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#so if there are any major typos or parts that didnt make sense
deathits3lf · 22 days
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wolf359. its grasped me again.
I have become obsessed again. To the point I wrote a ABSURDLY LONG ramble about Warren Kepler. I wrote it in discord messages and I will not be taking the time to fix the typos. There are so many.
But yes, I wrote a... character analysis? It's honestly just about the last season.
⚠️Major spoilers ahead. For last season, the finale, anywhere past 45 basically. If you have not completed wolf 359 entirely, well, this will be the end all be all of spoilers.
oooh. I should put a highlight here: but he assumed it was a "sorry, you are wrong and I am right, and you are going to die, and perhaps you deserve to in my eyes." when it really meant "You are right. I love you. I would do anything for your safety even if you may never know I was doing it for you." <<<< i love this part. im so smart. squints. im actually not but i was onto somethin
And be warned that it is long. Google docs says 1563 words. I'll put it under this read more.
Have fun. I hope this is any bit comprehensible.
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okokok. so. warren kepler. i could talk about this man for HOURS, i swear. but i need to START somewhere so why not start at his death. I love thinking aboiut it... and by that i mean i hate thinking about it. buts its great. so tragic. i love characters dying like that; they are introduced as a douche. dickhead, antagonist, honestly villain. not likeable, really. (by that i mean well written but the character themselves being THE WORSTTT) (although i love him i DID used to HATE HIM) (i always joked about wanting to throw him out of an airlock... no seriously. i didnt know. help) 
BUT, throughout the show, despite them being a dick, we are shown some moments of them almost.. being human. cause they are. everyone, despite how mean or stuckup or 'emotionless' they are, is human, and humans feel emotions. 
okok, so at this point some hate em, some love em (altho mostly lovehate), but overall they are.... antagonistic but with the potential. not enough potential however.- (quick sidetrack here, i swear i get back to my point eventually) 
The Last Season. oml, the first time I watched it, before I knew what kepler was doing, I thought,"kepler is acting weird". kepler is acting almost nervous, and something just felt off. yes it was because cutter was there, kepler was used to being in charge and aggressive about it to make his subordinates feel scared and therefore listen to him. which in the last season, is clear where he learned that from; cutter. but now cutter was back and he was the subordinate and scared one. he wasnt The Most Powerful One There anymore. BUT ALSO 
Maybe he acted weirdly because,,listen,, he was already planning something against them. it makes sense. he was sort of kept in the dark, but he knew something was going to happen.
He had to watch his crew like that, despite having just held a mutany against him, he still knew them. they were stuck in space together, they knew eachother, but also JACOBI. kepler interacting with mindcontrolled jacobi was. thats a rant for later on. 
But. He had just had his morals rocked. His right hand man, his most loyal companion, betrayed him, tried to get him killed, he lost his other teammate- no, friend, and well, if you look closely enough he really had some time to think about it all. 
And thats where he decided that he was not on the side he always had been on, the one he worked for for god knows how many years, the one who he had based his entire mindset on, and maybe he realized that his idea of a bigger picture didnt line up with Goddard's. 
Maybe he was doing it for Jacobi. and maxwell. Maybe he was doing it for the whole crew. or the whole world. Maybe he really, truely, cared. deep down.
I also think that he wasnt planning to make it out alive. 
He didnt want to face it afterwards. He convinced himself that this was the only way- that he couldn't possibly have made it out alive and that sacrificing himself for the greater good was the only way.
He could have survived that. The hardest part would have been convincing the others to let him on the homebound ship. (the sol i believe?) jacobi begged him to stay. oml that scene. another rant for later on. 
But going back to my first point- I love that they really gave you one last reason to care about his death. If he died still on goddards side, even if he seemed a bit hesitant, that was still the cowards choice. they really said "hey he actually cares about the greater good and to an extent, the others. anyway immediatly after that revelation kill him." They gave us a reason to cry.
I love characters like that. You hate em, but before they die, you are given a reason to give a fuck. Really wrenches your heart. 
back to other points. rachel, had been SHOT. and yet managed to push him into the airlock and close the door. you could say he was overconfident, but I believe thats uncharacteristic. hes always on guard, always thinking of every way something could go wrong and how to account for it. He should have thought about rachel fighting back. he could have stopped her, but he had already accepted that he would, and perhaps should die here. perhaps he didnt want to face everything after it all. how he might actually care about ppl. how fucked up he acted and all his bad actions. and also, how he could keep living beyond His Job. the artist formerly known as warren kepler. if he stopped Making Art, who was he to go back to? warren kepler didnt exist. he was just a husk. 
thats why i love reading Kepler Back From The Dead fics. it would have been SO INTERESTING. although its fair they wanted to wrap up arcs, or at least leave them on something somewhat satisfying, and kepler was definitely NOT done cooking. put that man back in the microwave he is STILL cold in the middle. 
anyway. kepler was a coward for dying but at least cowardice is human. 
>He couldnt tell anyone. What he was planning. couldnt even tell jacobi, "hey, im on ur side and also im going to stop it all. and sacrifice myself" because rachel was there. rachel was watching, and she was arrogant that kepler couldnt possibly not be on goddards side. yeah she probably definitely knew he cared about jacobi, but the others? she was not expecting him to actually have the confidence to go aginast CUTTER. 
jacobi begged for him to be on their side, argued good arguements,
but jacobi thought. there is no way this will work. absouletly no way he will actually listen to me. but he did. kepler had already planned this. kepler couldnt put into words why he was doing this, but when rachel asked him why he echoed their words; because he is human. 
but kepler couldnt tell jacobi that he was listening. and that he cared about him. he couldnt say he wished jacobi would make it out alive, or that the others would b ok, or that he wasnt going to make it back. 
all he could say was "Thank you Daniel, and goodbye." AKJHSDKJAHSKDH that line makes me want to CRY. its more evidence that kepler totally knew he was going to die. or at least expected it. the way he said goodbye like he knew it really was the last. called him daniel, and maybe others werent aware what that really meant, perhaps they were, but jacobi knew he never called him that. that that meant something. he didnt know what, but he assumed it was a "sorry, you are wrong and I am right, and you are going to die, and perhaps you deserve to in my eyes." when it really meant "You are right. I love you. I would do anything for your safety even if you may never know I was doing it for you." 
.... "thank you" for being in my life? for teaching me how to be good? for everything? AUGH I LOVE THESE FICTIONAL MEN. 
>His interactions while the others were mindcontrolled. I relistened to the first episode or two of the last season, and kepler honestly showed signs that he was already doubting goddard. that he wasnt as confident as when the others last saw him. and they commented on this- rachel talked about hera and kepler replied almost remincing about his time on the hephaestus. he said 'she had always been stubborn.' and rachel said 'careful warren, wouldnt want to sound like you admire it.'
And the whole scene with cutter, pryce, kepler, and mind controlled jacobi. Cutter definitely purposefully picked out jacobi to take notes during that. cutter realized something was off about him. He was weaker, almost upset that his subordinate was mindcontrolled? and would obey his every command? cutter had just improved them; and the kepler that cutter wanted wouldnt have cared. but he clearly did care, as he told- no, lied- to cutter about jacobi being a good team member. despite the fact jacobi almost got him shot, like, not even an hour before I think? He was worried jacobi would be punished, or hurt, or even killed. 
Cutter knew this. he took it into account, basically; he didnt kill him, he merely improved his brain. 
And. Eiffel, after being de-mindcontrolled because of the alien blood, waiting for Jacobi, had accidentily given himself away as being 'unmindcontrolled' when he ran into kepler. he expected to be carted away, re-mindcontrolled, or perhaps killed, or locked in a room, but kepler instead 'played along' and pretended like all was fine. he even sneakily told eiffel to be more careful next time. AND YET WE DIDNT NOTICE- eiffel didnt think to mention 'hey kepler totally let me get off scot free, he is maybe on our side. maybe i mean totally.' ?? and i didnt notice the first time around that THE KEPLER WE KNEW AT THE BEGINNING WOULD TOTALLY RAT HIM OUT INSTANTLY. he was always on their side, and perhaps always planning something. maybe since the interaction with mindcontrolled "she was twenty-eight!" jacobi.
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bl00dw1tch · 1 year
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I really need a name for this au. Anyway i nailed down their color schemes (flats and some character design-y thoughts notes below)
Aw man im really about to go in on this here, ok--ill stick to just design stuff and a bit of Their Deal^tm for now! ill explain the au in full some other day, with a more polished drawing.
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Alright so. I am still doing research, its ongoing, but i think ive decided that, in this au, their relationship is something more akin to... in a past life they were the same, but for spiritual development reasons, the qi that made That person split, and went on to reincarnate as Them--narratively this is going to make them function like. Just normal Foils lmao--just with an added umph of it being somewhat literal for them, in the scope of their world, if that makes sense! I dont want to put myself in the box of calling them brothers, bc it just irritates me, but they are Not going to be romantically involved in this au either--SWK has enough trouble in his weirdly uneventful but still tumultuous love life as it is (👀 at Erlang and ZBJ), im not going to torment him by adding his evil clone to that list LMAO. Also LEMH aromantic as hell bc i said so.
Also their both trans thats very super important. Trans monkeys forever obviously
Anyway, So theyre still sort of "the same person", yet not, as they had still Never properly met (until Liu'er chapter)--their both incredibly similar and incredibly different, due to the imbalance of the energies within them and the actions they took for the majority of their lives. SWK is the yang, extroverted and bold and destructive and take-no-shit, while LEMH is the yin, (at least in this story) by being reclusive and a bit of a pushover for the longest time--the, erm.... Outburst, being the result of built up resentment and imbalance within himself spurning him to overcompensate for what he was lacking. It's kind of complicated and intricate and i like it that way if describing it is kind of rough Pfft--but anyway!
Point is, i wanted ALLLL that to be reflected in their designs by giving them plenty of Contrasting but Complimentary, and even sometimes juxtaposed details! The incorrect yin yang belt buckles/brooches are the most obvious one i think, next to the general warm vs. cold color palettes--then there's Liu'er being shirtless and with shorter hair, just to bring a sense of masculinity into his appearance, counterbalancing the fact that he's otherwise very feminine and in line with his Yin nature. Id say i made SWK's hair longer for the same kind of reason, but given that long hair isnt seen as inherently feminine, mileage can vary on that--if one reads it that way then yay, fun detail, and if not, then you still get to be looking as a SWK with long hair, and thats always a win in and of itself.
The red parts of their face are also matching--SWK's making up the over eye and LEMH's the under eye, to visually indicate the "this is the same person split in two" dealio. I also tried to make SWK appear a bit more Rounded and Soft, curving his cheek tuffs and little beard In a bit more (belying a gentler nature and other. Yknow, Round thoughts underneath his theatricality (contrasting with his yang-ish behavior), while LEMH's is sharp and feathered out (bringing to mind hostility and action and other Sharp thoughts, equally in contrast with his usually yin-ish nature).
They were initially going to both have the fillets on their heads, for reasons Like the ones above, but without a shirt Liu'er torso was feeling empty and i felt like he needed something to break up the grey of his fur--so, necklace. Hes bouta get choked tf out dont worry about it ❤
Uhhh thats all i can think of writing down right now, feel free to let me know if any of it is kind of Eh, constructive criticism and all that--if you saw any typos no you didnt, thank you for coming to my ted talk and have a groovy day
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Chara, the fourth Blook cousin:
A crack theory that accidentally become way more serious than it should have because it somehow, despite my best efforts, ended up making sense
Brought to you by my idiot conspiracy brain (affectionate) and by encouragement from my Tumblr followers
Under the cut for the sake of your dashes and sanity
Ok here we go my very elaborate accidental theory, because in order to answer the complex questions simply you must first make simple things more complex or something
First, you need to know that Chara became a Blook cousin by adoption.
All of the Blooks are adopted.
Ghosts are not born into families, they make their own.
Got it? Great, because we’re about to start running
so first, im gonna make surprisingly uncommon claim in this fandom, and I am going to say that undertale ghosts are all dead
I’m taking the tiny details we know about ghosts and sprinting with them to new places
Ghosts also do not have souls I decided
Undertale souls do not work the same as souls in traditional mythology
So every ghost is soulless Unless and Until they become corporeal
Evidence: Monster souls cant exist without bodies, and ghosts are monsters, therefore ghosts cannot have souls without bodies
Further evidence: Asriel doesnt steal blooky’s soul, blooky is unkillable, we have no concrete evidence that blooky has a soul
What about mettaton? He only has a soul after he has completely committed to being corporeal and to a specific body.
Also maddy and mettaton are both only killable while corporeal
Im also connecting the dots we have about souls in a new creative way so let me live for a second
Additionally, i am going to claim that there are a lot more ghosts than just the blooks, some evidence given below
Theres like actual scientific knowlege of ghosts in the undertale verse which seems unlikely if theres literally only three or four
The underground is so much bigger than you think, theres that giant forest in snowdin, a large town in the ruins, the huge city of new home, who knows how much space in the large open areas of waterfall etc. Its really really big okay
Also based off evidence of blooky, we can conclude that ghosts can turn invisible whenever they want to and/or haunt objects to hide
So I personally think that ghosts are, generally speaking, extremely reclusive
And the blooks are just a special exception, a beautiful family, amazing for them
So anyway im going with typical ghost lore for now, for the sake of ease, so im gonna say ghosts generally come from monsters who are particularly restless or unsatisfied when they die
HOWEVER i dont think they remember being monsters or anything before being a ghost. They just kinda fizzle into existance with a fully formed personality and immortality while being unkillable and feeling vaguely uneasy
ALSO i personally think that chara was a ghost for a long time before they became a blook by adoption
Based on game lore, i think ghosts can possess any inanimate object and just kinda wear it? But it takes a lot of strong emotion to become corporeal
And chara is the super weird exception because they were a human not a monster.
They dont have a soul (i headcanon that their soul got destroyed when asriel died)
And they KNOW this, which is a huge part of why they kinda just... give up
Because they lost their ability to fulfill prophecy
Also, without a soul, they lost their ability to reset, so for the first time since falling underground, theyre subject to the relentless march of time
But theyre still weirdly strong and powerful and more emotional
ALSO they DO still remember being a human but they catch on pretty quickly that other ghosts dont have memories and because chara is stupid they just lie to fit in
Theyre too tired to explain themself, they just want to be alone and feel awful
Now back to ghost lore
Emotions are a lot harder for ghosts??? I decided
And they dont know why,, they tend to blame it on the soul thing
But realistically its actually more of the immortality thing making actions not have consequences and/or or not having a body so they cant have a sense of touch or have physical effects of emotion
They all know that ghosts just tend to be way more floaty and bored and numb
And thats part of why the blooks are so special
Maddy’s rage and Mettaton’s yearning and Napstablook’s misery are like... not great all of the time...
but theyre also way way more emotion than most ghosts have,,, they are just a family supporting each other, being as functional as they can,, just an emo(tional) ghost family
most ghosts barely do anything except like stare at walls but the blooks have their snail farm and that helps them have purpose and it is good
And they hold each other accountable and it is nice
So anyway chara just chills and is in a depression coma for a few decades before the blooks find them and are like “our child/baby cousin”
and they raise them for a cool minute
They are all very protective of the new baby emo blook
And chara doesnt get therapy but at the very least they once again have a family, and they decide they want to try to become corporeal eventually just like mtt and maddy
So anyway chara starts hanging out in the ruins a lot more and they finally tell the blooks theyre leaving to go become corporeal in the ruins
This is actually because they are trying to hang out with toriel
because they miss their mom ;;
but chara’s not gonna admit that to anyone, especially not to themself
And because theyre still repressing their emotions constantly and pretending to be fine, they cant become corporeal
And they hang out in the ruins for a long time because they feel guilty lying to everyone about everything
They still feel like its their fault that all the monsters are stuck underground, because they were SUPPOSED to save everyone and they COULDNT and it HURTS
But again, they are doing too much repression to use this guilt to become corporeal,
so instead they just kinda hide and watch toriel from a distance and cry
Blooky visits them the most, thats why blooky is chilling in the ruins so much at the start of the game
Theyre just there to visit their shy baby cousin ;;
Ofc they wont tell frisk about this because chara wants space and privacy and blooky respects that
but maddy and mtt also visit them a lot
Oh also when mtt and maddy start dissapearing, blookys mental health plummets as their family and support system starts to dissolve
Blooky was actually doing extremely well (for a ghost) for a long time, i headcanon,
but theyre doing the worst theyve been in a long long time during the game, because of family issues
So anyway, chara dissapears when frisk shows up, and maddy assumes this is becaude frisk hurt their fragile feelings
Maddy spends hours desperately searching the ruins for chara and cant find them and assumes that they had their heart crushed and went to hide and disappear in a depression coma for another few decades, and thats part of why maddy is so furious with frisk
Like,, to be clear, maddy is still jumping to conclusions and throwing blame around with no proof, but also, its a logical conclusion to come to
And mettaton has already disappeared too and been gone for a while, too, by this point, so it hurts even worse
But anyway, what actually happened to chara is that;
Because chara is a human ghost, not a monster ghost, normal ghost rules dont apply to them
And they can possess living things too they find out
Maybe they knew it a long time ago, maybe its a new discovery, but for whatever reason they end up possessing frisk and theyre like “what the heck”
And frisk still has most of the control
But now chara is like,,, “this is my chance, im a human again, gotta save the world for real,,,”
and they cant explain this to anyone without revealing their past
so they just chill in frisk’s mind while being super crypic and trying to figure out how it works
Pacifist route, this is pretty much exactly what happens
They manage to help frisk save the day
And in my headcanon, the no mercy route is started by frisk who is scared when faced by monsters attacking them
And then chara, who was aready hiding in a semidepression coma for a while, immediately transitions to a panicked “gotta protect this body, gotta protect my chance to be human, i died and threw away my chance to save everyone the first time, i CANNOT lose this chance again”
And so the combination of both frisk and chara is the genocide run
Because frisk kills in self defense, and whenever frisk hesitates, chara jumps in
Also theres leftover feelings from the whole asriel incident
Because again, ghosts come from monsters who died unsatisfied
And chara’s main source of unsatisfaction is how they were trying to get asriel to kill people before he died and then he didnt
So thats a strong strong feeling ruling them
So anyway by the time they both realize how bad its become they figure its too late and also the amount of LOVE has made them numb
And thats when chara who, despite everything, still has idiot hero complex and thinks they need to save the world
So, while panicking, they step in at the very end, and erase the timeline and delete everything
And also to clarify
They DONT HAVE this power at any other point in the game
Because, guess why
They become corporeal
Just like maddy, the no mercy route is the only thing that gives them strong enough emotion to spontaneously become corporeal
So they become corporeal and as soon as they have a soul again and can reset again, they just erase everything
Ok back to fluff
Post pacifist route, they are still a non corporeal ghost
They can still float around and look just like the other blooks
And it takes them a while to open up about things, but they do end up moving back in with blooky so that blooky isnt completely alone
And also they do way better with a family
Also they can float through the mountain and talk to flowey down below and bring him news
And now that they know about him, they can bond with him and explain that they dont have a soul either but that doesnt mean theyre worthless
Oh ALSO
The other dead humans dont have ghosts
BECAUSE
ghosts only come from restless dead MONSTERS
and chara is the weird special exception
Because they were a monster when they died
They became a ghost and asriel didnt because they were way more restless and stressed than asriel was when both of them died
Like sure, asriel felt awful, but chara was the one who was way more like “this is my fault, i CANT die now, the world NEEDS me”
So anyway
charablook the emo tween ghost and asriel flowey the eldrich goat daisy are siblings once more and they hang out and eventually they are okay and have a family again
Thank you for reading, this has been my thoughts on a crack theory that accidentally went too far
This isnt even everything, maybe i’ll make a part two eventually, but i promised to have this post out like two days ago, so i wanted to post SOMTHING
Anyway leave your thoughts if youd like
Im not looking for people to disprove it, i already know its crazy, i dont think it was intentional by the game writers, but i do think its a fun concept
thats the fun of it, so if anyone wants to run with it im all for it lol
Thanks again! Have a nice day!
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ais-n · 3 years
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ok so me and some friends have been talking about how much we loved greyson especially because of how meta it was and i wanted to ask if there was any more thought put into the show outside of canon, like who the characters are or about hsin and boyd watching it (like the plot point boyd predicted, that was so cute)
Hey! lol it is hilariously meta to have in there, isn’t it? haha
I don’t think we talked a ton about it beyond just generally what the plot would probably be based on the original story idea. I ended up getting super distracted multiple times in the course of trying to answer this because it got me curious to look back at old notes lol
!!!!!!! Oh my effing god - I legitimately thought we hadn’t talked much about the plot of the show itself but after searching around and remembering that apparently we spelled it Greyson some places and Grayson others I found way more info. (btw the Greyson is probably my fault more recently lol I spell gray as grey so I bet over time I flipped it in my head to being Greyson when it was probably Grayson canonically, but I can’t remember for sure what’s actually in the book itself)
ANYWAY I found a July 20, 2010 email string between “Sonny” and me about Grayson/Greyson with a lot more notes on the whole thing. So it turns out I do have some extra info, shockingly enough.
I put it beneath a cut in case of spoilers. 
THIS IS DIRECTLY FROM MY EMAIL - SO IT IS GOING TO PROBABLY MAKE NO SENSE/BE CONFUSING AF/HAVE NO CONTEXT - also since it was just a regular chat back and forth we were kind of shooting the shit figuring it all out. just a forewarning :) only changes i made were clear spelling typos that made it a little confusing to not fix
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July 20, 2010 emails figuring out Greyson/Grayson 
8:49 am - email from Ais to “Sonny”
btw in grayson i thought of doing an homage to what we originally were going to have icos be, so i thought your one guy could be the one who has the lung sickness in there and we can have whoever we want as other characters. i imagine the one who lost everyone and is all violent to be cypress but he will have his real name, Akiva, because cypress is in my fantasy series. for some reason in my mind, the Feral is named Annika and she's basically a Feral by the end of the first season, and also some of the other characters who werent affected by the war as much probably are basically in middle class or nicer areas. so for some reason in my mind, there's a rich girl named Daphne (could be a different name) and at the end of the first season, she somehow got caught up with Annika (maybe kidnapped?) and the show's plot lines seemed to be implying Daphne will end up as a Feral eventually. im not sure if it'd be Daphne then that people think died at the end of the first season or if it would be someone else. regarding your character (was it Nate?) i think he had a sister didnt he? i thought maybe if he did, he thought she died in the war but actually she lived. she was at a friends house or something so he never saw what occurred with her and when he went there everything was destroyed and the bodies were too mangled and burnt to be identifiable. but maybe she doesnt remember anything or she's hurt in some hospital and recovering, and eventually they could run into each other but she may or may not know who he is. the only thing is i dont think we should have the secret agent aspect to Grayson but we could have one of the other characters be some vigilante or law enforcement person of some sort if we wanted. or we could leave that out altogether. i also completely arbitrarily chose 7 characters so you can increase or decrease as you like.
8:51 am - email from Ais to “Sonny”
also these are just random ideas for the series plot which isnt that important anyway so you can feel free to add/change/suggest/whatever... i just wanted to email you those general ideas before i could forget
8:53 am - email from “Sonny” to Ais
im kind of confused by people becoming ferals unless they were kidnapped and kept among them for long periods of times? because i implied that ferals were people who basically never left the wastelands after the war and became mentally and physically changed because of the way they live and what they saw, so i dont think it would make sense that someone "becomes a feral" unless theyve been kidnapped for some reason and held there for several years until they forget who they were/adapt to the life in the wastelands/bombed out cities. also though, the ones who live very far from working cities and towns are cannibals
9:00 am - email from Ais to “Sonny”
well originally i was thinking she'd be kept there for a long period of time but actually in the context of the show that wouldnt work. so maybe people just thought she was going to be killed by the ferals and eaten by the cannibals at the end of the first season. or she could have nothing to do with the ferals; it was just an idea. also, someone else couldve been in danger of dying in some more normal way, like just a fight with scavengers or something. maybe an unexploded bomb went off too, who knows. or they could also touch on the rebels and have some rebel attack put someone in danger or someone joins some rebel group. i dont really care, theyre all just random ideas im throwing out
9:04 am - email from “Sonny” to Ais
i dont care about what all happens but like you said, her being kept there for long enough time for that to happen wouldnt work on a show unless there was a time jump. i assume the show takes place soon after the war
9:05 am - email from Ais to “Sonny”
yeah so forget about the turning into a feral thing. the main thing was i just thought it could be kind of fun/cool to get in parts of the original icos idea
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Rereading that now, I feel like I sound a bit bitchy in my replies on the feral stuff, even though in looking at it at this moment I think “Sonny”’s response makes total sense and I agree with “him” on that part of the email. No idea if I was feeling pissy/impatient that day and I truly was a bit tetchy in my replies, or if I was just super distracted writing or editing so I was being especially lazy about punctuation and paying attention to tone and accidentally made it sound a little more abrupt than I would if I were trying to be careful about that.
Anyway this seems to be the majority of the extra info I have on it. 
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poeplepound · 7 years
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!!! i !!!! love these guys so much!! theyre so spectacular omfg !
also i tried to do this once already ! and i was very far into a very long info dump about these guys and i was ALmost done ,,, and my browser crashed, but im doing it again anyway because i need it (i might make typos and sound like a bum jus btw)
sean bonnette and benjamin gallaty started releasing musci together in 2005 after having worked together in a coffeeshop in pheonix arizona - sean was 18, and the buds released their debut album “candy cigarettes and cap guns” and have since released four other full albums, a handful of singles, two eps, and a compilation
sean has a bachelors degree in social work, and has always been working in homeless shelters, volunteering with youth programs, and trying to give a voice to one of the largest groups of stigmatized humans on our planet
candy cigarettes and cap guns was released when sean (30 y/o) was only 18 - and he has since recieved lots of negative feedback on offensive content in ajj’s older songs - to this, sean apologizes but says , quite frankly , that he was a yung edgy boi at that time in his life, and even if his music was offensive then , it represents a time in his life and hes not going to let its content discount that relevance
this is similar to how ajj changed their name from “Andrew jackson jihad”, sean and ben publicly decided to stop using the old band name because they aren’t muslim and have to right to use the term jihad as a part of an aesthetic - neither of the guys expected ajj to get so big, and andrew jackson jihad was adequate for a yung edgy boi garage band
ajjs vast discography centers around themes of social anxiety, privilege, depression, mania, loving how horrible life is, making the most of nothing, being nothing, and how wonderful our shitty planet is
ajj is considered folk-punk, and to a certain degree i agree with that, but to me music genres are irrelevant, and often times musicians fail to fit a category
the idea of organizing music by genres is restricting to a musician and songs and music grow as people do.  in an interview with verbicide, sean said that he acknowledges ajj’s influence on “folk punk” but how the identification of what folk-punk actually is is very vague and unclear, what really Is folk-punk?
ajj has albums that are way more based in folk music, and some that are way more based in punk - some songs are very poppy, some kind of choral in nature - but somehow, ajj has a very cohesive, recognizable sound that never fails to impress and comfort me
this is in part to sean’s wonderful lyrics, they are so very very raw and uncut - he is incredibly relatable while staying poetic, and i admire that So Much.  his use of metaphor in his lyrics has alwasy been apparent, but even more so in his more recent albums, and his political commentary songs are more prevalent in older songs - but they stay SO RE l AT a b LE !! every time i listen to ajj, i feel so whole and accepted and like im listening to my deepest internal thoughts and feelings in the form of beautiful lyrics and entrancing music
when asked if sean’s lyrics are a reflection of a darkness inside of him, he usualyl replies by saying that hes no darker than anyone else is - he just has a way to express and expel that darkness.  after the release of knife man, sean was asked if his emotional songs were about his past and what he’s been through as a person, and hes replied by saying that a lot of what he sings about is stuff that hes seen through his job, and learned about through people he’s met and interacted with.
shortly before christmas island was recorded, sean’s grandfather passed away.  his grandpa had lived with him from the time he was 13 tot he time he was 18, and he was a very major male role model in his life.  christmas island has lots of imagery around death, and a lot of the songs on the album personify grief and death.  sean has said that christmas island is an album about “pre-grief” meaning the way that people feel bad about death and grieve loses before theyve even happen, just beause they know theyre coming.  sean’s grandfather’s death was not unexpected or sudden, and he died very happily - surrounded by all of his grandchildren, and the feeling of knowing someone you love will die shortly is what fueled a lot of the tone of christmas island.
sean is a big big fan of 90′s hip hop, and a lot of his lyrics and writing style is heavily influenced by his favorites - aesop rock, brother lynch hung, biggie, and ol dirty bastard (seriously sean is SO Iconic)
i’ve been listening to ajj since their release of “knife man” in 2011, i could never pick a favorite album of theirs  - i love each of them and theyre each incredibly important to me
their 2007 album “people who can eat people are the luckiest people in the world” gave me a completely new worldview , and showed me that the world is incredibly imperfect, and humans are incredibly imperfect, but life is so worth living, and there is still so much good amazing stuff in the world
in 2008 they released the ep “plant your roots” and in 2009 “cant maintain” - both of theses eps were the first time i had found relatable emotional music that felt so accurate to myself - it was raw, it was unapologetic, it was beautiful, and it was sad.  these eps have an incredible tone, and theyre both so different (cant maintain being more light and - dare i say - playful) but still so connected and deeply rooted (pun intended ;) ) in my head as near perfect expressions of my feelings
“knife man” was released in 2011 and it came into my life at a time where i was trying to learn about myself and discover who i was, and this album guided me in such a strong positive direction - it introduced me to white privilege, taught me about forgiveness, how to be unapologetically me, but still let me stay in touch with my dark, cynical, pessimistic side of myself - knife man is somehow so negative but still so positive and i think thats how a lot of real life is, and ajj captures that incredibly well 
knife man was the first ajj show i ever saw, and i will never forget how captivating sean is when he preforms, his body language and his expressions reflect so much of what he’s singing, theyre so true
in 2014 they released “christmas island” and im not gonna lie when i first heard it i really didnt like it - i thought it was too poppy, and not raw enough like how ajj usually is - it felt wrong to me.  but alas, i kept listening, and i soon fell in love with this album.  it is indeed poppier than their other stuff, and when it came out in may of that year, i didnt really want to like it that much - and so i avoided it, and once Taylor Swift’s super poppy 1989 came out that october, i avoided it Even Harder because i felt like 2014 would be the year of great musicians selling out to labels to gain hits.  eventually, i let myself sink into christmas island - i allowed myself to like it, and boy o boy did i fall in love. i saw the show and i cried. the album seamlessly ties together themes from older albums - optimism, death, unrest, self-loathing - but it introduces a new style to seans words - theyre less direct, less blunt, less in-your-face , he starts using metaphors that dont make sense the first time you listen, his lyrics take on a new type of poetry on this album - and its beautiful
christmas island is softer, its more about introspection and knowing why youre the way you are - its about emotional intelligence - this album taught me how to know whats happening, and how to accept it and learn form it and let myself dream and live, despite how shitty stuff is, and i love it.
in 2016 “the bible 2″ was released, and i waited to listen to any of it until i went to see the show - i binged the album twice through right before i went to see them, and i had really really mixed feelings about it - some of the songs i didnt understand, i didnt like the sound of some of them, and i felt like they got very preachy.  once i saw them play the song “small red boy” though, i was 110% hooked - it suddenly made sense to me as an album.  the sound is so personal to me, and i connect with the radio static and the messy raw noise, and the lyrics take on such a poetic, innocent tone, and all the songs are equal parts inspiring, funny, and dark.  i really really really truly love this album.
this is kind of just a silly extra, but in 2015 they released a single called “keep on chooglin” and i honeslty dont understand what most of the song means, but its really a bop and its poppy and upbeat and positive, and i can gather that basically to “choogle” is to be yourself unapologetically and just do your own thing and basically fucc the haters, and its a nice song to listen to if youre feeling down because the lyrics are funny and the message is bright
ajj’s discography has gotten me through some of the hardest years of my life, and have seriously, literally, kept me from killing myself on so many occasions and i am forever grateful - if i had not stayed alive until now, i would miss so much and i would throw away my life, just because i didnt feel like making it, and now i can say in full confidence that this band has ridded me of all my suicidal ideation , and if anyone is down here reading this, im gonna make an ajj “dont die” playlist that i Will post here
in 2012, ben gallaty recorded a couple songs under the name wiccan babysitter, adn then a few years later (2016) he recorded a few more under the name benjamin galaxy - he compiled these songs in 2016 onto an lp, one side being the wiccan babysitter ep and the other being the ben galaxy ep.  i didnt know this was a thing until recently? which is weird? but i have listened through the lp many times - i still dont have a strong grip on what the songs mean, but i can say that the wiccan babysitter/benjamin galaxy lp is super comforting to me as well.  the sound is unique and different from ajj, but it is still warm and whole feeling, and the lyrics are still relatable to me, and i want to read more about what ben wrote about and why, but im having trouble finding info on this project
im mostly done for now, it’s very late at night, and i have work tomorrow morning, but i’ll leave u with this - youre an irreplaceable human soul with your own understanding of what it means to suffer, and thats a huge bummer
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