so episode 31, really the last three or four episodes, honestly, crystalized a lot of what i have been working on behind the scenes when it comes to the hells so let’s talk. warning: as always, this a long post.

because the thing is, the thing is, bells’ hells have been a control party almost from the word go. control parties, for those who don’t know, build themselves to go around obstacles and find new, different win conditions for encounters. control parties have a million different ways to handle these objectives. they can avoid combat altogether via stealth, charisma checks, or other pointed party actions. they can, as the crownkeepers did with the crocodile, find a creative way to neutralize an encounter. this doesn’t just apply to combat, by the by. social encounters provide ample opportunity for a control party to flex their muscles and steer their targets towards the party’s objectives. the haunting of the moon tower is a perfect example. they tend to be more creative and aware of their environments and the people within them than their glass cannon and cockroach counterparts. they have to be. you can’t redefine victory conditions without that awareness or creativity. control parties are just willing to try new things in ways that other parties can’t (glass cannons tend to be built for just damage) or won’t (cockroaches prefer optimizing the action economy).

the hells are several different control modes smushed together into some semblance of a balanced party that can switch on a dime and adapt. they can playfully booby-trap their way through a museum job then roast their opponents alive before flipping back to friendly assistance once the threat has been neutralized and they’ve won. the hells are much more interested in gathering and using information than their c1 or c2 counterparts; they’re also much better at extracting it. whether it’s fearne and orym scouting out enemy bases or numbers, fcg and imogen running roughshod over other people’s minds to find it or being irresistible enough that information is just handed to them, or chet, laudna, and ashton scaring the information out of opponents, all of them have some way of pulling information together (using it is still a skill the group is working on but they’re getting better). in combat, laudna and imogen easily cycle between environmental control/support (think imogen’s hunger of hadar reskin and laudna’s form of dread) and big damage numbers, chet literally has two modes he can fight in, while ashton and orym have a number of ways to control enemy movement and attacks.

and the thing about last episode and this most recent string is how the cast has built characterization into and from the mechanics and abilities. the hells are a control party, and they all have control issues. every last one of them.

ashton - traumatic brain injury that left them their unreliable at best memory, sometimes unable to rein in their impulses, and a rage they’ve only recently learned to channel and use, a man who wants very clearly defined roles and relationships (and oh boy it says something that ashton is the one who best knows their limitations and has gotten used to living with this lack of control).

chetney - werewolf who has lost control of the beast once that we know of. has issues with authority and people having control over his creations and livelihood.

fcg - has been denied autonomy and personhood for much of their existence, can snap to murderbot mode when sufficiently stressed with no memory of what occurred.

fearne - oh fearne, she has issues with cages and how things need to be free but also how she collects the things and people she cares about (she’d never keep them but at the same time...). after all, if she collects them, well, she can’t be left again, right.

imogen - has to maintain a stubborn, rigid control over her feelings, thoughts, and powers at all times or else something could explode. literally, in some cases. or worse, she’ll be subjected to every passing, awful thought of every person around her and who wants that, really?

laudna - a potential puppet on delilah briarwood’s strings. her control issues stem from her (pretty justified given her life) fear that everyone will leave her, that she’s not worthy enough for people to remain by her side. if she just controls herself and finds the one thing that others want, they’ll stay, they have to, right?

orym - like imogen, orym’s holding himself together by the skin of his teeth sometimes. he’s trying to control situations and fights around him so that this time, maybe, hopefully, his loved ones won’t be hurt, never mind if he gets hurt in the process.

part of what fascinates me so in the last several episodes is how out of control the hells have felt and the catalysts for that. yu, who manipulates and worms their way around obstacles and uses others and changes the win conditions and gets what they want in the end, a dark mirror of the hells’ own tactics turned on them. ira, who has controlled and manipulated and wiped out any good intention fearne’s parents had, right down to smearing away their memories and emotions. delilah, who gaslights, manipulates, and abuses, whom they cannot escape without leaving one of their own to her “tender” care. fcg, who weaponized what little actual vulnerability this party has been able to let itself feel.

so strap yourselves in, folks, we’re in for a long haul here.

i found you in the future

Thinking about the symbolic weight of smoking in the TLT universe that comes to the fore in The Unwanted Guest -- the way it moves through from person to person: Pyrrha smoked, and Augustine wanted to impress her in all her stone cold fox MILF James Bond glory (and tbf who wouldn't) so he started too. and even though as far as he knows she's been gone for a myriad and is never coming back, he keeps the habit. Ianthe sees something in the hollowed-out Faberge eggshell of Augustine that resonates with her, all that gilded eloquent emptiness and disdain through the ages, so she picked it up from him to try to emulate it. She picked it up so hard that Palamedes -- the exact spiritual antithesis of the 'smoking! on a space station! what a powermove' ennui Ianthe so admired -- spontaneously unnerded enough to even known how to, simply from a sort of contact contamination of the soul.

G1deon and Augustine sharing a jittery smoke after their near-Harrow experience during soup night, and it's the closest thing to any real sense of brotherhood that remains between them. Pyrrha going ten thousand years dying both literally and for a smoke (and then Camilla sold her fucking cigarettes (for a third of what they were worth, probably Pyrrha's own good, and also more importantly grocery money). what an entirely haunted time to be alive etc.). Augustine and Mercy trading a cigarette back and forth in the middle of their collusion over the love and murder of god.

An act of small and measured self-destruction in the name of something a little bit like connection when you're stuck somewhere in yourself where love itself dares not or cannot tread (ritualized, transmissible)..........

If the implication in the old journal entry is accurate, and Halsin ended up having to be the one to destroy the shade of his former First Druid that he trained/was taught under, do you think he had time to mourn him? Do you think he fell to his knees in the rubble, feeling the shadows press heavy around him, catatonic, as the weight of realization finally started to hit him? Were any of them reflected back at him when he peered into the dull, sparking energy left behind? Did he let himself cry? Scream? Did he carefully stone his expression and nod tightly in approval, like neatly tying a package, since what he eliminated wasn't him - what was left was so twisted beyond recognition, such a dark reflection of the man he had come to see as second family, that it was better destroyed?

Or did he have to run? Did he shove his grief deep down in the place where it always goes to make room for his survival instinct to bring him into the sun again? Did he have to unceremoniously abandon what was left of him because there was still a chance there may be others - a hope made in vain that the ones they had to leave behind were still out there - praying as he went that he had found peace, that Silvanus recognized his face, before the curse took what was left?

i could KILL him for this. motherfucker's every interaction with children has him being, if not nice, then at minimum kind and forgiving and genuinely invested in their wellbeing.

he asks crying kids what's the matter, he's afraid to hold a baby because he's worried he'll drop it, he goes after people who are mean to kids without a second thought. his whole mentorship with timothy hunter is him trying to do right by that kid no matter how he feels about it at the time. man would be the most loving dad in the world but because of his own awful goddamn father and the ways he thinks he takes after thomas, he doesn't think that's true. i hate.

peace and love to all of those who find joy in attempting to extract a coherent and “correct” narrative from Jenny from Thebes, but, in my opinion personally, a story is true, a story is untrue. as time goes on, it matters less and less.

Rewatching a playthrough of Danganronpa and it actually shocks me how chill Monokuma is. Even when Kyoko goes around stealing his shit and he finds Makoto with it later he's like. Yeah okay. I don't hold it against you or anything it's cool. LMAO

He has every available opportunity to just kill everyone whenever, especially when they break the rules, but he never does. I really love villains who stick to their own rules so it's fair for everyone else :")

Something something about Buck and learning and or teaching.

Something something about Buck teaching when he really needed to be learning.

I just keep thinking about how the show has increasingly - especially last season - put Buck into the role of 'teacher' - including his coma dream. (i'm using teacher for the lack of a better term!) and how in the aftermath of the coma dream - he's been trying to teach but it hasn't worked - instead he's been learning.

I've been musing on the fact that even back in season 1 Buck has been in a teacher role -

Abby learning to chose herself and go for her happiness,

Bobby learning to let people in and Buck being a major part of that because of their developing father-son type relationship

'teaching' Eddie that he could rely on other people for help

Maddie learning at Bucks hand that she didn't need to keep running, that she could lean on him for support and build a new life for herself

Ravi being tutored by Buck in the fire house

even Lucy being given advice by Buck - teaching her through his own experiences in dumb luck

Buck making himself into a teacher in his coma dream and the idea that all these people he has helped teach teaching him that he has a place with them and that he is important

and so many more examples through the seasons that I won't list or I'd be here forever!

Because there has been a lot of emphasis on teaching and learning since Buck woke up from his coma - he learnt he was good at maths, but then wasn't allowed to help Chris with his maths homework because it would be cheating.

used his maths skills to win at Poker - but got taught lessons even in victory - rather than teaching others lessons (whatever they might have been)

Natalia being interested in him because he could teach her about death and things going south pretty quickly when it became evident that Buck needed to learn how to live again rather than be stuck in death

And now we've had several mentions by Tommy of him teaching Buck things - teaching him to fly, teaching him Mauy Thai, all the way to him being his bi awakening is teaching him about a part of himself he didn't know. Things are turned on their head - Buck is the student not the master now

Even with Eddie this season, we've seen him teaching Buck things - rather than Eddie learning from him - Eddie handing over this really important thing going on with Chris - Eddie knowing that Buck would be a better option - that Chris would open up to him more - is teaching Buck about his importance in the Diaz family - re-enforcing that he is part of their life. Its also Eddie who has had the good advice for Buck this time rather than the other way round.

Something something about 'you like to be the guy with the answers' to Buck becoming the guy with the (maths) answers - only for it to fade away and now he's having to learn

Something something about the tie to Buck and death and the resurrection and how Christ was the teacher up to and immediately after his death and resurrection when he left others on earth to spread his teachings and he ascended to learn at the right hand of god

Something something about how that is the key to happiness and that is what Buck has figured out and that is why his journey to figuring that out has had him wearing the bright blue - because in Christianity - that shade of blue is the colour of the kingdom of heaven (because it is the colour of the sky!) so putting Buck in it at all these key markers of his journey is showing him as being on the road to ascension.

This post is a mess - I don't even know what it is any more! I started with one idea about teaching and Tommy and then more kept coming and we ended up here!!!!

"What if I told you I love you" "You'd be lying" "*laughing* But a beautiful lie, nonetheless...." - hahahahahaha screaming crying throwing up

Sometimes I just randomly think about how Prism Grimpoppy is somewhere out there in the world with like half of the members of Bell’s Hells hair in a back pocket. Just for funsies. Like she asked for it just in case she felt like spying on them later and they all said “yeah sure that sounds good”.

writing Character explicitly to die at the end but unfortunately: She Is Compelling

My kind friends... my kissing encounter with another trans woman... my general content feeling and happiness from HRT... things are good. They were so bad for so long but they are good right now.

what the fuck happened in shining nikki while i was gone. i stopped playing in late 2022 but even then i stopped paying attention at around the start of volume 2. so i've been trying to catch up a bit and every single thing i learn just makes me have to set my phone aside and just. think. like seriously what the fuck

so I actually really enjoy the OG SQQ, he is such an angsty and dramatic bitch absolutely stuffed with trauma and terrible coping behind that ice cold veneer and it’s a shame we didn’t get more of him. there’s just so much to explore with him and he gets cut out and missed by his sect exactly 0% which is pretty heartbreaking.

Just take things at your own pace, there’s no need to rush (Patreon)

leaving for college tomorrow... it doesn't feel real at all :')