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septic-skele · 3 years

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US - Heed The Signs (Part 6)

[Part 5]

“Are hatchling bones meant to look so yellow and frail? Take another pastry, dearie,” Miss Muffet advised, nudging the tray back at him. Blue sniffed, a little indignant, but he accepted another croissant nevertheless.

“I’m not frail at all! In fact, my bones are hardy and strong and rather magnificent,” he informed her as he tore off a piece, excess honey dripping from it in globs and strings. “I carried my brother most of the way here.”

“Oh ho, but you do not stop along the way for a doctor? The strength of little Papyrus-like bones is not important too?” Blue reeled back slightly as two of her five eyes gave him a sideways glance. What was she implying?

“Of course it is. That’s why I brought him here as fast as I could, so he could cool down!”

“Ahuhuhu, cold does not help a cold, silly thing! Why do you think little Papyrus was dancing out there? Snow and ice make the heat inside cook faster! Shiver and shake, quiver and quake, until the heat becomes too much and has to rattle right out of his bones! He didn’t get all of it, still some leftovers boiling.” Tutting, she resoaked the sponges to tuck against the younger skeleton’s ribs. “This is why I’m mopping him up! Let sit at room temperature so he can cool properly.”

“Wait, I—I don’t understand,” Blue whispered, despite the nausea slugging through him which indicated otherwise. “So his fit out there…Did I do that to him by bringing him here?”

“Ahh, accidents will happen.”

Her blasé tone only made the words worse. It hadn’t been an accident; he had brought him here purposefully, knowing already that he was ill. Light draining from his sockets, Blue dropped the croissant, pressing sticky gloves to his face. “Oh, stars…Oh, stars, I did this to him! I thought I was making him better, I thought—! How could I—?!”

Failure, idiot. You hurt him and then you abandoned him in the snow while he was lost and in pain. How could you? You’re dreadful! You made everything worse for him! You don’t deserve—

“Sans? Look and listen here, you.” A third hand on his face made him jump, biting back a mortified whimper as Miss Muffet brought his chin up. Her expression wasn’t entirely sympathetic but it didn’t hold quite as much judgment either. “Did you hear what I said? Accidents will happen. Hatchlings don’t know, so they don’t think until they are taught…and you don’t have any teachers, do you?”

Blue gulped against a lump in his throat.

“Where are your parents, child? In the nest you lost?”

Parents, plural. Memories of Dad were fleeting enough. Memories of a mother? When he looked back, he could grasp nothing about her at all.

“I suppose so,” he managed at last, not daring to blink lest any tears fall. He focused on his reflection in Miss Muffet’s dark eyes, admitting the truth to it. “We lost him—or them—when we lost the house. We should have known how to get back. It’s my fault, I can’t remember.”

“If you can’t remember, how do you remember it’s your fault?”

“It—It was my job to remember!” How could he know that either? It was just a feeling. He was the big kid so obviously he was to be trusted with the responsibility of recalling…whatever he was meant to recall. It was supposed to make sense.

“Huh! Well, if that’s so, it was your parents’ job to teach you better how to remember! Shame on them for misplacing you before doing so.” Huffing, she turned her attention to the fallen croissant. “Accidents, waste. My mother never let anything go to waste. Not food, not time. She carries me on her back until I’m grown and ready, and your mother goes unbothered? She makes you carry your own brother here from a home you don’t know? What shame. It’s no wonder bone hatchlings are only a myth.”

“A myth? Like a legend?”

“You and your brother are only you. Have you ever made friends with another? Have you ever seen another bone child your age?”

“No, I don’t think so. Are there many spiders like you?”

“Ahuhuhu! Two or two thousand live in the Ruins and Hotland! Cousins, brothers, sisters. Sad, my business is bad there. Grillby and his firecrackers are burning down the industry, but Snowdin puts their flames out. I am the only one strong enough to survive this cold, so my family sent me here to find better customers.”

“But…how is that any better than our parents? They lost us. After all that time raising you, your parents sent you away? I’m sorry, that sounds very lonely.”

Muffet opened her mouth. She closed it. She opened it again. “It’s my job to be here, like it’s your job to remember, you say. And we have telegrams.”

“It still sounds difficult, and sad, and not what I’d ever want. I may not see any other skeletons but Papyrus is all I need. Just one brother to keep me company is better in my mind than having none. If he ever sent me away…Gosh, now I know why he hates the thought of being left behind. I bet your brothers miss you.”

At that Miss Muffet looked more than a little shaken, though she glanced away so he wouldn’t examine it too closely. Blue didn’t inquire any further. The idea of being without Papyrus for any reason, now or as a grownup, was enough to make his shoulders hunch and his soul shudder. How close had this illness brought them to that reality already?

“That fit he had…Is that normal? Could that ever happen again?”

Gladly she latched onto the subject change. “If you want it to, if you do not?”

“N-No, I don’t! I never want to see that happen again!”

“The little bones dance when they need to dance; there is nothing you can do to stop it once it starts. Using foresight—” Four of her eyes blinked demonstratively. “—you try to see that he is not this sick again!”

“How did you know what to do when you saw him? Or not do?”

“Some spiders are not raised as strong as I. Some mothers did not prepare them for the world.” Her bucket sloshed wildly as she set it on the floor with a sharp clank. Blue flinched as she spun toward him, agitatedly tossing her head. “This world isn’t kind to my kind. Many of my brothers, sisters, cousins look for treats and find sweet poison left for them. They squirm and shake like this little bone and only some live to finish the dance.”

Blue’s eye sockets were as huge as saucers. “They…?”

She didn’t give him time to finish the thought, her next words brusque. “That comes to mind, what has the little bone down like this? This heat is brought on by something. Has he been looking for treats? Nibbled something unsavory?”

“We last ate some water sausages on our way here but he came down with it before; he didn’t even want to eat until I fed him by hand,” he murmured. “I tried to offer him part of that quiche I found under the bench we slept on but he wasn’t hungry for that either. We left it. Before that…Oh! We were foraging. We found a Nice Cream to share. That truly was a treat!”

“And you are not sick from that but your Papyrus is?” She peered closer, giving his forehead a tentative pet for a temperature. “That makes less than sense.”

“You’re right. If it was that, I should be sick too. Maybe I was meant to catch it but it couldn’t catch me, so it caught Papy instead. He’s always been a bit fragile, sensitive.” A humorless laugh escaped him. “He even choked on that soft Nice Cream. Lucky he’d found a bottle of sea tea to wash it down!”

“Tsk. Sea tea doesn’t come in bottles, dearie, it comes in boxes.”

“Really? You’re sure? That can’t be right. If that wasn’t sea tea, then what did he—?” He stiffened, eye sockets growing impossibly wider. “What did he drink? It was in that bottle. The bottle had cracks. It had spilled, it was all over that crab apple he tried before I found the Nice Cream! What was that?!”

“Well, describe its looks for me! Labels, liquids?”

“The label was torn! The liquid looked…green, I think.”

“Sea tea is blue, Sans, blue like the sea.”

“I-It doesn’t come in different flavors?!”

“Ai, Arachne!” Pressing a hand to her face, Miss Muffet shook Blue’s shoulder with another. “Has the little bone brought it up again?”

“No, we left after we ate! We didn’t talk about it. I didn’t think about it again, he seemed fine at first but—”

“Silly, silly, listen! Has he brought it up again? Spitting, spewing?”

“Oh, h-he was sick to his stomach twice! It was worse the second time.” Scrambling off the stool, he grabbed at her arm. “Is that really bad? Is it going to make him worse? What did he drink?!”

“Your Papyrus left the bottle behind? Where is there?”

“On the far end of Waterfall, b-by the second east river! An old monster lives there and we sorted through his trash. It wasn’t the first time; we try not to scavenge in the same place too often, overstay our welcome, and he yelled after us the first time but he had so much of it! Sharing is caring and if he threw it out, I didn’t think he would miss it too terribly! Miss Muffet—”

“I’ll string a telegram through the web to my cousins in Waterfall,” she announced, bustling back toward the door. “Stay with the little bone, mop him up—and don’t look so blue. If I know much of what I know, he should be up, groggy and grumpy soon, and the last thing he needs is to see your face frightened.”

#undertale #underswap #fanfiction #sans #sans undertale #swap sans #papyrus #papyrus undertale #swap papyrus #muffet #sickfic #whump #babybones #angst #feels #caretaking #hurt comfort

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simon-newman · 5 years

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A long overdue update

Ok. I’ve did it.

The last update was a ver,y very, very long time ago.

It was a good one with lots of photos and stuff, good news overall.

This one.

Now. Some stuff happened, sad stuff some of you might recall that I don’t want to discuss here.

I was also occupied with the Half Marathon Beginner training program which was becoming more draining with each passing week.

Now with all of this behind, no hardcore training to do and running season at it’s end I’ll probably do more updates now.

What updates, some poor soul who sees this post by accident might ask?

Animal updates!

So now. Lets begin.

1. Mantises.

Mantids? Whatever the plural is...

Well... I have good news and bad news.

Bad news is... I had two more deaths. Atum passed away a month after Athena and didn’t even reach his adult form.

Case again unknown. he was eating well, doing just fine just... Not molting for a long time. When he refused food and started hanging on the top of his enclosure I was happy - suspecting he finally decided to molt again...

Unfortunately the next day I found him nearly dead - still hanging upside down from the lid. Did he wait too long and couldn’t molt? Something else killed him? I have no idea.

Another death was #4 - the most lively of the Blue Gang.

Here the case is clear - the mantis fell during molt. I tried my best to help but by the time I found it two legs were already gone and one of the remaining ones was unnaturally bent and useless.

The mantis actually ate a small roach when I helped it to grab it but it didn’t help. It couldn’t walk and died soon after.

I fed it’s remains to one of my ant colonies - they are now big enough to handle such large food items.

Ok - this is all for bad news.

Good news! The remaining 4 mantises are alive and well.

#2 and #3 seem to be one molt away from adulthood and from the looks of it they seem to be Hierodula Sp. Blue as well.

You can see a hint of blue on the tiny proto-wings they have.

Also - they are BIG. This is an adult cockroach they can handle for lunch.

I’ll provide more pictures in the near future but know this - one of them is already living in a “penthouse” - the one beautiful terrarium I’ve set up for my animals (in the future it’ll belong to one of my tarantulas).

2.Ants

I think I’ve mentioned the rehouse I did.

The two Manica Rubida colonies were moved to proper arenas. Nest building is currently underway.

I’m preparing a ytong nests about 10x10x7cm that’ll connect nicely to this:

Cat legs for scale. In the middle is the old setup which now houses Formica Cinerea colony.

M.Rubida are both doing astonishingly well. There are new ants pretty much daily and I only expect the speed to increase.

There are deaths however - first, weaker generation is slowly going away.

From time to time I remove a dead ant or two from the enclosure.

Still - the numbers are increasing so it’s all good as the new ants are bigger and stronger.

They (or rather their larvae and the queen) eat A LOT.

I can feed them once a week and usually give them 3 small roaches per colony but they could easily eat more. They dealt with the mantis above in about 3 days - this includes the time they took to eat the roach first (they didn’t know how to handle a mantis at first).

Formica cinerea?

Honestly I don’t know. There’s the first generation and I don’t see any new eggs or larvae. i am kinda worried.

I might try and make a 3rd setup or something... IDK.

Also - they make a mess.

3. Tarantulas

Ok. The not-so-big guys!

They are all well.

Chromatopelma cyaneopubescens molted twice. She’s now L3 and good 3cm in legspan. She’s growing A LOT between molts.

Brachypelma Vagans molted three times - this makes her an L4 and she’s also big... Not as big as the Chromatopelma above.

This is the best picture I could do. Sorry - she is really shy.

Also. I was told they start changing coloration after 5th molt.

Well - either this count included nymph molts or I am getting a fast grower here.

Or it’s just not easily seen. It’s just a tiny brown spider and I got to see the red hair only on a few photos with a really good light setting from behind the spider.

So... Here it is. All of it... Right?

Well. You might be happy with this but my family certainly wasn’t.

Meet new additions:

T003: Phormictopus Sp. Green Gold Carapace

A tiny sling that’s the most expensive spider in my collection currently. Still - only like 1/3 of what the Phormictopus Sp. Purple costs.

It’ll be a beautiful green-legged giant of a spider with (duh!) gold carapace. For now it’s a tiny bluish-green sling.

And I say it’s going to be a giant - out of all my spiders it’ll grow the largest.

I’d have to get a Theraphosa or Lasiodora to get a bigger one. Easily 20cm of legspan here for an adult.

And the last addition:

Psalmopoeus Cambrigei

It’s both the smallest spider I owned (right now) and the only arboreal in my collection.

I wasn’t really planning on getting it but decided to get an arboreal to gain some experience with those.

Just so you know - arboreal tarantulas are faster and can jump.

it’s better to have some experience before you get an old world arboreal so...

TBH I was looking for some avicularia but the expo I attended had none.

Now - i don’t want you to think this is a case where I picked whatever when they didn’t have what i wanted.

No - I did look into Psalmopoeus genus and decided on this one “just in case” before attending the expo. It’s not an impressive spider when it comes to coloration but many people said good things about this species and IMO it does look nice with a hint of green on an otherwise light-brown body.

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soveryanon · 5 years

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Some thoughts about MAG121! (... it ended up getting long, rambling and screaming ahead.)

- “Antonio” had been one of my hypotheses for the first episode (same as season2!Jon: try to consider all the possible options, increase statistical chance to be right about one of them), since he had popped up a few times through allusions when crystal shops were involved:

(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) These dreams have been a regular part of my sleeping for about eight years now. Even as life improved and I found a new job and place to live – believe it or not I now work selling crystals and tarot cards in a “magic” shop – they continued to crop up a few times each month.

(MAG032, Jane Prentiss) I had a job. I sold crystals. […] I remember, before I found the nest, someone new came. His name was Oliver, and he would look at me so strangely. Not with lust or affection or contempt, but with sadness. Such a deep sadness. And once with fear.

(MAG042, Jennifer Ling) […] I saw someone staring at me from the doorway of a small shop. The sign above didn’t have an obvious name, simply reading “Crystals. Books. Tarot”. He was tall, black and careworn, deep lines of worry etched into an otherwise handsome face.

… but I had pictured a visit paid to the Archives, not… apparently-already-turned-Avatar!Oliver visiting Jon at the hospital and basically encouraging him in this path, SHHHHHHHIT. (Handsome black queer Death Prophet introducing himself officially, and Tim isn’t around anymore for this, I feel cheated (like Death). I… had been wondering if Tim hadn’t met the guy off-screen towards the end of season 3, since he sounded unsettlingly convinced that he wouldn’t come back… And now, I kinda hope that it really didn’t happen – it would probably have make him lose faith in (in)humanity even further. Oliver would have told him to “rest in pieces”, uh.)

- … I’m also so, so mad, because, yes, I had spotted him in MAG032 and MAG042; but I had totally overlooked the fact that he had lied/concealed some information back when he’d given his statement (March 14th 2015) and it’s so, so obvious in retrospect, gdi!!! He totally got me with the seemingly pure good boy utterly honest façade, and nop, he’s just super good at casually lying/dissimulating while pretending to be charmingly deadpan honest, which he did again with Georgie by introducing himself as “Antonio” without missing a beat (lol) (don’t misunderstand, I’m love him, his voice was effing amazing, and also WOW WHAT A LITTLE SHIT).

(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) I tell you this because I feel you have a right to know the sort of timescales that we’re dealing with here. I haven’t had much of a chance to experiment or see anything more specific, I’m afraid. There are so many people who die in London, and I know so few of them.

^he only gave the two examples of his ex-colleague’s (a “John” =D) and of his father’s deaths, but he worked in Jane Prentiss’s shop before she gave her statement in February 2014; he had already seen her, seen her condition (and it looked… really fucked up) and yet didn’t mention it at all in his statement, and… it should have ticked me off, damnit!! Same with MAG042 (statement given November 3rd 2013):

(MAG042, Jennifer Ling) When he saw me looking at him, he began to walk up to me, still with that intense look. I took a couple of steps back, and asked if I could help him. He shook his head as if unsure what to say, then asked me what I was listening to. A chill ran over me as I realised he was staring at my ears. I said I wasn’t listening to anything, as I wasn’t wearing headphones, and asked him what he wanted. He shook his head again, and mumbled something about protecting my hearing. He turned away then, and started walking back into the shop.

He thought that Jennifer was wearing earphones!! Because there were roots in her ears!! He couldn't see her ears!! Because he was seeing it live, not remembering it from his dreams!! Gdi!!! I’m still so mad I hadn’t realized, it was just right there!!

(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) Or maybe they just couldn’t be seen, fighting off death for so long that when it came at last its icy tendrils covered every inch of them.

That “icy”: he knew that they were cold because he had already touched them!!! Damnit!!

- … there is some ambiguity about the number of statements he gave (I definitely heard the plural in the second sentence?):

(MAG121) OLIVER: I gave the old woman a statement, so, maybe I owe you one as well. […] So. My name is Oliver Banks. In my other statements, I used the name “Antonio Blake”, but I don’t really think either name has much meaning for me anymore.

So, mmmm, is there another one laying around, or did Gertrude take a live statement from him after his written one?

- efhrefdjknefd about the fact that the One Person Sent To Talk To Jon would be calling him “Jon” (“Hum… Hello, Jon. Do you… mind, if I call you Jon? I, I mean. You don’t actually know me, it’s just… well. “Archivist”, it’s so… formal, isn’t it?”), while, until now, other avatars had called him “Archivist” without batting an eye:

(MAG039) PRENTISS: Archivist. (MAG047) MICHAEL: There has never been a door there, Archivist, your mind plays tricks on you. (MAG089) JUDE: No more questions, Archivist! (MAG091) MIKE: Archivist. Take my mercy and leave. (MAG097) NIKOLA: Question time is over, little Archivist. (MAG100) HELEN: Time is hard, Archivist. It’s difficult to follow without a proper mind, especially here.

(Nikola also used “Jon” sometimes, but it had mostly been “Archivist”, and hey, ~the Stranger is not known for its consistency~) -> Dat sweet-talking and trying to get in Jon’s good graces by calling him by his name, while he usually goes into squint&snarl mode as soon as he’s called “Archivist”. Oliver’s obsession with finally being able to have a good night (he wanted a “dreamless sleep”, recalled his “desperation to finally have a good night’s sleep”, “to have one good night’s sleep”) must also have hit a bit close to home, uh.

- Martin begging for Jon to wake up and help them, finally accepting a deal that sounded shady to protect the others since Jon is still unresponsive => Jon: *stays undead* Handsome black mlm passing by to tell his story, right after Valentine’s day => Jon: *HEAVY BREATHING.*

- In all seriousness, I wonder how Oliver’s statement expressed itself in Jon’s mind: were they suddenly on the boat, breaking the cycle of Jon’s dreams? Did Jon indeed feel a “fear”, since Oliver is already an avatar? (Julia&Trevor hadn’t really sounded afraid when he quickly saw them in their dream, in MAG120.) Interestingly, it looks like Oliver could see Jon’s dreams, or at least knew their content, inside of his own dreams?

(MAG121) OLIVER: […] And I do kind of know you? Haven’t had much choice, really. Dreams are like that, y’know: no matter how lucid you think they are, there is always that part that just drags you along. Guess I don’t need to tell you that, at least… not right now. […] I s’pose there’s only so long you can dream about someone and not at least try to find them. […] I don't talk to many people these days. Putting my thoughts outside myself, it's gets a bit… hm… clumsy. […] ‘wish there was a better way, but… Touching someone’s mind, it’s not… as simple as that, is it? Doesn’t always make things clearer, y’know? Still. I gave the old woman a statement, so, maybe I owe you one as well. That’s how it works, right? Give you a terror. Give you a dream. ‘t’s not like I don’t have ‘em to spare. Mm. Let me tell you about how I tried to escape.

It’s… curious, given that he used to dream of people themselves (how do the tendrils interact with Jon’s… state?); but it looks like in Jon’s case, he could access Jon’s dreams, since he knew what Jon has been experiencing. Is he currently able to communicate with people through dreams? (Either something he developed since his 2015 statement, either yet something else he didn't bother to mention at the time?) (I do wonder how Jon’s choice manifested in his dream, too! Was it to face the Eye, since Elias had narrated that Jon… was basically trying to escape its gaze/pretending that it wasn’t there by focusing on other people, though he couldn’t not watch them anyway? I had been wondering if his clue for leaving would have to do with the “DIG” ad, since it came from Martin’s statement, static included; or from Helen’s door, since… “He does not know what is behind it anymore, and he is deathly afraid of finding out. The Archivist turns away.” (MAG120) sounded like Jon fleeing, and also the least Beholding-like thing he did in the cycle of dreams.)

- I’m laughing SO HARD about how Oliver had quite clearly been sent by The Web:

(MAG121) OLIVER: [SIGH] I wish I could tell you why I came here. I wish I knew why I came here. I s’pose there’s only so long you can dream about someone and not at least try to find them. […] Then again, maybe I’ve just wasted my breath. But I don’t think so. Honestly, hum, I'm still not exactly sure why I’m here. But… you know better than anyone how the spiders can get into your head. Easier to just do what she asked!

(The fact that he tried to rationalize actions that he had not chosen is quite reminiscent of the effects Trevor had described in MAG056: “The weirdest sensation began to flow through me; I wanted to leave. […] This was just a sudden awareness of my own desire. I’d been sober for three years at that point, but I felt like I desperately wanted to get high, and I knew that the best place to get some was out in the night. Looking back, I think it might have been my own mind rationalizing the way I felt my will being tugged out of the room, but it was still very powerful.”) … and that’s the thing that made Jon tip over. He had been holding on for six months, prisoner in his dreams and under the big eyeball’s stare, and the thing that apparently made him ~choose~… was the message that The Web sent him. That’s so rude towards Beholding, Jon =D

- Also it’s the *screams* confirmation that… Jon probably never really escaped Mr. Spider back when he was a kid. At the very least, the spiders have plans for him, and it’s apparently in their interest to have Jon functioning, whether it stems from a Web-Beholding alliance or from the Web having its own plan and trying to hijack the chessboard. As far as the tense relationship between The Web and free will is concerned, I remembered something Elias had said a while back:

(MAG092) ELIAS: […] And your will is still your own, mostly.

………… that “mostly”………..…………… Elias, what do you know about this…….. (I’m still unable to pinpoint, for a lot of things regarding Elias, if the answer is “he knows a lot” or “he barely knows anything and only manages to stay in control because he’s a very pretty/lucky complete buffoon”.) (In the same exchange, there was that moment of “Feels like all I’ve managed to do is… not die.” “And believe me, that is a remarkably rare skill.” and that also does take another dimension now fedhbjnefd.)

- Relatedly: if Jon indeed gave himself up to Beholding… well… Gods. Gooooooods. I am not ready for elated!Elias since uwu!! Jon chose this path himself!! uwu. We already had a glimpse of it in MAG102 (“No, Jon, this is good! It’s a promising development!”) but I think nobody is ready for Elias being elated over something Jon-related again. (… Except for Ben, probably.) Will Elias make arrangements to send a Congratulations postcard and/or flowers to Jon from his cell. Will Jon still be Jon enough to dump them in the trash.

- Important logistic question: did Jon receive his salary during his coma, and what happened to his shiny new flat? According to Georgie, he hadn’t been paid during his, erm, escapade from the police&the Institute at the beginning of season 3 (for a bit more than two months) (though it could have been Jon avoiding to use his bank account altogether in order to not get tracked down):

(MAG099) ARCHIVIST: Look, G– Georgie, I need to move out. GEORGIE: Umm… yeah. I thought you were looking for a place. Y’know, now, now you’ve got a salary again.

(Elias, you could have at least compensated him for the weeks he spent on the run since he worked even more than usual if his sleep schedule is any indication, you’re a terrible boss in more than one aspect.) So, yeah. Does Jon still have his new flat, or will he have to find a new one again (or go back to Georgie’s, or… keep definitive residence in the Archives).

- Same question as I’d asked myself during the trailer: is the clock in Jon’s hospital room specifically the clock from Elias’s office, and did Elias arrange for this? Since we first heard it, I’ve been wondering if it had… something behind it (aside from informing the listeners that scenes were taking place in Elias’s office). Bones, or something else entirely. It’s super ominous on its own, the regular sound being half a constant reminder that things are advancing their natural course, and half a feeling of mechanicalness and of things being trapped in an cyclical system! But I do wonder if that clock had a function in-universe, too, since… it’s very noticeable. At the very least, Oliver’s words resonated strongly with it

(MAG121) OLIVER: Time is like that, isn’t it? Just keeps going. No matter what happens, it just carries on. And it strips everything away from you in the end; the good, and the bad alike, until there is nothing left of either. “This too shall pass”, “All good things come to an end”. “Memento mori”.

and it was a beautiful (and terrible) atmosphere.

- It’s possible that Georgie and Martin have met off-screen!!

(MAG121) OLIVER: Uh… uh, I’m a friend. Of Jon’s. GEORGIE: Are you now. OLIVER: Y– y– yes. GEORGIE: Right. Just… haven’t you seen visiting before.

Well, that depends if Martin has been visiting often but… Georgie sure is keeping a close watch on Jon. I wonder if Jon will still be in a state to feel guilty about it, since… ~before~ the coma, he didn’t want for her to get involved further and in the end, she did.

- I love that she’s also picky about the friends Jon should be surrounding himself with, but she quite clearly understood that Oliver was bad news (“Sorry about that. But you really don’t need friends like th–”). What was the reason she chased Oliver at the end? Because the tape recorder was running and it usually didn’t react when she was there? Because there was something weird already with Jon’s body? Or did Oliver leave something in the room for Jon, a gift from The Web? (… or could it be specifically the zippo again, returning to Jon? We don’t know if Martin had used it in MAG118, but it could have been, since it could burn statements…)

- I’ll forever be laughing at the fact that Jonathan fucking Sims dated someone who would later be a supernatural podcaster who says “spooktacular”, but at the same time, I Would Die For Georgie Barker:

(MAG121) OLIVER: I’m Antonio. GEORGIE: Sure. OLIVER: Do you mind, uh… giving us a minute? GEORGIE: No, I think you’re done here. OLIVER: Oh. Uh, right. H… have I upset you, miss? GEORGIE: No, you just remind me of someone. OLIVER: Ah, I’m sorry. Were they– GEORGIE: Evil. Yes. OLIVER: … Oookay then. I, I just, guess I should just go. GEORGIE: I guess you should.

This was the first time we've heard Georgie interact with someone else than Jon, and… Georgie!!! GEORGIE!!!!!!! I’m guessing that “someone” was referring to the events in the dissection class, since that was an agent of The End too… and now I’m worried for her, since woops, they’re related to the same shade of fear, and the idea that Georgie is getting involved in that, or at least with people deeper in it than she is… is worrisome.)

- Well. I’m assuming that Oliver chose to serve The End, it sounds pretty clear to me? He wouldn’t be punning that much about it if it wasn’t the case (do you get more powerful when you pun about your patron all the time. *eyes Elias*). I’m not sure about the rest of his situation, though, since… I saw a few other people mention it, and same, Point Nemo sounded like a Lonely and Vast territory – different powers fighting to get the upper hand influence-wise, like at Hill Top Road? The shades bleeding into each other in the spectrum of colours-that-hate-me? I had wondered, with MAG011 alone, whether “Antonio” was actually under The End’s or Beholding’s influence – the latter because… there were, and there still is in MAG121, a lot of references about him witnessing without being able to help and slowly coming to terms with that fact, his being mostly a passive observer overall, unable to do anything about it, and the idea that, when given a choice, he wanted to see, even when it wouldn’t do him any good:

(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) Eventually my wandered drifting led me back to the Barclays building. Something inside me wanted to go inside, to see what it was like in this rhythmic, fleshy dreamscape. […] I was aware that I had two choices: to follow the light to wherever it might lead or to turn and retreat into the waking world. I decided to follow the path of that scarlet glow […].

(MAG121) OLIVER: I don’t know why I did it. I knew it was a stupid thing to do, walking past my own home in a dream, but I just… Maybe I wanted it this way.

By contrast, his ascension made him take an active part, with him purposely leading people to their deaths… So I don’t know if this was The End all along, or Oliver switching from another power to The End, à la Mike Crew? Also, we don’t know if he’s gay or bi/pan (he’s a mlm at the very least, since he mentioned his ex-boyfriend Graham) but: it would add another dimension to the fact that he referred to The End as a He while The Web (or its avatar) gets a She =D (My Patron Is More Appealing To Me.)

- ……………….. okay, so this statement seems to confirm that Avatars tend to have a death experience or something close to it in order to… become. It’s unclear if Jane Prentiss had clinically died when she was treated, but as for others:

(MAG089) JUDE PERRY: […] It became clear that, where once I had destroyed to fuel my life, I now lived for the pain that I caused. […] I doused myself in kerosene and set it alight. […] As the heat warped my bones and bubbled my flesh, all I heard was the loving exaltation of my god.

(MAG089) MIKE CREW: […] In the end I threw myself into the arms of that vast emptiness, and I bound my tormentor to the book.

(MAG109) ARCHIVIST: Last I heard, you were dying of lung cancer. TREVOR: I was. ARCHIVIST: And now? TREVOR: I’m not. [CHUCKLES]

(MAG121) OLIVER: […] I could feel all their eyes lock to me, panicked, hoping for some sort of explanation. I almost tried to give them one, but I barely got the first word out before the falling satellite debris hit the ship at two hundred miles an hour, killing us instantly.

Mike jumped from a tower pursued by a Lichtenberg figure; Jude immolated herself; Trevor was dying from lung cancer (and Martin thought that people had mentioned he had died after the first part of his statement); Oliver explicitly states that he died (and yet is still present in some way, and corporeal enough to need to open and close the door). That. Sounds. Really. Really. Bad. For. Jon. Given that, for all of them, it was presented as a turning point – the thing that made them tip over into another sort of existence. Interestingly, Jon got… many of his powers before this stage (compulsion, the ability to Know things he had never learned as highlighted by Elias in MAG102 and later Tim in MAG114, the languages-thing, the ability to… See?, unravelling one’s story, as he did in MAG119, and the nightmares-sharing as we learned in MAG120), but Trevor had the ability to feel the vampires his entire life, and Jude set someone on fire before completing her transformation.

I’M DEVASTATED BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT JON WAS AFRAID OF, ESPECIALLY AFTER TALKING WITH OTHER AVATARS, GDI!!! The prospect of becoming a monster and of losing himself like the others… shook him quite badly at the time.

(MAG092) ARCHIVIST: So it’s… it’s back to breadcrumbs, and statements, and risking my life talking to things that barely remember how to be human anymore? [...] Am I… Elias, am I still human? ELIAS: Jon, what does human even mean? I mean, really? You still bleed, you can still die. And your will is still your own, mostly. That’s more than can be said for a lot of the “real’ humans out there. … You’re worried about ending up like that thing, lurking in the dirt under the streets of Alexandria? Don’t be. Just do what you need to, and you’ll be fine. Understood?

(MAG093) ARCHIVIST: You’ve seen monsters? GEORGIE: Not the time, Jon. ARCHIVIST: Right, it’s… it’s just I think I’m turning into one. GEORGIE: Really? That’s… not great. […] ARCHIVIST: But [Avatars] end up getting these abilities, and they lose a lot of their self. Sometimes all of it. GEORGIE: And you think… that’s what’s happening to you? ARCHIVIST: Yes. Yes. The Institute serves one of these beings. A–At least, Elias, who runs the place, does. Since accepting the Archivist job, I–I’ve been… different.

(MAG114) TIM: So, why don’t you “Archivist” me, then? Just pull it straight out. ARCHIVIST: Because I don’t want to! I am not your enemy, Tim. TIM: [DISMISSIVELY] Like that matters! These things aren’t human. It’s… instinct. You can’t not. ARCHIVIST: [SOFTLY] I’m still me, Tim. [TIM HUFFS] I’m still… me.

(MAG115) HELEN: We’re both changing, Archivist. I had hoped, that together– ARCHIVIST: [FURIOUS] Get out. HELEN: Archivist… ARCHIVIST: Get. Out.

… And at the same time, Oliver’s statement just highlighted how… far Jon was from the state the other Avatars were in just before they turned into their current beings? Jude Perry was depressed, isolated, straying away from her girlfriend (projecting Agnes on her instead) and decided to start killing pretty easily. Mike Crew had lost his parents and was apparently quite solitary, and discovered along the way that he didn’t mind killing (MAG089: “My experiments weren’t entirely pointless, though, they did have a truth to me. I learned that I was more than capable of killing, if it brought me closer to what I needed.”) Oliver didn’t sound like he had anyone who could have mattered to him (we knew he’d lost his father in MAG011, but he didn’t mention any other family member or friend in MAG121) and… decided, at the end, to kill everyone on board. Their transformations were all preceded by them losing touch with their previous surroundings, to replace it by their dedication to their god? (Iirc, one of the Q&A had even explicitly referred to the relationship between the Hive and Jane Prentiss as a clear case of toxic/abusive love.)

But Jon… Jon had precisely being going in the opposite direction in season 3: where it wouldn’t only be about him, but about the others, and about trusting them, even artificially. That was the decision he had made.

(MAG0117) ARCHIVIST: […] Still, it does sometimes make it hard to… fully trust them, I– … [SIGHS] You– you know what, no. I’m… I’m done with that. No more paranoia. It’s almost got me killed more than once, and… Georgie was right. If I am… slipping, then I need people I can trust. And I… I don’t think that can happen naturally for me an–anymore, so… I’m making a decision. I trust them. All of them. E– except Elias, obviously, that’s not– I mean… I’ve listened to the tapes. I’ve listened to the tape, I– I know what they talk about behind my back, how much they’ve… suffered… because of… this place… because of me. God. Poor Melanie. […] I do worry about Martin and Melanie, leaving them behind, but… I– I suppose that’s- part of trusting someone, isn’t it? Letting them help how they can.

(MAG0118) TIM: You thought you brought me in as a distraction, right? ARCHIVIST: What?! TIM: Let me do it! Go in, maybe you can get some of them– ARCHIVIST: Tim, contrary to what you think, I did not bring you here to indulge your death wish! […] I knew none of us might be coming back, and I’m not gonna let anyone get killed for nothing! […] I am not losing you as well!!

I’m a big sap when it comes to the Power Of Friendship (feed it to meee!!), and I’m also aware that it might nnnnot go down super-well in a horror podcast where Bad Things Happen, but part of me still… hopes, very deeply, that it mattered in Jon’s apparent decision to not die-die (which meant, if we judge by others’ stories, to give himself up, be it to Beholding or to another one). … Two counter-arguments, though: Jon spent six months in his loop of nightmares, which… could have been enough to break him quite a bit, and to reduce him to a state in which his decisions at the end of season 3 don’t matter much to him (or what’s left of him) anymore. There is also the feeling that Avatars tend to… look down? on their past selves and feelings, as if they now knew some deeper truth that invalidates their past thinking, and a bit like they're… rewriting their own story in order to conclude that what they became was the logical achievement of who they were?

(MAG032, Jane Prentiss) Perhaps I’ve always heard it. Perhaps the itch has always been the real me, and it was the happy, smiling Jane who called herself a witch and drank wine in the park when it was sunny. Maybe it was her who was the maddened illusion that hides the sick squirming reality of what I am. Of what we all are, when you strip away the pretense that there is more to a person than a warm, wet habitat for the billion crawling things that need a home. That love us in their way.

(MAG089) JUDE PERRY: I know now they were simply guiding me upon the path to my true epiphany. All this time I was serving my god, but only for my own glory. But with each new gift, each renewal of the fire, I saw how lifeless and hollow it was, how grey and ashen my existence had become. It became clear that, where once I had destroyed to fuel my life, I now lived for the pain that I caused. And for Agnes. My sweet, hopeless Agnes. And so I ended it.

(MAG091) MIKE CREW: I know it was the first storm, the first real storm, I had seen for almost ten years, but nothing else remains in my mind. There are echoes of resignation, I think, almost desperation. That can’t be right, though. What reason would I have had not to jump? Not to become as I am now. Perhaps I just didn’t know the true joy of vertigo. It doesn’t matter.

(MAG121) OLIVER: […] That was it with the old woman too. That was different, though. Way I figure it? She stuck her nose in just about everywhere it wasn’t wanted and stirred up hornets. ‘Till all the precautions in the world couldn’t stop Death from finally catching her. If I’d’ve known more back then, I’m… not sure I would’ve bothered trying to warn her. Still… you live and learn, don’t you? […] And the worst part is that somewhere, in me, I… I liked it. Underneath all that awful fear, it felt like… home.

(Oliver had also mentioned that the tendrils had felt “almost affectionate” at first. We… really got to witness his degradation: he had initially tried to stop what was supposed to happen (with his father), he switched to warning (Jennifer from MAG042, Gertrude in MAG011), and then, was just witnessing (the “Thomas” whose identity he stole in MAG121) until… he brought around ten people to the spot where they were supposed to die, actively ensuring that they would all meet their planned ends. On the one hand, he became his current self in just two years since his first statement; on the other end, he had already concealed a lot of things in that statement from two years ago and was already deeper in that he had claimed, but overall, that… doesn’t bode well for Jon’s evolution, yeah.)

Of course, it’s only natural to come up with different conclusions at the time you’re experiencing something and in hindsight (knowing where they led to in the end, the mistakes you were making, the consequences your actions would bear), but it. still. sounds A LOT like a kind of brainwashing…? And we don’t know yet what Jon’s state of mind was when he “chose” in MAG121, though we do know that he was, personality-wise, The Best/Worst Possible Person to get into Beholding stuff, yeah, because he… had had the craving for novelty since he was a kid and the tendency to pursue knowledge at all costs (MAG093, Georgie: “That does at least explain why he picked you. […] If your job is asking questions, I mean. You were always the one who pushed too far, and asked smart-arse, awkward questions. I always was surprised you never got punched.”) Except for Mike, who switched, the Fears tend to choose people who will fit in with them and… that’s… bad…

- So overall: no idea if we’ll perceive drastic changes in Jon right away, or if it will be a slow slippery slope. I’m… worried for the hospital staff, though; Jon seems to have understood the correlations between live-statements and his dreams by the end of season 3 (MAG113: “I’m not too concerned, to be honest, my dreams are, uh… well, let’s just say I don’t think they’re going be letting anyone else in any time soon.”); we know from Basira and Daisy that it’s not only Jon, that it also affects the statement-givers unless they’re Archival Assistants and/or directly working for the Institute (MAG112: “Are you sleeping?” “Yeah. … Do you still have the dreams?” “Um, no, not really. Not since we joined up here, I don’t think. You?” “Yeah.”) and… there is a clear line between being harmful without knowing, and being harmful despite knowing (but not caring and/or prioritizing one’s own gain). So I’m afraid that Jon might extort a statement or two as soon as he wakes up, if he’s hungering for them and/or wants to get better, after having been deprived of them for so long.

I mean, I’m totally expecting Jon to go bad – and I’m not quite ready for it right now, but then, it’s not like I can’t expect my feelings to get repeatedly crushed by a lead pipe in this series, I know what I signed for, I’m in for the ride, I’ll Take It Anyway >:3 But I’m a bit more concerned about the idea of following Jon as he knowingly hurts people and doesn't care… without anyone there to remind us that hey! This is bad, actually?, and without… anything about the people Jon is making suffer. It’s not only about Jon: it’s about them, becoming victims through their live-statements, apparently being haunted by them in their dreams through Jon? (The series has been great, though, at making us feel like all these Characters Of The Day are people, with their own lives and stories, so I trust that there will be… something about the fact that this is happening to them! Also, I don’t know if Georgie has been suspecting something regarding the dreams, but if characters managed to piece things together, then, I doubt that Georgie would allow Jon to run wild? Mmmartin might, maybe a bit, but not Georgie. She might not outright kill him if she sees he’s gone bad, but she would scream at him until he puts effort into fighting it as best he can.)

- Also overall: a… lot of things will depend on Jon’s state of mind, and what he's understood from Oliver’s story. I have trouble finding a “lesson” in it, honestly? What are we supposed to take away from his experience?

(MAG121) OLIVER: At that moment, a sudden calm came over me. I understood it all. I could follow the lines of the huge veins that encased the ship down into the water, leading off to a point almost a mile from the South-East. There. That was it. That was our fate. Where we would always be. Because I was going to take us there. Running was pointless. To try and to escape from my task would only serve to fulfil another. I finally understood what I needed to do. […] I don’t know where I got the gun, but once Captain Macabee was dead, the others were very keen to sail wherever I wanted.

That you can’t escape these things? That the longer you try to run, the more innocent people will get harmed because of you? That the only way for Jon to leave the dreams would be to give in (and give himself over), confirming that there is no other solution? (Oliver told Jon that he had ~to make a choice~ but… technically, Jon can’t die in this state. How could have he chosen that option? Was he waiting for someone to mercy-kill him…?) What were Jon’s options exactly, and what did he choose? We didn’t hear about the notebook that he had found in Gertrude’s hangar in MAG113 (“Names, locations, dates. I’ll, I’ll check properly later. Doesn’t look like it’s to do with the Unknowing, I don’t think.”) and it sounded valuable enough for Jon to plan to take a deeper look at it … so as usual, Jon Is Probably Ahead Of Us, and what he does and chooses to do with it will get explained later. Notes on preventing The Watcher’s Crown? On the “new emergence” mentioned by Adelard? (But if Jon indeed gave himself to The Beholding… is it possible to do it if he’s still planning on wrecking its ceremony? That’s not really giving yourself up if you don’t want it or are planning to work against it?) (So as usual: what happened, aaaaarrrrrg)

- So far, we had been hearing all the statements recorded by the Archival staff, so… has that changed, and we didn’t hear the ones being recorded by Melanie-Basira-Martin while Jon was in his coma? Or did they stop recording them? Or did the tape recorders refuse to work because Jon was away? … Or will Jon listen to them to catch up on the time he missed, and we will discover them with him – and how things apparently got progressively worse for the assistants?

- … I had been wondering about Jon’s use of the tape recorder. He used it for statements starting season 1 and, starting with the climax and all through season 2, as a way to convey his discoveries to a hypothetical successor in case something bad happened to him. In season 3, the tape recorder started to apparently turn itself on, pretty often to record quite mundane conversations, whether Jon was there or not, and in a few cases there is some ambiguity over whether or not he had actually been turning it on when he had it on him (with or without realizing it), but… there were also moments in which it was explicit that Jon wanted conversations and talks to be on tape. It culminated with the testaments in MAG117:

(MAG098) MARTIN: […] Have you seen [Jon] since…? TIM: [GRUNTS] Kind of. We tried to talk, but he, he reached for that– Ah, he, he wanted to turn on his recorder. I freaked out a bit, and I said some stuff: if he wanted to talk, no tapes, I just, I just hate that thing.

(MAG102) [CLICK] ARCHIVIST: You’re sure you don’t mind? MARTIN: No, no, no, it’s fine, I’ve… I’ve kind of stopped noticing if I’m honest. They just sort of… turn themselves on these days.

(MAG115) ARCHIVIST: […] There is nothing you want to say to me. TIM: Nothing with that thing here, no. ARCHIVIST: [SOFTLY] Interesting. […] TIM: Why are you so set on having it running? ARCHIVIST: I… Look, if you want my honest opinion– TIM: I don’t.

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: I, I wanted to get some thoughts down before, er…everything. We all should, actually, I… I’ll maybe mention it to them.

……………. I’m wondering if… this wasn’t actually... all about Jon fearing that yes, he would (have to) turn into an avatar for real at some point, and it would probably fuck with his mind a bit (highlighting parts of him that were already there, but also rewiring him to serve his god’s objectives rather than what felt right to him) – and so, using the recordings in an attempt to… keep traces of who Jonathan Sims used to be, what his actual trains of thoughts were, the actual choices he made. Jon was very conscious that something else would come afterwards: Gerry had told him about The Watcher’s Crown, and Jon… sounded like he had picked up that stopping The Unknowing wasn’t an end in itself but also a way for Elias to get him closer to something:

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: […] Elias seems pretty insistent I go along. Part of me thinks it’s just so that we can see if whatever this… preparation he’s been trying to do on me works. And you know what? That same… petty little part of me… rather hopes it doesn’t; that all this time, all his… cryptic nudges and “learn to fly by falling” attitude ends up being a complete waste of time. Just to show him.

I do hope that his “I’m making a decision. I trust them. All of them.” will matter in the long run, but I’m also crying in advance that it won’t and that will be the tragedy ;___; (I’m also not ready to say goodbye to Jonathan “I’d rather doom the world rather than prove something I despise right” Sims, please keep some of that stuff in you, Jon.)

- worriedaboutmartin.jpg since… we still have no idea what happened/what’s happening… and he’s the only one left of the original assistants. Sasha got killed. Tim sacrificed himself to get his revenge, and his words from the season 2 finale are resonating more strongly than ever right now:

(MAG080) MARTIN: Sorry? Sorry, what? How can you not care!? TIM: Because this is us now. Worms. Monsters. Corridors. They’ll keep happening until one of them kills us and we’ve just got to deal with it.

I’m… really hoping that we will get some mourning around Tim – maybe not right now, but at some point, like it happened with Sasha. Sasha had been an open wound since Jon learned about her death, despite the fact that they didn’t remember her; Martin and Tim had expressed their feelings in covered-up, indirect or delayed ways, but there were still… bits that hinted that it was gnawing at them a lot more than they were saying:

(MAG082) MARTIN: Maybe they said something about Sasha, y’know? TIM: She’s dead, Martin. Come on! Even you’re not that blind. He got her too. MARTIN: Don’t you say that. Don’t you dare say that!

(MAG086) TIM: The first Sasha. What… What was she like? […] … Who am I even sad for…? MELANIE: I… I’m, I’m sorry… I don’t, er… TIM: Um… I’m, I’m going to lie down…

(MAG114) TIM: You know how long that thing pretended to be Sasha? ARCHIVIST: Oh god… TIM: And I had no idea? I knew Sasha for years, we… I don’t know Martin as well as I knew her.

(MAG117) MARTIN: Hey, hey, I mean what’s normal, right? Is living in an old document storage normal? Is losing a friend and not even noticing normal?

(MAG118) MARTIN: [DRY LAUGHTER] Dignity? Alright, yeah; like the dignity of being trapped in your flat by worms, or sleeping in the Archives, clutching a corkscrew! Or– or fetching drinks for the thing that murdered your friend without you even noticing…! Laughing at all their little jokes, then being left to wander impossible corridors for weeks!

… and just the mention of Sasha was enough to make Jon snap in two different season finales:

(MAG079) NOT!SASHA: […] And it will hurt. Oh, yes, it will hurt. It hurt Sasha. ARCHIVIST: Shut up! NOT!SASHA: [CLOSE AND DISTORTED] There you are.

(MAG0119) ARCHIVIST: Who are you?! NIKOLA: Who am I? Tim, of course! Who else would I be! ARCHIVIST: You’re not– you’re not… Tim. NIKOLA: Oh, you caught me~ I’m… Sasha! ARCHIVIST: Shut up! NIKOLA: No~! Really, it’s me! Sasha– whatever her name was! Back from the dead, just like you wanted~! ARCHIVIST: Get away from me, or, or I swear I’ll… I’ll…

It’s been a series where characters tend to take even more shape after their death, or at least… where the characters who died (or their secrets) tend to still have an influence, or to be present in other characters’ minds. Tim probably got the best ending he could have wished for in the circumstances and in the overall universe, but it was also a stupid death, intertwined with his desire to not come back and his conviction that the others had only taken him along as a distraction for the Stranger’s minions (which… didn’t sound like it was the case at all, at least in Jon’s mind: he had to accept Tim’s desire to come along in order to regain some of Tim’s trust). It was a sad death. It has the potential to hurt A Lot – and who will mourn for him, or at least highlight that what happened was plain unfair? Basira was wary of him and will have the Daisy issue in mind; Melanie didn’t hold Tim super-dearly in her heart, since he'd been an ass to her for the few times they spoke. Tim made a point of staying away from them, since he couldn’t trust them. There are only Martin and Jon to really remember Tim; it would feel… very cold and gritty? to just pass over his death as something that happened and to barely mention it, so I’m assuming that we’ll get something at some point.

The only glimmer of pain about Tim’s death that we have got was when Elias sweet-stabbed Martin about it in MAG120 (“Hello, inspector. Martin. I’m… sorry to hear about Tim.” “Don’t.”), and Martin might not currently be around if he was heading off to somewhere dangerous in the trailer, and it’s been six months already for him, so… I don’t know! I hope that we’ll get some mourning. Jon waking up and realizing only then that Tim died when the others have already had the time to process the information in the last six months, could have the potential to be Absolutely Awful, but the whole series is a competition between Potentially Awful Things to happen (ie: will Jon still be able to care or to feel the Hurt, in his new state). At the very least, Sasha was an open wound until the end of season 3, so I don’t really see Tim’s death getting brushed off like that – it’s a series that make you care about things, a series in which wrong things are constantly highlighted and denounced. It doesn’t mean that the horror doesn’t happen, but it always has effects on people. (Also, hi! Jon’s feeble and fragile “Tim…?” was the last word he said before the explosion happened! Before Tim’s “I don't forgive you. But thank you for this.” which Jon most probably heard! I’m fine, it’s just rain falling indoors right on my cheeks!)

… This might also be why Martin accepted to do something dangerous, after checking that “they [would] be safe”. Because Basira had put her finger where it hurt, when she told him that he couldn’t just wait and hope (MAG110: “Look, Martin. I know you care. I know you do. But caring isn’t enough. You can’t just stand next to someone with a cup of tea and hope everything’s gonna be alright.”), and Martin had decided to act on it at the end of season 3 (MAG117: “Anyway. I guess I’m just sick of sitting on my hands, drinking tea and hoping everyone’s okay. This way I finally get to do something. It’s gonna hurt, but… I’m ready. And I want to.”), though… even his plan, in the end, had most of its victories sucked out of it (yes, Elias was sent to jail, but he still has blackmail material for the officers and had already made arrangements to get Peter to manage in the interim while he was gone; and Melanie resents Martin for robbing her of Elias’s murder, if Elias’s comment is any indication; and Tim died; and Daisy went into the coffin and is probably mostly gone; and Jon is unresponsive… and will only be able to come back by sinking deeper into his inhumanity). It could make sense, for Martin, to start trying to take more risks, since he… is the only one of the original assistants to have survived this far, and hasn’t even ever been physically hurt until now (though what Elias did will probably have long-lasting effects).

At the same time!! I’m!! Glad!! That the trailer was Martin apparently asking and begging for Jon’s help, but… not for Jon to wake up in itself. It sounded like the threat looming around was unrelated to Jon’s current state? And Martin did ask about the others’ safety before agreeing, which means… that he’s not doing everything for Jon and Jon only, or to protect Jon. The others factored in.

(It’s not something I believe to have happened, but the date worries me a bit further since hey! Peter Lukas had shown Interest in Martin (MAG120: “And don’t look so down! I know, change can be scary, but eventually it happens just the same. I think we’re going to great things, Martin. Great. Things.”) and Jon has been in that state from August to February, with Martin’s visit taking place at some point before he started breathing again. That time frame… would fit with the Tundra being in the UK area, if its route is annual:

(MAG033) ARCHIVIST: […] Sean Kelly disappeared from the port of Felixstowe in October 2010, and his body washed up on the coast of Morocco in April 2011, six months later. According to the coroner, it had only been in the water for five days.

Or maybe Martin still has six months to live from now on? I mean, Sasha and Tim both died around the end-of-July/beginning-of-August. Summer’s gonna get fun in the Archives.)

(ALSO WORRIED ABOUT MELANIE AND BASIRA, OF COURSE, since Martin’s “Basira’s keeping things taking over, and Melanie is… well, Melanie is Melanie…!” from the trailer isn’t announcing good news and it’s been six months, Melanie had been doing worse and worse in just a few weeks when we left her in season 3; and Basira… just lost… her own anchor… and Daisy seemed to have snapped for real – not dead, but We've Lost Her, since Jon can’t reach her dreams anymore. I think we might be switching to them in MAG122? Will ~see~ in a few hours /o/)

- … the only glimmer of hope for a Good Thing is that if (if.) Elias is still in prison, it will mean that he has spent six months in jail. I don’t know if it’s worth everything else but. Still. Possibly One (1) Good Thing.

#tl:dr *strangled noise and waits for mag122 tonight*#i'd take the comfort blanket but then. 'the blanket never did anything.' :|#the magnus archives #tma spoilers #mag121 #*eXCITED*#tma season 4 #long post; pondering&rambling&screaming&scratching at the table etc. etc.#the magnus archives spoilers/#long post/#tma liveblog

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quantummindclassicalheart · 6 years

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At Sea, Under Stars

I haven't written any fic in a long time. But I thought it could be fun to write about an established character and explore a part of his life not explicitly covered in canon. As such, the Imperial Agent doesn't appear in this at all-- this is just a character study for my own personal edification.

In his dreams, Vector Hyllus was adrift in a sea of memory. It had only been a few weeks since his Joining, and the changes were still far from anything he had ever known. At night he saw star-flecked skies over planets he had never visited, heard whispers of languages he'd never learned in school but somehow understood anyway, felt the warm embrace of family members and partners he had never met. Memories of battles and pilgrimages from centuries ago swam before his eyes. The experience was.. disorienting, to say the least.

And in the daytime, everything was at once brighter, sharper, more vivid. Vector could feel the soft tremors of a herd of nerfs roaming the Glarus Valley several kilometers away. He heard the vortices left in the air by a passing thranta like an aria drifting on the breeze. Sometimes he mused to himself that perhaps this was how the Jedi and Sith saw the world, in color and light and music invisible to the rest of the galaxy. It was as though he had graduated from shadows on the wall to emerge into streaming sunlight, warm and radiant.

But not all things could be beautiful. Clear as a bell he heard the roar of the hungry vorn tiger hunting under the pale moon and stars, and the anguished cries of its prey as the tiger's fangs found their mark. He smelled the singed ozone left by the bolts of an overtuned blaster, and felt the ripples in the air from when those bolts struck their target dead in the chest. His keen ears picked up involuntarily on every desperate gasp, every last heartbeat. Vector had never asked to know death and suffering like this.

And yet. Already, any lingering objections from his past life were fading fast, mere drops in the ocean that surrounded and suffused his every thought. The nest was always there, a vast network of minds he could no more easily disconnect from than he could stop his own heart. But he was also Dawn Herald, a diplomat and an ambassador like he had always been. To be Vector was to exist in the space between singular and plural. This was his truth.

Some nights he stayed up blinking away sleep from jet-black eyes to reflect on what memories were still his. Evenings spent reviewing dialects and histories for an exam on the Core Worlds. The day he'd been accepted to the Diplomatic Service. A night at the opera with his parents. And then his thoughts turned to the ones he had lost. Friends. Classmates. Former lovers. Would he ever see them again? Did he even want to?

Surely there were more important things, now. A Dawn Herald had responsibilities. But once in a while, Vector allowed himself a little fantasy. Of leaving Alderaan and exploring the stars, learning from new cultures and races in distant locales. Perhaps even falling in love again, if the Force (and the nest) permitted it. Like vibrations on a spider's web, his thoughts cascaded out into all that was Oroboro, changing the nest subtly but just as surely as it had changed him.

Perhaps someday, he would have a new mission, and he hoped he would be ready when it arrived. For now, there was much to do. Content in this minor indulgence, Vector laid back down to rest and closed his eyes until sleep at last took him and he was at sea once more.

#vector hyllus #swtor #star wars #my writing #imperial agent #(a character from that class story anyway)#featuring a mini reference to Plato's allegory of the cave #because why not #writing

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kaaramel · 7 years

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a long and very disjointed list of webber HCs in no particular order

i don’t necessarily think this is all Untouchably True Game Canon but when i write about webber or play them in RP servers consider these.. my guidelines??? i don’t know it’s all pretty nebulous

wild spiders:

Eusocial - warriors and workers (the default black kind) are non-reproducing; queens develop from workers who are exposed to high concentrations of magic/nightmare fuel (provided in the wild by dark petals and primitive, instinctive ritual). I don't have a specific headcanon re: sexual reproduction namely Where the Males Are At - I could come up with something elaborate about much smaller males who never leave the dens or possibly do the anglerfish thing but if it's my call I'd like to take the path of least resistance and call it parthenogenesis

i made up the thing about nightmare fuel just now while i was writing but i'm into it - i say it because it follows from webber's triumphant appearance, assuming it’s the result of high exposure to nightmare energy, if we interpret the growing claws and the narrowed eyes as the beginnings of a queen-transformation (and i do)

all nests contain a primary queen at their base and center protected by swaths of webbing, laying eggs continually, & being defended by her children. a tier 2 nest contains a queen and one developing heir, who will take over the nest when the primary queen emerges, carrying the tier 3 nest's final and youngest queen on her back as she wanders looking for a place to establish a new colony.

the queen's use of dark magic allows her to grow to her full size and strength, & telepathically direct her colony; her strong insanity aura vs. players is partially a side effect of this magical nature

depth dwellers and cave spiders have queens too, but they confine themselves to the cave ceiling/underground respectively, so you'll never meet 'em

all castes are venomous but the venom has little to no effect on anything as big as a human, & doesn't linger. it has antibacterial effects when extracted and treated properly, hence the use as a base for healing salve

spiders have good night vision but are pretty miserable at color, & have an excellent sense of smell but hear mostly through vibration

their eyes faintly reflect ambient light like a cat's

spiders groom each other communally within the den and share food among the colony members

webber-specific anatomy:

after the resurrection event (character unlock - and by the by, should we establish who found and buried webber's skull in FFverse? did that happen?) their respective anatomies were reshuffled and merged into a single more-or-less coherent organism

one uninterrupted digestive tract; two hearts; one set of lungs; two brains but probably somehow interwoven nervous system. uhh, my house my rules, I'm gonna say the spiderbrain has ended up more as like.. a knot of ganglia running along the spine? (this is my retroactive justification for writing a fic where a blow to the head only knocked out the child and left the spider piloting the body solo)

their blood and muscle tissue is redder than a spider's and purple-er than a human's; the human skeleton is all present and anchoring standard-issue muscles and everything, but their outer skin is pretty tough and more or less exoskeletal..? we'll gloss right over how that one works for spiders i guess, magic kinda bones the square-cube law

the spider's nightvision is gone but colorvision has sharpened; they can tolerate bright sunlight where the spider couldn't before, and they see better in twilight than the human could, but are totally blind in the dark like any other player.. i think maybe spider vision would track strongly to movement, but not have clear focus on small things?

the spider-legs have very rudimentary digits at their tips and can hold things, although not as well or with as much strength as the main arms. webber can also get down and crawl on all eights but it's awkward for long distances. mostly in practice the extra limbs end up being used to gesture

raised and spread out wide: threat display. tucked close: fear/submission. up/down position corresponds roughly to mood and energy (held high when happy and sagging when unhappy). they use some recognizable human gestures as well: pointing, waving, covering their eyes, etc.

webber isn't very good at judging whether they've eaten the right amount, and will put basically anything in their mouth if it seems edible; they're pretty much constantly low-key hungry (standard for spiders - their next meal is wildly uncertain so they're fully prepared to scavenge at any moment) and simultaneously have a sensation of fullness without getting anything from it (the last lingering echo of "i, the spider, just ate a huge meal and it's not digesting properly at all," even though their internals have rearranged since)

their fur is stiff and bristly, & can stand on end or relax; lacking denmates they mostly groom themselves (combing claws through it) which means they are probably a bit grubby and matted in the hard-to-reach places

they have two tongues i swear to god you'll pry their use of "tongues" plural, in one shipwrecked line, out of my cold dead hands. this one’s real true canon that i could not possibly have made up and you’ll never take it away

they get pretty miserable in the heat, considering jet-black fur and all. mostly they have to resort to panting; the only sweat glands left to them are in places where the fur is thinner, mostly along the soles of their feet and palms of their hands

on the flipside of course, their fur isn't actually much insulation against the cold.. got them coming and going

they've tried before to file down the small, sharp claws on their fingertips against rocks, etc. and it never takes for longer than a single night; their blunted claws are back to how they were by the next morning. they've pretty much resigned themselves to having them and are able to be careful with fragile objects and hold hands and everything, it just takes some effort

they are able to communicate between themselves directly mind-to-mind but it was disorienting for a long time since one's mode of thought was very verbal and the other's very much based on images and emotions; it clarifies things to say them out loud and they do talk under their breath to each other, although not usually when other people are around unless their sanity's slipping

related: yes, the spider has learned to understand & use language, pretty competently. it likes playing with all the new sounds their mouth can make, and with rhyming words ("vroom vroom mushroom" and similar)

when their sanity drops it causes friction between the two halves, who are usually much more in sync - their perceptions of the world around them start diverging and it's a lot of strain to simultaneously see a shadow creature and not see it, or maybe see it a few feet to the left instead, etc etc

oh, also, one hideously specific thing: webber can see dark swords as, simultaneously, the sword and the simple stick of wood it's built around, and they find the double-vision sensation deeply unsettling

in general their sensitivity to magic is heightened beyond a normal human's - the spider is native to the islands and sensitized to these kinds of energies - but that mostly just means extra headaches and unpleasantness

uhh, they probably molt once in awhile, sure, my city - not often tho - their instinct is to go somewhere safe so they mostly go off on their own to do it, and the old exuvia crumbles into dust almost immediately. they're a little more soft and sensitive for a short period of time afterward and probably steal the opportunity to discreetly touch as many textures as they can before the new exoskeleton hardens up, because the rest of the time, all sensations are dreadfully dulled from what the human was once used to

they get mildly cramped and achy during the few days leading up to a molt, although a sense of being just a little too big for their rigid skin is never super far away

if they're jonesin' to feel textures at a time when they haven't recently molted, they lick things/put small objects in their mouth, ain't nothing wrong with the sensation coming from their tongue(s)

human family: i don't have a lot of original thoughts on this matter, tbh, i just have my interpretations of stuff hinted at in the script, but you can have 'em

his father kept goats

he remembers his mother cooking, sewing, & gardening; he probably helped around the house with at least basic tasks of that sort; he remembers some of her advice/sayings although some of it has gone kinda vague in his memory (same with grandpa: "you live in what you eat," are you Sure kiddo)

imo he seems like he was closer to his mom than his dad (mom is almost always "mum" and dad is always "Father," for one thing)

only child, no siblings

visited his grandfather reasonably often for fishing trips, chess lessons that he doesn't remember very well, bothering grandpa's cat Whiskers

imo: liked the outdoors but wasn't super athletic - he says he wasn't good at football. was probably always kinda short and scrawny even before growth was permanently stunted by being trapped inside a monster, but is at least a tough little nugget now

really liked superhero comics

i don't have a location more specific than "rural-ish england????" for where he comes from

mm.. i don’t know under what specific circumstances webber was brought to DSworld and again i hesitate to speculate, but if you make me pick a narrative i'll pick this one: just as people are occasionally drawn into Their world from the mundane world, things very rarely slip through going the other way, and a monstrous, magical spider from the islands managed to cross over. maybe a queen that wasn't fully/properly developed..? in order to be the correct size to swallow a lost/wandering child whole..

i figure webber's "indigestible" status is roughly analogous to how willow is impervious to fire, just, a way more specific and unpleasant circumstance, but nevertheless he survived in there much longer than he should've; the spider was pretty distressed over its inability to actually complete this weird meal and maybe the gradual establishment of a very rudimentary telepathic contact; maxwell offered carefully nonspecific help to the pair of them (somehow. broken-down radio in a junkyard?) and returned/brought the spider/child to the island dimension

behavior:

polite and respectful child. was probably always a pretty polite kid, and the spider understands hierarchy and respect from a rigidly eusocial organism's perspective, but it's also to a certain extent a really deliberate choice, namely "if we are meek and emphasize having human good manners then we are less likely to be feared or thrown out for being a monster"

yes, they are worried about this. they hear how enthusiastically the others rag on and murder mundane spiders

basically they consider themselves low in the hierarchy of this loosely-organized human den and aren't super great at refusing orders they’ll just ask what needs done and do it without complaint

particular respect for the authority/knowledge/power of women

intensely loyal to their friends

you are all their friends

even you WX

once they're sure that someone will tolerate it and not freak about.. Giant Spider, they like to be physically affectionate with friends.. they'll comb claws through people's hair, or just hug and cuddle

bad, bad dreams. could you possibly blame them in even the slightest

eating/being eaten and the lines blurring between those two states is a big one. being lost and trying to call for help but not being able to form the words. the child's parents not recognizing him. the dark

they are a staunch lil optimist and willing to believe the best of everyone

they like having something to do with their hands or fidget with or chew on

seeing the adults argue and fight among themselves is stressful and frightening

their response to stressful and frightening things is to run off solo for a little while and hang underground or with a spider nest until it sounds like things have cooled off

that’s all i can think of at the moment and if you read through all of that i’m in awe

#i'm gonna tag this as #famine's friends #cause thats who this is for #ds headcanons #it's like 60-70% talking about spiders and spider anatomy and spider physiology no prizes for guessing my priorities #some of these things i can give text citations for out of the script if pressed #spider psychology* is what i meant fuckin. fuck words

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networkingdefinition · 5 years

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Dragonfly Quotes

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• And in time it will be as though men had never come to this perfect corner of the world-never called it paradise on earth, never despoiled it with their dream factories; and in the golden hush of the afternoon all that will be heard will be the flittering of dragonflies, and the murmur of hummingbirds as they pass from bower to bower, looking for a place to sup sweetness. – Clive Barker • Anyone can buy a car or a night on the town. Most of us shell our days like peanuts. One in a thousand can look at the world with amazement. I don’t mean gawking at the Chrysler Building. I’m talking about the wing of a dragonfly. The tale of the shoeshine. Walking through an unsullied hour with an unsullied heart – Amor Towles • As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame – Gerard Manley Hopkins

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'dragonfly', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_dragonfly').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_dragonfly img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Clouds of insects danced and buzzed in the golden autumn light, and the air was full of the piping of the song-birds. Long, glinting dragonflies shot across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies. – Arthur Conan Doyle • Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly. Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky. – Dante Gabriel Rossetti • Go to sleep, baby,Mama will sing. Of blue butterflies, and dragonfly wings. Moonlight and sunbeams, raiments so fine. Silver and gold, for baby of mine. Go to sleep, baby. Sister will tell, of wolves and of lambs, and demons who fell.-Pierce’s Lullaby Kim Harrison (Black Magic Sanction) – Kim Harrison • He was becoming unstuck, he was sure of that – his bones were no longer wrapped in flesh but in clouds of dust, in hummingbirds, dragonflies, and luminous moths – but so perfect was his equilibrium that he felt no fear. He was vast, he was many, he was dynamic, he was eternal. – Tom Robbins • I got to keep a clip for my hair. It had a pretty little dragonfly on it and I got to keep it – Mackenzie Foy • I need to capture my sprite with trembling hands. Except I could crush her. Wonder how many small things of beauty – flowers, seashells, dragonflies – have met such a demise. Wonder how much fragile love has collapsed beneath the weight of confession. – Ellen Hopkins • If you are old and you wish to be young again, if only for a moment, try and identify a dragonfly. – Simon Barnes • I’ll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you… We’ll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams… And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they wont’ just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we’ll be joined so tight. – Philip Pullman • It’s very far away/It takes about a half a day to get there/ If we travel by-dragonfly. – Jimi Hendrix • Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone’s gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly. – Italo Calvino • Question four: What book would you give to every child? Answer: I wouldn’t give them a book. Books are part of the problem: this strange belief that a tree has nothing to say until it is murdered, its flesh pulped, and then (human) people stain this flesh with words. I would take children outside and put them face to face with chipmunks, dragonflies, tadpoles, hummingbirds, stones, rivers, trees, crawdads. That said, if you’re going to force me to give them a book, it would be The Wind In The Willows, which I hope would remind them to go outside. – Derrick Jensen • Reflected in the dragonfly’s eye — mountains. – Kobayashi Issa • Sitting on the floor of a room in Japan, looking out on a small garden with flowers blooming and dragonflies hovering in space, I suddenly felt as if I had been too long above my boots. – Mark Tobey • Smile / to see the lake / lay / the still sky / And / out for an easy / make / the dragonfly. – Lorine Niedecker • So, that was Nature’s way. The mosquito felt pain and panic but the dragonfly knew nothing of cruelty. Humans would call it evil, the big dragonfly destroying the mosquito and ignoring the little insects suffering. Yet humans hated mosquitoes too, calling them vicious and bloodthirsty. All these words, words like ‘evil’ and ‘vicious’, they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention. – John Marsden • Sophia and Grandmother sat down by the shore to discuss the matter further. It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this–dog days–that boats went sailing off all by themselves. Large, alien objects made their way in from sea, certain things sank and others rose, milk soured, and dragonflies danced in desperation. Lizards were not afraid. When the moon came up, red spiders mated on uninhabited skerries, where the rock became an unbroken carpet of tiny, ecstatic spiders. – Tove Jansson • The beauteous dragonfly’s dancing By the waves of the rivulet glancing; She dances here and she dances there, The glimmering, glittering flutterer fair. Full many a beetle with loud applause Admires her dress of azure gauze, Admires her body’s bright splendour, And also her figure so slender… – Heinrich Heine • The girls chirped and chatted like uncaged warblers. They were delirious with joy… Intoxications of life’s morning! Enchanted years! The wing of a dragonfly trembles! Oh, reader, whoever you may be, do you have such memories? Have you walked in the underbrush, pushing aside branches for the charming head behind you? Have you slid laughing, down some slope wet with rain, with the woman you loved? – Victor Hugo • The point of the dragonfly’s terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows,is not that it all fits together like clockwork–for it doesn’tbut that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world’s water and weather, the world’s nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz. – Annie Dillard • Their love as a dragonfly, skimming over echo park, stoppin to visit the lotus. Eating dreams and drinking blue sky. – Janet Fitch • This dragonfly came up to me. He was hovering right in front of my face, and I was really examining him, thinking, How does he see me? I became enlightened. – Ziggy Marley • Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long. – James Thurber • Twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush, scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly to find an unexpected waterfall, not half a mile from the nearest road, a spot so hard to reach that no one comes a hiding place, a shrine for dragonflies and nesting jays, a sign that there is still one piece of property that won’t be owned. – Dana Gioia • Unless you are here: this garden refuses to exist. Pink dragonflies fall from the air and become scorpions scratching blood out of rocks. The rainbows that dangle upon this mist: shatter. Like the smile of a child separated from his mother’s milk for the very first time. –from poem Blood and Blossoms – Aberjhani • Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? …We are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves. – Diane Ackerman • Whoever the kid had been, whoever had the grand attitude, has finally heeded the admonishment of parents, teachers, governments, religions, and the law: “You just change your attitude now please, young man.” This transformation in kids – from flashing dragonflies, so to say, to sticky water-surface worms slowly slipping downstream – is noticed with pride by society and with mortification by God, which is a fantastic way of saying I don’t like to see kids throw away their truth just because it isn’t worth a dime in the open market. – William Saroyan • Without constraint, without any form of mental compulsion, the act of belief becomes the freest possible projection of what resides in our hearts. Like the poet’s image of a church bell that reveals its latent music only when struck, or a dragonfly that flames forth its beauty only in flight, so does the content of a human heart lie buried until action calls it forth. The greatest act of self-revelation occurs when we choose what we will believe, in that space of freedom that exists between knowing that a thing is and knowing that a thing is not. – Terryl L. Givens • Yesterday a child came out to wonder. Caught a dragonfly inside a jar. Fearful when the sky was full of thunder. And tearful at the falling of a star – Joni Mitchell

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equitiesstocks · 5 years

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Dragonfly Quotes

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hereisplendorr · 7 years

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Here's something I wrote over 8 years ago. I was reminded of it today. I don't like the vestiges of racist, drug war language it contains; I was on the way out of having been raised very conservatively, and this piece is part of the questioning I did as I worked out how wrongly I'd been informed about so many things. There are also stylistic things I regret, but here it is anyway.

Hornets' Nest

This hornets’ nest. Family vacationing near the top of a mountain, a stilt-mounted house surveying a dirt road and a small creek, billed as “overlooking a waterfall” which is, as usual, generous. Here’s my dad, not long out of bed, pajama pants that might be comical if I’d looked more closely; next time I will look, and tell you. Dad is peering out of the window above the sink, where the eaves of the screened-in porch are mere feet away, it’s a corner, you could reach out and grab the little hornet-spit-formed baseball nest. Is that right? About the hornets using their saliva to glop together paper or wood fibers or whatever? Do hornets have saliva? We’ll have to wiki what’s sticky later.

There is a small hole pointed almost directly at our window, at my dad, and hornets are moving rapidly in and out, but it’s so dark inside, so abruptly interior and secretive that, on the cusp, only half of a hornet can be seen at a time. Unknown amounts of stinger made more obvious because there is shadow where there should be visible threat.

Actually: that’s always true.

I join my dad, and he’s sipping coffee. Contemplating the eradication of a species while he waits for the early-morning mindfog to clear. I’m holding a book that I’m rereading after four years, after that first time when it mangled my view of freedom and tried to unleash me before my socially-appointed time. I also have a pen, which I have used to make just a few marks to the sides of important lines, only remembering that marking is okay when I’m two-thirds of the way through.

Yesterday I decided I wouldn’t drink any more coffee. I usually only drink coffee when I’m with my family or with friends - I am a social coffee drinker. It is one of the few things I do only when in the company of others. However: in a few hours I will fill my new mug with coffee, conflicted and exuberant because, what does it matter? This is vacation and I have finished this book and gotten into the shower because I thought I would start crying and all emotions must be optimized, maximized, extrapolated to their fullest potential. If I’m grinning, why not throw my arms out to my sides, mimicking the spread shape everywhere? If my face is going to have this thin trickle of water, why not the entire body, enveloped and steaming, endangered and streaming? If struck with despondency, if depressed, why not also be compressed, squished down to the lowest point, waving paper-thin as I pass a cockroach under a door-frame thoroughfare, watching its antennae drop astonished?

Bordering, I will not cry. So the shower will be repurposed, become a more obvious cleansing, rinsing some of that old detritus. Cinnamon soap will hang under the faucet. When I steal a small daub of my brother’s eucalyptus/mint shampoo, I will be two flavors of gum and thrilled.

But all of that is a few hours away. On this page, we’re still inspecting the hornets. My dad says, “You see that?”

“Ikes! Yellow jackets!” I say.

He pauses, doesn’t believe that his son doesn’t know the difference. “Actually, I think they’re hornets.”

“Yes. Right. Hornets. I thought--”

“They do look a little like yellow jackets.” Maybe he can be swayed. “But that’s what a hornets’ nest looks like.” He will not be swayed. I sway instead.

“Yeah, well; I wasn’t sure at first.” But to me, hornets are mythological - a hornet’s nest looks like my neighbor Brandon when I was seven, he and two other kids from our street jabbing a stick into a bush in front of Brandon’s house. A hornets’ nest looks like I’m standing at the edge of my yard, yelling that they probably shouldn’t do that, knowing what would happen because I’ve seen Winnie the Pooh and I understand the word “swarm” vaguely but viscerally. A nest looks like nothing until the stick hits the right angle, or the hornets finish counting to ten in warning, and then it’s like the cloud of hornets has always been there, maybe we just weren’t focusing our eyes -- there is no transition between no-cloud and cloud, between scold and swarm, between poke and panic and a Hornets’ Nest looks like I’m fleeing for my house, for the safe door, and I look over my shoulder and see this single hornet breaking from the pack, approaching me at unbelievable speed, flying straight into my lens like a television cartoon. I can see its wings right before I reflexively close my eyes and it stings me, just below the juicy marble of my left eye. The doctor tells me a centimeter higher and it might have stabbed my eye out.

I’ve never seen a hornets’ nest since then, as far as I know, though I am still equipped with both eyes. I have told the near-blindness story many times, never with any concept of what a hornets’ nest looks like… actually not even sure how to tell a hornet from a yellow jacket!

And then, here it is. This hornets’ nest. Until now I’ve always thought about it like “hornet’s nest,” as though the hornet were the entire colony, or maybe just that one hornet’s nest, the one that stung me. But we’re looking at these hornets flitting in and out, and I realize it’s got to be “hornets’ nest.” The plural is visible, shiver-shocking, and in transit. Industrious little things.

Why does their jerking, flickering movement speak of malevolence and hatred? When police say, “No sudden movements,” when they’re getting ready to pin the perp to the pavement, are they thinking about hornets and how you can’t trust them to be in the same place for any longer than a second? And: Are the police aware that they have become the swarm?

“How many do you think there are in there? Forty?” I guess high, to push the threat into absurdity, so that when my dad says, “No, not that many,” I can laugh and be relieved.

“Yeah, maybe,” he actually says. “That sounds about right.” I do not laugh, and I am not relieved. Now I know that he, too, is overestimating, maybe hoping for me to deny it, except he knows about hornets and I know nothing.

“Man. That’s a lot of hornets.”

“I wish I had some hornet spray,” my dad says. He gets wistful like this sometimes. “We’ve got ant and roach spray, but if I had hornet spray I could just open this window and shoot it straight into that hole and then shut the window really fast.”

“You wouldn’t have time,” I say. “You’d have to lean way out to get the spray to reach, and they’d be on you before you even pull the trigger.”

“No, hornet spray is a… it’s a stream, it shoots like twenty feet.”

“Oh, I was thinking of the other, you know, ant-type.” Of course! Of course, hornet spray has range! If I’d been in charge of inventing hornet spray, I would have botched the first batch by being too attached to the established method of bug murder. But then: why wasn’t spider death-spray also a long-range spray? Why this gentle mist? A weaponized stream would have come in handy when I was systematically eradicating the spiders outside my new house, having to jump to get the ones - again, under the eaves, like the hornets exploiting our shelter - that were too high up, almost always getting the cloud back on me, missing the spiders and becoming sticky with poison.

“No, it’s a stream. I wish we had some hornet spray.”

We watch the hornets moving in and out for a few more minutes.

“Was that a big one?” my dad asks, piqued.

“Where? No, I don’t know,” I say.

“You know there’s a big momma in there somewhere.”

A big momma hornet. Somewhere brooding.

“What’s the structure? Is it comb, or condos, or what?” I like imagining the hornets with time-share condos. Somehow it makes them even more desirable as targets for violence.

“No, they… there are compartments, for babies, and then they build more compartments onto the outside, for more babies.” My dad might know what he’s talking about. It sort of sounds like the time he told me about the poor black people in his town who became very wealthy when some drug came into vogue - maybe cocaine. They got the jump on the market. He said that, in order to store up the money, they rapidly and haphazardly expanded their tiny shacks, adding on a few rooms at a time, or a tennis court, or in one case building an entire mansion off of the back of a lean-to such that the front door was still through the old one-room shanty, but then you’d cross through the back door (how did my dad know this? probably he bought drugs from them but did he actually go to their homes or was he assuming based on the exterior?) and into opulence like none of us can possibly imagine.

Drug money mansions. Hornets’ nests.

Common threads:

Contained danger. Safe until prodded. Best if ignored.

Other commonalities:

Piecemeal; Pocketing; Pests; Persistence; Xenophobia.

“Huh,” I say. I lose interest in the in-and-out traffic jam, of thinking that everything lately has been turning up cyclical, pendulous, and that I embrace the notion as fervently as I am opposed to its purportedly universal nature. There is stability in it, an averaging out, which I need… but there is a resistance to progress that makes me want to spit, sometimes I do spit about it, because I think spitting goes so well with spiting and that I ought to, as I mentioned, outwardly manifest my emotions whenever possible. No more bottling, ever. Certainly not bottling of spit. Eugh.

Then I’m on the couch, reading a bit more, and my mom comes into the room. Dad lets her know that there are hornets, that we have no spray (except ant/roach), and that we also forgot to purchase Off! at the grocery store yesterday. She says we’ll get some, or something, and then Dad begins monologuing about his desire to destroy these hornets, his responsibility to his family and to the future. He doesn’t want us to get stung, nor does he want the next renters to be stung, either. And if they aren’t dealt with now, the nest will only get bigger, more virulent, more dangerous. He becomes discouraged, though, as he does so often recently, without cause, and begins saying, “Or, well, maybe we should just leave them alone. They probably won’t sting us, and then those next people can deal with it. Maybe they should deal with it. Why should we?”

I have to interrupt. “Nothing should be left for anyone else to do. Ever. We should always take action, always pre-empt. You want to destroy those hornets: we will destroy the hornets.”

My dad shrugs, makes a “you’re probably right” face. Mom is a little overwhelmed by the vehemence of the statement, as she tends to be. I speak clearly, decisively, sometimes dogmatically, and she is not the only one who is put off by this. It’s something I’ll spend the rest of my life wrestling with.

“We will kill these hornets because they may harm us, and then the people who stay here two months from now will not even know the hornets were there. They will not know us, nor will they know the favor we have done them. But when they are drifting off after an unmolested day outside, just before they lose consciousness, they will know our faces and they will know love.”

“Hey, I like it,” my dad says.

“And at that exact moment, we will remember the hornets, and hope that someone appreciates it, and we won’t know that it’s because they actually are appreciating it, but we will feel that love, also, and all of our lives will be better for it.”

There is a pause as we take this possibility in, and then I say, to diffuse, “And at the same moment, the relatives of those hornets will fill with rage at our scent, and the animosity between our species will grow.”

“And,” my dad laughs, “when the world-ending war between man and hornet comes to a head, we’ll know we were instrumental in bringing it about.”

“This is the impact of our lives!”

Laughing, my dad says, “Well, we took that about as far as it could go, I guess.”

Does the joke diminish fervent truth? Or is it just that degree of comfort needed to survive grave purpose?

Tomorrow, we will discover two other nests; it is an infestation. We will get the spray. Two cans. Dad will say he doesn’t delight in their sudden end. They will die as soon as the stream touches them. The range is impressive. The nests will sop up the chemical; they will darken and drip. The whole family will watch through the window. The lead-up will be like Christmas. An hour later, Dad will be wandering the house, saying he isn’t sure it was the right thing to do. We will comfort and reassure him, because we always have.

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