Join us for the latest installment in our audio series, where the storyline takes a thrilling twist!
The newest episode of "Slowly Unspooling," titled "The Messages" follows closely as we delve into Kai's captivating journey within the enigmatic confines of their workplace. Through the aid of a reliable recorder, Kai candidly opens up about their innermost thoughts and feelings. Brace yourself for even more unexpected revelations to come!
Prepare yourself for a thought-provoking encounter as our main character receives enigmatic messages and undergoes an eerie sensation of being watched.
Please be aware that this episode addresses intense themes, including emotional turmoil, work-related pressure, existential unease, sleeplessness, mental health challenges, self-doubt, isolation, work-related demands, perplexity, ear strain, and audio distortions. We kindly advise you to approach this content with sensitivity.
Featuring the exceptional talents of Aspen Rayne as the voice of Kai, this episode guarantees an unforgettable auditory escapade.
For those intrigued by the complete script, fret not! You can access the transcript for your perusal through the following link: Transcript Link
We would like to express our gratitude to zapsplat.com for providing captivating sound effects, and to pixabay.com, whose enchanting music sets the tone throughout the episode.
Don't let this electrifying episode slip through your fingers! Tune in on your preferred platform by following this amazing link: Listen Here. Your auditory journey awaits!
(Warning (?) : This one gets kind of intense with the themes of being harassed, I didn't know if that needed a warning but just to be safe!)
You were backed into a corner of an empty alleyway as you were pleading with the creepy stranger to leave you alone already.
“I-I said please leave me alone, I’m not interested!” You frowned up at him as he pressed one of his palms against the brick wall from your response of trying to walk away from him.
You were beyond uncomfortable at this point, he had followed you to isolate you for gods sake!
You were only on your way to the small theater to see your boyfriend after work, apparently the stranger saw you walking on the sidewalk and decided he wanted to pursue you.
“Aww come on sweetheart, I could treat you better than anyone ever could.” He winked down at you, making your stomach and heart feel like it’s been punched.
You realized this guy wasn’t going to take no or stop for an answer, deciding your best option was to make a run for it so you weren’t isolated and around other people for help.
The creep saw you shift to the side, knowing what you were going to do next as he grabbed you by the wrist as you ducked underneath his arm.
You cried out as his grip tightened around your waist, “Where you going sweetheart, I’m not done with you yet.”
You squirmed in his grasp as you struggled to get him to let you go, your fingers trying to make his grip loosen.
This only made his fingers grip tighter, making you seethe in the squeezing pain.
“Heh, you’re cute when you struggle like…”
His words trailed off as his eyes locked above you instead of into yours, a low growl emitting from above your head.
“Get you hand off of them before I rip it off your arm…”
Oh dear Gods.
The creep quickly released your wrist, making you rub the red finger marks around your limb as it already started to bruise.
Your boyfriend Macaque had appeared in your shadow, poking his head out from a portal above you as he used another to rise from the ground to appear in front of you to defend you.
He looked behind him to see he had left bruises on your wrist as you seethed in pain.
Macaque saw red as he felt raw anger pulse through his form.
He hurt you.
HE HURT YOU.
In a flash, Macaque grabbed the creep by the shirt collar and pinned him to the wall on the opposite side of you.
“On second thought, I should rip you apart limb from limb for even laying one of your disgusting fingers on them.”
The creep’s smug composure was long gone, now replaced with shivering fear as he pleaded with Macaque to leave him alone.
The simian gritted his fangs as he raised his fist to land a blow to his face, wanting to make sure he wiped that horrid smug expression off of him for the rest of his days.
He was stopped as your soft voice called out to him, snapping him out of his enraged state as he looked back at you.
“I… I just want to go home.”
Macque looked back at the creep as he growled once more, “You got lucky pal, if I ever see you even dare to look at my partner I’ll rip your eyes out myself.”
Your boyfriend let go of the creep’s collar as he scurried off, you wouldn’t need to worry about him coming back because if you were in his shoes you wouldn’t.
Macaque never went back on his words when it came to you.
He ran over to you as he gently took your bruised wrist into his palm, pressing a loving kiss against the mark.
“That son of a bitch was lucky you stopped me, I’ll tell you that much.” He muttered against your skin.
You smiled as he scooped you up into his arms as he summoned another portal to take you home, landing on your couch as he pressed his lips against your own.
“I’m gonna stay with you tonight, is that ok starshine?” His low voice asked, making you smile once more as you nodded.
“Of course hon, I’d actually really like that.”
He sighed in relief as he laid back on the arm of the couch, pulling you close to his chest as he kissed your forehead and held you like someone was trying to take you away from him.
Macaque wanted nothing more than to keep you close to him as much as possible tonight, seeing someone make you so scared and uncomfortable ignited the protective urge in him.
No one was every gonna mess with his sugarplum ever again, he was gonna make sure of that.
One of the many things I find funny and irritating is the slant of a lot of interpretations of Alecto's name (that it's about feminine rage)--on this here wlw internet in the year of our lord 2024, it's easily made to figure as rage against God, or rage against patriarchy, or religious oppression, and therefore an allusion to the idea that she's going to get her vengeance on John for betraying and oppressing her somehow, but like
John is the one who named her Alecto. He's the one who named her that. So, naming her "Alecto" is alluding to the embodiment of John's rage--their rage, since they are joined inseparably (John even explicitly says that when he first perceives her: "You wouldn't stop screaming. You were so scared. You were so goddamn mad").
He says of Alecto to Harrow, "In a very real way, you are [Alecto's] children". At a very surface level, Alecto is (depending on the text or tradition), one of the Furies--famously, in several surviving Greek tragedies, who punish Orestes for the crime of killing his mother. In fact, in Aeschylus' Oresteia, they declare that they are specifically bound to avenge matricide.
So the name "Alecto" alludes to the nature of John's mission and how he sees it.
It also implies that his divine rage, the rage that gives him power, the power that makes him divine, that he either represents or wants to represent, is feminine rage. He was chosen by Earth (which, Furies are sometimes the daughters of Gaia); he is her champion, however he's managed to fuck that up. Once the truth of that comes out, it becomes clear that all of his power comes from her.
And that's why you get statements from Tamsyn Muir like:
“[T]he God of the Locked Tomb IS a man; he IS the Father and the Teacher; it’s an inherently masc role played by someone who has an uneasy relationship himself to playing a Biblical patriarch. John falls back on hierarchies and roles because they’re familiar even when he’s struggling not to. Even he identifies himself as the God who became man and the man who became God. But the divine in the Locked Tomb is essentially feminine on multiple axes – I think Nona will illuminate that a little bit more."
So yes, he plays the role of Emperor and God and Teacher, with all of the things that implies. And I don't think it should be discounted. But he also is (and partly sees himself as) the chosen champion of a goddess, or what is for all intents & purposes for a human like him a goddess. He is her avenger, and while she sleeps, her avatar.
And I don't think we're meant to read him purely as a parasite who's taking advantage of her to gain power for himself, either. Or an oppressive, Kronos-like figure. Especially if you consider Palamedes' theory of the Grand Lysis, even if he was purely motivated by desire for power before (which I really doubt), there are parts of each in the other, now. What was clear and separate before is uncertain and interpenetrated. Is his rage his own, or hers? Is his mission of revenge his, or hers? If he wants power, is that his own selfishness, or her desire to survive?
One of my favorite parts of phase 2 (and indeed one of the few moments I resonated with IDW Prowl) was when the neutrals were coming back to Cybertron and Prowl said that he refused to let Autobots be pushed aside and overruled after they were the ones who fought for freedom for 4 million years (the exact wording escapes me atm).
And I mean, that resentment still holds true even once the colonists come on bc like. As much as it's true that Cybertron's culture is fucked up, and as funny as it can be to paint Cybertronians as a bunch of weirdos who consider trying to kill someone as a common greeting not important enough to hold a grudge over.... The colonists POV kind of pissed me off a lot of times, as did the narrative tone/implications that Cybertronians are forever warlike and doomed to die by their own hands bc it just strikes me as an extremely judgemental and unsympathetic way to deal with a huge group of people with massive war PTSD and political/social tensions that were rampant even before the war?
Like, imagine living in a society rife with bigotry and discrimination where you get locked into certain occupations and social strata based on how you were born. The political tension is so bad there's a string of assassinations of politicians and leaders. The whole planet erupts into an outright war that leads (even unintentionally) to famine and chemical/biological warfare that destroys your planet. Both sides of the war are so entrenched in their pre-war sides and resentment for each other that this war lasts 4 million years and you don't even have a home planet any more. Then your home planet gets restored and a bunch of sheltered fucks come home and go "ewww why are you so violent?? You're a bunch of freaks just go live in the wilderness so that our home can belong to The Pure People Who Weren't Stupid And Evil Enough To Be Trapped In War" and then a bunch of colonists from places that know nothing about your history go "lol you people are so weird?? 🤣🤣 I don't get why y'all are fighting can't you just like, stop??? Oh okay you people are just fucked up and evil and stupid then" ((their planets are based on colonialism where their Primes wiped out the native populations btw whereas the Autobots and OP in particular fought to save organics. But that never gets brought up as a point in their favor)) as if the damage of a lifetime of war and a society that was broken even before the war can just magically go away now that the war is over.
Prowl fucking sucks but he was basically the only person that pointed out the injustice of that.
And then from then on out most of the characters from other colonies like Caminus and wherever else are going "i fucking hate you and your conflicts" w/ people like literal-nobody Slide and various Camiens getting to just sit there lecturing Optimus about how Cybertronians are too violent for their own good and how their conflicts are stupid, with only brief sympathetic moments where the Cybertronians get to be recognized as their own ppl who deserve sympathy before going right back to being lambasted.
Like I literally struggled to enjoy the story at multiple points because there was only so much I could take of the characters I knew and loved being raked over coals constantly while barely getting to defend themselves or be defended by the narrative so like. It was just fucking depressing and a little infuriating to read exRID/OP
“And family history, after all, is just another kind of ghost story. So ten years ago, on a night just like tonight, when the fog lay heavy on the lowlands, a man drove his sister home. And eleven years on a night just like tonight, their mother died, and it didn’t –mean- anything, but it happened. And the sister stood by and watched it happen and the brother, talked on the radio and didn’t even know that it had happened until afterwards, and there was nothing that they could have done.”
day 3 of @cecilosweek — favorite episode > Ghost Stories <3333
start from the beginning // read the november chapter // read the most recent chapter (january)
hey listen. look me in my eyes. have you read thirteen by anna scribbles. i think you need to read thirteen by anna scribbles. i think if you want your life to be forever changed you need to read thirteen by anna scribbles. i think if you are a person who is breathing and alive you need to read thirteen by anna scribbles. thank you
I think sometimes some people dismiss the amount of damage and trauma isolation can cause. a lot of people latch on to the torture line in sonic forces and focus on that as the sole or main source of trauma sonic went through, but solitary confinement in itself is legit torture. and I'm also thinking about knuckles and his life before eggman n sonic came along
@lightandfellowship re: your tags on this post (just to kind of bring this out to a different post).
I was thinking about making a separate post to expand on those tags anyway because they were a little off topic to the op, but I was like, you know, it's that Xehanort was worse to the Dandelions than Luxu was, yes. But Luxu was supposed to be that callous to the Dandelions in the first place. He was supposed to think of them as tools and to just let whatever fucked up thing was supposed to happen to them just happen. And with anyone else he can, but he can't put his personal feelings aside enough to 'do what needs to be done' for this set of people alone.
But Xehanort can.
And I think that's really interesting when looking at Xehanort as the 'replacement Luxu.' Xehanort who, as observed by another post I don't have immediately to hand, speaks with MoM twice. Xehanort who is chosen by MoM and manipulated into doing his bidding the same way Luxu was, given the same coat and made the heir to Luxu's keyblade, Xehanort who actually is allowed to take action to bring the Keyblade War about and revive the Lost Masters while Luxu is only allowed to watch.
Actually I started this post with a different thesis ('Xehanort is able to put his personal feelings aside and be ruthless even where Luxu fails to follow his role') but writing that paragraph I've changed my mind actually. Because Luxu has basically no agency in this situation, whereas Xehanort does.
Like, both of them are assigned roles by their mentors but Xehanort isn't really given a road map about how to fulfill his role. He's being manipulated, sure, but he's also making choices himself all along. They're choices that are fucked up but he understands they're fucked up and is choosing them anyway because he strongly feels it's necessary for the greater good.
Luxu has been told these things are necessary for the greater good. He's been told what to do. He's been told to just watch and that he can never take action. He doesn't even have the illusion of agency that Xehanort, who is actively choosing to lean into his feeling that destiny is inevitable, does. What is that like, to live hundreds of years never having any sense of agency? For Luxu, helping the Dandelions is fucking up. It's doing what he knows he's not supposed to, what he's been told is against the Plan, but he has no agency and this is his little way of rebelling, even if this is, to us, the 'right' thing to do. There's a question of what actually is 'right' and 'wrong' here and whether Xehanort is a 'better Luxu' than Luxu for choosing to simply follow The Plan.
Also I'm rambling here but putting things together as I go, sorry to also expand on other tags on posts I reblogged from you lol, but like. Luxu also very clearly has Lucifer stuff going on, the same way Xehanort does, down to the name. Xehanort takes on the Satan imagery over time - but it was Luxu's first. And Luxu is the one who actually tried to rebel against his Creator by deviating from his role (only to watch) and intervening with the Union leaders.
The thing about angels is they are not, in Catholic traditions (I can't speak to other denominations) is that they are not supposed to have free will. Free will is for humans; angels only follow The Plan, with no agency or say in the matter. They're messengers and avatars created only to execute the will of God. The Foretellers seem to play this role, if you will, in relation to Master of Masters. He hands them roles to execute the plan he's already designed. If we're, in this analogy, considering Master of Masters to be in the role of 'god', both Ava and Luxu are ultimately fallen angels - they both question the will of their creator, both rebel - but Luxu rebelling was built into the plan. He is Lucifer, and Lucifer rebels, and so he was still allowed to come back to the fold at the end of kh3, having fulfilled his duty even considering his rebellion. He still had no agency in the end, even having done what he thought was exercising it by saving the Union leaders.
Anyway I'm just rambling on at this point and don't really have a conclusion to this but the whole interplay between Luxu and Xehanort, agency and servitude, angels and devils, light and dark, feels really compelling to me.
I think a part of why I find Hub so cool is how he seems to be one that won't hold back in a fight. These sketches don't even scratch the surface on what I mean, but he has this certain feel on the battlefield.
(. . . Hey Mew, I think the word you're looking for is "violent".)
Whatever the case, I wanted to draw more battle scenes with him.
okay i know i said i didn’t want to start analysis yet but heaven, iowa and i am my own muse are two sides of the same coin. they’re such similar sentiments but one expressed with longing and sadness and introspection and the other expressed with rage and betrayal and desperation