#I remember reading a theory suggesting that while the viewer escaped

[blueheartedmayor]

OOC:

#I am having THOUGHTS in work #I remember reading a theory suggesting that while the viewer escaped #they actually did so through what was left of C.eline's body and not Mark's. #since her body was too weak to safely carry both twins it was never considered #so... I think I might have it that by 'default' - meaning not taking anyone else's interpretations into account - #the viewer is still in the mirror; but if/when they escape it would be with the Seer's corrupted corpse #since not only is Mark's body too fragile; Dante's soul is still attached to it so it likely wouldn't co-operate #BUT. If there was a way for Dante to pull that corpse out and take it so the viewer could reclaim their body he would do it in a heartbeat #after all most of his pains are from the OTHER body; not the one he's currently in #(back to work I go)

[weirdcanucks]

For our final film of the series, we look at the subject of Indigenous hockey. Based on Ojibwe author Richard Wagamese’s novel, Indian Horse uses the hook of hockey to grapple with Canada’s darkest policy: the Indian residential school system.

We'll look at the criticism towards this film: failure to keep the novel's indigenous storytelling methods, narrative colonialism (adapted entirely by white key creatives), and more importantly, the industry problem of the lacking opportunities for Indigenous filmmakers. Circling back to the Holtby mask and Canucks logo cases, I think it's very well worth a read!

Synopsis

Torn from his Ojibwe family as a child in the 1950s, Saul Indian Horse is left to languish in an Ontario residential school, where he's forbidden to speak his own language and faces corporal punishment for the slightest transgression. Undaunted, Saul finds salvation on a sheet of ice, where he demonstrates a hockey sense that allows him to slip bodychecks with a dancer's grace and constantly leaves him three moves ahead of opponents. However, even when his talent allows him to escape the school and places him on the precipice of stardom, he can't evade the ramifications of past abuses.

Keep Reading for:

Why wasn’t an Indigenous director hired to make Indian Horse?

Indian Horse and the limits of allyship in adaptation

Rethinking Canada through Indigenous hockey

Witnessing painful past: Understanding the images of sports at Canadian Residential School

📄 Why wasn’t an Indigenous director hired to make Indian Horse?

Director Stephen S. Campanelli explains his reaction to reading the late Richard Wagamese’s novel and Dennis Foon’s adapted screenplay. “I was shocked and angered and embarrassed to be a Canadian and not know about this. And I wrote an impassioned six-page email saying why I needed to direct it.”

The uncomfortable question that I’m certainly not the first to ask is why Campanelli’s need to direct a story he previously knew nothing about is prioritized over the ambition of numerous Indigenous filmmakers who have been waiting for the opportunity to tell their stories.

Indigenous audiences at screenings across the country have expressed how much the film has touched them. There are others who, like me, were left a bit horrified. We are talking about a film reckoning with colonialism that has been adapted entirely by white key creatives (the main producers, director and writer), a set-up we could argue is narrative colonialism.

“It felt like extractive filmmaking at its finest,” says filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, a member of the Kainai First Nation and Sámi from Norway. “I felt like I was watching a spectacle of Indigenous trauma,” says Tailfeathers. “It was very apparent that there were no Indigenous key creatives. There’s an outsider/insider perspective. As outsiders, they are inevitably going to tell the story wrong because they don’t get it. They haven’t lived it. They don’t understand it from the perspective of lived experience. And it’s reflected so clearly onscreen. It’s yet another film about Indigenous people by non-Indigenous people for non-Indigenous people. It was made for settler audiences to have this emotional catharsis and walk away and feel like they did something.”

“It’s being paraded as an Indigenous film. But it’s not. It’s taking up space. And that’s what settlers do. It’s about them taking up space. It’s about them choosing which stories have value. It’s about them choosing whose voices should be heard.”

The persistent challenge for Indigenous filmmakers is that no matter how much talent they show in their short films and micro features, it barely translates to bigger opportunities at making features. Instead they often find themselves working on projects for settler storytellers, populating consulting roles on features or acting as the sole First Nations representative in the writers’ room on a television series. It’s tokenism easing the way for narrative colonialism.

“Tokenism comes from this inherent understanding that [the settler storytellers] are not really coming from a place of truth,” says Tailfeathers. “They haven’t properly collaborated. They haven’t properly worked with the community whose story they’re extracting. We’re an afterthought. And that’s very apparent in their process."

That process also often trumpets good intentions and well-meaning decisions.

“There’s been a long history of good intentions,” says Jesse Wente of the newly formed Indigenous Screen Office. “Remember, the residential schools were well intentioned in theory. There are many instances where you have non-Indigenous storytellers who are very well intentioned. But the reality is that when it comes to movies made about First Nations people, roughly 99.9 percent of them have been made by non-Indigenous peoples. That sort of overwhelming history suggests that maybe those good intentions are getting in the way of better results. Even if you come with the best of intentions, at what point will it be okay with the over-culture that Indigenous people get to tell their own stories? We are long overdue.”

📄 Indian Horse and the limits of allyship in adaptation 

While the filmmakers get that the content of the story isn’t theirs to tell, the way the story is told on screen significantly alters the tone. Wagamese’s novel immerses the reader in Saul’s personal subjectivity, an essential component of indigenous knowledge and storytelling. The novel is framed as Saul writing his story down to share only with a counsellor he trusts. By extension, this forms a personal relationship with the reader as someone to be trusted. Saul writes his narrative relationally, with brief asides about culture and memory to contextualize his story.

In attempting to faithfully adapt the novel’s plot, the filmmakers abandon one of Indian Horse’s most affecting aspects, its storytelling methods. While readers serve as Saul’s trusted audience, film viewers are independent observers of Saul and his surroundings. The film even gives viewers access to scenes where Saul was not present, such as school staff meetings and incidents of abuse. Had the filmmaking team involved indigenous members, they could have been in a better position to find a creative solution to adaptation that actually reflects an indigenous storytelling perspective. Instead, the result is a film that brings a vital story to a potentially wider audience, but feels like a story told second-hand.

⏪ Our previous post on Rethinking Canada through Indigenous hockey

⏪ Our previous post on Understanding the images of sports at Canadian Residential School 

#change hockey culture #film #indigenous hockey

[dantesintegrity]

Higurashi Gou Theory [DEBUNKED]: The Miracle, Motive, and Murders of Satoshi Houjou

Satoshi has always been a fascinating character to me, mainly because we’ve only actually seen him in the first half of Chapter 5, an only in some segments of Chapter 8.  Even so, his presence has been constantly lingering in Higurashi for as early as Chapter 1, and because of his sudden disappearance it only lead to more and more suspense. Not just to us, the audience, but to the characters themselves, they were completely changed because of his Disappearance. Shion was devastated by the demoning away of the one she loved, Satoko felt immense guilt because of it, and Keiichi became paranoid by the mere mention of his name. So when we found the truth that he was merely comatose in the Irie institute, we gave a sigh of relief because he was alive- yet still devastated of the news that he my never wake up. We’ve known that he has been through so much reading the Visual novel, and it only adds to the Tragic circumstance he is under.

However, This is not the Visual novel. Higurashi Gou is something new, and we have started to suspect that the culprit my in fact be someone different this time.

It was around Watadamashi that I began to think that- you know, as a joke- that Satoshi was the Culprit this time. I had no real reason to suspect him, just a crack pot theory that I will humor on occasion.

Then we all noticed something peculiar, when Keiichi woke up in Onidamashi, he was informed that Rika and Satoko were ambushed and killed.

In Watadamashi- while Rika was killed as well- it was Mion and Satoko who were killed together.

Then, in the Thirteenth episode, Mion, Shion, Rika, and Satoko were said to be dead- Supposedly killed by one Ooishi Kuraudo, if Rena’s words are to be believed.

Now, in all of these Circumstances, Satako was one of the Victims, alongside Rika. To us Original fans, we know that Rika is Certainly fated to die. In Gou, however, Satoko is added to that list.

There is a phrase that goes something like: “Once is Happenstance, Twice is Coincidence, Three times is Enemy action”

Satoko is Directly Targeted by the Culprit, I can say that with conviction.

Now, here is where my theory diverts from other theories. Some theories that she is the Culprit, murdered Rika and committed suicide. The reason why she did that is because......... Some will also that she is a Looper, Evidence to support this is that.................. Some say she is just sus.

While I agree, some- key word, some- of her actions are suspicious, I believe that she is actually more of a distraction if anything else. Whether it is intentional or coincidental, we are the ones who is being deceived into thinking that Satoko is behind everything.

But we are focusing too much one what is being shown by the light, when the truth may be in the shadows. Additionally, one of the complaints I have been seeing for this series is that the Endings of each arc seems to just pop up out of no where, unlike the original where we would be able to at least get a grasp of how the story ends. However in Gou, we are being kept in the Dark, as well as other things...

In a previous theory of mine, I suggested that the existence of Satoshi is narratively being kept in the dark. Original viewers would have noticed that he was barely mentioned, and new viewer who noticed the bat would wonder who this “Satoshi” person even before Tataridamashi.

From Keiichi, who doesn’t know who Satoshi is. To the club members characters, who never mention him. To Rika, who perhaps completely ruled out him as a possibility.

(Note: Before anyone says anything on Knox’s First, You must remember that literally the first thing we see in the Opening is Satoshi’ name. It is written in Japanese, so anyone who knows Japanese, or knows the bare minimum of how to use google translate would know that his name is written plain as day. Therefore, no, this does not Violate Knox’s First. If you don’t take that as evidence because it is in the Opening and not in the actual episode, then you are also forced to disregard any and all other evidence that shows up in the Opening, yes, that includes the blonde hair girl.)

While the endings and circumstances of those endings are very different from the original- and some might even say ‘out of no-where.’ There is one thing that actually remains consistent throughout all the arcs.

Onidamashi is very similar to Onikakushi, up until Keiichi lets Rena in. With some few notable exceptions (such as Takano and Tomitake dissapearing- but we will get to that later.)

Watadamashi is also fairly reminiscent to Watanagashi, at least until Rika dissapears in school- ending up in the septic tank.

Tataridamashi is almost beat for beat to Minagoroshi, all the way up to the Watanagashi Massacre.

You starting to notice a trend? The Drastic change shows itself after- or on the day of Watanagashi. Meaning that on the night of Watanagashi, something happens that drastically changes the game board.

Enter: Satoshi Houjou.

So, where does my theory begin? Well, like the original series: Satoshi kills his Aunt, Has his mental breakdown, and forced into a Coma. He enters into a Sleep that he may never wake up, nor will he ever recover from entering L5.

And then... he does.

One day, Satoshi just wakes up, completely lucid. Those at the institute thought he would have never wake up, thinking he was a lost cause and would certainly never wake up. Yet even so, an Astronomical chance happened, and he recovered from the breaking point. It was a Marvelous Occasion, A Miracle, some might even say.

Naturally, this Miracle would have effected Two people in particular: Irie Kyousuke, and Takano Miyo.

To Takano, she could have used him as evidence in support of her research and to get more funding and prevent the Shut down- it was a long shot be she may have had the slightest bit of hope.

For Irie, this was more personal for him. He knew Satoshi and wanted for things to have been better for him, now he has the chance to change everything. Plus his recovery could lead to more and better treatment for Hinamizawa syndrome- or better yet a Cure.

Satoshi meanwhile, is confused. Where is this place? What do they mean by Parasite? Why can’t he see his sister? He doesn’t understand what is going on.

So to help calm him down- or for Takano, help him cooperate- They both told him the truth behind Hinamizawa, and the Parasite.

They tell Satoshi about the truth about Satoko’s Illness, and their theory that Rika may actually be the Queen Carrier.

This is where I form the Crux of my theory, its about what they told him, combined with his willingness to do anything for his little sister.

Because, what if, when they were telling him everything, he had an idea.

What if Satoko’s illness is caused by Rika.

Rika, being the ‘Queen Carrier’ turned Satoko into an L3 Instance, causing the Hallucinations and Paranoia she has now. Yes, she is currently being Treated, but what if Rika was the one to Cause it.

Of course, Satoshi may be misinterpreting everything they are saying, but he doesn’t understand all the medical terminologies Takano and Irie use. There could also be a chance that he is not fully cured either, and that his symptoms are causing him to misinterpret everything they are.

Regardless, he has his theory, Rika is the cause of everything.

There is another that thing could have happened while he was under their Care. One day, Takano was taking some samples from him, testing to see what could have caused his awakening.

Satoshi then asked a question, something like “Will I ever be able to see Satoko.”

Takano possible replied, “Well, unless she also has a full on breakdown like you, then maybe we’ll let you meet with her- but she might not even recognize you, like you couldn’t recognize anyone other than your Aunt.”

Satoshi, feeling dread from her response, then ask, “Well... what will you do with her then?!?!”

Takano, perhaps Joking, replies, “Don’t know, maybe I’ll dissect her brain hee hee hee.”

Whether Takano was joking or not, Satoshi took it literally. I mean, with this secret underground facility under the Clinic, a paramilitary group at her command, She is more than capable of kidnapping Satoko and dissecting her.

He killed his Aunt to protect his sister, but now he knows what could really be up against them. Takano can take Satoko, and examine her brain and do all kinds of horrible experiments on her, all while Satoko is still alive.......

Satoshi would not let them do that, but he is their medically confined prisoner.

He needs to escape.

He needs to stop that monster from demoning away Satoko.

He needs to make sure this ‘Tokyo’ organization from ever doing harm to her.

...

He needs to Kill Satoko.

He doesn’t want to... but what option does he have? If Satoko does breakdown, then she will become Takano’s lab rat. Even if they do manage to escape, she will be unmedicated, and her condition will degrade even further.

To Satoshi, that is his only option, it would be a mercy kill in his eyes.

And while he’s at it, why doesn’t he kill the person who is also heart of this damn parasite.

He needs to kill Rika Furude.

So, on the night of Watanagashi Festival, he decides then to escape.

Perhaps to keep extra watch on Rika, there were fewer Mountain Dogs on the Clinic, or the others were in the Secret base that Takano planned on hiding out in. Meaning that on that night, there were few people guarding the Clinic.

That night, he gets up, and finds anything relatively bat-shaped, and escapes his room. He tries his best to hide in the many dark corners of the Clinic, but eventually he is spotted, and he is reported to the others. They try their best to stop him, but he does manage to escape, almost as if Fate was certainly on he side.

After he escapes, its reported to Takano and Tomitake, right before she enact her plan. She now has more important matters to deal with, so she suggested that her and Tomitake remain hidden in the mean time, to protect themselves from what ever danger Satoshi poses, and also to- just for her own amusement- keep up the appearance of the Curse.

So her and Tomitake begin their search for Satoshi Houjou.

And Satoshi Houjou will begin this years new game, his goal:

Kill Satoko Houjou and Rika Furude.

Well this theory took me a while to type, Sorry if there are any spelling or grammar errors, but this is actually the third time I had to write a lot of that, since my computer crashed while I was typing... Twice. Feel free to comment any Critiques to my theory. Soon I will need to write my theory on each one of the arcs, so I can fully break down what happened.

#higurashi #higurashi gou #higurashi gou theory #Satoshi Houjou #Satoko Houjou #Rika Furude #Satoshi Hojo #Satoko Hojo

[hellstenglow]

Fiveya Meta: they need to talk

Endure me, I am on a fiveya-train and my thoughts don’t shut up.

After watching the most recent behind the scene videos of TUA season 2 we can conclude that they did make senseless choices in the plot because in some cases they had to. For example in the case of the snow storm created by Harlan in the final episode, that was added to the script because suddenly there have been a snow storm on the outside set the days before the scheduled filming and they couldn’t clean the place enough, in time for the recording. The snow was added.

I also think they could have written some of the characters better and given them real development (*cough* Luther, Ben *cough*). I wasn’t even a fan of the whole “Vanya lost her memory” thing, but I’ve read that Steve Blackman (the showrunner) doesn’t want to diverge from the original content too much (which is a bit silly to say since they did make major changes since season 1, but okay). I guess that’s why Vanya’s amnesia was still there, although they treated it differently. In the comics it was Mom-Grace who helped Vanya to find herself again and her own value, in the show it was Sissy who did it. I thought it was kind of a hint to the comics the fact Sissy resembled Show-Grace a bit (blond, kind and a mom). Did I think it was unnecessary to have a love interest for Vanya right after season 1? I did, but I justified the choice by thinking that the show wanted to give Vanya a taste of what real love (not like Leonard’s manipulative and abusive love) is supposed to be. I also thought it was a way to show how Vanya needs to stop clinging to the first person who gives her affection, attention and treats her with kindness. I hope she’d realize that and work on herself and family in season 3, first and foremost.

Even with the evident flaws I enjoyed season 2, especially because I decided to treat it as a passing by (detour/digression) chapter in a longer story. All Hargreeves siblings in the ‘60s tried hard to make a new life and ignored their actual life (Allison, Luther, Klaus) or had a convenient amnesia (Vanya) or focused on something too much to lose track of what matters (Diego). Everyone except Ben (who was not treated once again as a full character despite the apparent level up the PR promoted) and Five (who once again was running around in panic mode to stop an apocalypse). Remember Vanya saying, “New timeline, new me.” And Five replying “That’s NOT how it works.”? I may give the writers more credits than it is due, but I hope those two lines were some kind of meta messages for the more attentive viewers. Those two lines can explain perfectly season 2 to be honest.

Nobody can know how long a tv show would run, a fact that expose us to uncertainty. It’s always a gamble trusting writers and showrunners to deliver a good story, but all it’s fair game and one has only to accept it. I do not trust any of them, but I cannot help myself and still hope that they will not ruin everything. With all this said, let’s talk about something I think the show has to tackle in next seasons: Five and Vanya are two points of a theme that needs to be addressed and solved. They need to interact, talk and close their open theme together.

This is not a cohesive meta and I probably will lose myself in too many details, but I hope the message I am trying to convey will arrive. This is only my reading of the show and theories, so you can disagree. I just hope you’d find something interesting and maybe help someone to have a different perspective on what’s going on and where (I pray) the show will go. Here the points I will talk about, if you are in for a very verbose essay, please click on the “keep reading” button. Meanwhile I’ll wear my tinfoil crown and sip some margarita.

Five and Vanya are a theme

It was mean to be Ben

Why the Fiveya’s tension in S2 EP 7’s iconic scene is a symptom of something

I dare to hope in fiveya (at least until proven wrong)  

1. We have a theme: Five wants to stop the apocalypse and Vanya is the apocalypse

It’s a twisted joke of the universe that the very thing Five is obsessed about in season 1 (the apocalypse) was caused by the person he trusted the most (“I’ve decided you’re the only one I can trust” - Five in S1EP1). The red thread that linked Five and Vanya can’t be more evident, that’s one of the reasons why I started shipping them. The family’s dynamic, the siblings’ relationships and bonds are equally important, they add layers and motivations to the story, but if we strip everything else and look at the core, we all know Five and Vanya are at the centre of it.

It’s not a simple coincidence that Five said “I’m the four horsemen”. At first, it’s just a funny line, because Five is drunk and he described himself as those fearsome figures (because he is the best assassin of the whole world and time. Death incarnated in his humble opinion). You don’t take him seriously when he said that line, you don’t pay attention to it.  

However, later it gains a certain degree of truth. Subtly the show tells you that indeed Five is linked deeply to the “apocalypse” (Vanya), as much as the four horsemen (they are the prelude and the bringers of the end) are linked to the apocalypse (in the biblical sense). He lived it. He was trapped there for 45 years. He is obsessed with it. The Apocalypse is his business.

Timid little Vanya is the first person he looked for in the middle of the doomsday’s ruins and arguably his closest friend. On the first day of his return Five only have meaningful talks with Vanya. Five sought her to confide the horror of his memories and share the burden of the truth. He trusted her above everyone else. Then the universe made a laughingstock of him when it was revealed that Vanya caused the Apocalypse. Five didn’t know he was running towards her, despite wanting to go back to his family (her) all his life. 

In the first two episodes of season 1 they made clear that Vanya and Five had an intimate bond in their childhood and still cared for each other after so many years, then the show proceeded to separate them until the finale. They tried so hard to keep them far away from each other during season 1 and we all know everything would have been different if they had time to properly talk, process their situation and find a solution together. Of course, the show didn’t give them that chance, otherwise the show would have ended in episode 3 and goodbye drama!

They did not confront each other in the end of season 1, they let Allison take that role because the show built up their connection as sisters and I didn’t dislike the choice. Did it work thematically? No, Allison has no connection with the apocalypse. That’s Five’s business. He didn’t confront Vanya, he let others take the lead in the most crucial moment and with no surprise the apocalypse still happened.

The other apocalypse in season 2 was still connected to Vanya and again Five ignored the cosmic signals and focused on dead ends. Despite knowing perfectly that the butterfly effect can come from any source, he didn’t even think about Vanya’s being the cause of the apocalypse again. Five should have listened Klaus when he suggested that Vanya might have been the cause. Funny how Klaus told him in S1 that he has an addiction and Five aggressively denied it. Funny how saving his family and stopping the apocalypse are always his top priorities, but Five still deny himself (for a reason or another) the time to confront Vanya (the apocalypse).

We have a theme waiting to be resolved: Five wants to stop the apocalypse and Vanya is the cause of the apocalypse. If Five does not confront Vanya the theme will never have a closure. It’s still open right now. It is still there, waiting to be picked up again. There is no resolution.

2. Vanya and Ben’s goodbye

The scene between Vanya and Ben was one of my favourites from season 2 and after pondering for a while I concluded that it couldn’t have been anyone else but Ben the one who helped Vanya in that moment. My theory is that the show will walk backwards the breaking points of Vanya’s life: Ben’s death, Five’s leaving and Reginald’s abuse.

Vanya is not fixed. How could she when she was barely Vanya in this season? “New timeline, new me” she said, but that was just a convenient escapism mechanism. Years and years of mentally and emotionally abuse don’t disappear in one week. The Hargreeves have still a lot to process and resolve, individually and as family. That’s why I hope the show will progress the story in the right direction and actually work on them in season 3. Especially Vanya, who needs to confront her trauma. That’s why the scene with Ben in episode 9 was necessary.

From Vanya’s book:

[…] Our everyday existence was full of evidence that Dad had [...]-pped into treating us like experiments. Not as children, but like animals. And what happened to Ben was the last straw that finally shattered the illusion for the others …

Ben died long time ago and his death was the last straw that shattered the illusion (for the others) that their father cared about them (even in his own messed up way). Everything changed from that moment and each sibling drifted away from one another after that. Ben’s death was the moment Vanya and the rest of her siblings stopped being a family. The definitive step of Vanya’s alienation from her siblings.

There was no place in the group for her. With Five’s absence and Ben gone (he is a caring brother, with Klaus is like that and I can imagine him being kind to Vanya in their childhood too. Although, Ben is not Five and we have seen him being harsh to her in the flashbacks in S1EP10), Vanya was truly lost.

The tearful and important moment between Ben and Vanya was a reverse moment in my opinion. Vanya needed that from Ben, his death heavily influenced the course of her life (everyone’s life) and it was only fitting that Ben should have been the one helping her to start again. It’s symbolic in a sense, but also very factual.

“Sorry that I left without saying goodbye” – Five, S1 EP2

“At least this time I can say goodbye.” – Ben, S2 EP9

I’m using my fiveya-goggles, but we all thought that what Five said in S1EP2 (when Vanya tried to find him at Hargreeves’ mansion) wasn’t just about him leaving her apartment. It’s a very specific line that works on double levels: text and subtext. The subtext of course refers to the day he run out the house and time jumped. I highlighted these two lines from Five and Ben because I think they share the same theme: leaving her without saying goodbye.

Vanya wasn’t on mission with the team when Ben died, and I doubt she even saw his body (or whatever remains were left) when the Umbrella Academy returned. She didn’t even see his manifestation during the Icarus’ fight, too focused in her own power. The scene between them in Vanya’s mind gave both the opportunity to make amend of untold words and missed moments.

Ben is dead, he is the one he cannot return. His departure is permanent, there is nothing they can do about that. However, they can have a closure. Ben needed to be the one first patching to mend Vanya’s relationship with her family, to remind her that she does belong. This sort of second death (finally move on into the Light) has more meaning than the first one, this time Ben completed the mission. He saved someone he loved (he couldn’t stop Klaus from destroying his life with drugs and alcohol) and could trust his siblings to take care of the rest.

I still think Ben didn’t need to die-die, but in a sense it was time for him to move on into the light. He was afraid to go on, but if he could move on so his siblings. It is time for Vanya to move on her own trauma.

(Yeah, I know. I still have problem with the scene because they erased canon in a way and Ben could do a lot more as character. They erased the fact drugs stop their powers like in Klaus’ addiction and Vanya’s pills, so how Vanya was able to use them under LSD? I tried to explain that to myself by the fact “they needed to bs that canon fact in season 1 and ignored it”.

We can also argue that Ben could have prevented the apocalypse in 2019 by doing the same thing, but in their defence S1-Ben didn’t know he could possess a body. Yeah, how did he do that without Klaus’ power help? No idea, that doesn’t make sense to me either. Ahah. I just swam with the flow at that point and accepted it as it is. Call it the power of superpowered siblings’ love. I’ve seen worse plot holes in my life. I can live with this).

3. Pass me the knife, there is some tension here!

From Vanya’s book:

Though prone to arrogance and outbursts, even more than the average preteen, Five was my sole confidante in the years before he disappeared. It almost seemed fitting […] the siblings to leave us, it would be him who [I fully?] […] who fully trusted me.

I said that Vanya’s walking backwards her life’s breaking points. So, after Ben’s death, she needs to address Five’s leaving. Five was her only confidante in the years before he disappeared, as she wrote in her book. Five was very important to young Vanya (and old Vanya needs to remember that) and I bet when he left, that was a scar never healed.

Vanya missed him and hoped for his return, for a while she kept the lights on in the house every night and prepared for him his favourite sandwich. When Five did come back Vanya couldn’t process that fact properly in season 1, all she could think of was that she didn’t want to lose him again. Five on the other hand decided that he would save everyone on his own and for that choice he made a bunch of tragic rookie mistakes.

Miscommunication is their kryptonite and right now Vanya and Five aren’t able to fully communicate at the same level. Reggie did such a good work at parenting that they’re so unfit to deal with their emotions and relationships, that will always be the root of their mistakes.

Same story in season 2, meanwhile Vanya is on the verge to provoke another apocalypse (although indirectly), as usual Five was too obsessed with his own plans and was not even aware of the situation. He knows nobody is insignificant when it’s about altering the timeline, but he always ends to focus on the wrong lead. The show again did incredible summersaults to avoid the two to interact properly and when they interacted things still didn’t work for a reason or another. She didn’t remember her past, he was not entirely sincere with her. She wanted to start anew (having a family with Sissy, easy-peasy), he is trapped again in a run against time to save his family. They are still not at the same page and for the show that is convenient. They still can play with their open theme (my point number 1 in this meta).

I don’t blame Five in S1 for thinking that if the worse happens, they would need to kill her. I think he was in a very delicate state of mind in that moment, he didn’t have time to process the fact Vanya (his favourite sibling and we all know she is his favourite) caused the end of the world. It was disappointing and cynical, but time was ticking fast, and he had been in his “maniacal-panic” mode for almost eight days. I also think he wouldn’t really kill her; he was the one who convinced the others that they needed to take her with them in the time jump. They need to “fix her” (aka help her to never feel alone in the universe and prove her we do love her) or they’re going to make the same mistakes again and again.

Just to be clear I think if Five wasn’t one day from the end of the world and in a rush to stop Vanya, he would had had the same reaction as Old Man Five in S2. His 14-days younger version take it very well “Fair enough” he said and then proceeded to tell Luther how to save Vanya, no mention about killing her whatsoever. Old Man Five had time (10 days more than our current Five) and a direct clue on how to stop the apocalypse (thanks Luther). Nobody was going to kill Vanya.

“Vanya will always be the cause of the apocalypse, unless we fix her.” - Five S1EP10 

“Vanya is the bomb. She will always be the bomb.” - Diego S2EP8

Vanya is the bomb and she will always be the bomb unless she heals. A fact that can be added to my number 1 point in this meta, there is an open theme and they need to tackle it. Five and Vanya need to confront each other and resolve it.

This takes me to S2 EP7: the iconic stare-power stand between Five and Vanya. THE TENSION was real, and you could cut it with a butter knife. The first time I screamed at my screen, I felt like Gordon Ramsay in one of those episodes of “Kitchen Nightmare US” when someone finally serves him good food.

Of course, the immediate reading of the scene is that Five needed Vanya to come along and Vanya didn’t want to go because at that point these Hargreeves are still strangers to her (amnesia is so convenient), Sissy and Harlan are the ones she knows and loves in that right moment.

They were still able to cut each other with sharp words and hostile glares though. Five let her have what she wanted, not because he feared her, but because as usual he cares more about her feelings than what he would ever admit. It’s the second time in S2 he let her go, his soft spot and favouritism for Vanya was showing once again! *fakes surprise*

I think the tension shown in this scene is a symptom that Vanya and Five are on the verge of something they will (they have to) confront soon or later. This is the subtext reading I came out with.

Even if you don’t look at it with shipper goggle, you feel there is something going on. They let the viewers feel there is a sensitive something whenever these two have an alone scene together. All their alone scenes have a specific grade of intimacy, they made it clear since the scene in front of Five’s portrait. They care for each other, they love each other (sibling love, platonic love, we-could-have-been-something love etc…) and it’s there. However, Five left and Vanya never truly recovered from that. They didn’t process that fact and I truly believe they can’t move on until they heal that scar.

Basically, S2 EP7 Fiveya’s scene = We have to talk, but this is not the moment because the show is only on its second season! THIS TENSION IS HERE FOR A REASON.

4. Hope is the last thing to die

I shouldn’t trust a show, I’ve been disappointed so many times in the past years and showrunners of popular shows tend to be unoriginal and cowards. However, I am an optimist at heart and until season 3 I dare to hope anyway. If proven wrong, there are always fanfictions who can do better job than canon.

If all was lost they could have eliminated Alluther too from the universe because of certain fans screaming “harcest is incest you weirdos”, but Allison and Luther’s situation still exist and still work on the parameter “will they or not”? I imagine for their shippers it was annoying to have such a regression in season 2, but they didn’t destroy it and they still gave them scenes.

Fiveya had even a more subtle situation than Alluther but they’ve been granted the same level of intimate interaction whenever they have an alone scene together. Until Five (the character) will gain an older body (which he can) the whole thing is suspended. However, I think they wouldn’t have been open about the possibility of Five changing back to an older body and spoke about in season 1 if they didn’t have an idea for that.

I brushed off the line Five said to Old Man Five about being forever trapped in his 13-years-old body. It’s canon that there is a way to gain an adult body for Five, the Commission has the technology and even if it’s not the Commission they can mambo-jambo the thing in a way or another. That would never work. The actor is a growing up teenager and from season 1 to season 2 he has already changed. I imagined he will change even more before season 3 will ever start recording (maybe very late due the COVID-19 situation).

Aidan is a fan favourite and I am one of those who can’t see anyone else playing Five, with this said there are still ways for the show to give us fiveya. Young fiveya flashbacks will be always an option to explore the idea of “they had a crush on each other when they were young” and make other viewers understand that it wasn’t all “sibling” love between them. Endgame in a distant season can always have an epilogue with an adult Five (another actor I mean) having a very non-platonic (let adult Fivey kiss please) moment with Vanya, meanwhile building up the longest slow-burn (kinda, deep down I believe those feelings for each other are there) of the century.

Maybe I am wrong, maybe my tinfoil crow is too tight, and my brain doesn’t breathe. Maybe the show will succumb to easy paths and angry bullies. I don’t know, but until proven wrong I dare to hope.

PS: This is a monster of a meta and it probably doesn’t make sense? I hope someone will get what I’ve tried to say. I hope you survive, brave readers. Here a glass of margarita for you. I’d love to hear what you think

#fiveya #five x vanya #vanya x five #my meta

[where-theres-smoak-2]

Riverdale 4x18 Review, Analysis and Theories

I’ve finally watched the episode and I’ve got alot of thoughts about it. To be honest it went pretty much the way I thought it would, mostly. We’ve been given some more information and a whole lot more questions. There were four plotlines in the episode, two main ones and two sideplots, so I figured we could go through each one and unpack them to see what clues we’ve been left this time. So if you want to read an analysis of the episode and get my opinions and theories then read on below the tag. As always these are just my own opinions you are welcome to disagree also there are spoilers obviously.

Jughead, Charles and the Video Tapes. 

So the first plotline I want to talk about is the one where Jughead and Charles are invesitgating the tapes. The episode starts out with Jughead showing Betty, Alice and Charles the newest videotape that he found at the end of the last episode. A couple of sidenotes here which aren’t all that relevant but I figured I’d mention anyway. I love how protective everyone was of Jelly Bean. Even Charles who stood up to block the her view of the tv. But also where was FP? I feel like this is something he should be included in so it was a bit odd that he was missing from the scene. They could have at least mentioned him like said he was investigating it from the station or something. Anyway getting back to it. Jughead asks Betty if she wants to help him look into the tape but Betty says she doesn’t want to get pulled into another mystery. This is when Charles decides to suggest that Jughead and he could investigate it together. I loved that Charles called Jug little brother. I just thought it was really sweet. Also I would like to see more of the Jones/Cooper/Smith family interactions. Whilst we’ve gotten a decent amount of Charles/Betty and Charles/Jughead sibling bonding moments we haven’t gotten as many with Charles and his parents and other than this brief one I don’t think we’ve had any with Jelly Bean and Charles so I wouldn’t object to seeing those relationships developed a little more. Also I would like to point out that while it was really nice that Charles is always offering for Betty and Jughead to help him out with the investigation, I can’t help but think that Charles has an ulterior motive for this. I mentioned in my theory post about Charles and the video tapes (which you can read here if you want) that I think Charles sees Betty and Jughead as loose cannons. When they first meet Charles he says something like ‘I hear you two are quite the detective duo.’ Or something along those lines. I actually think Charles keeps asking for their help so that he can keep an eye on what they’re doing and make sure they don’t do anything to mess up the FBI’s own investigation into the tapes. I mean think about it, if Charles gets them working with him then he knows where they are and what they are doing, so he knows they aren’t gallivanting around town getting themselves into all kinds of mischief, classic big brother move.   

Through Charles we learn that there are two drop off boxes where people can turn in the tapes they recieve. One at the Sheriff station and one at the FBI office. They are both monitored with cctv cameras but there are hours upon hours of footage so Jughead and Charles decide to make some popcorn and go through all the footage in the hopes they can find some clue as to who left the murder video tape. Also can I just say that this episode made me remember why I love Jughead there were just so many little moments that were, well I don’t know how else to describe them other than they were very Jughead. Like I don’t know what was funnier that Jughead’s response to facing hours of footage seraching for a potential killer is ‘do you have popcorn?’ or the fact that yes the FBI does have popcorn. Maybe its just me but I just got a chuckle out of that. Anyway while going through the footage Jughead does spot someone he knows and decides to follow the lead alone. Of course we learn that Ethel is the person he sees leaving a tape behind. But before we get into that I want to talk about something else I noticed. When Jug is leaving the camera pans down to show us Charles’ laptop with the cctv footage. Now they had to have done this for a reason there had to have been something in that segment of cctv that is important to the plot. The footage is very grainy and sped up but we see a woman enter the building. She walks down the hall, appears to stop briefly to talk to whoever is at the desk at the end of the hall, This person seems to gesture around the corner. The woman disappears around the corner and then a few moments later reappears, walks back towards the camera and leaves. I managed to grab a couple of screenshots of this footage. 

If you’ve read my last theory post where I talk about theories around both Charles and the Voyeur (the one I linked above) then you will know I have a theory that Donna is the one behind the tapes and also the one who is wearing the Betty mask. Now I know the image is really grainy but to me this looks like a female with long dark hair who is wearing a jacket and trousers very similar in style to what Donna wears. Her build also seems very similar to Donna’s aswell. I mean...

I’m just saying the woman in the cctv, the woman in the betty mask and Donna all look real similar to me. As for why Charles didn’t recognise her, well as we can see the image isn’t the best, it was sped up and he could have been distracted by Jug saying he saw someone he knew. We don’t see where he is looking so for all we know he might have been watching Jug leave and not at the computer screen, point is he could have just missed it. Also another thing worth noting is that right before the footage is shown Charles asks ‘do you recognise someone?’ Obviously he is directing the question at Jughead but it could also be the writers way of asking us the same question, do we the viewer recognise someone in this footage.

So Jughead goes off and talks to Ethel about the tapes and she says she was just dropping off the tapes that had been left on her doorstep, that they contained the same as all the others, static footage of her home. She gets upset when Jughead tells her that one of the tapes was different and asks if she knows anything about it. One thing I will say is her line ‘I’m just trying to make it out of Riverdale in one piece.’ really resonated. Like it really makes you think how much crap these kids have gone through with all the murders and cults. It is almost like its more of an achievement for them to reach adulthood than normal because so many of them could have been killed by one of the many serial killers that have rampaged through the town. Also I feel like a lot of the kids in Riverdale see college as being a way to escape from Riverdale. 

After talking to Ethel Jughead comes up with the idea that maybe the Voyeur is a film maker, so he and Charles hit the video store. I do love the store owners line when Charles asks if any of his customers were acting suspicious and he replies ‘they all act suspicious.’ I do think the writers might be having a little laugh with us here because its very true for Riverdale as a whole, like every character on this show acts shady as hell most of the time. The store owner gives them their records and they discover that Ethel has rented the horror movie Friday the 13th sixteen times. Charles then tells Jughead that he considers Ethel to be a prime suspect as she has a predilection for horror movies, was seen dropping off a tape and as per Jughead’s admission an obsession with him. But Jughead clearly doesn’t want to upset the progress Ethel seems to have made and points out that he doesn’t think she would have the equipment for it and tells Charles to drop it. When he’s next at school Jughead goes to the office to get info on the AV club, the members of which would have access to the equipment needed to make the video tapes. He not only learns that Ethel is the president of the club but that Charles had already been there asking questions and had already left with Ethel. Jug goes back to the FBI office to find out what happened from Charles and finds out that Ethel had somehow got ahold of the sex tape of him and Betty from Stonewall prep. Now I have seen some comments saying that they think Charles going after Ethel alone was really shady and that it could mean he has something to do with the video tapes. I’m not saying that he doesn’t have something to do with the tapes, its could be a possibilty, but out of all the shady behaviour we’ve seen from Charles in my opinion this wasn’t shady at all. I think because we see everything from Jughead’s point of view its easy to forget that its not a case of Jughead is leading an investigation and Charles is helping out but the other way around. Charles is the lead on the investigation into the tapes, he’s the FBI agent. So if he thinks someone is a suspect he’s not just going to drop that lead just because some teenage kid said he should, even if that kid is his brother. Also can I say that this is such a Jones/Cooper thing to do, they get told not to do something and then the next scene you find out they did the exact thing they were told not to. We see it with Betty and Jughead all the time so it was kinda funny to see the same thing happen to Jughead in a role reversal. It was a good thing he didn’t drop it too as if Charles hadn’t gone and searched Ethel’s home they probably wouldn’t have found out about the Scarlet Room. 

So speaking of the Scarlet Room it shows that there is an even darker side to Riverdale if that was even possible, this is a definitely x rated room in the back of the store where they have home made videos. The store owner says sometimes people sell the videos and sometimes they trade them. But these tapes consist of some sex tapes, rougher ones and weirder ones but also more sinister than that snuff films which Jug finds. I was able to catch some of the titles which could be clues as to which other murders might be re-enacted next. The one of Jason Blossom is called a Maple Murder which is pretty self explanatory. There is one called Black Hood Unmasked which I think could be Mr Svensons death. The Blackhood Diaries is another self-explanatory one. There’s another called Carrie the... I can’t make out the rest of the title but that one is clearly Midge’s death. Then there’s one called Pop’s After Hours which I reckon is from the Halloween episode where Veronica kills that serial killer in self defense. The curious thing about Jason Blossom’s murder being there though is that as far as we know there are only three copies of that footage. Betty has one on her laptop and Cheryl has the other on a USB. The third from what I remember was given to the police, I can’t remember what happened to it after that but I think the Blossoms asked for it to be destroyed? Sorry if I’m wrong about that. So if only those copies existed then how did one end up in the store. Well I do have one theory for that. We know that Betty gave Chic one of her old laptops, now I’m going to assume she wouldn’t have been careless enough to leave that footage on the laptop if it was ever on that one but you never know, we also know that Chic was in the house alot when Betty wasn’t there and he liked to sneak into her room. It’s possible that Chic found the video and took a copy to the store to get some extra cash. But the Scarlet room as a whole is a very creepy idea, that people including Students like Ethel are going in there and renting footage of people being brutally murdered, I mean no wonder there are so many serial killers in Riverdale cause that’s just messed up. On a side note I thought it was absolutley hilarious when the store owner came in and told Jughead that only over 18′s were allowed back there. Like dude you are being invesitgated by the FBI and they’ve just found your highly illegal collection of homemade sex and snuff films and you think telling them that only 18 and overs are allowed in this section is going to save you. So anyway the FBI confiscates all the videos so lets just say the FBI have now got a ridiculous amount of video tapes at that office what between these ones and the ones collected from the town residents. But I do feel like the Scarlet Room tapes are going to be important to the plotline in some way like they’ll find some kind of clue in them. 

The episode ends with Jughead getting a call from Cheryl who says she just got a tape. When he and Betty go over there they find out its the same kind of thing as the one Jughead found. Two people in masks re-enacting Jason Blossom’s murder. There is something I want to cover quickly before we analyse the tape itself but there does seem to be some confusion over whether these tapes are actually real or just acting. I mean Jughead calls the tape he got a faux snuff film and talks about how whoever filmed it went through the trouble of hiring actors. It also does seem like the person wearing Jason’s mask in the newest video is acting along. If they aren’t real it would also explain why there haven’t been any bodies showing up or missing people reported. Yet I get the feeling that these are real, I mean they look very real to me, particualrly the one with Jason. As to why it looks like the one wearing the Jason mask is acting well they either could be under duress told this is the script play along or else, or it could be that they didn’t know what was actually going to happen, maybe they thought that the gun was fake or that the other person wasn’t going to actually pull the trigger which is why they seem so relaxed and calm right before they are shot. I don’t know though maybe it is all fake? What do you think? 

But the discovery of this lastest tape raises some more questions. Once again we have two masked individuals which begs the question who are the people behind the masks? One thing we do know is that its not the same people as the first video. The attacker in the first video was definitely a woman and was much shorter than the attacker in the latest one. Also the murder victims in both are also definitely different people, the one in the first video who was dressed as Jughead was much more muscular than the one in the Jason mask who had a much slimer build. This could also maybe be evidence that its possible these really are murders going on. I mean if the first guy really was killed then obviously he can’t be in the second video. To be honest I don’t have any idea who could behind the Jason mask, at all.  

Ok but who do I think is behind the Cliff mask. Well here I do have a theory and it ties in another of the plotlines from this episode. The tickle ring one. I don’t think its a coincidence that its in this episode that Terry, the one who approached Kevin and who films them, suddenly turned violent. I mean up until now he’s come across as a decent guy by Riverdale standards. Now he’s threatening to break peoples fingers and issuing threats. Also it is worth noting that when Jughead says maybe the voyeur is a film maker the very next scene is the one where Terry comes out the room and pays Kevin, Fangs and Reggie. The writers are being very obvious with the message here I mean its like Jughead: Maybe its a film maker? Riverdale: Look its a film maker! I mean they couldn’t be more obvious if they put a neon sign above Terry’s head that said guilty. So is there anymore evidence to suggest Terry is the one in the Cliff mask? Well I grabbed some more screenshots. 

 So we have that same old problem of the qualtiy of the images in these tapes that are being left aren’t great, it does take me back to the good old days of vcr oh the nostalgia but I’m going off track. Despite the bad quality we can still get some clues from the image. Now it is a little differcult because of the lighting in the video tape is bad but take a look at the top two images in the grid above. As it was with my Donna behind the Betty mask theory its the hair that I think is the biggest clue here. There isn’t really anyone else we’ve seen in the show that has this style of hair where its longer on top and fades at the sides. I mean I don’t know about you guys but I do think the hair of the guy in the Cliff mask is very similar to Terry’s. Now obviously we can’t just convict a man based on his hair style. If we look at the two bottom images. I know it is hard to see the video tape image all that well but I have watched it over and over on slow motion and they do seem to be similar in build and height. The other problem we have comparing the two images is that while its useful that we’ve got a shot of Terry standing next to someone seated like the people in the tape, the sofa that Fangs is sitting on is much lower than the chair the masked Jason is sitting on, plus you have to take the height of the individuals themselves into consideration. But taking all that into consideration lets look at a bigger image...

As I said the difficulty we have is that Fangs is sitting on a much lower surface than the masked Jason. But lets have a bit of fun and do some estimations. Lets say the blue line on the picture on the right is the approximate height the seat of the chair masked Jason is sitting on. The black line is the length of Fang’s torso from his seat to his head. The green line is the height at which the top of his head would be if he was sitting on a higher surface. Now I know this is very much an estimation and not all that accurate its more just to give us an idea. But I think Fangs and the masked Jason seem to be of similar height so when we compare the two images we can see that the height difference between masked Cliff  and a seated individual is roughly the same height difference as Terry when standing next to a seated individual. Also something else that could suggest Terry might be involved is that he would be able to get the actors who are playing the victims. He already has a client pool he could pull from. It wouldn’t be that much of a leap to think that he might approach one of his tickle boys and say do you want to get a little extra cash? I’m working on another project if you’re interested. 

What if it isn’t Terry though. Who else could it be? Well the other person we are shown acting suspect in this episode is Mr Honey is shown to be someone who visits the Scarlet Room and it seems he does this regularly. I did think there was something about the way the masked Cliff moved that reminded me of Mr Honey but in my opinion I don’t think the hair style or height of the indivdual fits with Mr Honey as well as Terry. Also we know the person in the mask is imitating Cliff and so is mimicing the way Cliff would move which I think just happens to be similar to Mr Honey. However I don’t think that necessarily means Mr Honey is innocent and I’m going to cover my theory on that in a bit. The other person I thought it could potentially be is Bret. As I said in my theory about the Stonies having something to do with the tapes, we don’t know when these tapes were filmed or even where they were filmed. It could be that this was filmed before Bret was arrested. However while I think height wise it could be Bret the hair style is completely different from Bret’s who has much longer hair.   

Now going back to my previous theory post where I said I was pretty certain that it would turn out to be Donna behind the tapes, you could say that this newest tape derails that theory as there is no link between Cheryl and Donna. So why would she bother making a re-enactment of Cheryl’s twin brother’s murder? Donna might have had a motive with the previous video depicting Betty and Jughead its no secret she hates them both. But on the contrary I actually would argue that the appearance of this tape further confirms my theory. While it’s true there is no link between Donna and Cheryl there is a link between Donna and the Jason Blossom murder. When Jughead wrote his first draft for the Baxter Brother novel, the one that originally won him the contract it was based on Jason’s murder, it was called The Boy in the River. Later they tell Jughead that they don’t think its good enough after all and he starts writing one based on the Black Hood instead. But he finds his original draft based on Jason in a envelope saying ready for publish. He discovers that it has been rewritten but that it is the same story. Dupont later tells him that all of his classmates had a go at rewriting it, this includes Donna. This means that Donna became real familiar with Jason’s story. The premise of my original theory was that I believed that Donna was upset that she wasn’t able to commit the perfect murder. Especially as she was so close, I mean Jughead says himself that it would have been perfect if it weren’t for the fact that he didn’t actually die. I think Donna then decided to have another go at the perfect murder. A do over so to speak. Like I said we don’t know when that first copy cat murder video was filmed. If it was quite a while ago then its possible that Donna believed she had got away with it and so she looked at other imperfect murders that she could make perfect. I mean if you think about it like Jughead’s attempted murder Jason’s murder was very nearly perfect. Cliff so very nearly got away with it, from killing Jason after he was already reported missing by Cheryl, to having FP clean up and then take the wrap for it. The only reason he didn’t get away with it was because of one tiny detail, the fact that the footage of the actual murder was out there and the USB was found. If my theory is right then I think Donna is only going to continue looking for murders to redo. I think she’s going to become addicted to it and we’ll start to see more and more of these copycat murders. Also I had a thought about why if these are real murders there aren’t any bodies. We’ve been told on a couple of occasions that you can dissolve a body with Lye. As Donna says to Betty ‘No body, No crime.’ It’s possible she’s been dissolving the bodies with lye so there isn’t anything to find. Also if she is picking the victims right then there won’t be any missing person reports espicially if she is choosing people from out of town and then releasing the videos in Riverdale. The authorities might not be making the connection. 

So if I’m sticking with my its Donna theory how do I explain that it definitely wasn’t Donna in the latest video. I mean it was without a doubt a male right? Well we know that Donna works with a group. She’s the mastermind but she needs her disciples. I think she started this with the Stonies where they released the videos of peoples houses, most likely this started out as a prank. We know that the Stonies liked to pull some pretty crazy pranks like locking people in coffins overnight, we also know there seemed to be a little bit of a rivalry between Stonewall and Riverdale high schools. We also know that they were filming their fellow classmates, it wasn’t just Betty and Jughead and Moose. There were tons of illegally recorded tapes it seemed like quite the extensive operation. We also know that some of those tapes ended up in the Scarlet Room. But Donna’s got a problem now. Her disciples have either left the country are dead or are in jail. So she needs to find new ones. I think she’s formed a new group and I think this group consists of Terry and Mr Honey. I think Terry helps out by getting the victims. He’s got a wide pool of employee’s who do films for him, he could easily get people from out of town who would sit down in a chair and be tied up and think nothing of it just assuming its part of some weird kink, because I refuse to believe innocent tickle porn is that only kind of video that man shoots. I also think that he was the one in the Cliff mask. As for Mr Honey I’m not as sure on what his role could be. But we do know that Donna has worked with a teacher for nefarious reasons in the past so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that she could be doing it again. He could possibly be the delivery guy. Maybe he’s the one going around putting the tapes on doorsteps now. It would be much less suspicious for someone to see Mr Honey about Riverdale than Donna or Terry. He could also be dropping some off at the Scarlet Room. Speaking of I do think this could be where they all met/ connected. I mean as a film maker it wouldn’t be unusual for Terry to sell some videos to the store. We know Mr Honey visits the Scarlet Room. As for Donna while Jughead assumes the tape of him and Betty was put there by Bret, Donna had admitted to seeing the tape so its just as likely that it could have been her that put it there. 

Maple Rum Snoosefest.

So I figured I’d cover Veronica’s and Cheryl’s Maple Rum storyline here as to be honest I don’t have alot to say about it. Unlike the tickle ring stroyline which could potentially have some relevance to the main plot, I just don’t see how this one fits in. To be honest I find the whole thing boring. I mean its just another plotline with Veronica being at war with her Father. Plus the whole Veronica thinks her dad has changed because he spared someone only for us to find out he had murdered someone. Like we get it Hiram is a horrible, manipulative git you don’t need to keep showing us that at this point. I suppose the purpose of it was also to show that Hiram’s illness is really starting to have an effect on him because he never would have been beat up like that before, its this idea that Hiram is finally starting to get weaker so we might be coming up to his downfall. Also I found the whole scene after the thugs break into the Maple Club and Cheryl is all like poor momsie and Veronica is all apologetic to Penelope absolutely hilarious. Like this woman is a murderer, you had her on trial a few episodes ago and then you locked her up and now have her in forced labour as punishment but all of a sudden we’re suppose to be concerned for her. We’re suppose to believe that these two girls are concerned for her? Really? Being brutally honest here I kinda feel the same way about Penelope as I do Hiram which is I just don’t care. I don’t care about the rum storyline, I don’t care that Hiram is ill and I don’t care if Penelope nearly gets beat up by thugs, I just don’t have any sympathy for either of those characters seeing as they’ve been painted as truly terrible people and parents so far so why is the show trying to get me to care about them now. Sorry but its just not going to happen.

Barchie 

Ok so the other main plotline and the one I think its the one most people are talking about. Now let me start out by saying that I don’t think for one second that Barchie is over. In fact I think this is just the beginning. The episode in regards to Barchie pretty much went the way we all thought it was going to go with Archie being much more willing to persue something than Betty. So lets go through all their scenes and analyse every little moment of them because you know its fun. 

We first see Barchie away from each other. Betty is refusing to get caught up in another mystery and while some of this might be because she’s got too much else on her mind with what happened with Archie, I do think some of it is that she is just tired of it all, she’s going to Yale in a few months and I think she wants to just leave all that murder stuff behind her and focus on her future outside of Riverdale. When we first see Archie we see him playing his guitar and it looks like he might already possibly be working on the song for Betty. While he is playing he flashes back to the kiss. He then walks over and looks at the form for the Naval Academy and then out the window towards Betty’s room. I do think this is suppose to show that Archie is torn. He’s torn about whether to go to the Navy and hes torn about what to do about his feelings for Betty. I also think the two are linked, he unsure of whether to join the Navy because of Betty. Also I think the writers have left another little clue for us in this scene. When Archie picks up the form underneath it are some dominoes. I do think this is symbolic of the situation they find themselves in now. That kiss was the first domino and  they’ve knocked it over, now thanks to the domino effect all the others are going to come crashing down too, its only a matter of time. 

After Archie looks out his window we switch over to see Betty in her room reading her diary. This entry is talking about the day she first fell in love with Archie and we get a flashback to Mini Barchie waving at each other through their windows so know we’ve got another iconic window scene to add to our gif sets. It’s worth noting that while reading this entry she is smiling so we know she is thinking of the memory fondly. Howver when Alice comes in and they start talking about the future and getting teary eyed, Alice asks what Betty could have to cry about it Betty flashes back to the kiss and gets teary. It shows that while Betty might be looking back on the past fonly she has lot of guilt and uncertainty about the more recent kiss. She’s very confused about her feelings. 

The next time we see them is the first Bunker scene. Here we see them laying on the bed together and they start out by telling the other where their significant other is at. Betty tells Archie that Jugead is with Charles and Archie replies that Veronica is with Cheryl. I think in this moment wher ethey are lying close together and its intimate and all these feelings for each other are welling up they bring up Jughead and Veronica to remind each other that there are two other people involved in this, who are going to be affected by this. It’s at this moment that Betty asks what they are doing there? She is trying to figure out her feelings and what all of it means, whether its real, she’s despesrately trying to find the answers. But Archie doesn’t have an answer for her as he as just as confused by situation as she is, there is one thing he is sure of though and that’s this feels nice. Betty then admits that yes it is but that they can’t do anything more than this. This is very telling because it tells us that not only is Betty thinking about doing more with Archie she clearly wants to. It almost like shes saying it as a caution to Archie and herself, she saying this is nice I like this but we have to be careful because it would be far to easy to get lost in each other and go further. I did think Archie’s response to this was kinda funny, he’s like we’re just hanging out. It is a typical Archie/ teenage boy response and again its very telling because it actually shows that one Archie is a little in denial here, there is obviously more going on here than them ‘just hanging out’. It also seems like Archie is trying to find a reason for them to keep doing it by painting it as being more innocent than it actually is. He trying to justify them being alone together by thinking well we’re not doing anything romantic or anything. But while it may seem fairly innocent, I mean they are just laying on a bed, on top of the covers, with their clothes on, the reality is they are both having romantic thoughts about each other and this moment is actually a very intimate moment on an emotional level. The might not be physically cheating but they are being emotionally unfaithful and deep down they both know it. I think this is why Betty says she loves Jughead at this moment. She needs to say it out loud because she’s getting overwhelmed by her feelings for Archie, she needs to remind herself of Jughead who she could really hurt. Archie’s reply is actually really interesting firstly because he pauses for quite a while before answering, his response doesn’t come automatically to him but also because all though he also says he loves Veronica he adds a but. Have you ever heard that saying that nothing a person says before the word but really counts? I think its from Game of thrones. I think that is relevant here Archie says he loves Veronica but this feels nice. So if we’re saying nothing before the word but counts then what Archie is really saying is this feels nice. He also adds a question to the end of it. This feels nice, right? Again this is important because it is telling us that Archie needs that confirmation from Betty. He needs to know she feels the same that he’s not in it alone. Although Betty doesn’t give a verbal response to this I do think we can safely say she does feel the same as we see her turn to look at him and they spend some time staring into each others eyes before taking each others hands. I think in this moment they needed to make some kind of physical contact with each other, their feelings are drowning them but they know that at any moment they could knock some more dominoes and cross the line. But handholding is safe right? I mean they’re just hanging out right?

The next time we see Archie he has gone to his Father’s grave. Like I said I do get this feeling that Archie is just really confused and at a loss. He talks about how he wonders what advice his father would give him. That it would probably something like follow your heart. Archie admits that he doesn’t know which way it is pointing and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He is at a crossroads right now. He’s got several paths in front of him that he could take and he doesn’t know which one is the right one, and even scarier than that he doesn’t know where any of them lead, what could be hidden round the bend? Does he stay with Veronica, something he is familiar with and a person he loves and has a lot of history with? Does he stay in Riverdale after high school and focus on the center and his dad’s business? Does he persue his feelings for Betty another person who he has alot of history with but who he now has new romantic feelings for? Does he join the Naval Academy and get an education? There are so many possibilties in front of him but so many unknowns too. Its no wonder why he’s really missing his dad right now as thats the person he would ordinarily talk this all out with. 

And then we were back with Betty. Again she is reading her diary, this time its about the proposal. She describes this day as the happiest day of her life, which is just super adorable. She again flashbacks to Mini Barchie and the proposal and can I just say that red heart ring is so cute and I do think it might pop up at some point again, they did take special effort to give us a close up of it and I can’t help but wonder what happened to it. Did Archie still give it to Betty anyway as a kind of promise ring? Did he keep and its in a draw somewhere? Who knows but I do think itll eventually end up with Betty. Kevin interrupts Betty’s thoughts when he asks if she ok and when she answers yes she was just thinking, he asks if she was thinking about simpler times to which Betty agrees. The thing is if we look at it from Betty’s point of view it really was a simpler time. Back then she was certain about what she wanted. She wrote in her diary ‘I know I want to marry Archie but I know we’re too young.’ Little Betty knew exactly how she felt and exactly what she wanted. There was no boyfriend whose heart she could break, there was no best friend who she could utterly destroy with her betrayal. There was only her and Archie. Fast forward ten years and shes in a very different situation then what her younger self thought. As a child she believed this was the time when she and Archie would be getting engaged, when they were 18 and in high school. Now all those feelings she felt then are back but its far from a simple situation. 

I don’t think its at all surprising that when we return to Archie he is working on a song. Archie has always tried to work his feelings out through songwriting and music. We can see him smiling throughout the entire process of wrinting this song. Now I was going to wait and talk about the meaning of the song later when going through the second bunker scene but I actually think we should cover it now. I mean if Archie has written a song for Betty then obviously we need to study every single line in great detail just because what else would we do with it? So lets first start with the title. According to the video I found on youtube its called ‘Carry the Torch’. Now if this is the official title then this is very intersting as the phase means to love something for a long period of time. Us Barchie shippers have been saying all along that Barchie never lost their feelings for each other and I do think this confirms that. The first line of the song is ‘There’s no warning when everything changes’, pretty obvious that Archie is talking about the sudden emergence of their feelings for each other here. I also think its interesting that for Archie everything has changed. Literally nothing is the same for him anymore, not his feelings for Veronica, not his plans for the future, his feelings for Betty, literally everything is up in the air. 

‘You let down your guard and I saw something strange, I thought she’s not made for this world and neither am I.’ The part about her letting down her guard I think is in reference to how previously in season 1 after he broke her heart she became more guarded with Archie to the point where when he tried to talk about his feelings with her in the season 1 finale she shut him down. Now though she’s let that guard down, she’s kissed him and she’s met with him in the bunker, she admitted she was feeling something for him. As for the part about seeing something strange and thinking she’s not made for this world I again think this is a throw back to how he used to see her. I’ve said before that I always thought a huge part of the reason why Archie rejected Betty in season 1 is because of how he saw her as this perfect girl next door and so much more than he ever would be. I think he’s now realised thats not true. That she’s not the same person anymore and neither is he. The line about not being made for this world is a little more ambiguos to me but I think he means they aren’t made to fit into a box, they both a little different. I mean I think they have had similar paths, they both have struggled with a dark side that was brought into exisitence by the same man, the black hood. Archie’s anger at the black hood lead him down some pretty dark paths, Betty got the calls from the black hood that also took her down a dark path.They were both manipulated by someone they thought they could trust. Archie was manipulated by Hiram and Betty was manipulated by Chic. They have both lost their Fathers suddenly. I think Archie is trying to say that whereas before he saw them on different levels now he recognises that they are on the same, that they match. It could also mean that they aren’t meant for the world of Riverdale, this world that’s steeped in blood and violence, Archie has always seen their relationship as being something pure, that childhood innocence, maybe he’s saying that their love is being blocked because of this world where they can so easily be corrupted. How he feels for Betty is so pure that it doesn’t belong in this world of evil and corruption its on another level it doesn’t fit in with this world, its just too good if I’m making sense here. 

‘Cause you make me wanna be stronger than I am.’ Another fairly obvious one Archie wants to be good enough for Betty he wants to be worthy of her. She inspires him to better himself and again we this alot throughout their relationship. She supports his music and encourages him to persue it, we know that story of how she helped him get caught up as children so he wouldn’t have to repeat a grade, we also know that she helped him with his schoolwork when he got out of prison. She always believes in him and he always listens to her advice and lets her guide him. The next line is ‘Maybe I’m reaching, misplacing a feeling. There’s no way to know but to try.’  This line is really showing Archie’s confusion. But it also tells us alot about how Archie is thinking. He recognises that isn’t certain of his feelings that he just be mistaking nostalgia but he also says the only way they can know is to try. This is kinda what I’ve been saying myself. The only way Barchie are going to get closure is if they explore their relationship otherwise they are always going to wonder, they’ll always be a what if. It seems from these lyrics that Archie thinks this too that he wants to try and see what they could be. 

Ok I do want to point something out real quick here. We know that Archie didn’t sit down and write this song all in one session. This song was written over a couple of days and as I said I do think Archie uses music to sort through his feelings. All of the lines above come from the first verse of two. Here’s the thing there is a huge change between the two verses. In the first it is very much about new, tentative and unsure feelings. However as you will see as we go through the second verse it is much more sure and certain. Archie has made up his mind about what he wants and its reflected in this second verse. “So give me tonight, I don’t know much but I knoww this feels right.’ Archie might be a bit clueless most of the time, he might make mistakes and he might not have all the answers but in all that uncertainty one thing he does know, beyond a shadow of doubt that what he feels for Betty is right. I mean if you compare the line ‘maybe I’m reaching mistaking a feeling’ with this line ‘but I know this feels right.’ This is such a huge turn around. Those lines couldn’t be more different. From the line give me tonight it does make me think that the first verse was written sometime after the first bunker visit but before he goes to see Betty and arranges to meet her at the bunker tomorrow evening. I think the second was written the next day when he knew that evening he was going to sing the song for Betty. In that time he had recgnised that his feeling were real and that they felt right. 

‘So give me tonight, If you carry the torch, I’d follow the light, I’d follow the light.’ Here again Archie repeats give me tonight. I think he understands that Betty is unsure and so he’s asking her to hear him out, to keep an open mind to come to this conversation he wants to have. It seems to me like Archie very much wants to talk about how they are feeling and have that conversation that lets be honest they should have had the last time they kissed. When he says ‘if you carry the torch I’ll follow the ligh’t this is huge. He is literally saying that if she says that she has feelings for him, if she wants him too then he’s all in. He wants to be with her, its as plain as day in those lyrics. Like without a doubt if she had said she wanted to be with him he would break up with Veronica and be with Betty and does come across as what he wants. 

One thing I will say real quick is that I do think Archie needs to break up with Veronica anyway. Irregardless of whether Betty is willing to be in a relationship with him or not if he is having feelings as strong as what he is portraying in this song that its not right for him to continue with Veronica. As much as it would suck for her and as much as I’d hate to see her hurting, I think Veronica is an amazing woman and person and deserves a heck of a lot better than to have someone settle for her.

When we go back to Betty the diary entry of the day is talking about how they used to listen to records together. Again I don’t think its a coincidence that right after we see Archie working on a song Betty flashes back to them listening to music, music has always been a predominant part of their relationship. Again child Betty describes it as the best day ever. Betty seems to be trying to work through her feelings by looking back at old memories everytime we see her shes got one of her diaries in her hand. What I do think is interesting is that while Archie seems to be looking forward, looking to their furture Betty has chosen to look backwards. I kinda get the sense that Betty is frightened of the future and so her tactic for dealing with that is to just not think about all the much. So she’s getting lost in the past. Archie then shows up and can I just say I love Archie he’s so adorable, like he literally spent the entire episode writing songs and trying to think of ways to hang out with Betty. When he says that he’s there to help her with the year book it is so obvious that he is looking for any excuse to be around her. Definitely had th esame vibe about it as ‘we’re just hanging out.’ Bless ya cotton socks Arch. Anyway Betty sees right through Archie and points out that he’s not there for the yearbook. This is when Archie confesses that he can’t stop thinking about her. She says that they can’t do this but then after looking at him for a moment continues with ‘not here’. Naturally Archie gets very excited at this little bit of hope and Betty admits she can’t stop thinking about him either. Now the next couple of lines of dialogue I think are very important. They arrange to meet at the Bunker but Betty doesn’t want to meet that night but the next. The reasoning she gives for this is so that they have time to think about it and ‘make sure this is what we really want.’ The reason why this is such a big deal is because of the implications behind it. Betty is basically saying that in this moment at least she wants to be with Archie, this means that in this moment she had pretty much decided she was going to leave Jughead for Archie. The intersting thing is that she asks for that delay. I think some of it is yes so that she herself can be sure that it is what she wants and that she isn’t going to change her mind. But more than that I think she wants to make sure Archie won’t change is mind. I mean look at it from her perspective he has broken her heart before. Not only that but after they kissed last time when she next sees him after that night he is kissing Veronica and its obvious their back together, we know that Barchie hadn’t talked about the kiss at this point and they shared a look when Archie spotted her and realised she had seen him kiss Veronica. This must have hurt Betty too its possible she hadn’t spoken to Archie yet because she was working up the courage, unfortunately Archie could have seen the fact that she hadn’t tried to talk about it with him as indifference on her part which is part of the reason why he goes back to Veronica. I think Betty is thinking ok he says he can’t stop thinking about me now but lets wait a bit and see if that cools off and it changes because if we start something up for real then not only have they hurt the people they care about for nothing but Betty’s heart will be broken again. 

Betty continues to read her diaries in the meantime and the next entry we get is acutally really telling given what comes next. In this entry Betty is talking about how much she hates Cheryl for kissing Archie. This is relevant because unlike the others this isn’t some happy memory of childhood love, in this memory she is remembering what it feels like to see someone you love kiss someone else. I suspect she is then recognising that this feeling is what Jughead and Veronica will go through if she does persue things with Archie. These thoughts and feelings are fresh in her mind when Cheryl comes in. This part of the episode does seem to have split some opinions in the fandom and caused a bit of a stir. Alot of people feel like it was really out of character for Cheryl to say that what Betty feels for Archie isn’t real and that she is in love with the idea of him considering she was the one saying that it looked pretty real to her just a few episodes ago. I agree with that I was very confuse myself by it when I first watched the episode. But since then I’ve gone back and watched the scene again and I’ve got a few things I think we should think about with this scene. Firstly we need to remember that Cheryl unlike the audience, doesn’t have all the facts. She doesn’t know about the kiss, she doesn’t know that Betty fantasized that dance, she doesn’t know about them meeting in the bunker. Betty straight up denied anything had happened between them when Cheryl asks. I think in these instances its really important that we look at it from the character’s pov. We can actually learn alot from studying Cheryl’s facial expressions during this scene. They are very subtle but if you look closely enough it can make you understand Cheryl’s thought process also it gives us an excuse to look at Cheryl’s beautiful face so its win win. This is Cheryl’s face when she first realises that she was right and Betty is having real feelings for Archie. 

She is clearly excited and happy at the news. This is much more in line with what you’d expect from Cheryl after her comments about it looking real. However her demenour changes after Betty says she thinks a part of her had been in love with Archie for the last ten years and she suddenly looks alot more sombre and well sad to be honest... 

  So why the sudden change? Well her expression also seems really sympathetic to me as well as sad and her expression makes alot more sense when you see what she is seeing. She is looking at Betty in this moment and this is how Betty is looking at that moment. 

I mean look at her, she is so devastated, she is clearly hurting and struggling. Now again we have to look at this from Cheryl’s pov. While she might put on an act alot of the time and while its true she seems to enjoy chaos, she isn’t a heartless person. In fact on many occasions we have seen a softer side to her an example of this with Betty is when Betty suspected that her dad was a serial killer she went to Cheryl and she was supportive of Betty and gave her some really good advice. Well they might not be bosom buds Betty is still Cheryl’s cousin, her family. Again if we look at it from her point of view not knowing about the kiss or any of that then Cheryl likely sees it as Betty has started to have feelings and the idea of it is really upsetting Betty. If Cheryl did know about the kiss she might have given different advice but she doesn’t. It’s also possible that Cheryl may be feeling some level of responisibilty for Betty feeling upset now because she was the one who put the idea in her head that she had real feelings for Archie. I actually think Cheryl is trying to find a way to cheer Betty up, to comfort her when she gives this explanation that she’s just in love with the idea of Archie. 

I went to a body language class once and the guy told us that when a person lies or is trying to tap into their imagination they look up and to the right because its the creative side of our brians. If a person looks up and to the left they are trying to tap into the memory side of their brains. The interesting thing about Cheryl in this scen is she actually does both, her eyes flick from one side to another. Now I’m not an expert in body language I only ever went to the one workshop that covered the basics but to me this would suggest that Cheryl was searching for something to say here whether it comes from her imagination or a memory doesn’t matter she just wants to think of something to say that will cheer Betty up that will make it better. 

If you look at Cheryl’s face right before she says false and then goes on to explain that she’s in love with the idea and that what she has with jughead is real, to me it has that lightbulb look. You know the one I mean, when you’ve just had an idea pop into your head? Yeah I think this is Cheryl’s that’s it, that’s the solution to the problem moment. You can see it alot better when you watch the scene you can see the moment where it pops into her head. So I do think this was more Cheryl’s miguided way of cheering Betty up. I mean like I said she doesn’t even have all the information about the situation all she knows is that Betty is feeling hella upset right now. I think Cheryl meant well but that she didn’t give the best advice at this moment. Also there’ another much simpler reason for why Cheryl said this. The writers. I think they want to draw this Barchie storyline out and play on the angst a bit and so they are using Cheryl here to throw a spanner in the works and delay Barchie getting together. 

However that doesn’t mean that what Cheryl said doesn’t have some merit. In particular I think the line about being in love with the idea of the perfect romance is important. You know I actually half agree with Cheryl here. Only half though because I think this used to be true in the past. I think back in season 1 when Betty was more innocent and naive she was in love with the idea of the perfect romance with Archie. However now, when you think about it, it’s not possible for her to be. Mostly because she can’t have the perfect romance with Archie. By this point Archie has already broken her heart once, what’s perfect about that? They have already kissed and then hidden it from their significant others while pretending it didn’t happen in season 2, again what’s perfect about that? Now they’ve kissed again only this time its worse because they’ve actually cheated and now they know that if they do decide to be together alot of people are going to get hurt, yeah there’s definitely nothing perfect about that. My point is their relationship is already flawed, its already gone through the wringer and they already bear the scars from it, its not perfect so how can she be in love with the idea of a perfect love story with Archie? It not perfect but it is real. I need to point out as well that in this scene Betty admits that she has been in love with Archie the whole time. Yet when she talks about Jughead she says ‘I love Jughead’ not in love, love. I do think they’ve done this deliberately, this difference between the two phrases but I haven’t figured out what the significance of it is yet.

So now we’ve gotten to the second bunker scene. It starts off with Archie playing the song for Betty. What I do think is significant here is that whilst he is playing she flashes back to that scene where he was playing for them all and she gets overwhelmed and runs off. Like before when she was reading the diary entry about Cheryl she has remembered a time when she felt hurt and in pain because the person she loved had kissed someone else (Veronica in the cupboard this time) again she is thinking about how much that hurt her and how that’s how Jughead and Veronica are going to feel on top of that she’s got everything Cheryl said spinning through her mind and all just overwhelms her and she was to stop Archie. Another thing worth pointing out is when Archie asks if she doesn’t like the song she replies ‘it’s us, it’s us’ again here she is admitting that they are real, they are right because that’s what the song is about, so if she thinks the song is them that she must believe that. Yet I think in the end as she says she doesn’t want to hurt or lose Jughead. Ultimately that’s what it comes down to. It’s not that she doesn’t have feelings for Archie, its not that she doesn’t think they are right for each other, it not even that she doesn’t want to be with Archie, she just doesn’t want to hurt Jughead. She doesn’t want to face the consequences and so instead she just ends instead trying to convince them both that its just nostalgia and fear of things changing. 

The immediate scene after shows that Archie is still playing the song and his mother comments how it must have been written for someone special, she assumes that its for Veronica. This is the moment when Archie says that he wants to join the Naval Academy and says he thinks it’ll be best to just have a fresh start. I mean this poor guy is so heartbroken that he’s decided that the only thing left to do is join the Navy. I do think being in the Navy is going to drastically change Archie in some ways it might be good for him as it will give him more control over his emotions and discipline but it also might make him a much harder person. We won’t know for sure until after the time jump but I do feel like we should prepare ourselves for seeing a very different Archie. Again though we are being shown Archie looking forwards to the future as a way of dealing with his current situation. 

In contrast Betty is still focussed on the past, mainly on burning it away. But I do think its interesting that while one of them is obsessing over the future as an escape the other is losing themselves in the past in an attempt to deal. The thing is though neither one of them is focussing on the present on what’s going on right in the moment and so I feel like they are missing out. Its obvious that in this scene Betty still trying to convince herself that her feelings for Archie aren’t real. When her mother asks what shes doing she says she’s ‘exorcising her demons’ and then later after Alice points out that they are her childhood memories and that they are precious, Betty replies that they are just memories. I do think she is trying really hard to convince herself that what Cheryl said was true. I do think its interesting that its Alice in this scene that saves the last diary. I do think this diary is going to be an important plot point. I am very curious about whats in it. But I do find it ironic that Alice was the one in 3x01 who was trying to convince Betty to burn all her diaries but now shes the one trying to save them. Also it could be significant that Alice is the one to do this considering her past. When she was Betty’s age she too was in love with someone, FP. She too, like Betty is now, decided to not face these feelings and instead went for the safer option in Hal. As a result alot of bad things happened to her. While her life wasn’t necessarily terrible there was still something missing for her, the same can be said of FP. That decision to not face there feelings for each other had a direct impact on there lives. It had a domino effect. Like Betty and Archie Alice and FP had other opportunities to be honest with themselves and each other but didn’t. 

As I said before I don’t think that Barchie’s story is over yet. There are too many things left undone. We still haven’t heard the whole song in the show yet. I do think its possible that Veronica will somehow discover the song, whether because she hears a recording of it, or hears Archie playing it or becuse Mary asks her what she thought about it. Then one of two things will happen. Either Archie will be faced with the awkward situation where he either has to admit the song isn’t about her or pretend it is and play it for her. Or when she hears it Veronica realises right away that it isn’t about her. Maybe Jughead also hears the song and also gets suspicious. I also think that diary is going to come back into it, maybe Betty reads something in it that makes her realise Archie is the one she wants and so she rushes over to see him and tell him only to find that he has already left, she gets to his room and there is a letter for her on his desk. Inside the envelope is an explanation that he’s left for the Navy, a loves confession and the heart ring is in there too. Then we’ll have the 5 year time jump where we find out they’ve been longing for each other the entire time. Oh the angst. The other thing is that Jughead and Veronica still haven’t found out about the kiss and with these video tapes popping up all over the place its only a matter of time before that one comes out. Also its worth saying that technically Archie and Betty still haven’t had a proper conversation about their feelings. While they were better this time around and they did touch on the fact they couldn’t stop thinking about each other their conversations were more about what they didn’t want then what they did. They don’t want to hurt Jughead and Veronica. So at the moment they are kinda at a stalmate.   

Well thank you to everyone who read all the way to the end of this. I know it got real long, like I said a lot of thoughts about everything. Again I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next. I’m not sure how much information we are going to get from the next episode as its going to be a revenge fantasy from a story Jughead is writing but you never know, either way I’m still excited for the episode. So until next time.                         

#riverdale #barchie #riverdale theories

[incarnateirony]

Re: Primordial or Universal Concepts in Supernatural

Let it be said I’m going to try to cover this as... unilaterally and streamlined as I can. I’ve just come to realize, recently, that ideas like void, oblivion, or godhood tend to sit in an area of abstract that people haven’t really sat down and thought about. Most people remember their parents reading the bible about god splitting the waters and making light and darkness, and that’s it, that’s their comprehension of mythology on nothingness. Which is... fair. 

But as Supernatural delves deeper and deeper into the primordial: God, Amara, The Shadow, The Empty, and Beyond -- so much as what seemed like a perfectly Reasonable(TM) statement from me about Dreaming In Nothing really seemed to blow out a valve on some people and I had to step back and go, Why Is That? I mean, our show already covers universes that aren’t even remotely attached to our center one (French Mistake vs MainVerse, as opposed to Endverse or AUverse which are timeline divergent), but I think people have had a hard time stacking up some mythological concepts our team is employing.

And it’s not just Random Speculation Of Intertext I Like that they’re employing. Some are in name, some are in direct concept, some are in... episode titles. Be it directly in “Ouroboros”, or more abstractly in Optimism vs Nihilism. 

I may employ a few reference visuals and will definitely pull corresponding quotes from dogma(s), but let it be said -- these ideas are not even necessarily unique. I am not going to deep dive into the specifics of these beyond what is needed, because while I’d love to say “it’s obvious they’re using pure hermetics” from my angle, as a hermeticist, with recent titles and themes -- they might not be. They might be mixing and matching and just employing sweeping Omnimyth structure, such as The Hero With 1000 Faces but in mytharc form rather than just hero journey. (Also, read Campbell’s work, cuz reasons.)

THAT SAID.

I’ll carry away immediately into an aside that it was once kinda the swaggy thing to consider Hermeticism as “optimism” and gnosticism as “pessimism,” and they were parallel but not identical philosophies to discussing the origins of the universe. Both philosophies basically go on that the soul can only escape material bondage through deep and special, personal intuitive knowledge. There’s no one path through any of these, they both have respective denominations -- they are more philosophy than hard dogma and are designed for debate and, in some facets, scientific testing and comparison. That said, there’s some paradoxes, which is why I’m not gonna sit here needling any specific vein. 

And you know, they touch on other ideas -- Qabbalism, for example; a great many creator myths, and so forth. Most of these resonate from an idea. Once there was nothing, and now there’s something, so we have to figure out how the fuck we got to all this Something out of Nothing. And I mean even if you say “big bang,” a related question in this philosophy is okay, but why was there the infinitely compressed boomy dot and why did it bang, because if there was nothing, how did nothing bang.

You see the catch-22. 

SO LET’S TALK ABOUT NOTHING.

I’m going to use the Qabbalistic concepts, but these are in heavy discussion, only slightly divergent, in a variety of these discussions. Change the label as you will, there’s really only so many ways to discuss Nothing.

When we see The Empty in the show, we see black space. Which is fair. We, the viewers, are in a three dimensional world viewing light pouring out of our TV screen, and not in an indefinable void of any concepts, much less space.

Both of these fields use the Qabbalistic tree of life as their way to sort of like, grok how things go from nothing to everything, but even the tree means Something is there. We’ll get to the tree in a bit.

Before it all though, there is Ain. It’s negative existence, an absolute nothingness, sometimes called The Prime Cause or the Originless Origin of all manifestation. It’s not knowable or describable and anything you can say about it is not. In fact, that word pasta is itself still too defined. You feel me?

But once you creep past that, you talk about the Ain Soph. Ain means “Not.” Soph means “End.” Ain Soph is nothing but it’s an infinite nothing, infinite space, and eternity. That is to say, it’s gained some sort of cohesive definition while still being nothing. It’s called the Old One Of All Old Ones and is a total absolute primal darkness. Darkness being relative, of course, because we haven’t comprehended actual things like dark and light, but we’re getting close enough it applies. But it’s sort of a unified form of nothing-everything.

After that you hit the Ain Soph Aur. Aur just means “Light.” And once you hit the Aur, you’ve hit infinite light.

Once we start breaking free of the infinite-nothing-never-was-always-void-never, we discuss Ain Soph Aur as retracted into a point. There’s somehow substance in the nothing. This brings forth the Crown of the Tree of Life, where pretty much all other points in the universe descend. 

Here, it splits off into pillars. To the left, the female form, judgment. The negative. Not negative like evil; negative like... magnetism. Atomic structure. Then you have Mercy, the male form, on the right, or the “atomic positive”. Between them is a neutral pillar of mildness and balance, and this makes the cap of your tree. There’s a hidden, or if you will, “unofficial” point called the abyss, which is a realm of ideals. Beneath the abyss is what starts to be considered “reality.” It’s the universe coming together and taking form in its many dimensions, thoughts, feelings, experiences, shapes and forms. Above that, you’re in sort of... primitive state of Ideas(TM).

Now, again, I’m using Qabbalism as a base, I’m not saying this is like... specifically nail on head what the powers that be used. 

Now, Qabbalism or not, general creation myth or not, I really don’t believe they’ve hardily stuck through and through top to bottom of running Supernatural on a tree of life path. That would be insanity to suggest in retrograde. A good deal of its existing concepts before inclusion of these primal ideas, in our show, plug well INTO it in retcon or retrograde, but we know pretty much for a fact that when Kripke threw down his little draft about two dudes and a car, he wasn’t really thinking about The Concept Of True God And Oblivion. So I’m going to spare that waterfall of fuckery, perhaps for another day.

But we do know several things about SPNVerse:

There is a definite point of Empty/Nothing

There is a point that Empty starts getting feisty, but is itself separate from the creator

There is a creator represented by light and a “destroyer” represented by darkness, each gendered to these old ideologies.

 I mean, we can banter sexism and the ilk, but that actually comes with a very human perspective understanding and a bit of a struggle of understanding that destruction is not necessarily evil and creation is not necessarily good, but both are necessary forces. Now how well Supernatural handled that in execution is another thing entirely, but I’m not here to cover the social aspect of that in this meta -- I’m just here to sort of help with a confusion I’ve witnessed in recent commentary I’ve dropped.

There are many ways this gets listed depending on what... ideology you’re applying to this tree. Hell, there’s Egyptian versions.

Tumblr’s probably gonna shrink that illegibly but if you can’t squint it out, you’ll notice the top is the concealed, source of power, infinite potential and subjective realm, and so on. And that’s already being past the respective Ain Soph of nothing and into the Realm of Light.

TL, DR, basically, the rules of operation that you know in your material, living existence or within your universe are not necessarily employed in the above. Height, depth, width, emotion, feeling, these are all thoughts of this universe. And in theory, there may be other nodes of light that have their own outpouring.

This, in example, might be employed in concepts like The French Mistakeverse which, even according to the angel there, lacked heaven, god, or any of the rules within the SPNverse. It came from another, slightly shittier cascade of light and thought its own thinkie thoughts until it reached that point in an otherwise atheistic universe wherein Sam was something named a Padaleski when he got thrown into it. The rules and terms and conditions of that universe have, in the very least, not followed down the same path on the tree. On the other hand, the tree has shadows, parallels, or different spheres that have different levels of or parallel existences; or of course divergences in timeline in what is otherwise the same cascade of reality.

Again, to not diverge too heavily into a singular train of thought I’m going to cut that off there, but hopefully the concept I’m trying to deliver is clear:

Endverse and AUverse in theory are very likely on a similar waterfall of existence but

French Mistake and Scoobynatural and others like it are likely not.

It is reasonably arguable that Scoobynatural is almost a node within that plane, similar to Gabriel creating a sphere of his own when doing his trickster fuckery. In which case, I point to French Mistake, which was a universe unto itself.

PEDANTICS ASIDE, 

I bring you to why I’m talking about this to begin with.

Now, it was a conversation of headcanons and potential-canon thoughts that brought this up, but something that seems to hold fairly canonically sound, if in subtext: The Dream.

When Chuck was mortally wounded by Amara, the universe started... dying. Now, the real question is, if there is a world without god within it, why can it exist while another will fade if its god dies?

Well, first of all, that depends on the concept of an incarnate god; is the French Mistake’s god more of an abstract? Was there an early dream wherein the universe is only vaguely conscious, similar to ours which quantum scientists are testing its reactability as we speak, wherein it behaves differently while observed than not but doesn’t necessarily have angels in togas and trenchcoats popping around in direct view as much as our wavelengths being literal like, forces of the universe most of the time? And what defines consciousness? BIG question in both science and a lot of philosophy.

Before we digress into that, however, let’s talk about the concept of the incarnate god -- I’ll do so in shorthand as to not turn this into some sort of Initiation Class(TM) but essentially, considering it’s canonically sound that Chuck probably wasn’t walkin’ around like a Dude before there were humans for his angels to possess, and we’ve heard the rise of humans over neanderthals, what does that leave us but the awareness that this is an incarnate, and more directly engaged concept monitoring its realm?

And of course, the idea of the dream. 

To give some context, I had posted this as an “endgame potential thought,”

“The Everybody Dies BUT” Ending:

The Empty eventually comes for Cas. Also, so as to not auto-revive him, they’ve also killed off Jack, and the Empty claimed him anyway. Be it by battle or long life, Sam and Dean also perish, and are also escorted to the Empty by Billie. However, due to their strong connections, nephilim, profound bond or whatever else, they find each other in oblivion – in this liminal space before God and Amara and Creation – and create their own dream among each other. No angels, no god, or at least none without their version of doing it Right™. A new world – a better one – paradise.

This, I realized, confused people -- and as above, rightfully so to people not really realizing the concept of Nothing is completely outside of the universal construct. I had tried to shorthand it in that blurb, but it kinda whiffed over heads and really, I get why.  I’m actually going to use this exchange to see if, now with some context, I can better trade off and fill it out without top-to-bottom trying to Qabbalah through the whole SPNverse:

Other questions came shortly after in asks: 

In your "Everybody dies BUT" Ending, when you say TFW 2.0 creates their own paradise, do you mean like they create a dream, like a collective heaven of their own, concious design, where they can be in peace together? Or do you mean it as they go cosmic entity mode, and create a version of the world that they consider perfect, basically becoming God(s)?

To which I replied,

Perhaps people aren’t used to abstract thought wherein the question is, what’s the difference?

What makes a cosmic being beyond being the one to have a thought to create a thing? By nature it is their dream, it is their world and it is thus both subject to them and dependent on them, so chicken or the egg, ouroboros and full cycle, legitimately, what is the difference of one dream or the other?

But again, curse of knowledge/perspective, I realize I kind of missed the mark on that explanation, as was further evidenced by this follow-up ask:

I guess even in abstract terms the definition and perspective between what's real or what's not varies,just like the concept of perfection.I think everyone sees aspects that would represent differences between dream and reality in a some way,but it's always different. For instance,for me the SPN heaven is real in terms of it's existence,but it's also a dream,because it's a reflection of what a individual wanted to be real.It's real,but also a dream,it all varies on the layer you're analysing. 

Fair, of course, but as we were addressing this conceptual point, which is -- as shown above, difficult to detail, I replied:

You’re still thinking within the universe.

Heaven, and hell, exist within the universe.

Other universes exist. Some are parallel but varied timelines. Some are French Mistakes with different rules. Some are cartoons. These do not all function under the same rule set.

Heaven is part of the universe that Chuck made. At one point, he existed in oblivion, for whatever reason; we do not know whence he and Amara or even Death among them (chicken or the egg as Death put it) came. They simply were, as far as we can comprehend, as they predate time within the universe. Because Chuck created the universe. Ergo they all existed before the universe.

It requires a form of nonlinear thinking to parse it. But at some point, Chuck Made Everything When There Was Only Nothing. That world can fade out if Chuck dies, even inside the world. Just like, if someone was to die while dreaming, their dream would end as well. Many parts of your dream imagine themselves from your subconscious. Other parts you can become lucid in and start to control and take command of. Many elements run simply on what you know, or the depths of your mind manifests. Such is the nature of a dream.

Heaven isn’t to be treated as separate because it’s within that universe. Now, what Sam and Dean and Cas and maybe Jack might dream of as paradise might not be what Heaven is. Heaven, after all, was only part of Chuck’s vision of creation.

That first primordial spark that made Chuck’s early intangible dream that blossomed into everything he wanted above and below, that’s the universe.

If, as per The Post In Question, TFW started from that same oblivion point… what divides them from Chuck? “Power”? What is power when it is a dream reliant on YOU? You are the power.

And then came this follow-up ask:

I think I see your point.But just to understand your stand on this better,when you say suggest that power would be irrelevant in a situation were power is basically the ability to dream,that makes sense if that's the true source,or at least the initial source,of Gods powers.But what if there was something else,if he, Amara and Death had,for wathever reason,came into being with more power than just creativity?Could a being that came into existence without those powers obtain them,in your opinion?

This is the point in which I dug in my heels, but I now recognize did so unclearly:

I think this opinion requires that the authors are completely bypassing any and all myth regarding the concept of oblivion in multiple legends, and that people are having a hard time wrapping their heads around what ideas like Nothingness actually mean. Black Space is ironically too much. The idea of void predates… I dunno, time, space, height, depth, width, light, dark, that’s why it’s actually void. Most creation principles dawn from the idea that somehow, some way, a spark of thought dawned. What that spark is called, how it manifests, that’s where everybody bickers. But things like “uber power scale” are completely irrelevant when you’re talking about starting points of literal nothing, and that’s ironically the concept of things like the Ouroboros.

You see, the reason I dug my heels in, however, is not pure stubbornness. If we are operating outside of the laws of any mechanical or existing universe in which presence and power is defined, the power and presence within that universe is moot. Once a creature enters that universe it brings with it the weight of its general principle, but within the Empty, all things are relative. If this were not true, the Empty “would have thrown Cas so deep into the Empty that you can’t bother me,” but “except you can’t, or you would have already.”

“Pretty smart, pretty smart, tough guy.”

What we have is the Ain having something from the Aur thrown in and essentially becoming the Ain Soph, there is now Something in the Nothing and the Nothing just wants it to fuck off and leave it alone so it can resume being Nothing. It’s now vaguely aware again, of Things(TM). Of worlds and dreams and people and things, when everything else was just so peaceful Not Existing. 

If we defer back to Qabbalah again, this is a breech of something called the Tzimtzum. The tzimtzum is basically the act of when “God” “contracted” into the infinite point of light to barf out space and made its polar parts, it was considered creating “conceptual space” in which these finite and seemingly independent realms could like. Exist. But it made a bunch of empty space around it. Again, space being relative, when talking about Nothing, but doing it in a way we can discuss it. But here we are, putzing around in this place that doesn’t even exists and thus wants to be left the fuck alone. God is even called “Ha Makom” or “The place” in this structure. So there’s The Nothing and The Place. The Place is God’s universe basically. 

God, in this structure of naming, actually wouldn’t be Chuck as we know it. Chuck would quite-likely be the male pole with Amara the female, but again, we can’t swear up and down how closely they held to this. It would more be whatever thought hiccupped and made the PrimordialTwins that had their bickering match in season 11, which kind of made the non-space they started having their slap fight in. 

Also, realistically, there seems to be a level of retcon in this, as in theory “sealing out the darkness” could also correspond to this idea itself, and there’s a variety of terms one could sling around in treating Amara as herself conceptually outside of this space. The original intent/application could genuinely be either/or, and that’s the fun part of dealing in this level of philosophical fuckery. And the Tzimtzum did lots of cool things, like made not just spiritual and physical worlds but yes, even the very concept of Free Will is on the list of things it made space to exist.

One could also argue no retcon needed, as even if the primordial aspect of Amara was sealed away, the Mark used to do so still waterfalled her concepts and impact through the rest of the known universe via Lucifer, Cain, Dean, and whatever else that shifted along the way. Without the mark, Lucifer wouldn’t have fallen and made demons, and hell wouldn’t exist, still realizing “destruction” or “severity” into the universe. Wherein if she were ironically imprisoned within the realm of light, as it is more metaphorical light at that point, somewhere in the area of Ideas rather than Physical Reality And The Known Universe, it all applies and once that Abyss is crossed is where the Mark instead impacted reality in her stead.

The hermetic God is really Both Of These, not to be confused with the idea of the Christian God, more easily directly encapsulated in Chuck. One simply does not exist without the other. And there’s a billion reads on these in philosophy, some weirder than others and really, the application of these is light enough we need to ask if there were even retcons, much less trying to badly staple over our Favored Denomination Of Thought(TM). Supernatural handled it as brother and sister, one egg if you will. Many versions treat it as a hermaphroditic concept that split in two somehow. Others... get even weirder, we’re not gonna go there because frankly, the show didn’t even really try. We got brother and sister. It is what it is.

So while this post is somewhat in explanation of what I realized sounded like a madhouse theory to people not used to thinking abstractly over what is admittedly a headcanon/hopeful ending concept, it is also -- perhaps oddly to some people -- how I’ve taken to compute most of the ongoing mythology within the Dabb era, naturally as per my base... like... life? And study and teachings?

And frankly probably adds up a hell of a lot better than just assuming it’s a leveled-up power-game, which while from the bottom it looks like such, in the full scale, the top and the bottom are not so unlevel from each other, for -- “as above, so below,” the cardinal concept of the Ouroboros (14.14).

If the Nothing did not Become Infinite, nothing might Be. But if the Infinite Nothing did not then retract itself into a point, then Nothing Could Exist. In retracting to a Point, something existed. That Point births an origin, and all attributes that become the recognized universe and reality, to which there are poles and balance of arguable levels of sentience, and from which all things flow, including -- in this essay-ass meta thing -- Chuck’s creation(s). 

Heaven, hell, probably even purgatory, those are all parts of Chuck’s respective dream, that moment Something In Nothing pulled its shit together and started having Thinkie Thoughts. Maybe in French Mistakeverse it became a Big Bang. Maybe it even was in SPNVerse considering the mention of evolution. But the simple fact is, it all came from Somewhere In Nothing.

Which does, yes, roll back to my little idea about a possible ending I’d like to see on a list of a few, but also might help recognize what I mean when I say things like “power scales are pretty relative and abstract at these points” and so forth. 

Hindsight edit: @drsilverfish may enjoy.

#supernatural #primordials #chuck #amara #the empty #pagan life #meta #my meta

[twdmusicboxmystery]

5x03: Humbug’s Gulch

Hi everyone! I’m just gonna dive right in today. ***As always, spoilers abound in this post for FTWD 5x03. Don’t read until you’ve watched! You’ve been warned!***

This episode of FTWD (5x03: Humbug’s Gulch) was awesome! I loved watching it because there were so many important symbols and set ups. I'm loving where this is going.

So, we start with our group traveling around, trying to take down all of the Red Rover walkers and marking where they are on a map. As they mark them, they realize that it's a perimeter of walkers tied up around an area of land in the center. They have no idea what's inside the perimeter of walkers. So, kind of an intriguing mystery.

One of the first symbols that caught my attention was that when they mark the locations of the walkers on the map, use Xs inside of circles. (X Theory.) It would only be that, if it had only been Xs. But they drew an X within a circle. Remember, we saw this exact symbol around Morgan on a tree in Coda. What that tells me is that 

1) whatever's going on in the season, we can connect it to Coda. That's number one. And

2) whatever they’re planning for Morgan in the season has been planned since Coda and S5. That's awesome.

Also, remember the X within the circle is sort of a skewed version of the coda symbol. A coda is more of a T, straight up and down over circle, but the X is like a version of it that’s been turned on its side.

This episode is called Humbug Gulch. 

It’s the name of the Western town they go to, which I’ll talk about more in a minute. But I looked up the meaning of gulch. It can be a V-shaped valley formed by erosion. It may be a small stream or dry creek bed and is usually larger in size than a gully. It just reminded me of the dry riverbed in 5x10, Them. If you keep looking at the definition, it means different things in different places, but is often associated with water. The actual definition of humbug is deception or something that's not true. Which is why Ebenezer Scrooge always said, “Bah, humbug.” It's his way of saying something is ridiculous or that's untrue. And of course, the most famous pop culture reference of the word humbug IS Ebenezer Scrooge saying it. Which makes it a Christmas reference as well. So, we have a reference to Christmas, and something that has to do with water and something we saw in Them.

In terms of the show, the phrase would literally mean ‘deceptive gulch.’ Something about this town they went to is deceptive. The meaning of the title, other than the fact that they went to a place called Humbug Gulch, wasn't obvious. But I’ll come back to this.

They mentioned a gas station when the group talked to each other over the walkie-talkies. John also mentioned their luck turning (Luck Theory). We saw a windmill at the Gulch, much like the one on Herschel's farm in S2. In most been a common symbol since then, and we usually see it in conjunction with Beth symbolism.

The intro was kind of interesting. It basically just showed a wind storm and a rolling tumbleweed. I wasn't sure what that meant. But as we get into the episode, John and June do have to wait at a windstorm. So, the reason for that became obvious as the episode progressed. Then we heard just a snippet of a voice on the radio. There was a lot of radio talk in this episode, and what happened at the end had a lot to do with speaking over the radio. When I heard that in the intro, it reminded me a lot of the phantom voice we heard at the end of TWD 9x16. I don't know for supposed to be connecting those, but I couldn't help but hear similarity there.

So, we had a heavy similarity here to 6X16. While attempting to take down one of the rows of Red Rover walkers, someone starts firing on John and June. They jump into their car and run for it. They ended up going to a little Western town called Humbug Gulch. This is one of those Western tourist attractions. Apparently, John used to work at one—not this specific one, but another one in a different city—so he knew what it was. Even though it was a tourist place, he knew they’d find real guns there.

I totally didn't register this on my first watch, but when the re-watch came on, I heard it, and my mouth dropped open. Right before he being shot at, John remarks that there must be some “serious people” behind these this perimeter walkers. June then says, "We’re serious people too." When they jump in the car, John says his line again about these being serious people. Obviously a Sirius/Dog Star reference, and it’s repeated three different times.

I’ll jump forward to mention that we saw Dwight in this episode. At this point we can't prove the Sirius reference isn’t about Dwight and Sherry, but I don't think the two of them necessarily qualify. They didn’t go out of their way to make the audience think either one was dead. In fact, they kind of went out of their way to set up this story of Dwight searching for Sherry, which suggests the opposite. I'm really hoping this means is that something about this arc will lead to the original character associated with Sirius symbolism. (Beth).

They get to the town, and we see some more interesting resurrection symbols. There’s a carousel with bright yellow horses with blue saddles that the camera focuses on for a minute. There’s also a light colored horse statue. (Looks like a palomino.) So, horse theory. And the light colored horse represents Beth and resurrection (“You’re still alive.”)

John leads them upstairs to a gun locker. June picks the lock. Inside, they find guns and ammunition. @wdway noticed little tins, two green and three yellow (both Beth colors) inside of it. Even more exciting, we see ammunition for .45 colt. Remember that issue 45 of the CBs is the one where Andrea is resurrected from the dead.

We also saw an “Exit” sign over the door, which reminded us of the one in Beth’s cell in 4x01. And the bag June carries out of the building has a B on it. Just saying. ;D

They had all kinds of fun with their Western themes in this episode. It was a really obvious old West/Outlaw/Sheriff kind of situation. So that alone is significant. John and June get the guns, but a windstorm picks up. June wants to wait it out, but John doesn't. He wants to make a run for their van and try to get back to the group. We thought John's bandanna looked an awful lot like Daryl's black bandanna from season four. An interesting callback, given all the other symbols.

When they make a run for the car, the phantom shooter starts firing at them again. John eventually comes face-to-face with him and June hits him over the head. Guess who? Dwight.

We've known we’d see Dwight this season, but I was still excited to see him. His first question to John is, "Where is she?" Naturally, John has no idea who he's asking about, but we, the viewers do. We know he's looking for Sherry.

Random detail, but I have to say I think it's adorable that John calls June, “June Bug.”

As I said, we saw something of a replay of 6x06, Always Accountable (major Beth symbolism episode). We had John and June doing their own thing, and then phantom people started shooting at them. That's exactly what happened to Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham at the beginning of 6x06. They were returning from Operation Lead the Walkers Away, and were fired on by unseen people. In that case, it was the saviors who fired at them, looking for Dwight. Then, in the same episode just a little while later, Daryl met Dwight. Here, it was Dwight (previously a Savior) who fired on John and June. Only a few minutes later, in the same episode, they met Dwight. Don’t tell me episode parallels aren’t a thing, y’all. ;D

In the next scene, we see a deer crossing sign. Yet another indication of possibly someone coming back from the dead. Again, this COULD be a Sherry and Dwight thing, but I’m not convinced of that. Unlike with Glenn, Rick, and Beth, they haven't gone out of their way to make us think either Sherry or Dwight died. They merely disappeared from TWD.  Also, keep in mind that this wasn't an actual deer that we saw get shot. It was a deer crossing sign. It may not represent an actual resurrection, not like the deer we saw around Rick in 5x12. But it's a symbol of the resurrection arc. I'm interpreting it as something about Dwight in this arc leading to a resurrection.

Another call back to 6x06 comes when Dwight wakes up. He basically has the same conversation with John and June that he had with Daryl in 6x06, protesting that he held the gun to their heads and he didn't understand why they would help them after that. 

He said that same thing to Daryl in 6x06, about how he tied Daryl up and put a gun to his head and kept prisoner overnight, yet Daryl still came back to help them. Lots of callbacks to a Bethyl-heavy episode.

We also see lots of infinity symbols here because of Sherry’s notes. And granted, we saw them between Dwight and Sherry before, so it’s nothing new. But still interesting, all things considered.

I also think it's interesting the way they set this up. Because John looked for June (they are also Bethyl proxies) John completely understands the lengths Dwight will go to to find Sherry. He's probably the one person in the world who would have given Dwight a break over this and even helped him find Sherry. I’m just saying the crossing of Dwight’s and John/June’s stories required a lot of planning and has probably been in the works for some time. I’m positive when the writers wrote John and June’s story for last season, they already knew the two of them would cross paths with Dwight/Sherry.

We noticed John and June played piano music to distract the walkers so they could escape. Not only a musical reference, but we can tie it to 4x01, in which they used music to lure the walkers way from the Big Spot. And of course Beth specifically played the piano in 4x13, Alone.

Rather than escaping to his car with June and John, Dwight ran to their van, which by then he'd shot the tires out of. They talk to him on the walkie and he finally admits that Sherry has left messages for him as she travels. The last one he found was written on the registration for a van that looks exactly like the one John and June were driving. That's why he opened fire on them in the first place. He thought that was the car Sherry one drove, which was why she left a note for him on the registration.

Okay, this gets super-interesting at this point. Look at this scene with Dwight in the van. Remind you of anything? 

It looks exactly like the scene where Aaron and Daryl got caught in the wolf van in 5x16. 

Walkers all around trying to get in, him trapped with no way out, and then Dwight has a moment where he more or less gives up.

He basically tells John to go on without him, giving up both on the idea of getting out alive, and on his search for Sherry. This is a combination of a couple of things. We could compare it to Daryl in 5x16. They had no way out and Daryl insisted on sacrificing himself so Aaron could get away. He was willing to die right then to save Aaron. Maybe even wanted to die because he was still so down about Beth. Of course, Aaron insisted that they would work together to get out, and then Morgan—*clears throat* MORGAN!!!*—saves them.

Something similar happened here. Dwight is alone in the car. He gives up, even looking at his gun as though he might shoot himself, but John and June talk him out of it. June tells him that giving up his search for Sherry would be just as ethically wrong as hurting someone. I think it's interesting that it's June—the once missing woman—who convinces the depressed man not to give up. Very Beth-ish. Then they help Dwight escape the van by shooting the walkers and creating a clear path for him. Much like Morgan did for Daryl and Aaron in 5x16.

Some of the dialogue was also important there. June says Dwight doesn’t feel like he deserves to find her and find happiness again. Dwight says it doesn’t matter if Sherry is alive or dead, because he’ll never find her. Never be able to make things right. He says that’s “who I am now.” Making things right is a callback to what Daryl told him to do in 8x16. I also think this dialogue could apply to Daryl at various times after he lost Beth. Interestingly, “Who You Are Now” is the title of the first episode after Rick disappeared (9x06) so we have a connection between this arc and what’s happening on the main show.

The other thing that this really struck me is that Dwight gets a version of Beth’s suicide arc. It obviously wasn't as long or protracted as hers, but the difference between Dwight in this episode and Daryl in 5x16 is that Daryl tried to sacrifice himself for something noble (saving Aaron). He didn’t simply decide to give up and shoot himself. So, this felt a lot like Beth’s suicide arc in TWD S2. Back then, she really did just want to give up and die. Much like Beth, Dwight came through his depression with a new resolve to live and find Sherry. Again, very Beth-ish.

Another detail I didn’t catch until the second time through? Remember that colt .45 I mentioned earlier, which points to Andrea surviving her gunshot wound in the comics? It was that gun Dwight contemplated killing himself with. John gave it to him to shoot walkers. Coincidence? Yeah, really not. 

After rescuing him from the van, John tells Dwight he had the wrong car. He compared the VIN number on the registration to van’s VIN number, and they don’t match. Obviously, the make, model, and color of the van are exactly like the one Dwight was looking for, but he just so happened to find the wrong one.

I think all this car stuff is super interesting. Given that we think Beth was left in a car, and that we often see clues in car license place plates and car trunks, it’s just interesting that there's a car arc going on in this season of FTWD. Registrations have lots of numbers and letters in them. And the fact that he found the wrong car? I think that's significant. I wonder if something about this will end up playing out as part of Beth’s arc as well. They left her in the “wrong car” somehow. I have no idea, really, but it’s fun to contemplate the possibilities.

At the end of this episode, Dwight and Morgan meet and recognize one another. Morgan is instantly accepting of Dwight and he officially joins their group. One super-subtle thing I caught here was that Dwight went to Georgia before going to Texas. He just mentions it very briefly in passing, saying “Once she hit Georgia, everything seemed to drive her this way.” 

No way that’s a coincidence. They could spin it many ways. Maybe Dwight already ran into Beth in his travels. Maybe he was wrong about Sherry going to Texas and will eventually return to Georgia. Maybe she’ll head back to Georgia for some reason and he’ll meet up with her then. Either way, this arc is subtly pointing back toward Georgia. And Grady, which we can only assume is still standing.

He tells them that he's never been inside the perimeter of walkers either, but he's walked all around it. He takes them to one particular place where they plan to break through and see what's on the inside. Just before they do, they hear something on the radio.

I haven’t mentioned Alicia’s minor arc this episode because it has less to do with Beth symbolism. She hears the kids they met in the first episode on the radio and keeps calling out to them, promising to help them in asking where they are. At one point, she hears Annie and Dylan talking on the radio, with Annie telling Dylan to hide because she can see “them.” 

We don't know who “them” is. It's definitely interesting because it's the name of episode 5X10, so we could see it as another tie to Beth. It sounds like there are bad people that the kids are running from. In the end, the kids radio and ask Alicia to meet them at the truck stop where Morgan's group originally took them.

So, Morgan’s group doesn’t break through the Red Rover walkers right then, which means we can after little longer to see what's inside the perimeter. 

On the way back to the truck stop, they see the van the kids were driving. Inside, Dylan is laying on the seat. He looks hurt, or perhaps just sad. He’s covered in either mud or blood (probably both) so it’s hard to say how injured he is. But he’s alone. Annie and Max aren’t with him.

The most interesting symbolic thing about this is that we once again have Morgan finding someone inside a car who's hurt. It’s pretty much the biggest symbol of Morgan finding Beth in a car that we have, and we've seen it many times now. Alicia asks Dylan where his brother and sister are, but he doesn't really say anything before the episode ends.

Then it cuts to Max and Annie putting up Red Rover walkers. So, as it turns out, these kids are the ones tying them across the roads. I'm of two minds about what this might mean.

The show implies there's nothing inside the perimeter of walkers. The kids just put them up to keep strangers away from the area. But I don't know if I believe that's true. Maybe these kids are just super- smart, but I don’t see them going to this kind of trouble to protect…nothing. 

I also don’t think they could have put the walker heads up on the billboard by themselves last episode, and there’s still the question of who took Al. I don’t think it was them. In fact, Max says he wants to find out who took Alicia’s friend, so it wasn’t them. So overall, I'm not sure what to make of this yet. But it makes the mystery of this place intriguing and I'm excited to see where it goes.

So once again, we don't know if "them," is really a group of baddies, or just something created by these kids. I'm not even sure which one I hope it is. Having something crazy inside the perimeter of walkers would definitely be a cooler plot twist. But if there's really nothing there, the reference to Them becomes purely symbolic, which is good for us, too. Also, I’m wondering if the “humbug” in the title perhaps refers to the way in which these kids are deceiving Morgan’s group. Not sure how that will pan out yet, but it’s interesting.  

Some final symbols: we saw Max drawing on a map and I noticed it said, “Broken Bridge.” So, not only Bridge Theory, but I feel like that’s a connection to Rick’s bridge in TWD S9.

So yeah, I really loved this episode. Lots of fun set-ups and I'm super excited to see where this arc, both with Dwight and with this perimeter of walkers, goes. Because they used Xs within circles to represent the perimeter of walkers, I really hope whatever is within the perimeter will lead to Beth. Thoughts?

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

[reallyawesomecostumes]

Dean Winchester in his Coffin

A comparison between Queequeg’s coffin in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and Dean’s coffin in Supernatural

(screencap from Home of the Nutty)

In Supernatural 14x11 ‘Damaged Goods’, Dean Winchester builds his own coffin. 

It’s not really a coffin, it just looks like one. The box is a ma’lak box designed by Death herself to secure Dean and AU-Michael at the bottom of the Pacific for all eternity*. We as viewers of a long-running episodic television show are pretty sure the  Winchester boys will find a way out of this mess in the next couple episodes, but Dean built it, so we have to talk about it. 

There are closet metaphors inherent in this coffin-building (I recommend @drsilverfish here); there are show-internal parallels to Amara being locked away, Adam’s current fate in The Cage, the wall in Sam’s mind in season 6; the list goes on. I wanted to talk instead about how Dean’s coffin-building compares to some coffin-building in classic American literature: the story of Queequeg’s coffin in Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale.” 

Moby-Dick, published 1851, is a book that many of us were forced to read in high school or college. I escaped this fate but had to read “The Scarlet Letter” and “Bartleby the Scrivener” instead. I did watch the Patrick Stewart TV miniseries version as a teenager, of course. For some dumb reason** I became a Moby-Dick reader because I was a Queequeg/Ishmael shipper, so know that I have a fairly biased perspective on the book as a whole.

In Moby-Dick, our narrator Ishmael (a depressed unemployed Yankee) meets Queequeg, a cannibal

(Queequeg as a character is a jumble of noble savage tropes, the author’s own knowledge of Pacific Islanders met during his whaling experience, and ideas pulled from other contemporary books both fiction and non-fiction), when they become accidental bedfellows at Peter Coffin’s inn (Coffin is a prominent name among the whalers of Nantucket, in real life and in the world of the story). Ishmael wants to go whaling, and Queequeg’s a guy who is very good at whaling. They have similar life goals, if not similar life experiences . They’re textually married***. 

Queequeg catches a chill crawling around belowdecks on the Pequod moving barrels to find a leak (the hold is described as an ice-box). While he’s dying Queequeg says he doesn’t want his body to be wrapped up in his hammock before being thrown overboard like an ordinary sailor, but put in a canoe-style coffin like the harpooneers from Nantucket use. He convinces the ship’s carpenter to make one for him. Queequeg kits the coffin out with food and water and his (most precious possessions) harpoon and paddle, and puts earth from the hold at the foot of it . He lays in it, and Pip the cabin boy sings nonsense briefly (a la the Fool in King Lear). Ishmael sort-of suggests that watching this guy die would make him start a religion. But then Queequeg decides not to die. He throws off the fever with his own will, and recovers (for plot reasons, but also so Melville could add more Noble Savage tropes). He uses the coffin as a clothes-chest. He starts carving the lid with the pattern of the tattoos on his body (these tattoos are religious in nature, but are unknown and unknowable, ‘a complete theory of the heavens and the earth’), making it into a sort-of body double for him.

Some time passes. A guy falls from the rigging, and the stern life-buoy is thrown to him, and both the man and the old, rotting cask that serves as a buoy sink and drown. It is suggested that the nice new well-built no longer needed coffin can be made into a new life-buoy. This re-purposing is lampshaded in text:

“Here now’s the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver! I’ll think of that.”

-Captain Ahab, in a theatrical aside, Chapter 127: The Deck.

After the whale drags Captain Ahab down and sinks the Pequod, the very well-made coffin/life-buoy shoots to the surface, and the only surviving crewmember (Ishmael, our narrator) clings to it until another ship picks him up. 

While Queequeg’s coffin is intended for mundane use (to preserve his body from sharks after death) and is eventually used for mundane purpose (Ishmael’s life preserver), Dean’s pseudo-coffin-building serves a more esoteric purpose - to lock himself and his angel double away from the world said angel wants to destroy (“for all angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned” - Fleece the cook, Moby-Dick). The ma’lak box is Dean and Michael’s “immortality-preserver”. We have two pairs of characters, and two death-coded vessels that serve to preserve them.

Remember that time Ishmael and Queequeg got married? Some authors have characterized this wedding as "the first portrait of same-sex marriage in American literature". That it causes some readers 'uneasiness'. The line 'our heart's honeymoon', describing the time post-marriage, was censored in the original publication. Other readers have taken the marriage esoterically, relating Ishmael and Queequeg's earthly marriage to the internal marriage of the self to the Jungian shadow-self.

Shadows**** follow the two protagonists of Moby-Dick, Ishmael and Ahab. Ishmael accepts and marries his shadow, Queequeg the cannibal, and learns the customs of the whaling-ship from him. He admires the unknowableness of the ocean and sky as well as Queequeg's unknowable tattoos. He frees himself from his initial depression, and is literally saved at the novel's conclusion by Queequeg's pseudo-body. Ahab, conversely, pushes away Pip the cabin boy (who serves as Lear's fool through the story, and speaks unknowably) and turns towards Fedallah the Parsee (described as Ahab's shadow in the book) who speaks concrete but awful truths. Ahab rejects reality and stays on a path of revenge even though warned multiple times that he will fail. He eventually dies, and brings most of his crew down with him. His lack of acceptance of his good shadow and of his true place in the world brings about destruction. Self-actualization results in being saved.

The (current) protagonists of Supernatural have shadow selves as well. Again @drsilverfish has an excellent post about this. Castiel's shadow is The Shadow/The Empty, which has appeared in his own form, and wishes only for sleep and nothingness. Dean's shadow, AU!Michael, only wants to destroy the world that Dean keeps sacrificing himself to protect. Sam's shadow, Nick, went through the same dark experiences Sam did, but unlike Sam wound up horribly twisted and murderous. We haven't seen Jack's shadow-self yet, but I suspect current sweet and kind graceless!Jack will have a foil in future uncaring soulless!Jack. The idea of marrying oneself to one's shadow, in Supernatural, is nearly unthinkable: they are destructive, inhuman entities. However, in 14x11 Sam managed to accept the reality of his shadow self and release himself from responsibility for Nick.

At this point Dean's plan is to death-wed himself to Michael for eternity, sharing one body and one coffin-bed at the bottom of the Pacific. We know from Jung and from Melville that the only way to survive the confrontation with the shadow is to accept it - to 'Know Thyself', without misconceptions about your place in the world. 'Gain[ing] the perspective on [your] soul and the universe that will make balance possible.' The coffin will become a life-buoy.

I suspect the ma'lak box will be used to trap something other than Dean or Michael (soulless!Jack, probably) at the end of this season. Even if it's current purpose is untenable, it is a tool that can be used in the future.

Comparison between Moby-Dick and Supernatural can occur on a number of different levels. Ishmael and Dean (and Castiel whose human vessel, Jimmy Novak, is of the line of Biblical Ishmael) are the heroes of the bildungsroman part of the story and are hangers on to Ahab/John/Sam's Shakespearean revenge quest. Each story is a very American depiction of a masculine world. Each mirror the world in a smaller vessel, a ship and a car. Jung's concept of the shadow self, however, holds as the key to this season through all of these eleven episodes, and the shadow self is one of many keys that promote understanding of Melville's Moby-Dick. Self-actualization saves the day.

* Note that geologists cry whenever people suggest indestructible things sent to the bottom of the ocean will stay there for all eternity.

** It was Yuletide, and I’d just binge-read the entire Aubrey-Maturin series.

*** I wrote about this last year when Yockey dropped Led Zeppelin’s Moby Dick into the story. Moby Dick, song, has nothing to do with Moby-Dick, book, except their mutual length, but Supernatural and Moby-Dick share quite a few themes. 

**** yes, Melville does make the shadows of his white protagonists literally dark-skinned

References:

@drsilverfish, “A Fridge-Locker, An Enochian Puzzle Box, a Ma’lak Box… and the Closet (14x11 Damaged Goods)”, http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182296360214/a-fridge-locker-an-enochian-puzzle-box-a-malak 

@drsilverfish​, “The Shadow (14x08)”, http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/180906003584/the-shadow-14x08

Brashers, H.C., 1962, "Ishmael's Tattoos": The Sewanee Review, v.70, n.1, p.137-154, http://wwww.jstor.org/stable/27540756

Halverson, John, 1963, "The Shadow in Moby-Dick": American Quarterly, v.15, n.3, p.436-446, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2711373

Horton, Margy Thomas, 2012, "Melville's Unfolding Selves: Identity Formation in Mardi, Moby-Dick, and Pierre": doctoral dissertation, Baylor University

Melville, Herman, “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale”, project Gutenberg ebook, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm

#spn 14x11 #spn meta #spn spoilers #my meta #moby dick #yep i actually wrote it #themes are for eighth grade book reports #and also for relating personal experiences to fictional experiences #as well as higher concepts #spn #supernatural

[aspiestvmusings]

MCU & SPIDERMAN: FAR FROM HOME SPOILERY REVIEW

This is my first, initial “review” of the latest MCU movie - “Spiderman. Far from Home” 

SPOILERS, BEWARE! for “SPIDERMAN: FAR FROM HOME”

“Everywhere I go/look, I see his face/I am reminded of Tony”

The memorial video made by Peter’s HS friends. The comic cans, the online/getty pics used, the editing, the music choice “Dolly Parton’s “I will always love you” … from “The Bodyguard” by Whitney Houston” & images of Tony, Steve, Nat, Vision… Tony…

all the Ironman drawings/art on the classroom wall in Peters school (as he & Ned talk about the vacation plan)

the Ironman mural on the building wall… when Peter escapes to the roof… from the “press conference”

the film/video choices on the plane from Americas to Europe  (next to: “Nova: Einstein Rosen Bridges” &  “The Snap,” & “Finding Wakanda,” & “Hunting Hydra.”) is a 114 minute long Tony/Ironman docu/film… story

I am pretty sure there are also some pictures/posters/images on wall/screen at the airport, when they arrive in Europe... but I need to go watch it again (3rd time) to be sure. I think I saw it, but am not certain....

The murals (with flowers & lit candles) in Europe (Prague)…

Tony’s tech… everywhere

The EDITH integrated in Tony’s glasses...that are now Peter’s. He’s the next Tony Stark. He is the only one who can be trusted with the power - everyone else would just use it for their own good. The Tony glasses being basically a supporting character in the film... central in many scenes. 

Tony’s friends & “enemies” (people, who remember/mourn him & people, who are jealous of him)

Things I noticed/The little things:  

The BLIP “in memoriam” video edit made by Peter’s HS kids: The font was comic sans! The song choice was “I will always love you” by Whitney Houston from the film “The Bodyguard” (original: Dolly Parton), and the “in memoriam” part included images of Tony Stark... twice (first & last), Nat, Steve, VISION...and also others.... And biggest question here is... does this mean that Cap is considered dead? Does this mean his time travel shenanigans lead to him/the team listing him as one of the casualties... to not reveal the details of what really happened & to keep the time travel & other things... a secret? 

BOH! MJs new favorite word. I loved how Peter used it back at MJ... when he doesn’t want to reveal what’s in the bag/box. 

That “cat” in that one scene kinda looked like GOOSE, but only  a little bit, so was it a random cat, or was it a “relative” of Goose? Maybe another flerken?

I absolutely loved how happy & excited Peter got when he was told that the multiverse is real, not just a theory (anymore). I’m kinda sad that it turned out to not be true... for now. (he’d love to learn about the multiverse, just like he’s now studying Thor, who was a myth before, in his physics class)

When Peter was betrayed by someone he trusted & had no one to turn to, who did he call...from Netherlands? Happy. He was the one person, who knew, knew him & could be trusted, and could help him. I’m glad he had that option...someone to turn to. 

That tulip field in Netherlands was beautiful and all, but I was kinda sad to see that plane land there... and then hover above it..for a while... 

Speaking of the plane: The Avengers Tower was sold & is now being re-built by someone else, The Avengers Headquarters was destroyed in Endgame & since Tony is gone (and everyone else ran  away/went to hiding), I am not sure it’ll be re-built (we saw that the clan-up after the battle was happening... in the background...during the Endgame end scene where they set up the time travel platform by the lake). And now the airplane was destroyed in FFH. So lots of Tony’s tech (suit making machines & other tech) is destroyed now. And even though  the introduction of EDITH suggests that he had many other labs & tech set up, “secretly” everywhere... still... it keeps getting destroyed. and since he’s not here to create anything new, all his work will soon be destroyed/gone if this keeps happening. 

Peter stripped not once...but twice...in front of someone... a girl: first the SHIELD European agent, who made him the new (black) secret european “Night Monkey” suit (pants) & later in front of the girl he really likes... MJ (shirt). 

Mysterio’s illusions: all those scenes were visually amazing/brilliant! The Prague fire monster, the bar scene illusions after Peter leaves - the twist!, the German “safe house” illusions  that ended with the train & then the London Tower bridge illusions. 

The bar scene “turn of events” twist moment was brilliantly scary: it showed just how “crazy” Mysterio was. That, together with the “illusion rehearsal” scene, when he learns about the missing projector...and threatens his whole team... that was same level brilliantly scary. 

“Appearances can be deceiving”  hahaha Oh, how it hinted at the end credits scene reveal. It was not just Happy trying to tells “Fury” about Mysterio and his deception, but... also how Fury & Maria Hill are actually... skrulls, who work for Fury, while he (and Hill?) are elsewhere, working on other projects. 

Skrull sleeper cells... mentioned by “Fury”... a reference to Captain Marvel & comics.... 

Happy throwing a shield...at the drone... His cap moment. And his comment about how heavy it is/hard it is, and he doesn’t know how Cap does it hahaha

Michelle and the medieval weapon..that she borrows from the museum vault... 

There are many artifacts in the Tower of London museum vault - the crown jewels, all kinds of medieval tools & weapons, and also... “IRON MAN” - medieval iron knight armor!

Peter taking a selfie as he swings in NYC...in the end. He’s swinging & reading texts/texting & taking selfies... 

The text/line on the fence on the street/in front of “construction site”.... when Peter/Spiderman is swinging to MJ in the end scene..on NYC streets... (Madison Square Garden) say:   “We’re excited  to show you what comes next. And there are numbers 1, 2, 3 & a ? (instead of number 4) under the text. This has many meanings: a) the people in the MCU/FFH universe  are excited to show the citizens what they’re building there. b) the MCU creators are excited to show/tell us/viewers/fans what’s to come next...both in Spiderman films & MCU in general (Phase 4). c) Also..according to fans, who know more, it’s also a reference to the “Fantastic 4″.  

The initials B.F.P. on the suitcase he takes to Europe aka the suitcase belonged to Peters uncle Ben (May’s husband). Too bad it, too,  along many other things & places...got destroyed..in this film. 

LOL at everyone knocking on Peter & Ned’s rooms door at the hotel theyäre staying in in Venice. Interrupting “Fury” (and Peter) & Fury’s reaction... (he is so done with being interrupted...every 5 seconds)

All the “upgrades” to the class trip in Europe & all the changes in itinerary... #IfTheyOnlyKnewWhyThePlansWeereChanged

The “Peter tingle” (aka The Spidey Sense) 

“What happens in London/Europe, stays in London/Europe?” Peter, who is/has been keen to keep his identity a secret, behaved strangely & boldly in Europe & especially at the end of the big “battle” in London...where he just stands on the bridge...without his mask & talks to & kisses MJ. In the middle of the bridge, at the center of big event... Are there no video/traffic 8etc) cams in Europe/LOndon in 2023/2024 MCu? Are there no cameras/smartphones that people use to take pics & vids of every big event they see... in 2023/2024 MCU? I found that surprising... based on all the attempts he made until now & in this film..to keep his identity a secret. 

Pepper Potts signing the big (in both size & sum) check from Stark Fund to May’s charity event. But not being able to attend the event herself. Most likely cause the actress is done with MCU, but... otherwise...interesting... to mention her like that & specify that she was unable to attend in person...

How many “vacations” has Fury taken over the MCU history? While I mostly think that this was the first... after Fury & CM were “reunited” during the Endgame events (BLIP) & the plan was formed after Tony was gone (they were both at his memorial service) & the returned Fury who had no more team on this planet, was kinda lost...) But I also kinda think he might’ve used the skrulls before to take vacations. I am pretty certain that we saw the real Fury in Captain Marvel, in Iron Man films...  and I am also pretty certain that he was himself in Infinity War/Endgame...because as he’s “dying” aka turning into dust he doesn’t turn into skrull.Though it is possible that the dusting doesn't count & the skull face is only revealed if a character actually dies. (this is why we can be certain Tony was Tony & Nat was Nat in Endgame) 

ETA

What I LOVED the most 

My absolute favourite scene(s) is the Peter & Happy at the Holland/Netherland  tulip field & on the plane, hovering above the tulip field scene(s) -  their “talk” as Happy patched up Peter’s wounds. Talking about being a superhero and making mistakes, about Tony...and more... 

That scene...to me...sums up...hopefully... what’s to come. It confirms what I thought would be the case. Tony was/is Iron Man and no one can & should replace him as Iron Man. So everyone asking Peter if he’s gonna be the next IM... everyone looking for the next mightiest protector of the earth... and looking at SM...cause everyone else seems to have disappeared... are just putting too much pressure on him. He’s not the next Iron Man. He is Peter. He is Spider Man. (though after that end twist... who knows... maybe he will put on an iron suit for a while...since he can’t be the unknown neighborhood hero anymore...now that everyone knows...) But to me it summed up peters journey in this film & sets up what’s to come. He needed some guidance & Happy provided it... he needed to realize that he’s he’s own person & his own superhero & he’s not there to replace Tony/IM or any other superhero

But yeah... I loved how Happy said it. When others pressured him & manipulated with him (Beck purposely making him feel inadequate by saying things like “if you would've done better, he might’ve not died”), the now Pilot was his best friend & the one person he could really talk superhero things with...the one person, who IMO helped him the most with his grief over Tony & all the feelings he had regarding that & the pressure he felt to be his successor. 

Peter is likely the person, who will take over Tony’s role..somewhat...with the tech and such, but he is Peter, not Tony. 

And the end scene in Endgame with Happy & Morgan..talking about cheeseburgers & now this scene in FFH with Happy & Peter talking superheroes, responsibility, Tony...and more... tells me that Happy is now the mentor-uncle to these kids now...kinda. 

...and when Peter, excitedly, yells “I love Led Zeppelin” when the iconic IM song “Back in Black” by AC/DC starts to play... haha... awesome

What I hoped would’ve been (will be explored in future films) explored/shown in more detail: 

THE BLIP & how it affected regular people. We only saw the comial bits/parts - the marching band of Peter’s school disappearing & reappearing & Aunt May reappearing in her apartment..that was no longer hers...as someone else had moved in (a family). When in reality... this film confirms my “theory/suspicion” that Avengers 3 & Avengers 4 - the Thanos snap & the Hulk (un)snap both created chaos everywhere. Both emotional, and legal..and other issues. 

The fact that the world is not in chaos... makes no sense. But then again... since NYC & several other places on Earth being battlefields during the Avengers vs Bad guys/aliens battles...in the past films...and being re-built really fast & people seemingly not panicking or having PTSD after the events... is a thing... then I guess only the main characters will remember & suffer after living through such events...everyone else seems to go on with their normal lives in a week or so... 

It did bother me a bit (even though I know this is a blockbuster film..and those don’t deal with such things...) that the very real repercussions of the snap & re-snap were not really shown or told. Just the funny Blip-video. And then the little bit we saw from the Aunt May held charity event for the homeless. That was the only real hint about the seriousness of those events in the fictional universe (even though she also made a joke about it on stage...but the cause itself is serious)

Things that bothered me

How no one seems to do any background checks in this universe. How no one seems to use any security measures. Like... no one checking up on Mysterio’s backstory (and yes, I know...his team helped create such amazing backstory & provided such great “proof”...that it fooled even “Fury” & SHIELD -- probably would not have fooled the real man, but... that’s the point...) but still... 

Also... Tony’s glasses not having any other safety measures & it being so easy to transfer over the power to someone else. And...despite Peter being vulnerable & trusting what others tell him (he probably thought Fury had checked up on Beck, but still... how & why did EDITH/the glasses not “scan” Beck...and reveal he’s a fraud? I know... that the only time when he’s looking at the illusionist when wearing the glasses is in the bar scene & they seem to be not “on”... still... why is the tech not scanning everything nonetheless? Though yeah... I know that the idea is that because of the characters emotional state they are vulnerable & easy to manipulate, and hence not thinking of checking “twice”...

MCU using the same backstory for yet another villain. Thats old. It’s done. Time to move on. I'm talking about Mysterio & how his backstory is that because he feels personally attacked by Tony Stark then that’s a reason (which justifies..in his mind, when it does not...and has not for any other past MCU villain, who thinks the same twisted way) his actions - destroying historical sights/cities & leaving behind casualties... not caring if there are innocent bystanders getting hurt. I will allow it this time, because Tony was in the center of this film, but this had to be the last time MCU uses the same “Tony hate” as the villains motivator. Also... I don’t trust Beck’s version of the story, so I would not be sure if he’s telling it as it was. He might be, but he might be not. (maybe he did come up with the idea, but perhaps his work contact stated that all creations during working for SI belong to the company, so he has no right to claim the tech as his own..no matter how much he regrets it after. Or perhaps he did (co)create it, but since his idea was weapons-based (destruction) & SI didn’t do weapons anymore, the tech was redesigned by Tony. But until MCU makes a stronger case... I’m not gonna blame Tony for “stealing” becks tech & claiming it as his ow. Also because I do not think Tony ever claimed in past films that he made the tech. He says it cost him a certain sum...though... So it’s even possible he “bought” the idea from Beck...and turned the weapon into therapy sessions... But even if mr. Beck was telling the whole truth and he was the sole creator of the tech & Tony “stole” it... none of it justifies his actions of purposely hurting innocent bystanders & destroying places. ) 

And I cannot believe how anyone can see Mysterio as the good guy, or sympathetic to Peter.  I might be wrong, but IMO all his “friendliness” in the beginning was a trick... part of the plan to earn Peter’s trust. It was part of the “illusion”, so even though I appreciate his comment “never apologize for being the smartest one in the room”, I don’t see it as anything other than fakeness. And I know I might be wrong & he might’ve really liked the kid & try to be friendly & appreciate him... up until “his team messed up & he had no other option than to get rid of all the loose threads”) 

Things I did not see coming: 

The train! I mean... at first I did not suspect that it was actually Beck, not Fury in Germany, but I became suspicious before it was revealed. And then I suspected that the illusion was not over yet, but... what I did not see coming was that train...moment. 

Also...during the London Tower bridge scene... I had a hunch that he’s pulling a double again..and the dying Mysterio on the ground was fake, but I did not see it coming that in reality he was standing right next to spidey, while pointing a gun at the kid. I had thought he was “hiding” somewhere instead. So that kinda surprised me...

What surprised/confused me

What surprised me a bit was seeing THAT character (William) from IM1 being on Team Mysterio. Yes, he was one of Tony Stark’s Stark Industries previous employees, but  it confused me a bit that he blames Tony, when he should've seen Obadiah Stane (who yelled at him for not being Tony Stark & not being able to create a miniature arc reactor, when Tony could do it in cave...with no high tech..using just a box of scraps) as the one to blame -- his anger should’ve been directed at (based on what has been shown on screen so far) at the man who yelled at him in IM1. 

But I guess there’s either a bigger story there after that that the MCU writers/directors decided to not reveal just yet (as we saw him take that thumbdrive after the download was completed at the end of FFH) or Mysterio simply was able to manipulate people so well & rallied them against their former boss, making everyone see him as the bad guy & the source of all their problems. 

THEORIES: 

WHAT IF... the NYC “fake news broadcast” was an illusion created by Mysterio/histeam? This would make it much easier for Marvel to have several other movies released in the next few years...before the next Spiderman & go easier on Spiderman? This way we would not miss a lot of time & there’d be no need to clear his name. they could just have the movie take place right after Far from Home (and prior to the coming movies events)...or they could start with a flashback to the end of this film & the  fade to “2 years later” or something. The last bit is also how they can still release the next Spidery film in a few years, while having several otehr films events happen in between... use a time jump early in the film... after a “flashback”...to the time Peter was considered a villain

#SPIDERMAN: FAR FROM HOME #farfromhomespoilers #farfromhomespoiler #ffhspoilers #ffhspoiler #SPIDERMAN FAR FROM HOME #FAR FROM HOME #Peter Parker #Tom Holland #MCU

[moon--melon]

ADWM - Further Analysis - (More Questions and Theories)

I rewatched "A Date with Markiplier", and it just got me thinking again.

Here, I'll simply be going over some unanswered questions of mine, and suggesting interesting theories (please note that the majority of this post is simply unorganized observations. There's not just one point to this). This post gets pretty long, so click "Keep Reading" and hop aboard! Enjoy.

@markiplier @mayor-damien-protection-squad​ @colonel-william-protection-army

ADWM = "A Date with Markiplier"

WKM = "Who Killed Markiplier?"

(Y/N) = "Your Name" (the self-insertion character in ADWM)

DA = "District Attorney" (the self-insertion character in WKM)

We have a lot to cover here, so let's just start with the basics. Let's go over some theories and questions that will be discussed in this post.

-The Mark we see in ADWM is the same Mark we see in WKM.

-The Chef and the Butler in WKM are the Chef and the Waiter in ADWM.

-The (Y/N) in ADWM is NOT the same (Y/N) in WKM.

-Why does Dark and Wilford recognize the viewer?

-Why does Mark act so weird when we first meet up at the date?

So let's start off with the first theory: Actor/Asshole Mark (from WKM) is the exact same Mark we see in ADWM.

This theory is very easy to agree with, but nonetheless, I've gathered some proof. (Bolded sentences will be summaries of the paragraphs)

-He used to be a great and famous actor. In the Meta Ending, it is shown that these series of videos are all just an act, and Mark is actually a huge asshole to his TV/movie crew (that covers both the asshole, and actor aspect of the Mark from WKM). At 0:39, Mark says: "I use to be somebody. Maybe not something good, but I was somebody---who worked on great projects!". This quote implies that, while he was disliked, he was still a great actor who worked on "great projects". Later on in the video, he reiterates by saying: "I used to be somebody... I used to be a star---". Lastly, in "ROMANCE" and "THE DARK MARK", he said that he considered himself to be a "patron of the arts". All of these are clear evidence that he used to be a rich and famous actor, which is EXACTLY what he was in WKM.

-Money is a big thing for him. He clearly doesn't have much of it, and he's very greedy either way. Obviously in the beginning, he loses his wallet, and you either have to pay, or suffer the consequences when you don't pay. Later on in the video "DON'T ATTACK", it's discovered that Mark DID actually have his wallet! Although, If you DO pay, Mark offers to buy snacks for the show, ...but he awkwardly clears his throat and walks away, implying that he..."misplaced" his wallet. AND FINALLY! When he proposes and you say "NO", he awkwardly confesses to the ordained Elvis-impressionist that he couldn't afford anything anyway. If you need any more evidence that Mark is a cheapskate, just watch the "PBJ Blues" ending, where the narrator LITERALLY calls him a "cheap date" (Well, he implies it with sarcasm). Clearly, Mark is trying to save as much money as possible. Meaning, he's lost his fame and fortune, and he's still greedy. (He's not even willing to buy a simple snack for his date!).

-Mark's an absolute asshole. I only have one piece of evidence for this, (because his overall greediness and his demeanor in the Meta Ending take care of the rest) In the "PAY" video, Mark reaches to the Waiter's hand, holds it gently, AND KISSES HIS OWN HAND---NOT THE WAITER'S HAND! What a self-loving douchebag! That poor waiter. A very sad bonjour... (I'm not even fucking kidding. Re-watch it. I was fucking rolling when I realized. It's genius).

Now onto the ONE thing that could possibly ruin this theory:

-This Mark supposedly has kids. Yep! In the Meta Ending, Kathryn tells Mark that his kids had called him. This is a very glaring detail, especially considering I don't imagine WKM Mark ever having kids in the future, or just ever desiring kids in general.

I am very willing to completely disregard this detail though. Keep note that ADWM was made before WKM was even thought up of, so this could easily be just a throw-away gag that has no meaning whatsoever---just a joke. (And yeah, I guess you COULD say that maybe he DID have kids, and he just doesn't care about them). (I was also going to add the fact that this Mark said he had some years left of parole, but I realized that doesn't mean he's not the Mark from WKM).

The second theory/topic is: the Chef and the Butler from WKM is the Chef and the Waiter in ADWM.

Truthfully, I have no "evidence" for this per say... But, I DO have a little theory that could work with the canon.

After successfully escaping the Markiplier Manor, Benjamin (the butler) and the Chef were out of jobs. Over the many (MANY) years after the events that took place at the mansion, they worked at various different restaurants, with the chef cooking, and the butler now serving as a waiter. Eventually, they mke their own business together, and they now have a restaurant of their very own: the restaurant we see in ADWM. Over all of these years, the Chef just goes haywire---even more than he previously was (converting to full-on cannibalism). And yes, I know Mark confirmed that they hate each other, but I theorize that they only stick together because they know each other, and they work well together.

Third topic is the different (Y/N)'s in ADWM and WKM.

Many fans suggest that these two are the same, but I'm pretty confident that they're not. The biggest reason as to why people say this, is because of the fact that Dark and Wilford actually recognize the viewer in ADWM (more on that later). But! I have a piece of CANON evidence that completely debunks that theory: Mark made it very clear that the DA in WKM is permanently stuck in the manor. Dark trapped them in the upside-down with no means of escape, ESPECIALLY after he shattered the mirror. So, there's just no way that these two characters are the same! There HAS to be another explanation as to why Dark and Wilford recognize (Y/N), ...which leads me to our next topic:

WHY does Dark and Wilford recognize the viewer in ADWM?!

This seems like such a strange detail! After thinking about it for a long time, I finally came to the conclusion that it means absolutely nothing, and Mark was just trying to show a connection between the viewer and his two most infamous characters. But after re-watching ADWM for the fourth time, something just told me that it actually DOES mean something more. The video SO GREATLY emphasizes the fact that they know the viewer.

In "THE DARK MARK", Darkiplier greets us by infamously saying "Did you miss me? ... I missed you ... very much". He then goes on talking about the viewer fondly, as if he really does know them. He says "and then...he [Mark] had the gall to not invite me to his little adventure with you".

In "MORE?" (also known as the True End), Wilford says: "GOOD EVENING! ...YOU...How are you doing?". Now, you COULD argue that Wilford just calls us "you" because he simply doesn't know our name, but no no no... I don't see it that way. The way that he talks and annunciates the word "you", and even the way he asks "how are you doing?", comes off as very familiar. It even has a kind of awkward sense to it (y'know when you come across people you know, but you feel awkward when saying hi, or too awkward to say hi). Will hesitates, and he emphasizes his words, rather than just greeting a stranger like normal. If he didn't know you, he'd just immediately and quickly say his greeting! He even squints his eyes at the viewer, as if he's trying to recognize them. And also, who the fuck asks a random stranger "how are you doing?"? That very question implies a sense of familiarity. And AFTER he greets you, he says "I don't have you scheduled for an interview just yet", that CLEARLY shows that he already knows about you! Especially since he didn't expect your arrival in his...weird...spinning clock dimension: "I don't even know why you're here...".

So...what does this mean? Honestly, I have no clue. Someone (forgive me for forgetting exactly who), suggested that over the decades of being stuck in the mansion, the DA's form gradually deteriorated and split up, shattering just like the mirror. And thus, bits of their soul leaked from the mansion and got reborn into the (Y/N) we see in ADWM, ...and possibly even the van videos (and yes, I also mean the (Y/N) in "Don't Remember"). This is a very interesting theory... because it explains the familiarity between the (Y/N) and Dark and Wilford.

Now onto the question that irks me the most. Why does ADWM Mark act so weirdly when he first meets the viewer?!

This question confuses me the most, because Markiplier makes it seem like SUCH AN IMPORTANT DETAIL! It's literally mentioned the FIRST SECONDS of the video!

For some reason, in ADWM, Mark doesn't know us, but he admits that he oddly recognizes us. After gifting the viewer with a rose, the FIRST thing he says is "You look so familiar... Have we met?". Now tell me, who the fuck says that ON A DATE? Now don't try and bullshit me by saying "Oh! Maybe it's a blind date!". No no no, we know for a fact that it's NOT a blind date, because in the video option titled "ROMANCE", Mark says: "Good idea! Ya know, I always thought you to be a patron of the arts like myself and ... I always respected that about you...". (What? So NOW he knows us? NOW he's acting like he's known us for a long time?!) "...I'm so glad you asked me out on this date. Or---was it me that asked you?---Ah, never know". HUH? Wanna run that by me again? Ahg, but anyway! The fact that one of THEM set up the date, and not a friend, shows that it's not a blind date at all! So why is the Mark character acting like he has short-term memory?

Haha, do you understand why this makes me so frustrated?? It's really only because Mark mentions it so many times, which makes me think it's important. Mark wouldn't just include and repeat a detail like this if it didn't mean something, ESPECIALLY when Dark and Wilford ALSO recognize the viewer.

Now, here's two things that could potentially explain, and ruin, this:

-The weird acting and inconsistent writing is purposeful, so it can work with the Meta Ending. If this is the case, then that's just brilliant work on Mark's part. In the Meta Ending, the Mark character treats this whole shoot as a joke. He says "Now I'm working on this bullshit" and "--can you imagine this script?! This bullshit script! What kind of plot-hole filled, clichéd, written script is this?", he then goes on to explain how completely ridiculous the show/movie is. So obviously, he didn't write it. This could explain why the Mark character doesn't know who his own date is, but then later on, he's known them for long enough to correctly guess that they're into romantic plays. The script (in the video's universe) is just a shitty script.

-Mark was just referencing the fact that the viewer is a fan of his, so they know each other from a creator-subscriber standpoint, and Dark and Wilford know the viewer because they know the fans have watched videos that included them. This explanation further emphasizes the self-insertion aspect of these videos. It literally puts someone who watches a lot of Markiplier, in a date with Markiplier! So the Mark character knows the viewer literally only because he knows they watch his videos.

While I want neither of these explanations to be true, they make a lot of sense, and they're actually very clever when you think about how Mark scripted the video. So, bravo if one (or even both) of these are true.

Clearly, "A Date with Markiplier" and "Who Killed Markiplier?" were both so amazing that I'm S T I L L thinking about it, and I'm S T I L L coming up with new theories for them. Mark's sketches, skits, and big projects have always been my favorite content of his, and they always will be. Let's Play's are enjoyable to watch for relaxation and a good chuckle, but Mark's skilled acting and clever script-writing never fails to be immersive, hilarious, and exciting. I truly hope he strives to make more scripted sketches in the future, by himself, and with friends.

Thank you so much for reading my long-ass post :) <3

I hope you enjoyed, and I hope it got you thinking!

#markiplier #who killed markiplier #a date with markiplier #theories #wkm

[loremaster]

BNHA 167 SPOILERS

Many people think this chapter is a red herring. I don’t, and here’s why. Prepare for a lot of words.

First off, I love Aoyama very much, if you couldn’t tell already. I think his weird flashy persona is hilarious, especially combined with the way he tries and fails to get attention. He’s been effective comic relief (for me, anyway) and he’s often the butt of the joke, but he bounces back and puts his persona back on anyway.

The audience is also made to sympathize with him at key points during the story so far. During the training camp arc, he is frozen in fear but finally wills himself to act against his cowardice to save Tokoyami’s life (and almost Bakugou’s as well). During the hero license arc, he experiences a similar dilemma, overcoming his insecurities to help his classmates in a big way (and at his own expense). Both times, we actually get a glimpse into his internal monologue, so that the audience can relate to his struggles.

The hero license arc is perhaps the biggest chunk of information we’ve gotten about Aoyama’s story so far. He flashes back to receiving his precious belt as a gift, while he thinks the words “Mama… Papa… why am I so different from everyone else?” This could mean a lot of things, but a popular theory (that I personally subscribe to - I even made a comic about it) is that Aoyama is secretly quirkless.

We’ve never seen him without his belt. During the entrance exam and the sports festival, it’s stated he took the time to fill out the necessary paperwork so he could use his equipment in the arena. We don’t know how his Navel Laser functions without it… or if it even does. It’s entirely possible the quirk itself is contained within the belt, and without it, he is useless. Either that, or without the belt, his quirk is unstable and a risk to himself or those around him, but I think it’s more interesting to believe the former.

To my knowledge, Deku is the only major character at this point to have been born quirkless. (at least in the main story - we have Knuckleduster in the Vigilante spinoff.) Other characters have had their quirks taken away, sure, but if 20% of the world is in fact born without superpowers like Deku… it’s a little strange that there hasn’t been a single other quirkless character. I think being quirkless is an important part of Deku’s heroic journey and his identity, and having another quirkless character go about it completely differently would provide an excellent foil to Deku.

(On a side note, Deku and Aoyama’s surnames seem to be parallels of each other, corroborating the idea of them set up as foils. “Green valley” vs. “Blue mountain” …? Horikoshi puts a lot of thought into his characters’ names and what they mean, so there’s no way this is a coincidence.)

So in Chapter 167, we see that Aoyama is not quite what he seems. After a display of hilarious and unexplainable behavior at lunch time, Deku’s internal monologue from the future kicks in and says “Aoyama was someone I could never understand… until his true nature started to reveal itself.” We see Aoyama with an uncharacteristically grim expression, with no silly sparkles to be found, looming over Deku from outside the balcony as Deku sleeps. Yeah, this is ominous - too ominous to be the setup for a bait-and-switch, in my opinion. It doesn’t seem tonally cohesive to go back on all this buildup suddenly, especially since we’ve been waiting for a traitor reveal since Present Mic first pitched the idea after the training camp fiasco. Deku’s monologue hinting at understanding Aoyama’s “true nature” is also ominous… but vague enough to not be entirely condemning. More on that later.

Some people have brought up the idea that this Aoyama we’re seeing outside Deku’s window is in fact, not the real Aoyama, but Toga disguised as him using her quirk. I won’t deny this is a possibility - yes, the wine glass earlier in the chapter could possibly be filled with Aoyama’s blood, which could be a reason to insist on eating alone - but, again, unless Horikoshi is less straightforward of a writer and more of a troll than I thought he was, I don’t think this would be tonally consistent with the buildup in the narration. Deku also says “Aoyama is a man whom I could never understand” … If it’s Toga as a doppelgänger, that wouldn’t make sense, as this statement applies to both Aoyama’s present and past behavior. Toga didn’t get involved with the League of Villains until after the Stain arc, whereas Aoyama’s mysterious absence during the USJ arc before that is one of the things that makes the idea of him as the traitor all the more likely.

When Horikoshi drew up a chart of each student and major villain’s location when they get split up at the USJ, both Aoyama and Hagakure’s locations are unknown. I don’t think this is without reason. Both of their absences are played off as jokes - Hagakure claims to be near Todoroki, who is unable to confirm either way because she’s invisible, and wonders how she escaped being frozen, and Aoyama, after failing to get attention several times in a row, proclaims his location is “a secret.” The Hagakure traitor theory is already very popular, and there are many posts and videos about it already, so if you’re curious, please look it up. Not many of those posts have discussed the idea of Hagakure and Aoyama being partners in crime, though. I think that’s very possible at this point.

So, if Aoyama really is a criminal working for the League of Villains, what is his motivation? Based on everything we’ve seen, I think he is being manipulated by the League, and All for One in particular. Why? Because All for One can give out quirks.

What if Aoyama was born quirkless, but isn’t quirkless anymore? All for One would have the means to give this insecure boy what he wants in order to feel “equal” with the rest of the world, and use that as something to lord over his head and demand loyalty, as he could just as easily take that quirk away. This quirk could be the Navel Laser quirk, or if the laser is contained entirely within the belt, it could be something completely different - a second quirk we haven’t seen yet.

This would mean that Aoyama, while being the traitor, wouldn’t exactly be an unsympathetic character, which fits with the things we’ve seen directly from Aoyama before. He’s an incredibly insecure and cowardly young teenager who sees himself as unequal to his peers, and covers that up with a flashy persona to get attention. Up until now, he’s been annoying (to others, maybe) comic relief who knows how to stand up for himself and his classmates when it really matters. His past actions and the way they’re framed wouldn’t really make sense if he were entirely malicious and the entire thing was faked. I think he’s really bad at faking things! When someone pokes holes in his sparkly facade, he visually reacts! He gets nervous! He hasn’t been very competent at much of anything, not quirk tests, or grades, or even getting the attention he so clearly craves. If every part of that is an act, color me impressed.

But even though I think he’s sympathetic as a whole, that doesn’t mean I think he’s innocent either. Remember how he got to participate in the last section of the sports festival? He was in dead last during the race, but Shinsou brainwashed him and rode on his back for the cavalry battle, carrying him to victory (pun intended). Ojirou and Shouda, who had also been brainwashed, both dropped out of the final round because it wouldn’t be honorable to participate without having relied on your own strength to get there. Aoyama, however… sees nothing wrong with this, and participates anyway. This seriously calls his morality into question. He clearly thinks getting attention is more important than honor or skill. So he participates, only to be absolutely humiliated in front of thousands. Butt of the joke indeed.

Something else I have thought was odd about him was during his introduction at the UA entrance exams, when the teachers are describing various ways students can be strong and succeed. They indirectly describe Aoyama as someone who can “remain calm in any situation” … but this isn’t quite true, from what we’ve seen later. This could be something I’m reading into a little too much - I don’t know what it means, but it stood out to me.

The running gag of Aoyama breaking the fourth wall and always looking at the camera/the viewer is also something notable about him… at this point, it seems a little creepier than it did before. Maybe it’s symbolic of his constant unsuccessful plots for attention, maybe it means he’s aware of something his other classmates are not. I always thought it was endearing and funny, but others probably thought it was creepy. This latest chapter seems to confirm that.

His behavior - his “true nature” - really is unexplainable at parts, though. Especially during the cheese scene during this chapter. What’s up with that? I don’t think he was trying to poison Deku at all - that’d be way too obvious. My guess is he was just trying to make friends and win Deku’s trust in his own weird way… but then why is he so awkward about it? Why is he so unsuccessful at getting the attention and praise he wants? There’s still a lot more to be discovered here.

Some people have also suggested that Aoyama’s creepiness and upfront behavior in this chapter is because he has a crush on Deku. Again, not entirely out of the question, but I’ll be surprised if it happens in canon. Aoyama has read as very flamboyant since the beginning, but at the same time… I’m not sure I quite like the idea of the Gay Character being a creepy stalker. We’ll just have to see with this.

So what do I think is going to happen, then?

I think this next arc will be about uncovering Aoyama’s secrets, of course. We, the audience are aware that there’s something darker going on with him now, as is future Deku given his narrations… but the Deku of the present is still sleeping soundly as he is being observed. I don’t think this will lead to a confrontation immediately - I think Deku has to work for his suspicions to be confirmed. Quite possibly, he will be the lone doubter of our sparkly boy until some more evidence comes into play.

Iida, especially, will be an obstacle Deku has to overcome. In this chapter, he is incredibly trusting of Aoyama and willing to pardon his strange behavior without a second thought. He likely feels a kinship with Aoyama after their struggles together in the Hero License arc. He, unlike Deku, saw Aoyama’s display of brilliant bravery - and vulnerability - in that moment. He understands more of Aoyama’s true feelings… or at least he thinks he does.

In addition, none of the students know about Present Mic’s (and therefore the other teachers’) suspicion of a traitor within the school. Because of their shared trials together, I don’t think Class 1-A would be so willing to cast doubts on any of their classmates - their friends - unless given irrefutable evidence. (Given what we know about Iida and how he gets when he’s emotional, it’s possible he might take even longer to convince.)

So I think uncovering these truths will take a while to happen. Perhaps Deku will approach Aizawa about it, someone who does know about the traitor theory.

After that though, I don’t think it will be resolved right away. As much as it pains me to say, I think Aoyama’s time in Class 1-A will be coming to an end. Horikoshi did say Shinsou would be getting some major character development soon, right? The fan consensus seems to be that he will replace whoever ends up being the traitor.

But then what happens to our beautiful sparkly boy? Does he hang with the League of Villains? I can’t imagine him getting along with that crowd very well at all. Especially not since he helped fight against them during the training camp to save Tokoyami… it’s possible he’s entirely unrelated to the League and merely working with All for One… who is in solitary confinement. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him at all, but the only way for AFO to get out is to be broken out with help from someone from the outside. That could end up being Aoyama… somehow.

As far as Aoyama’s relationship with Deku, though… at some point I think he will confide in Deku and share his weaknesses so we can understand his real story and his motivations fully. Whereas Deku worked hard to do his best as a hero even without a quirk, Aoyama clearly has trouble with that, and will try to coast by on the backs of others. He relies on gadgets, and I don’t think he studies for school at all. But at the same time, Deku also understands what it’s like to feel completely hopeless and worthless, and I think he will end up connecting to Aoyama even despite everything, and help him become a better person. Nobody can solve all their problems by punching them in the face, not even All Might, and I think a true future Number One Hero would try to look for a better way.

So, yes, I think Aoyama is the traitor we’ve been looking for… but I don’t think this makes him a bad person. I think the audience is made to feel bad for him. He’s weak, cowardly, and pathetic, but when it comes down to it, he has a heart of gold and has been willing to put himself in danger to save his classmates on multiple occasions. I think anyone would have to be a true evil genius to fake that much, and I really don’t think Aoyama is an evil genius… just being manipulated by one.

All in all, I’m really excited to see where this arc will lead. I’ve loved Aoyama since the beginning and I’m so excited to see more character depth from him, no matter what that means. I could be completely wrong about all of this! (If you see a hole in my argument, feel free to point it out!) So either way, here’s hoping the rest of this arc is something great.

#bnha spoilers #bnha 167 #seriously major spoilers #this is like 2k words though #meta

[renzanandsinghramananda]

Kabbalistic Musings on "Life of Pi"

On the first page of the novel, Life of Pi, the main character, Pi Patel, states that one of his two academic majors was in religious studies, with his thesis focused on "certain aspects of the cosmogony theory of Isaac Luria, the great sixteenth-century Kabbalist from Safed."  Luria, also known as the "holy Sri" (Lion), is still revered as one of the greatest of all Jewish mystics.

In the movie, Pi does not mention Luria by name, but he does say that he lectures on Kabbalah at the university. Given this reference (and a few others I will explain below), I feel justified in assuming that there are Jewish mystical themes encoded in the story, even though they are presented mostly in terms of Hinduism.  As I am a visual-oriented person (one of my autistic gifts), I will focus primarily on the movie, while using the book for more background references as needed.

(Warning: If you read beyond this point, you will encounter spoilers, so if you have not read the book and/or seen the movie, stop here or proceed at your own risk!)

In both the book and the movie versions, Pi Patel's father owns a zoo, so he grows up with a lot of practical knowledge about animals.  He is also very interested in religions. In addition to his mother's Hinduism, he also explores Christianity and Islam, finding truth in all three paths and combining their practices in his daily life. His brother ridicules him for this, while his father tries to convince him that "religion is darkness" and that rational thinking -- science -- is the way of "the new India."  Pi replies with the words of Mahatma Gandhi: "All religions are true."

The book goes into considerable detail about the three theologies and the differences between them, while the movie relies more on visual scenes of worship to get this point across. The book has a poignant -- if hostile -- marketplace encounter, with Pi's three religious teachers each claiming him for their own faith.  The movie leaves this scene out, perhaps because it might offend viewers, or else be over the heads of children in a PG audience.  It is well worth reading if you haven't already.

Pi is especially puzzled by Christianity, because he cannot understand why God would allow his innocent son to suffer for the sins of the guilty.  To him this makes no sense at all. The question of suffering recurs throughout the story.  How can a God who loves us still allow us to suffer?

The shipwreck

Because of political changes in India (during the administration of Indira Gandhi), Pi's father decides to close the zoo, sell the animals, and move the family to Canada. They will travel with those animals headed for North America on a Japanese-owned freighter named the Tsimtsum.  Which brings us to the second Kabbalistic reference in the story.  Although Tsimtsum might look like a Japanese name, it is in fact Hebrew, and means "contraction" or "withdrawal."  It refers to the teaching of Isaac Luria which says that, before the Creation, everything was infinite God-essence.  In order for God to create the universe as we know it, God first had to create a vacant space -- a void -- for it to exist in.  God did this by withdrawing -- contracting  -- Him/herself.  Within this void, God is hidden, allowing for free will and for independent creatures like us to exist. 

That's all very interesting, but why did author Jann Martel name the ship Tsimtsum?  

In a blog article on this topic, David Sanders quotes Martel on this question: “I wanted a representative scoop of religions in the book – Hindu, Christian, Islam. I would have loved to have Pi be a Jew, too, but there are no synagogues in Pondicherry [where the family was from in India]. So I chose Tsimtsum as the name of the Japanese cargo boat because, although it sounds Japanese, it is a Hebrew word.”

So my intuition was correct:  Martel wanted to include Jewish mysticism in the mix, but like God in the cosmic tsimtsum, it is hidden. However, I think the symbolism goes deeper than that.  Genesis says that the world was "void and formless," with the spirit of God moving upon "the deep," often visualized as a vast ocean.The Zohar describes Creation as beginning with a primal point (singularity?) within the void, which then expanded.  When the ship sinks, Pi's world is contracted into a single point -- the lifeboat -- on a vast formless ocean, reversing Creation to chaos, so to speak. The graphics in the movie show this in several scenes, with Pi's boat a mere speck upon the ocean. 

"As above so below" -- the clouds reflecting in the water make it appear  as if the boat is in the sky

The movie also uses another common kabbalistic theme: "As above, so below." This is the idea that the physical world "below" is a reflection of the higher spiritual world "above."  In numerous scenes we see the sky reflected in the water to the point that there is no horizon, no differentiation between the two. In the contraction of Pi's world, everything blends into one.

In one scene, Pi looks into the ocean and sees the whole universe reflected -- reminiscent of a childhood story told earlier by his mother, about how the Hindu god Krishna opened his mouth and the universe was seen within it.  (The CGI graphics of the two scenes are very similar.)   Once again, we are reminded of the spirit of God moving upon the waters in Genesis. 

The voyage

Pi makes it to the lifeboat, along with four animals: a wounded zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a tiger named Richard Parker, a name he got through a mix-up of paperwork.  There is a lot of focus on names in this book.  Pi's first name is Piscine, from the French. But the bullies in his school take to mispronouncing it as "Pissing," so he re-names himself Pi. The Tiger was supposed to be called "Thirsty," but ended up as Richard Parker instead. In both cases, a less dignified name was replaced by a better one.  In the Bible, a number of characters are given new names to reflect a new status.

The zebra and orangutan are killed by the hyena, which in turn is killed by the tiger.  This leaves Pi alone with a vicious, hungry predator.  At first Pi is terrified, but he soon realizes that he and the tiger must co-exist.  He therefore works to establish his dominance and define their territories, using the methods of a circus trainer.  Various interpretations for this relationship have been put forth, most centering on some form of the tiger being his animal self.  This also fits with Jewish thought, where we have both a good side (yetzer tov) and a bad side (yetzer ha-ra.)  One cannot destroy the bad side, but one can learn to control it, as Pi does with the tiger.  In the book he considers various ways to destroy the tiger, but comes to realize that they need each other to survive.  "My fear of him keeps me alert, tending to his needs gives my life purpose," he explains. 

The carnivorous Island

One of the strangest episodes in Pi's voyage is the floating island full of meetkats.  Safe by day, the island becomes carnivorous at night.  This is so weird that many readers see it as pure fantasy.  I would like to suggest it is a combination of reality and imagination.  No, there are no ecosystems like the one Pi describes. However, there are many small islands in the Pacific, and floating islands of volcanic pumice -- some with trees -- have been reported. (Read more...) Carnivorous plants also exist in some places. So these elements do have a ring of truth.

By the time Pi gets to this island, he and Richard Parker are so close to death as to be delirious. In the movie they have just gone through a terrible storm where Pi cries out to God, "I lost my family, I lost everything. I surrender. What more do you want?" He has reached the depths of despair, the deepest dark night of the soul.  He fully expects to die.  So why couldn't there be a real island with some sort of animals on it, that Pi mis-remembers in this state of confusion?  If you compare the images of the island trees with the banyans he walked among back in India, they are very similar.

Screen shot of The Island, enhance by me to make the reclining Vishnu shape stand out more clearly. 

Another aspect of the island is mystical. In the beginning of the movie, we are told that the Hindu god Vishnu "sleeps on the boundless ocean of consciousness" and the universe is his dream.  After Pi learns about Christianity, he thanks Vishnu for leading him to find Christ, and touches a small statue of Vishnu reclining.  When we see the island from afar, it had this same shape, formed by the outline of the trees. This suggests the possibility that the island may be some form of miracle, that God is watching over Pi and Richard Parker even if hidden.

But although the island suggests sweet repose, it is a false peace.  All that the island gives in the daytime, it takes away at night.  And it is lonely.  Pi could have stayed there forever, eating plants by day and sleeping with the meerkats in the trees by night, but it was an empty existence. When he finds a human tooth embedded in a fruit (which opens like a lotus in the movie) and realizes that some previous castaway had died there, he decides to leave and takes the tiger with him.

The two stories

Richard Parker walks off into the junge

After 227 days of survival on the high seas, Pi is washed ashore in Mexico.  As he lies exhausted on the beach, Richard Parker walks off into jungle without even looking back  The tiger is never seen again. This deeply saddens Pi, who even years later wishes there had been some sort of final look or growl in parting.   In the book, during the first part about life in a zoo, Pi told the story of a black panther that escaped the Zurich zoo in winter and survived on its own for several months.  Now we know this was to lay the groundwork for the possibility that Richard Parker also survives in the South American jungle. Still, Pi misses him.

Once back in civilization, parts of the voyage sound too strange to be true. The two Japanese insurance investigators don't believe him, and ask for an ordinary story to put in their report, one that their company will believe. So he obliges them and tells a more common lifeboat survival tale, one of treachery, murder and cannibalism, in which only he survives. In this second story, the zebra is a wounded sailor, the hyena is a barbarous cook, the orangutan is his mother, and he is the tiger.  In its own way this tale is also hard to believe, because his mother and father can't swim, his brother refused to get up to investigate the loud noise, and all three were down below when the ship sank. Only Pi was on deck because he went up to see the storm.

So which story is true?  In both stories the ship sinks, he loses his family, suffers for 227 days at sea and is the sole survivor.  In the end, neither story explains why the ship sank. Neither explains Pi's suffering. Neither can be proven true or false. 

Pi asks, "Which is the better story?" The writer who is interviewing him says that the one with the tiger is better.  The Japanese insurance men apparently agree, because in the end, they include the tiger story in their report.  As Rebbe Nachman of Breslov once said, "Not all the stories are true, but when the people tell them, they are holy." One cannot prove religion one way or another. Is rationalism really better than mysticism? What if life really is a random jumble of meaningless events?  Can we live with that?  It is the nature of human beings to seek meaning in life, to bring order out of chaos.  Whether or not Richard Parker was real, without the tiger Pi would not have survived.

"Above all things, don't lose hope," said the survival manual in the lifeboat. 

"Nver despair!" taught Rebbe Nachman. 

The better story is the one with hope.

from Notes from a Jewish Thoreau http://ift.tt/2gRsTgN via IFTTT from CoscienzaSpirituale.net Associazione "Sole e Luna" via Clicca

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[twdmusicboxmystery]

The Significance of the BackGammon Game

Okay, as a separate thing from the Governor episodes, I want to talk about the games that the employee in the episodes. We've actually seen several games uses symbols throughout the see series. Two were seen prominently during the Gov’s arc for 4x06 and 4x07. The first was backgammon. I’ve briefly looked into this before, but I'm not at all familiar with how backgammon is played, and nothing jumped out at me before as super important to Beth's arc.

I think about the only thing I've said before, is that it's often associated with the colors black and white, which we know are associated with Beth and Daryl, both through their laces (X, X, X) and through the Horse Theory.

After re-watching the Governor episodes two weeks ago, it struck me very powerfully how much they focus on the backgammon game. I started looking at the rules and how to play. I found a few interesting things.

For purposes of this theory, we’re going to assume that game pieces or checkers represent characters.

In terms of playing, each player sets the checkers up in various formations, depending on what version you're playing, on these triangles. Players must move in a horseshoe-shape. (Horseshoe = St. Patrick and Luck, yeah?) 

(Image Source)

Once a player gets all the way around the board, they can get rid of their chips. It's called “bearing off.” The point of the game is to get all one’s checkers off the board before one’s opponent does.

So, if the checkers represent players, then each player moves through the game (the show) in a horse-shoe shape (luck). And they end up back where they started, or just adjacent to it.

The “bearing off” could represent death.

Each player rolls the dice and move their chips accordingly. I won’t go into all the intricacies of backgammon, but there was one part that really caught my attention. 

In the course of a move, a checker may land on…a point occupied by exactly one opposing checker…. In this case, the [checker] has been “hit,” and is placed in the middle of the board…. Checkers placed on the bar must re-enter the game through the opponent’s home board before any other move can be made. (Source)

Read that a couple of times and apply it to characters in the walking dead. We’re actually talking about a game where pieces (a.k.a. characters) can be taken out of play and placed in the center for safekeeping. Basically, theyr’e not part of the game for a while. They’re in holding. But they MUST re-enter the game at some point in order for a player to win.

Sound like that's true of Beth? I would say yes. It's also been true of other characters. In fact, this game first showed up in the Governor's episodes. So it could apply most directly to him. And it works:

The Governor, at least as far as TF was concerned, was taken out of play. He disappeared at the end of S3. They didn’t know where he’d gone, and they definitely didn't have a body. He was missing and presumed dead. Michonne and Daryl even talked about looking for him, but not being able to find him. The trail went cold.

We, the viewers, need to learn a lesson from this. Just because a character disappears doesn't mean that they're gone. It means that they’re somewhere else, being held in wait for later part in the story. This was true of Glenn, though his fake out was very small. He disappeared him 6x03 and for the next few episodes is not part of the story. He reappeared in 6x07, in time to be part of Enid’s story, part of 6B, and an unfortunate part of the Savior’s story.

You could also argue this was true of Tara for a time, when she was missing. Much like the Governor, we saw Tara’s story in its own episode. We saw the Governor's back story, and we saw Oceanside.

But there are some characters whose back stories we haven't seen. We still haven't seen what happened to Heath. Sherry also disappeared, and we don't know where she's been, but she has a back story as well. Given that Daryl sent Dwight to find her, I think we can safely assume that shall reappear in story at some point. Same with Heath.

You can even say this of Morales. While he didn't see his back story, we did hear what it was. He disappeared S1, and reappeared much later.

I do think that this was the significance of the backgammon game in the Governor's episode was to show that the Governor was the first (after Gimple took over) of characters who exited the story for a time, but was kept in holding for a time, until he could re-enter the story and become a part of it again. We see with numerous other characters, Beth being the biggest. Once again, she disappeared, and wherever she is. She's being kept back, but must reenter the story before the game ends.

In terms of the plot, Megan and her grandfather are playing backgammon when the Governor first meets Tara and Lily. The grandfather later asks the Governor to visit the apartment above theirs and get a better backgammon set that he knew his neighbor had.

 Two things that were interesting about this:

1. He finds the set under the bed. 

There’s a bit of an “under the bed” theme going on here. Remember in 4B, Rick hid under a bed from the Claimers. 

In 4×07, the Governor, Martinez, Pete, and Mitch find severed heads under the bed.

In terms of Rick, that episode has a crazy amount of parallels to Beth and especially Grady. He’s trying to escape from the house the whole time, there are similar symbols and colors. When he leaves, he does it with a pair of scissors in his hand. I always thought it simply foreshadowed Beth, but if Rick is going to repeat her arc, it makes a lot more sense.

I think overall this is part of the “what is hidden” theme. Beth is hidden from us. Rick hid from the Claimers under the bed, and they didn’t even know he was there. The Governor was hidden from TF, as was every other character that disappears for a time. See what I mean?

2. After finding the game, he sets it on the wheelchair. 

Remember how I talked about how the owner of the apartment had two prosthetic legs and there’s a wheelchair in the room? Later in this same episode, when the Gov goes to the funeral home, there’s a blond walker in a YELLOW wheelchair (escape) that obviously represents Beth. (I mean, who’s ever seen a yellow wheelchair before?) 

After the Governor finds the black and white backgammon set (Bethyl’s laces) under the bed (what is hidden), he sets it on the wheelchair (Beth). See what I mean?

Don’t you just love it when the symbolism all comes together like this. ;D

A quick word on St. Nicholas and the Pickles. It deals with three resurrections, right? And I keep saying that I think they represent Beth, Glenn and then Rick in S9. I’m actually changing my opinion on that. I no longer think Glenn is one of them. I think the three resurrections are the Governor, Beth and Rick. That’s why Beth was so heavily paralleled with the Governor and foreshadowed by him back in S4.

What makes Glenn different? Mostly time and distance. 

Unlike these others, Glenn wasn’t separated from TF for a significant period of time. (It was really only about a day.) He also didn’t go on some long journey and then return to TF. The parallels between Beth (and probably the other two) and Glenn are there, but he was very much a miniature example of the arc. He wasn’t gone for months or years, or travel a great distance. So I officially think the three resurrections are the Gov, Beth, and Rick.

Quick Aside: You know how Beth = water? There’s a water bottle with Rick under the bed in 4x11. Water around the Governor in this part in 4x07. And a water bottle that Enid throws at Glenn in 6x07. Just saying. ;D

But the Gov won’t be resurrected, you say. True, but that’s because he already was. This arc for him encompassed the time between when he disappeared in 3x16 and when he reappeared in 4x05-4x08. He was missing and presumed dead by TF and then turned up alive. So that was his “resurrection.” As of 4x08, he is dead and won’t come back again.

So that’s it for today. Wanted to show you guys the significance of the backgammon game. I think it showed that starting with the Gov, characters would begin disappearing for a time before reappearing. These episodes also featured a scene that’s a play-by-play of Grady, 

which I interpret to mean the ultimate example of this (a character being held for later) would come through Grady. And since then, this has happened with multiple characters: Carol (when Rick kicked her out but she returned to Tyreese a few episodes later, Judith (because Rick and Carl thought she was dead for a while after the prison), Beth of course, more than once, Tara, Sherry, Heath, Morales. I read an article suggesting Dwight may disappear from the story for a time, but will resurface eventually. And now the same will happen with Rick in S9.

Incidentally, FTWD also does this. Ophelia disappeared for a time, Daniel has disappeared more than once (is currently missing) and I believe Madison is now missing, rather than dead, and will resurface as well.

Bottom line: Beth isn’t dead. She’s being held in wait, in the middle of the backgammon board, until the story is ready for her. Here’s hoping S9 is her time to return to the game. (And because Rick is needing, leaving a vacancy for a new sheriff, I believe it will be.) Cheers!

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl #back gammon #st. nicholas and pickles