opinion like he needs a hole in the head.

Jinx needs comfort far more.

He lets Jinx tug him closer. The mattress sags under their shared weight. Yet he finds the awkwardness getting lost in the remembered gaps between their bodies. Instinctively, his arm passes around Jinx, steadying her within its crook. She fits herself against the hard bolster of his body. Their sharp bones imprint into each other like a set of teeth-marks.

"Left me," Jinx whispers.

"Hm?"

"I don't understand. Vi left me. You didn't." A slurred sigh. "It's all—"

"All what?"

She clings closer. Shimmer-tears sparkle on her cheeks.

"It's all wrong. You killed Vander. You stole me. You took everything."

Yes, yes, and yes.

Yet the terrifying abyss in Silco's chest isn't guilt. It is something altogether more brutal. Because he knows full-well that the world is a twisted place full of twisted bastards. As the most twisted bastard of all, he'd staked his claim on Jinx before the rest dared, and kept her safe. Kept her—and in doing so transformed his own life from wretchedness into a bliss more profound than many lay claim to in a lifetime.

(Now this is my price.)

"Don't leave me," Jinx says.

"Ssh." He palms her hair. "Go to sleep."

"Please stay."

Silco tugs the blanket up, and under its coolness, lets their foreheads nestle close. His hand settles against Jinx's nape. Cold, then warming.

"Always," he promises.

Soothed, Jinx's lids flutter shut.

In the distance, faintly, the bells of Old Hungry sound off two a.m. Evidently, the repairs were successful. Silco lets himself be lulled by the sound, and by the slow drag of Jinx's fingertips along his chest. They sketch three letters into the weave of his shirt. A childish code from bygone days, imparted like a blessing.

Right into his heart.

XOXO

[tillxthexearthxstartsxtoxcrumble]

Relistening to one of my fav episodes of WTNV and getting excited all over again knowing how upset I was the first time

(Episode 48- Renovations)

I hated that the two of them were there and Cecil wasn't and then Cecil shows up in the coolest way ever and I still get excited

[ncisfranchise-source]

TORONTO, August 26, 2024 – Today, Global announced premiere dates for its fall 2024 schedule chock full of star-studded new series alongside 12 of spring’s Top 20 programs* and more. The season kicks off on Global with Canada’s #1 program Survivor back for Season 47 starting Wednesday, September 18 at 8 p.m. ET/PT with a special two-hour premiere (followed by weekly 90-minute episodes). Then, Canada’s #1 drama 9-1-1 returns for an eighth season on Thursday, September 26 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. Celebrating its iconic 50th season, Canada’s #1 show in late night, Saturday Night Live, also premieres on Global this fall. Global’s brand-new slate of scripted programming launches with a special sneak preview of Matlock starring Oscar® winner Kathy Bates on Sunday, September 22 at 8 p.m. ET/PT before settling into its regular day and time on Thursday, October 17 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Canadian-produced mystery, Murder in a Small Town, starring Rossif Sutherland and Kristin Kreuk debuts Tuesday, September 24 at 8 p.m. ET/PT with a one-time 90-minute episode then moves to 9 p.m. ET/PT on Tuesday, October 8 before landing in its regular day and time on Wednesday, October 16 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. The latest addition to the NCIS franchise starring Austin Stowell as a young Agent Gibbs, NCIS: Origins, premieres Monday, October 14 at 9 p.m. ET/PT with a one-time two-hour episode before moving to its regular time slot at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Monday, October 21. Lastly, big laughs from Damon Wayans and Damon Wayans Jr. come to Global with Poppa’s House Monday, October 21 at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT.

“Whether it’s Kathy Bates stealing scenes in the reimagined Matlock, a nostalgic look back at iconic TV character Leroy Jethro Gibbs in NCIS: Origins, the laughs that only the Wayans can deliver in Poppa’s House, or the idyllic British Columbia setting of Murder in a Small Town, Global’s schedule offers a fresh lineup of standout content this fall,” said Jennifer Abrams, Senior Vice President Programming & Multiplatform, Corus Entertainment. “After a successful spring, this fall’s lineup promises another exceptional season, filled with the best new shows, beloved returning favorites, exclusive specials, and thrilling reality competitions.”

Global’s returning hits kick into high gear when the worldwide phenomenon NCIS premieres on Monday, October 14 at 8 p.m. ET/PT (regular timeslot 9 p.m. ET/PT begins Monday, October 21). Action-packed FBI night is back starting Tuesday, October 15 at 8 p.m. ET/PT with FBI, followed by FBI: International at 9 p.m. ET/PT and FBI: Most Wanted at 10 p.m. ET/PT. Back for sophomore seasons, the star-studded anthology series Accused returns Tuesday, October 8 at 8 p.m. ET/PT and delightfully quirky procedural Elsbeth premieres Thursday, October 17 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. Explosive Friday nights return starting with S.W.A.T. on Friday, October 18 at 8 p.m. ET/PT then Fire Country at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Lastly, The Equalizer is back starting Sunday, October 20 at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT.

Next, the laughs return to Global this fall with award-winning comedy Abbott Elementary (Wednesday, October 9 at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT), plus crowd-pleasers Ghosts (Thursday, October 17 at 7:30 p.m. ET/PT) and The Neighborhood (Monday, October 21 at 8 p.m. ET/PT).

Other perennial hits returning this fall on Global include 48 Hours (Saturday, September 21 at 9 p.m. ET/PT with a two-hour premiere), 60 Minutes (Sunday, September 15 at 7:30pm ET/7pm PT), The Floor (Sunday, September 29 at 9:30 p.m. ET / 9 p.m. PT), Crime Beat (Friday, October 18 at 10 p.m. ET/PT), plus much more including exclusive specials Secret Celebrity Renovation (Friday, September 20 at 8 p.m. ET/PT) and The Greatest @Home Videos (Friday, September 27 at 8 p.m. ET/PT). For series descriptions of Global’s new series and a full list of Global’s premiere dates click here.

Global’s lineup of hit series are available to stream anytime on STACKTV, the Global TV App and GlobalTV.com.

Global is a Corus Entertainment Network and is available through all major TV distributors, including: Bell, Cogeco, Eastlink, Rogers, SaskTel, Shaw, Shaw Direct, Telus, Videotron and STACKTV, streaming available on Amazon Prime Video Channels, Bell Fibe TV app, FuboTV, Rogers Ignite TV and Ignite SmartStream. The Global TV App is available on iOS, Android, Chromecast, Android TV, Apple TV, LG Smart TVs, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TVs, Roku streaming players, Roku TV™ models, and at watch.globaltv.com.

[jayconner-raisingprivatemoney]

Effective Funding Strategies Using Private Money in Real Estate

Private Money Academy Conference:

Free Report:

Welcome to another insightful episode of the Raising Private Money with Jay Conner Podcast!

Today, we're diving deep into the world of private money for real estate with our host Jay Conner, joined by Crystal Baker, Chaffee Thanh-Nguyen, and special guest Jay Mora.

In this episode, Jay Conner unravels the essential questions private lenders will ask before funding your real estate deals and emphasizes the importance of being prepared to answer those questions.

Crystal Baker shares her strategies for determining minimum investment amounts and leveraging smaller investments through pooling, while Chaffee Thanh-Nguyen discusses the variability of investment minimums based on market and strategy.

Listen in as we explore the significance of setting the right investment timelines, understanding liquidity, and ensuring transparent communication with potential investors.

We also highlight the vital role of private money in real estate and provide actionable advice on navigating investment opportunities across different states.

Don't miss Jay Conner's anecdotes and valuable tips on leveraging private money effectively!

Timestamps:

00:01 - Raising Private Money Without Asking For It

03:18 - Prepare for potential lender questions from the webinar.

09:48 - Invest your capital and set up a call.

10:38 - Answer with a clarifying question for clarity.

13:51 - Investor need to know their timelines well.

20:07 - Establish minimum amount based on renovation costs.

22:03 - Consider smaller amounts for foreclosure property buying.

27:10 - "Truth always guides investment decisions in all markets."

28:04 - Private lenders seek secure investments in individuals.

Have you read Jay’s new book: Where to Get The Money Now?

It is available FREE (all you pay is the shipping and handling) at

What is Private Money? Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner

Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. He maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $67,000 per deal without using his own money or credit.

What is Real Estate Investing? Live Private Money Academy Conference

YouTube Channel

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[laresearchette]

Thursday, January 04, 2023 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES?: ONE NIGHT STAY (BET +) REYKA (BritBox) SANCTUARY: A WITCH'S TALE (Sundance Now/AMC+) THE GOLDEN BACHELOR: THE GOLDEN WEDDING (City TV) 8:00pm THE FIRST 48 (A&E Canada) 8:00pm THE POWER OF FILM (TCM) 8:00pm CASEY ANTHONY'S PARENTS SPEAK: THE LIE DETECTOR TEST (A&E Canada) 9:00pm BARNWOOD BUILDERS (Magnolia Canada) 9:00pm

WHAT IS NOT PREMIERING IN CANADA TONIGHT: GENERAL HOSPITAL: 60 YEARS OF STARS AND STORYTELLING (ABC Feed) SWAMP PEOPLE (Premiering on January 11 on History Canada at 9:00pm) DAUGHTER OF THE CULT (Premiering on January 11 on Disney + Star) SWAMP MYSTERIES WITH TROY LANDRY (TBD - History Canada)

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME CANADA/CBC GEM/CRAVE TV/DISNEY + STAR/NETFLIX CANADA:

NETFLIX CANADA BOY SWALLOWS UNIVERSE (AU) THE BROTHERS SUN SOCIETY OF THE SNOW (ES)

2024 IIHF WORLD JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIP (TSN4) 5:00am: Relegation: Germany vs. Norway (TSN/TSN3/TSN4/TSN5) 9:00am: Semifinal: Sweden vs. Czechia (TSN/TSN3/TSN4/TSN5) 1:30pm: Semifinal: U.S. vs. Finland

NHL HOCKEY (SNEast/SNOntario) 7:00pm: Penguins vs. Bruins (TSN2) 7:00pm: Sabres vs. Habs (SNPacific) 8:00pm: Canucks vs. Blues (SNWest) 8:00pm: Flames vs. Predators (TSN5) 10:00pm: Sens vs. Kraken (SNEast/SNOntario) 10:30pm: Panthers vs. Knights (TSN3) 10:30pm: Jets vs. Sharks

NBA BASKETBALL (SN1) 7:30pm: Bucks vs. Spurs (SN1) 10:00pm: Nuggets vs. Warriors

DRAGONS’ DEN (CBC) 8:00pm: A West Coast duo arrives with precious cargo; an Ontario business owner freshens up the Den; an entrepreneur revamps the Dragons' credit cards; a West Coast entrepreneur puts a new spin on an old product.

ALMOST PARADISE (CTV2) 8:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): A local priest is murdered over a long-lost ancient cross, the cross which Magellan held in his hand the day he was killed by Lapu-Lapu in the Battle of Mactan.

HEARTLAND DOCS, DVM (Nat Geo Canada) 8:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): The Schroeders scramble to save a farm dog after it ate rat poison.

THE NATURE OF THINGS (CBC) 9:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): The human voice is a very sophisticated communication tool, but most lack knowledge of how to unlock its potential.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT HOUSE? (HGTV Canada) 9:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): A New York couple overwhelmed by their water problems are ready to bring in professionals to correct them for good; Joe Mazza discovers the source of their issues while designer Noel Gatts takes their Cape Cod home from cluttered to classic.

SUPERCHEF GRUDGE MATCH (Food Network Canada) 9:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): Darnell Ferguson welcomes four culinary masters to settle their turf wars. Matt Klum calls out former boss Dana Downs to prove she made a huge mistake letting him go, while Danny Wilson challenges Jay Ducote in a battle of Southern cuisine supremacy.

THE GHOST TOWN TERROR (DTour) 9:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): Karen calls Tim and Sapphire back to Gunslinger Gulch to investigate a shocking, fire-branded omen; when Tim repels deeper into The Pit for answers, a confrontation with his own dark nemesis leads to painful revelations about the living and the dead.

CANADA'S DRAG RACE (Crave) 9:00pm

MARRIED TO REAL ESTATE (HGTV Canada)10:00pm/11:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): A couple living with their two children and mother are bursting at the seams and want a bigger home with character; Egypt and Mike find the right place in Roswell and look to turn the sterile house into a dream with a new kitchen and yoga studio. In Episode Two, with behind-the-scene details and never-before-seen footage, Egypt and Mike revisit their favorite family renovations, including an old family home turned into a chic short-term rental, to refreshing a Southern-charm haven.

LAST OF THE GIANTS (Discovery Canada) 10:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): Cyril Chauquet and his team are dropped into the middle of the wildest environments on the planet with the sole mission of collecting vital specimens that could save species from extinction.

A HOME AWAY (Magnolia Canada) 10:00pm (SERIES PREMIERE): Harrison House is a 130-year-old Victorian bed and breakfast that Bryan and Catherine are converting into a boutique hotel; the plan is for a quick renovation, but they soon find out that they're in for a challenge.

CANADIAN REFLECTIONS (CBC) 11:30pm: Shallots & Garlic; Promotion

[gloomiedyke]

I am listening to Welcome to Night Vale for the first time (I know I am very, very late) and I have NEVER been as pumped as I was listening to Renovations (48) for the first time.

What the FUCK that was so good. Just.

"He is holding a cat."

And then Cecil coming in all calm and badass after all this time.

And the weather was PERFECT holy HECK

I am just. So happy.

[italwaysflinchesfirst]

Lauren: It feels so *good* to redecorate!

Kevin: Does it?

Kevin: I rarely feel anything.

Kevin: I rarely feel anything at all.

[hapless-and-hopeless]

Episode 48 - Renovations

We must continue to fight, and resist. We must be the heroes we look for in others. We must no longer speak in code, but in action.

Return to your homes, if you can. But do not lock your doors tonight. Do not hide yourself away from danger. Be brave. Be truly brave.

[cal-adia]

MAG 191 Spoilers

I want Georgie Magnus Archives to reappear with The Admiral in the same fashion that Cecil Nightvale did in Episode 48 - Renovations. Just “She is holding a cat.”

[crimeculturepodcast]

Hispanic/Latino horror movies

In honor of Hispanic Heritage month, this week we talked about horror movies out of Latin American and Spanish speaking countries. There were some we couldn’t get to so here is the full list:

Spain

The Devil’s Backbone (2001)

Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

Audience Score: 89%

Google Score: 85%

IMDb: 7.4/10

Critics Consensus: Creepily atmospheric and haunting, The Devil's Backbone is both a potent ghost story and an intelligent political allegory.

Description: “Set during the last years of the Spanish Civil War, The Devil's Backbone is a Spanish gothic horror movie that follows Carlos, a young orphan boy who is deposited at Santa Lucia School among several other children who have been displaced by the conflict. Though he finds friends in the professor and the head mistress, he is plagued by a wandering spirit with a link to the violent caretaker's secret past.”

Trivia: The movie, which he wrote in college and was in development for 16 years, is strongly inspired by Del Toro’s personal memories, especially his relationship with his uncle, who supposedly came back as a ghost. It is also included among the "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" edited by Steven Schneider. Although filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is Mexican, this film is set in the Spanish countryside (largely filmed in Madrid) that’s why it’s on the Spanish list. The Devil’s Backbone has all of the impactful elements of spirituality, horror, and the supernatural that come up again and again in Del Toro’s work. This film has been referred to as the “brother film” of one of Del Toro’s best known works, Pan’s Labyrinth. 

[REC] (2007)

Rotten Tomatoes: 89%

Audience Score: 82%

Google Score: 85%

IMDb: 7.4/10

Critics Consensus: Plunging viewers into the nightmarish hellscape of an apartment complex under siege, [Rec] proves that found footage can still be used as an effective delivery mechanism for sparse, economic horror.

Description: “Late-night TV host Angela and her cinematographer are following the fire service on a call to an apartment building, but the Spanish police seal off the building after an old woman is infected by a virus which gives her inhuman strength.”

Trivia: The movie was filmed chronologically in real locations (no sets were built for the movie). The actor’s were never given the script in its entirety and didn’t know what was going to happen to their characters until the day of filming. The movie is also a big inspiration for the horror survival game Outlast.

Considered The Blair Witch Project of zombie movies, REC had a lot of competition in the found footage style (it came out the same year as George Romero’s Diary of the Dead and the first Paranormal Activity movie). It more than holds its own among them, so much so that an American remake called Quarantine came out the next year. Director Jaume Balagueró keeps the movie disturbingly real and doesn’t fall prey to jump scare after jump scare.

Veronica (2017)

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Audience Score: 49%

Google Score: 80%

IMDb: 6.2/10

Critics Consensus: A scarily effective horror outing, Veronica proves it doesn't take fancy or exotic ingredients to craft skin-crawling genre thrills. 

Description: “During a solar eclipse, a teenage girl and her friends want to summon the spirit of the girl's father using an Ouija board. However, during the session she loses consciousness and soon it becomes clear that evil demons have arrived.”

Trivia: Based on the true story of 18-year-old Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro. I won’t go too far into it because we may do an episode on it in the future but if you want spoilers, watch the movie (if you dare).

Directed by Paco Plaza (same as REC), the possession theme is done over and over again in horror but this movie is a terrifying and fresh take. 

The Bar (2017)

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Audience Score: 55%

Google Score: 75%

IMDb: 6.3/10

Description: “In bustling downtown Madrid, a loud gunshot and two mysterious deaths trap a motley assortment of common urbanites in a decrepit central bar, while paranoia and suspicion force the terrified regulars to turn on each other.”

Directed by Álex de la Iglesia, it’s labeled as a horror-comedy. You can watch it on Netflix.

Who Can Kill A Child? (1976) - Tells the story of a happy couple, two English tourists who decide to vacation on a secluded island in the Mediterranean. There they discover – almost too late- that the island has been taken over by a group of murderous children.

The Baby’s Room (2006) - Featured on Six Films to Keep You Awake at Night. A new family renovates and moves into a grand old house. Nervous first-time mom installs a baby monitor but hears mysterious sounds on the other side. Once they install a high-tech video baby monitor, what they see chills them to the bone.

Sleep Tight (2011) - Apartment concierge Cesar is a miserable person who believes he was born without the ability to be happy. His self-appointed task is to make life hell for everyone around him, a mission in which he has great success. It has big home invasion/stalker vibes. 

Timecrimes (2007) - A man accidentally gets into a time machine and travels back in time nearly an hour. Finding himself will be the first of a series of disasters of unforeseeable consequences. It sounds like a “Happy Death Day” type of plot (but proceeding it by a decade).

Thesis (1996) - Angela is doing her thesis on the effect of violence in the media when she discovers a snuff film. This discovery leads her down a dark path where she must confront her greatest fears and question everybody around her.

Witching and Bitching (2013) - One article I read said it perfectly, “What Shaun of the Dead did for zombies and What We Do in the Shadows did for vampires, Witching & Bitching essentially did for the cinematic depiction of witches, albeit on a less visible scale.” Great pick if you’re looking for something a bit more lighthearted.

Mexico

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Audience Score: 91%

Google Score: 90%

IMDb: 8.2/10

Critics Consensus: Pan's Labyrinth is Alice in Wonderland for grown-ups, with the horrors of both reality and fantasy blended together into an extraordinary, spellbinding fable. 

Description: After the Allies invade Nazi-occupied Europe, a sadistic captain sends a troop of Spanish soldiers to flush out rebels,bringing his new wife and her daughter along on his exploits. While his family resides in the countryside, he leads his men on a murderous rampage, much of which is witnessed by his step daughter. In an effort to escape her reality she plunges into Pan's Labyrinth, a mystical world at the border of her own.

Trivia: Guillermo del Toro is famous for compiling books full of notes and drawings about his ideas before turning them into films, something he regards as essential to the process. He left years worth of notes for this film in the back of a cab, and when he discovered them missing, he thought it was the end of the project. However, the cab driver found them and, realizing their importance, tracked him down and returned them at great personal difficulty and expense. Del Toro was convinced that this was a blessing and it made him ever more determined to complete the film. Del Toro also repeatedly refused offers from Hollywood producers, in spite of being offered double the budget, provided the film was made in English. He didn't want any compromise in the storyline to suit the "market needs" (he even did the English subtitles himself). The film received 22 minutes of applause at the Cannes Film Festival and in 2007, it became one of the few fantasy films ever nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars. It’s another on the list "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" edited by Steven Schneider with The Devil’s Backbone. It was on more than 130 top 10 lists in 2006. It is also the 5th highest grossing foreign language film in the US.

The Similars (2016)

Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Audience Score: 49%

Google Score: 75%

IMDb: 5.9/10

Critics Consensus: A smart homage to genre filmmaking, The Similars is a fun and frightening film that balances socio-political issues with aplomb.

Description: A monstrous, once-in-a-lifetime thunderstorm strands passengers in a remote bus station outside Mexico City in 1968. As they listen to the radio, they realized that the storm has spread all over the world. As they look at each other, they also realize that everyone’s faces are slowly changing, and not for the better. 

Trivia: The film used make-up and special effects techniques never before done in Mexico. Director Isaac Ezban was influenced by B-movies of the 50s and 60s as well as TV shows and movies like “The Twilight Zone”, “The Thing”, and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.

We Are What We Are (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes: 72%

Audience Score: 48%

Google Score: 77%

IMDb: 5.7/10

Critics Consensus: We Are What We Are is elevated horror that combines family drama and social politics, with plenty of gore on top.

Description: After a family patriarch dies, his survivors are tasked with continuing the rigid family rituals that involve hunting meat, preparing it for consumption, and eating it. The “meat” in question is human flesh, since they’re a family of cannibals. With two detectives hot on their tail, the family of cannibals strains to maintain their family traditions in a modern urban environment.

There was an English language remake in 2013 (86% on Rotten Tomatoes) with Wyatt Russell and Odeya Rush (Lady Bird, Dumplin’, and Goosebumps)

We Are The Flesh (2016) - A joint French-Mexican production released in Spanish as Somos la carne, this post-apocalyptic nightmare involves a brother and sister who roam the land desperately seeking food until a kindly old man takes them in under the condition that they help him renovate an abandoned building. Oh, and they also have to have sex with one another while he watches. And after he breaks their will by getting them to do that, he makes them do all sorts of other things. This film was one of only four in Mexico to receive a “D” rating—which is reserved for subject matter that is considered extremely disturbing and/or pornographic.

The Witch’s Mirror (1962) - An abusive and cheating husband kills his wife so that he can be with his mistress. The woman’s godmother was a witch who originally tried casting a spell on a mirror to protect her from domestic violence, but the spell failed. Still, she is able to bring the woman back from the grave, and the two witches set out to destroy the evil woman-beater.

Here Comes The Devil (2012) - A married couple lose their children while on a family trip near some caves in Tijuana. The kids eventually reappear without explanation, but it becomes clear that they are not who they used to be, that something terrifying has changed them.

Chile

Downhill (2016)

Rotten Tomatoes: 60%

Audience Score: 22%

Google Score: 43%

IMDb: 3.5/10

Description: Deeply upset by the passing of his best friend, a professional BMX rider accepts to partake in a race in Chile. Everything goes as planned until he stumbles upon a man who is infected by a mysterious virus and becomes the target of local assassins.

Trivia: Filmed in 13 days

Post Mortem (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Audience Score: 61%

Google Score: 70%

IMDb: 6.5/10

Description: In Chile, 1973, during the last days of Salvador Allende’s presidency, an employee at a Morgue’s recording office falls for a burlesque dancer who mysteriously disappears.

Aftershock (2012)

Rotten Tomatoes: 39%

Audience Score: 24%

Google Score: 61%

IMDb: 4.8/10

Critics Consensus: Aftershock hints at an inventive twist on horror tropes, but ultimately settles for another round of mind-numbing depravity that may alternately bore and revolt all but the most ardent gore enthusiasts.

Description: In Chile, a group of travelers who are in an underground nightclub when a massive earthquake hits quickly learn that reaching the surface is just the beginning of their nightmare.

Trivia: Horror icon Eli Roth wrote and stars in this film.

To Kill A Man (2014) - An attack on his daughter leads a mild-mannered family man to take revenge on the vicious street thugs who have tormented him and his family for a long time.

Columbia

Out Of The Dark (2014) This is in English

Rotten Tomatoes: 24%

Audience Score: 22%

Google Score: 77%

IMDb: 4.8/10

Description: A family moves to Colombia to take over the operation of a manufacturing plant, soon they learn their new home is haunted.

Trivia: Starring Julia Stiles (10 Things I Hate About You, Dexter) and Scott Speedman (The Strangers, You) 

The Squad (2011)

Audience Score: 53%

Google Score: 82%

IMDb: 5.3/10

Description: After a secret military base ceases all communications, an anti-guerrilla commando unit is sent to the mountainous location to discover what exactly happened. The squad expects to discover that the base was attacked and taken over by guerrilla units, but instead find only a lone woman wrapped in chains.

Trivia: In one scene where the actors are shooting guns, one actor accidentally picked up a real gun instead of the prop and fired a real shot (no one was hurt).

Cord (2015) - On a post-apocalyptic world of never-ending winter, a sparse cast of outsiders live underground. Due to their unsanitary conditions, sexual contact has become dangerous. Masturbation has become the paradigm of sexual experience and an array of low-tech devices with this purpose has come into existence. In this bleak reality, a dealer of such machines a sex addict make a deal: she will allow him to experiment new devices on her body in exchange of pleasure. Soon however, their relationship goes out of control.

The Hidden Face (2011)

Rotten Tomatoes: 80%

Audience Score: 72%

Google Score: 86%

IMDb: 7.4/10

Description: Shattered by the unexpected news of their irreversible break-up, an aspiring orchestra conductor is puzzled by his girlfriend's mysterious and seemingly inexplicable case of disappearance. But, can he look beyond the facts?

Trivia: There is a Turkish version of this movie and a 2013 remake out of India called “Murder 3”

At The End Of The Spectra (2006)

Google Score: 83%

IMDb: 6/10

Description: A young woman who has become agoraphobic due to a traumatic incident is holed up in her apartment, she begins to suffer from hallucinations, paranoia and an obsessive neighbour.

Trivia: There is a Mexican remake called “Devil Inside” and there were once rumors of an American remake starring Nicole Kidman but that’s the end of that.

Uruguay

The Silent House (La Casa Muda) (2010) 

Rotten Tomatoes: 68%

Audience Score: 37%

Google Score: 63%

IMDb: 5.4/10

Critics Consensus: Shot in a single take, The Silent House may be a gimmick movie, but it's one that's enough to sustain dread and tension throughout. 

Description: A girl becomes trapped inside a house and becomes unable to contact the outside world as supernatural forces haunt it.

Trivia: The plot is supposedly based on a true story that occurred in the 1940s in a small village in Uruguay. With a budget of just six thousand dollars, it was filmed using a handheld high-definition digital single-lens reflex camera (the Canon EOS 5D Mark II), 2 handheld lamps, and a couple of lightbulbs over a time period of just four days. The claim that the movie was filmed in one continuous take are suspect. The Mark II camera can only record up to 15 minutes of continuous video at a time. Uruguay's official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 84th Academy Awards 2012.

Monos (2019)

Rotten Tomatoes: 92% 

Audience Score: 85%

Google Score: 69%

IMDb: 6.9/10

Critics Consensus: As visually splendid as it is thought-provoking, Monos takes an unsettling look at human nature whose grim insights leave a lingering impact.

Description: On a faraway mountaintop, eight teenaged guerillas with guns watch over a hostage and a conscripted milk cow. Playing games and initiating cult-like rituals, the children run amok in the jungle and disaster strikes when the hostage tries to escape.

Trivia: Moises Arias (Hannah Montana) and Julianne Nicholson (I, Tonya, August: Osage County) most of the other actors had never acted before. The movie draws inspiration from Lord of the Flies. Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider. It was selected as the official Colombian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.

Peru

The Entity (2015)

Google Score: 66%

IMDb: 4.3/10

Description: A group of students decide to study 'reaction videos' and are led toward an old film, hidden in the archive room of a cemetery. It appears that everybody who has witnessed the film has met an untimely demise under suspicious circumstances. When the students view the footage, they discover first hand, what the demonic spirit is capable of. Fulfilling the ancient curse of a woman cruelly killed during the Spanish Inquisition.

Trivia: The Entity has been billed as Peru's first 3D horror film and to have been loosely based on true stories. Review websites Flickering Myth and Nerdly commented that the movie suffered from being too overly familiar to pre-existing works (Blair Witch, The Ring).

The Vanished Elephant (2014)

Rotten Tomatoes: 89%

Audience Score: 72%

Google Score: 88%

IMDb: 6.5/10

Description: Crime novelist Edo remains obsessed with what happened to his fiancee Celia after she disappeared during an earthquake. When an enigmatic woman brings him photos that may help him solve the mystery, he senses he is being drawn into a dangerous game.

The Secret Of Evil (2014)

Google Score: 65%

IMDb: 5/10

Description: Video footage depicting a supernatural encounter is all that remains of a filmmaker and his crew who disappeared while exploring a haunted house.

When Two Worlds Collide (2016)

Rotten Tomatoes: 91%

Audience Score: 69%

Google Score: 93%

IMDb: 7.6/10

Description: An indigenous environmental activist takes on the large businesses that are destroying the Amazon.

El Vientre (2014)

Google Score: 81%

IMDb: 6.1/10

Description: Silvia, a beautiful 45-year-old widow, is obsessed with having a child and finds in attractive but naive Mercedes the perfect candidate to bear it. Silvia kindly offers her a job and a room in her house, and then manipulates her into seducing a young man named Jaime. They soon fall in love and Mercedes becomes pregnant. Silvia will do anything in her power to keep the baby, even if it means leaving a couple of bodies behind.

Argentina

Terrified (2018)

Rotten Tomatoes: 77% 

Audience Score: 65%

Google Score: 82%

IMDb: 6.5/10

Description: Paranormal researchers investigate strange events in a neighbourhood in Buenos Aires.

Luciferina (2018)

Rotten Tomatoes: 83%

Audience Score: 25%

Google Score: 69%

IMDb: 4.6/10

Description: Natalia is a nineteen-year-old novice who reluctantly returns home to say goodbye to her dying father. However, when she meets up with her sister and her friends, she decides instead to travel the jungle in search of mystical plant.

Francesca (2015)

Audience Score: 67%

Google Score: 73%

IMDb: 5.3/10

Description: Two detectives track a serial killer who has been targeting the impure. To catch him, they'll have to solve the case of a girl who went missing 15 years ago.

Cold Sweat (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes: 75%

Audience Score: 

Google Score: 58%

IMDb: 4.8/10

Description: The movie follows Román, who stumbles upon his ex-girlfriend Jackie, who has somehow gotten caught up in a torture cult run by two sadistic, old men. The aging political radicals have managed to put Jackie’s life in incredible danger. But when Román and his friend try to help Jackie out of her confines, the elderly psychos prove to be more than meets the eye.

Penumbra (2011)

Rotten Tomatoes: 50%

Audience Score: 26%

Google Score: 75%

IMDb: 5.5/10

Description: A woman desperate to find a tenant for her decrepit apartment apparently finds the perfect candidate, unaware of a sinister plot involving an imminent eclipse.

Venezuela

The House At The End of Time (2013)

Rotten Tomatoes: None 

Audience Score: 72%

Google Score: 91%

IMDb: 6.8/10

Description: Dulce encounters apparitions in her house and unleashes a terrible prophecy. Thirty years later, Dulce, now an old woman, returns to unravel the mystery that has terrorized her for years.

Trivia: Winner of the Audience Award at Gävle Horror Film Festival 2016 (Sweden). Not only is it Venezuela’s highest-grossing horror film, it’s also the most distributed film from the country. By August 2016 it was announced that the American studio New Line Cinema acquired the rights of the film to make a remake for the American public. Hidalgo is still at the wheel so its chances of success are high.

Ecuador

Cronicas (2004)

Rotten Tomatoes: 71%

Audience Score: 77%

Google Score: 80%

IMDb: 6.9/10

Critics Consensus: An unsettling and absorbing cautionary tale with John Leguizamo playing an unscrupulous TV reporter who uses the medium to further his own goals.

Description: Reporter Manolo Bonilla (John Leguizamo) goes to a jail in Ecuador to interview Vinicio Cepeda (Damián Alcázar, Narcos, Narnia), a hit-and-run driver whose crime incited a riot. After Cepeda tells him he knows where a murderer called the Monster of Babahoyo buried a young female victim, Bonilla posts bail in the hopes that he'll learn more about the crime. Bonilla finds the girl's body, but, as he nears the scoop of his career, it looks as if Cepeda might be withholding some key details.

Trivia: Inspired by a true story? As well as being both a Cannes and TIFF favourite, Cronicas is the official submission of Ecuador for the 'Best Foreign Language Film' category of the 77th Academy Awards in 2005, it was produced by Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) This is John Leguizamo’s first film in Spanish. He said he felt awkward talking in Spanish while acting, like he didn't know the language. 

English Language Horror

The Silent House (2011) This is in English

Rotten Tomatoes: 43%

Audience Score: 

Google Score: 72%

IMDb: 5.3/10

Critics Consensus: Silent House is more technically proficient and ambitious than most fright-fests, but it also suffers from a disappointing payoff.

Description: Sarah is working with her father and uncle to renovate an old family home to prepare it for sale. Long vacant, the house has no utilities, forcing the trio to rely on battery-operated lanterns to light their way. Sarah becomes separated from her relatives and soon finds she is trapped inside the cabin, with no contact with the outside world. Panic turns to real terror as the young woman experiences events that become increasingly ominous.

Trivia: Elizabeth Olsen (Wandavision) The plot is based on a true story that occurred in the 1940s in a small village in Uruguay. Contrary to the marketing's claim that the film was shot in one uninterrupted take, the entire movie was actually shot to mimic one continuous real-time take, with no cuts from start to finish, as a result the time span of the film's plot is exactly 86 minutes. It was shot in roughly 10 minute segments then carefully edited to hide the cuts.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) - This along with the rest of the Dead series are the work of George A. Romero, whose father is from Cuba.

Ash vs. Evil Dead - I love the Evil Dead movies and although this series wasn’t perfect (I’m sure die-hard fans will say it's far from it), I still think it kept to the heart of the main story. Bruce Campbell is obviously perfect and the addition of Lucy Lawless is amazing, it’s really Puerto Rican actor Ray Santiago that steals the show.

The Others (2001) - Directed by globally renowned Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar, The Others starring Nicole Kidman is a Spanish gothic horror movie that combines elements of the supernatural, psychological, and mystical. It focuses on the strange events that occur at the estate of a woman and her young children, plagued by spirits in the aftermath of WWII. It has the distinction of being the only English-language Spanish movie to be given the Best Film Award at Spain's national film awards, the Goyas. In total, the movie has seven Goya Awards, including for Best Director. Although it might not read as particularly “Spanish,” it was produced, written and filmed all in Spain, shooting in Cantabria, Northern Spain and Madrid.

[mudstoneabyss]

do u have a list of all the desert bluffs episodes/ all the ones with kevin in them? id like to listen to them again! 💖

19a & b - The Sandstorm

43 - The Visitor (he's not heavily featured just does an ad)

44 - Cookies (has lauren, again not heavily featured)

47 - Company Picnic

48 - Renovations

49 - Old Oak Doors parts A & B

65 - Voicemail

70a - Taking Off

73 - Triptych

90 - Who's A Good Boy? Part 2 (Kevin has a bonus after the credits of the episode)

100 - Toast

120 - All Smiles' Eve

135-137 - The Mudstone Abyss

(Then Kevin's in The Debate liveshow and has a bonus for The Investigators, and is in multiple Patreon Q&A eps, Lauren is in one Q&A ep. Kevin's also talked about in It Devours!)

[wtnvproverbs]

Feeling lost? Like you have no goal in life? Like you're covered in dirt and wet leaves? Like you're an earthworm? Are you an earthworm? Kinda sounds like you're an earthworm, actually.

Renovations