#also fun fact all of his player caused deaths were done by hermits

[cactuupng]

I hope it's still okay to talk about traffic!Mumbo

A lot of the times,it's either Grian or Scar or Martyn that's popular within the life series fandom,but Mumbo's my favourite character so I'm glad that you like him a lot as well!

I just love that Last Life kind of started so good for him,with the Southlands,the aha jokes,the base and farms,but then he and Grian had that moment on the bridge and would only be red with Grian,who wanted him to join him SO BADLY,if he killed Mumbo fair and square.

Then Mumbo turned red and went INSANE with the end crystals.He was forced out of the Southlands (I think),he was trying to attack so many people,and didn't hesitate to push Impulse off of the SAME bridge that Grian tried to kill him on.He still joined up with fellow reds but he kept moving through different people,until he met up with Jimmy,a fellow Southlander,and died in his home,by the hands of one of his closest allies.

He's just kind of a tragic character that's different to the usual angst of the life series,somebody who wanted friends but lost them all and went insane and bloodthirsty because of it.

This might not make sense,or just feel like a basic explanation of Mumbo's Last life journey,but still,it was nice to talk about him and I love your art of Mumbo!

Yes yes yes YES!

I absolutely love traffic!Mumbo because the more you rewatch his povs, the more tragic he seems to become.

Like you said, it started out great! He got a group of friends, he got 4 lives, jokes - everything was perfect! But then the Bastion happened, and he lost his first life. Okay, that's scary! He hadn't died on hardcore before, so it's weird and was definitely a lot more terrifying than if he died on Hermitcraft.

He calls for help in chat, asking if someone, anyone, can come help him get home and protect him. He buries himself underground, waiting for Martyn and Jimmy to come back for him. No one comes, though, leaving him to wait. He's completely alone for the night, terrified to go out in case a mob hurts him and kills him again.

Mumbo's rightfully upset at them, commenting how the "aha" is traumatic to him now and how he can't do it due to not having a spyglass anymore. Meeting up with Grian, Mumbo makes a jab at himself about burning and dying, clearly still upset.

Then he dies again at the hands of, again, lava, but this time it was because Scar poured it on him. His friend from another world, killing him just like that, not really caring. He respawns, but he stays burning. Mumbo tries to jump into the water, trying to distinguish the weirdly non damage taking flames, but they don't disappear no matter what he does. The others don't comment on it, as if they can't see it. He's still burning. It's still warm.

and THEN THE GHAST BRIDGE?? INCIDENT HAPPENS??? Mumbo only heard talks about red names and how they can't team with non reds, only seeing Joel act that way. He's never experienced this. So it's incredibly distressing when he watches his best friend die in front of him, going down to red. He leaves a sign at the bottom, saving Grian's stuff and pleading for him not to hurt him, because hey! I saved your stuff! I'm your pal!

The whole conversation makes me sick, because Grian clearly isn't fully trying to kill Mumbo off. He wants to be friends with him, of course, but he can't kill him. Grian resorts to making pathetic attempts to drop him, but of course it doesn't work. He backs off the moment Mumbo tells him that he will join him if he kills him fair and square. Mumbo wants to join him, he wants to stay friends, but only if Grian does it fairly. Grian doesn't. He can't.

I'm skipping through everything to when Mumbo turns red because MUMBO ON HIS RED LIFE IS CONSTANTLY ON MY MIND BECAUSE OH MY GOD. This man is not used to this amount of bloodthirst. He's a killer, of course he is. His middle name is Killsalot god damn it! But he's not used to it being this much. He immediately goes insane, not hesitating to hurt, to explode, to push the limits. Seeing how Ren and BigB were scared of him if he even went NEAR them with something explosive, it filled him with power. "I like having this power!" he says, absolutely ecstatic of how he can do what he wants.

All this power comes with a cost, of course. Mumbo coming back to the place he called home, meeting face to face with Grian and Impulse. He shouldn't be here. They tell him that in the face. Mumbo tries to protest, to talk about about how he somewhat already was exiled already, but his voice gets quiet as the realisations hit him. He cant come home. Grian exiles him right in front of him, telling him that he should leave. He does, but not without doing what red names were meant to do. Destroy. Scare.

Back on the ghast bridge, Impulse and Grian are there. Mumbo doesn't hesitate to push Impulse off, laughing. Grian's upset, yelling at him while Mumbk tries to explain himself. Mumbk tries to do Grian's old tricks of breaking the floor beneath him, but he can't. Grian can now, though, not afraid to protect himself as he starts scaring Mumbo. All Mumbo fan do in turn is to apologise repeatedly, saying "sorry" over and over as if he didn't mean to do ehat he did, running away.

He keeps burning the flame. He keeps making the flame larger and larger and larger until its too much, until he burns himself down to ashes. He flies too close to the sun as he watches Jimmy die in front of him, realisations crashing over him after hitting his best friend of what he's done now, running away before turning back, hoping that he didn't follow. Grian did, though. He always does.

It ends with Mumbo getting stabbed in the chest as he feels himself dying. Not dying in the way that is on Hermitcraft, the way that it is back home. No. He's dying.

Mumbo has a constant theme with burning in LastLife. His first deaths relating to burning in lava, coming back permanently burning due to a glitch after his second one, his third happening right after exploding an end crystal right in front of him, his love for end crystals in the first place...

I like to associate him with a burning candle flame that just got too big, slowly burning himself down until nothing but a puddle of what once was remained.

#i didnt even touch on Ahasbands #there were some special moments in Mumbo's pov that make me sick #idk if any of this makes sense he just means a lot to me #ANOTHER association is Icarus but it isnt that big #He flew too close to the sun (Grian) and burned down because of it #LL!Mumbo Jumbo my burning star #also fun fact all of his player caused deaths were done by hermits #Scar took his second life #Etho took his third #and Grian took his final one #fun! #and all his deaths were somewhat witnessed by either Martyn or Grian or both #who are the two closest people to him in this season #and who are very strongly associated with the Watchers #cactuu talks

[the-apples-were-monitored]

Why Mika’s Death was Not Okay

It is a rule with fandom that the longer you stay with a series, the more it’ll disappoint you. A series will inevitably fail you, but the rule never will. Whether or not, as a viewer, we allow these sins committed by our favorite shows to turn us off til we turn it off for good is our own personal choice. Blind love can only carry us so far.

 It turns out that even though I feel the atrocities committed in the second episode of season 5 of Orphan Black are narratively unforgivable, I’m in too deep to turn off the tv now. I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t see how the final trip ends when with only 8 episodes left. But I can’t forgive the writers for killing off Veera Suominen.

 Now I get it; I’m a writer, and I feel that while storytellers have a responsibility to care for our audience and to understand the broader impact of our art we also have a deeper responsibility to ourselves. Most storytellers would agree that their best stories were passion projects that felt as if they were just burning to get out of them. The finished product should always be something that, when looked at later, the author can look back on and be proud that they really put all of themselves into. Can Graeme Manson and John Fawcett honestly say that this is the best, most shining example of their work? Is the way they tossed aside such a valuable character really what they had in mind from the beginning?

 For the uninitiated, Veera Suominen (hereafter referred to by her preferred nicknames of M.K. or Mika) is one of the latest female clones to pop up on the scifi television show Orphan Black. She was a valuable new addition to the team last season, as she was a connection to a previously hinted at massacre of clones in Europe: the infamous Helsinki event where a group of clones became self aware and were killed to protect the interests of their creators. Mika was the only clone to escape alive, and was so traumatized by what had happened that she basically became a hermit. She was smart enough to know that it wasn’t safe to be seen out in the open, and she used her considerable skills as a hacker to keep an eye on what was going on in the world around her.

 I think what made Mika so appealing to me is my own history of psychological trauma, plus a history of medical problems that keep me pretty regularly sick. Without going into too much detail, I can safely say that maybe my thinking on the matter is entirely biased and clouded by emotion. M.K. was a person I could see myself in, and when it was first made clear that she was starting to get sick with the same autoimmune condition the other clones were experiencing my heart broke. I don’t know if I fully expected her to succumb to her illness when progress was being made towards a cure, but I expected pain and heartache at least. If she was to die, it would be a dignified death befitting someone who fought in her own way to stay alive and under the radar. She was living outside the control of the ones who created her, but was still living under psychological duress after what had happened to her. It was most definitely a relatable story, as it is one that I live every day (under less dire and conspiratorial circumstances). I wanted so much for her to get closure and freedom in her life.

 With all that being said, this death scene was not okay. That’s what I keep repeating to myself now. It’s the biggest impression I got from the episode. This show advertises as one that respects its characters, but respect is the farthest thing from what she got. There was no respect for Mika’s journey, and there was no dignity in this death. The writers took a Ferdinand, a sad, sexually dysfunctional little man who was responsible for the Helsinki event and had him kill Mika because he was angry with a different clone. It’s a death that strips her of her right as an individual (which is a major theme of the show) and has her die as a stand in for someone else. And she didn’t even struggle. She immediately gave herself up because she was tired of running, and didn’t even try to take him with her. This is such a far cry from the M.K. who almost killed Ferdinand last season, and really begs the question: What could Ferdinand possibly have to offer the show that M.K. couldn’t? Ferdinand didn’t have half of the useful skills that Mika had and any proficiency with murder or intimate knowledge of the conspiracy could be achieved by Helena or Rachel. But M.K. was useful as a hacker, and even beyond having a usefulness to the plot there are those of us with traumatic pasts who really could’ve stood to see her get resolution before her death.

 The funny part of all of this is that now we’re being told that the point of the death is to prove that “nobody is safe” at this point. But we kind of already knew that, didn’t we? This was pure shock value, and shock value has no place in a series that purportedly respects its characters. If writers want to go in the direction of shock value, write slasher films. I promise that a good slasher film requires just as much attention to detail and can be just as much fun. That way, you don’t have to invest any time in characters because we all know they’re not safe and we know the majority of them are going to die horribly - like little humanoid Happy Tree Friends. All I’m saying, really, is that, as Cosima would say, the writers need to admit what this is really about. This was never about proving that nobody is safe. This is because the writers were just...done with her. So they just killed her. In the least respectful manner possible. It tied up no loose ends, it served no real consequence to the plot. Her death wasn’t an immediate call to action nor did it seem to have any effect on the characters beyond proving Kira’s psychic ability (which we’ve all known was a thing) and pushing her towards DYAD for testing (which would have happened anyway). It was just...nothing.

 It could be argued that M.K. giving herself up in Sarah’s place was brave in itself, but it wasn’t brave in a manner that was conducive to her character arc. In fact, this entire episode was antithetical to her character arc. Like I’ve already mentioned, clone disease is treatable. We’ve spent all this time seeing the sisters struggle with it, but there was no time dedicated to Mika’s personal struggle. Even Jennifer had more time post mortem to show us her coming to terms with her mortality. This just felt like one more thing to do to make her suffer, because what other way could they make Mika into a martyr for the cause than to make her too weak to fight? Which, in case you’re wondering, is what she should have done. Accepting her death immediately, before it even came to blows...lifting not a finger or a word in her own defense...It was deeply upsetting. Narratively, extremely sloppy, but personally very unsatisfying. It seemed like something I would do on my worst days. I went through a horrible trauma as a child and also suffer from an immune disorder that frequently makes me very sick. Being mentally and physically sick all the time is exhausting and I could understand why she would end it that way. But I turn to fiction a great deal of the time to see people who are in similar situations do things better than I would have, so that on the days when I want to give up I can point to them and say, ‘Well they didn’t, so I won’t either.’ She should have at least taken him with her. Then Helsinki would have at least been finished, and in death we could have wrapped this up quite neatly. Killing a major player in the event that created her mental trauma would have been a fantastic resolution to her character arc.

 I’m not saying, exactly, that death of a main character isn’t permissible in character-driven stories. When a series handles death well, it can be fantastic. True, in real life death doesn’t always have some kind of grand purpose and is always meaningless. But this is a story, and stories are supposed to have a grander purpose. I understand that we needed to raise the stakes, since this show has almost as many main character resurrections as Buffy (I exaggerate, but you get my point that this is the show where our characters never die). But it could’ve been handled with more respect to the character involved. I also think it was weird timing to kill off a Leda girl this early in the season. Big character deaths normally should be reserved, if not for the finale itself, than for the episodes directly leading up to it. That kind of death puts a show on a more clear narrative trajectory. One of the greatest character deaths in recent history happened on the CW show Nikita when Ryan Fletcher was killed off before the finale. Not only was that a death fitting of his character, but we know things just got real and there is a definite tipping point from which there is no return. I don’t have the same feeling after Mika’s death. I feel like she’s just gone and there’s no real reason for it. But I could be being unfair since there are still 8 episodes to go until the conclusion.

 I’m going to keep watching this show til the end, even after all this. Tatiana Maslany’s performance continues to be that which I aspire to as an actor, and I still feel a deep connection to the characters and an insatiable need to know where it all goes. But this was deeply upsetting, and cannot be forgiven. Please, just, fellow writers, I beg you...Retire the shock value deaths. Put actual thought into your characters and don’t just throw them away like this. Rest in peace, Veera Suominen (AKA M.K., AKA Mika). You didn’t deserve to be reduced to a stand-in for Ferdinand’s frustration with Rachel. You didn’t deserve to die as a representation of someone else. You deserved so much better.

#this is what i wrote earlier this week about mika #thought about submitting it somewhere to make money but it'll be irrelevant by tomorrow night #so i'll post it here #i feel weird because this is article format me instead of text post format me and it feels too formal #thoughts?