deep cover thoughts, or: who is kotoko's victim, really?
ok. so now that we've seen the deep cover mv, it's late but before i go to bed i want to post my biggest thought/theory on it. that being?
this girl is the victim that kotoko is in milgram for, and the murder we see in the warehouse is a red herring.
now. one thing about the prisoners that are grouped together is that each duo appears, largely, to have a direct murder and an indirect murder in it.
haruka is seen directly killing in his mvs; yuno's murder is an abortion, something so indirect many people don't even consider it to be such. muu is clearly seen directly stabbing rei in her mvs; fuuta's victim dies indirectly due to him starting online backlash against her. whatever shidou is doing to his patients appears to be pretty direct, while mahiru's boyfriend seems to have died indirectly due to having killed himself. kazui is in the same indirect boat as mahiru with hinako's apparent suicide; meanwhile amane is shown in purge march to have directly attacked and killed her mother.
with one duo, up until now, having been an apparent exception.
we can see these groupings clearly in the first anniversary art with all the prisoners together:
all the direct murderers are on one side of the table, and their indirect counterpart on the other. all the patterns outlined above, we can see here.
mikoto is on the direct murderers' side of the table, and this makes clear sense with what we see in MeMe's opening shots: as vague as mikoto's mvs can be sometimes, we definitely see him hit that guy with the baseball bat pretty explicitly.
and kotoko? kotoko, as his counterpart, is on the indirect side of the table. this seemed weird, because from what we knew of her murder in harrow... we see her track a guy down into a warehouse and kill him pretty directly. it seems like these two are an exception. but now, we have deep cover, and... are they really both in milgram for a direct murder?
it seems like something bad is happening in this shot, judging by the girl's expression. what do we see right after? kotoko leaving this girl behind, walking past her. she's looking for her next target, and she doesn't have time to play around right now. only... i think it goes wrong. i think kotoko leaving this girl when she does is a mistake, and that her disregard for the girl leads to her getting hurt and dying somehow. after all... the images on the prisoner cards appear to correspond to the murder location. and kotoko's...
kotoko's looks an awful lot more like this than it does like that warehouse.
it seems like this girl idealizes kotoko an awful lot for having saved her. maybe she tries to follow kotoko, but something happens. maybe she gets caught by whoever it is that kotoko is trying to hunt down... and maybe this time, she doesn't make it out okay.
I have a question related to the prison au. Sorry if this has been asked before but what if Mc didn’t com in as a nurse but rather a therapist. Like the jail’s first therapist and it was all mc’s idea because Mc thinks that if the prisoners have more of am emotional outlet they won’t be as aggressive to one another and will become better people/monsters after they get out. And Mc wants to make a difference for them because Mc knows that their jail life isn’t the best. Mc can tell sans is trying to manipulate them, and isn’t affected much by reds attempts to charm her as much, and Mc can see threw skill’s scary and can understand him more and teaches him how to communicate how he is feeling better.
Oooooo...
Sans: Unlike pretty much all her other counterparts, this Mc is onto Sans' shit from the very start. Originally assigned to him as a mere formality, she immediately clocks that this motherfucker is much scarier than anyone has noticed before. His 'therapy sessions' are more like mental chess matches between two very perceptive people. Her aim is to genuinely try to treat him, genuinely try to get to the bottom of why he's turned into this terrifying mastermind, and perhaps even help him; there's not much else she can do. No one will believe her. Sans knows that, too.
Sans loves it. At last- someone who really, actually understands him, and the monster (not Monster) he's become. Not someone from his past lingering endlessly on who he used to be, not another pawn buying his 'harmless' persona. He loves having someone who is finally, finally in on his game. He was already fascinated with her from the start, this just makes it so much more intense- he loves being able to drop the mask. He loves the challenge of having to find ways to manipulate that are outside of his usual routes. He loves her, she's all he lives for.
She wants to help him? Cute. He'll show her what the world is really like. Then they can be puppetmasters together.
Red: She's assigned to Red to 'help' with his constant violent outbursts, after he gets in a particularly brutal fight and has to choose between attending therapy or lengthening his sentence. He's not the first violent offender she's dealt with, and he's definitely not the first flirtatious patient... but he's definitely the first that seems so utterly determined to charm her. She's firm on not breaching her ethics and she won't allow herself to do anything more than just get along well with him.
Mc actually makes a big impact on his mental health. The instinct to open up to her is a hard one to ignore, given his affection for her and their great rapport, and Red just likes her more and more with every issue she helps him work through. He doesn't like that she absolutely refuses to be with him, and he sees it as more of a challenge than anything.
When he gets out, he'll make sure she knows he's still very interested in some private sessions...
Skull: Giving Skull a therapist kinda feels like putting a band-aid on a completely severed torso. But it was a legal requirement. He cycles through therapists who either immediately refuse to treat him, or get a few days in and THEN refuse to treat him. Mc is just another in a long line of therapists that the prison expects to see rolling in.
... Except... he's so good for her. He tries to talk, he's calm and never bites, he's highly engaged with the tasks she gets him to do with her, he quickly notices that the better he does the more they make her spend time with him. The less violent he is, the more she talks to him in that lovely soft voice. Anything for more of her voice.
... Issues arise when Mc starts to understand that Skull has developed feelings for her. Deep feelings. He's always trying to kiss, nuzzle or hold her- it feels unethical to keep treating him. But it's also a well established fact that her presence in his life has probably saved several lives. If she tried to tell the prison that she didn't want to treat Skull anymore, she'd probably get a response along the lines of "we don't care, just keep him from eating anyone's hands".
Me: Here is an interesting idea, extrapolating the story's inherent, underutilized worldbuilding and not only acting upon it, but expanding it and making it my own to explore themes and characters I enjoy.
Also Me: Ok but also this would be Hilarious
There needs to be a scientific study done on how Rockstar Games' Arthur Morgan is able to provoke the most earth shattering emotions I didn't even know I had in me
✨🦐Behold the brilliant blue blasts of barf that best baddies in the black of the bay!🦐✨
Okay, it’s technically not barf… This vibrantly vermillion little deep-sea shrimp, Acanthephyra sp., is a savvy spewer that spits up a sparkling secretion to outsmart sneaky shrimp snackers.
That glorious glowing goo is a special fluid it creates in its hepatopancreas (kind of like an all-in-one liver-and-pancreas combo organ), which lights up upon contact with oxygen in the surrounding seawater. By blasting a predator in the face with bioluminescence, it distracts them long enough for the shrimp to make a swift escape!
🎥: Shoutout to our fronds @mbari-blog for the first three clips!
THIS interview and THIS gif gives me the perfect picture and I think about it all the time.
"I wipe biscuit crumbs on the tail of my shirt before shaking the slender, almost weightless hand of Alex Turner."
"We'd lost the spark a bit, at the end of last year, with the live stuff. But we're ready for it again. I'm ready to look people in the eye," he'd said, staring at me just long enough for me to see my reflection in the black pits of his pupils.
And then he looked away.
From Highly Evolved - Simon Armitage (The Guardian): on Humbug era Alex
Big thanks for the support ! 🙏 it really warms my heart, you can’t imagine :) I sometimes wonder what’s the point. of, like, my hobbies I guess, what I do and all, but that’s ok, and if some can enjoy along, then I’m happy 🌟