gem & impulse, I dunno, looking up a map i guess + gem explaining something to a crowd + some bodymarks (they are kinda like birthmarks and dont hold much meaning, i just thought it would be funky)

before i do anything actually related to the main plot i decided to do some exposition stuff

So, as i was saying in previous post, the relationship between Heliocross and Lunaris (i actually gave them names) regions are what i would describe as disconnected (even tho they are literally neighbours). It was a result of practically unresolved conflict from like 500 years ago which barely ended up in an official war (you could say that Sages basically dragged their Heads of Region to sign up a peace treaty). Im not going to say much about who was the baddie, it was pretty much the type of conflict that could have been avoided if the Heads weren't such stuck-up dismissive bitc- anyways. For some time after it was still really bad - people of both regions generally wanted to do nothing with the people of the other. It did mostly cool off with time, but unfortunately, the lands created by Gods were seemingly irreparably divided. For example, the biannual celebration of Equinoxes was no longer held (imagine New Year, but actually twice a year, and its like, the collaborative effort of both Heliocross and Lunaris. The March one (im not thinking of original names for fucking months) is more grand tho because its the The New Year, yknow?); some economics shit because most of the trading now happens through the third party (we will talk about the other region that is also there later tho); just overall unawares of what's happening on the other side of border. The only thing that stayed pretty much the same is whatever Sages are doing; and one if the things they are doing is ritual every solar eclipse (because yadda yadda moon close to sun) (i will expand on Sages later tho).

Talking about Heliocross specifically, one of the big problems here is hundreds of years of Not Admitting You Have Also Fucked Up about the whole thing. It's, once again, not outright hatred for Lunaris, but but ever since forever history books in Heliocross would mention mostly fucking ups from the other region. As of recent tho, it mostly now affecting the older generation, because those who younger are having access to less biased information due to the worlds equivalent of Internet (basically, how its it kinda irl now lmao). This also one of the factors of creation of special organisation [i will. create a name for it later. its not really important now anyways]. One of the main objectives it has is the rebuilding the relationship between Heliocross and Lunaris. That org is divided in two separate wings, one is more legal work focused (Usually related to traveling between regions for on or another reason. Its not illegal, but its really hard), the other is more social work leaning. Im not going too deep into that, neither into structure of it. I haven't thought of the name of it yet, but i made a logo:

Gem is a Managing director, concurrently is pretty much in charge of her department (her's is one of the ones that in the capital of the region). She also travels to Lunaria a lot (its pretty much part of the job). Impulse got spontaneously hired as "helper of Manager" (its supposed to be this vague). Those two are pretty much coworkers turned besties, since Gem insisted on dragging Impulse on various trips and visits.

I just finished outer range and I’m curious to hear your thoughts if you’d like to share them: what do you think is the point of Billy’s character? It seemed like they wanted us to think there’s a reason for his otherworldly quality, but it never really seemed to pay off.

well, i typed out a bunch of things in response to this and then i tried to backspace something and the page crashed and ate the whole thing, so now i’m kinda over it lol. but i guess the short version is idfk. i agree that the show seems to want us to think that there’s a point to a lot of things, and pretty much none of them have any actual payoff (other than i guess the VERY obvious reveal of autumn’s identity and the slightly less obvious only because we weren’t given reminders of it every 10 minutes but still easy to put together reveal of royal’s past). tbh i think brian watkins doesn’t really know what he’s doing—a feeling that only intensified as i started reading interviews with him talking about the show—and i think the show doesn’t even know what story it’s really trying to tell

to actually bring it back to billy though, at the most basic level i think billy is “otherworldly” and weird simply because wayne also is. so much of the show is about fathers and sons, about the ways they’re similar and the ways they’re not, about the ways they feel about those similarities/differences and the ways they embrace them and the ways they rebel against them. and so i suppose billy is Like That to make the point that he’s wayne’s son, that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree (whereas luke is clearly much more like patricia). but at the same time, i also don’t know why he’s SO fucking weird. he’s like twenty times as bizarre as wayne is. they just really leaned into it, and the show doesn’t really give us an answer as to why that is or really even do anything with it. the singing, the weirdness, none of that plays out in what ultimately happens to him through the last several episodes. it’s not like that’s why he chooses to go all in on autumn. he tells her he did that because he ate the time dust and had a vision of them, and yeah i guess you prob have to be a little fucking weird to crush up a rock and immediately think hey maybe i should eat this in the first place, but that’s a pretty weak “point” if that’s all they were trying to do with it. he could have followed her for any number of other reasons, or even the same one, without having to be weird as fuck to make it work. it's not even like the fact that he's more like wayne even makes a difference in the end in his relationship with luke, since billy ends up just telling luke he can have the ranch anyway (and then he, you know, conveniently dies, so it really doesn't matter then)

i guess for me it seems like ultimately they wanted him to be that strange just because they wanted him to be that strange. and that’s honestly my impression of like 90% of the show: we did this thing because we thought it was fun or cool or interesting or mysterious and not because it has an actual story-related, character-driven reason

most the beers in grocery stores here are 4-5%, which i think is a normal amount? i manage to get drunk on them at least. and yeah, supportive people are important! i wish i had more IRL support from friends, but i still haven't gotten my social life up and running again after my 4 month hospitalisation. that hospitalisation basically lost me almost all of my friends..

Yes it is! The low-percentage beers must be a Sweden only thing, then. I feel you on the involuntary isolation, by the way - the 1.5 year I spent with my toxic and very controlling ex had me completely isolated from everyone else in my life and before that I was also very isolated and lonely. 

But it escalated after I met this asshole who managed to ruin and end every potential friendship I started developing one way or another, so when I eventually lost him I was all on my own as none of my previous relationships had survived his meddling and because while I was still seeing him I was forced to cut off every new person I started getting close to or he’d punish me.

So I’ve been there (although for different reasons) and while I have an active and fulfilling social life today, that’s still new, and most of my life I barely had one single friend - and then when I started becoming socially literate enough to make friends, I got so stuck in a toxic relationship that I ended up cutting them all off to satisfy my partners need to be the only important person in my life. But all that luckily changed when I met my current boyfriend as he quickly introduced me to all of this friends and then I started reconnecting with my family and now I have a big group of amazing people to share my life with.

So yeah, I know what it’s like to be isolated - I was 19 when I made my first real friend and he turned out to be a manipulative, controlling asshole who made my life and my mental health struggles ten times worse - but I also know that while relationships can and will end for shitty reasons and while it can take time to build up new ones, it isn’t impossible, and if you just give it time, it’ll eventually happen. Very few people go through life without ever bonding with other human beings without it being a deliberate choice. 

So try not to stress too much about it. It took me 18 years to learn how to make friends (I didn’t really have friends during my childhood and teenage years) and it took me several toxic relationships with much older men to figure out how to go about socializing and most importantly how not to go about it, but eventually I found my people and I’m sure you will to. It’s normal for relationships to end for various reasons and to have periods in your life where you’re more lonely than you’d like, but it won’t last forever. I promise you that.