#tld Franklin

[donner-mathis-official]

Swap AU make my pea-sized brain ping around my head like one of those brick breaker games.

Mathis was on a flight to Great Bear to visit his son in prison. He booked a flight with Archer Remote Transport, flying with a serious woman named Molly who doesn’t seem to particularly like him. Their plane goes down, and he finds himself in a quiet apocalypse.

Molly is a pilot who hunts in her spare time. After her husband died in mysterious circumstances, she’s generally regarded with suspicion by the people around her, and it weighs heavily on her.

Astrid is a doctor in the small town of Thompson’s Crossing. Shes taken over the community centre as a clinic. She would go out and search for crash survivors, but the people here need all her attention.

Mackenzie is a convict who recently got transferred to Blackrock. After one of his guys, a stern man named Jeremiah, got sent here, he got himself sent up to break him out. By the time he reached the prison, that had already happened, so he started searching the island for someone who could get them off it.

Heller takes Jeremiah’s position almost exactly.

Jace takes Methuselah’s position, but isn’t quite as cryptic about it and instead speaks in scientific terms that leave Mathis like “please have mercy I got a C in high school physics”.

Lilith Barker takes Jace’s place, ensuring that Donner doesn’t escape. She was climbing Blackrock mountain when the first flare happened, and when she saw from above what was happening, she rushed down to try to help.

Vachon takes Hobbs’s place but isn’t as obviously dead meat after his cutscene though. Hobbs is the guy who they mentioned got shot with arrows (who is Leclerc in canon).

Mackenzie, in spite of being a convict, isn’t actually a bad guy. He’s exceedingly practical, but he cares for his people, and when he learns Mathis is trying to get to Blackrock, he immediately agrees to help him. Then a faction conflict happens in Blackrock because some dudes are like “hey fuck you and fuck this guy from solitary you’re not the boss of me”. So Mackenzie wrestles with that and keeps them in line while Mathis goes to do all the quests.

The warden and Father Thomas sort of swap places except the warden ends up more in Molly’s position. He went off the deep end a bit with the fire and brimstone and most people stopped attending his services, which he resents them for. He kills the convicts because “it’s the will of the Lord”. Just fully cuckoo bananas with the religion.

Grey Mother is Mackenzie’s other henchman because I think epic gun grandma should get to commit crime and also hang out with Mackenzie more. It’s part of why in this AU, Donner does actually escape; because Lily gets distracted by her mom being there.

Methuselah goes where Grey Mother does. He has the player go look for buffer memories instead so they can write down the story of Milton because he doesn’t want it to die. They need to go to the farmhouse to get the key to the office, not the lockbox.

Father Thomas isn’t locked up (because in this AU, the convicts didn’t murder everyone bc the staff weren’t as horrible to them) but he is completely useless in sorting out the conflict in the prison. Just like “oh no, please don’t— oh no you’re doing it anyways :(“

[exastriis]

biography : alfred f. jones

COUNTRY INFORMATION

Official Name: United States of America

Capital: Washington D. C.

Largest City: New York City, New York

Official Language/s: English (de facto)

Government: Federal presidential constitutional republic

Demonym: American

Continent: North America

Area: 3,796,742 sq mi / 9,833,520 km2

Population: 333,287,557 (2022 estimate)

GDP: $26.855 trillion ($80,035 per capita) (2023)

Currency: US Dollar

Internet TLD: .us

Leader: President

HUMAN INFORMATION

Human Name: Alfred F. Jones

Meanings:

Alfred – "Elf counsel", Old English origin. Derived from "Alfred the Great", the first King of England. F. – Initially a very Puritan "Fly-Fornication". But he gives a different meaning every time when asked. From "Franklin", to "Francis", to "Fitzarthur"– and even joke-y ones like "Fuck-Off" and "Freedom". However, "Frederick" was the first one he ever picked himself, right after the American Revolution. Jones – "son of Jonathan", Welsh origin. Derived from John Paul Jones.

Nickname[s]: Al, Freddie, various aliases

Age Appearance: mid-20s

Sex: AMAB

Gender: Cis Male

Orientation: Pansexual

Birthday: July 4th

ABOUT

Personality:

Positive Traits: Gregarious, optimistic, cheerful, outgoing, sociable, generous, determined, passionate, open-minded, eager to learn, protective, resourceful, adaptable Negative Traits: Domineering, obsessive, impulsive (or at least seems to be), "doing/talking without thinking", traditional in the oddest sense of the word/in a way that only makes sense to him, stubborn, dishonest

MBTI: ESFP (Se Fi Te Ni)

Enneagram: 8w7

Tritype: 829 (2w3, 9w1)

Instinctual Variant: sp/sx

Socionics: ENTj / LIE

Attitudinal Psyche: EFLV

Temperament: Choleric-Sanguine

Jungian Archetype: The Hero

Hobbies: The real question is "what hobbies does Alfred NOT have?"– Watching and making movies, assembling models of planes and tanks and what have you, archaeology, sports (baseball, football, basketball, etc.), dancing, cooking, carpentry, husbandry, "quick-draw", coding, playing instruments (guitar, harmonica, trumpet, percussion)

Languages Spoken: English, French, Latin, Spanish, Dutch, Filipino, German, Russian, Chinese (Mandarin), Various indigenous

Education: Various undergraduate degrees in the sciences and a few graduate degrees

Extras:

voice claim : talking / singing

Physical Description:

Alfred is young, tall and handsome— a Rockwell-esque, Hollywood-glam poster child for the most powerful Nation in history. He stands at around six foot and four inches, or roughly 193 centimeters. He has sandy blond hair cropped short, wide blue eyes ringed gold around the pupils, freckled tan skin, a powerful, muscular build, and a signature megawatt smile. Usually dressed casually, he’s most often seen in blues, reds, oranges or browns, or with some type of jacket on.

Back to navigation.

[firstladybe-blog]

[WATCH] Yolanda Adams Sings

Yolanda Adams performed Aretha Franklin's "Respect" during PBS A Capitol Fourth celebration. Dressed in a gorgeous red gown, Yolanda Adams had the crowd on their feet as she belted out the words to the hit song. Embed from Getty Imageswindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'7UqdfWogRThS8fhZGsmb1g',sig:'D3uXWRTfaM_C7Dvobdg6TlAGaq_2Lesf4H1ZP7rCW88=',w:'594px',h:'425px',items:'1159943564',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })}); A Capitol Fourth was broadcast live from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol on the 4th of July. Embed from Getty Imageswindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'1Ur0pXFEQy5yfcwvtztpZg',sig:'sjTEnEcXGclSmnz-FP7aG2C4ncK2xLbZ-Di5tCB9Wjo=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1159943568',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })}); In the three decades since the beginning of A Capitol Fourth, a parade of superstars — including Patti LaBelle, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Reba McEntire, Natasha Bedingfield, Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, Dolly Parton, Steve Martin, Josh Groban, Gloria Estefan, Huey Lewis and the News, Little Richard, Tony Bennett, Faith Hill, Ray Charles, the Bee Gees, Kenny G, Aaron Neville, Kenny Rogers and the Muppets from Sesame Street — has offered the best in American entertainment and helped set the tone for a spectacular American birthday party. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKPR1UwVCoE Read the full article

[darcylindbergh]

THoB: Henry Knight is traumatized by an event in his childhood and he remembers a human (Bob Franklin) as a DOG because he is being drugged TLD: Sherlock is traumatized by an event in his childhood and he remembers a person (Euros) as a DOG (Redbeard) because he is being drugged (TD-12????) Am I crazy or is this super !!!!!!!!!!!!!

LISTEN!!!!!!! I am OBSESSED with Hounds because of all the episodes in the first Moriarty arc, it has the least to do with Moriarty. Just a frightened hallucination?? NOT ENOUGH!!! They made that episode to set something up, they couldn’t have wasted it, not with all the references and callbacks we are seeing now to the previous eps, so I am certain Hounds will be key to TFP--we have what looks like an underground bunker to match Baskerville, the shot of Sherlock with the gun and his face in his hands in parallel to Henry almost shooting his therapist (HIS THERAPIST!!!)/killing himself (SUICIDE PARALLELS) and all that was the result of a drug!!!!!! TAB, the decoder for s4, was drug induced. TLD was all about drugs. Hounds was all about Sherlock losing track of his senses, hallucinating things that weren’t there, and TLD focuses heavily on John doing exactly that, and Sherlock admitting to himself he is afraid, that he is losing control, just!! like!! John!! IDK how the parallels will work out wrt Redbeard/Hound etc, but this episode is so so so much more than a standalone romp in the country. watch it closely. it’s coming back. 

[webbygraphic001]

How to Stop SEO Disasters During Website Migration

After many weeks and months of preparations, you are ready to go; you’ve done everything that you needed to do to make sure that the design and development of the new site has been put together perfectly and you are happy to move forward.

So you press the launch button (because that’s how it works, right?), you sit back and congratulate yourself and your colleagues on relaunching the new website successfully…

…only to see the organic traffic has plummeted.

You look in fear, but then stop for a second because everyone knows that a site relaunch can sometimes cause an initial slump in organic traffic. You assume that it’s normal.

But after days, weeks and months, the traffic doesn’t recover, and panic sets in…

This is a potential reality for anyone who is relaunching a website. Amidst all the excitement with the new design and new features, not everyone thinks about the consequences that could happen if you don’t plan it effectively, especially from an SEO perspective.

In order to minimise any potential disasters, there’s a simple step-by-step process that you should follow in order to make sure that the periods before, during, and after the launch go smoothly and to better your long-term SEO strategy.

What Qualifies as Website Migration?

Google is surprisingly not very specific about moving sites and what it involves. They have two pages: one for site moves with URL changes and one without URL changes.

But it can actually get a lot more detailed and complex than that.

Let’s look at some of meanings of website migration and what it can involve:

you are changing domains and are planning to move from one domain to another e.g. during a rebrand;

you are going international and require to change the TLD (Top Level Domain) e.g. from .co.uk to globally recognised .com;

you want geo-specific TLDs and sub-folders e.g. .com/uk, .com/fr, .com/ca;

you are going to undertake structural changes e.g. changing the internal linking, changing the site hierarchy, changing the user journey;

you are changing from HTTP to HTTPS;

you are going to change the CMS (content management system) or platform you are currently on;

you are redesigning a website completely;

you are changing the mobile setup by applying AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) or PWA (Progressive Web Apps);

you are going through content changes e.g. adding/removing pages, introducing new languages, consolidating pages.

What to be Aware of Before Starting the Migration

Every migration is different, but there are some things that you need to be aware of before you even touch the website:

Work out your strategy – Do you need to do this? Why? What are you hoping to achieve? What are your objectives?

Who is going to be involved in this project? Get them involved as early as possible – whether you like it or not, you can’t do it alone. Make sure you talk to the relevant stakeholders to understand how it can impact them and how they can help to minimise disruptions. And the earlier they can be involved, the better.

Get professional SEO consultations to help you – much of the tasks listed below will involve someone with SEO expertise before, during and after the site has relaunched.

Get professional UX and CRO consultations to help you – you also need to follow the important elements of UX e.g. what kind of impacts certain design changes are going to have on user engagement and how it will affect conversion rates.

Looks aren’t everything – in the middle of all the excitement about building something visually stunning, make sure it doesn’t come at a usability or SEO cost. Sure, add a bit of flair and style to it, but don’t go over the top.

Get everyone to test – all the stakeholders should help with testing. This also applies if you have the development site already set up and are available to test.

Put time aside for fixing bugs and errors after launch – no, you can’t relax after you’ve done your bit

Site migration is not a solution for penalty – if you are suffering from any algorithmic penalties, it will not disappear during the migration. This will need to be fixed manually.

Never migrate your site during peak seasons – so if your busy period is Christmas, then don’t migrate the site between October and January

Before You Rebuild Your Website

Crawl all URLs using tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider and Sitebulb

Compile a list of all the URLs and add traffic performance (visits, bounce rates, exit rates, conversion) to use as a benchmark post-launch;

Eliminate any duplicate/low quality contents by redirects or improving them;

Check for broken links;

Check for broken pages;

Make sure all the relevant pages are accessible to search engines;

Make sure all the pages are accessible to humans (blind users, mobile users, browser compatibility).

Compile the list of the new URLs.

Plan out your new URL structures and site hierarchy/architecture.

Carry out keyword research for every single page.

Compile a list of your top keywords and note their rankings.

Update or create new content for the new pages and include relevant keywords.

Map out the 301 redirects from old to new URLs (and avoid redirect chains) in a spreadsheet.

Identify and compile a list of your most important backlinks.

Measure the page speed using tools like GTmetrix and WebPageTest.org.

Set-up the new social media profiles if you are rebranding the name.

Register and configure the new domain in Google Search Console.

Carry out usability testing to prevent bad experiences from happening on new site.

Plan your relaunch campaign – “hey we launched a new website” should happen soon after the launch rather than later. Who can help you with that? Current customers/clients/suppliers/bloggers/PRs etc.

During the Redesign

Block development site with meta noindex tag or robots.txt to prevent duplication issues on Google.

Make sure web analytics are implemented and tested on all pages.

Publish the new URLs and content on the development site.

Add/update title tags, meta description and alt texts to new pages.

Add Google Tag Manager.

Add any necessary retargeting and remarketing codes e.g. Facebook Pixels and Google Remarketing.

Set up and verify your new Google Search Console account.

Remove or update internal links which are pointing to broken or removed pages.

Update your XML sitemaps and have it ready to submit on Google Search Console.

Update all canonical tags and self-canonicalize all new pages.

Update all internal links.

Update your robots.txt.

Create a custom 404 page.

Crawl the site and verify that all 301 redirects are working.

Add schema to create rich snippets opportunities.

Add Open Graph fields for further rich media experience.

Ask the relevant stakeholders to help with testing.

When nearing the relaunch, attempt to organize usability testing for small amount of traffic or by using focus groups to iron out any issues.

Ensure the site is compatible on most popular browsers and mobile devices.

Ensure the site is accessible to visually-impaired users.

After the Relaunch

Submit a change of address via Google Search Console.

Submit new XML sitemap.

Update all social media bios with new URLs.

Crawl the new site and check that the redirects are working, all internal and external links are working, and fix any 404 pages.

Crawl the list of URLs that you have extracted originally and verify their redirects.

Add annotations on Google Analytics to make sure you know when the site has relaunched and subsequent changes.

Update backlinks with new URLs by contacting those who have linked to you.

Continuously monitor the web traffic, engagement and conversion as well as page speed.

Test the mobile friendliness of your site using the Mobile Usability feature of Google Search Console.

Benchmark those performance metrics against the old site.

Reach to the authoritative sites that link to you and ask them to update the link to the new site.

Monitor the indexed page count via Google Search Console and using the site: search on Google.

Monitor your search rankings over time.

Keep control of the old domain just in case of any issues.

Organize new usability testings of the new site.

Launch your relaunch campaign.

Choosing to Migrate or Not

Relaunching can be a good thing as it allows you to deliver the best user experience possible for your audience, a chance to refresh your brand and improve the bottom-line for your clients.

But that is only if you do it for the right reason and you plan the site migration properly.

You know the old saying by Benjamin Franklin: “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”.

If you plan and execute your relaunch successfully, this will give you the best chance of catching any problems as early as possible and to make the process a smooth one.

Because you do not want to go through the headache of a botched migration.

  Featured image via DepositPhotos.

Add Realistic Chalk and Sketch Lettering Effects with Sketch’it – only $5!

Source from Webdesigner Depot http://bit.ly/2GQFwZs from Blogger http://bit.ly/2So4q3J

[onymco]

This Month in Names, August(ish) 2018

🍗 Kentucky Fried Folklore

There’s a slew of name origin stories hitting the internet as low-grade content farms look for cheap posts with a pop culture hook. American Name Society recently got in on the action by re-posting a link from MSN claiming to reveal the truth behind Kentucky Fried Chicken’s 1991 rename to KFC. It wasn’t, they claim, for KFC’s stated reason of distancing themselves from the unhealthy connotations of “Fried,” but rather due to a disagreement with the Commonwealth of Kentucky over licensing fees. Perhaps the MSN author read a 2012 Business Insider piece claiming the same, or the American Antiquities post BI listed as their source. Or maybe they stumbled upon a 2010 Harvard Business Review article with the same curious logic. Maybe they even made it all the way back to the Snopes post from which the others copied and pasted. One thing is certain, they didn’t bother to spend five minutes actually fact checking their story before hitting post.

🥀 Memento Mori

Two high profile passings in August brought discussions of renames. At the funeral of R&B legend Aretha Franklin, the mayor of Detroit announced Chene Park will be re-christened in her honor. Then came a bipartisan effort to rename The Richard B. Russell Senate Office Building in honor of the late “maverick of the Senate,” John McCain. The building’s current namesake felt, according to historian Gilbert C. Fite, that “White supremacy and racial segregation were… cardinal principles for good and workable human relationships.” It’s worth asking now whether any of McCain’s stances may soon seem equally outdated or barbaric and, if so, if might we find ourselves renaming it once again in 50 years time. Meanwhile, Atlanta’s Freedom Parkway is slated to be renamed after civil rights figure and Georgia Representative John Lewis.

🗺 You aren't from around here, are you.

Back in the days of Sanborn and Rand McNally, neighborhood names used to be relatively static monikers. But as Google Maps has become the world’s map of record, powered not by a single body or cartographer, we’ve see the names of localities come and go — often at the whim of a ranking algorithm or crowdsourced input (with an overuse of acronyms that LoOk LIkE ThIs). The results are often frustrating and identity-stripping of local residents, reflecting the broader malaise of a one-size-fits-all approach of many technology products. The New York Times outlines the ramifications of these changes with effects on Real Estate (often a result of real estate listing agents inventing new, more desirable-sounding locales like Brooklyn’s ridiculous DoBro → Downtown Brooklyn), spellings (Detroit’s Fiskhorn → Fishkorn transcribed from a misspelled map), and business districts (i.e. San Francisco’s Rincon Hill → The East Cut). While Google wouldn’t divulge the details of their naming process to the Times, a recent snafu for Snapchat provided insight into the pitfalls of open sourced processes when New York City was renamed Jewtropolis on their Snap Map feature.

🔢 Short is Sweet

Online Chinese pharmacy Yiyao — better known by its domain name 111.com.cn — announced it’s going public. The fresh batch of headlines discussing “111” present a good opportunity to revisit the common use of numbers by Chinese companies online. The short of it is, the internet has long had a bias toward a western audience, and top level domains (TLDs) were slow to adopt IDN, a system for allow Chinese characters in domain names. As a coping mechanism, Chinese businesses used Arabic numbers as mnemonic devices (where the sounds hewed closely to Chinese characters) to help their audiences remember their brands. In Yiyao’s case, the number “one” can be pronounced as both “yi” and “yao” in Chinese. Chinese companies aren’t the only ones looking for succinct ways to establish themselves online. Gerald M. Levine — a lawyer who specializes in fighting domain squatters — writes about the challenges companies face in establishing trademarks and claims to domain names when using abbreviations; International Business Machiens may have a solid claim to IBM.com, but you’ll face an uphill battle in establishing a claim on YNC.com as obviously belonging to Your Naming Company. Of course that hasn’t stopped P&G from trying to trademark LOL and WTF.

More News in Naming

🎭 A surprisingly great piece from the NYT on the naming trends of plays and Broadway musicals. 🤷 Faculty at Duke and CU Boulder claim eponymy causes businesses to be more profitable at the cost of being less attractive to potential funders. It’s a working paper, so take it with a grain of salt. 🏝 A reminder to fellow vacationing New Yorkers, in 1985 the Supreme Court ruled that Long Island is not, in fact, an island. For the curious: more here. ❄️ George R.R. Martin discusses his methodology for naming characters (related). 🧓 Baby Boomers don’t want to be called old, except they’re getting older and the agists, bean-counters, and AP Style Guide demand a term; negotiations are ongoing. 🛴 Micromobility “don’t kid yourself, it’s a scooter” company names, rated. 🎸 Jimmy Eat World on the dangers of naming your band without considering the acronym. Note to all 14 year old garage rockers: hire a naming professional. 📖 What if English was phonetically consistent? (via: @operativewords) 🥤 Keurig Green Mountain and Dr Pepper Snapple Group merged to create a disgusting sounding name: Keurig Dr Pepper. Maybe it’ll be big in Japan. ⛪️ Book of Mormon Musical to be renamed Book of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Musical.

Thanks for reading, Greg & Willem

Onym names everything from startups and consumer products to children and pro sports teams. Get in touch and let us help you name your next thing.

[donner-mathis-official]

Thinking about Blackrock and the way the narrative portrays the convicts as one dimensional bad guys who are just bad for no reason… except for when it doesn’t. You’ll have to excuse me for the length of this, I’m on mobile and don’t know if I can do a read more. Also it might be scattered I’m not the best at writing stuff like this.

So I’ve been replaying episode 4 and paying more attention to the prison and convicts than I have in the past, and I got a loading screen saying the following: “Doctor Childs has been medical director at the Blackrock for decades. It’s rumored that due to his experiments on penitentiary inmates he cannot get another job on the Mainland” (this may not be exact, the loading screen ended before I could copy it all down). There is also a note in the guardhouse saying “we’re going to need some volunteers to dig into a few of these rations that got dropped on us. We’ll be in the barracks tonight with the cook to open them up. If they’re any good, we might just keep them for ourselves.” These inmates are already being kept incarcerated in a remote location, in a concrete/stone building with no obvious insulation or heating in spite of temperatures in the area reaching down to negative fifty degrees. The exercise yards are in no shape to actually be used, with ripped and broken fences and walls, so it’s likely that even in the summer, inmates are not given the opportunity to exercise. They don’t get the food they’re supposed to, they don’t get exercise, they’re kept in inhumanely cold conditions. And on top of that, the medical officer may or may not experiment on them.

In addition, Mathis isn’t at Blackrock for the killing of the prison guards. He was on the bus on the night of the first flare, his name can be seen on the manifest. While Franklin does insinuate that Mathis has been here the whole time, or at least some amount of time prior to Mackenzie waking up in his cell, a lot of what he says just doesn’t add up with literally anything else. Between him thinking Mackenzie is one of Mathis’s cronies while Mackenzie is patching him up, in spite of being told explicitly that Mackenzie was in the cell next to him, and him talking about the generators staying up and the prison remaining in some semblance of order for a few days after the first flare (which is directly refuted by Jace’s presence), I think it’s pretty safe to say that he is not a reliable source. He’s either too concussed to understand what’s happening, he doesn’t trust Mackenzie and is lying on purpose, or there’s something else going on.

Jace says that the people the convicts were killing innocent civilians, but that just doesn’t make sense. The Blackrock area has only one other building that people visibly live in: that trailer that you find the dead power station worker in. Foreman’s Clearcut does not count, nor does Bricklayers Retreat, as neither of those has a proper bed. Foreman’s Clearcut is likely used as a logging centre in the warmer months, and the bedding at Bricklayer’s retreat seems to be insinuated to be the convict who lost his mind in that prepped cache you find in the memo side mission. This brings up the question of what civilians Jace is even referring to. There were only a few hours between the first flare junking her car and her reaching the prison, so even if the convicts were rounding up people from the area to shoot (which I find highly unlikely, because why would they), the only ones they would have had time to get were power plant workers, who were complicit in their captivity. More likely, Jace saw prison workers who were not currently on duty and thus in civilian clothes. Considering she only saw the bodies, she would have had no way to tell the difference, so it’s definitely not unlikely.

Let’s move on to Mathis specifically. Aside from general personality unpleasantness (because let’s face it. No matter how you slice it, this dude is an asshole), what does he actually do wrong? 1] burn down the Milton schoolhouse. Uncertain whether or not the convicts did this. Geomagnetically induced currents have been known to cause fires (which also occurs in canon, as power lines can be seen lighting on fire in the opening credits), so it’s also very possible that the people inside there just got unlucky. It’s also very possible that even if the convicts did do it, Mathis specifically was uninvolved. Too uncertain to give him points. 2] try to attack Grey Mother and Astrid. Neither of the convicts who did this were part of the main crew (they are also now dead), and while Mathis does seem to be a leader, we have no reason to think he ordered these things. Hobbs’s smug demeanor would suggest the opposite actually. Possibly Mathis’s fault, but unlikely. 3] kill the woman in the dam. While seems unlikely that the woman was Molly, considering Mathis described the woman as screaming, which does not seem like Molly’s reaction upon spotting him, it’s also very possible that Mathis was just straight up lying about that. Regardless, at least two of his guys (Hobbs and Leclerc) have been murdered since the bus crash. At this point, the convicts are likely running on the assumption that anyone they come across is a threat and should be dealt with accordingly. Which leads us into 4] knocking out Mackenzie. Potential threat. Enough said. Though the fact that he killed the woman and knocked out Mackenzie suggests, to me, that there’s something more there than just her being annoying, because at the point of Mackenzie being knocked out, Mathis doesn’t know that he could be useful. 5] kidnapping Mackenzie. Mathis has just had a very convenient escape from the island fall right into his lap, holding a very alluring and shiny mystery box. Not right, but understandable. 6] beat up and kill Franklin. Franklin says they have history, that he was warden at a prison Mathis was in on the Mainland. In addition, Franklin’s description says that, “no one is more aware of the notorious prison’s dark history than its Warden.” He believes all of this to be reasonable punishment, as in his mind, “the worst of the worst end up with him at Blackrock”. He has at the very least turned a blind eye towards, if not actively facilitated all of the previously mentioned torture done to inmates at Blackrock. And Mathis believes Franklin is standing between him and his son. Probably the most justified thing he does. 7] misogyny towards Jace. His son just got blown up and he’s enraged at the people he believes are at fault. Still, unequivocally his fault and bad. 8] attacking Mackenzie with a hatchet and vowing to destroy everything he loves. See 7.

Let’s compare this to another morally complex character we have: Molly. She also kills (minimum) two people; one who we have pretty solid textual evidence was a piece of shit (husband), and one who we know very little about (Leclerc). She keeps our player character locked up but releases them when she needs help, much like Mathis. They’re not exactly the same, ofc, because Molly saves Astrid’s life and Mathis, you know, actively endangers Mackenzie’s. But if Mackenzie had been in that same situation, it’s pretty clear that Molly would have left him to die (see: her not even checking that dude in the car in the opening cutscene, and her “I hope to never meet him” after Astrid says Mackenzie is a good man). They’re not on even ground, morally speaking, but they’re not too far off.

So why does the story portray them so differently? It’s pretty clear to me that we’re supposed to sympathize with Molly. And I absolutely do. I think she was absolutely right to let her husband get eaten by wolves. But what separates that from Mathis beating Franklin to death for facilitating the abuse of his son and the dozens of other inmates at Blackrock? Is it the fact that he actually did it instead of just letting it happen? Is it the fact that the player character knew Franklin, even a little bit? Is it the fact that he’s a convict? Mathis’s description quite literally calls him, “an evil bastard”. Which I’m not necessarily even denying. Morality is a spectrum and evil is an arbitrary and subjective line on that spectrum. But it still sits strangely with me. Molly’s describes her as a simple farmer who likes tea. Franklin’s describes him as an administrator who “got caught up in Mathis’s deadly schemes”.

At first glance, these descriptions, the music stings, and the general vibes the game has seem incongruous with the information we’re given about these characters, but as I look further into it, it feels intentional. Because the main difference that we the player get between Mathis and Molly is their treatment of our character. The characters with in game descriptions that make them out to be evil and bad and that’s it are the ones we get a bad first impression of: Hobbs and Mathis. We get a good first impression of Molly, Methuselah, and Father Thomas, whose descriptions all have a more positive tone. Jeremiah and Franklin’s are pretty neutral, which makes sense, considering they’re rude and dismissive but technically helpful. I’m probably kinda dumb for not recognizing this, but the music swells at key moments (such as when Franklin is wheeled out on the stretcher), these descriptions, everything we get that isn’t canon as being within the world… they’re extensions of Astrid and Mackenzie. Of how they see the world. Molly is given depth because Astrid is looking for it. Mathis isn’t because Mackenzie isn’t looking for it. Which is pretty neat.

I am definitely still miffed about how “convict” ends up being synonymous with “evil” tho. Please episode 5 have one of them switch sides and be my buddy I know this won’t happen but plz. I think Mackenzie should be buddies with Vachon.