#i went on his wiki to see if there was a physical description and i did NOT expect to see a sentence so short

[altargarden]

me upon reading the line "anubis was heavily worshipped because, despite modern beliefs, he gave the people hope."

[antariies]

how to build a chair........... director's cut ∠( ᐛ 」∠)__ this is about to be a very long very self-indulgent post where i just talk about my own writing. i also doodled on all the pages i think it makes the whole thing more fun to go thru. welcome to my ted talk

SIKE before i begin. credit where credit is due, this post was the start of it all. it changed my brain chemistry my jaw was dropped i was in awe i was obsessed and before i even finished it i knew that i would eventually have to make something similar for the commander or else i would be cursed to think about it for the rest of my life. and i Was cursed for like two years every day i would just be like........ is today the day i sit down and draft the commander chair fic of my dreams....... maybe tomorrow......

and then i got accepted as a writer for the gw2 zine ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ the chair idea was actually my backup option in case my first idea didn't pan out, and thank god it didn't, bc this one worked so much better. (still working on my initial idea, just turning it into a full fic! it was wayyy too long to be a zine submission.)

this is the chair i used. i downloaded the assembly instructions and tried out a bunch of different free pdf editors until i found one i liked, which ended up being sedja. if anyone's interested in doing something like this, i recommend printing out the pdf and writing directly on it! it was a lot easier for me to just figure out everything on paper first and then digitalize it after :P here's a picture of my physical copy

okay actually getting into it for real this time !!!!!

1. yeah i could've just erased the ikea logo and left a blank space but then i realized i could turn it into an in-universe joke. and then i ran with it.

2. i ripped this straight from the product description on the website. thanks ikea

3. i'm not sure if anyone went and looked it up, but it's a real item code!

hehe :3c

4. if your commander willingly goes to therapy i'm happy for them but TO ME? you'd have to drag the commander kicking and screaming. it's not that they don't know that something is wrong with them, they know, and they know YOU know. you're just never supposed to talk about it. they don't look at their own psych eval results bc that's none of their business.

5. i normally avoid specifying the commander's race when i write them bc i enjoy the challenge, but for the zine i was assigned to write about a norn commander! as a human main i was uhhhh very ill-equipped. but that just meant i had to study up on my norn lore (•̀ᴗ•́)و i spent hours on the wiki, then went around interviewing norn mains for their opinions, which was great fun :D it all helped me narrow the focus of my piece: joining the war on commander objectification on the side of commander objectification (ㅅ´ ˘ `)♡ and no one self-aggrandizes quite like the norn commander!

and to balance that i knew my narrator had to be patronizing as shitttt. they've clearly been following the commander since the beginning and seem to know a lot of intimate details about their life, despite not thinking very highly of them. wonder who that could be :3c

6. i can't stop making references. so the original part number is actually #122620 in the manual but i've changed it here (and on the previous page!) to #082812, as in 08/28/12, the date gw2 was released! no real reason for it, @dalennaugw suggested it for funsies and i liked it. if you're my pal and i show you a wip and you have a cool idea for it, chances are i Will put that shit in. hi dale if you're reading this

7. another thing about me. i loveeee repetition. here the word "over" is repeated four times to match the picture. honestly a lot of the creative process for this piece was just staring at the pages and figuring out how to tie the pictures to the commander in ways that weren't extremely corny or trite. idk why i enjoy writing like this when i could be frolicking in the beautiful prosaic meadows of a word doc instead but. it's like i see a tiny little restrictive box and i'm like OH BOY can't wait to think inside of that thing!!! i like when the format matters just as much as the content and in some cases informs the content. am i making any sense here. well all you need to know is that i'm a virgo and my favorite book is house of leaves

7. aw fuck just realized i wrote 7 twice. whatever i'm not changing it this is 7 part two now. the theme of my piece is glory, what it means to the norn commander, and how far they're willing to go for it.

8. does norn culture place emphasis on seeking individual glory Yes are norn also very community-oriented Also Yes. i think it's common to see norn kids napping together in a big pile, usually after they've worn themselves out playing games outside. it makes sense practically (apes together warm) and socially (pack bonding good) but that's just my hc. growing up i used to share a bed with my cousins all the time so it's normal to me.

a young, naive not-yet-commander, with no real combat experience, has no point of reference to compare a "blaze of glory" to. but the way everyone talks about it, it must be a good thing. a wonderful thing. a reward fit for a life well-fought and a legend hard-earned. so they imagine it must feel like falling asleep surrounded by the people they love, who love them in turn.

9. .........i was playing a lot of ace attorney when i wrote this page. i wish i was joking 👍🏼

10. ohhh shit the truth come OUT this whole chair thing was all a ploy just so i could write about the departing. again.

will i ever stop thinking about her. reply hazy, try again later.

11. out of all the pages, this one has the most emphasis on text placement, like comparing the enlarged picture of the screw to a sword, the numbers counting the screws, and "up up up" being arranged to mimic a wisp of smoke.

i also wanted to lean into the viking/norse mythology influences with my word choice.

12. more nods to norn culture. i didn't know they referred to the six human gods as "spirits of action" until i was doing the research for this piece :O

and the domain of the lost is called a hall of ghosts....... cause valhalla.....

13.

i'm sorry this so funnyyy. SAYS the guy who literally clawed their way back to life for a rematch.

me when i'm in a sore loser competition and my opponent is the COMMANDER!!!

14. arms as in "limbs" and also arms as in "armaments" :•]

15. haha get it because the picture makes it look like there are two mirrored speech bubbles while the text paints two opposing interpretations of the norn commander. one that's selfless and humble versus one that's selfish and vainglorious.

16. and the best part is IT DOESN'T MATTER which one is true bc at the end of the day no matter what their motivation, balthazar is dead by their hand. ofc i'm of the opinion that the most compelling interpretation of the commander is both, simultaneously. contradictions are good for the soul.

17. i could've name-dropped kas, the only person present that would do something like that, but i felt it was better to leave it ambiguous.

18. low-hanging fruit. the metaphor was so obvious here but i had to do it. for the culture

19. the alternate title for this piece was "THIS COULD BE GLORY". "how to build a chair" was only supposed to be a placeholder title til i figured out a better one, but the innocuousness of it grew on me. also i came up with the other one too late and had already advertised under the chair title lol

20. my first instinct was to end it with something more reassuring, like "what you have built so far is enough" but that would've been an ooc switch-up for a narrator who has been nothing but snide and detached this whole time. gotta stick to my guns

21.

obligatory chair joke as the last line. for realsies though it’s meant to be an earnest appeal to the commander to take a break, to have a seat, but it’s also a challenge. are they willing to lean on their friends? are the bonds they’ve forged strong enough to hold their weight? are they willing to put their faith in someone else’s hands? are they brave enough to try? well. only one way to find out.

also guess what that wasn’t even the real last page of the manual. it's THIS

but no way i was letting this be the image we ended on. IT LOOKS LIKE A DICK AND BALLS!!!

and on that note, THANK YOU if you made it this far!! a very special shout-out to @hawkepockets, my lovely boyfriend and beta reader, without whom this piece would not be nearly as polished. i would bring him pages to look over and he would say Scrap half of those lines you can do better than that. kill your darlings. i would complain and argue for a few minutes then we would revise. rinse and repeat until we had honed this thing to perfection. i can't stress enough the importance of having a second pair of eyes on your work throughout your creative process, even better if it's someone who challenges you. i don't even pay him 🫶🏼

and if there was anything i didn't cover that you still have questions about, please feel free to shoot me an ask! (ㅅ´ ˘ `)♡ thanks for reading! see u later dudes ;P

[alchemistoftheend]

Across the Street (Case #0070107)

Pre-Statement

Statement of Amy Patel, regarding the alleged disappearance of her acquaintance Graham Folger

Original statement given July 1st, 2007

Date of Event: April 7, 2006

Statement

At the time of the incident(s), Amy found herself riding the same bus home as Graham

They both got off at the same stop and walked home. During the walk, Amy fell into the road, resulting in a concussion

She went to Graham’s flat to recover, he lived across the street, opposite of her own flat

Amy saw the hooks of a window box and when she asked him what he grew, he looked confused

Amy looked again and the hooks were gone, with no sign of it ever existing

Got “hypnotized” by an ornate wooden table

“with a snaking pattern of lines weaving their way around towards the centre, where there was a small square hole”

“The pattern shifted as I watched it, like an optical illusion”

something is suppose to go in the center; Graham doesn’t know what

“I saw him take one of his notebooks and start to tear out the pages one at a time. And then, slowly and deliberately, he ate them” ????????

he was constantly on edge, and jumped every time any loud noise passed on the street below, he spent a lot of time staring at the table

On April 7th, after work she was watching Graham and saw something (she initially mistaken for a pipe) clamber into Graham’s window.

“it was long, straight, dark”

“I was looking at an arm, a long, thin arm”

“As it bent the joint close to where the arm ended, I think I saw another joint further down, also moving, and bending what I can only assume were elbows”

“It shifted. Like when you stare at one of those old magic eye paintings and you change from seeing one picture into seeing another.

“I just saw these… arms, legs? they kind of folded themselves through the window in a flash of mottled grey. I think that was the colour – it was mostly a silhouette”

The moment it was inside, the lights im the flat went out, and the window slammed behind it.

The person (answering the door) was not Graham

He was shorter and had a long, square face topped with curly blond hair

Not-Graham looked out of his window directly at Amy, grinned, and closed the curtain

a wide, staring eyes met mine and a cold, toothy smile“

Not-Graham threw out the notebooks

OG Graham was completely erased

the video is getting some interference as Jon reads what Not-Graham said to Amy

“Isn’t it funny, Amy, how you can live so near and never notice. I’ll need to return the visit someday”

Post-Statement/Thoughts

apparently Tim is a little shit 😏

They managed to find one of Graham’s notebooks

It just says the same thing on every page: the words “Keep Watching” over and over again

I’m going to be watching new episode, as well as catch up on notes for old eps

This blond curly haired man matched Sasha’s description of Micheal in ep 27

The long, thin hand motif is a constant with the fears? entities? anomalies

Also these creatures are yet again being referred to as blank “a silhouette” as Amy put it

Micheal as far as we know was able to distort reality, and erased the existence of OG Graham entirely

Graham was on edge, maybe he knew that he was being taken over or at least aware that something was wrong

That table was also mentioned a lot

It was label as hypnotic/an optical illusion

maybe it’s related to Micheal

the keep watching message, more to the eye motif

i really need a list of all the entities so that i’m not rely on the wiki so often

if i had to guess i’d say

The Stranger: matchups in physical description and almost human, uncanny figures

The Eye: Amy stalks Graham throughout this episode, Micheal kept staring at Amy towards the end of the ep, and OG Graham writes “Keep Watching” in his notebook

[ladyhindsight]

Something I just realized,

In TMI, the few important female characters are: Clary, Isabelle, Maia and Aline.

Clary: green eyes and red hair

Isabelle, Maia, Aline: dark hair and eyes

Incidentally Isabelle and Aline are set up as Clary's "competition" when it comes to beauty and male attention.

(The only other female character with light hair and eyes is Jocelyn who, as Clary's mom, is no competition at all and on the other hand serves the role to show where Clary got her beauty 🙄 I think even Lily and Maureen, the vampires, have dark eyes)

As for the boys,

Jace: gold hair and eyes

Alec: black hair, blue eyes

Magnus: black hair, green eyes

Interesting how male characters have eyes of different light colors, but female characters have dark hair and eyes...

as to not outshine Clary????

Even more interesting, Jace's "competition" are Simon and Sebastian... both with dark hair and eyes (only later on will Sebastian change hair).

Light hair and eyes: protagonists and a few other (male) characters

Dark hair and eyes: competition for the protagonists, and villains

CC really thinks that brown/black hair and eyes are bland and unattractive, and will give them to the female characters around the beautiful speshul protagonist, because gods forbid someone be actually prettier than her! (and in CCs mind light eyes = pretty)

In TID, Sophie has brown hair and eyes, Charlotte has red hair but brown eyes, Jessamine has blonde hair but brown eyes... Tessa is the only one with light eyes (gray).

Will ofc has blue eyes and black hair. And since Jem couldn't play the role of competition with bland, unattractive dark hair and eyes, CC changed his hair to white (but left his eyes dark, because Will must be the prettiest boy always!).

In TDA CC won't stop talking about the Blackthorns blue-green-whateverthefuck eyes. Emma is Jace's female version and her moral support, token poc is Christina, with brown hair and eyes.

And so now in TLH where CC finally has main characters who are poc... of course she gives them improbable light eyes and light hair. Something must balance out the fact that they're not white, after all!

Can't have an MC with dark skin, eyes and hair. Even white people are boring and ugly like that!! A poc would be just horrible!

(I'm black btw just in case this sounds racist lol I'm in no way agreeing with this, just trying to see things for CC's point of view!)

Fucking hell.

It's also evident from the fact that Clare finds gazillion ways to wax poetry about Jace's eyes, Will's eyes, James' eyes, Blackthorn eyes, Alec's eyes, Magnus's eyes, whatever eyes that are not dark. And hair. God fuck the hair.

This and the messages about Cassandra Jean's art got me thinking about the coloring of Clare's characters. I did a dive into the Shadowhunter wikipedia where I could find lists of all the Shadowhunters who'd been illustrated by Jean (flower cards, tarot cards etc.). I made tables of all the Nephilim characters that had an illustration made by Jean and then picked each color used in said illustrations and compared them to the physical descriptions Clare had written about them.

I went a bit overboard, maybe, but here's what I figured:

Each table contains the members of one major family in the series, except the last one in which I've compiled all the miscellaneous characters. The gist is, each column list the skin, hair, and eye color of each character. The "descent" one is a bit arbitrary in the sense that is roughly gives the idea from where around the world the family or parents of any particular character is from.

Each background color is picked from the art made by Cassandra Jean. A white background means that there wasn't art available that had any color from which to lift. Any color in italics has not been listed in the physical description on the wiki pages, and they are based on the color picked from the illustrations. Otherwise each color has been stated by Clare in some form or another and also found on the wiki pages.

Proceeding alphabetically, the first one is the Blackthorn family.

Looking pretty white here. I've written white in cursive as Clare never really describes her white character as "white" rather than pale and ivory and those are the only two words she has used that I can come up with.

With the exception to Andrew and Arthur and maybe Tavvy, all of the Blackthorn children are in major roles in The Dark Artifices, from main to supporting and switching in-between.

Cartairs family is the only one that stands out compared to the other major Shadowhunter families. What stands extremely well out too is Cordelia's skin color which Clare describes as brown but Jean has colored very light. The picture of Cordelia in the article is brown-skinned but it was also made by another artist. There were quite a few illustrations of Cordelia by Jean where her skin was light. I don't know how old the art is, but it seems this is where retconning Cordelia's heritage can be seen.

All white-skinned and green-eyed. Red hair with the exception of Matthew who is blond. Also Matthew's eye color kept changing in every illustration except the new, more contemporary ones made by other artists. All of these members of the family are also important characters in their respectable series.

There is a theme going on here...

Some of the Lightwoods have served antagonistic roles, but it's interesting to note that, as you said earlier, Isabelle as Clary's competition and Benedict as an overall bastard both have dark eyes.

Barbara and Eugenia both had illustrations made of them but neither had any physical description, hence both their rows are in italics.

Yep, yep.

Here the colors don't match to their descriptions. Jaime's hair is the wrong color, Cristina's eyes are too light, and they all have the same skin color in the illustrations when they are described been darker in color.

There were plenty of the Shadowhunter characters, but the ones that did not include didn't either have illustration made by Cassandra Jean, the only thing described about them was hair or eye color, or they were minor characters. For instance, some of the Centurions and Clave members that have made an appearance but lack proper description or character.

There is 75 characters listed here in total. All of them are more or less notable in the series (or several stories) they appear in. Of those 75 characters at least 57 were European descent. That's over 75% of the characters. I can't also help but notice that the characters belonging to other minor families are mostly dark-haired and dark-eyed whereas most of the characters in Blackthorn-Fairchild-Herondale-Lightwood-Morgenstern axis have light colored eyes and more variety in hair color.

3 of the 75 characters were half-faerie but all with light complexion

1 of the 75 characters were of Middle Eastern origin

2 of the 75 characters were half Middle Eastern and half European descent

5 of the 75 characters were of Asian origin

2 of the 75 characters were half-Asian, both also half-white

1 of the 75 characters is unknown (Beatriz Mendoza, couldn't find info anywhere)

1 of the 75 was African

3 of the 75 characters were Latin Americans

That is pretty fucking little.

When comparing the final table to the other ones, Clare's bias becomes obvious. Like you said, dark hair and dark eyes combined seems less worth page time. Also you can see that Clare doesn't really describe her white characters as white, like I previously said, which means she could get away by saying, imagine it however you like. Only if it weren't for Jean's art that's pretty official anyway that this whole thing unravels and fast.

I also did list warlocks, vampires, werewolves, and faerie characters that had illustrations or adequate physical descriptions, but they were far more patchy and the info was far more scarce than with the Nephilim. And what does that really say about Clare and her Downworld characters. 🙄

[lucky-sevens]

mechs deep lore compilation post

so! maybe you’ve read the other compilation post i made of basic lore/how to get into the mechs! maybe you want to know more! or maybe you’re a fan already and want to see how deep down this rabbit hole you can get!

well, good news for you: i have gone down the rabbit hole and hit bedrock only to find maki yamazaki standing by my side with a pickaxe! it is time for mechs lore part 2: electric boogaloo also known as ‘wow blue have you considered sleep’

rest under the cut!

i’ve tried to organize this, but given how many random facts there are, it’s hard! decided to start off with lore for each character (in order of them joining the mechs in-universe), including all the carmilla lore at the end; then move into general world lore/a bit of album lore, and finally more obscure/unknown facts, such as explaining the whole scuzz thing! also, citing the sources has been difficult, as a lot of things are from, say, old twitter posts and the like. there might be less links here than you all would like, but bear with me- compiling all this lore is quite difficult!

disclaimer: unlike stuff like the wiki, this includes a lot of my own theories and red stringing, and while i’m noting if something’s fanon or canon, the fanon may occasionally make its way into my theories!

links to the songs will be mostly TheVoidSings’ youtube lyric videos, as i don’t want to find the links to all the different platforms they’re on and the videos are lovely and accessible!

also- i’ve done some significant editing on the mechanisms wiki, as have other talented people- go check it out! it’s a good source of lore!

now on w/ the actual post!

crew

jonny d’ville

his lore is fairly concrete, but since he’s an unreliable narrator, we don’t know what bits can be trusted! his backstory song is one eyed jacks, which gives a pretty clear picture of events, but here in his crew bio he says that he made up new texas, and doesn’t have a very good memory of events in general. (it’s implied that he didn’t lie about killing his father, but we don’t even know that for sure.) a note: unlike the others, we don’t know what happened to his heart in order for him to be mechanized.

the aurora

the aurora’s lore is a mess. here’s what we know for sure, which is an edited version of what i have on her wiki page, (where i have also given a list of her known physical attributes);

she started off as a moon, but was weaponized and turned into a ship. she initially was a navy ship, but mutinied and joined the rebellion, participating in the october revolution, in which nastya died and was mechanized. this may have been her choice, but it is more likely that carmilla and/or jonny forced her into it, as they are the ones who won her from the cyberian navy.

when they stormed the ship, a woman was trapped inside- specialist 278 tereshkova, presumably aurora's programmer. What her and aurora's relationship was like is unknown, but aurora did not make any attempt to save her, so it may have not been positive. before dying, tereshkova managed to program a final distress message into aurora, as well as coding the mechanisms' blog.

she’s likely to be based off of the historical battleship aurora, like nastya is based off of the historical russian princess anastasia.

now, it’s time to get into the main theory about her: that aurora used to be briar rose! i’m collecting all the evidence on it, as well as all the evidence that can disprove it.

here’s a refresher on briar rose’s whole deal, taken from ‘the aurora strikes’-

The Rose Reds were the most effective of the soldiers created from Rose's genetic material, but they were not the first. Rumours spoke of an early prototype, known as the Briar Rose, that had malfunctioned and slain everyone on the desert moon of Briar, where she was being grown. But she was not dead. As the Mechanisms discovered, instead, she slept, at the heart of the defence grid that surrounded New Constantinople. The grid was composed of Thorn-class gun emplacements and was virtually impenetrable. And in its centre, the Briar Rose slumbered, plugged into the system, her anger, her rage, her hatred and her fear, fueling the machines, and focusing their gun turrets.

the main support for the theory here is that over time, briar rose could have fused to the moon, which is one of the very few conditions in which a biomechanical weaponized moon seems plausible and not just like a collection of vaguely cursed words. however, in the fiction ‘by any other name’, which is some collected lab research on briar rose, there’s this line- “During transportation and integration of the specimen, take all precaution and care.”- key word here being transportation. so she must have been moved off the moon.

the fiction i cited to disprove the theory actually has something that further supports it, though- the presence of a mysterious woman in king cole’s lab, who could be carmilla. hood, the revolution’s hacker, notes on a picture of her ‘[No idea. The others I’ve been able to find evidence of, but she’s a fucking ghost]‘. the description is a bit off, though, as she’s described as a short, pale, woman with hair long enough to be pulled back and carmilla is quite tall and has short hair- as well, in a later part of the fiction, the woman is killed and does not revive. however, there’s also another who could plausibly be her, noted here- ‘A tall woman sits opposite Prof. Root with a tray of her own. From her stature, it is conceivable she was one of the figures in the chemical suits. They talk sporadically, but the audio is heavily corrupted.’ she isn’t one of the ones killed later on, either, so that’s possible.

we know carmilla knew aurora when she was a very young moon and raised her practically from birth, so if she is one of those two people, it would make sense.

in ‘the aurora strikes’, aurora pushes to save briar rose- nastya explains this as ‘she can not bear to see another biomechanical organism in pain’. in my own writing about aurora, i interpret that as her having very high empathy, but there could be a more personal connection here. this is also notable as the only time aurora is mentioned in-album beyond jonny calling the mechanisms ‘the crew of the starship aurora’.

nastya rasputina

nastya’s backstory song (cyberian demons) was only performed when they were still dr. carmilla and the mechanisms, so it’s harder to find! thevoidsings has made a lyric video of it here, though, and it gives another very clear picture of her backstory! there’s also the fiction of the same name, which i didn’t understand upon first read-through but is basically a nastya character study, covering different points in her immortal life.

her performer went on hiatus for a while, and as an in-universe explanation, the cyberian sequence was written! in which nastya flies aurora to cyberia, infects herself with a computer virus, and transmits it to the entire planet, causing it to explode. this is all in the cyberian demons fiction i linked above, and with it are two other tangential fictions- one presumably just before those events, and one that’s an outsider pov.

there’s also out, which i’d suggest reading rather than just looking at my summary; basically, nastya has a crisis over aurora changing so that it’s harder to recognize her love, and ends up leaving the ship to float away into deep space- this is presumed to be her death, but that is never confirmed and nastya seems to assume she will wake up at some point.

ashes o’reilly

ashes’ whole deal is quite straightforward, which is a nice break from aurora and (to a lesser extent) nastya! their backstory song is lucky sevens, and it’s elaborated on further in their crew bio; interestingly, ashes was the one most into the idea of immortality at first, and also gave clear consent to carmilla.

ivy alexandria

we don’t know that much about ivy, which is fitting, as she doesn’t either! the most clear information we can find about her is in her crew bio, which can be summarized as: she grew up in a library!

archive footage explains more about her memory situation. she has no memories of anything before she was mechanized, according to this line ‘[...] she can tell you dates, and places, and body counts, she can list for you the exact circumstances of each event of her long, long life (at least, every event since that time, long ago, among a maze of bookshelves in a library that, awake, she can no longer describe to you, though once she knew its every turn by heart, when a woman stood over her and offered her eternity: before that, there is nothing at all).’ she also processes her memories differently than most people- they’re more like records, instead of things that affect her emotionally. (archive footage is also beautifully written and very much worth reading!)

the toy soldier

would say it has concrete lore, but it’s also almost solely responsible for fucking up my timeline and the album lore, so i’m rather angry at it. nevertheless, its entire backstory can be found in the fiction ‘the story of the toy soldier’. additionally, there’s a short story about its time fighting in the revolution of once upon a time (in space); presumably, this is the first time it did so, though it was likely in the war at least twice and possibly even three times. the mechanisms were only watching the second time, though it’s not out of character for it to have participated in the war again, and there’s also the dr. carmilla song, eleven, (which is about a war and uses a lot of rose symbology so it’s likely the revolution) where it is present. notably, carmilla had left the mechanisms by the time once upon a time (in space) takes place on their timeline, and the toy soldier is the only one there. at first, i interpreted that as carmilla meeting the toy soldier before it had met the mechanisms, but there’s two inconsistencies there: firstly, it doesn’t recognize her when it joins the band, and secondly, in the song they leave together. this increases the likelihood of it having been in the war three times.

we actually have a recording of the toy soldier’s first time joining the band- the mechanisms @ lashings! (part one / part two / transcript) there’s also a note of that show in the story of the toy soldier! they bought it because jonny was in jail (x). interestingly, that show is the first recording of rose red, and it’s later noted jonny was in a rose red prison!

now it’s time to get into the main theory regarding it, which also will factor into the write-up of ulysses dies at dawn later! i personally subscribe to this theory, or at least, most of it.

here is frankie @byron-von-raum‘s post- the theory here is that the toy soldier is the rebodied mind of the widow’s fiance. i’m not going to get too into that part, as i don’t personally incorporate it into my lore and more importantly frankie already has a post on it! read that if you’re more interested!

the most important bit here is the evidence it collects regarding the toy soldier living near labyrinth; in one of the pictures from the toy soldier’s backstory, there’s a dionysus brand wine bottle. the consensus he comes to is that the toy soldier lives in a colony of earth that trades with labyrinth, and while i think that’s possible, the all-encompassing nature of the city makes it more likely that they would have a minimum of outside communication, so the toy soldier would just be from the city proper. i will get into the impacts of this/expand on it more in the world lore section!

another thing: the angel has an out of character explanation! if you look at photos of old mechs gigs, jessica law looks similar to the drawing of the angel in the story of the toy soldier! their voice being stolen was most likely a reference to that.

drumbot brian

brian’s backstory is laid out in his crew bio! i’d summarize it, but to be honest, it’s already a summary, so i’d suggest just taking a second to read that! sadly, this is all of what we know about it. the priest from his backstory was apparently made almost immortal in some twisted form of mechanization, and has never forgiven brian for it/is still trying to hunt him down (x).

his bio is also where his morality switch is introduced! (interestingly, it takes a far lower role/is mentioned far less in canon than in fanworks.)

there was originally going to be a backstory album about him called indistinguishable from magic. this never happened, but ben below is working on a new one called the wanderings of drumbot brian! no more knowledge on this currently. 

the main theory about him is that he had some kind of alliance/is lying about something to do with carmilla! we know from maki that carmilla didn’t go out of the airlock (more on that in her section), and when brian is questioned on what happened to her, he doesn’t give a concrete answer. this is in contrast to all the other mechanisms, who assume she fell out an airlock. here’s what he said:

I will not point fingers and lay blame. I do not know how it came to pass that Dr. Carmilla left this vessel, whether by fair means or foul, and so I will not engage in this painful discussion. I hope she did not suffer, and that we may forgive the perpetrator of this deed.

he’s speaking very formally here. (fucking nerd). well, no; legitimately, this is not the normal way he speaks in other contexts. he could be masking something. we know that even when he’s lying, he’s not good at it, and this comes off as clearly odd. in support of this, i believe one of the songs on his unwritten backstory album was called ‘the doctor’s demise’ (though i could be remembering incorrectly).

there’s not much more evidence we can draw on here to come to a consensus, though!

something else to note- i’ve written this other meta about his prophetic powers! feel free to read if you’re interested in that aspect of his character!

gunpowder tim

of course, tim already has a whole mini-album to himself (gunpowder tim vs the moon kaiser), but there’s a couple more niche things about him, though not as much as aurora and ts!

mainly, the implications that he destroyed the sun. there’s an old mechanisms tweet that states he 'was floating in the wake of a detonated star’. additionally, there’s this old blog post, which turned into a bit of a fiction! the figure speaking is not named, but given the other mechanisms who speak (therefore knocking them off the possibilities list) and the fact that the post was made around the time tim joined, it’s likely that it’s him. now, he says this:

“It wasn’t the deep space that drove me crazy,” he said, his voice low, calm and polite.  “It was the sudden realisation that I was entirely responsible for the destruction of my entire civilisation, and happy for it.”

though destroying the moon and his other actions in gptvtmk could possibly count for this, it would fit more if he had destroyed the sun.

both those posts also imply that he was floating in space for an incredibly long time. i don’t know how he survived if so, but it seems very likely that’s what happened.

i considered these posts being too early/having a changed canon now, like the odd use of different pronouns for some characters in the earlier fiction, but they seemed to have gunpowder tim vs the moon kaiser mostly worked out by the time tim ledsam officially joined, as they perform it at the only recorded gig from that year with him (port mahon 2011), which was around when the second blog post was made!

marius von raum

we don’t have a written backstory or backstory song to go on for him, but kofi young (his performer) is working on a full album about him called ‘the death of byron von raum’!

the blog post kofi made about it as a summary is the main source of marius lore that we have! i’d highly suggest reading it, but the main points are:

1. it’s going to be very dark and tragic, and shows that marius at heart isn’t really the kind of comedic figure that he comes off as in the band! ruth @thedreadvampy (the mechanisms’ official artist, as well as morgan’s sister and kofi’s partner) has also made a tumblr post that connects to this!

2. the world he’s from used to be high-tech, but has devolved over time into 18th century levels of technology! what this boils down to is; what we assume is marius and an unknown friend (more on this in raphaella’s part) manage to discover ancient technology and attempt to use it! all we have here is this quote om the blog post- ‘In the middle of this, two kids hiding from the soldiers discover an army of ancient mecha and use them to fight back, but only end up plunging the world into further chaos.’.

3. anime protagonist marius!

we also have this small piece of writing, screenshotted here (monogoggle...)-

[image id: a screenshot of writing, most of it out of view/hard to make out. it’s also in the middle of the line, so the breaks are off. however, it looks to say ‘at the controls of RISML/cockpit is cramped and d[...]/has his monogoggle over his/controls are uncomplicated/the neural interface. They [...]’ end id.]

raphaella la cognizi

i’ve been very deep down the mechs rabbit hole for over a month now, and yet i’ve found hardly anything about her!

there’s a small theory i have, though it doesn’t have too much supporting evidence! in marius’ backstory, it mentions two kids, and raphaella and marius joined together (first mention of either of them is together, in this facebook post!) when questioned about marius and raphaella, nastya says a story instead of stories (x). (that post also clarifies that carmilla was not involved in either raphaella or marius’ backstories!) this could potentially point to raphaella being the other person from marius’ backstory. the evidence against it is that if raphaella featured that heavily, r. l. hughes would have said something about the album as well instead of it just being kofi talking about marius, but it’s still interesting to think about!

there’s also a theory that she was the preacher’s daughter from brian’s backstory, but the only real evidence there is that she could have used his tech to mechanize herself (which her doing is only fanon!) and that she performs ‘lost in the cosmos’.

dr carmilla

this is most likely going to be the shortest section, as it’s basically another crew member; that being said, there’s a lot of lore here!

if you haven’t listened to the carmilla albums, i’d really suggest doing that! there’s two- exhumed and (un)plugged and ageha prototype edition! the story there is harder to put together than in the mechs backstories, especially because the songs are mostly out of order, so i’ve decided to just straight up summarize my interpretation, along with what we have to go on from maki, instead of framing it like a theory, as that’s the easiest way! still, please bear all this with a grain of salt- it’s most likely to be contradicted in the new album maki is working on.

carmilla and her girlfriend loreli lived on a planet called terra. for their childhoods, it was a fairly okay place to live (though i elaborate on this a bit in the world lore section!) however, it was bombed; most likely taking the role of an alternate universe hiroshima, as the blurb on her bandcamp says ‘Dr. Carmilla tells the twisted tales of a dystopian future following WWII having ended very differently.‘ after this, the planet sunk into a nuclear winter.

loreli got sick and died; or, she should have, but carmilla saved her by turning her into a vampire as well. this resulted in loreli losing her morals and becoming abusive towards carmilla. carmilla was too deep in love to see this, and stayed in the relationship for several years.

we don’t know what happened to make her strike out on her own, but eventually she did, and created the mechanisms. while with them, she recognized her own failures with loreli, and left the mechanisms (which they all believe was caused by jonny d’ville pushing her out an airlock, rather than her own volition.)

from there, she traveled back in time to the point where loreli was dying, and let it happen- potentially burying herself and loreli alive, which she survived due to her immortality and loreli did not.

however, she was trapped underground for a hundred years. when she is finally found and dug out, she starts enjoying herself (i.e. committing murder). for some unknown reason, she clones herself multiple times, creating the in-universe version of maki yamazaki.

the mechanisms assume she pursued them after she was pushed out of the airlock, and that that was what eleven was about, but i’m not sure why she would do that, given that she left them of her own volition. because of time shenanigans, it could have been far later on her personal timeline; maybe she simply wished to reconnect with them after all those years.

that’s all we have; we don’t know if she died, or anything like that!

world lore

all the folktales and normal history the irl mechs work off of also exist in-universe! (for an example- the toy soldier and ivy start reciting the walrus and the carpenter together in lashings, and the mechs also do alice in wonderland as a song.)

we know the alternate universe theory is correct, mostly because of this piece in the fiction on kofi’s blog-

In those burning instants, he’d feel the weight of it all, and know it was true. The golden age that never came; the city that stood at the dawn of a world instead of in its dying embers. And beyond – to a myriad of Camelots and a thousand thousand Arthurs, unfathomable worlds apart, each different, each fighting the same hopeless battle.

He’d feel the burden of that task pressing down until it felt like it’d crush his chest, and he’d wake every day gasping for breath, feeling older than he ever had, older even than Ector.

And as he screamed inwardly, Galahad would meet his gaze with those crazed eyes of his and grin, and Arthur would know again that whatever had spoken to Galahad was moving him too.

the mechanisms are most likely traveling between several alternate universe versions of folktales, and occasionally alternate versions of earth! (cyberia, tim’s earth, terra...) this is likely why everyone in their stories is human, and is actually low-key evidence against drawing them as aliens (though ofc feel free to have fun!)

i was initially going to put all the album lore in its own separate sections, but a large amount of it is how it intersects with other pieces of lore, and the rest isn’t necessarily niche enough to cite here? my personal advice is that if you want to learn more about the albums, read the fiction! i have a compilation post of all the fiction up on this blog, and you can find it on the website here!

let’s start with the mechanisms’ roles in ulysses dies at dawn, though! we know for sure ashes is hades, brian is the oracle of delphi, and the toy soldier was a nymph (which is actually quite worrying, considering what that means and the inherent issues with consent there, but i digress.) tim most likely took on the role of achilles (more on that here). then, we know some of the mechanisms’ activities and can guess their roles from that. raphaella was helping athena on her research, marius was psychoanalyzing the olympians, and jonny was committing mass murder. it’s a common theory that one (or three) of the mechanisms was cerberus, but sadly i couldn’t find any evidence towards or against that.

i said in the toy soldier’s section that i would talk more about the implications of it being from labyrinth here! the main thing is the fact that, for it to join the rose red war, the city must have interacted with king cole at some point. it’s a risky thing to pose a theory on the toy soldier’s allegiance towards a certain group, but the fact that it seemed to stick with the rose reds here might also mean that the city was, in fact, under king cole’s power. this fits in nicely with the greek mythology aspect of it all; king cole, in that universe, could have been a stand-in for the figure of kronos/saturn!

a few other theories on how the lore intersects:

1. high noon over camelot takes place after the bifrost incident! in terminus, we see communication breaking down, and that could have been the reason the station was isolated. the mechanisms go from it to the bifrost incident, but as they canonically travel in time, that’s not enough to disprove the theory!

2. arthur becomes king cole eventually! this is mostly going off of the fact he’s called ‘the once and future king’, but also the fact that cole used to be considered a good king.

a few loose pieces of worldbuilding:

people from new constantinople seem to be longer lived, and their culture is built around age as a concept. the older you are, the more wise and important you are. specifically, in this fiction, snow is dismissively noted as ‘barely fifty’ and king cole’s age is held up as evidence to why he’s a good ruler.

terra, carmilla’s planet, has two major languages; high terran and low terran! high terran is a more regulated, formal way of speaking, specifically something that only the rich and privileged tend to know. there are many dialects, but the grammar is dictated by the capital. low terran is a creole language formed from several others, including high terran, that most children are taught in school as the baseline. (though they might speak a completely different, less widely spoken language at home!) carmilla speaks low terran but not high terran (although she pretends to know the latter.)

the mechanisms were all (or mostly all) at fort galfridean at one point; don’t have the source to hand, but marius apparently became a prophet to the saxons for staring into the sun for a very long time.

if you’re looking to draw album fanart, there are a few things i know aren’t as widely known; the ones i can think of off the top of my head is orpheus having a ‘foppish haircut’ (the type of thing that falls under that definition is narcissus’ undercut), and snow’s disfiguring scar. there is also official album art; i, personally, have not seen much of it, and i’d encourage coming up with your own character interpretations.

one last theory- it’s highly likely carmilla was involved in the events of the bifrost incident. in the mechscord (sadly, invites are closed due to the difficulty with handling the boom in the fanbase) maki yamazaki has mentioned that part of the criteria for picking a mechanism is ‘good friend for lyf’. at first, i assumed that she meant good friend for life, but when asked on that she was worryingly cryptic (as tends to happen), and she made a joke earlier in character as doc c about accidentally calling odin. though immortal lyfrassier edda most likely became fanon just so they could become a mechanism, this is a piece of evidence towards them actually becoming immortal.

my personal headcanon is that to gain true immortality (which maki has said king cole and the olympians do not have) you have to have some kind of eldritch component, so carmilla had to go to odin for aid. this is supported by the fact that in drive the cold winter away and cyberian demons, their mechanisms are noted as having a rainbow sheen to them!

other lore

scuzz nishimura

scuzz has built up a bit of a reputation for being the ‘cryptid mech’, but her lore is really quite simple! she was a member of the band back when they were doctor carmilla and the mechanisms, but left before they became more popular, so there’s not too much knowledge about her. she appears in this fiction and the only two recorded gigs from that era (lashings and homesick). she’s also visible in several photos!

i know i’ll get people in the notes asking for photos of her if i don’t include any, so have this;

[image id: a cropped picture of scuzz nishimura, looking tired and resting her head on her hand. she looks to be wearing white gloves and some kind of sweater or waistcoat, and her hair is cut short. her cello is also visible, as is someone else’s hand. end id.]

we don’t know too much about her; all we really have is that she was their cello player!

assorted things with no explanation

there’s this old piece from the wayback machine-

[image id: a screenshot of what looks to be the fiction page from a old site for dr carmilla and the mechs. the writing reads;

Writing

( The Aldwich Horror } A short story in which Dr. Carmilla attempts to solve the mysteries of the Aldwich Horror, the strange appearance of a new crew memeber and several zoologically dubious pets.

( Disinterration } A cautionary tale about exhuming corpses.

end id.]

‘disinterration’ is most likely a reference to the carmilla song exhumed, but i’m unsure about ‘the aldwich horror’. the most intriguing bit there is ‘the strange appearance of a new crew member’. i’ve researched the other aspects in an attempt to figure this out. aldwych is a closed london tube station- it served as a bomb shelter during the blitz, which is interesting as both carmilla and tim have backstories involving the world wars (though only carmilla’s is world war ii specifically; tim’s is wwi). the zoologically dubious pets are most likely the octokittens, which we know the toy soldier brought on board, so it would have to be in a place on the timeline after ts joined and before carmilla left. the only mechanism that joins in that space is gunpowder tim, so it’s possible that he is the new crew member.

the mechanisms blogs have a lot of incidental lore, so if you’re this deep in i’d suggest looking at my compilation post of some of my favorite posts of theirs!

and that’s it! we did it! i can finally go to sleep now. i’m so tired. please. i am going to die. i have homework. thank you all so much. please consider coming to my funeral service.

[starkeaton]

the adventure zone: graduation character list

Well, i accidentally deleted the original graduation character list post, so here i am making another one. Oops. And as always, if anyone has important details i should add then feel free to suggest them!

Here are all the characters introduced in episodes 1-25. Named characters only!

Also i can’t hide spoilers! So, um..... I can’t put spoilers on this one. If you need the version with spoilers try this version of the post that i made on the adventure zone subreddit but youre not missing out on much.

# -EPISODE 1- (19 characters)

Hieronymous Wiggenstaff (he/him): Head of the Hero/Villain school. at least 400 years old. wears shining blue armor with gold accents. also an elf. according to Tomas, he led the charge at the "battle of blood valley", brought the Kingdoms of Rickart and Dawnbreak to a peace treaty, and founded the school. a little boastful, a little prideful, [SPOILERS OMITTED], and overall a pretty good dude.

Higglemas Wiggenstaff (he/him): Head of the Sidekick/Henchperson annex, cranky old elf. has a dog named hero who shows no signs of anything strange at all, ever. 

Gary (he/him): friendly room gargoyle. pseudo-hivemind.

Groundsy (he/him): the groundskeeper. a pretty nice fellow. don't go in his shed.

Hernandez (he/him): beautiful centaur professor of animal handling.

Jimson (he/him): human battlegrounds trainer for sidekicks/henchpeople, world famous featherweight champion, wields a staff. married to crushman.

Crushman (he/him): silver dragonborn with a sickle, and self-described beefy boy! heavyweight blood champion married to jimson. never lost a match for 8 years. full name Frostus Crushman.

Rolandus Fontaine (he/him): former prince, son of deposed king, kind of an asshole, maybe. wears a cape (important detail)

Zana (she/her): "terrifying" tiefling villain sorcerer, friend of rolandus. barkept the test tavern in ep2

Rhodes (she/her): hero ranger, friend of rolandus.

Buckminster Eden (he/him): hero guy. son of "The Iron Lord". their dad is stronger than rolandus's dad. his wiki page says rogue so i think hes a rogue? i never caught that and ive listened more times than i wish i did

Leon (he/him): softspoken buff, bald "fighter" (although i dont remember any clarification on how exactly he fights), sidekick of buckminster, around 28. anyone else keep forgetting he's bald? i keep forgetting it. >!gets sorta-drafted into becoming a falcon for higglemas and so far hasn't done much else.!<

Rainer Michelle (she/her): cheerful villainous necromancer with a floating chair. also, her name is pronounced "rainier" despite not being confirmed as such? travis ships her with fitzroy.

Tomas (he/him): human man with "kind eyes" and a good (psychic???) memory. guidance counselor.

Stewart LeBoeuf (he/him): brawny human man. serves food. there is no joke here, i promise

Mulligan (he/him): teaches potions. mentioned but doesn't appear yet. and we're like 25 episodes in. maybe we'll see him someday

Germaine, Victoria, Rattles (he/him,she/her,???/???): Skeleton crew. They live in the training room i guess, and as a result can never die, because "no one dies in the training room!" (note: someone now HAS to die in the training room). also their races are never explicitly stated but i guess they're probably human? in episode 3 travis brings up something about how many bones are in "the human body" and at this point i think i'm looking too deep into this so i'll just forget about it and you probably should too.

# -EPISODE 2- (9 characters)

Riveau (he/him): halfling, blame-taking teacher.

Mimi (they/them): gnome sidekick who builds cool robot prosthetics

Bartholemus (he/him): owl aarakocra accountant teacher, known for being the best accountant in the land and having a face some might describe as "smoochable". very pro capitalist :’( hope he gets better

Ramos (she/her): goliath teacher of shieldwork. *

Dip (she/her): sidekick, half-orc twin of pip

Pip (she/her): hero, half-orc twin of dip

Festo (they/them): fairy with "beautiful gossamer wings", independent study teacher of magic, loves to party

Snippers (he/him?): Let me tell you my story about Snippers the magic crab. When Travis gave the list of animals that Griffin could choose as Fitzroy's familiar's current form, he listed crab near the start, and this gave me excitement. Now i knew that crab was pretty unlikely but god i hoped that he would choose it. When the list went on- Bat, Cat, Crab, Frog, Hawk, Lizard, Owl, Poisonous Snake, Fish, Rat, Raven, Seahorse, Spider or Weasel- I nearly lost hope. I was hoping so hard that Griffin would choose the crab, but i was ready to accept a non-crab familiar. It was just buried in that list. It wasn't the most useful animal and it was an obscure pick. And as Travis informed him that it didn't have to keep the form for the whole campaign, Griffin said those five words i wanted to hear so, so badly. "Well then it's a crab." Folks, I do not often react physically when something happens in media. But in that moment, i remember very clearly, i fist-pumped and yelled, "YES!!!!!!"

so anyway, Fitzroy has a crab.

Jackle (he/him): kenku teacher of sneakery. creepy dude. apparently knows something about argo? also his name is not spelled "jackal" for some reason. Also in later episodes theyve started calling him "The Jackle" for some reason??? *

# -EPISODE 3- (1 character)

Dakota (they/them): tavern instructor, clad in black/red leather. no race stated? probably human. *

# -EPISODE 4- (6 characters)

Gerry & Tom (she/her, he/him): shopkeepers at barns and nobles who seem to have very bad names. also constantly competing for customers? these guys got dropped faster than the heathcliff quests, which is honestly just sad.

Barb (she/her): the bartender. runs Springs Eternal in Last Hope. has a sweet seeing-eye hawk familiar. 

Jaryd Reginald (he/him): owner of Reginald Ore. Wants the workers to be held responsible for the damage caused by the xorn. (fun fact: originally i wrote down "Jerrod" because i wanted it to sound like a fantasy name, then realized it was probably "Jared" because theyre named after listeners, but i was pleased to find it confirmed that it's actually "Jaryd")

Candice (she/her): A Miner. thought those werent allowed in bars but, i guess not. Wants the mine owner to be held responsible for the xorn's damage.

Jade Johnson Esq. (she/her): lawyer.

# -EPISODE 5- (1 character)

Xorn: a big hungry gem eating guy from the plane of earth Low-Down Deep with 3 arms and 3 legs. why did travis just say "multi-armed" instead of specifying it was 3? who knows! Anyway it leaves

# -EPISODE 6- (3 characters)

Osric (he/him): the man, the myth, the bursar. finally shows up after being mentioned in episodes 2 and 4. he's an elf. 

breeze through the willows (she/her): Pegasus attacked by demons, lost her parents. introduced in ep1 but gets a name here so fuck it. also in ep>!16!< we find out shes a "white arabian pegasus" and i dont think thats a spoiler bc we shouldve really known it from the beginning

Sabor (he/him): Librarian/research teacher. also a TORTLE. Really good at recalling stuff, i guess. kinda reminds me of Tomas's memory thing but i'm sure that's just a coincidence... *

# -EPISODE 7- (1 character)

Mosh (he/him): The goliath blacksmith who welcomes argo into the unbroken chain. Also, and this is specific to the tumblr version of this post, all the characters with an * at the end of their descriptions are also members of the unbroken chain. if someone knows how to do spoilers on tumblr please tell me

# -EPISODE 8-

:)

# -EPISODE 9- (2 characters)

Eeiïäá#æ&éñn (pronounced like "Ian") (he/him?): an imp but without a shitty voice. also happens to not be violent. what a coincidence?

Terence (he/him): a chain devil with a real demonic name. minor boss of the imps. very convincing and very threatening. has the frightening ability to make you zone out during his fight

# -EPISODE 10- (2 characters)

Althea Song (she/her): elf with autumn-orange hair. representative from heroic oversight guild. i'd like to personally thank travis for spelling her name out.

Crabtree (she/her): Artificing teacher. Long gray hair with a long grey beard. no mentioned race, one might guess dwarf but that would be an assumption i suppose. also unbroken chain member, presumably the dwarf argo didn't recognize in episode 7.

# -EPISODE 11- (3 characters)

Marie (she/her): Grey-haired elf woman. She's the school's physician, i guess. Member of the unbroken chain.

Dendra Maplecourt (she/her): Fitzroy's mom. Has hot mint gum, i guess. She was mentioned earlier but i wasn't convinced she was a real person until this episode

Cool Gary (he/him): AYY ITS ME GARYR

# -EPISODE 12-

no new characters again!

# -EPISODE 13- (7 characters hhhyyyuu)

Kale (???/???): Head of the Placement Department, in charge of real world assignments. First mentioned in Ep4 but i missed that the last few times bc it is so brief. Gives exposition about missions i guess????? is that the only reason this chara cter exists

satyr thief (unnamed) (he/him): tries to rob thundermen, dies instantly

Ogre (he/him): teamed up with the satyr. his name is ogre.

Moon (he/him): A Sidekick. small pale sullen guy. no mentioned race. Why is there another FUCKING sidekick WE HAD ENOUGH hhhyuuuuuu

Deanna (she/her): A bigoted centaur with an obnoxious voice. Malwin the Strong's second in command.

Malwin the Strong (she/her): Leader of the centaurs of the scarlet woods. Wants to appease the spirit of the scarlet woods so that thecentaurs of the scarlet woods will be protected in the scarlet woods. Had a relationship with Arturas in the past but their clashes are currently known to get pretty heated.

Arturas (he/him): Leader of the Centaurs of the Valley, i guess. Had a relationship with Malwin. Centaur. Did i mention centaur? i cant think of anything else about this character

# -EPISODE 14- (2 characters)

Calhain (he/him): Human wizard, Malwin's magical advisor. Kind of an amateur wizard in a job high above his skill level. Graduated Wigginstaff's as a hero.

Spirit of the Scarlet Woods: A spirit who requires sacrifice in order to keep Malwin's herd safe and prosperous. Not keen on dubiously canonical combos, i guess. i wouldnt be either. also apparently the sacrifice depends on personal value, not how much value it has to the spirit.

# -EPISODE 15- (2 characters)

Sylvia Nite (she/her): Fitzroy's magic theory teacher at knight night school, who he turned into a catfish by accident. oops!

Chaos (they/them, maybe more): Presumably a deity, gave Fitz his powers and wants him to give in to his chaotic desires. (physical desc: 9 foot tall, iridescent 'mother of pearl' skin, pure white eyes, fine burgundy cloak with gold/onyx lining. their physical form beyond that seems to change every time they show up.)

# -EPISODE 16-

none -w-

# -EPISODE 17-

some demins happened. the big dudes are called "Pit Fiends" and the armored demon ladies are called "Erinyes", by the way. that was incredibly hard for me to figure out the first time, especially without headphones, i thought travis was saying "pig feet" and i just could not discern what the other things were

# -EPISODE 18- (6 characters)

snow on the mountain: shire horse pegasus

storm at sea: peruvian paso pegasus, vehement defender of The Guardian. doesn't have a goofy voice.. but he could have....

thaw of the spring: a winged horse

night of no clouds: a winged hhorse

The Guardian: "An ancient and powerful being that guards the unknown forest." Has protected the flock from demons for many many years. apparently is the voice that was talking to our firbolg in episode 1?

Grey, the Demon Prince (he/him): wants to cause a war, originally wanted to kill hiero and higgs, forces the heroes to build an army to fight his. As "Fauxronimous", he has skin the *color and pattern of* (but not necessarily made of) slate splashed with liquid, pointed ears, sharp teeth, shining eyes, horns of unspecified shape. 12 fucking feet tall. wonder if the slate-looking skin is related to garys. plot twist detected? Also i recently looked at the episode descriptions and found out his name is spelled "Gray", but really does it truly matter?

# -EPISODE 19- (2 characters)

Shabree Keene (she/her): Argo's mom, killed on the Mariah, possibly by the Commodore. Long auburn hair, green eyes. Mentioned earlier but described here, so fuck it.

**Thomas** (he/him): Argo's first mate on the Mariah, as the Kraken, in his chaos-dream. may or may not actually exist.

# -EPISODE 20- (1 character)

The Commodore (he/him): Reknowned hero of the seas, military regalia, great naval hero, presumably responsible for the death of Shabree Keene. No mentioned race. Seriously, they never mention this guy's race. The only thing described about him is how he's dressed and his evil smile. Does that mean he's human? Elf? Dwarf??? Who knows! maybe it just doesnt matter. 

# -EPISODE 21-

none

# -EPISODE 22-

not any of them. not any.

# -EPISODE 23- (1 character)

Ozymondelius (sp???) (it/its): A warforged teacher who just so happens to like war or something? i guess its in the name. only mentioned in this episode, doesnt show up yet.

# -EPISODE 24-

they have a fight in the training room but nobody dies :\\ maybe next time. also no new characters. pog

# -EPISODE 25- (4 characters)

Gherkin (he/him): Tall lankier skeleton, has a scimitar and a merkin, which is a pubic wig... and he wears a jerkin? which i guess is a kind of coat? also i think hes mute 

Tibia (she/her?) : Shorter skeleton with gold teeth, and long canines. i think both of the skeletons are mute actually.

The Lich King aka Gordy (he/him): Rainer's dad. Commands armies of the undead. lives in The Crypt. described as a hooded, skull-faced man with intricate black lines on his face, but changes to a shaved-head man with dark skin and vetiligo. Abandoned as a babby, raised by traveling parents, had necromancy powers, took Rainier in. Not actually very scary at all i don't know why he did the creepy laugh. Kind of a warm fatherly figure actually. hm. also people are speculating Gordy might be short for Gordita and his parents are maybe supposed to be lup and barry but THAT S JUST A THEORY.

our firbolg's father (he/him): A firbolg who lived by the code and was there when our firbolg was banished. Came to respect our firbolg's interest in a new way of life, in his final moments.

TOTAL: 72 NPCS! (well, including 2 extra PCs, i guess.)

Average: 2.88 NPCs per episode.

i was gonna not include the bone-PCs and have it be 69 but our firbolg's dad was just too important to not respect with a spot on the list.

anyway as always make sure to smack me with a blunt object if i forgot any characters!!!!!

[redhoodssweetheart]

Love Languages (Reader Version)

Genre: Fluff

Relationship: Dick Grayson x Gender Neutral!Reader

Requested: Yes (REQUESTS ARE CLOSED)

Word Count: 2.2K

Warnings: Mentions of knife wounds, some angst

Description: Dick learns about the love languages and starts using them on you.

A/N: We’re going to pretend that I totally didn’t accidentally skip over the physical touch love language in the BatFam version, but don’t worry I added it in this one.

Dick had always been a loveable person.  He was open and carrying to those around him.  And recently he had been learning about the five languages of love.  He had come across them by accident when he had been surfing the web.  He had been on a Wiki deep dive when he had come across the article.

From there his interest in the subject grew and he decided that he was going to use the five languages of love on you.  This is how it went.

Quality Time

Dick felt bad that some nights were spent out on patrol leaving you at home alone.  You were used to it and didn’t mind that he was out so late because it meant that the streets of Gotham were a little safer than before.  But he also felt bad on the nights when he wasn’t out on patrol because he was too tired to do anything.  Between work and being a vigilante there was barely any time to relax.

Most nights he would be passed out in bed snoring while you read or watched TV beside him.  You didn’t mind because most nights he was seek out your warmth and curl around you.  You would softly chuckle and run your fingers through his hair earning a contented sigh from your boyfriend.

But Dick was going to change that.  He was determined to start using what he had learned about love languages with you.  He knew that you were going to be off this coming Thursday and he planned a whole day with you.

“You don’t have to do this, Dick,” you told him as he swept you into his arms.  “I’ll be fine just chilling here for a while.”

He shook his head, “We haven’t had a proper date day in a while and I want to spend time with you.”  It made your heart flutter when he bent down to brush a kiss to your forehead.  “I have a whole day planned out, it’s gonna be great.”

You watched him hurry off into your shared room so that he could change.  You couldn’t help the smile at how excited he was for this.  Dick got excited by the smallest things sometimes, and you loved his enthusiasm even though he had seen a lot of horrible things in his time.  

Following after him you prepared for your day with him wondering where he had planned to take you.  He told you to dress comfortably, but wouldn’t say where the two of you were going.  When you were ready Dick practically dragged you out of the apartment and took you to your favorite diner for a quick breakfast.  

After the two of you took a stroll through the park, you sat on a bench for a while just watching the other people pass you by as your head rested on Dick’s shoulder.  It was a peaceful afternoon as you and Dick talked about random things going on in your lives.  He told you that he had gotten a call from Alfred inviting the both of you to a family dinner tomorrow night.  You were excited to see his family again, it had been several months since you had gotten the chance.  You loved hearing his brothers’ stories even if they did like to embarrass Dick a little too much.

After that you went to the market to pick ingredients up for dinner that the two of you planned to make together.

Gifts

You had a habit of collecting Funko Pops.  You liked to get the ones for your favorite characters and TV shows, as well as the real life people.  Right now you were trying to finish your collection of the BatFam, but Red Hood and Nightwing were eluding you.  Dick would laugh and say, “Why do you want our figurines when you have the real thing at your fingertips?”

“Because I like you all and I want to have a set of your figures,” you put it simply.  “Plus it’s like my own little inside joke.”

So when Dick was out one day and saw the last two remaining BatFam Funko Pops that you needed for your collection he didn’t hesitate to buy them.  He even grabbed the matching shirts that went along with them.  From there he had an hour until you got home from work to wrap them up before you could see them and ruin the surprise.

When you got home your feet were aching and all you wanted to do was sit down and enjoy a quiet evening.  “I’m home,” you called out as soon as you tossed your keys into the dish beside the door.  Dick was in the living room practically bouncing off the walls as you rounded the corner.  “Did you eat too much candy again?”

He shook his head, “I have a surprise for you.”

Throwing your stuff on the table you walked over to the couch and saw the wrapped box in front of him, “All right, I’ll bite.  What’d you get me?”

“Open it!”

You began ripping into the paper and Dick offered you a knife to cut the box open.  The first thing you saw were the Red Hood and Nightwing t-shirts, your mouth dropped open and you glanced up at Dick who seemed to be ready to bounce off the walls with excitement.  “Dick!”

“Keep looking!”  He insisted.

You peered down inside the box, “No way.”  You looked back up and then pulled the two Funko Pops out of the box.  You couldn’t believe it, your collection was complete.  You shoved the box out of the way and threw your arms around him, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!  I love you!”

Dick chuckled and squeezed you back, “I know how long you’ve been looking for them and when I saw them today I didn’t even hesitate, I just got them for you.”

“Do you think Jason will sign this?”  The others had been signed by the rest of the family, Dick had glared at them until they agreed.  

“I’m sure he will,” Dick assured, knowing full well that he would get Jason to sign it if it was the last thing he did.

You put Nightwing and Red Hood side by side with the rest of them on the shelf where you kept your Funkos and stood back to admire them, the relief of finally having a full set washing over you.

Acts of Service

The past week at work had been hellish for you.  Your boss was being a dick and it seemed as though the days crawled on.  Dick saw the toll it was taking on you and decided to lighten your load at home.

Normally the two of you took shifts on the chores, switching them up weekly that way neither one of you were doing the same things all the time.  It was your week to do laundry and dishes, both tasks time consuming.

So while you were at work Dick set to work on getting them done.  He didn’t mind the extra work since it meant that you could actually rest and not have the added stress.  He didn’t even mind that you hadn’t noticed the first two nights that he had done it.  He had seen the tiredness on your face and how after your shower you practically passed out on the bed.

Tonight when you came home you were a little less tired and remembered that it was your week for the dishes and laundry.  You weren’t really looking forward to doing them, but you resolved yourself to your task.

Dick was on the couch watching a TV show, you kissed the top of his head and said hello before heading into the kitchen.  You paused when you saw that there were no dishes in the sink or dishwasher.  When you headed into the bathroom where the hamper was located you noticed all the clothes were missing from there as well.

You headed back into the living room, “Dick where’s the laundry and dishes?”

He looked up at you and said, “Oh I did them for you, I know your week has been stressful so I wanted to do something to ease your burden.”

You could have cried right then, and you went over to your boyfriend and wrapped your arms around him, “How did I get so lucky?”

“I don’t know, I think I’m the lucky one.”

You scoffed and rolled your eyes at his corny line, but smiled as you clung to him for a little bit longer.

Physical Touch

You and Dick had no problems with physical touch.  The two of you were constantly holding hands, hugging, cuddling, and the like.  He always found little excuses to touch you.  You had come to learn that it was a gentle reminder to himself that you were still there, that you were safe.

You weren’t even sure if he realized he did it, but you didn’t mind because you wanted him to be reassured that you weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Dick’s favorite thing was when you would play with his hair as you read or watched TV together.  He liked the way it felt as your fingers slid through his hair and your nails lightly scraped his scalp.  He also liked it when you two were in the car and you reached over to hold onto his hand, or how when you were on his motorcycle how your arms wrapped around his waist.

It was the little things that he liked about your physical intimacy with him, the things that he would never get enough of.

Words of Affirmation

This was another easy one for the two of you.  You were constantly telling each other thank you or telling the other how much you meant to them.  After a hard mission sometimes Dick would come home and wrap his arms around you and tell you what he loved about you, your smile, your laugh, how you were a part of his life.

There was one time when you were first getting to know one another that he had told you he enjoyed listening to you talk.  It had embarrassed you at first because he had said it so casually and it had thrown you off guard, not expecting to hear him say something like that.  But now there was nothing that he could say that would surprise you.

Tonight Dick came home late from patrol.  You had already gone to bed knowing that he wouldn’t be back for a few hours.  You never slept heavily on the nights when Dick was out, always afraid of something happening and getting a call from one of his family members that he had been hurt or worse.

You heard him enter the room, groaning slightly as he pulled off his uniform and you opened your eyes as the bathroom light switched on and the door started to close.  From the bed you heard the shower running and Dick’s hiss of pain.  Slowly you got up and made your way to the bathroom to find Dick standing there in his underwear, knife wounds on his body.  You knew he would get hurt, had seen him worse than this, but you couldn’t help the gasp that escaped you.

Dick turned and tried to smile, but it came out as more of a grimace, “Hey, I’m fine.”

You put your hands on your hips and arched an eyebrow, “Fine?  Richard Grayson you are in pain and bleeding on the floor right now.  You are most certainly not fine.  Sit.”  You pointed to the tub/shower ledge and quickly closed the drain so that the tub would fill with water while you gathered supplies to help clean Dick’s wounds.

He watched as you flitted around the bathroom gathering the things you would need.  “I’m sorry I woke you,” he murmured.

You turned to look at him, “You don’t have to apologize, you know I don’t sleep well on nights you patrol anyway.”

He nodded his head and turned the water off when it filled up enough.  You came back over and started wiping the dried blood away.  Dick watched you work and occasionally flinched when you touched a particularly tender spot.  You made quick work of the cuts and bruises and when you were done Dick turned the shower back on to wash his hair and the grime off the rest of him.

Back in the bedroom you gathered up clothes for him to wear that night.  Dick came out with a towel wrapped around his waist, and hugged you from behind.  “Thank you for taking care of me and being there when I need you the most.”

You turned around and gingerly wrapped your arms around his neck, making sure you missed all his wounds, “You’re welcome, Dick.  You know I’d do anything for you.”

“I know,” he said.  “But I still want you to know how grateful I am for this.”  He kissed you slow and sweet before pulling back and changing into the clothes you had prepared for him.

As the two of you fell asleep that night he held you close and promised that he would never take you for granted.

[another-bryk-in-the-wall]

Taking apart the new Outlast trailer & what we know

Thank God for Red Barrels and the fear they have caused me over the past few years. More than once I screamed in the dark, clutching my controller so hard my knuckles turned white. Outlast, Whistleblower and 2 have been the cause of so many nightmares - and I loved it. That’s why I am trying to analyse the latest teasers as good as possible, including my personal headcanons and so much more. I will take a lot of information off the Outlast Wiki, in case you want to check documents. Headcanons will be written in bold, official information in cursive.

Trigger warnings: it’s Outlast, the whole game series is one big trigger warning

What we know so far

Set in the era of the Cold War, human guinea pigs are involuntarily recruited by the good folks at the Murkoff Corporation to test advanced methods of brainwashing and mind control. In a world of distrust, fear, and violence, your morals will be challenged, your endurance tested, and your sanity crushed. All in the name of progress, science, and profit. - Steam description for Outlast Trials, 15.06.2020

The game is going to be set in the Cold War time, which had its peak in the 60s with the race to the moon. And you know who was also active during the Cold War? The first experiments surrounding the Walrider in Mount Massive. According to the Wiki, Mount Massive was opened up in 1967 and shut down in 1971 due to a problem with an unknown patient who had killed three scientists.

This is where my first headcanon comes in:

In the trailer, we see three scientists working on our character. Maybe our character is the reason why Mount Massive was shut down, killing the scientists from the trailer. 

What was going on in Outlast Trials, according to the information we have, is the project MKUltra. Project MKUltra was a program created by the Central Intelligence Agency for the purpose of researching and developing drugs and procedures for interrogation and mind control. Several of these procedures have been deemed illegal, particularly the ones that experimented on subjects without their knowledge or consent. In Outlast's universe, a branch of the program was established in the 50s and operated at the Mount Massive Asylum until its closure in the 70s and is also the focus point behind The Outlast Trials.

Which confirms the fact that Outlast Trials will be set in Mount Massive - if it revolves around MKUltra! Of course, there could be a lot of other problems and experiments happening in Outlast Trials, but since this one is established in canon, working on it would be a great option for Red Barrels to expand the lore and bring players back to Mount Massive.

Since it is pretty much canon that we will return to Mount Massive - what will we witness there?

The first “variant” has been confirmed by the trailers already - a tall man with ripped pants carrying around a hammer, which he later smashes us with. Nice.

But if we take a closer look at him…

Check out his head, his left arm and left leg. The device on his head looks similar to the device our character gets drilled into their head in the trailer. What’s on his left arm and leg could be a kind of ripped physical restraint. He is also extremely tall and skinny - my headcanon is, that he is a variant who had been starved and tortured by the staff at Mount Massive. The torture could have changed his physical appearance (becoming taller), which can also lead to terrible growth pain, another way of pain to make him go crazy. I am pretty sure this guy right here went mad because of the horror he had to undergo due to Project MKUltra and now is out for blood - I see similarities to Chris Walker here. He will play a big part in the game and the fear we are going to experience.

And now to our friend…

If you have seen one of my previous posts, you will know that I noticed our female alley having two different kind of death animations in the trailers. Why?

Another thing to point out - what is this thing on her chest?

At first I thought this was some suicide bomber thing, but that wouldn’t make sense at all. Is it some kind of battery for the night vision goggles? Is it similar to an electrocardiography to collect data? Heartbeat, saturation of oxygen in the lungs… everything would be useful for scientists. Note the black box on the left side - could be a big battery to keep the device running for a long time. Do we have to change batteries...

My headcanon here is that she is one of the playable characters - but one of the characters which is controlled in coop. That’s why she is friendly towards the character, but can die anyways.

All in all, the two trailers got me very excited for the game! I have high expectation for Red Barrels, and I am sure they will outdo themselves with blood, gore and horror. I cannot wait for 2021 and the horrors we can experience alone and in coop. 

Also one little thing at the end - the place from the trailers reminded me so much of the scene of Frank’s first chase, kinda made me feel homesick for Whistleblower.

[swiss-cheeze]

We All Sin Agent Hotchner || Aaron Hotchner

Request: YES/NO

Gender: none, they/them

Warnings: oh jesus, murders (duh), talk of sins, mentions of abortion, talk of sexual and physical abuse, child molestation, mention of a drug addiction.

Description: you’ve killed 12 by murder and another 13 by proxy, as you get interviewed by Hotch and Reid they finally find out why you killed up to 12 and another 13 but when you start mentioning the teams owns sins you get rather bored.

Disclaimer: OKAY BASICALLY, background before you read? Your parents went through a divorce when you were 12 and then your mother sexally and physically abused you at age 13; this is why you killed 12 people, however the other 13 you killed by proxy because they were all sinners. You got someone else to kill them for you (mentioned in the fic), the background to this is because your mother was catholic, so you grew up catholic; you couldn't kill those 13 other sinners because it's a sin but the 12 you could because it was the year for the divorce but the 13 you couldn't because that was from the sexual and physical abuse.

Disclaimer: I AM NOT RELIGIOUS, this is all based off of research from my own questions over the years as well as the quick engine search for this fic. The ‘sins’ the team has commited are ones I’ve found on their profiles on the Criminal Minds Wiki and twisted it a little to the use of the plot; GIDEON AND ELLE ARE MENTIONED IN THIS FIC AS MERE MENTIONS, THEY ARE NOT IN THE TEAM (this team consists of the OG; Prentiss, Hotch, Reid, Morgan, Garcia, Rossi and J.J.)

-------

“Jesus Christ what should we do?” Emily questioned as the team stood around the round table. They caught the unsub of course, however they needed a confession, and you were not budging.

“Thirteen murders and twelve by proxy,” J.J. muttered and looked to the victim board, “that's a lot before we got brought in, is there any significance that we can use against them?” the team looked to Spencer who simply shrugged.

“The number 13 is considered an unlucky number in some countries,” Spencer started, “the end of the Mayan calendar's 13th Baktun was superstitiously feared as a harbinger of the apocalyptic 2012 phenomenon. Fear of the number 13 has a specifically recognized phobia called triskaidekaphobia which was coined in 1911” Spencer ended his little ramble but it still did little for the team, you hadn't done anything towards those facts or any others that Spencer could recall, same with your twelve additional murders.

“Well we have to find a reason otherwise (Y/n) could have bail and hit again in a few years,” Aaron said as he leant against the chairs, “there has to be something”

“When (Y/n) was twelve their parents split?” Garcia questioned, “and then thirteen was when they oh no-”

“What, what you got baby girl?” Derek questioned as he moved to lean over Garcia's computer.

“Umm, okay these are direct quotes from a medical? Thing?” Garcia questioned again.

“That sounded like a question Garcia, what is it?” J.J. said fiercely.

“Okay okay umm,” Garcia did a little more typing, “at age thirteen (Y/n) was brought into their nearby medical centre from their house, because they lived with their mum, and they always came in with multiple bruises ‘in the shape of hands, occasionally cuts and multiple sexual assaults’ oh poor baby,” Garcia mumbled her last few words, “sexual assault from their mum at age thirteen? That would suck”

“If that's all we have to work with then that's what we’ll use,” Hotch said as he gathered a few files randomly, “Reid i want you to go into the room with (Y/n), set up a conversation regarding their childhood, specifically ages twelve and thirteen; (Y/n) is used to alpha males and females, they won't be expecting someone like you,” Emily snorted softly as Hotch handed Spencer the random files.

“And what do i do with these?” Spencer questioned, they literally were all random files and were not in order, that bugged the poor Doctor a little but he knew better than to fix it.

“Look through them alot,” Hotch responded, “pretend to fall back on things you already know from the profile and the murders, try and look through multiple files at once; (Y/n) is a curious killer but knows what they’ve done and the reason, they like to play with their food and in this case food is-”

“People got it,” Spencer said quickly before ducking out of the door, down the catwalk and towards the room you were being held.

“Hotch,” Derek said suddenly, “you do know this is about you right?” the man said, everyone looked up confused as their unit chief nodded.

“That’s why i sent in Reid, when (Y/n) gets fed up and calls for me i'll go in and i'll get the final details we need” and with that Hotch walked out of the door and in the same direction as Spencer as Derek showed the rest of the team how it was about Hotch.

-------

“(Y/n), you were sexually assaulted multiple times at the age of thirteen, tell me more about that?” Spencer questioned, you didn't budge in your seat nor did you show any signs of knowing what he was talking about besides the slight flinch he noticed when he mentioned the age.

“Why,” you said softly, your voice came out gravelly, “what is it you want to know?”

“Well, it was from your…” Spencer flipped through multiple files, making sure to keep them out of your line of sight before landing on a random one, “mother” you scoffed.

“Bitch, slag, whore, slut,” was all you said in response.

“How?” Spencer questioned.

“SHE MOLESTED ME,” you blew up, slamming the table, “BEAT ME AND MOLESTED ME, SENT ME TO SCHOOL IN THE MORNING, THE ONLY SAFE PLACE I KNEW BEFORE I HAD TO GO HOME AT THE SAME TIME EVERY DAY TO HER HANDS, HER EYES, HER MOUTH AND SOMETIMES HER FUCKING FRIENDS,” you struggled to breath as your body vibrated from the added adrenalyne.

“(Y/n), i need you to calm down,” Spencer said, he didn't even flinch at your explosion but he knew the signs of an early panic attack, “what's special about you is that you have so much anxiety, self doubt and self loathing and yet you still lured in twenty five people to kill,” Spencer mentioned.

“Twelve,” you said in a low voice, “I only killed twelve i had nothing to do with the others,” your eyes flickered to Spencer who started packing the files; he had gotten half the confession.

“Thank you for your time-”

“I want Hotchner,” you said with a grin, knowing exactly what that meant as Spencer paused for a moment, “even you noticed it Doctor, you saw all those victims that look like him, high class, business, lawyers, close to the justice system…” you started pointing out the similarities.

“I'll see what I can do,” Spencer said before leaving the room. The click of the lock made you giggle, then laugh, then cackle. The team watched from the two way mirror as you had a slight psychotic break in the chair you were chained to.

“GIVE ME AARON FUCKING HOTCHNER,” you screamed, “otherwise ill have to kill his little boy~” you sang with an evil grin. The team stiffened as your words floated through the room.

“They wouldn't,” J.J. said, “we didn't profile accomplices,”

“No but (Y/n) did kill by proxy,” Hotch said, “anyone could have anything trained on my little boy,” the unit chief said before he opened the interrogation room and your loud gasp came through the monitors.

“Hotchie!” you exclaimed happily, your grin was sick as your posture changed and you sat upright.

“Don't call me that,” Hotch said calmly, “you just confessed to twelve murders, now we need you to confess to the other thirteen-”

“I didn't do it,” you said immediately, “I simply helped victims with their own troubles,” you said with another sick grin as you leant forward, “you've got your own troubles too don't you Hotchie?” you questioned.

“I told you not to call me that,” Hotch responded as he stared you dead in the eye.

“A dead wife,” you grinned, “murdered wife I should say, son who almost, kind of, slightly doesn't trust you. Why?” you looked to Hotch with a grin, “you’re never there for him the poor thing” you said with a fake pout, “i should know what that's like, divorced at age twelve, molested at age thirteen, wow what a rocky fucking year those two where huh?” you questioned with a grin as the room door opened and out stepped a delicious looking man who handed Hotch a file. You whistled low, “Sexy little things aren't you here at the BAU huh?” you questioned with a grin as he left, it wasn’t the doctor from before but that didn't matter, you had the man you wanted right in front of you as he looked over a file, “what's that?” you questioned with a jut of your chin to the files.

“Damian Field,” Hotch started, you barely remembered the name let alone the face, “shot execution style, was a pedophile on three accounts,” you grinned, so that techy finally figured it out, “Emily Guard, shot execution style, multiple accounts of stealing and piracy, Dellie Parafield, shot execution style, stealing, looting, poisoning her mother and-”

“Did you finally figure it out?” you asked, cutting off the man you loved.

“You wrote ‘sinner’, at each crime scene, that's why there's thirteen and when we didn't find you quick enough you came to us,” Hotch said, you grinned.

“Thirteen dead, not because of me, but thirteen dead,” you shrugged, “know why?”

“Your mother grew up catholic,” you grinned.

“We got every single one of those people to confess agent,” you said with a sick grin as the team watched on, “they confessed for every sin they committed and died respectively because of it,”

“You're a sinner,” Hotch said as if it were a fact, you scoffed.

“I aint,” was your response.

“You killed twelve and another thirteen by proxy,” Hotch reminded you, tears filled your eyes as you sniffled.

“That's not good,” Derek muttered as he watched through the glass.

“They deserved it,” you said softly.

“And you don't?” Hotch questioned.

“AT LEAST I SEE MY SINS!” you exclaimed loudly, causing a few of the team to jump, “if you realise your sins and apologise to the lord he will forgive, and he forgives me,” you nodded with a sniffle as tears trekked down your face, “he sees what i've done and he praises me!” you said with a laugh.

“Have you ever met god (Y/n)?” Hotch questioned, you rolled your eyes.

“What, you sayin’ i'm a liar too?” you asked with a grin, “that's a sin too Aaron,” you said with a grin.

“You're not a liar but you are a bad killer, you left everything out in the open and you led us right to you and when we hit a dead end you came to us,” Hotch reminded you again, “do you confess to twelve murders and thirteen murders by proxy?” he questioned again.

“No.” you grinned, “i ain't the one who killed ‘em!” you exclaimed again as Hotch stood up and walked out of the room. This only fueled your rage as you started thrashing your wrists in the cuffs they were being held by, “WE’RE ALL SINNERS AARON HOTCHNER” you screamed, you grinned as you felt the teams eyes all watching you from behind the mirror.

“Who's the accomplice?” Emily questioned.

“We’ll find out in a second,” Hotch said calmly.

“You think you’re safe!? From who but the lord!?” you shook your head, “Elle Greenaway,” you started, the team became rigid, “shot an...what do you guys call us? Unsub?” you laughed, “shot an unsub and you rid it off as self defense,” you held up a finger, “that's one sin agent Hotchner. Jason Gideon, stole hotel toiletries,” you grinned as another finger went up, “thats called stealing Hotchner, Derek Morgan, considered suicide after molestation,” you put up another finger, “thats three now Hotchner, Emily Prentiss, abortian at age fifteen,” another finger went up, “Hotchner im all for abortians and i dont personally find them a sin, however unfortunately thats not what catholics and christians see,” you grinned, “four. Jennifer Jareau, I unfortunately only recently found out about you even though you've been with the team for a few years. Fortunately for Hotchner it stays at four,” you waved your fingers in the air, “David Rossi,” you scoffed, “married and divorced three times,” you added three fingers and whistled, “that's added a lot to the load already Hotchner, up to seven now,” you sighed as you had to use your other hand, “Doctor Spencer Reid, wow” you laughed, “what? Drug addict, liar, that Lila woman who i'm going to add simply because i feel like it,” you waved both hands as much as you could and laughed softly, “damn, that Doctor is racking it up a lot Hotchner!” you exclaimed.

“Hotch we’re not getting anywhere with this,” Rossi said with a sigh as he looked to the saddened faces of his team mates.

“Just another second Dave, it'll work.” Hotch said, his eyes still glued to your frame, “when i was in their (Y/n) said ‘we’, there is an accomplice we just have to wait for their slip up” and that's when you did, it wasn't a slip but technically but you were bored.

“UGGGHHH,” you groaned, “Lily!” you exclaimed, “Lily Raymond, she's in our safehouse,” the team was about to walk away to find this ‘lily’ before you gave them a deal, “Aaron Hotchner i will give you the address if only you let us stay in the same cell, AND,” you grinned and bit your lip, “let me give you a big smooch,” the team sighed.

“Hotch you can't,” Emily said.

“If we want that address he’ll have to,” Rossi said softly as Hotch walked into the room and did just as you asked.

He kissed you.

[macgyvertape]

50 or so hours into Cyberpunk 2077

This should be roughly the correct amount of time, ive been leaving the game running as I get up to get food or do stretches. Quests are roughly in order I did them

non spoilers above cut:

 i haven't found a single hat/helmet i like, and since you can't hide them I just am not wearing any. It matters that much.

I posted the other day about bugs, every few hours I play I find new bugs. some require me to go back and reload a save others I honestly can’t tell if it’s a bug or just really poor development

there are several perks that don’t quite do what the description says, like the Anamesis perk. Based on reddit and trying it out it seems to just not do anything.

sometimes in car chase segments the passenger will say “look out” as cars spawn in my path and hit me. Can’t tell if that was deliberate or a pop in issue

Yeah I’ve just totally given up on doing pacifist things unless required by a mission. Given up on doing stealth too unless a mission objective, except for sneaking around to set up a fight.

:readmore:

the delemain car quest is fun. From the shock of the one going "beep beep motherfucker" and doing a hit and run to start it off, to the GLADOS car i see a lot of people talking about. It was fun to explore the city when i might have missed places like the landfill apparently there is follow up on T-bug's death if you go back to the quick hack shop in Kabuki. It's not much but better than nothing I made the pass with Panam of "what if the room just had one bed". I know she won't do a wlw romance, which is fine since I wouldn’t have chosen her.  I enjoy her as a character, don’t get me wrong, my V considers her as a friend, but it seems like theres always drama going on which would be tiring. I would have gone for a fling, i like her leotard-pants combo with all the straps

but also her questline was buggy as hell. Multiple cases of having to reload due to clipping into objects, including her in a driving section, or just insta-dying when collision physics with some rocks broke "your neural network can no longer function independantly of the chip" me slapping my desk: s y m b i o te!!! come on lets have some s y m b i o s i s

in the scene with hellman i really liked how Johnny moved around the room. It made him feel like he was really there. it was hard to follow the convo as I left the room, i would not have understood it without subtitles. But i guess Takemura fucking waterboarded hellman. :|

lol I hope the dialogue is different b/c i refuse to smoke for Johnny

i am level 18 and still can't beat the first opponents in the fist fighting quest. ffs

I looked up the romances options so I went to do the I fought the law quest as soon as i got it. ACAB, but like I literally just met River Ward 2 minutes ago, and I really like him. His earring and cyborg eye, his big fluffy coat. I'm definitely gonna sleep with him Ok i like how when River Ward is dealing with the tiger claws if you interject it leads to a fight. It goes better if you follow his instructions and let him deal with it. Seriously I enjoy that sometimes its good to not pick a dialogue choice.

during the red queen club part, there was no dialogue over the phone. So i reloaded a save and got myself spotted and attacked. Then River showed up to help me <3 and it was more enjoyable having him there. I honestly am not sure if him not going to the club level is bug or not.

then uuuuuugh the worst of irl police "cops are my family" from Detective Han. Again ACAB "FRATERNITY OF CITY COPS RESEMBLES A [Nomad] CLAN NOT AT ALL" ok a few minutes ago i was complaining about bugs, but the character modeling in this game is good (when they're there). You can see body posture, characters jiggle their legs when they are nervous. Like I though character A was just throwing a cigarette on the ground, but then character B flinches back; I realize Char A threw it at B as a fuck you

I'm honestly curious if "I fought the Law" quest will have any impact later on. My choices were that I thought there was more going on than Holt being the only person behind this (based on how complicated the main questline heist is, and keeping an eye on some of the in game news), and told him not to take it to internal affairs, and I loved his response of how he doesn't give a shit what we think, he's doing it anyway.

In the elevator to report in, Johnny said "this muck is deeper than you think, tell them nothing", so i just said that the case was complicated. anyway i love how much of a sarcastic asshole V is

I thought i was being nonlethal with the monk quest, but it seems i accidently killed someone. RIP, but thats kind of the problem with this game. Like when i do the non lethal cyberpychosis quests I equip my non lethal modded gun and hope for the est. I like how a go here kill things quest led to Charles the ripperdoc. He's getting all his parts from scav gang members so I felt obligated to take him out. I got a police bounty for it but w/e.

I merged the Delemain fragments with the whole. Guess he's the meta now. (Side note: some of my favorite rvb fanfic plots are Ai consiousness/memory merging with the humans, so I’m having fun with this game and look foward to introspective fanfic)

Honestly Jonny made some good points, the fragments didn't deserve to die; but also destroying the core and freeing the fragments, they couldn't really function alone.

I was able to rescue Saul fine with stealth. Using cameras and the synapse overload really made it easy.  Can't use the sniper rifle reward b/c I don't have the stats for it, and while it has a silencer the fact that it's a ricochette weapon and not a shoot through walls weapons, makes it not as good imo; and theres a legendary one that is stats free for only 100k.

Lol made a pass again at Panam, and she immediately shut me down. I then did Mitch's quest and I love every time someone tells V they area  good person.

I hacked the operation carpe noctem shard, and wow the corporations are using ai to make people have cyberpsychosis, or something like that. What a shocker /s, I've played Deus Ex HR before

lol driving through the unifinished interstate, past the fight from Panam's first quest I found a "batcave" with a very nice car, and a manifesto written by "muckman'. But here's my complaint about the loot, there is a legendary top, but it had 16 armor. My current top has 84 armor, like why would i switch?? then later i found a bunker with soviet spies in it. Wild

Doing River's second quest, love the timing of as soon as you ask, why are we breaking in, someone shows up to tell you he got kicked off the force. It's funny how Johnny comments how maybe River's into you, and V just doubts Johnny's words. Love how the first kid asks River if I'm his girlfriend. also wow like oof both the second parts of Judy and River's quest are SUPER fucked UP!! oof like i stopped doing first person mode on the braindances for those quests as soon as i could, just made me too uncomfortable seeing that in first person.

DRIVING IN THE GAME IS BAD! nowhere is it more apparent than the sinnerman quest, which took me 3 times to get the driving section done, as cars spawned out of nowhere to hit me. Then when you restart, there is a bunch of dialogue it doesn't let you fast forward through. The rest of the Sinnerman questline is interesting. My V took every option to tell the dude that he was messed up, and what he was doing was wrong. idk, I was surprised how much dialogue there was that let you buy into his whole "forgiveness thing" and how there wasn't any real dialogue to call him the fuck out, that in seeking forgiveness he continues to do harm both emotional to the mother of the man he killed, but also that he got the husband killed via cop. The later follow up quest, I told him that what he is doing is crazy, studio is just going to profit off this vid. Then I refused to join him prayer, and told him fuck no i wasn't going to hammer him to the cross, or even watch. Yes, the man is scared of dying, and the corporation is exploiting him, but he keeps creating burdens for others.  I think the discussion on this quest will be interesting to read, it's definitely my own personal experience with religion coloring my view. Anyway back to a main quest, yeah i don't trust Placide, especially in that scene where he grabs my hand, then jacks in. I ran off to do most of the sidequests here and got some criticism from him. I do love how in the cinema the western movie switches to a mission brief as the netwatch agent talks. its a fun enviromental detail.  I took the netwatch offer, i don't think he's being fully honest with me, but he didn't put a virus in my head. As I told Placide later, I didn't pick a side. I like how you can then talk with the agent, who is a fan of Western movies, b/c they show "a simpler time where all good guys carry badges" :eyeroll:, and then V recommends Unforgiven, which from the wiki summary goes against that theme.

Looks like the Voodoo boys all got killed by Netwatch, but I as revenge for them trying to set me up I'm fine with it. Honestly after speaking with ai!Alt I don’t believe their plan of trying to be on good relations with AI would work. 

doing the johnny flashback 2, and wow Johnny really is an asshole. Like I had gotten so used to him in side missions I forgot how self centered and unlikable he was.You constantly get prompts to drink or do drugs, which I ignored. But i do love the goth/punk love Rogue and others have.

lol i called it, when Hellman said that the engram would seek to override the host, put V on the engram. I really like how as the relic malfunctions, you wind up in the chair with a cigarette, which you can either smoke and say you are turning into Johnny or throw away. My dialogue "your problem is the ends justify the means", which is true!!! He and Rogue detonated a nuke downtown, does anyone know that, and like ask Rogue about it????

(Funny you can ask Rouge about Johnny silverhand, over the phone, then the game bugs out and spawns her npc where you are. She doens't say much about the nuke, but she does say no one trusts you for jobs). The line of no one trusting you for jobs is pretty funny at level 46 street cred where im at “respected” status. really loving the family atmosphere at River's 3rd quest. Also his big strong arms, and the fact he is no longer a cop. I totally let the kids win, and wow the family dinner where they GRILL YOU over the relationship and try to set the two of you up, then the water tower scene!!!!! I don't love the first person sex cutscenes but they do have personality. I'm glad afterwards you got to tell River about the biochip and that you might die. Because he's so far removed from your personal plot. So I took that option to back out of a relationship.

I do love that you wake up with "river's tanktop" that says "fuck the police" It actually has extremely good armor stats, so thats what I'll wear now.

panam 3rd quest, when shes like why did you help me, I'm like "because it's important to you". Basically the closest you can get to "when a friend asks for help you help them", which as an ex-nomad backstory I really choose the nomad options when ever i can Paralezes quest part 2! I love the piano song but I always think of it as ocean's 11 music. It's also fun to see the computer and see Judy recommended you for the first quest. The emails talk about "forgetting" to hire a staffer, on the balocony a strange antennia was scannable, the color of the roses was remembered wrong...  lol guess i was right with those giant wall screens. Its fun environmental details that spell things out before you can notice, and it ties into some other quests where people's behavior is being altered. Actually, this quest "Dream On" I love it! For a while I've been like "wheres the illuminati conspiracy! Here it IS! I chose to follow Elisabeth's wishes and not tell her husband he was being brainwashed. In best case they program him to forget again, in worst case he ends up dead. The gaslighting Elisabeth described is CHILLING, her husband describes a vacation she can't remember and she doesn't know whose memories have been messed with. On your way to the plaza you get a call from someone/something that says the know exactly WHAT you are, any you black out!!! It's such a great feeling of helplessness that you're just one person in a world so big that you can't fight every power. As Johnny said, could be a corporation, could be a rogue ai, either way Jefferson is fucked (and so are you).

[elodieunderglass]

Hey Elodie. :) so I was reading your moss post and I had a question: you know those algae lights that they want to put everywhere? How does that work? If the CO2 goes to making biomass of a plant, how is algae so good at making O2 when there isn't a ton of it physically? I mean presumably it is pretty good at it cause afaik that's where the O2 on earth came from to begin with?

(in reference to my general grumpiness about people’s claims that moss sequesters more carbon than is physically possible)

To engage with this post, you’ll first need to know that photosynthetic organisms absorb carbon dioxide and break the molecule apart. Carbon dioxide consists of a carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. These organisms keep the carbon atom and release the two oxygen atoms. This is how plants turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. The carbon atom goes into their biomass. Right now, there is too much carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, caused by the burning of carbon, which reacts with oxygen when burned to form carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is making the atmosphere too hot. As our economies depend on burning carbon, people do not want to stop doing it. Many people are now interested in “absorbing the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere” in order to survive on the planet. The problem is, as I point out, that the atoms of carbon have to go SOMEWHERE. Carbon dioxide doesn’t just magically turn into oxygen - the C atom is still there. And when plants break CO2 down, they need to do something with the carbon - they use it to grow. The C atom goes to making the biomass of the plant. If you see a product that claims to use plants to suck enormous amounts of CO2 out of the air (I argue) you should look for the biomass that it will produce. If you can’t see where the carbon went, it’s probably not real.

Anyway! Ah! It’s a good question! but there is a ton of algae physically! And it does make biomass! Lots of it! PLANETS FULL OF IT! It’s its best trick. And it grows very quickly, too. The fact that algae still produce a huge chunk of the oxygen we use today is a big clue to the fact that there is Really Quite A Lot of It. Anyone who has ever had an aquarium can attest to how quickly algae can increase its biomass. That’s where the carbon goes! Into the biomass! That’s where the oxygen comes from! It’s discarded as a product of all that growth! There’s a huge amount of it!

I’m just going to dump this whole quote from a relevant paper here:

There are several reasons for the greater biomass yields of algae versus land plants. Generally, algae have higher photosynthetic efficiency than land plants because of greater abilities to capture light and convert it to usable chemical energy (Melis 2009, Weyer et al. 2010). Under ideal growth conditions algae direct most of their energy into cell division (6- to 12-hour cycle), allowing for rapid biomass accumulation. Also, unlike plants, unicellular algae do not partition large amounts of biomass into supportive structures such as stems and roots* that are energetically expensive to produce and often difficult to harvest and process for biofuel production. In addition, algae have carbon-concentrating mechanisms that suppress photorespiration (Spalding 2008, Jansson and Northen 2010). With algae, all the biomass can be harvested at any time of the year, rather than seasonally. In contrast, only a portion of the total biomass of terrestrial crops (corn cob, soybean seed) is harvested once a year

* this means that instead of slowly growing into a more complicated structure, like plants do, algae just doubles and doubles and doubles. FYI, moss is a plant. algae is not. algae can casually double its mass even caring, and that’s where the carbon goes: literally into LITERALLY doubling the biomass, INCREDIBLY quickly. Moss will not. Moss will grow, become more complicated, and eventually flower - all quite slowly, in comparison.

Anyway, here is a picture from the paper, showing the Biomass. you can see exactly where the carbon is going. There is so much carbon being made here, they’re literally turning it into ... oil?

Yeah... oil. Algae fuel is considered to be a reasonable replacement for fossil fuels. (starting link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel). Algae fuel is used as reliable gimmick in science fiction, as a renewable fuel that spaceships can generate as they go - the handwaving possibilities are endless: ‘ooh, here’s a thing that takes the waste breath of human crew and makes fuel and oxygen out of it. hurray!’

So you may be like, “oh Elodie, but surely burning carbon-based fuels contributes to climate change, because it releases CO2, so uhhhh why would you bother replacing fossil fuels with a slightly fresher version of the same product?”

and I’m like “YEAH I KNOW RIGHT? the argument is that because algae removes the CO2 from the air, and burning the oil releases the same amount of CO2, it’s argued that it’s a carbon-neutral fuel. the carbon goes in, the carbon goes out. The algae puts it into the atmosphere and it takes it back out. it’s always the same carbon.”

WHICH. THE MATH CHECKS OUT, BUT I DON’T LIKE IT. The argument for developing algae fuels is that the math works out as carbon-neutral, and that it reduces reliance on the oil industry and its geopolitics, as every nation on Earth can easily grow and refine their own oil. BUT I STILL DON’T LIKE IT.

Anyway, the trick here is to look for the biomass. In the diagram above, YOU CAN SEE WHERE IT IS. The carbon goes from the carbon dioxide into the algae, where it can be made into carbon-based fuel. The carbon is THERE. it is FOUND. The peer-reviewed, heavily researched industry is so confident in the math, and the carbon, and the physical laws of photosynthesis that algae can genuinely be called a carbon-neutral fuel. The carbon has been AUDITED. the mass is KNOWN.

So what about those “algae lamps that [THEY] want to put everywhere?” I know exactly what you’re talking about. They are glowing street lamp things full of algae and they have the amazing claim of “fixing as much carbon dioxide as 200 trees.”

Those appear to be bullshit. Sorry.

However, on Tumblr, you will find a lot of posts about the algae lamps. I know. I’ve seen them. And I really wanted to believe in them! I may have even reblogged one! But then I just couldn’t find any more evidence about them. And neither could these science bloggers who tried to track down ANY ANSWERS AT ALL in 2012, https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/04/streetlight-powered-algae-actually-possible/1854/ and again in 2015. https://www.zmescience.com/science/biology/the-green-algae-street-lamps-that-suck-up-co2/

The algae were reported on in 2012 and 2013 as a funky startup invention, but apparently, only one lamp was ever made. The inventor, an utterly obscure man known as Pierre Calleja, does not appear to have a scholarly record and his scientific qualifications are a bit murky. A few scientists appeared to have asked, “Since algae grows so quickly, what will you do when they overgrow the container/ block the light?” and “Anyone who has maintained an aquarium know that removing the algae - even if you want algae! is part of maintenance; won’t these require a huge amount of maintenance?” and there was no answer. There was definitely no peer-reviewed research. The claim of “fixing as much carbon as 200 trees” (by generating equivalent biomass) cannot be backed up because all of the actual materials have disappeared from the web. The TED talk he did is gone. The startup has vanished. The website is gone. Considering that it attracted millions of dollars of investments, that’s sad news for stakeholders, but normal for a startup based on an idea easily blocked by the question, “don’t you need to clean it.”

Calleja reappeared in the news in 2017, having left the lamp startup (the article has some explanations - apparently the issue was ‘finance people’) and now he wants to make vegetarian smoked salmon out of algae. https://thefishsite.com/articles/algae-can-spearhead-a-culinary-revolution So I think it’s fair to say that the lamps didn’t work and aren’t going anywhere and have disappointed a lot of people and wasted a lot of money. However, I like his new project better. It’s obvious where the biomass is going. It’s going into the fake meat! Carry on, Pierre!

“They” are not going to put them “everywhere” because there is no secret panel of “Them” who, like, Decide Things. There was one inventor, a few reporters who talked about him, no scientific research, no marketable product was ever created, and now the creator is trying to generate fish. Just because that post has 6 bajillion notes on Tumblr doesn’t mean it’s real.

(It’s a bit awkward because two of the science communicators who reported on the lamps are friends of mine, and I know that they simply reported on it in good faith as an interesting bit of pop news, based on the now-vanished TED talk. The tumblr post in the screencap claims its source as Jess’s 2012 snippet from the Grist, which was just meant to be a cheerful description of a cool Youtube video of Pierre Calleja’s TED talk... which has now vanished from the internet entirely. She wasn’t reporting on research, just pointing out a cool video. But yeah, the ‘‘‘‘‘source’‘‘‘‘‘‘ for the Tumblr post we’ve all seen is ... literally just my friend, mentioning a cool TED talk she saw. in 2012. Which is now gone. Because the startup folded with its tail between its legs. And people are using it as a ‘source’, which I don’t think is fair!)

[thewrongexecution]

thinkin’ ‘bout final fantasy

I go by Not The Author for exactly the reason that I ain’t no expert on any given work of fiction, but I do like to make connections what make me seem smart: an illusion, haphazardly crafted by incident accident and supplemented by precocious pretentiousness. All the same, here are some fun thoughts I had that you might also enjoy!

I do have a point, that I do get to. I feel like I should say that ahead of time, all things considered. Like, I can appreciate if you can’t appreciate a shaggy dog story? But there is a point to all this.

...Eventually.

Spoiler Warning:

Final Fantasies 1, 6, 7, 7R, 13 and 15

Content Warning:

Discussion of death

Cussin’

Length warning:

5621 words

13 sections

16 digressions

Let’s dig in.

- - - - -

Final Fantasy 1 was not my first Final Fantasy experience, but I think it was the first I ever played by myself? The remaster for the GBA, came bundled with FF2 on the same cart, which I played briefly but did not complete and do not remember, except that it had Cid.

FF1 doesn’t have a Cid, but I really loved the narrative anyway, straightforward as it was, because it was very specifically about spitting in the face of an uncaring god who would doom the world for a laugh. Take these chains that bind us to darkness and, though we be forgot to history, strangle with them that selfsame darkness to bring an end to its tyranny.

((it is a terrible curse, to love time travel. so many grand expectations, so few ever met. play ghost trick, chrono trigger, radiant historia, majora’s mask, outer wilds. have you any recs yourself, lemme know! I digress.

((I digress a lot, as I may have mentioned. they’ll be noted in parenthetical, like this.))

This is the foundation upon which Final Fantasy is built, and while any student of architecture could tell you of many and varied perfectly valid construction techniques, it resonates. Grappling with an immutable past to course-correct an uncaring future is, too, an apt description of personal growth; a theme as universal as being alive. And I, as an impressionable youth, ate that shit up.

((I assume I was young, at any rate. my love for time travel, be it era-spanning or moment-stretching, is, I suspect, not entirely coincidental to my terrible temporal memory.))

And that was the tale of the studio, too. Final Fantasy was so titled because, the story goes, the developers knew they would shutter if it didn’t make bank. Staring your imminent demise in the face, knowing your fate is doom, and giving it your all, all the same.

And then they made another twelve, plus two-and-a-half MMOs, and god knows how many mobile games and spin-offs, and now the Fantasy is that there could ever be a Final one. so say I: life parodies art.

((the half-an-MMO is FF14 1.0, which no longer exists and is a fascinating tale, a rally against bleak futures all its own. I’ll [link] Noclip’s three-part documentary covering the developer’s side of things, because that’s the one I’ve seen. there’s plenty other material to hunt down, though, if you wanna.))

- - - - -

Final Fantasy VII is a game about fate, too. Particularly Death, that most ultimate of fates. Tragic, to be sure; preventable, or at least delayable, in many cases; necessary, at times, for the growth of something new.

Unrelenting. Unstoppable. Inescapable.

Death, and the fights against it, take many forms. There are the fascist death squads that hunt down your ragtag band and any dissent against their cruel masters, but these will only truly stop by cutting off the hydra’s head and building an entirely new society; eight dudes and their dog, faced with a corporate private military, can survive but never win. There are such disasters as do slay that hydra, be they natural or man-made. There’s the space alien and the apocalypse it ushers. There’s literal illness and injury, physical or otherwise. There are the deaths of loved ones, friends and family, that lead to some subtler deaths within those that survive them. The deaths of relationships, by neglect or abandonment. The ideological deaths we inflict on ourselves, accepting ever-growing lesser evils in the name of some impossible ideal.

Every day, the person we were becomes the person we are, and soon, the person we are will give way to someone new, and this, too, is a sort of death. In this sense, we tally Cloud’s deaths at least five: failure to become a Soldier and rebirth in shame, the massacre of Nibelheim and rebirth in grief, arrival at Midgar and rebirth in delusion, his cratering at the Crater and rebirth in nihilism, and his death and rebirth in the Lifestream of Mideel.

((you could prolly hunt down another two if you wanna be cheeky, but I lack the knowledge, motive and patience. frankly, this whole thing is to create a leading line of logic and probably isn’t, uh. academically ethical? or whatever the term is. I’m not necessarily wrong, but I’m definitely scuttling nuance. oh well!))

Now, I say “rebirth,” because that’s how deaths of identity more-or-less work. There’s usually some new identity waiting in the wings to take over. And rebirth is itself a notable theme, inasmuch as it is one outcome of death. But death is oft more final than that, and what people do in its imminence and wake is key here, too. Wutai’s collapse into an insular tourist trap. Avalanche’s vengeful fervor, in general and post-plate drop. Bugenhagen trying to pass his knowledge on to Red. The whole party’s ongoing post-traumatic depressive episodes.

Ultimately, death is the inescapable fate of all things. It’s what we do, in light of that, that makes us who we are.

- - - - -

Final Fantasies 13 and 15 are the only modern Final Fantasies I’ve beaten, and I bring them up because both deal very prominently with fate and death, and as Square’s most recent mainline FF titles, Remake can’t exist without comparison to them. Here’s what I remember:

Final Fantasy 13 was a game I enjoyed. The stagger system mixed up my casual FF tradition of Get The Big Numbers by putting a prominent UI element onscreen that says You Can’t Get The Big Numbers Unless The Bar Is Full. Suddenly there’s a natural-but-enforced ebb and flow to combat built in, where you gotta juggle chip damage, survival, and crowd control while keeping resources enough to burst down a staggered foe, but maintain situational awareness to swap back into survival mode if you’re not gonna down your enemy, all in something close to real-time. Very obviously a direct precursor to the combat of Remake. I didn’t realize the depth of it, but it was still super fun.

People at the time didn’t like the linearity of the game and, I can see that in retrospect? I think it’s closer to, there weren’t breakpoints, there wasn’t variety. It was cutscenes, combat, and the stretches of land between them; the only real thing for the brain to get a workout on was the combat, and eating only one kinda food is gonna make that food taste bland.

((I didn’t mind, but I like idle games, and, also probably had depression around then. Take that how you will.))

The story, though, I loved. You got your uncaring gods forcing mortals to do their increasingly-impossible bidding, cursing them to agonized unlife if they take too long, and with blissful, beautiful death if they succeed. It sucks! And here you have a ragtag band of incidental idiots trying to rebel against a system that, actually, wants them to? Like that’s the plan? Have mortals kill god and summon the devil to destroy all life, because god, doesn’t.... like life anymore?

((The lore gets more than a little impenetrable, and I remember bouncing off it a couple times. The throughline of God Sucks And Makes Zombies was good though.))

The biblical parallels are obvious, and if they weren’t, the final boss’ design will clue you in, god that’s a good design. hang on I can add pictures and already tossed a spoiler warning, here, look at this:

(per the Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki [X])

That’s literally The Holy Trinity But A Sword The Size Of A Building. It’s perfect.

Anyway, I love this game, because the heroes win, which is what God wants, so in winning, they lose, as was fated to be, right? Fuck All That, say the lesbians from space australia, as they turn into satan and, as satan, stop God’s shitty metal moon from crashing into space australia and destroying all life.

((this awakened something in me, though, as is becoming a theme, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. actually hold up I’m gonna rewatch that sequence.

((yeah okay wow on review that was aggressively cheesy and had a whole bunch of weird emotional whiplash that just leaves a super-bad aftertaste. I don’t really like it as an experience, but big bazonga lesbian satan with arms for hair is still a look-and-a-half.))

The whole thing is not entirely unlike if meteor was also Midgar, and there’s more than a few points where I went, hang on, are they trying to evoke 7 here? “Lightning” is ex-military and bad at emotions, Sazh is a black dad w/ guns and emotional trauma and I love him, quirky pink healer girl who might be an alien is here, the game starts on a train and leads into a robot bug fight; obviously it’s not one-to-one but the connections are there for a brain like mine to make, and only more prominent for the fact that FF7 was the more satisfying game.

((I cannot speak to 13-2 or -3; 13-2 was fun up until the enemies were abruptly 30 levels higher than me, more or less a mandate by the game for me to do all the side content, which I was not on-board with. I skipped 13-3 entirely, especially when I learned the whole game is on a timer. did not and do not need that stress in my life.))

- - - - -

But okay, FF13 was “too linear” and wasn’t doing super great. Enter Final Fantasy Versus 13, by which I mean enter Final Fantasy 15 actually, we don’t need any more of this 13 crap. And once again, I enjoyed it! ...Right up until it was bad.

Final Fantasy 15 was not a finished game, and we know this for certain now, because all its DLC was to make it a finished game. At the time, though, there was uncomfortable and inconsistent story pacing, only one playable character, relatively sparse combat mechanics... but it was open-world, and hey, that’s what you wanted, right? open, non-linear environments? I picked it up because, Teleporting Swordsman With a Motorcycle Sword. I am of simple pleasures, and those are they.

Of the little I remember, one point that’s stuck with me is the sequence following the Leviathan fight. See, we’ve been talking about fate and destiny and how Final Fantasy likes to spite them. Here in 15, our main man Noctis doesn’t want the destiny he’s been burdened with, to Become The King and Save The World from the Coming Darkness, or whatever. He’d really rather be doing, anything else? like hanging out with his buddies or actually getting married or, I dunno, grieving the death of his father. Nope! You don’t get to do that. Go find the ghost armaments of your dead ancestors so you can ~saaave the wooorld!~ I would have been in college around then, so, eminently relatable.

Now, on this journey, you meet a guy called Ardyn. He’s the sort of character that was built as an attack on me personally: sleazy, charming, possessing airs of casual familiarity with people he’s never met, kinda helps you out in tight spots, and also, by the way, vizier to the empire that killed your dad and wants you and your friends dead too. But not in the “secret good guy” way, he just likes fucking with you! he’s perfect.

Right up until the Leviathan fight.

See, Lunafreya, your betrothed--

((I’m so mad about this stupid, stupid garbage. I love Lunafreya on principle, but the game doesn’t bother to give her screentime. you only ever hear about her incidentally, which can be cool if you then meet the character and get to compare/contrast what you’ve heard, but the initial release only has her show up for this one chapter, and your party doesn’t really get to interact with her that much.))

Your betrothed is here and she’s some symbol of the peoples’ hope, right? she’s got light magic or something, and can actually commune with the gods. the gods are on your side, but you can’t actually understand a word they say, but she can, and that’s sick as hell. anyway.

You lose the fight against Leviathan, because you’re a shitty emo teen who doesn’t know how to use your ghost swords, and she got beat up earlier when Levi got all pissy at being summoned. And then Ardyn shows up in his magitek dropship.

Now earlier, Ardyn had Luna as his captive, completely at his mercy, and right now, he who would be king of kings, destined to save the world from darkness, is clutching at rock in a hurricane, beaten, wounded and dying.

Of the two, which do you think he stabs to death?

if you thought, “the protagonist, which will allow him to win, and subvert Final Fantasy’s themes of defying fate by having the villain be the one to do it, forcing everyone else to scramble for some alternate solution and deal with the fallout,” congratulations! You win disappointment, because that idea’s cool as hell and they didn’t. fucking. Do it.

((Ardyn, before this, had given me major Kefka vibes, and thinking on it now, the world descending into darkness in the 15 we never had could have played with even deeper parallels to FF6... but I never played 6, and that FF15 doesn’t exist, so... I’ll leave that analysis to better scholars.))

now, with the benefit of hindsight, that was never going to happen. too long in development hell, game had to ship, had no time or budget for mid-game upheaval. but at the time? made me lose any interest I had in Ardyn, made me mad at the developers for passing up on fulfilling the themes their series had explored in past, made me almost stop playing the game. I’m still mad about it for crying out loud!

((thinking about it gets me tensed up, coiled, with that sort of full-body thrum that’s best conveyed with letters that jitter around. best I can do here is bold italics, but it doesn’t have the right energy. it’s a fleeting feeling, but when it’s here? god. given the men that wrote this scene I would fight all of them and win.

((inhale...

((exhale...

((and move on.))

We, the player, never really meet Luna, so there’s no real... impact, no substance to it. It’s sad, but impersonal. villain kills damsel to inflict manpain on hero. that’s it. we’ve seen this song and dance before.

But kill Noctis? The character the player’s been controlling all this time, who they know intimately? Now it’s personal. Now your party members’ grief is a mirror to your own. And now you get to play as Luna, maybe? give the game time to flesh her out, have her bond with your old companions over their shared grief, and maybe use her connections and public speaking skills to rally the people of the world, in a perhaps-vain attempt to resist the oncoming darkness, while simultaneously using that public-facingness to drive her to hide her own fear and hopelessness...? That’s a complex character ripe for drama and tragedy right there! And then her, at the head of a story about people coming together to solve a global calamity themselves, rather than await their appointed savior?

Even then, but especially now... You can see the appeal, right?

- - - - -

Lemme step back and zoom out for a moment, because there’s one more kind of Fate to discuss before I finalize my thesis. Yes, I promise, there is a point besides being mad at FF15, this is still ultimately about Remake. Bear with me a little longer.

See, Remake’s premise is that it’s not quite FF7, but that itself is predicated on Remake being essentially FF7. Certain things must be in the Remake series, or it will cease to be the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. The developers have gone on record saying as much, that they’ll still cover the thrust of the original, and that makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint. Building on an existing framework saves loads of time, and lets them focus on details as they have in Remake.

((I think they've already set up an in-universe justification for this, too. The party may have defeated the Whispers at Midgar, but the Whispers are the will of the planet. The only way to truly defeat them would be to defeat the planet itself, which: kind of the goal of the villains!

((a bit ironic, because the villains are the Whispers’ means to keep manipulating events. Remake backends a very large portion of the plot, and I don’t think Rufus seeing the Whispers is a throwaway detail. The party chases Sephiroth by chasing Shinra in the original, so even if the party has shaken free of the direct influence of the Whispers, manipulating Shinra should in turn manipulate the party.

((on top of which, Rufus prizes power, and the power to change or control fate-- something both the party and Sephiroth have seized-- would be as enticing as anything.))

But this begs the question: How much of Final Fantasy 7 is necessary before it stops being Final Fantasy 7? Do you need all nine characters? The Weapons? Rideable chocobo? Breedable chocobo? What about locations? Can you drop the Gold Saucer? or Mount Condor? or Mideel? How many minigames am I holding up? These are necessary questions, but so is this:

“Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?”

- - - - -

Now, the phrase “emotional impact” is necessarily kind of nebulous and subjective, so lemme dig into that a little bit.

The first significant chunk of the original FF7 takes place entirely in Midgar, which is one huge city. Every screen is densely packed; movement is typically constrained to narrow corridors and industrial crawlspaces. The whole world is deeply claustrophobic and visually hostile, by design.

This is FF7 for the first few hours, before a motorcycle chase deposits you outside city limits, and then... you hit the world map, and everything changes. The world is rendered in three whole dimensions, now! (Then, a technological marvel in its own right.) There’s a sky! There’s a horizon! Grass, mountains, the ocean!

Boundless, terrifying freedom.

From a mechanical standpoint, there’s only one real destination, an A-to-B with random encounters before a small enclosure with an inn and shops, no real change from what you’ve already been doing. But the mood? Everything’s fresh and new, now. Everything’s an unknown.

So, how do we do that again, two-and-a-half decades on?

Let’s say, something like this: Remake 2 starts with Cloud and Sephiroth en route to Nibelheim. For new players, this provides immediate intrigue: why are these mortal enemies hanging out in a truck? how did they get here, where are they going? For veterans, it’s familiar: oh, we’re in the flashback sequence.

For both, it provides mechanical familiarity. We just finished last game hanging out in Midgar, a bunch of town squares with shops and cutscenes connected to hazardous corridors. Well, Nibelheim’s a town with shops and cutscenes, connected to a monster-filled anthill and capped with a reactor. We know this. We’ve done this. We can do this again.

And when the flashback ends, we’re in Kalm. Another town, maybe with sidequests this time; Midgar looming in the distant skybox as a reminder of how far we’ve come.

And then you leave Kalm, and the camera zooms out, and out, and out...

Remake is essentially 7, and you can’t have the impact of 7′s world map reveal if Remake isn’t functionally open-world too. Square has plenty of experience with open environments, however successful their more recent attempts have been; I’m confident that the have the ability, at least, to craft an expansive world that feels appropriate to FF7.

((I’d like to take a moment here to talk about FF14, which mixes both compact twisty dungeons and wide-open overworld zones, and is necessarily wildly successful to still be operating as an MMO... but though I have played it briefly, I don’t claim knowledge sufficient to go in-depth. The point is, Square not only can make a game like that, they have, and are, and apparently possess non-zero competency. I have worries, but I’m not worried, if that makes sense.))

So, can you recreate a given kind of emotional impact? Yeah!

Can scenes from the original Final Fantasy 7 be rendered into a new context, more-or-less as they were? Absolutely!

Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?

- - - - -

Aerith dies.

If you opened this post and didn’t know that, well. There were spoiler warnings up at the top, the game’s more than two decades old, and the spoiler itself is basically a piece of pop-culture, up there with space dad and wizard killer. There’re probably plenty of people who know next-to-nothing about Final Fantasy 7 except that Aerith dies.

Everyone knows because, at the time, it was so big a thing. This was a title that Square hyped to heaven and back to push JRPGs into mainstream western markets, and it worked. And this was before major death was so common and arbitrary as it is today; even now, Game of Thrones and its ilk are a relative rarity. The death of a protagonist or love interest wasn’t a new thing for games, or any media really, but usually you knew it was coming, or it served some purpose. Aerith’s death was sudden, arbitrary, you’re almost immediately thrown into a boss fight so you don’t even have time to process it right away, and it’s the first stone in an avalanche of other pointless arbitrary tragedy. It’s an obvious narrative setup for the endgame confrontation with Sephiroth; instead, Cloud has a breakdown, Meteor happens, and now there’s an entire Disk 2.

Fandom has always been fandom, even before the continuous immediacy of the modern internet, but... people wrote letters to Square, and got sad on message boards. There’s an entire subset of forum signatures, back when those were a thing, that you could sort as “people fucked up over Aerith dying.” And again, this was the world. Not just Japan, or Asia, but everyone.

((Or, everyone with the finances to have a PS2 and/or an internet connection. Gaming as a pastime remains way expensive, whether played or watched. But you know how it is.))

And that’s the problem with answering that question.

See, FF7 is a lot of things, but for better or worse, it is defined by Aerith’s death. It’s one of many factors, but you can’t... leave it out, right? or it wouldn’t be FF7 anymore.

Aerith dies in FF7, and everyone knows it.

- - - - -

But Remake has promised, repeatedly, that things will be different this time. Everyone is coming together to defy fate, and Cloud in particular is here to keep Aerith from dying. Bodyguard jokes aside, Cloud repeatedly has flashbacks (flashforwards?) to Aerith’s death and the events leading to it. When he meets her in the church, when they cross into Sector 6, twice in the final battle. Hell, the very first time they meet, Sephiroth taunts him about not being able to save her. Even from a metatextual standpoint, since everyone knows Aerith dies, that’s like, The Most Obvious Fate To Change.

If, after all that, Aerith still dies? It’s not just tragedy, at that point. That’s the developers, actively lying to the player about their intent in making this game series. That’s frustrating, and immersion-breaking, and when said death is likely to still have one or more entire sequels to come after? maybe not great for sales! I know I didn’t bother buying the complete edition of FF15; I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about a game that set up this cool possibility, and then just, failed to deliver on every count.

And, Remake is being made for two audiences. I’ve said “everybody knows Aerith dies,” but that’s not really true, is it? It’s been 23 years, after all. Remake could well be someone’s very first Final Fantasy experience. That’s why they’ve been telegraphing Aerith’s death so hard. Not everyone knows, but at least everyone can guess. Is it fair, then, to this new audience, with potentially no knowledge or understanding of the legacy of this flashy new action game, to foreshadow tragedy in the future, have everyone come together to say, We’re Going To Stop This, and then... not? Is that good writing? Is that satisfying? When this is a multi-game and potentially multi-console investment of time and money, is this, as a newcomer, a story you’d want to keep playing?

And then on top of that, it’s 2020.

I don’t mean that in the current-year-fallacy, “we’re better than this now” kind of way. Rather, the way I felt about Final Fantasy 15 is even more relevant now. People, in real life, are realizing that the powers-that-be are failing them, have failed them, have been failing them for far longer than twenty-three years. The people that already knew that are actually showing up for each other, to spite what felt and feels like inescapable fate and finding that, together, they might just be able to ruin God’s day.

Game development is, of course, its own whole beast, and projects in motion tend to stay in motion; deviating from a plan takes time and money that Square may be unwilling to spend. But, under current world circumstances: is making a game where the hero sets out to save one specific person from their fated death, and following that with a game where that one specific person dies anyway, aside from everything else, a good business decision?

- - - - -

So... Aerith, shouldn’t die, right...? But, FF7 requires Meteor, and so requires the Temple of the Ancients and the Black Materia. And, Meteor can only be stopped by Holy, so FF7 requires the Forgotten City.

FF7 is a tragedy. FF7 demands blood.

...Hey, actually, hold that thought. How come Cloud can remember Aerith dying in the first place? He’s not from the future, right? He’s got a connection to Sephiroth, who is from the future... and Sephiroth can manipulate his memories...? but, why would Sephiroth let him, or make him, remember that?

Hey, how come Zack is alive, but like, in the “narrative scope” sense? Wouldn’t his presence circumvent Cloud’s delusions about the Nibelheim incident?

Hey, how come Cloud had multiple big climactic Sephiroth confrontations at what’s essentially the end of the prologue, including one that mirrors the very end of the original FF7? Shouldn’t that still come at, like, you know. the end?

Hey, how come--

- - - - -

Remake has these... Callbacks? Refrains? Like my favorite, when Sephiroth throws a train-- you know, The Fate Metaphor-- at Cloud, who absolutely shreds the thing. Or, for a more direct example:

And it frequently uses these to show that people are changing, that things can change. You know, the whole Running Theme the game has going on.

Sephiroth gets a refrain, too.

At the start of the game (give or take a reactor), in his first real appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, makes sure Cloud hates him, and tells Cloud what he wants.

At the end of the game, in his last appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, tells Cloud what he wants, and makes sure Cloud hates him.

Structurally, these encounters more-or-less bookend the game; thematically, it doesn’t exactly indicate change. Barret may or may not have come around on Cloud, and his admission that Cloud is important to him after all is, itself, important. Cloud, on the other hand, was always going to defy Sephiroth. He stands resolute, now, ready to fight rather than flee, but apathy was never on the table.

Now, Sephiroth’s whole Thing is psychologically manipulating Cloud to get what he wants, and as part of that, what Sephiroth wants is usually not what he says he wants.

All throughout the original FF7, Sephiroth riled up Cloud so that Cloud would pursue and defy him, culminating first in the Black Materia incident, and then again in the Forgotten City. None of the Sephiroth clones could survive the trip through the Northern Crater, so Sephiroth had to lure Cloud, with the Black Materia, to him, and then also convince Cloud to give up the Black Materia of his own accord. Mind control, memory manipulation and illusions were involved, but if Sephiroth could maintain those indefinitely, he probably just. Would have done that instead. Way easier,

The point is, in Remake, in addition to all the intermittent retraumitization sprinkled throughout the game, Sephiroth goes out of his way twice to directly ask Cloud, “hey, you hate me, right?” And, as part of that question, he tells Cloud, “this is what I want.” And Cloud? He hates Sephiroth, and will do his damnedest to keep Sephiroth from getting what he wants.

So. What does Sephiroth... say he wants?

- - - - -

One last aside before we cap off: This post would not exist without the valiant efforts of one Maximilian_dood. His devotion to the series kept myself and many others engaged and excited and, frankly, hopeful, in the leadup to the release of Remake, and his correlations between the rest of the FF7 series and Remake were enlightening and entertaining.

and had he not the gall to identify defying fate as a device to make aerith’s death more tragic, I would never have been angry enough to write this.

((I know, I know. Gaming and streaming and lit analysis are all hard individually, and I don’t begrudge losing one for the other two. And it was a first playthrough! I might have seen these lines sooner than some, but collating all this info was certainly not instantaneous. And Square can be hack writers at times-- see again my rant on FF15-- so even then, I can’t discount the possibility.

((but, still.

((Really?))

So, while I would like to believe that I have, by now, made my thesis on Remake’s narrative direction abundantly clear, here it is spelled out anyway:

- - - - -

At the bottom of the Forgotten City, at the shrine on the pillar in the lake, Cloud will find Aerith, who believes her fate immutable.

Sephiroth will descend, and Cloud will sacrifice himself, that Aerith should live.

This is Sephiroth’s plan.

- - - - -

Hey, thanks for reading this far! With my conversational tone and rambling tendencies, I’d have preferred to make this an audio post or, god forbid, a video essay, but I got a keyboard, and that’ll have to do. Diction is important to me, as the capitalization, italics and use of punctuation may have clued you in on, so... maybe you’ll get a dramatic reading sometime in the future? but, don’t bet on it.

Feel free to riddle me with questions, or point out inconsistencies with this big ol’ thing! I’m not exactly an expert, and I’m sure I glossed over, heavily paraphrased, completely forgot, intentionally ignored and/or aggressively misrepresented some stuff, but I love learning and teaching esoteric bullshit about The Vijigams. On that note, anything that sounds like it should be sourced is sourced from “I heard about it on social media or in a stream or youtube video one time, but if I actually had to hunt it down this whole thing would never see the light of day, and it has already been like three months,” which isn’t to excuse my lack of due diligence, but I do, lack diligence, so, tough.

Oh! but the Remake screens all come from [here]. Don’t care much for that splash screen, but, I Get It, so, whatever.

There were some other things I wanted to touch on but couldn’t really find a spot for. FF7 Remake as a metaphor for its own development, for example. Or, some of The Possibilities, like how Cloud’s death could very literally haunt Aerith, or how Remake sets up a more fleshed-out Midgar revisit that Cloud’s death specifically would make infinitely sadder.

On that note, if it was not yet obvious, I love speculation, and if they do go this direction, it’ll probably be their justification to go completely... off the rails? Remake only has to be FF7 until it doesn’t, after all. If there’s some wilder implications youall see for like... I dunno, a Jenova more fully-regenerated from also having Cloud’s cells back, getting into proper Kaiju-on-Kaiju battles with the Weapons, or anything like that? Feed me your brain juice, etc.

And, once more, for the road: this is interpretation; subjective, opinionated, and very much in denial of any kind of author-ity. Nor is this a claim on how things should be, or an assertion that this would be good or bad. Everything ultimately rests on Square's narrative design team and, we’ve touched on them already.

((but, for your consideration: I’m smart, and right))

Here’s hoping, whatever happens, we get the game we deserve.

thanks for coming to my ted talk, have a great day

[wondereads]

Recommendation of the Week (5/24/20)

The 100 by Kass Morgan

Why am I recommending this book?

I’ve had this book for a while, but I decided to read the entire series before I started watching the TV show. Also, the final season just started airing, so it seemed like a good time

Plot 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

It seems I’m on a bit of a streak. This is the third dystopian book in a row! The 100 is about the last of the human race who live on space stations above Earth, which has been ravaged by a nuclear war. Due to issues with the oxygen supply, they decide to send one hundred juvenile delinquents down to Earth to see if it’s habitable again. The story is told from four points of view. Clarke, whose parents were imprisoned along with her and executed. Bellamy, who forced his way onto the drop ship in order to protect his sister, Octavia. Wells, who got imprisoned on purpose to follow Clarke to the ground. Glass, a privileged girl who barely escapes being sent to the ground. While the concept of a nuclear apocalypse is a tried and tested story, I’ve never read anything quite like this one. Some things are a bit cliche, but the overall idea is completely unique. Of course, there are some parts where you think, ‘Why? Why would they do that?’, but they are a bunch of teenagers living outside of parental/government supervision for the first time. Also, there’s a lot of making out (see above).

Characters 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

Honestly, I love Clarke. She’s very no-nonsense and practical, which I appreciate in a character. In order of likability, the main characters are Clarke, Bellamy, Glass, then Wells. Bellamy is technically the oldest, but his chapters reveal that he’s just as uncertain as any of the teenagers. He also has a lot of conflict over his younger sister, Octavia, that adds a lot to his character. In my opinion, Glass is a little over dramatic and pretty much the definition of a hormonal teenager. However, as the story progressed, she became more fleshed out, and I grew to have a lot of respect for her. Finally, Wells is a good person just trying to do the right thing. I won’t say he isn’t a good character, but I never established an emotional connection to him the way I did with the other characters. As for side characters, the important ones are Thalia, Clarke’s friend, Octavia, Bellamy’s sister, and Luke, Glass’ boyfriend. Thalia was by far the best as she had maybe five lines of dialogue in the first book, but I still felt a strong connection to her. Octavia, while not the most likable character, is very well written, especially when it comes to the conflict around her. Overall, the characters were pretty good, and I always love it when I can personally connect to one like I did with Clarke.

Writing Style 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

Morgan’s style is very to-the-point. In terms of physical description, there isn’t too much. A lot of what the Colony and the 100′s camp is left up to the imagination, and I really only had a vague idea of what the characters look like. However, when it comes to emotions, Morgan does not skip out. A lot of the conflict is emotional, so a lot of time is spent describing how the characters feel and react. That was where the writing truly shone.

Meaning 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

As far as I can tell, there is no underlying meaning in the first book. There is a general tone of teamwork and trust, but nothing more than that.

Overall 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

I really liked this book. So much so that I went ahead and read the next two (I won’t be reviewing them unless someone wants me to). It was a fun read that kept me interested in the characters and their decisions. As I’ve said many times now, I really liked Clarke, and the side characters were well-developed despite not being the focus. I would recommend this to fans of post-apocalyptic dystopia or stories where the kids are in charge such as The Lord of the Flies or Gone.

Bonus! The TV Show

I prefer to think of the book and the TV show as two different entities. They are completely different in terms of plot and characters. In the show, Glass doesn’t exist, Wells is killed off in the first season, Clarke has a different love interest, Clarke’s mom is alive and unimprisoned, Octavia has a completely different story, and there are many new characters such as Finn, Raven, Murphy, Monty, Jasper, and Kane. I find it very funny that Finn’s on the cover when he isn’t in the book. However, I do think the show is very good, but it’s like Howl’s Moving Castle. The book and adaptation have nothing to do with each other except for a similar premise.

The Author

Kass Morgan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kass_Morgan

The Reviewer

My name is Wonderose, and you can learn more about me here!

[grimelords]

The hits just don’t stop coming!

My May playlist is finished and it’s only almost one month late! Everything you want and nothing you don’t from Nicki Minaj, the band that did the OC theme song and Italian Adele. What more could you ask for! 

Listen here!

Curious - Amerie: Amerie, who sang the world's greatest song 1 Thing and unfortunately never had any other good songs, surprise released a 22 minute album called 4AM Mulholland and a companion EP that was 20 minutes long called After 4AM last year. I don't know why she didn't just release one normal length album but anyway, because she's Amerie people weren't exactly eagerly awaiting a surprise release album from her so it came and went pretty quickly. This song though is really very good and sets a really nice midnight smoky tone that the whole rest of the album/EP unfortunately fails to really live up to. I also found out in my research that Amerie is also apparently a semi-influential book vlogger 'BookTuber' and last year edited a book of YA short stories where other BookTubers 'reimagined fairy tales from the oft-misunderstood villains' points of view. She's got heaps going on.

Vipers Follow You - Amon Tobin: Amon Tobin has lost his damn mind yet again. His last album was 8 years ago and it sounded like a hardware test for a new kind of million dollar sound system. Every single type of sound and frequency was crammed into it and it felt like a sound sculture that could physically attack you rather than an album that you listened to for fun. Now his new album sounds like the direct opposite. There's no drums on it at all and it's all stripped back thick and smooth acoustic-modelled textures and it's very nice. This song is a good example of the album feel overall: not exactly ambient or laid-back, but definite night music from a guy who has gone all the way from chillout trip-hop to walls of hydraulic noise over his career and it's always such a thrill to hear people pushing forward in their sound 9 albums in.

Do The Panic - Phantom Planet: Phantom Planet who famously did the theme song for The OC have reformed and released their first new song in ten years. This isn't that song but there was a bunch of people in the comments on the Stereogum article about it saying they were and underrated band and their 2008 album Raise The Dead has bangers and guess what: they were right!

Roman Holiday - Nicki Minaj: Roman Holiday reentered the billboard charts last month because it became relevant again via people putting it in memes where they would play a sped up version of the song over sped up videos of.. anything really. It's not a very good meme but I thank god for it because otherwise I would never have learned that it's a very good song. I also think there's a very interesting lesson to be learned here about Nicki Minaj because she premiered this song at the 2012 Grammys before Roman Reloaded came out with an elaborate Exorcist routine and everyone hated this extremely weird song and extremely weird performance so it was scrapped as the first single and they put out Starships instead. Nicki Minaj seem to me like an artist that has always struggled to ride the line between pop marketability and doing their own unique thing in much the same way as Eminem, and just like Eminem she's eventually settled in to a very safe and marketable version of herself. Roman Holiday is a glimpse of the Nicki That Could Have been that just starts singing Come All Ye Faithful in the middle of a song and does the chorus in an extremely dodgy British accent. There's a good bit on the wiki for this song that quotes Jessica Hooper's Spin review that says "the pop tracks are a paying of the piper and the too-perfect, Dr. Luke-produced songs are her penance for sneaking deranged yodeling ode 'Roman Holiday' in there." More deranged yodelling odes please Nicki!

Cousins - Vampire Weekend: I've never gotten into Vampire Weekend for an unknown reason. I like every song I've heard of theirs I've just never properly sat down and listened to an album and appreciated it until Father Of The Bride this year. I have however always loved Cousins. It’s got a completely deranged riff, the drums sound like their going to catch fire and it ends with chiming bells. It’s completely off the rails and I think the video is one of my favourites ever for just simply matching the tone of the song and the performance.

Lost Your Number - Nu Shooz: On the episode of R U Talkin' R.E.M Re: Me? with Ezra Koenig they were talking about grunge and the early 90s and how music that had 'authenticity' suddently became so popular. Scott's reasoning was that by the late 80s pop music had become so incredibly vaccuous and bad that people were yearning for anything with meaning. He said 'pop was so bad, stuff like Nu Shooz' and I immediately remembered how fucking good Nu Shooz are and paused the podcast to listen to them instead. This is an absolutely great song because the lyrics never rise above linear storytelling. 'I lost your number' is not a metaphor for lost contact or leaving someone or anything like that. This whole song is about trying to call someone but you've lost the piece of paper that you wrote their phone number on. She even describes the paper like maybe you the listener have seen it around somewhere, I absolutey love it.

Paper Trail$ - Joey Bada$$: Joey Bada$$ is a goon but he has good songs sometimes. If he wasn't a famous rapper he would be working full time in reddit arguments where people rank members of the Wu-Tang Clan. He's one of these 'real hip hop' 'lyrical miracle' guys and he even goes so far as to rework C.R.E.A.M in this song to say cash RUINS everything around me :O but this beat is nice as hell and I woke up with the bit where says 'shit is really real out here' repeating in my head.

Julien - Carly Rae Jepsen: I'm really loving this new Carly Rae album. It's not as heavy on hits as Emotion obviously but it's more even overall and has a lot more to dig into I think. I just keep listening to it. This song especially is so nice because it's a great example of how you only need two chords to get something extremely funky going.

Rock Non Stop - Cassius: Cassius finally have another great song! The nearly two minute choral intro is such genius because of how suddenly and forcefully it drops you into the middle of the most boneheaded dance song I've heard in a long time. Two different silly voices going back and forth with each other saying 'rock non stop' and 'gimme the good time', who could ask for anything more?

Just as I was about to publish this I saw the news that Phillipe Zdar died which is so sad! Just as they started releasing fantastic new music! So now this song is tinged with that sort of sadness which is unfair because it’s such a fun and silly piece of music, it doesn’t deserve to hold that kind of weight.

DOLO 5 - Dolo Percussion: This Dolo Percussion album absolutely astounded me. No melody! Just drums! For an hour and a half! It's a complete world of its own and you can get totally lost in the depths of it. Every song has a completely unique palette and it never ever feels boring like percussion focused music sometimes can, it's constantly evolving in every track and never settles into anything for too long. Things just come and go so naturally it feels like actually trying to figure out the structure of these songs would be impossible. There's a few moments where there's a hint of a bassline or melody in a some of the later songs and it completely shakes you up, like seeing sunlight again after years of absolutely thriving in the dark.

Song About An Angel - Sunny Day Real Estate: The way he sings 'running behind' in this is maybe one of my favourite pieces of vocal performance ever. He just shouted himself apart. Also the Genius description of this song is one of the best emo sentences I’ve ever seen: "The song is believed to be a conversation between a guy and an angel (possibly a girl)."

This Life - Vampire Weekend: The R U Talkin' R.E.M. Re: Me? episode with Ezra really put this album into a lot more context for me, because he's talking about being influenced by The Grateful Dead - not musically exactly but in the mindset and the idea of being in a guitar band and making guitar music in 2019 which is an interesting thing to think about. Anyway this has such a Dead feel to it and I'm really interested to see what they do live because as I've heard they're really mixing up their reputation of being a band that sounds exactly like the album and really going for it instead and doing absolutely anything which is a lot more fun.

The Past Is A Grotesque Animal - of Montreal: I've been getting heavily into Hissing Fauna Are You The Destroyer? this month and it's just so incredible. This song especially as the centrepiece of this whole album is amazing. The mindset is so intriguing to me: absolutely going though it in the worst way possible, getting divorced and everything like that but also somehow managing to keep it twee. The sorts of things that influenced this album would turn any normal person to heavier or stranger music but somehow he manages to believe so hard in the power of twee indie pop that he pushed it to the limit and create a masterpiece.

The Cascades - Janice Scroggins: You know that tweet about riding the bus and looking out the window and pretending the music you're listening to is the soundtrack to the movie about you riding the bus? That's me except with Scott Joplin rags and pretending i'm in a silent film where I embarrass myself in front of a society lady.

The Governor - Nicolas Jaar: I think i’ve probably already had this song on a playlist like three times so I’m going to stop talking about it but here’s my favourite thing this time: It could have just ended and been fine but instead it goes to saxophone hell and that’s what makes this a 10/10 song.

The Less I Know The Better - Tame Impala: My peabrain moment this month was suddenly developing a huge obsession with this song for some reason. Have you guys heard of this band ‘Tame Impala’? I really feel like they might blow up! One of my favourite things about this song is that the top youtube comment for a long time was ‘this is like the cuck anthem’. They’re right!

New Town - Life Without Buildings: Life Without Buildings feels like indie rock from another dimension. This came out in 2000 and for some reason I can't reconcile that fact with how it sounds. It sounds like it should have come out at least 5 years later. I cannot imagine this style of vocal ever working so effectively but somehow it just does. I'm hanging on absolutely every word and feeling it so intensely when in reality she sounds like something went wrong with the recording. I just love it.

Bang Bang Bang - Mark Ronson And The Business Intl: This is a hugely underrated song and this era of Mark Ronson seems to have been totally forgotten which is unfortunate. This song, Bad Romance by Lady Gaga and OMG by Usher all came out around the same time in my memory and I remember feeling very optimistic for the direction pop seemed to be heading in. Bombastic and unique and unafraid to be structurally different but then it turned out it wasn’t really a trend at all, it was just three great songs. So who knows.

Back To The Trees - Adele H: I suddenly remembered this song I completely fell in love with last year and remembered as a moderate hit only to find that it has <1000 listens on spotify and 300 on youtube. Simply not good enough, please listen to this song! Support my friend and yours Adele H: ‘The Italian Adelian’

Out There - Studio: What’s so good about Studio is it’s technically an electronic duo but it has the feeling of a jam jam band. Their wiki article is obviously written by their management but it also describes them as an ‘afrobeat-dub-disco-indie-pop adventure’ which is very true. It’s an adventure! It just keeps moving on and on through fifty flavours of groove!

Shut Up Kiss Me - Angel Olsen: This really is maybe the best love song ever written! Because it's about standing firm and not giving up on love! Stop pretending I'm not there when it's clear I'm not going anywhere / If I'm out of sight then take another look around!

Through This Town - Mia Dyson: If you ever need an optimistic song to lay down on the floor to then here's one.

Cry Flames - Rustie: I'm on my usual shit about how good Glass Swords was and how that it's a tragedy that this never coalesced into a major movement like it should have. This is such a good sound that just kind of disappeared because vaporwave and everything overlapped with the boring parts of it and the anime chillout version became popular instead. Sad!

Real Truth (feat. Tkay Maidza) - J-E-T-S, Machinedrum and Jimmy Edgar: I love this beat so much. The sort of beat that sounds like it's playing out of a droid that got shot with a lazer and is malfunctioning.

Aute Cuture - Rosalia: me putting these lyrics through google translate: oh my god she’s right this IS on fire

Self-Immolate - King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard: King Gizz are a metal band now and they're writing the very best kind of metal songs - sci-fi about burning to death in the skies of Venus that's also a climate change parable.

Magic Arrow - Timber Timbre: Timber Timbre feel underrated to me. I never see anyone talking about them but they're one of the most consistently great bands around, I absolutely love them. There's so much space in this song, this whole style of minimal production is underutilised. It feels like if Wicked Game by Chris Isaak was about an 18th century cult leader instead which I think we can all agree is a much improved song.

Kim's Caravan - Courtney Barnett: I love this style of songwriting where you just sit on an extremely heavy bassline the whole time and have no chorus, which affords you the freedom to just get bigger and bigger and smaller as you wish. The Drones cover of River Of Tears works like this too and I think it's just masterful.

When The Movie's Over - Twin Shadow: My belief is Confess is front to back one of the greatest pop albums ever written. Please, please listen to it and be moved.

listen here

[lo-lynx]

The rulers of the forest: The witches of His Dark Materials and Scandinavian folklore

Spoiler warning: All of the His Dark Materials books, and one tiny spoiler from The Secret Commonwealth 

Beautiful, supernatural, and gets PISSED if you turn down their advances. I could very well be describing the witches from His Dark Materials, but I could also be describing the Skogsrå of Scandinavian mythology. Skogsrå means “ruler of the forest” and is one of several similar mythological beings in Scandinavian folklore (there is also the Sjörå, ruler of the lake/sea, and Bergsrå, ruler of the mountain). The Skogsrå, as well as the other rå, can be likened to the fairies of English mythology (Häll 2013, 62). She, because she is always a woman, appears walking alone in the forest, looking beautiful, and often tries to seduce the men who meet her (Harjunen 2019). However, she often has some sort of physical deformity (that she tries to hide), such as a tail or having a rotting tree trunk for a back.

Source: https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skogsr%C3%A5et#/media/Fil%3ASkogsr%C3%A5_med_ih%C3%A5lig_rygg.jpg

Source: https://www.isof.se/om-oss/for-dig-i-skolan/arkivvaskan/skogsraet-i-folktron.html

Those who pleased her (by having sex with her, or for instance by helping her with the animals she kept) were generally given some sort of boon, such as luck in hunting or fishing (Häll 2013, 129). If you did not do as she wanted, however, you could expect some sort of punishment (ibid, 345). Having sex with her, was not always a good idea, however. Those who did so could often come away from the encounter feeling sick (ibid, 378). It could also lead to a feeling of emasculation since these women were the dominant partner in the relationship (Harjunen 2019). Sometimes this was literal too, with the men losing their genitalia or it being damaged in some way.

Now, I feel like the witches of His Dark Materials share many traits with the Skogsrå. Firstly, they’re both described as beautiful women who are connected to the forest; when we first hear of the witches, we learn that “They live in forests and on the tundra. Their business is with the wild.” (Pullman 2011a, 165). They are consistently described as beautiful (ex: Pullman 2011a, 300; Pullman 2011b; 49 & 118). Similarly, the Skogsrå is the ruler of the forest, and it is also there one might encounter her (Harjunen 2019). Harjunen writes that the forest often was considered to be the borderland between the safe, human, world and the unknown world of the supernatural. The forest was also often coded as female, and as something that should be conquered by men (for instance by hunting the animals in it).

Source: https://www.isof.se/om-oss/for-dig-i-skolan/arkivvaskan/skogsraet-i-folktron.html

Here you can also see a connection between the wildness of the forest and the wildness of the Skogsrå’s sexuality. Häll notes that this was a great contrast to the gender norms of premodern Sweden and the ideal femininity where women were supposed to be virtuous (2013, 401). This leads me to my second point: as one might expect, the church was hardly a fan of the Skogrå and similar beings. They were seen during the 15th and 16th century to be Satan’s creatures, and to have sex with them (as some men claimed that they had) were likened to having sex with the devil (ibid 251). Similarly, there is most definitely a conflict between the witches’ way of life and that of the church in His Dark Materials. As Ruta Skadi notes about the church in The Subtle Knife: “For all its history (…) it has tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. (…) That is what the church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.” (Pullman 2011b, 50) (Side note: Is Ruta basically a Marxist? This might have to be another essay at some point.) I’ve written before on the church’s attempts to control sexuality in His Dark Materials, if anyone is interested in that. We get another glimpse at the church’s view on witches when Will meets a priest in The Amber Spyglass who tells him this:

“the witches- daughters of evil! The church should have put them all to death many years ago. Witches- have nothing to do with them, Will Ivanovitch, you hear me? You know what they will do when you come to the right age? They will try to seduce you. They will use all the soft cunning deceitful ways they have, their flesh, their soft skin, their sweet voices, and they will take your seed- you know what I mean by that- they will drain you and leave you hollow! They will take your future, your children, and leave you nothing.” (Pullman 2011c, 100).

The priest here echoes a lot of the Christian views on the Skogsrå in Sweden; linking them to the devil and describing them as seductresses. His sentiments are also similar to how the Skogsrå was seen as someone who might bring illness and emasculate her male lovers (Harjunen 2019). Harjunen also makes the interesting point that those who have sex with a Skogsrå might be seen as “queer by association” (ibid, 47). This is because the Skogsrå, as a forest spirit and a woman breaking gender norms, was seen as a kind of queer being. In a similar line of thinking, Häll writes that in the eyes of the church, having sex with a Skogsrå were often considered to be sodomy (2013, 200). All in all, those who had sex with a Skogsrå could be considered to not be “real men” because they engaged in sexual behavior that was not heteronormative. A similar point is raised by the priest in The Amber Spyglass when he claims that the witches will take men’s seed, and thus take their children and future. The man will then not be able to live up to the heteronormative ideal of having a wife and fathering children.

Now, I want to look at the thing that first made me consider this connection between the witches and the Skogsrå; the giving of favors or punishment. When we’re first introduced to the witches, we learn that they might be inclined to help our heroes, because “there’s an obligation there” after Fader Coram helped save Serafina Pekkala’s life (Pullman 2011a, 163). Similarly, in The Secret Commonwealth (TINY SPOILER), we learn about a witch in Sala silver mine (a real place by the way) who helped some miners heal from illness, and they in return helped her when her cloud-pine went missing (Pullman 2019, 345). This story is very similar to the way a Skogsrå or Bergsrå might help forest workers or miners.

 (Note the tail) Source: https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skogsr%C3%A5et#/media/Fil%3ATroll_woman.gif 

But unfortunately, we also get stories a plenty of what happens when you spurn a witch. As a seal-hunter puts it like this to Lee in The Subtle Knife: “A witch offers you her love, you should take it. If you don’t, it’s your own fault if bad things happen to you. It’s like having to make a choice: a blessing or a curse.” (Pullman 2011, 118). This is consistent with how the Skogsrå is described; if you do what she wants she will reward you (for instance by giving you luck with hunting or curing an illness), but if you reject her, she will punish you (Häll 2013, 345). This latter outcome is seen in The Subtle Knife when the witch Juta Kamainen kills Stanislaus Grumman/John Parry for scorning her (Pullman 2011b, 321).

So, in conclusion, the Skogsrå of Scandinavian folklore have often represented a wildness, untamed nature and female sexuality. They were deemed sinful and agents of Satan by the church. They could help you if you helped them, but if you scorned them they would punish you. Similarly, the witches of His Dark Materials live in the wilderness, are very sexual, are disliked by the church for this, and can both help and punish you. What we can take from this comparison, besides the fact that Pullman might have been inspired by this folklore, is that women who, in the words of Häll, do not follow gender norms and are virtuous are a threat (2013, 401). In fact, Häll describes the Skogsrå as “the femme fatal of folklore” (my translation) (ibid, 404). This description fits the witches quite well too. I’m not sure if Pullman does enough to deconstruct this idea though. But, as I have argued in previous texts, it is interesting that female sexuality is such a big threat to the institution of the Magisterium. And since the Magisterium is the villain of the story, we should probably cheer Ruta Skadi when she calls for its destruction for its attempt to “obliterate every good feeling” (Pullman 2011b, 50). So, while I have some quibbles with how the witches are portrayed, I guess we should celebrate these femme fatales of the forest.

 References

Harjunen, Catarina. 2019. “Queer Perspectives on Erotic Human-Supernatural Encounters in Finland-Swedish Folk Legends”. lambda nordica. 1/2019: 46-66

Häll, Mikael. 2013. Skogsrået, näcken och Djävulen: Erotiska naturväsen och demonisk sexualitet i 1600- och 1700-talens Sverige. Stockholm: Malört

Pullman, Philip. 2011a. Northern Lights. London: Scholastic.

Pullman, Philip. 2011b. The Subtle Knife. London: Scholastic.

Pullman, Philip. 2011c. The Amber Spyglass. London: Scholastic.

Pullman, Philip. 2019. The Secret Commonwealth. London: Penguin Random House

[langernameohnebedeutung]

(Nazi mention tw) Since you answered my question about Magneto’s accent before, I now ask: Does Magneto have citizenship in any nation? Fansites say he has German citizenship, which I don’t think is right—he would have had to actively reapply for citizenship after the defeat of the Nazis. I think Trial of Magneto mentions that he has no citizenship anywhere, though I’m not sure if that is legally true. I think at some point it’s definitively stated that he’s not an Israeli citizen either (1/2)

 (2/2) I presume he had Genoshan citizenship back when there was a Genoshan nation, and that he has Krakoan citizenship now. But other than those, has he been stated to have citizenship anywhere? Would he be likely to have any citizenship?

Uuh, that’s a really interesting question. I also kinda stumbled over his citizenship being stated as German in the wiki a few times, but personally I think they just put Germany in because he was born there. Plus listing all the countries he lived in at this point would be a lot of work lol.

On theother hand he is referred to as German occasionally – for example by Iron Manin Axis-

- but I think that’s just low-hanging fruit for a punchline (tony shut up challenge) and doesn’t really reflect anything. (Although I did check Not A Hero because I remembered we see a glimpse there of the exact description of Mags that Iron Man has in his computer system because I was curious about the nationality there but there is none given.)

But thereare various aspects to nationality – for one, where a person feels athome and how they identify. And especially for someone like Mags who doesn’t care much for laws in the first place, those are probably more important than any “legal” aspects. Personally, I think Mags is more defined by his history as an immigrant or refugee than by any national identity – and when he does exhibit any particular enthusiasm for any country, it’s usually countries with the idea of immigration as their defining traits. Genosha, Israel, America, Krakoa – and his disappointment when one of these countries doesn’t live up to the idea.

As for the legal aspect of things- which citizenship he holds – I personally think it’s very likely that he doesn’t have any ‘official’ citizenship at this point, because he would probably refuse to be defined by one slip of paper and on the other hand, I don’t think any nation is particularly eager to lay a claim to one of the most famous terrorists in the world.

Looking at what we know: Max was born in the Weimarer Republik, not so long before the NS-Regime came into power. According to Magneto: Testament, his father was Jewish and he fought in WW1. While antisemitism was rampant in the Weimarer Republik (obviously), Jewish people had the same legal rights as everyone else and at birth, he would have been considered German.

After the Nazis came into power, the first group of Jewish people which were stripped of their citizenship in 1933 were so-called “Ostjuden”, “East-Jews” from Eastern Europe who had been granted German citizenship after the end of WW1.

Later on, refugees were targeted. I work with Gestapo files for my job and we often encounter emigration files of Jewish people – I just held one in my hands the other day, and all legal formalities aside, the Gestapo straight up, more or less verbatim, writes in these files: “We have evidence that Jew XY (yeah, they put “Jew” in front of their names like that) has left the country. They can therefore be considered an emigrant. It is to be investigated whether they left wealth of more than 5000 RM in Germany.” 

If the person or family left behind wealth of more than 5000 RM, they were stripped of their citizenship and their possessions were put up for auction. Mind you, the official law that stripped Jewish people who “changed their usual place of residence” of their citizenship officially came into power on the 25.11.1941 - but the entries I found in the Gestapo and Sondergerichts files about the earlier-mentioned practices date back to…I think 1937 or 1938 (I still have one of the file numbers in my notebook I could even look it up), the major difference being the >5000 RM limit earlier. But as of the 18th of October 1941, Jewish people were officially forbidden from emigrating, because deportation was considered a more efficient way to access their money.

Obviously we can’t know how much money Max’ family had exactly (we know they’re middle class, his father being a civil servant and probably also receives some pensions as a veteran), but considering that physical property and real estate were also sold in these auctions and that they fled Germany in 1939, it’s not unlikely that according to NS-law, he was stripped of his German citizenship then already. If he didn’t, he must officially have lost in 1941 because he was nolonger living in Germany. As of 25.4.1943, all Jewish people and people considered “Half-Jews” as well as Romani people were ultimately stripped oftheir German citizenship. So he must have lost his German citizenship between 1939-1943, although I’d argue it’s more likely to have happened between 1939and 18th of October 1941. I think we could even narrow it down further, since they seemed to have barely arrived in Poland when his father’s friendtells them that the Germans invaded Poland, but honestly, that’s hardly therelevant point here.

Another important aspect is that the Nazis often “confiscated” the papers of the prisoners of their camps. After the war, many German Holocaust survivors who returned to “Germany” (or whatever else to call that entity until the foundingof East and West Germany), had a hard time proving that they were in fact German. While some were lucky and still had papers or there were enough people around their home towns who would admit they knew them, others had great problems getting their own property back or to get their compensation money or just their identity back. 

I work with an organisation that works with Holocaust survivors and one of them told us that when he returned, he almost didn’t get his home back (it had been turned into an NSDAP-house) and that the same mayor who had his parents and his siblings imprisoned to get his hands on said house was still in power. And would later become a member of the Bundestag, the German parliament.  Without a federal government in place and even the tribunals that were responsible for taking care of the victims of the fascist regime corroded by former Nazis and ideological infighting, the survivors were still facing discrimination. Especially since the rest of the population basically refused to address these issues. It’s also noteworthy that Romani people were still subject to a different legal status after the war and that explicit legal discrimination continued well into the 1990s and early 2000s. So for many reasons, getting your citizenship back wasn’t usually a walk in the park - especially if you have a Romani friend with you and escaped before the war even officially ended. It would have been risky as hell for them to go back home. And even if Germany had magically turned into a model democracy, it was still a place of horrible memories for both him and Magda and they had nothing there anymore and no one waiting for them.

So ok, what does that mean? We know Max and Magda escaped Auschwitz together and went to live in the Carpathians and eventually had Anya and Max/Erik got his first false identity. Which…is a thing he does a lot so the question is… whether that counts as an official citizenship? If yes, he had Ukrainian papers at some point. In the end, it’s a question of self-determination, really but the papers were still fake.

Then the unthinkable happened, Anya died, Magda ran and Max/Erik was on his own again and went to Israel as Erik Magnus. Now, it’s still another new name, but there’s nothing saying he didn’t adopt it in official papers and got anofficial citizenship. That would make him at this point either Israeli or Israeli-Ukrainian. I would actually argue the former is more likely, because he was working for the Mossad (which probably means he had real papers as an Israeli) and the CIA - which would probably have had a hard time trusting a Soviet.  

As for Genosha and Krakoa…I mean, you could definitely argue that he was automatically a citizen of Genosha because it was “his” country. The question is…would did he consider himself a “Genoshan”? because…personally I think the nature of the country as a home for mutants would have been much more relevant to him than any questions of national identity. Especially if you compare it with Krakoa, you notice the different treatment of concepts of language and culture in Krakoa – which has its own language and writing (which is imprinted in your brain CAN WE PLEASE REVISIT THAT?? I HAVE MANY THOUGHTS ON THIS) and generally seems to have a much stronger focus on the creation of a Krakoan identity. 

So where does that leave us? I don’t think he ever went to claim his German citizenship again. He legally could and even emigrated people who never returned again are usually considered German-(Whatever nationality they adopted)(but not just “German” like his Wiki entry does).  I assume he became Israeli at some point, especially since he worked for the Mossad (I don’t think they would have been very impressed with fake papers). I don’t think he ever said he was ‘Genoshan’ as an integral part of his cultural identity – I think it was first and foremost the community he was tied to, the people, the idea of his new Genosha, but honestly, I don’t know any textual evidence on that and there are many aspects from his rule over Genosha that I have a conflicted relationship with writing-wise. As I said, Krakoa is a different house number but again, I think even with its own language and everything, that Mags’ reasoning is less “I am Krakoan” and more “Mutants are Krakoan and I am a mutant.”

Generally, I don’t think Mags ever really thinks in terms of “national identity”. Being Jewish, being a mutant, being an immigrant, being a survivor, living the life he does, doing what he does – I think all those things rank much higher in his sense of self than national identity ever could - and even if it did, I don’t think he would care much about a ‘legal’ status anywhere. But I think it’s important to keep in mind that he grew up in a state that used national identity as a means of controlling and brainwashing its citizens – at the expense of people like him. Growing up, national identity was an exclusionary experience for him rather than an inclusive one - one that he never wanted to be part of. 

For him, discrimination was the key relationship he had with national identity and even after the war, he gets false papers and changes his name to be with the woman he loves. And later he changes his name again and goes to Israel and works in a hospital to help other survivors. Just like he didn’t have any problems becoming Charles’ cousin. He just moves on. He took over Genosha to help mutants and the same ambition brought him to Krakoa. And at the same time he’s always willing to change his location for the people he loves. So personally I think that these values rank much higher for him than national identity and generally, I think for him the communities he does consider himself part of are usually ones of shared experiences while for example while his time in Ukraine or Germany were defined by exclusion. For the same reason I think that for Mags, cultural transfer - of language, customs, food and other cultural aspects - would usually remind him of the people he lived with in the respective countries rather than an ambition to assimilate or be “(nation)-ian”. Especially since Mags isn’t the type to seek comfort in the collective.