It Lives Within is so incredibly Evil™ for making one of the LIs a loner with daddy issues who slowly learns to open up and trust people and make friends and fall in love because of MC and then for the secret LI to be his evil dad

i still haven't worked up the guts to see what happens when you romance them both in the same playthrough

quick comix of the little creatures

There’s a line from American Gods I keep coming back to in relation to Yellowjackets, an observation made early on by Shadow in prison: “The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment.” I keep rotating it in my head in thinking about the six survivors, the roles they occupy in the wilderness, and the way the show depicts them as adults in society.

Because in the wilderness, as in prison, they’re trapped—they’re suffering, they’re traumatized, they’re terrified—but they’re also able to construct very specific boxes to live in. And, in a way, that might make it easier. Cut away the fat, narrow the story down to its base arc. You are no longer the complex young woman who weighs a moral compass before acting. You no longer have the luxury of asking questions. You are a survivor. You have only to get to the next day.

Shauna: the scribe. Lottie: the prophet. Van: the acolyte. Taissa: the skeptic. Misty: the knight. Natalie: the queen. Neat, orderly, the bricks of a new kind of society. And it works in the woods; we know this because these six survive. (Add Travis: the hunter, while you’re at it, because he does make it to adulthood).

But then they’re rescued. And it’s not just lost purpose and PTSD they’re dealing with now, but a loss of that intrinsic identity each built in the woods. How do you go home again? How do you rejoin a so-called civilized world, where all the violence is restricted to a soccer field, to an argument, to your own nightmares?

How does the scribe, the one who wrote it all out in black and white to make sense of the horrors, cope with a world that would actively reject her story? She locks that story away. But she can’t stop turning it over in her head. She can’t forget the details. They’re waiting around every corner. In the husband beside her in bed. In the child she can’t connect with across the table. In the best friend whose parents draw her in, make her the object of their grief, the friend who lives on in every corner of their hometown. She can’t forget, so she tries so hard to write a different kind of story instead, to fool everyone into seeing the soft maternal mask and not the butcher beneath, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the prophet come back from the religion a desperate group made of her, a group that took her tortured visions, her slipping mental health, and built a hungry need around the very things whittling her down? She builds over the bones. She creates a place out of all that well-intended damage, and she tells herself she’s helping, she’s saving them, she has to save them, because the world is greedy and needs a leader, needs a martyr, needs someone to stand up tall and reassure everyone at the end of the day that they know what’s best. The world, any world, needs someone who will take those blows so the innocent don’t have to. She’s haunted by everyone she didn’t save, by the godhood assigned to her out of misplaced damage, and when the darkness comes knocking again, there is nothing else to do but repeat old rhymes until there is blood on her hands just the same.

How does the acolyte return to a world that cares nothing for the faith of the desperate, the faith that did nothing to save most of her friends, that indeed pushed her to destroy? She runs from it. She dives into things that are safe to believe in, things that rescue lonely girls from rough home lives, things that show a young queer kid there’s still sunshine out there somewhere. She delves into fiction, makes a home inside old stories to which she already knows the endings, coaxes herself away from the belief that damned her and into a cinemascope safety net where the real stuff never has to get in. She teaches herself surface-level interests, she avoids anything she might believe in too deeply, and still she’s dragged back to the place where blood winds up on her hands just the same.

How does the skeptic make peace with the things she knows happened, the things that she did even without meaning to, without realizing? She buries them. She leans hard into a refusal to believe those skeletons could ever crawl back out of the graves she stuffed them into, because belief is in some ways the opposite of control. She doesn’t talk to her wife. She doesn’t talk to anyone. It’s not about what’s underneath the surface, because that’s just a mess, so instead she actively discounts the girl she became in the woods. She makes something new, something rational and orderly, someone who can’t fail. She polishes the picture to a shine, and she stands up straight, the model achievement. She goes about her original plan like it was always going to be that way, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the knight exist in a world with no one to serve, no one to protect, no reason propelling the devastating choices she had grown comfortable making? She rechannels it. She convinces herself she’s the smartest person in the room, the most capable, the most observant. She convinces herself other people’s mysteries are hers to solve, that she is helping in every single action she takes. She makes a career out of assisting the most fragile, the most helpless souls she can find, and she makes a hobby out of patrolling for crimes to solve, and when a chance comes to strap her armor back on and ride into battle, she rejoices in the return to normalcy. She craves that station as someone needed, someone to rely upon in the darkest of hours, and she winds up with blood on her hands because, in a way, she never left the wilderness at all.

How does the queen keep going without a queendom, without a pack, without people to lead past the horrors of tomorrow? She doesn’t. She simply does not know how. She scrounges for something, anything, that will make her feel connected to the world the way that team did. She moves in and out of a world that rejects trauma, punishes the traumatized, heckles the grieving as a spectacle. She finds comfort in the cohesive ritual of rehabilitation, this place where she gets so close to finding herself again, only to stumble when she opens her eyes and sees she’s alone. All those months feeding and guiding and gripping fast to the fight of making it to another day, and she no longer knows how to rest. How to let go without falling. She no longer wears a crown, and she never wanted it in the first place, so how on earth does she survive a world that doesn’t understand the guilt and shame of being made the centerpiece of a specialized environment you can never explain to anyone else? How, how, how do you survive without winding up with blood on your hands just the same?

All six of these girls found, for better or worse, a place in the woods. All six of them found, for better or worse, a reason to get up the next day. For each other. And then they go home, and even if they all stayed close, stayed friends, it’d still be like stepping out of chains for the first time in years. Where do you go? How do you make small choices when every decision for months was life or death? How do you keep the part of yourself stitched so innately into your survival in a world that would scream to see it? How do you do away with the survivor and still keep going?

They brought it back with them. Of course they did. It was the only way.

And then we killed a looooooot of people

| First | | Previous | | Next |

[[ All Croissant Adventures (chronological, desktop) ]]

[[ All Croissant Adventures (app) ]]

Geppetto, after Pinocchio sacrifices his immortality and life to save his papa:

something about finally, finally getting to live.

So there’s a new Twisted Wonderland character, his name is Rollo Flamm. Have you seen him? Any thoughts?

DELIVER US THE TRUTH

The ghosts all being so SO sentimental towards each other this season I cannot TAKE it. They're family. They're family!!!!!!! They're family and I love them so so SO dearly

ILW spoilers out of context kinda

TWF 4 Spoilers

What the fuck no brian and bon makeout session?

On the plus side I can totally make some bribon wonderland soul plane yaoi now mwahahaha.

Also lord 'Bon's voice was hot as fuck (why does he sound so familar though???). Loved Susan's voice, Charlie sounded exactly how I expected him to sound lol.

Fuck man we all knew Felix regretted that crash but christ the way my breath stopped entirely when he was about to jump.

Everyone looked so damn good in motion I cannot get over it. Seeing 'Bon' kill Susan was brutal I was not expecting such fluidity. Loved the girlboss pose he struck afterwords tho #slay

Praying some epic secret hunters spot a Brian cameo like they did for ep. 3 lmao

So, Power ending, huh?

I want to talk about Aziraphale's state of mind in the second season.

The big problem? He got his happily ever after in season 1. He and Crowley both did. Together. So by every story and fairy tale and romance book logic they are happy and everything is well. Right?

This is how he is acting during much of season 2. He's enjoying his bookshop, supporting his local community (purely in selfish ways of course), and occasionally contacting Crowley to talk about whatever it is that has happened recently. It's perfect! It's what they always wanted! Crowley is perfectly happy too and absolutely not living out of the Bentley and not telling Aziraphale that. Right? But of course it isn't (both for reasons of continuing the story and the presumed lengthier adjustment period of 2 immortals). Where this gets interesting is when pressure is applied by a new crisis (Gabriel) and instead of, idk, communicating, Aziraphale leans harder into the fantasy. Everything is great, and now they are solving a mystery together! This is a partner thing, right? Like the plot of a novel! Or a film.

And this is where I want to take a little step back, and point out that every single one of the flashbacks are framed from Aziraphales point of view. We see him bring up, research, and look pensive after the Job minisode. The Resurrectionists series of events comes up with the mention of Edinburgh, but are also framed with his diary. The 1941 romp shows up after Shax mentions it to him in the car. Storytelling and fiction are Aziraphale's coping device this season!

I'm not saying that the minisodes are doctored or incorrectly remembered (although there are moments where everything seems so gosh, gee whiz, over the top that it has me squinting) but rather that it helps to frame the rest of the season (the present day Gabriel and Maggie/Nina plots) as stories to Aziraphale, rather than a thing happening in real time that requires communication and actual thought. Because after all - he and Crowley are in their happily ever after! They will solve these little problems, and even better, Aziraphale can play out the next step of their story (making it a little more human and tactile... how Aziraphale of him) through all the glances, little touches, and the Ball. Then Crowley will sweep him off his feet, because that's how these stories go! He is increasingly consumed by this narrative up to and including ignoring the demons outside until one literally throws a brick into his carefully constructed Pride and Prejudice LARP. Even so. Holding the bookshop against the demons is only a temporary setback because what happens next? Love conquers all. Gabrial and Beez get their happily ever after. Looking at Aziraphales face in that scene there are truly no thoughts only heart eyes directed at Crowley.

Except. Then the Metatron shows up. In the most spectacular reverse deus ex machina possible, he makes The Offer. And maybe THAT is the happily ever after? The best possible happily ever after? Maybe this is the next part of the story! But finally we get the cold water. It turns out Crowley has been living in an entirely different (and probably more realistic, although still heavily secret agent based) narrative. So we have the Confession and still such terrible miscommunication... until the Kiss. After that I think Aziraphale understands. (A Kiss of awakening?? The sleeping storybook princess?? Maybe a metaphor too far). He can finally HEAR and realize the this is NOT yet happily ever after. That it could be but they aren't there yet. However at this point it's too late and emotions are running too high. He panics into old habits. He forgives. Crowley leaves. And then once again at the perfectly wrong time, the Metatron shows up, rushes and bundles and all but pushes Aziraphale out the door and onto the elevator. At one point Aziraphale almost says he's changed his mind. I think he does change his mind. Or at least his story. Because the fairy tale is over and now HIS double agent days are about to begin.

We haven't seen this much of a victory in battle since the crick in c1 and its making me feel some kind of way

I'm sorry but the It Lives series is still killing me...

Book 2 MC watching Arthur apologise for betraying Josephine after being naive and getting manipulated, to the twisted wraith-like ghost that Josephine became after fusing with The Power when she died to save the little girl they both would do anything to protect. Only for Josephine to decide she could never forgive him for it before stabbing him in the chest

& then in the next chapter,

Book 2 MC watching Noah apologise for betraying Book 1 MC after being naive and getting manipulated, to the twisted wraith-like ghost that Book 1 MC became after fusing with The Power when they died to save the little girl they both would do anything to protect. Only for Book 1 MC to be sad and hurt and angry but eventually settling on "it doesn't matter" before hugging him

Yeah Josephine and Book 1 MC's circumstances are wildly different, and what happened to Josephine was inhumane but at the end of the day Book 2 MC still watched the same situation playout in front of them twice with wildly different endings and I can't help wondering if it felt somewhat cathartic? To see what was, at its foundation, the happier version of what happened to their grandparents?

Craving more of It Lives Within? I understand.

If you got any of the lore documents and have played the ending you are likely familiar with the flashback scene where Matthias lures Redfield to Westchester.

(If you’re not there yet, go play the ending, it’s great)

What you might not know (unless you listened to the Q&A) is that this scene was originally much longer, and had to be cut for pacing reasons.

If you want to read the original scene look no further! It’s right here:

Now Playing as Matthias McQuoid: The Original Version

By HeartofArcanum

In this scene you will see exactly how manipulative Matthias truly is as you read from his POV as he lures Redfield to Westchester.

Have fun guys!