#there are a few things i didn't include

[revunant]

𝐃𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆;

                                          𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 -                                𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮.

𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐒𝐈𝐃𝐄 𝐈𝐍.

It’s a process Jean knows well, and he’s almost upsettingly routine about it when he sees it coming. If you’re close enough to him that not only does he think you’ll have to experience it first-hand, but also would like to avoid subjecting you to unnecessary stress, he’ll probably make some effort to prepare you for what's to come.

You're familiar with dead bodies, at least on paper. I’ll be cold, I’ll have no pulse, I won’t be breathing. If rigor mortis never sets in, that’s a good thing. If it does set in, uh - I don't know what happened, but you might want to start planning a funeral. Lay me down somewhere that the cops can’t find me and wait. Hide me in the wheelie bin if you have to. I’m usually out for two or three days; if it’s longer, don’t panic. Be patient. Defying nature can take time. When I wake up, I’ll be confused. I might be scared. I’ll probably be bleeding, depending on what offed me. Don’t get too handsy, uh- actually, try to keep your distance. I won’t be capable of much, but I don’t want to hurt you, and if I'm scared enough, I'll probably try. If I start hurting myself, let it happen. Let me come down. I’ll remember who I was and where I am and things will be peachy again.

It’s simple enough, assuming you don’t want to know any more than that. He dies, he enters stasis, his body regenerates as much as it needs to in order to sustain life, and he returns. Jean would prefer that you avoid asking many questions about it, even if you have no intention of asking them out loud. But, for the sake of science, let’s go against his wishes.

𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐃𝐎 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐆𝐎 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐘𝐎𝐔'𝐑𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐃?

Ekt; the Chasm herself. Cihnem Lis'ekt, Spinewalker, is in some ways a very literal title - except the Chasm doesn't really have a spine. Dormant as she is (with no solid evidence that she's ever been awake) she's less of a deity and more of a plane of existence. A living, ever-growing, ever-shifting purgatory. She guides the dead to the next life as you might guide a bug onto a leaf.

Cihnem Lis'ekt are to her like the opposite of a vaccine. An intruder inoculated with an inert dose of her own blood, enough to make them unrecognisable. If the other dead are insects being ferried back outside, then Spinewalkers crawl unseen under her skin; are parasites. The relationship between goddess and champion is not a conscious one, or even a consenting one.

Jean refers to the act of returning to Earth as being rejected, but the truth is the Chasm never knows he's there. In fact, the Chasm lets him stay there forever.

Each death is infinite and mind-breaking. An average of two days in the real world equates to something without end in the Chasm. It feels like an impossibility for him to wake up somewhere else at all, having spent an eternity walking across her back, and an eternity isn't supposed to have a finish line.

The time there is spent walking. There isn't much else to do, but something about the landscape consumes him with both a compulsion to move forward and a dread of what his destination might be. The landscape is both constantly shifting, and completely unchanging. It's completely white, with a black sky, but at the same time it's brilliant with red and blue and yellow that make your brain bleed to look at. The ground is flat. The ravines are bottomless. The mountains break the sky open.

𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐄𝐅𝐅𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐒?

Jean would say no, and he’d be anywhere between lying and mistaken, depending on the point in time at which you ask him.

There are lasting effects. In every way, there are lasting effects. His body suffers for it, his mind suffers for it, there’s every possibility that his soul suffers for it*, depending on your belief in souls. Beyond the lethal injuries themselves, the act of dying and coming back has a deteriorative effect, especially on his brain, notably the limbic system & anterior cingulate cortex.

This isn’t because of actual injury; rather due to the Chasm being a pretty extreme cognitohazard. As time spent in the Chasm accumulates, behavioural and emotional conduct deteriorate, among other things (empathy, self preservation, fear & pain processing, memory, etc.). The penalty from a single death is small, but there's no way of reversing the damage once it's been done.

Comparatively, the strain on his body is slight. When he was first inoculated, Ekt's blood caused so much damage to his blood vessels and heart that it killed him in a matter of hours - most tributes would not have come back from this kind of reaction, but Jean was fortunate (or unfortunate) to have been kept alive for long enough that by the time he died, he was already part of the Chasm.

His assumption is that every time he visits the Chasm, this circulatory damage gets worse, and this is why his body gets worse at keeping itself warm. What he doesn't know is that he's not really that much more susceptible to dying of hypothermia than a regular person would be, and that this chill is less about physical damage and more about his connection to Ekt, and his closeness to her frozen expanse. It boils down to this; how much of her blood is in his?

There are the expected things on top of this; wear and tear, lethal wounds, nonlethal wounds, result in scar tissue, chronic pain, missing pieces. Though Jean's body is a little more adept at healing some things, he's far from invulnerable. The only reasons he'd be harder to kill than a human not affiliated with Ekt is because it's near impossible for him to die from exsanguination (a gift from Ekt) and because he's horribly, horribly determined (completely unrelated to Ekt).

Something that can only be observed when comparing one reality's version of a Cihnem Lis'ekt to another's is what it is that has an effect on their brain. The hidden truth is that it's the pace at which they cross the Chasm's back. The further you travel, the more she reaches into you; the more she is part of you. The worse the dread gets.

Every time Jean dies, he gets closer to something. And it's scraping away at the things that make him human.

*Author note; some characters have noted that there is damage done to Jean's soul with every death. I say it like that because in his setting there aren't really souls as a separate thing from someone's mind and consciousness, and as such there's no canon to the effects on his soul, or what it looks like, or how it copes. Jean doesn't know, Jean doesn't want to know, and I think it's more fun for the characters who are able to see/sense souls to have their own interpretation. The same goes for his aura, or magical signature, etc, etc, etc.

𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐃𝐎 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐀 𝐁𝐎𝐃𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐃𝐈𝐄𝐃?

The rules, as Jean knows them, are as follows: he can be hurt, he can get sick (though most pathogens and parasites struggle to survive in his body), and he can die. He ages - or at least he thinks he does.

His healing factor is abnormal, especially after death, prioritising small-scale, widespread damage. Injury and abnormality on a cellular and chromosomal level are healed almost instantly; lesser injuries such as bruises, small wounds and sprains heal at a noticeably quicker rate; severe wounds and broken bones heal at a more-or-less normal one. Cancers stand even less of a chance than pathogens and parasites.

Mortal wounds, however, will heal at an accelerated rate while Jean’s body is still dead, up to (and, for security, a little past) the point required for it to sustain life again. Long-term mechanical damage is usually at least limited, if not negated entirely; though old wounds can still hurt, can still scar, and missing parts do not grow back.

In the event that his body is destroyed rather than just killed, life finds a way. It's not quite as gnarly as being stitched together from the exact ashes, or atoms, that once comprised his body. After anywhere between a few minutes to a few weeks, he wakes up, in an intact, uninjured, naked body.

And he always wakes up in the same place; on the dusty stone altar near which the traces of Ekt's blood were found, hidden in a cave near Mardin, Turkey. Beyond being existentially upsetting (what was he formed from? how did his life know which body to return to? how does he know he's still the same person?) it's, as you can imagine, a bit inconvenient. He tries to avoid this scenario if he can help it, but it's happened a couple of times in the last 15 years.

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐂𝐀𝐍'𝐓 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐋?

This is the part Jean doesn’t like to think about, if he can help it. It's not, however, something he tries especially hard to avoid, partially because it's an entirely theoretical outcome. To him.

There are stories and even some depictions of Cihnem Lis'ekt reanimating with their ribcages wrapped around spears and axes and swords, like a tree growing around a fence or a sign or a gravestone. Stories of champions whose bodies simply didn't have it in them to close a wound and so tore holes elsewhere in order to patch themselves up, breaking down and sloughing off and rebuilding in an agonising and seemingly never-ending cycle.

Champions whose problem wasn't that they didn't heal enough, but that they healed too much; who rejected all medical treatment, and for whom a broken bone meant the bone growing out, through, and over the skin in order to prevent being broken again. Eldritch forms of stone man syndrome. Bodies twisting around and over themselves to guard their soft stomachs.

The reasons for these consequences, as with a lot of things related to Ekt and her champions, are unknown. Many Cihnem Lis'ekt could break bones and be impaled and contain foreign bodies without suffering any effects not seen in normal humans (Jean, for instance, in one reality, spent 50 years trapped in a cave-in, dying over and over with a pike in his side, and only got a nasty scar for his trouble).

It's suggested that these champions, though cursed to live out the rest of their days in some kind of agony, were Ekt's favourites. Not only did they survive the trials required to become her champion, but were believed to have been somehow actively chosen by the sleeping god; not only accepted, but picked out. The twisting cage that became of their skeletons, or the ever-shifting landscape of rifts and ravines that became of their flesh, was a power bestowed unto them, a mark of pride, a blessing.

Because they looked like Her.

Evidently, the Chasm, simultaneously asleep and inanimate and incomprehensibly non-human, doesn't know what a privilege is supposed to look like, probably doesn't know what causes living things pain; and rewards her chosen ones in ways that amount to horrific, lifelong torture. It's not known if she's able to love her chosen, but if she does, her way of feeling love is something that humans can never hope to comprehend.

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐂𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐖𝐀𝐘 𝐈𝐍?

It's known that ancient Cehim Lis'ekt had a different experience than the modern one does. The definite is that ancient champions, after making it through their gruelling trials, were revered and worshipped, treated as something between royalty and a messiah, while Jean was killed a few times for science and then used as an attack dog for several years, locked in a white room, barely eating or sleeping.

A bigger difference is that, judging by his reaction to Ekt's blood, he was never supposed to walk her spine to begin with. It's only by virtue of modern medicine that he stayed alive for long enough for her blood to take root in him. The Chasm doesn't seem to know the difference. Pieter, at least, didn't observe any great change in Jean versus his predecessors from millennia ago.

...Due to Jean not being a very reliable narrator, or test subject, and struggling to properly convey the things that Pieter couldn't figure out by observation alone. Ancient Cihnem Lis'ekt, while not all were chosen by Ekt, were at least accepted, or acknowledged, by her. They would die, and be turned away.

Jean, with only a few hours of life support, managed to sneak through her defences. She doesn't know he exists. He dies, and goes unseen. He trespasses. He wanders infinitely. Worse, still; the fact that he wasn't the one who forced his way in, but that someone else did it on his behalf.

[flightdescending]

badly frankensteins the thing

[ashleyslorens]

PLAY AGAIN ?

[pocketgalaxies]

fcg: i enjoy eating silver more than copper

imogen: i am genuinely scared to meet my mom again

chet: it is well known that wood is better than metal

laudna: deep down inside, both delilah and i kind of want the shard

laudna: i don't want [the shard], fearne should have it, but i don't know anymore what's my opinion or desires or feelings or [delilah's]

imogen: i love laudna deeply, but i'm disgusted at the thought of delilah looking at us all the time

orym: i'm super lonely all the time, especially at night. doesn't matter if i'm bunking with one of you guys

fcg: sometimes i pity some of you because you have beating hearts and opportunities and you don't do enough with them

fcg: chetney you have so much love to give and it doesn't seem like you're interested in anything, in ANYTHING, other than wood. there's people out there who you could love and experiences you could share with someone else, but all you care about is wood

orym: i've always laughed it off but i guess i do kinda wonder if chetney is my dad

ashton: i am the reason that the jiana hexum robbery went fucking wrong and the reason why i got thrown out of a fucking window

ashton: (laudna: is that why you feel like you deserved to have the nobodies leave you?) yeah.

fearne: i feel like we are very ill-equipped for this job and we're gonna fail at saving the world

chet: while wood may be the superior material to metal, i do fear that with the dwindling interest in it that children will find my toys and thereby myself obsolete every year that i grow older

fcg: i think it's something buried deep down in my circuitry, but every time i hurt or kill something, it feels really good. it makes me sorta relax a little bit and some of my stress goes away

imogen: i know we're supposed to save the gods but i've tried talking to them my whole life and none of them will ever respond. i think i'm tainted. i don't know if i want to save gods that don't love me

laudna: you know we could all ripcord out of this at any moment, and i don't mean this scavenger hunt, i mean saving the world, right? andsometimesifantasizeaboutitallthetime

fearne: sometimes i do stuff to you guys while you're sleeping. not weird stuff, i just like to look at you closely and...you know, just look at you. you look so content and comfortable and i can get up and look at you really well. and maybe twiddle your hair and like braid it. nothing bad! nothing bad!!

ashton: any time it's too quiet, i start worrying that one of us, most of us, are gonna end up killing another one of us accidentally. all of us. orym...very gently, but probably–orym may be the only one i worry about the least, but genuinely everybody else. i have panicked thinking about what happens when one of you kills another one of us

orym: (laudna: do you have any strong feelings one way or another kind of being the normal guy in a group of freaks who are all ticking time bombs? are you okay with that, do you have any strong feelings?) i have all the faith in the world in you guys, all of you. and i have also spent time thinking how to neutralize each of you

fcg: i kinda worry that i put all my eggs in the changebringer basket and she might betray us all, i had a really weird conversation with her and i think she's just out for herself and she might not really care about me

imogen: fearne, i was really disappointed in you for running away from your power, you should take the shard (laudna: you should take the shard)

orym: i really miss dorian, and sometimes i think that's okay and sometimes i think it isn't

pate: [laudna] is my creator, i don't have feelings, i'm a construction

ashton: i feel fucking worse that i just fucked up fearne's life way more than mine, and i should've died instead of that happening

chet: i grew up in the bramblewood outside of westruun, and when i was a kid, i came back from learning how to make toys and found that my whole family had left. all they left behind were toys. and they ran when errevon the rimelord was running across the plains so i'm kinda afraid of dragons. and i had five siblings, alabaster, pepper, sugarplum, hermey, and chad, and i was so mad that they left, i never looked for any of them. and now i'm pretty sure they're dead, so i think that any family i have is just gonna look for a reason to leave me, that's why i don't get attached to anybody

[sergle]

NOTHING makes me happier than when total strangers are possessed by the need to Give Hugo Something. like yes he gets a treat when we're at petsmart or something. but now. we can add "an entire bag of cinnamon twists at the taco bell drive-thru" to the list of things Hugo has been Given.

[thedreadvampy]

sometimes I forget that my experience has been. um. not 'your experiences are not universal' vibes but more like 'your experiences are EXTREMELY atypical'

[uncanny-tranny]

Realizing you can never please anybody can be a devastating loss... until you internalize exactly what that means.

When you sacrifice so much of yourself for others, you forget that you leave yourself behind. Not being able to please everybody means you can start learning how to fully embody who you are instead of juggling everybody else's baggage, trying to make something work out.

You might feel devastated about this, thinking you're terrible for not pleasing everybody. The truth is, it was impossible from the start, and learning who you are is infinitely rewarding

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s4 episode 4 thoughts

woohoo!! it feels, again, like our separation has been so long, but it has been about… 3 whole days. oh, how i miss the earlier months in which i had time to post episode thoughts every day… 

this episode sounds interesting!!! no idea how someone’s thoughts could be captured on film, but we do a lot of disbelief suspension around these parts, with varying levels of success.

wait. hold on. i just saw the description for the episode after this one. what the hell is mulder getting himself into with that. do we need more mulder ex lore? i don’t need that. it doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. 

putting aside my many questions on that matter to focus on what is here in front of us.

(author’s note post-episode: …. woaghhh. scully…)

in all honesty, having processed my thoughts, i think this one was just a LITTLE bit too intense for me. which i recognize is okay, and to each their own. but i need to speak my Truth.

liveblogging commences below 

we begin with this sketchy looking dude, who is being rude as hell to a woman putting on lipstick before getting a passport photo taken. god forbid a woman want to serve… then he says to act natural while not acting natural himself. HYPOCRITE!

she goes in for a passport photo and…. she left her money in the car! she must return to this unfortunate man and go get it. but someone is following her…. 

he did something to her… and she gets back to the car to “billy”, but someone did something to him, too!! he appears to be dead and bleeding from the ear!! then she falls to the ground and tries to crawl to safety, but the mystery man in the yellow rain jacket comes back for her…. 

and the man in the photo store looks at the passport photos, but despite taking just a standard headshot, he sees the woman’s dying face in the images!!

oh. that is an unpleasant day on the job for such a nice seeming man.

this intro always makes me laugh... i’m sorrrrryyy the ufo pictures just remind me that this show is fundamentally unserious 

scully and mulder are rolling up to a town in michigan, while he asks her for any thoughts on the case. it appears this woman was abducted three days ago. and billy was punctured in the brain. yuck.

okay, so her name is mary. and this poor pharmacist…. he has to take people’s pictures, and give them drugs, AND deal with this nonsense 

they are at the pharmacy where the “druggist” (they keep using that term which i have never heard before) is showing them his camera, which he keeps under lock and key, and i notice he has some fun candy in the background. but i assume things are not fun at this time for him. 

scully wants to see the camera, and mulder takes a step back to let her pass. it kinda looks like he does that thing where he touches her back, but it’s hard to tell. and once again for all readers, that thing where men touch your back is only attractive when it’s mulder to scully and not between some randos!

scully notices something on the pharmacist’s foot, and also that the film is out of date. she is always noticing things. one of her many lovely qualities. 

mulder calls the pharmacist “bruno hauptman” and i don’t get that reference so i do what i do best: go to wikipedia. oh! bruno is the guy that was executed for kidnapping the lindbergh baby. i don’t know why i thought that mystery was unsolved. i guess it’s because the article is saying it was a heavily criticized and debated case. huh, a mystery for another time.

anyway, mulder is saying this all tauntingly with his stupid beautiful mulder smile, but scully is saying yeah, this nice old pharmacist doesn’t look like a usual suspect.

but she does point out that the film has heat damage, and a heater is right there… “so you think that would make it look like she posed screaming for a passport photo?” <- LMAO MAN LET HER FINISH

BAHAHA she is onto nothing 🔥🔥 

“plus, the film is two years out of date” “oh” the- the photographic chemistry could have changed” (mulder nodding) “uh-huh” “the- the dyes fade… they… alright, what’s your theory?” <- BAHAHA love that… you have to admit when you don’t know wtf is going on! i had full confidence she would pull something out of her science-y brain, but sometimes you just don’t know!

(this stupid scene had me giggling, as did her face of resignation)

mulder seems to ALSO have no idea wtf is going on, but as they discuss this, a police officer walks in and says they might have wasted the agents’ time…. what does that mean? did they figure it out that quick?

back at the house of the victims, they meet a postal inspector. okay!!! that’s fun and different. and i pause to write this down, and scully is SO beautiful, i actually might blow up. a full on explosion where once stood me is liable to go down. oh my gooooood.

okay: postal inspector is investigating a mail theft. mary had been working at the postal office, stealing people’s credit cards, and her boyfriend was signing them! oh! very illegal. inspector seems to think she faked her disappearance, but mulder points out that would not explain the stabbing of the boyfriend. also, they have this creepy ass broccoli magnet on their fridge which. bleugh. it did not spark joy.

mulder wants a camera from their house, and he finds one! did he just. take a picture of scully…? oh my god. he said “stand back, scully, it’s loaded” and took one… he didn’t even let her pose or anything… that's so cute... even if it's a little weird to use a dead person's camera from a crime scene... he wanted to take her picture

no, i am all wrong, for it appears he is just… taking random photos. because someone in the 60’s once claimed that he could concentrate really hard on undeveloped film and show his thoughts. uh. press f to doubt.

(man, i want to live in that very brief and exciting moment where i thought he was taking a cute little candid of her again… it was so blissful there)

wait. what da hell. he just clicked the camera a bunch of times and it comes up with the screaming mary photo again and again.

oh… he thinks that someone was stalking mary, and the stalker’s psychic energy altered the film by him coming in its proximity. i didn't realize that was how psychic powers worked but i am listening and learning

scully says that these images had to be doctored, which is, again, a reasonable conclusion, but he asks her to “what if” the situation and just think about it!!! just imagine!!!

cutscene to… someone crawling on the side of the road. it’s mary!!! she’s bleeding from her eyes (?) and not responding at all to the police car arriving behind her.

now she is in a stretcher at the hospital that our agents are helping to steer. they are kind like that. she had a “painkiller cocktail” in her system, but that wouldn’t account for her condition. scully orders a PET scan for her, a term i have never heard before. i love when she uses terms i have never heard before.

they’re putting mary in what looks like an MRI sort of thing to look at her brain. whatever it is, it is clearly very bad, as told by scully’s visible reaction and audible declaration of “oh my god”, while mulder looks at her and asks “what is it”? 

(and while i appreciate that this is a sensitive moment for our story, mulder not knowing wtf is going on with these medical things always is a favorite trope of mine, 1. because me too, and 2. he is usually such an insufferable know-it-all i love watching him admit when he knows nothing. humility!)

oh my god… “she has been given what’s called a transorbital lobotomy” <- oh that does NOT sound good… it used to be known as an ice pick lobotomy!!! oh my gosh i’ve heard of that one!! ice pick… eye sockets… i can feel myself growing faint…

but whoever did it, did it wrong… who would do a lobotomy without knowing how to do it the right way???

in the machine, mary is mumbling!! she is saying “unruhe” according to the closed captioning, but it just sounds like faint groaning to me. however, given that this phrase is the title of the episode, i venture to guess that it IS in fact relevant.

a policeman bursts in and says there has been a second abduction, and our agents look deeply sorrowful at this news, seeming to know what will happen next if they cannot crack the case.

oh! now we are seeing the new victim, and whoever took her is in fact saying “unruhe”, and other stuff in german! NO! he pulls out a pick…. fade to black. 

WHO in this small seeming town speaks german and has a psychic effect on cameras… ?? i hope this can be narrowed down to a slim pool of candidates!!

scully is going into the next crime scene, where mulder reports that a man has been murdered, and his secretary alice taken. this is not good.

mulder has been looking into what that word alice was mumbling means- first in a phone book, but then as a translation, i guess, because it means “trouble” in german.

WOAH, WHAT?

! SCULLY LORE REVEAL ! she took german in college!!! and knows that the word is more accurately translated as “unrest”! 

(oh my gosh, i need to get back into compiling lore reveals at the end of each season like i did for s1…. good thing i take such detailed notes so i can go back and do them for s2 and s3)

((we didn’t get a ton in the last 2 seasons, so i thought of doing one post for both seasons- but the organization freak in me wants to do 1 per season, so i’ll go through them again and see what i can find when i get bored someday))

scully hands him a photo from the first crime scene, but mulder says the criminal wasn’t there, because if he was, he would have altered the photos. scully seems annoyed that he’s looking for psychic photos and not crime scene evidence, but he explains that whoever did this has to be very good, and photos may be their only lead since he doesn’t seem to know he is doing it. but then scully sees something and her eyes go SUPER wide… and she says she wants to show him something. 

oh! they find a construction company’s logo at both sites. so maybe the criminal worked at places under construction and was able to kidnap the women…? this theory is brought to you by scully.

he says she might be right, but he is going back to DC to get analysis on the photo. she still is skeptical, but he says that since the woman’s time is running out, that’s all the more reason to analyze the one piece of hard evidence they do have, and that he’ll be in touch. 

he must have really cared if he said he’ll be in touch, because usually he just runs off to god knows where to do god knows what. 

(and how much time would they even HAVE if he has to drive all the way back??? that isn’t a quick trip, is it???)

the same criminal dude from before is now saying stuff in german and taping alice’s mouth shut, while mulder is back in the photo lab sitting practically on top of this nerdy yet attractive fellow, asking for the blurriness in the image to be reduced. and it reveals very scary looking demon things! 

mulder sees someone in the back of the photo… and they get a more enhanced image on the face, but it isn’t clear to me who it is. i felt like i was supposed to know who it was, but luckily i wasn't!

scully is ordering people out to canvas and investigate the employees who may have been working at both construction sites. i like when she does that.

mulder and the lab guy figure out that there is a shadow in the background of the photo from the kidnapper. “he’s standing over her, he means to pass judgement on her, like a god” <- an unsettling thing to say, mr. spooky

scully rolls up to one of the construction sites and i’m thinking, oh please, do not get kidnapped, please please, it’s not something we need today. she’s yelling “hello” and no one is answering... but she hears something….. 

it’s a… guy on stilts? it’s the foreman named gerry. oh… could he have made the big shadow in the picture his stilts? but he doesn’t sound german…

mulder calls and says the kidnapper’s legs are unusual, either he’s very tall or he wants to be. stilts man?!?! is it you?!

instead of playing it chill upon hearing this news, she hangs up on mulder, and turns to gerry and says “unruhe”, pulling out her gun. but he uses his stilts to jump across the building! only to collapse and fall. his getaway is thwarted as scully tells him to stop or she’ll shoot, and to prove her seriousness, she does so. but i’m not buying he’s the guy!! sorry my queen!!

NO!! I WAS FOOLED, WASN’T I??? she reaches into his pocket and pricks her finger!!! NOOO! it’s a huge pick in there! like we saw before at the kidnapping!!

is she gonna be drugged from that….

(thankfully, the pick itself did not contain the drugs)

they’re interrogating the dude, and he denies everything. i mean, i guess a lot of people could have stilts and a pick at construction sites. maybe they didn't grab the right fellow.

he says that tool is used to start keyholes in the sheetrock and all fixtures. a good excuse…

but he really does seem confused. 

however, mulder brings up that gerry was arrested before, for attacking his father with an axe handle until he spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. OH! this is not promising.

gerry says that he was institutionalized, which mulder reveals was for a schizophrenic disorder. gerry claims that since his release, he had been taking care of his father 24/7, until he passed away in january. well i’m not entirely sure if that makes amends, but i guess it’s better than nothing?

“and how did you feel about that?” asks mulder about gerry's father's death, sounding very much like the psychology expert i sometimes forget that he is. then he reveals that the same year gerry attacked his father, gerry’s sister passed. connected….?

gerry is staring intently back at scully, saying that she looks troubled. oh! do not talk to her that way.

then mulder comes in with the enhanced photo from earlier, and asks if it shows gerry’s father. he seems taken aback, like it really is his father, and then further taken aback when he pulls out the full photo and asks if those demons figures are what he sees when he closes his eyes. this finally gets gerry to crack and say that he knows where alice is, and that she is safe, “from the howlers”. HUH? 

(is it bad my thoughts went straight to a howler monkey when he said that? i was thinking man, monkeys do not look like that at all. you and i have seen some different monkeys, gerry. but no, he does not refer to those types of howlers)

a ton of cop cars are arriving in the woods, to find alice, who is bleeding from the eyes, which can only mean one thing in this context. oh noooo. scully seems horrified and as if she is blaming herself 

oh, we get a very charged exchange here. she says it doesn’t matter what is in the photos, or if it shows gerry’s dreams or nightmares, because it’s over, and they couldn’t save alice. she starts the engine, and when i think she’s gonna drive off without mulder, he hops in. i bet that guilt that doctors feel when that cannot save a patient is even worse in her than in usual doctors, because she also has to deal with trying to rescue people from crime. :(

gerry is being taken in and photographed by the cops. but instead of a mugshot, when we see the picture, it’s the guy who was taking him in with a bullet hole in his head. oh! so that seems to confirm earlier suspicions on behalf of mulder. 

OH NO!! gerry reaches out and grabs the gun from the cop! NOOO! 

mulder points out that the image from that interaction showed the man shot in the head, but in reality, he was shot in his throat. so i guess it’s not based on reality as much as his intentions? sure, why not. and scully says there was a robbery at the pharmacy back where the very first photo was taken. no! our druggist friend!

gerry took all of the film in the store and a ton of drugs for more “twilight sleep”, which is a bad sign. i think i’ve seen this film before…

scully thinks that perhaps he was stalking his next victim at the construction site, and i’m thinking, girl i think he picked out his victim alright, but i don’t think she’s in the apartments.

mulder wants to wait a bit for his photo to come out. so he sends her to pull the car around and i’m screaming NO, NO, DON’T SEPARATE, NOT WITH A GUY ON THE LOOSE WHO LOOKED AT HER AND SAID “YOU LOOK TROUBLED” AFTER DOING 2 DIY LOBOTOMIES ON OTHER WOMEN AND KILLING 2 OTHER MEN! JUST WAIT A MINUTE AND WALK TO THE CAR TOGETHER!!!

but she cannot hear me….

NO! as she unlocks the car, a hand from beneath reaches out and pierces her foot with a needle NOOOO… and it’s gerry and she’s going down and NOOOOOO!!!!

AND MULDER PULLS THE PHOTO OUT TO FIND GERRY WAS THINKING OF SCULLY WHEN IT WAS TAKEN!

he is RUNNING after that car. despite his best efforts, even trackstar mulder is not as fast as a car, yet he follows her and screams her name regardless. until he realizes he will not win this race.

back at the police office, mulder is STARING at that photograph, the one showing scully being taken by these horrific creatures known as “the howlers”. he’s asking for any leads, including “does he have a summer house? a winter house?” which could be seen as desperation for answers or mulder being out of touch with how many people grew up with summer houses, take your pick.

OH! in gerry’s wallet was his father’s obituary. and his father was a dentist… and the name sounds german… 

so they go to his old dentist’s office, where they did an ad for the pain medicine cocktail he’s been cooking up. and mulder finds a footprint and a missing dentist’s chair. 

NO!! scully is in the dentist’s chair at some undisclosed location. waking up to find her arms and legs bound with a pick on the table and gerry in the distance. she’s watching him…. and she says to let her go. 

he begins his german ranting that has happened before the other lobotomies, and she… RESPONDS???? in clumsy german??? she says she has no unrest and doesn’t need saving, but he insists she does??? WHAT!!!

good on her for remembering some words after all those years :,)

he says everyone has some unrest, but especially her. she thinks she must remind him of his sister, and they talk about “the howlers”, who live inside your head, and make you say and do things you don’t mean.

so she turns the tables on this, and says maybe there are no such thing as howlers, and maybe he made them up to justify what his father did to his sister, which sets him off further. OH… so she thinks gerry attacking his father and his sister’s death were related. damn… that’s heavy

she tries to convince him that the “howlers” are just in HIS head, and no one else’s, as he approaches with a camera to try and prove they do exist. because cameras cannot lie!!

back at the dentist’s office, mulder appears to be losing it. mumbling about the 6 fingers the howler had in the photos, and yelling “WHY are there 6?” to no one in particular, as if he can find an answer through sheer willpower. one of the cops is asking him what to do while he looks at the obituary and counts five headstones…. and the father makes 6? sure, if that makes sense to you king!

they’re off to the graveyard while scully is still in a mystery location, with tears in her eyes as gerry shows her the photos he took. he takes the photos to mean he doesn’t have much time left, and tapes her mouth… and oh my gosh, i think of what would go down here if i knew she wasn’t gonna pull through… until gerry hears a tapping and MULDER IS LOOKING IN!! YES!!!

gerry is doing this in a camper van! by the graveyard!!! mulder is peeking in, sees a tooth keychain, and realizes she’s in there!!!! he’s yelling her name, and she’s yelling that she’s in here, while gerry tries to hold her down!!!

mulder’s BEATING on the window of the camper with his hands, and when that doesn’t work, he finds a giant metal pipe and SLAMS it into the window, goes in, and shoots gerry. this escalated quickly, but it was almost not quick enough.

mulder asks if she’s hurt, and neither of them say anything as she walks out, with mulder kneeling down to see that the last photos gerry had taken were of himself dead on the floor. it’s a terribly thick tension that reminds me of the ending to irresistible, but without the tension bursting like it did in that episode with her finally revealing her fear to him. i wish that she did it again this time. 

scully is doing the episode wrap up, sounding terribly solemn. she is reporting that gerry had written a diary intended as a letter for his father, including the list of the women he hoped to “save”. and her name is the last entry. she has no explanation for the photographs. but she empathized with him, which her survival depended upon.

“i see now the value of such insight. for truly to pursue monsters, we must understand them. we must venture into their minds. only in doing so, do we risk letting them venture into ours?” (said while there are tears in her eyes, as she looks at the photograph of her being pulled by the howlers)

WHAT THE HELL.

okay, so chris carter… you and i need to have some words. 

i have a lot of thoughts. perhaps number one: what if mulder had been 5 minutes later… can you imagine him never being able to cope with that….? oh my gosh. oh my gosh. no, i shan’t imagine. but i’m sure they both were imagining it. and that is probably why she couldn’t say anything as she walked out of the camper van. it was too horrific.

second. this was a dark one. i was giggling at first and then it got really dark. lobotomies… are a hard subject.

third. when the writers make the bad guy have a mental illness, i do feel it to be insulting, because we don’t often get a character where a guy with schizophrenia is just a guy doing normal things like working at the store or going to get his oil changed. no, he’s gotta be up to something nefarious. i wish that wasn’t the case and that these episodes didn’t use mental illness in that way, and i understand that things were kind of Like That in the 90’s and arguably still are in media, but it has been observed with distaste. 

okay, final thoughts? like i’ve said before, i believe in gender equality when it comes to kidnapping and rescuing, and i hope that will be evened out at some point. i understand that gerry had a fixation on women for his own personal reasons, but that’s the doyleist vs watsonian debate thing. and i want a 1:1 ratio on who goes about saving the day. although the ratio was uneven in s2, i’m not recalling the ratio from s3, and we’re 4 episodes into s4 with a 1:1 ratio. so i hope that overall, the entire series ratio evens out eventually. damsel in distress is gender neutral

i was actually really invested in this episode, probably because it let us look into scully deeper, and also because the stakes were high, the pacing fast, and the horror a new kind rather than a standard serial killer we get in a lot of episodes. 

but… while i appreciate that, i’m not sure i can say i enjoyed it, you know? because even a “scully speaks german” lore reveal cannot save me from the feeling of… something adjacent to fear? not horror as in “ahhh i’m so scared” but maybe a sort of horror as in “stop putting her into these fuckass situations, let my girl have a day off” and also a bit of terrible grief in knowing that lobotomies were a very real thing and did untold harm. and to be clear, i’m not saying that fact shouldn’t be explored and discussed, i just think that for me it seems to provoke some intense feelings that make me want some fluff. now. 

deliver it. to my door. as we speak. in fact, here is an incomplete list of things i want to read our agents doing in fanfiction form:

apple picking and apple cider sipping, hiking and sharing weird facts they know about the things they encounter (scully will be all “this type of spider has a unique silk production gland” and he’ll be all “this type of wildflower is used to induce hallucinogenic states” while they look at a pretty view), ice skating (can they ice skate? need to explore that), getting ice cream cones, a visit to the beach, decorating for various holidays, a very serious game night- perhaps uno or some sort of trivia where it turns into a real nerd-off, arguing over unsolved mysteries, more implications of them starting a family together if you feel bold and brave, even, but for those who like it more reserved we can just have an aquarium date, watching a meteor shower, scully attempting to understand his fascination with the various sports of the world by tagging along on an anthropological expedition to a knicks game with him, baking, movie theater trip, etc

well! i have gotten myself so enthused at the idea of them doing silly stuff like handing out halloween candy that i have forgotten all about my initial feelings, which shall surely resurface soon when i go through and edit my notes, but you’re gonna sit there and tell me you don’t want to play dolls in your head of them getting hot chocolate together? 

canon? what is canon? c’mere, kid. let’s daydream about them eloping without ever having the “what are we” conversation and ignore the suffering 

[specialized-rexan]

SCREENSHOTS I GOT FROM THE JEREMY JORDAN LIVESTREAM YESTERDAY. especially love the comments on his duck drawings. he was very proud of some of them since he needed to practice before the stream. he admits he does not draw much lol

and here's Lucifer's signature that Jeremy came up with: a cursive capital L attached to a pentagram!

the stream was SO FUN and literally only felt like 20 minutes even tho it was almost an hour

at one point he mentioned he's making pancakes with olive oil now since he has high cholesterol, and that he LOVES how the pancakes turned out. someone responded:

(later someone joked he should make pancakes with bacon grease and he almost shouted (not angrily) "DO YOU WANT ME TO DIE? I JUST SAID I HAVE HIGH CHOLESTEROL. I just said. I had high cholesterol. Are you TRYING. To kill me."

anyway back to screenshots lol)

"Take that, depression!" was a popular quote to write on prints, and he said he hoped we're not depressed and it was very sweet

some more quotes written during the stream and other notes:

"I'm gonna be signing these prints of my boy Lucifer, the short king of Hell"

he drank both a cold smoothie and hot tea during the stream. "Doesn't make any goddamn sense, but here we go."

"It's never too late to fuck up--too late to fuck shit up" (a legitimate accidental stammer. but still perfect in its own way)

"Every time I hear the name 'Shay' I think of my daughter's friend at school. My daughter's obsessed with a friend named Shay. 'S all she talks about. 'Shay Shay Shay Shay Shay Shay.' Shay and Madeline. It's like 'You can be your own person. Clara. You are your own HUMAN.' …HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KATHERINE."

hopes to go to some conventions for Hazbin Hotel. more likely to go to cons in New York, New Jersey (where he lives), or Philly area

"He's just a li'l cutie. :3 Is he really da bosh? :3" (wondering if Lucifer really is the Big Boss of Hell Himself or if it's just more of a title)

"Hope you're not depressed"

" 'Write something Lucifer would say to cheer someone up.' And I think Lucifer would think that… 'SINGING MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER!' At least when it comes to rebuilding your relationship with your daughter."

"Guess what's in my smoothie. There are six ingredients. Go."

"…said draw a little duck, so I drew the smallest duck I could. (holds print up to camera then says in small high-pitched voice:) It's a little duck!"

MORE QUOTES UNDER THE CUT. THIS POST IS GETTING LONG ASFQJSKSKSKKS

_____

about his smoothie again: "Obviously, I just went to the gym. So I gotta have some kinda supplement in there. ... WHAT'S THE BASE, Y'ALL? YOU GOTTA HAVE A BASE." (someone could use that audio and give a character a bass guitar lol)

(still about people guessing smoothie ingredients:) "WATER? Why would I put water in my smoothie. (mutters:) Water is for losers. ... Kale! -grins and points at camera- That's it! You win. That's my smoothie."

his smoothie was blueberries, bananas, strawberries, protein powder, almond milk, kale

"…with a hUUGE shmiley faysh! :3" (about a little " =) " smile he wrote with an autograph)

"THAT DUCK IS CUTE!"

"We love, we stan Lilith"

AGGRESSIVELY, ABOUT A JOKE HE MADE: "GET IT?"

Some fatherly advice from Lucifer: "Don't fuck up your lives like I did 😎"

HE SANG THE START OF HELL'S GREATEST DAD AND WANTS A MIMZY-LESS VERSION THAT ACTUALLY HAS AN ENDING QSJFKSKKSKS

he's only seen Hazbin Hotel once, and he had "~champagne fountains, caviar mountains, that's just to staaart~" going through his head for the two+ years between recording his lines and the show airing. he wasn't able to tell anyone it because of non-disclosure stuff, and eventually he even forgot what that song line was from. but it still went through his head

"[Person he was signing an autograph for] is a bi girl [bisexual], and that's pretty baller"

"AN INCREDIBLE DUCK YOU SHALL HAVE"

"Take that depression!! Quack"

"Hold please!" (i just liked imagining Lucifer saying almost any small thing)

Jeremy Jordan says Lucifer is short, and not just that all the other characters are tall (i cannot confirm that that is canon even tho that's what i want LOL) "What gives!? There are short people in this world, and they need some love"

someone asked what he thinks about OC x canon ships. he was confused about what OC means and then when the chat explained, he was confused about how "OC x canon" works. but he figured it out after thinking for a moment. "So basically everybody wants to fuck Lucifer. GOT IT."

"Am I going to Hell for this" (about all the pentagrams he's drawing)

"…so i just did a bunch of stars and hearts around Emery's name 💜"

someone asked about his favorite Hazbin Hotel song, and he answered that season 2 has a rock song he really likes 👀 👀

"(a requested phrase for an autograph:) 'Duck lord loves you no matter what.' ...Don't know what that particularly means but…"

[indilaras]

Desert Gang Week 2024

Day 1: comfort and trust + showing affection

a silly one to start! (I guess this is also sort of Modern AU?)

ID: a drawing of Candace from Genshin Impact, alongside Cyno, Dehya, and Alhaitham as cats. Candace is wearing dark shorts and a white tank top with a crescent moon and flower symbol; she is sitting on a soft orange surface, right eye closed, smiling. Cyno (white cat with black patterns) is on hanging on her right shoulder, tail up, looking at her and smiling. Alhaitham (gray cat with white on the tips of his ear) is under her right arm, eyes closed and smiling, leaning against her torso. Dehya (brown cat with lighter brown/yellow accents) is on her lap, also smiling with her eyes closed. The background is a sandy-brown square with faint three heart-shapes. End ID.

[captainhunnicutt]

Mike as "Hammond" in Happiness is Dirty Hands // This is the Life (1968)

[rahabs]

The Tudors ran so Wulf Hall could shuffle awkwardly around reiterating the same tired old Tudor stereotypes while claiming to be something new.

[treesbian]

these are really pretty too.... with promo codes it's about the same price as those ^ I think. a bit understated though.... they are called "dear"

and these are called "suki" :3

also around the same price as the others after the new customer promo code

[bunnyscar]

Fears

As soon as Link and Zelda were well enough to travel, they left Castle City with Impa. According to her, they would take less traveled roads on the way to Kokiri Forest, in the hope that Ganon would be less able to trace them that way.

The group spoke little on the drive out of Castle City, each wrapped up in their own thoughts. As Zelda watched the city outskirts slowly falling behind them, her heart ached, tears springing into her eyes. It was not as if she were leaving forever. If she could master her power and learn to defend herself, then she could return.

But somehow she knew it would not be the same. As a child, she had believed her home was invincible, a haven of peace and happiness, that no one there would intentionally hurt another. When she was older, she had realized not everyone was that kind, but even in college she had chosen to see the best in others. Now, however, this belief had come crashing down. Ganon’s men had put cracks in that belief when they infiltrated the university and wounded Link, and the attack on the lab had torn it down completely. Darkness had entered her little world of light. And she was afraid the darkness would swallow her.

She turned away from her window and glanced at Link, who sat at the other end of the car’s backseat. He gazed out his own window, silent and thoughtful. What would he think of leaving Castle City? Would he call it home like she had, or would it be a relief for him to be gone? 

Link broke into her train of though by asking, “The Kokiri forest, how far away is it?”

“With our route, we should make it in three or four days,” Impa answered.

“Is it far enough away from the City?”

“It will do,” Impa said, “until you’re both fully recovered. The forest is dangerous enough that Ganon should think twice about entering it, but for us it’s a good hiding place.”

“Dangerous? I thought you were taking Zelda there to be safe.”

“It’s not that dangerous if you know where you’re going. The danger is in getting lost,” Impa replied. “My people the Sheikah have long researched the forest and found out some of its ways. As long as we’re careful and stick together, we’ll be fine. Besides, some Sheikah have even found fairy fountains that heal wounds.”

“Fairy fountains, huh,” Link muttered, raising an eyebrow, obviously unimpressed.

“Yes,” Impa said testily, starting to get annoyed. “Or do you doubt my people’s trustworthiness?”

Link looked like he wanted to say something sarcastic, but he thought better of it and kept his mouth shut.

“I’ve never been out this way before,” Zelda commented, trying to fill the uncomfortable silence that followed. “My parents took me sometimes to Lurelin Resort for vacations, but other than that I haven’t seen much of Hyrule. It’s a little exciting to think about seeing the forest. You must have seen a lot of places, Impa.”

Impa nodded. “I have seen a lot of Hyrule, mostly on research trips.”

“What about you, Link? Have you been outside of the city?” Zelda asked, turning to him.

Link hesitated, glancing out the window again. “Well, since I grew up in Gerudo Valley...yes, I suppose so,” he said slowly.

Zelda glanced at him curiously. Perhaps his coming from Gerudo Valley should not have surprised her, since he spoke and wrote their language so well, but he looked nothing like a Gerudo with his blonde hair and fair skin. And furthermore… “Aren’t all Gerudos women?” she asked in puzzlement. “I thought that they only gave birth to boys every 100 years or so.”

“Yes, that’s true of the Gerudo race. But just because I grew up in that area doesn’t mean I’m actually one of them. There’s a trading town at the edge of the desert, a place where several races meet to trade with the Gerudo women. I grew up in its slums.”

“The slums...did you have parents?” Zelda asked softly.

“I don’t remember them. I was an orphan and earned a living as a thief. Ganon found me in the slums and offered a place in his organization, promising that I would never have to want for food or shelter again. It seemed like a dream come true, and at first it was everything he promised. Until the training began. Then it was hell.” He shuddered involuntarily.

“You didn’t mention this before when we asked you about the organization,” Impa interjected, glancing at him with a frown.

Link shrugged. “Didn’t seem necessary.”

“What was this training?” Zelda asked hesitantly.

“Some of it was combat training, some of it was stealth training. And then there was...curse training.”

“Curse…” Zelda felt a shiver of fear crawl down her spine.

“Ganon’s curse magic, to be exact. It’s dark magic and acts as a sort of poison, spreading throughout the body and destroying it from inside. How fast it kills a person depends on his resistance to it, and some people can even build a tolerance for it.

"The curse training was so we could use weapons imbued with his magic. But members of the organization who were like me, orphans or homeless who had been picked off the street and only joined out of desperation, often failed this training. We couldn’t build up enough tolerance. The ones who passed the training and became Ganon’s important officials were often hardened criminals he recruited. People like those who attacked the lab.”

Zelda shuddered. In her mind, she could see Link’s crumpled form on the floor that first time he had been attacked in the university’s lab. She remembered vividly the agony in his face, the anguished moan, the blood seeping from his side—she shook her head, trying to clear those images. How many times had he been through that pain?

“So you never passed this training, then?” Impa asked.

Link shook his head. “Never. I’ve always been quite weak to it, even more than the others….”

“Yet Ganon’s men didn’t try to use the curse magic on you this time when they attacked the Purah lab?” Impa asked pointedly. Link did not answer. “If they knew you were weak to it, why didn’t they use the curse on you?” Impa pressed.

Zelda glanced anxiously at Link, whose only response to Impa was a slight crease in his brows. “Well, he wasn’t cursed, and we made it out alive, so that’s what matters,” she said lightly. Impa frowned deeply, but asked no more, and the three fell into silence, each absorbed in their own thoughts once again.

It was true, the attackers could have killed Link much faster if they had used cursed weapons, but none of Link’s wounds had been cursed when they treated him at the hospital. Either Ganon’s men had decided to use regular weapons, or somehow the curse had been healed. But neither of those options seemed very likely.

As for Link, he refused to say anything about what had happened in the Purah lab, even to Zelda. When she had asked, all he said was that he wasn’t ready to tell her, that he needed time to think. Though she had wanted to tell him he could trust her and didn’t have to carry his burdens alone, she had instead dropped the subject. If he needed time to think, she would give him time. And when he was ready to talk, she would listen.

When they finally stopped for the night at a small cabin, it was midnight. They drove off a ways from the main road to get to the cabin, but Impa said it was a safe house, and they were less likely to be seen by Ganon’s spies here than if they stayed at a motel. It was dark inside, since half the lights did not work, but they could see it was a one room building with a loft above, a kitchen area to one side, and a couch and fireplace in the living area. After a small supper, they each wearily said goodnight and headed to bed. Impa and Zelda took the two beds in the loft, while Link situated himself on the couch. 

Though he was weary and his head was aching, he could not sleep. He raised his left hand, and stared at its back, even though in the dark all he could see was its vague outline. He didn’t need to see, though, to know that the brand was still there, the mark that he’d received when he first entered Ganon’s organization. The symbol of a horned beast devouring a flame. For several years, that symbol had been stamped in his mind, the mark of who he belonged to, the chain that bound him to his master. And yet….this hand had glowed with golden light in the Purah lab. This hand had saved him and Zelda.

Link knew. He knew very well that he now had a piece of the triforce and that it had activated at the lab. He knew he should tell Impa and Zelda, that they could help him learn to use it, that he should use it to stop Ganon. Yet fear and confusion paralyzed him. Why him? He had not been born with this triforce as Zelda had, and the only explanation was that it had chosen to manifest itself in him. But why? He was no hero, he was a criminal, a thief, a murderer. It wasn’t right for him to hold such power. It had to be a mistake. 

Such were the protests he made in his mind, though deep inside he knew was just afraid. Afraid of what the Triforce would mean. Though he’d decided to defeat Ganon and stop his crimes, though he’d promised to himself he would protect Zelda, Link still feared his former master. He would go fight Ganon if he must, he had firmly decided that, but part of him wished that someone else would step up and take down Ganon. If Link had the triforce, however, that meant he was the hero. It was no longer a personal fight to protect his friend, but a fight to protect all of Hyrule. And that thought terrified him.

Slowly Link clenched his hand and let it fall back down to his side. He would have to tell Impa and Zelda soon. But not yet, not yet….

Previous

[hersweetrevenge]

Hi there! <3 I re-watched Halloween Ends yesterday because I was upset and I needed Corey to save me, lmfao, and I wanted to ask you something that I've been wondering about. So, I have no way of getting the novelisation of the movie anytime soon, and you're kinda my only frame of reference for it; so I hope you don't mind me asking you this. When Corey is on his revenge killing spree, he kills those bullies at the mechanic shop. And Ronald is there. And then Ronald comes out to help the kids because of Terry. And only because of that. So, that makes me wonder... Did Corey plan on killing Ronald after he was done with the kids? Is that something that was elaborated on in the novel? Because I keep wondering about that, since Corey pretty much killed everyone that ever wronged him during that night, and Ronald was right there; but Corey didn't kill him (or didn't get the chance to, at least). Terry shot him by accident. But Corey killed his mom, of course. So, it'd make sense if he had at least planned on going after Ronald as well; even though he never actively wronged Corey (only passively, if we look at the way he just sat and watched while Joan abused Corey right in front of him, for example). But more so for completion's sake, y'know? They were on generally good terms, after all. I mean, in your latest post about the novel, you quoted that Ronald is "the loveliest thing" in Corey's life, according to Rohan. So, that makes me wonder all the more. OH, and... I fought with myself to include this point, but anyway- Corey takes the mask off when Ronald comes to help the kids, so that Ronald can see his face and know it's him. And it clearly disarms Ronald immediately and is the reason why Terry accidentally shot him instead of Corey, because he shielded him instinctively. Thus, I keep wondering if Corey meant for that to happen or if he took the mask off in order to assure Ronald that he wasn't actually in danger... It's such a seemingly insignificant thing that I'm thinking about far too much, but it's been bothering me that I don't know, and I was curious if the novel said anything about that at all, or if they just brushed over it there, as well. If they did, I'll just make up my own mind, of course, hdsfdjkfsk Anyway, I'm very sorry for rambling on about this, gosh! I love your blog(s) and everything you have to say about Corey and Rohan, you're awesome!!! Thank you for your detailed posts all the time, they keep me going! Take care! <3

ahhh hi !! thank you so much for sending this ask !! i love talking about this sort of thing more than anything lol and i’m sorry this took a little longer than i expected to reply, i was double checking like every ronald scene in the novel and cross-referencing that with behind-the-scenes details from making of, and re-watching the movie (i didn’t have to do that last one but like you, i needed emotional support from corey too 💗)

WARNING for discussions about (canon-typical) violence, murder, child abuse, abusive households, mentions of suicide and self-harm, and spoilers for the novelisation.

TL;DR – the novelisation does not elaborate on corey's intentions in any huge amount of detail, but it does provide some insight into a few different possibilities for ronald and corey’s relationship and what that would mean for corey's intentions.

general relationship

the novelisation actually gives some really specific details about the cunningham-prevo backstory, but also leaves a lot of aspects vague too.

joan married ronald when corey was 15, and she made it clear to ronald that he would "remain firmly on the sidelines when it came to corey's upbringing" which ronald "gladly" agreed to. so from the very beginning, ronald accepts he isn't going to be an active parent to corey, which maybe means he didn't believe he would do a good job anyway, or maybe he agreed it wasn't his place to parent corey in the same way joan does.

also, corey was already a teenager, he didn't need parenting in the same way a younger child would, which is partly why i think joan waited until corey was older to get remarried, because although being a single parent is difficult, she wouldn't want someone else in the picture as a father-figure for corey.

i don't personally see corey and ronald having a super close relationship, but there are multiple instances that show they are at least comfortable and familiar with each other (in line with what rohan said).

corey had a job before working for ronald, so we know ronald didn't have to give him a job. i hc that corey really wanted to do something stimulating instead of call centre work, and ronald agreed despite joan's grievances over it.

ronald doesn't seem too angry at him for being late, even though it is a regular occurrence (third time in a month).would he be so lenient on anyone who wasn't his stepson?

the gifting of the motorbike is a huge moment of course. that's a big gesture which, in the novelisation, also comes with some stilted bonding when ronald reminiscences that he used to "get laid [...], if you can believe it".

they have their united front moment over dinner when joan is trying to work a reaction out of them and neither gives her what she wants.

a smaller but still significant gesture is that corey uses dumbbells and a pull-up bar in his room to workout, which ronald bought him for christmas. very much feels like an attempt to help corey rebuild his self-confidence.

honestly though, rohan's comment about ronald being the "loveliest" thing in corey's life is probably right, especially as corey's life has been incredibly insular. as the town pariah with an abusive mom, his stepdad being cool about him being late for work is probably one of the best parts of his day.

but then on the other hand, there are moments which do not characterise their relationship very well, including multiple instances of ronald "ignoring" joan's abusive behaviour and not intervening.

to reiterate a previous point: ronald very willingly obliges joan's wishes of not "interfering" with corey's upbringing. her unfounded criticism and distrust of doctors, the school system and anyone other than her taking care of corey should have been a huge red flag (if, of course, any of that behaviour could have been inferred prior to their marriage).

ronald's passivity at being side-lined by his wife, allowing her to continue an unhealthy and unbounded relationship with corey.

when joan is berating corey for "sneaking around" and seeing allyson (the slap/kiss scene), she questions ronald as to whether he knew about the motorcycle, to which ronald stays completely out of it and doesn't answer her, despite her being furious with corey.

however it is a really difficult family dynamic to navigate, with so much nuance. i'm reluctant to say if ronald is a "good" or "bad" stepdad, or whether their father-son relationship is "good" or "bad", simply because their circumstances are so trying and complex. yes, joan has abused corey for a long time, but that abuse also extends to ronald in many ways too, resulting in him allowing (or enabling) joan's abusive behaviour in a flawed attempt to maintain the (toxic) status quo of the household.

did corey intend to kill ronald?

like i mentioned, there isn't any elaboration about corey's intentions in the novel, either through narration or extra dialogue. the scene happens almost exactly as it does in the film, with a few alterations and added background details. it's the surrounding details and plot differences that change my opinion.

i think movie!corey would have killed ronald if he had to. he knew ronald would be at home or at the yard, both of which were places he intended to go (to kill momma and the bullies). i'm not sure he had the same desire to kill ronald as he does the others, especially if he sees ronald in a good light, but to tie up loose ends he might do what is "necessary". i do find it very interesting that he lets ronald see his face though, and i can't decide if that is as a reassurance (he wouldn't kill ronald and ronald should know that) or because it just didn't matter (he's going to kill ronald so even if he sees corey's face, he won't be a liability to worry about).

however, i don't think novel!corey intended to kill ronald. in the novel, despite all of the extensive set-up of joan being abusive and corey's repressed desires to hurt her (and arguably ronald), there's no suggestion that corey planned to go back home as part of his spree and kill joan. if he wasn't going to kill joan after everything she did, i really don't think he'd have plans to kill ronald.

that's not to say there aren't implication in the novel that corey would hurt ronald too. there's a scene after the slap/kiss where corey can hear joan and ronald arguing about him, and once they've gone to bed corey gets a knife and stands outside their room, but ultimately doesn't go in. it isn't specified whether he wants to hurts just joan, or ronald as well.

michael's mask

ahh so when i was re-reading the scrapyard massacre in the novel to try and answer whether corey letting ronald see that it is him was a way of corey saying "you don't have to be scared of me" or even "you should be scared of me", i've come to a different conclusion about the mask.

“Who did this to you?” [Ronald] asked. “Him,” Margo said, pointing across the street. Ronald turned to find Corey twenty feet away on the other side of the fence, pulling Michael’s mask over his head. "Corey?" he muttered in disbelief.

the way the novel reads, i think that when corey puts the mask on in front of ronald, it's the first time he puts the mask on at all. if that is the case, it adds a whole other level to the transition between corey's kills as himself (or as the scarecrow) and his kills "as michael".

earlier, billy's sees "corey's shape wearing his prevo jumpsuit". it's fair enough that billy would assume it's corey without seeing his face, because they know that corey is there, but there's no mention of the mask either.

then, the way it describes ronald seeing corey put on the mask doesn't really indicate that corey was making sure ronald saw it was him. he's already "pulling on the mask" by the time ronald looks over at him; he wasn't waiting for ronald to look he was already doing it.

alternatively, the movie shows corey very deliberately stood there, waiting for ronald to see him and recognise him before he puts the mask on. i'm leaning towards it not being a gesture of reassurance but more of a last show of humanity to someone corey cares about -- "it's me, and i appreciate that you always treated me well, but this is the monster they've made me into".

in both versions, ronald jumps up to stop terry shooting corey. whether he was intending to shield corey or was just getting up to try and talk terry down, i think it says a lot about ronald as a character. he has been very passive this whole time, especially in scenes that take place at home, but in this moment he takes an authorative position to try and diffuse the situation. there's a scared kid with a gun, and his own stepson who he's starting to think might have done something awful, but this doesn't have to continue -- they can talk about it and calm down and whatever it is that has happened can be worked out.

[paigemathews]

Continuing our battle royale for s4!