#this is obviously a very important location for many of us
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FFXIV Vanilla Gpose Challenge
Day 2: Landscape/Location 🪦 Grave of a Dear Friend
“…It doesn’t get any easier, does it?” ~ Lord Francel de Haillenarte
#ffxivvanilla24#vanillagpose24#ffxiv gpose#ffxiv spoilers#heavensward spoilers#female wol#female lalafell#hali aloke#oc: drops of jupiter#this is obviously a very important location for many of us#and I cried all over again once I figured out where Haurchefant’s grave was and found it#then Francel showed up and I cried even harder#so I had to choose this location#sorry for any tears shed
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The Final Fifteen is about Terry Pratchett's Death
read on Ao3
The final fifteen is obviously a major plot point, and serves a role in a story that was written long before Terry Pratchett was ever diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. But the scene itself wasn’t written until just a few years ago, during the writing of Season 2. In fact, the scene came about during a park bench conversation between Neil Gaiman and John Finnemore.
Others have noted that the non-romantic kiss that signals the story moving into the third act is a Neil Gaiman staple. The function of such a kiss, from Gaiman’s perspective, is to communicate.
In 2023 we are seeing a lot of stories written by men, for men, about men who are best friends and discover that their friendship can go deeper than the norms of society would usually allow; that platonic and romantic love are not so far apart, and perhaps the better word for a relationship that can be described this way is intimacy.
Neil Gaiman has made it clear in interviews that his friendship with Terry Pratchett was deeply intimate. They began collaborating on what would become Good Omens in the 1980’s, endured a tumultuous experience together through the first publication, wherein Neil offered to martyr himself on behalf of Terry if the book failed, and then spent the better part of two decades touring the world, meeting the people who loved their work. Neil would even off-handedly remark that Terry’s fans were so cheerful, and Neil’s seemed like they were ready to kill themselves; wouldn’t it be nice if they got married? From the outside, it looks very much as if Terry was Aziraphale-coded, and Neil was Crowley-coded, working together in an unexpected partnership to make the world a little bit more tolerable for the humans inhabiting it. I am not conjecturing that Neil and Terry had romantic inclinations the way their fictional characters do, but I think it is fair to say that their opposites-attract intimacy became an important part of who each of them were.
In 2007 Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer’s. As the disease progressed, he began to lose himself, and knew that the person he used to be was slipping away. He wanted to end his life on his own terms, and die as himself, but England did not and still does not allow for voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide. He advocated for the right to die but never achieved it, and ultimately succumbed to the disease in 2015. Neil Gaiman has spoken a lot on the topic of death, and one answer of his that resonated with me reads:
Mostly it feels terrible. It even feels terrible when it’s someone who has been in a lot of pain for a long time or has not really been there for a long time and you know that Death has in some ways been a blessing: suddenly you are mourning the whole person.
It doesn’t get easier as you age. It gets stranger. The point where you realise how many people you used to know and like who aren’t there any longer, and you cannot talk to them or see them or laugh with them is painful in a way that I had never expected. The first time that someone you had a romantic relationship with dies and you realise that there had been moments both of you shared and now you are the sole custodian of those moments and one day you will be gone and they will be lost forever is peculiarly strange and hard.
~~~
The entire show is seeded with references to Terry Pratchett, but the most important one is the one that’s missing. Neil Gaiman cameoed as a sleeping moviegoer in S1E4, but a long time ago, he and Terry had discussed cameoing as sushi restaurant-goers, because sushi was weirdly prominent in the book. That cameo would have been in S1E1. But when it came time to do it, Neil couldn’t. Not without Terry.
Neil: I was gonna say our location is a Chinese restaurant we’d had turned into a sushi restaurant. So Terry and I, Terry Pratchett and I, had a standing… not even a standing joke, just a standing plan, that we were going to have sushi - there was going to be a scene in Good Omens where sushi was eaten and we were gonna be extras, we were gonna sit in the background, eating sushi while it was done. And I was so looking forward to this and, so I wrote this scene with it being sushi, even though Terry was gone, with that in mind and I thought: Oh, I’ll sit and I’ll eat lots of sushi as an extra, this will be my scene as an extra, I’ll just be in the background. And then, on the day, or a couple of days before, I realized that I couldn’t do it.
Douglas: You never told me this before either. I might have pushed you into doing it, had I known. I think you were right not to tell me.
Neil: I was keeping it to me self ‘cause I was always like: Oh, maybe I’ll be… this will be my cameo. And then I couldn’t. I was just so sad, ‘cause Terry wasn’t there. And it was probably the day that I missed Terry the most of all of the filming - it was just this one scene ‘cause it was written for Terry and all of the sushi meals we’d ever had and all of the strange way that sushi ran through Good Omens.
~~~
In the Final Fifteen, it is clear that Crowley and Aziraphale want to stay together. They love each other. They each know that the other loves them. There’s nothing that needs to be said, no convincing that their bond is true and real and precious.
But Aziraphale has to go to Heaven, and Crowley cannot follow him there.
I cannot speculate what it must have been like for Neil to endure losing a friend who, though I’m sure he desperately wanted to still be in his life, he also knew that life had become a burden to him, and grieved that Terry was not able to choose the time and manner of his departure from this Earth. This sort of complex grief, we fan-ficcers know, is the kind that is often best processed through story-telling.
I think that what we see Crowley going through in the Final Fifteen, alongside its importance to the story arc of Good Omens overall, is Neil processing his grief at losing his friend Terry Pratchett, and even the kiss, that violent, terrible, awful kiss, was the symbolic representation of Neil saying goodbye.
#neil gaiman#terry pratchett#aziraphale#crowley#good omens#good omens 2#good omens meta#ivoc#this meta ended up being only about 2/3 the length of my usual metas and somehow that feels appropriate because Terry's life ended too soon#and the jarring brevity of this piece parallels that feeling of sudden unexpected loss#for me anyways I don't know about you guys#if this made your eyes even slightly moist you are obligated to reblog to help someone else feel their feels#I don’t make the rules#but them is the rules#blessed by Beelzebub
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TL;DR: HNL was studying how to give human subjects electromagnetic, most specifically visible light based, powers in order to bend space-time for their needs.
I’m going to try and condense this as much as I can because considering electromagnetism as a major force in ST (pun intended) opens up so many potential areas of analysis that can only be a brief cover of without turning into multiple essays.
Let’s go over the electromagnetic spectrum:
I hope you might already be recognizing some symbols we see often in Stranger Things, especially if you’ve been following the BTS and some location and set leaks from Season 5.
The electromagnetic spectrum encompasses the different frequencies of electromagnetic radiation - waves of energy that travel at the speed of light (and produce visible light to us at certain frequencies). You’ve probably heard of most of these, including cancer-causing gamma rays and x-rays, the visible light spectrum (the rainbow), microwaves, and radio waves.
In S5, we have the radio station as a main location for the characters. They’re also driving around in the radio station’s van, which has an image of a hawk emitting a rainbow (visible light radiation). Steve’s car also has a massive antenna on top of it. My first thoughts were that the team was trying to keep in contact with Max in hopes of her being able to hear them in her coma, considering she has a radio near her bedside. While that still may be a reason, I think the characters may have come to realize how important electromagnetic fields could be in their fight against Vecna (this where leader of the AV Club also focused on electromagnetic objects Scott Clarke may make his triumphant return).
Now to pivot onto why electromagnetism is so important to the lore of ST:
What the scientists in Hawkins Lab are likely studying is a way for human brains to produce or manipulate certain types of electromagnetic waves through telepathy. Most obviously this is seen by them having the kids try to manipulate and turn on a circle of light bulbs. Our brains actually already produce electromagnetic waves, but at a very slow frequency. The scientists are constantly measuring brain waves while conducting these experiments. We even get full shots of El’s brain waves during NINA, for example. We also see similar shots in S2 while Will is in the HNL.
You can also observe that the Hawkins National Laboratory has absolutely massive satellite dishes on it’s rooftop; ones that do not exist on the real life building but are added in post because they pose some sort of significance. Nudge, it’s because they are transmitting and receiving massive amounts of electromagnetic waves.
Why are they studying electromagnetic waves then?
They are studying electromagnetic waves because they are a method in which time travel can theoretically be achieved - the focus of the Montauk Project in which Stranger Things is based on. The military likely is investigating time travel as another war tactic against Russia.
Let us take a look at the first chapter of the Montauk Project: Experiments in Time book (they are seriously plagiarizing the living hell out of this thing):
Also, did you catch the whole 'attaching a massive antenna on the hood of my car to pick up a secret signal' thing? That's suspiciously similar to the state of Steve's car! Anyway...
The story of Stranger Things starts chronologically, as does Montauk, with the disappearance of the USS Eldridge and Project Rainbow (named after the bending of the visible light spectrum). Brenner’s father was revealed to have captained the boat in TFS, which disappeared for 12 hours into Dimension X and when it came back, the crew was killed or driven mad (except for Brenner Sr). This inspires Brenner to continue onto the Nevada project, and eventually, Hawkins National Lab’s studies. The USS Eldridge / Philadelphia Project conspiracy from real life went as follows:
They were studying electromagnetism, specifically the bending of light, to make objects invisible. This was only the first step in the experiments. Once Henry got involved and came back from his trip to Dimension X with powers, Brenner must have realized he could potentially use human subjects to manipulate electromagnetic fields themselves. Human subjects didn’t require machinery or set up and could bend space-time wherever they pleased, as long as they were able to learn the ability.
The more conspiratiorial side of Theoretical Physics proposes using circulating light beams to warp time-space, creating a wormhole in which one can literally walk through time. This is pop-science, likely not true but interesting for fiction purposes. This method of time travel being used is heavily implied due to the fact that the USS Eldridge was already able to disappear into another dimension by the bending of light.
This is how it worked in the Montauk Project book (absolutely ridiculous how much they took from this honestly):
My guess is that in the Stranger Things universe, they have not yet managed to time travel, only to create portals into this alien Dimension X. Previously, said portals were only made twice by highly advanced technological equipment. El demonstrated that she was able to open a portal all by herself - another step to achieving time travel with singular human subjects. Season five is when we will see the beginning of the time travel plot line, though it like in Montauk is likely already in a loop.
That’s where we get the name for the Rainbow Room, named after this Project Rainbow. The rainbow represents the full spectrum of visible light, and the goals of the project to bend said light into portals and eventually time travel wormholes.
Implications?:
-Well, first of all it seems very obvious by this point that we are going for a time travel plot line, and this is how it will be achieved.
-Will is heavily connected to light in general, the sun, and of course… the rainbow. He is also implied be the one involved in the time travel plot line. This will be very relevant going forward and deserves it’s own post. Potential funniness of defeating Vecna with the power of the rainbow afoot.
-Coma patients are known to have odd, barely detectable brain waves. The kids will be able to communicate with Max in her coma using the electromagnetic spectrum somehow, probably through the radio waves.
-On the farthest end of the spectrum, we have ionizing gamma ray radiation, which is known to cause cancer in humans. Expect Hopper’s daughter Sara to connect to this plot line (and perhaps Sam Owens’ dead son). There is a whole theory on this site already called radiationgate. I have not managed to look into it yet but I think they are probably onto something there. The original al pitch mentions the UD leakage into the real world causing cancer as well.
#stranger things#dr brenner#will byers#max mayfield#byler#<- fuck it intended audience#el hopper#st theory#electromagnetismgate#:)#tagging them for the exposure cause idk who is going to see this#time travel
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Cregan Stark NSFW Alphabet
NSFW topics ahead don’t read if you’re not comfortable!!
A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)
Cleans you up with a rag and warm water while telling how perfect you are for him
Knows you get cold in the north so he always has extra fur blankets to wrap you in
B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)
For him he likes his eyes, knows you go wild for eye contact and you always compliment his eyes
On you he likes your stomach and hips, most northern girls he’s bedded have been rather skinny he loves the feeling of your stomach under his hands
LOVES your hips boy is grabbing them while pounding into you or caressing them while making love
C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)
He will cum in you if you’re comfortable with it he goes feral for that shit
If not he loves cumming on your back or stomach something about you being dirty with his seed makes his brain short wire
D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)
Would love to fuck you in the great hall alone obviously
Just the thought while he’s at some important meeting he just has to look at the table to remember what you two did whilst everyone is oblivious
E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)
He has 10 kids.
F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)
Anything where he can see your face
G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)
Cregan lets you set the mood but if it’s after a battle or hunt it’s all business
H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)
He’s well shaven he likes to keep it neat and manageable
I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)
He’s romantic he wants everything to be perfect for you he will definitely start a nice fire for you
J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)
He doesn’t necessarily like or need to jerk he has you
K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)
Breeding kink goes brr
Wants you to have his kids so bad he will whisper in your ear during sex telling you how good you would look pregnant
Praise giving and receiving he likes to know he’s making you feel good
L = Location (favorite places to do the do)
Your chambers obviously he loves going to bed knowing you have had sex on the bed
M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)
Imagining you pregnant
Seeing you with Kids (more specifically Rickon)
He loves to see you all dressed up for important events
N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)
Will never do anything without your consent
Will never lay his hands on you
O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)
LIVES for eating you out it’s his favorite meal
Won’t deny head but won’t demand it he prefers giving
P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)
Once again it’s mostly up to you and your preference but I like to think he goes deep you know quality over quantity
Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)
Only likes quickies if he has absolutely no time
He likes to take his time to make his lady feel good
R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)
Will never do something with you not being comfortable so kind of if your down, so is he
S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)
He can last atleast 3-4
T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)
I can’t imagine him using them on you, he prefers to please you himself
Doesn’t mind if you use them by yourself, he’s a lord after all he’s busy
U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)
He can tease and will but hates making you wait
V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)
He’s not very loud but he will grunt and moan in your ear
W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)
Cregan was so touch starved before you got betrothed so when you held him the first night you made love he cried but always denies it
X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)
Oh yeah he’s big you know what they say about northern men😏😏
Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)
This man is down literally 24/7
Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)
Cregan makes sure you are comfortable and okay before anything then it’s fair game you both knock out
A/n: My first NSFW alphabet!!! Give me feedback how did I do?? Who next??
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Hey so here's a conversation you might or might not be interested in having but if you'd like to, it's been my understanding that you participate in the time honoured tradion of cruising (TM), so I was curious about how/why you first started engaging with that? Was it an intentional choice? Are there still live spots around where you live? Natural continuation from the grindr life? Feels like it isn't really a natural part of gay life for a lot of people these days and more of an active choice.
I do like having conversations like this! Now I do cruise, but not in the ways that first come to mind with the term "cruising." My experience is limited to bathhouses, bars, and parties with play spaces, but I haven't done it in, say, a park or a highway rest stop. Cruising refers to looking for sex in places known for the practice. Said sex does not have to occur there, so finding someone at a cruising spot and going to a second location is cruising, but a couple arranging to have sex in a park is not. There are definitely gray areas--is Grindr cruising, or is it an existential threat to the culture? What's the line between a plain old bar hookup and cruising? Is going to a cruising spot only to have sex with people you already knew cruising? Maybe someone reading this knows better than I do.
Knowing spots is and always has been a matter of word of mouth, but sites like squirt . org and Sniffies have made it a lot easier. People looking to cruise might look at these sites, or look for advice for their city in forums, or just know the right people who know their way around the "pickle parks." The spots I've been to are the easiest to find--obviously people are going to be having sex at a bathhouse. But there are other options--informal, discrete spots that don't (or can't) require an entry fee. You'd be surprised just how many there are, and not just in the cities you'd suspect. I just don't know much about this world, aside from the "official" brick and mortar spots.
I started going first out of curiosity, but then I kept finding more and more reasons. It wasn't a natural continuation from Grindr life but rather a reaction against it. I was sick of Grindr. I wanted to work on people skills, like dishing out and taking rejection respectfully, and without the ego-preserving move of a block button. I had a roommate and felt awkward inviting people over. I didn't have a car and had a hard time even getting to other people's places, and by the time I got there I'd lost my sexual appetite. I found being naked or in a towel in a space full of equally naked people helped me be at ease with my body. The men I had sex with couldn't find and contact me after the fact unless I deliberately gave them contact information. I felt more freedom to say no or change my mind in a place full of sexual possibilities than I would at someone else's apartment. I found a lot of reasons beyond finding voyeurism and exhibitionism hot--which I do.
I have learned not to focus too hard on the why. A lot of different types do it for a lot of different reasons, and that's part of the appeal for me. There are closeted and experimenting men, out and proud gays who view the baths as part of their identity, disrobed white collar professionals visiting my city for a conference, locals who can't host, and nobody's really asking who's who. This is the sort of contact that Samuel R Delany wrote about, overcoming the guiding rule of cities that we "don't talk to strangers." Michael Warner also has great writing on cruising and public sex, and challenges the idea that gay victory will look like normalcy and the end of cruising. Cruising is not as popular as it used to be, and I think it's important to acknowledge a lot of this comes down to policy and not a change in the gay conscience. Ironically, the very gentrification that scrubs away these spaces has made them necessarily through a tightening housing market where fewer people can host. I would not be surprised if I heard it confirmed that more gays lately are choosing to cruise--or already are and don't realize it. At the risk of over-simplified sentimentality, I'd be glad to hear it.
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Druig X Eternal! Reader
✨ (Gender Neutral) ✨
No Warnings.
After many years of being split up, the Eternals must come together as a team again. Nobody seems to know where you've been all these years, so they've gone to the one person who might know of your whereabouts...
Little did they know that you're a lot closer than they thought.
"You have given me a lot of bad news in one go, my lady." Druig's tone is a lot less welcoming after he's been told the horrible truth.
"You and (Y/n) are the main parts of our big plan. We need you both to get through this." Sersi explained again. "Will you help us?"
"We can't find (Y/n)." Ikaris cut to the chase, obviously not ecstatic about needing Druig.
"All of us have searched across almost the whole planet." Sersi subtly encouraged Ikaris away from Druig, sensing the tension already rising between them. "All of (Y/n)'s favorite countries, every area we've had somekind of special or significant moment, we've even asked elders who've written many books about (Y/n). Found not a trace of where they could possibly be."
Drugs arms stayed crossed. "I don't think it's my business to just give out personal information like that." Once his fellow Eternals showed up, his peace was interrupted and he now has a headache.
He knows he told them to "make themselves at home," but he didn't expect them to drop all of this shocking news on him about their true purpose as Eternals, and then interrogate him about your location.
"Do you all remember this forest? Beautiful." Druig walked around the room with his hands clasped behind his back, trying to make small talk and steer the topic away from (Y/n). "It was the last place that we all lived together." His tone held some sorrow at the memories.
"I've protected these people for 20 generations now. From the outside world, and from themselves."
Druig towered over Kingo's valete, Karun. "Your kind, my friend, you will be responsible for your own extinction one day. Don't you think?"
Karun looked a little intimidated, but he answered honestly.
"I think that we must learn from our mistakes and do better, sir. You must not give up hope."
Druig did not seem to like his answer, expressing so by possessing Kingo's valet and proceeding to throw his camera against a wall, thoroughly frightening Karun and pissing off Kingo.
"Oh, where is your sense of humor Kingo?"
"You are not a god. You know that right?"
"How ironic. Kingo, the movie star."
"I've directed some things too."
"Oh yeah? Like what?"
"Some internet content..."
"How many views?"
"I don't do it for the views-"
"Let's go. He's waisting our time." Ikaris started heading towards the door.
"We need him and (Y/n)." Sersi tried to reason.
"Ikaris!" Druig stepped in front of the taller man's path. "I missed you."
Druig was really pushing it right now. "Are you not gonna charm me or threaten me?"
"There's a third option if you'd prefer that."
"It must be heartbreaking to find out that you're not mothers favorite." Druig taunted about Ikaris not being the next chosen leader.
"I'm sure she'd be real proud about what you've been up to." Ikaris always seemed to fall for the psychic's taunting.
"Druig, this is serious." Sersi tried to butt in once more.
"I'll tell you what's serious." Druig's voice got louder as he seemed to get more annoyed.
"I've just been told that I was sent on a suicide mission for the past 7,000 years, and that my entire existence is a lie." He looked Sersi in the eyes. "So excuse me for not giving a shit about your plan right now."
Athena stepped forward, brushing away Gilgamesh's hand that attempted to stop her from engaging in the conflict. She'd been quiet this whole time, but nobody else seemed to be getting anywhere with the stubborn psychic.
"This is very important. Everything will be lost if we can't stop the celestial birth. You have to admit that we've all gained somekind of admiration for humanity. Not only will the humans be gone, but so will all of the memories we've shared on Earth. Our memories with each other." Athena turned away from the rest of the Eternals, only addressing Druig when she said her next line, hoping that she'll strike a chord in him. "Your memories with (Y/n)."
Everyone was silent.
Druig let out a heavy sigh, but before he could even open his mouth to say anything, the large wooden door creeked open slowly.
"Hey Druig, I-"
Silence still hung heavy in the room amongst the Eternals, but this time it was shock.
There you stood, slightly different from the last time they've seen you many years ago, but still you. It all made sense now, why you were nowhere they searched, even though they've literally checked everywhere.
Your voice got caught in your throat as soon as you entered the cabin filled with your old friends, whom you may also have been technically hiding from.
"Uh...bad timing." Druig's voice rang in your head. Your panicked eyes met his from across the room.
"Holy shit." Kingo was the first to speak up. "(Y/n) has been here with Druig the whole time?!"
You let out an awkward chuckle, not knowing how to reply.
"What have the two of you even been doing here together for all of these years?!" Kingo's arms flailed in the air dramatically, obviously annoyed that all of their searching was for nothing.
"Actually, don't answer that question." Sprite put her hands up when she saw the look you and Druig exchanged.
"Ohmygosh-" Ikaris pinched the bridge of his nose in disgust.
Confused, Kingo looked back and fourth between everyone. "Wha- I wasn't even aware the two of them are a thing."
Everyone turned to look at the man in purple with expressions that read "really?"
"Are you telling me that I'm the only one who didn't know?!" Kingo was still going on about it. "(Y/n) is too kind and cute for Druig!"
You couldn't help but laugh behind your hand as Druig rolled his eyes, fighting a small smirk.
You had to admit that you missed your family.
"Well I for one honestly don't care where (Y/n) has been this whole time. I'm just glad to see them again!" Gilgamesh stomped up to you and scooped you into a big bear hug, fits of giggles escaping you as he squeezed your breath away.
Laughter eventually erupts from everyone, the atmosphere a stark contrast from how it was only 5 minutes ago.
When all was settled down again, Sersi sat you down and told you everything...
The tragic death of Ajak, your wise leader and mother figure.
How your purpose is to keep a planet happy and thriving just to destroy it by creating a celestial.
How all of your memories have been erased countless times, because you've killed planets and birthed celestials countless times.
By the end of it, you were a sobbing mess. You've always been a little more sensitive than the others, so this obviously deeply soured the peppy family reunion mood you were in.
There was no question that you were going along with Phastos's plan. You wanted to keep these memories that you've spent centuries cherishing, and you wanted to watch humanity grow so much more.
When you declared your certainty about going with them, Druig was dragged in by default.
Wherever you went, he went.
You did the same for him when shit hit the fan in Tenochtitlan and he left.
You knew you'd miss the little civilization that you and Druig have helped create, but it'll still be there after you've saved the planet. When it's all over, you can go back with Druig and continue waking up next to him every morning to start a busy day of harvesting crops and handwashing laundry.
For now though, it's back to Olympia.
....................
"Well, look who it is!"
"Didn't think you'd be so glad to see me Phastos." Druig remarked with a smirk.
"I'm not. I was talking about (Y/n)." He brushed past the raven haired Eternal to embrace you.
Makkari elbowed the psychic, who had been grinning like an idiot while watching (Y/n).
"You look like a lovesick puppy." She signed.
Druig rolled his eyes, but his grin never faltered.
"Well, I for one, still can't believe it!" Kingo's appeared on the other side of Druig.
"I've never seen this man smile bigger than that annoying smirk." Kingo playfully leaned an arm on Druig's shoulder.
"I've also had the displeasure of seeing them kiss like 50 times during the time spand of getting here from the Amazon."
"You're just jealous." Makkari joked.
"What?! No! I get tons of babes! I just don't have the time for a committed relationship." Kingo stuck his nose in the air.
You tried not to smile while listening to your friends tease Druig. You continued pretending to pay attention to Phastos's rambling about a new invention idea.
Druig's eyes caught yours.
"Get me outta here!" He pleaded in your head.
"We just got here baby." Your voice is always so gentle and soothing in his brain. Even though he's begging to leave, he doesn't mind staying as long as you're here.
"Alright. You definitely owe me one, love." A smug look dawned his features as he affectively ignored the two Eternals babbling next to him.
You felt your ears and cheeks blush, going thankfully unnoticed by Phastos.
You are going to do absolutely anything to make sure that you both come out of all of this alive and well. There's no way you could possibly imagine a lifetime without Druig.
#druig#druig x reader#eternals#eternals x reader#x reader#gender neutral#x gender neutral reader#marvel#marvel x reader#mcu#the eternals#oneshot#imagine
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Unwanted Animal
Summary: Because that unwanted animal wants nothing more than to get out.
Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x female!reader
Warnings: mentions of torture
Word count: 2197
a/n: new series, I’m so excited for this!!
Tags: @thought-of-you-and-me @rafecameronswhore @sayah13 @strangegardentaco @natashamaximoff69
masterlists | guidelines
Natasha walks down the empty hallway. Her gun is in front of her, ready to shoot if necessary. She can hear the sounds of fighting coming from the other Avengers. They’re winning. HYDRA didn’t staff the facility with enough men to keep it secure.
Her breathing is calm and quiet, like the steps she takes. She goes through every room, looking for anything important, while skillfully avoiding anything that could make noise on the floor.
A creaking sound comes from near her. She stops moving, listening for the origin of the noise. When nothing can be heard anymore, she continues moving, though now even more cautious than before. There’s a door ajar in front of her. She sneaks right next to it, gripping her gun better, before slamming the door open. Pointing the gun towards the mostly empty room, she suddenly notices a shaking figure at the corner of the room.
The person is holding their arms up and eyes closed, trying to appear as non threatening as possible. “Stand up.” Natasha’s voice is cold. She keeps staring at the figure, who is slowly getting up. It’s a woman. “Who are you?”
“I’m Y/N,” she opens her eyes carefully, “I am a former Black Widow agent. I was caught by HYDRA after the Red Room fell.” Her voice is shaky and quiet. Her eyes meep darting all over Natasha, analyzing her, trying to see if she’s a good guy or not.
Natasha glances at the door behind her. It’s a heavy metal door, meant to keep people in. The room is small with no windows or unnecessary furniture. There’s only a thing mattress and a hole that’s supposedly the toilet.
“One of the agents was bringing me back in until all the loud noises started. He ran away and forgot to lock my door because of it.”
Putting her gun down, Natasha relaxes her stance, though she’s still vigilant, ready to shoot if the woman in front of her decides to attack. “I’m Natasha Romanoff and I’m here with the Avengers. Are there any other prisoners here?”
Y/N shakes her head. “They were moving us out to a different location, don’t know where. I think I was the last person to be moved.”
That explains why the facility is so lightly guarded, there’s nothing important left here. Everything has already been moved somewhere else. “If you came with us willingly, would you to tell us everything you know about HYDRA?”
“Yes.” The answer comes out quick, with no hesitation. She’s desperate to get out.
“Come on then,” Natasha starts leading her back towards the way she came from. “Stay beside me and be careful.”
Y/N looks around the empty interrogation room. It’s very white, with bright lights. There are two cameras in the upper corners of the room. Although, they are hidden, Y/N can easily recognize them. Her hands are cuffed to the table as a precaution, which she understands. She did come clean to being an ex Black Widow assassin after all.
Natasha walks into the room. Her clothes are different. She is out of her mission suit, now wearing clothes with the SHIELD logo on them. She sits down to the chair opposite of her. The chairs are metallic, uncomfortable. “What did you do after the Red Room fell?” She goes straight to questioning.
“I tried to get away as far as possible, but I guess HYDRA heard what happened and wanted to collect as many assassins as they could.” Y/N keeps her eyes locked on the gray table between them. Her head is tilted downcast, not enough so she wouldn’t see Natasha’s expressions from her prephilial vision, but in a way that makes her seem more submissive. “I obviously didn’t get far before they found me.”
“How long were you locked up there?”
“Years.”
Natasha nods. She was the one to shut down the Red Room all those years ago. It still haunts her at nights, but one casualty is nothing compared to the whole organization being shut down. “What were they doing to you there?”
“Torturing,” she shrugs, trying to remember any significant moments or conversations she over heard, “I think they were trying to recreate the Super Soldier serum with us, but to my knowledge they have been unsuccessful so far. Without the original vials, they can’t be sure what the formula contained.”
Glancing at the camera in the corner, she nods. There’s a file on the table she opens. She slides a picture towards Y/N. “Does this person look familiar?” The picture is blurry, most likely because it’s taken from a security camera feed, but the man’s face is still recognizable.
She stares at the picture. Y/N does know the man. “Yes.” She lifts her eyes back up, this time looking at Natasha’s face, though avoiding direct eye compact. She doesn’t want to stare at the man any longer than she has to. “He is the one behind the whole program. He supervised all of our…sessions.”
“Sessions?” Natasha’s brows furrow. It’s the first time she’s showing anything else than neutrality on her face.
“Injecting the test serums in us, interrogations,” her eyes glance over the room then, though she’s in a different place, it feels incredibly familiar, “torture and, other things.” Her voice turns quieter. She isn’t keen on everyone behind the wall hearing her. “I’m sure you understand, you were in the Red Room.”
Biting the inside of her cheek, Natasha puts the photo back inside the file, closing it afterwards. She nods again. “I’m going to take you to medical, so Doctor Banner can check you out, just in case.” When she turns to look at Y/N, her face is changed. She has a small smile on her face. It’s sympathetic.
Tony and Steve glance at each other, they’re watching the interrogation through a screen in a different room. It’s supposed to last longer, but they trust Natasha, so they push away their worries.
Y/N nods with a small smile. Natasha takes out a key from her pocket and opens the cuffs, making Y/N’s hands instantly move to rub her wrists. Although, she’s used to tight handcuffs, they’re never comfortable.
“Come on.” She walks to the door, Y/N right behind her.
As they step out to the hallway, Y/N starts looking all round her. The training is still ingrained in her brain. Look for every possible exit and weak spot. The compound is modern and minimalistic, it looks a bit like a hospital with its long, white hallways and multiple closed doors.
Natasha opens a door and ushers Y/N inside before her. Bruce Banner is waiting in the room. He is wearing a white lab coat with Dr Banner written on it and his hair is all over the place, he looks like he hasn’t slept in a while. “Dr Banner will do tests to see if you’re physically okay, and to see if the Super Soldier tests have changed anything in you.”
“Got it.” Y/N sits down with slight hesitancy, she doesn’t have to fondest memories on hospital chairs.
“Would you like me to stay?” Natasha asks. She surprises herself when the question slips out of her mouth. She’s already becoming too close to the case, but Natasha feels some kind of responsibility over the whole situation. No one could understand all this better than her.
Giving her a small smile, Y/N nods, her posture relaxing a bit. It makes Natasha feel better. Maybe by helping her she can wipe away the red in her ledger for good and make sure something like this won’t happen to her sister. The thoughts swirl inside Natasha’s head as Bruce conducts the health inspection on Y/N. She could really help her adjust to a more normal life, to a better life. She if anyone knows what the woman has been though in her life.
Bruce hums, looking at the tablet, which brings Natasha’s attention to him. “Everything okay?”
“She’s malnourished and dehydrated, understandably, but there seems to be no permanent problems from the serum, at least ones that I can see.” He turns to look at the two with a smile on his face. “I think with rest and food you’ll be fine. Of course your wounds and such need to be bandaged, but I’m sure you can manage that.”
“Yeah,” Y/N lets out a breath she was holding, “thanks, Doctor Banner.” She slides down from the table.
Bruce has a small smile on his lips as he nods nervously. He knows he is just as useful as Doctor Banner as he is as Hulk, maybe even more, but it feels good to hear genuine thank yous every once in a while. He feels like him being a doctor doesn’t get appreciated as much as the green monster in him.
Natasha and Y/N walk out of the room. Taking Dr Banner’s advice seriously, Natasha decides to show Y/N an empty guest room next to her own room, they could do all the official stuff later. “You can sleep here,” she opens the door wide, letting Y/N walk in before her, “you’ll of course be under some kind of supervision by FRIDAY, but I hope you understand that.” Y/N nods, looking over the room. “Mine is right next to you.” She stares at at the other woman, who stays quiet while slowly walking around the room. “I know it’s not much, but-“
“It’s great.” She says quickly. Y/N doesn’t want to seem ungrateful. “It’s better than I have ever had.” Her hands are in front of her stomach, fingers pulling the skin around her nails as her eyes wonder. “It’s big.”
Natasha leans her side against the doorway. The room isn’t that big, it’s the smallest bedroom they have, which obviously in Tony’s standards still needs to be spacey, but it’s nowhere near the lavishness of the other rooms of the compound. But, she understands how Y/N is feeling. Anything bigger than a tiny cell feels overwhelmingly huge. “There’s also has a bathroom connected, over there.” She points at a door on one of the walls.
“Oh, I can use it? Whenever I want?”
“Of course.”
Humming, Y/N nods as an answer. She doesn’t open the bathroom door. Her eyes linger on the big window on the back wall of the room, it has soft looking beige curtains on the both sides of it and the bed is placed right next to it, so you can look out of it while laying down.
“The window is locked,” Natasha states, “but if you decide to stick around, we can unlock it.”
“Stick around?” Finally Y/N turns to look at Natasha again. Her head is tilting to one side, her hair moving with her head.
“Yeah,” she shrugs, “if you want to. We could use someone capable with an extensive skillset.” Her back is straighter as she explains this to Y/N, somehow starting to feel warm under her gaze.
“Oh.” With that, Y/N looks away again.
“Do you like the sound of that? We could give you a home here.” She smiles slightly, though she knows Y/N isn’t looking at her, maybe that’s why she has the courage to smile at her.
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Find a home here.”
“I-“ she hesitates, “I found a place as close to home as I could, I think.” In her mind, Natasha is cursing at the vulnerable sound of her voice. She shouldn’t be opening up yo the newcomer this much, someone from HYDRA especially, but the way her smile flushes away all of her worries is making her feel things she hasn’t felt in a long time. “It’s complicated.”
“Yeah.” She sighs. “I’m not sure I know what a home is. If it’s something you love or hate, run to or run away from.” Her voice comes out as a mumble.
“I think it’s both. Sometimes you can’t stay there even for one second, but other times it physically hurts to be away.”
“Sounds difficult.”
Natasha laughs, though it’s more of a huff coming from her nose. “Yeah.”
“I’m not sure if it sounds worthwhile.”
Rubbing her own arm, she bites her lip. “It might not be,” Natasha comments, “but don’t you want to make sure before deciding?”
Y/N stares at her in silence for a while. Her mouth is moving as her teeth press together every once in a while. “I suppose so.” Her words come out quietly, but they’re clear enough for Natasha to hear.
Somehow this makes Natasha the happiest she has ever been, besides reuniting with Yelena, she has to fight the smile trying to make it way to her lips, so she wouldn’t give away the joy she is feeling. “I’m sure you won’t regret it.” Is the only thing she says, before walking out of the room, closing the door behind her to give Y/N the well needed rest.
“I have a feeling I won’t.” She whispers to the closed door with a slight smile on her face.
#marvel#mcu#mcu imagine#marvel imagine#mcu fanfiction#natasha romanoff#natasha romanoff x reader#natasha romanoff x you#natasha romanoff imagine#natasha romanoff x female reader#natasha romanoff fanfic#natasha romanoff x fem!reader#natasha romanoff x female!reader#the black widow#black widow x reader#black widow#black widow imagine#natasha romanoff x black widow!reader#natasha romanoff x y/n
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summary: After a worried phone call from Wheezie, you decide to come back to Kildare.
wc: 1.3k
a/n: This is set right after season three, let's pretend the time skip in the show doesn't exist (: This is my first post since 2020! Let me know what y'all think <3333 part two??? ;)
Eyes snapping open and with a rush of panic, you try to locate your piercingly loud phone tangled in the sheets somewhere next to you. Who the fuck would be calling me at whatever ungodly hour it is? Finally finding it, you damn near blind yourself with how bright it is and how unadjusted your eyes are. Squinting, too tired and agitated to read it, you swipe to answer the call like muscle memory.
“Hello?” you huff.
“I’m sorry I know it’s late… but I have a favor to ask.”
“Wheeze? What’s going on? Are you okay?” Hearing her voice sits you straight up in your bed, she has never called this late or has ever asked of anything from you.
“I’m okay, kind of. I’m alive. It’s not me I’m worried about.”
“Wheezie-”
“I know,” she cuts you off, “nevermind it was stupid anyways.”
“No, Wheezie, talk to me.”
“It’s just, Rafe,” you flinch at hearing his name, “I’m scared. I’ve never seen him like this before. We know he’s already a pretty angry guy, but this is something different.”
You sit there quietly listening. You left Kildare a year ago, after a nasty breakup with Rafe and trying to break apart the unhealthy codependency you both developed. You transferred to a different state college but you always stayed in touch with Wheezie. Before you and Rafe went wrong, you were close with both his sisters and promised to stay in contact with the young girl you watched grow throughout your time with Rafe. No one knew of course, you and Rafe were completely no contact- opting to block his number after one too many heartwrenching voicemails while obviously under the influence of his favorite white powder.
Sarah hadn’t tried to reach out, but from what Wheeze had mentioned she got herself distracted with a pogue-turned cop killer-who was proved innocent. What a shit show. You knew it all, countless Facetime calls caught you up to speed. You consoled her through the “death” of Sarah, the “death” of her father and what other trauma presented itself. Sometimes it was too much being constantly reminded of your ex, whom you still loved very deeply, but being there for this poor girl trumped how it made you feel. The feeling went both ways, she stopped you from coming back to the island quite a few times when she told you just how bad things have gotten, insisting that she would be okay, when in reality she really just needed a hug from her honorary sister. He was never brought up, you didn’t ask, she didn’t tell. Something in your gut told you it’s just better if you don’t know what had been going on with him. You appreciated her respecting that boundary.
“The club is hosting some kind of party in Ward’s honor tomorrow. It’s weird, he was supposed to be dead months ago and the island is just now doing something in memory of him. Probably Rose organized it or something, who knows. Anyways,” she stopped and took in a deep breath, “Rose wants us all to be there and speak about him in front of everyone. I went to ask Rafe what he planned on saying to hopefully find some inspiration but he just went on and on about how ‘the pogues killed him on purpose’ and how ‘they have another thing coming to them if they think they’re just going to get away with it’. I’ve seen him mad before, I’ve watched him punch holes through the walls, scream, yell, and cry. But this…” she trails off, inhaling deeply after her fast paced rant.
You sigh, not knowing what to say, “Give me some time to get a bag packed and get on the road, and I’ll be there.”
“I’m sorry, I wouldn’t bother you with his dramatics if I didn’t think it was important.”
“Hey, don’t apologize, I’m glad you told me. I’ll be there soon, just keep working on what you want to say. I’ll help you brainstorm tomorrow while I’m driving if you need me to.”
“Thanks, Y/N. You’re seriously the best.”
“Keep your head up Wheeze, get some rest and maybe steer clear of your brother for a little bit.”
After hanging up, you sigh and stare up at your ceiling. Shit.
-
The drive back to the OBX gave you time to think, what would you actually be walking back into? Was his grief manifesting itself into the kind of anger and violence that could be fatal to anyone he saw at fault? You shuddered at the thought. Pulling in to your parent’s driveway, you sent a text to Wheezie telling her you just got in and you’ll meet her at the country club. You could name about a thousand and one places you would rather be than under the same roof as Rafe Cameron for the first time in over a year, but you wanted to pay your respects and be there to support the people that had turned into your bonus family during your 2 year relationship with Rafe.
“You ready honey?” your mom asks as you slip on your shoes to match the black dress you had chose.
“As I’ll ever be.”
The car ride was quiet, your anxiety was palpable as you bit your nails down and bounced your leg uncontrollably. Walking in the familiar doors, all you saw was the looks on people’s faces as they realized you were back on the island and here no less. Pretty much everyone knew who you were, your family’s status not much different from the Cameron’s themselves. You were known as the sweet girl from the affluent family who smiled politely at everyone who looked in your direction and would never hurt a fly. Rafe’s reputation was quite the opposite. When you and Rafe had made your first entrance together at Midsummers at the age of 17, it was the talk of the island. Ignoring the stares and whispers, you held your head high and looked for Wheezie.
Standing next to a huge photo of Ward leant against an easel stood Rafe, watered down whiskey in hand as he blankly looked around at the people in the room. If one more person awkwardly gave him a tight lipped look of sympathy, he was going to lose it. He heard people murmuring and the looks in his direction seemed to increase. Shaking off the feeling like everyone knew something he didn’t, he downed his drink and made his way over to get another. Sofia caught him before he reached the bar and assumed her position under his arm.
“Maybe slow down on the whiskey?” She meant well, but damn did he need another drink. Looking at her blankly, he kept moving towards the bartender. His father was dead, who gives a fuck how much alcohol his grieving son intakes. Kelce walks into the room from the hallway, looking around frantically, catching sight of Rafe as he beelines toward him, out of breath.
“Yo, Rafe, Y/N is here.”
Rafe nearly chokes on his drink as he looks at Kelce with an unreadable expression, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Y/N, I just saw her walking in with my own two eyes bro.”
He sets his glass back down and suddenly Sofia was right all along, he needs to slow down on the whiskey if you were really here. He thinks back to the last time he saw you, all the screaming and crying and pleading with you not to leave. Even with the past year's events, he puts losing you at the top of the list of the most painful things he’s ever been through. He understands why you left and couldn’t blame you, but damn did he miss you like you were the air he needed to breathe. You walked in, obviously looking for something or someone as he watched your eyes scan the room until they caught his. He immediately felt nauseous.
I’m going to puke, you thought.
part two
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THURSDAY HERO: Helmut Kleinicke
Helmut Kleinicke was a German engineer who supervised construction projects at Auschwitz while saving Jews from the gas chambers.
Born in 1907, Helmut grew up in the forest of Lower Saxony – literally. His parents were forest rangers. Helmut studied civil engineering and joined the Nazi party in 1933. In 1941, right after getting married, Helmut was hired to join the team planning the construction of Auschwitz concentration camp. He moved to Chrzanow, Poland to work on the project.
In Chrzanow, Helmut was ordered to select local Jews who were young and healthy to work on the construction site. He treated them well and didn’t allow the SS to harass them. One survivor remembered, “Those of us who worked for Kleinicke were like VIPs. We had a certificate that we worked for him, and that was our insurance policy.”
When he heard about plans to round up local Jews, Helmut located every person on the list and warned them they were about to be arrested. Then he transported many of them to the border and helped them escape. Others he hid in his attic and basement. Helmut didn’t keep track of the Jews he saved, but it’s estimated there were hundreds.
By late 1943, the higher-ups at Auschwitz noticed that Jews who interacted with Helmut kept disappearing. He was removed from his job and drafted to an artillery unit, then sent to the front lines. When Germany surrendered in 1945, Helmut was arrested by the British because of his membership in the Nazi party. While he was in prison, Jews he had saved submitted affidavits testifying that he had rescued them “without regard to his person” and that many Jews owed their lives to Helmut Kleinicke. He was exonerated in 1949. For the rest of his life, he did not talk about his wartime activities. He told his daughter only that he’d saved some Jews, but wished he’d saved more. He never considered himself a hero. In 1979, the American miniseries “Holocaust” aired on German TV. Helmut watched it and was deeply shaken. Three days after that he had a stroke from which he never recovered. He died a few months later.
Helmut’s heroism was unknown until recently. In a 2015 documentary, Josef Konigsberg, an Auschwitz survivor, testified that Helmut Kleinicke saved his life by pulling him out of a line of people being deported. This interview, and corroborating evidence that Helmut had saved many Jewish lives, led to Helmut Kleinicke being honored posthumously as Righteous Among the Nations by Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem. The ceremony was held at the Israeli Embassy in Berlin, and was attended by Helmut’s daughter Juta Scheffzek. Also in attendance was Josef Konigsberg, who told his story of being rescued by Helmut. “I owe him my life,” said Josef, describing how Helmut rescued him from a transport line to Auschwitz: “My mother came and begged him to rescue me. Kleinicke grabbed me and said that I was his best worker.” Josef’s mother and sister were not so lucky and both died in the gas chamber. Crying as he addressed Juta, Josef said, “This is one of the most beautiful days of my life. Thank you, thank you.”
Juta was deeply touched. “It verified what my father said to me in very few words – and I never knew if he had been telling the truth.” She told the Times of Israel after the ceremony, “It was a very long and emotional search to discover the truth about my father, and I hope that people in America, the UK and Israel will hear about it.”
Israeli Ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff, who hosted the event honoring Helmut, commented, “When you’re in the context of Germany, you’re never free of the historical dimension of the Holocaust, and it’s a very heavy burden to bear for the Germans, and also obviously for the Jewish people, and it’s always there. And I think it’s really important that this type of ceremony also recognizes that there were a few really important people who did the right thing. And that, to me, is the main message that should come out of this.”
For saving Jews while his peers were killing them, we honor Helmut Kleinicke as this week’s Thursday Hero.
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can you do a carl grimes nsfw alphabet?🤭
𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐥 𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐰 𝐚𝐥𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐛𝐞𝐭
Carl Grimes x Fem!Reader
everyone is 18+ <3
A = Aftercare (What They're Like After Sex)
Carl is so sweet. he'd get you water if needed, cuddle you, kiss you, clean you up, just everything ugh he is so adorable <3 he'd just wants to make you feel loved and safe after sex
B = Body Part (Their Body Of Theirs and Their Partner's that they like)
He likes his hands, seeing them pump in and out of your gushy cunt, and having his arms around you, keeping you safe, and making you cum basically.
He loves your eyes, as sappy as this man is he is in love with them, Siren or Doe he is obsessed. (especially when you're focused, like when you're killing walkers)
C = Cum (Anything to Do with Cum; because yum.)
I'd say his favorite place to cum is honestly on your tits (he is nasty nasty) it's hot when it dribbles on your nipples and makes him so fucking hard again
D = Dirty Secret (Pretty Self Explanatory, A Dirty Secret of Theirs)
remember back at the prison? with those flimsy curtains we tried to use as doors? yeah, he peeled them away when you were changing.
E = Experience (How Experience are They? Do They Know What They're Doing?)
he knew absolutely nothing at first. I mean..obviously, it's the apocalypse. but with trial and error, you guys found the perfect pace and perfect angles <3
F = Favorite Positions (This Goes Without Saying)
missionary. like I said he is sappy and loves to hold your hands above your head while he looks at your face when having sex with you
G = Goofy (Are They More Serious In The Moment? Are They Humorous? Etc.)
he is more serious, and emotional out of everything. when its just love making tho he can be more goofy
H = Hair (How Well Groomed Are They? Does The Carpet Match The Drapes? Etc.)
it's not on his mind to shave his pubic hair, I mean why would it? there are a million other things more important than that. but, he does grab scissors and to a trim every so often (don't worry, he's very skilled with his hands)
I = Intimacy (How Are They During the Moment? The Romantic Aspect)
bros a fucking rom-com. he is so sweet and so loving, buuuut when he's stressed it could get a little more freaky, he is just a switch with those things
J = Jack Off (Masturbation Headcanon)
he doesn't jack off so much anymore now that he's with you, but he probably jerked off in the shower thinking about you as his daily routine before he got with you.
K = Kink (One or More of Their Kinks)
your innocent eyes looking up at him when his cock is down your throat (told you he had a thing for your eyes)
loooooves it when you're vocal, he wants to hear just how good he's fucking you
L = Location (Favorite Places to Do the Deed)
shower for sure. gotta live out those fantasies he had when he was fucking his fist now he has the real deal. but on a serious note, it's easier for you to be louder and it's easier to clean up.
M = Motivation (What Gets them Turn on, What Gets Them Going)
everything! he is a teenage boy, after all, bro is 18 and has a girlfriend what do you expect? but the top of his list is when your cleavage pops out, makes him wanna take you right then and there
N = No (Something They Wouldn't do, Turn Offs)
hurting you, or just making you feel bad is not something he'd like
O = Oral (Preferences in Giving and Receiving, Skill, Etc.)
I think as much as he likes receiving, giving you pleasure is so much more rewarding. ( he could be stuck in between your thighs allll day)
P = Pace (Are They Fast and Rough? Slow and Sensual? Etc.)
slow and sensual...unless he's had a rough day....then buckle up.
Q = Quickies (Their Opinion on Quickie, How Often, Etc.)
i think he likes them. the shower for example -easy cleanup and easy wake-up or wind down-
R = Risk (Are They Game to Experiment? Do They Like Taking Risks? Etc.)
if risks mean fucking you in "oh fuck are we gonna get caught?" places, then yes. (such as the kitchen, it's happened so many times, thank goodness you guys haven't gotten caught yet)
S = Stamina (How Many Rounds Can They Go For? How Long Do They Last?)
he can go on forever, 4 rounds if you can keep up, but 2-3 if you're tired.
T = Toys (Do They Own Any Toys? Do They Use Them? On A Partner or Themselves?)
where is he supposed to find toys!?!? but if he finds an unopened, new, clean vibe then I think he'd store it in his bag to ask you about it for later.
U = Unfair (How Much Do They Like To Tease?)
a good amount I think. he likes to tease you in the walls of Alexandria, just cuz for shits and giggles and seeing that pouty look he can kiss off, but outside the walls, he doesn't bother you too much. -doesn't wanna distract you-
V = Volume (How Loud They Are, What Sounds They Make. Etc.)
in bed, low grunt and praises in your ear. in the shower, full-on groaning and moaning as he pounds into you.
W = Wild Card (A Random Headcanon For The Character)
he once fingered you in the living room while someone was in the kitchen across from it, he'd had a blanket over your both, your head was limp on his shoulders as you let out little whimpers in his ear but to anyone else, it looked like you were having trouble waking up. the fear and excitement of getting caught rushing through your veins (tho he'd die if someone found out) was so thrilling as his fingers fucked into your pussy, and when you came he was daring enough to slip his fingers in his mouth to lap on your cream, then rick walked by and he turned his palm so it looked like he was yawning. he still looks back to that as the craziest thing you've guys done.
X = X-ray (Let's See What's Going Under Those Clothes)
6.2 inches. and he has a raging cock. veins all over with a deep red tip that oozes with pre-cum. it looks so fucking sore and all you wanna do is relieve that uncomfortable ache in his cock :(.. he has a nice pair of balls, they're heavy with the need to pump you full of babies and he loves it when you take one into your mouth <3
Y = Yearning (How High Is There Sex Drive?)
pretty high. he can get his fill with one quick rough fuck for a day or two but if it's like a week then you start to notice he can get a little snappy with people and more irritable so once you start to notice that you make sure to give a good sucking that night that has him whimpering and whining <3
Z = Zzz (How Quickly They Fall Asleep Afterwards)
after making sure you're safe and okay, he kinda watches you for a while then knocks out not too long after...making sure to kiss your lips or your nose if you are asleep and mumble 'love you' before drifting off himself <3
an: omggg i loved writing this sm <3 I had kinda a weird day today and writing this made me feel so much better. lmao my writing kinda seems off to me but I just think it's because I'm writing like narration pov in this post, anyway, i hope you guys enjoyed it!! mwah! <3
#twd carl grimes#carl grimes#carl grimes x reader#the walking dead#twd#carl grimes imagine#the walking dead fanfiction#carl grimes fanfic#carl grimes fanfiction#thewalkingdead imagines#carl grimes headcannon#carl grimes smut#thewalkingdead oneshots#thewalkingdead#carl grimes imagines#carl grimes x y/n#carl grimes x you#carl grimes x fem reader#the walking dead imagine#the walking dead imagines#the walking dead fandom#the walking dead x you#the walking dead au#carl grimes angst#carl grimes fluff#twd rp#twd smut#twd carl#twd fanfiction#twd fluff
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As much as I love Adam for a few fun parts of his character and for what he could have been at the hands of a competent writer (as shown by the fanfics where he gets properly developed)...
I feel like he (and the way he's characterised) is what broke Hazbin hotel season 1 pacing, Lucifer's character and the show's overall atmosphere.
(Long and packed rant under the cut, because I've been having these thoughts since I saw season 1, and I want to share them. Viewer discretion is adviced)
Before Adam existed (pilot era) it was all simple and worked more properly: a story about the hotel and its inhabitants, and most importanty, redemption. It was a small snuggly location with a few characters in the center of a plot
Heaven was in the background and kept as a mystery. Moreover, from what we've seen in the pilot, Lucifer was obviously a background villain or at least an anti hero, one of the real obstacles for Charlie to overcome on the way to her goal (instead of a minor inconveniece resolved in a single broadway song)
But when Adam and his weird obsession with murder broke into that perfectly cut out premise, everything just shattered. Too many themes got weaved into the short story of the 8 episodes: Heaven vs Hell politics, overlords, war, Charlie's conflict with Adam, the seraphims...
All of that pushed the hotel and the redemption to the background instead of Heaven.... in a cartoon that's named after the hotel. Because 8 episodes is not enough to talk about politics, a war and a 6 month redemption course (the latter even happened behind the screen with only some verbal hints given about the amazing secretive progress the hotel guests made that we were not allowed to see!)
(Had this cartoon stayed indie, there would have been a possibility of making more episodes and tackling more themes properly. But big name broadway actors are more important than that, it appears)
Back to Adam.
He is not even a good villain. He really should have been more of a background antihero. Give the man some sedatives, for f's sake! Where did all that rabidity even come from, after centuries of living in Heaven? Honestly, he'd be expected to act calmer and wiser than how he actually did, especially with how old he is (as old as the earth itself). But instead it's like he got frozen in a state of a dumb jock bully from high school
Imagine if Adam allowed Charlie and her hotel guests to prove that redemption is possible, out of principle, or curiosity. Hell, maybe even allow him to threaten to kill them, but not straight away! Later, after they fail to prove him wrong! If that's what Adam's role had been, the hotel part would have gotten time to breathe and more spotlight
All Adam did in the series, was:
1. make a lot of excessive noise
2. do dumbass things (and it wasn't even explained WHY he's the way he is, not even a single flashback or his own musings and thoughts shown, which makes all of his actions fall flat in every sense)
3. break the remains of logic (Heaven looks plain dumb because of him, not able to tell sinning from non sinning and to judge human souls properly. It's not even corruption, since Adam is not that important or benefitial to Heaven, an actual archangel like Michael could have been leading exorcists in his place and do a better job.... it's just stupidity)
And then Adam just died, for nothing and with no consequences.
I mean, straight after Adam's death Lucifer is immediately trying to divert the viewer's attention: "who wants pancakes? :D". It's like the cartoon itself doesn't care that the first human, one of the most mysterious beings in vivzieverse and someone who badly needed a second chance and therapy, just died. By a very stupid joke too (Niffty didn't even have to stab him).
In short, Adam's plotline is a huge waste of screen time...
And while his final smile to Lute may give us some hints that there's something good inside Adam, but it's more akin to mockery. Since we were never shown that there's more to Adam besides "the main character's opponent=ultimate bad"
And of course Lucifer was retconned into a pathetic uwu boi, who's depression and "silliness" have overshadowed the fact that he practically doomed humanity to a life full of pain, suffering and surviving and took away Adam and Eve's home. We don't even get the slightest glimpse of what exactly Lucifer DREAMED of that was so important to force him to do the humans dirty. Meaning it was something abstract and not thought-through anyway.
(Free will my ass.. Adam and Lilith did as they pleased in Eden without the free will, Adam ordering his wives around, Lilith being able to defy him and Eve being able to disobey God. What good did "free will" from that fruit even do them? If anything, it only did harm to everyone)
And so now this daft egotist is being portrayed as this selfless harmless character only for the sake of contrasting the painfully obvious bad evil that Adam is.
That comes off as black and white writing, fit more for a childrens cartoon, despite the show critisizing Adam for thinking in black and white terms. Not a good look
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Can you talk more about height and combat? Like for example a taller woman fighting a shorter man? I usually see the opposite (and the woman having all of the disadvantages) but how would it look the other way around? Assuming neither is skinny.
In most circumstances, height is less important than a lower center of gravity. Height can be useful in some situations, such as being able to see over obstructing obstacles. Reach is very useful, though overall height results in a negligible increase to reach.
So, generally speaking, any object with a lower center of gravity will be more stable than one with a higher center of gravity. Obviously, when we're talking about inanimate objects, you can get some weird examples where this isn't the case, but when you're talking about your normal, roughly humanoid object, a lower center of gravity will be more stable than a higher one.
This leads into another general statement that won't be true in every possible case, but is important to be aware of, if someone says that women have, “all of the disadvantages,” in a match-up, they don't know what they're talking about. The low hanging fruit is that women are more resistant to exertion and exhaustion than men, and that will become important in a prolonged fight. As mentioned earlier, they have a lower center of gravity (in most cases), meaning that they'll be more stable than a male foe.
If you've ever watched Judo videos of a five-foot-nothing girl casually tossing a massive guy around, what you're seeing is a practical consequence of that lower center of gravity. This is just a practical application of basic physics. If your center of gravity is below your opponent's it is far easier to leverage them off the ground and deposit them in a tangled pile of limbs at the location of your choosing.
Beyond that, while getting into ground fighting can be very dangerous for the smaller fighter (regardless of their sex), being able to put your foe on the ground before getting dragged down yourself, does open the door to some options for ending the fight, if you have the stomach for it.
A taller woman versus a shorter man will narrow the difference between their respective centers of gravity, and may make it possible for the man to get his center of gravity lower than his foe, but it depends on the relative height difference, and you'd be looking at some pretty extreme differences before this starts to become a realistic possibility.
In the grand scheme of things, the total amount of mass is less important than where that mass is located. This is why ground fighting, that is to say, when both combatants have already fallen over, and are continuing to fight without getting back on their feet, can be very hazardous. At that point, both participants are about as stable as they'll ever be, and sheer volume of mass can be used effectively. When you're standing, not so much. Also, yes, there is a window in the transition to ground fighting where one combatant has gone down, and does have a stability advantage. Some martial arts (again, Judo comes to mind) specifically train to act in this window. You're not going to fall over again, so you may as well take the opportunity to maneuver and drag your foe down, with an eye for making their trip to the ground less pleasant than yours.
Something we've said, many, many, times is that reach is very important, and this is true. So, it would follow that a shorter person would have less reach, which is also true. On average, your arm-span should be roughly equivalent to your height. So, if you're 6ft, you should have a 6ft armspan. If you're 5ft8in, you should have a 5'8” arm span. (There's some slight variation based on gender here, which has more to do with the length of your individual arms. The average arm length for an adult male is ~14.5”, while the average arm length for an adult female is ~13.5”, even though the average height difference is ~5”.) However, in most combat situations, when we're talking about the importance of reach, we're talking about a difference measured in multiple feet. Someone armed with a 4” dagger is going to have a difficult time countering someone armed with a 60” greatsword, for example. However, when you're talking about a difference in a few inches, that's not nearly as decisive. Unless your shorter character is dramatically shorter, they shouldn't have any difficulty reaching their opponent, so while reach is an exceptionally important consideration in armed combat, gender isn't likely to be an important factor when calculating overall reach.
The big thing to understand about height, and this is very true when looking at authors interpreting its importance in writing, is the factor of intimidation. A taller person will generally feel more intimidating up front, and a lot of visual narratives use this as a cue to show that a character is at a disadvantage. Adventure fiction, like Indiana Jones for example, uses this to great effect and so do most martial arts action movies. When someone is talking about the importance of size, that's usually what they're referencing. When you see a massive person walking on screen or popping up in your favorite anime, your brain mentally checks itself and goes, “oh. Oh no.” This, of course, has nothing to do with reality, it's just our brains interpreting danger.
We say this a lot on the blog, but really, you learn to fight with the body you have. Men and women fight the way they're trained to fight, so they don't have intrinsically gendered fighting styles after release into the real world. The concept of gendered fighting styles really comes from anime and other fighting games or as a reaction against socially constructed systems such as 'fight like a girl!'
If you ask Michi, who grew up doing martial arts, what it looks like when a tall woman fights a short guy, her reaction is to shrug and say, “it looks like two people fighting.” There just isn't a discernible difference outside of personal, stylistic preferences.
-Starke
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Pathologic Bachelor ARG Megapost
This post is a culmination of months of (mostly my own) research into the Bachelor ARG. For far too many days and far too many hours, I’ve been doing my best to solve this, with the help of a few other people. I looked very deep into most Fyodor Vitin posts, played through The Marble Nest several times, looked extensively through the Pathologic wiki, and read/analyzed countless outside sources for this post, and I will link as many of them as I can. (If there are links that you think would help the ARG that you’d like included in here with credit please let me know.) For any people that are credited, an “@” before their name implies that it’s a Tumblr username, while a “u/” proceeding their name implies it’s a Reddit username. I have discovered and analyzed dozens of leads, some of which are more likely to be important or intentional on the part of IPL than others. The primary purpose of this post is to give all of you Pathologic fans new leads and theories to analyze in pursuit of solving the mystery behind this ARG, so many of the things within this post should be looked into further! With this post, I will lay out my findings in a series of sections, all of them having several connections to each other. This post is more than 10,000 words and is not meant to be read all at once, so feel free to read sections, take breaks, re-read sections, or skip around if you'd like. “Observations, Research, Analysis” is a vast majority of this post and consists of observations made about the ARG material, as well as any research I did into those findings that bore fruit, and analysis/connections to other things. The additional notes section consists of some of the conclusions I’ve reached after putting all of my evidence together, as well as some connections I didn't really make in the previous section, but keep in mind they’re still just theories so they could obviously be wrong. I would like to emphasize that I am not a native Russian speaker, but I did have many native Russian speakers helping me along the way, and in particular, I’d like to thank @kurury-chan for her massive help with this. She transcribed the newspaper for me, provided tons of consulting, translated many other Russian sources, and actually went out of the way to go on an irl tour of a certain ARG-related location to see if my theories about it could hold any ground! Because I'm not a native Russian speaker, the sections where I'm required to analyze Russian text (notably the newspaper section) will probably be the least interesting and I'll probably end up making a lot of points that aren't valid. Additionally, I’d like to thank @cryingsyren (who also happens to be my bf) and @ded-not-ded for their help. As for formatting, since Tumblr doesn't have tiered lists for some fucking reason, all main points will be written as bullet points, and any sub-points within that bullet will then have numbered points afterward. For example like this:
The first main point about a topic
Sub-point of the first point
Second sub-point
The second main point about a topic
I'll either do that or I'll do it like this:
First main point
First sub-point
First sub-sub-point
Second sub-point
Second main point
Edit 1: I've had to revert much of the Chat text (the font I used for the sub-points above) to regular text because of a formatting glitch that irreversibly changed most of the Chat text to bold, which was very confusing.
Depending on which looks better in the context of the points.
Because that formatting is so awkward and clunky I'll try to minimize the use of tiered lists as I convert this from the Google Docs format to the Tumblr Format. Most of the time that I use tiered lists here it's to deal with the character limit Tumblr has on single blocks of text within a post. With that out of the way, let's just get into the post.
Observations, Research, Analysis:
"The Accident" Fyodor Vitin post
The first thing I noticed about the newspaper when I took a good look at it was the use of bolding with certain letters. If you look at the Newspaper you’ll also see ink splattered on the page in several areas, which could be a clue toward noticing the bolded letters, or it could be something else I’ve yet to discover. I knew I wouldn’t be able to transcribe the entire newspaper by myself, not being a Russian speaker (although I’ve just started learning!) so I enlisted the help of @kurury-chan, a native Russian speaker, and she transcribed the entire newspaper for me in Cyrillic. After getting this transcription I went through and spent a couple of days looking for which letters were bolded, writing them down, and coming up with possible translations/meanings. I’ve come up with lots of possible meanings for these, but for many of them I couldn’t figure anything out, and I’d love help if anyone has any idea what they could mean! To me many of them seem like word fragments that are simply missing one or two letters, and so in the document where I list all of the bolded letters I put some words/phrases that are very close to the seemingly fragmented words. Once again keep in mind that, while I’m trying to learn Russian, my understanding of the language is still rather weak, so I may have mistranslated some of these. Another small detail to mention is that there’s a prominent crease on the left side of the paper that runs through a decent portion of the bolded words. First, I’ll start with the bolded letters on the left side of the page. I may have missed a couple, and I may have written some of them down as bolded when maybe they aren’t supposed to be seen as such.
Here is a link to a list of all the letters I think are bolded on the left side, which lines they’re on, and possible meanings, many of which I’ll be discussing here. I will not go individually through what I believe all the bolded letters mean, but I will go through and explain the ones I think are most meaningful and important, as well as some connections I’ve made with them. And here is a link to the original Russian transcription and my best attempt at an English translation.
It’s possible that the crease that runs through the left side of the paper and notably runs through many bolded words somehow denotes that those particular bolded words are special, or perhaps that they should be seen as separate from the other bolded words.
Line 15 has a rather interesting bolded phrase, because it actually appears to make a somewhat coherent 3-word phrase, but one of the words seems to be a surname, “Pepe.” Additionally, the crease on the left side of the page starts right above the word “ПЕПЕЛИЩЕ” in the title, and splits it so that “ПЕПЕ” is separate from the rest of the word. (ПЕПЕ is Pepe in Cyrillic.) If you want to know what the non-Pepe words say, skip to the next bullet point, because the rest of this one is my analysis of the ПЕПЕ part. So, of course, I looked into the name a bit, looking through all notable historical figures with the last name, and found one that I think is of special interest: Guglielmo Pepe. Born in the small ancient town of Squillace, Pepe entered the army at a very young age, and was an Italian commander during the early 1800s, but his military career was fraught with trouble, as he also had rather revolutionary politics, which angered both the government he was serving and many of his peers, and he was exiled on several occasions. Upon Pepe’s return to Italy at the age of 30, he was given the rank of general. After this, the most notable events in his life would largely consist of his attempts at going rogue in revolutionary attempts to change the existing power structure, for which he was usually punished. (It’s also perhaps worth mentioning that his brother was part of the attempted French invasion of Russia.) All of this is to say, Pepe obviously shares some striking similarities to General Block, perhaps the most striking of which is his status as a 30-year-old general, which is an aspect of Block’s character that is highlighted several times. So, of course, I looked into Block’s character a bit more, and discovered that in the Russian version of the game he is called “General Ash” instead of “General Ashes.” “Strange,” I thought, until I saw that in Russian, Ash is “Пепел” which is pronounced as “Pepel” for anyone that isn’t familiar with Cyrillic. If we look into it, we do see that the letter after the Пепе is л, but it is notably not bold. This is, if you're counting, two separate times in this paper where the plural for ash, пепелище, is split up so that only the пепе is emphasized. As for other connections between Pepe and Block, we could look at them both harboring some revolutionary tendencies and being punished for it, both by The Powers That Be and his peers. General Block also tells Artemy that he was born in a town not too dissimilar to the Town on Gorkhon; this is interesting because there are some connections to be drawn between Squillace and Gorkhon, primarily that both of them preserve the beauties of ancient times that have all but been lost to most people. Related to this, it should also be noted that I believe the plot of The Marble Nest was heavily based on the plot of The Seventh Seal, which is the same movie that inspired the character Alexander Block.
The rest of line 15 is also interesting, but I’m not sure exactly what it’s supposed to mean yet. It translates to “Heaven on Pepe” basically. I consider the “Pepe” part to probably be the most important, since there’s a large crease that runs through it, which I think probably denotes a level of importance? The line’s meaning might be related to the fact that “heaven” is sort of a synonym for “utopia,” or the character that Block is based on is the protagonist of a movie that revolves around the ideas of heaven and Christianity, which is something we saw very briefly with Block in Pathologic 1. If you have any ideas please post about them and tag me, or simply comment/reblog this with your ideas!
Line 1 and line 18’s bolded letters both start out with “ов”, and for my English speakers out there it is pronounced sorta like “ove.” ов is interesting because if you translate it as о-в it actually is the shortened form of “island” in Russian. Line 1’s bolded letters read as “ов попо”, and for people not familiar with Cyrillic попо is basically “popo.” There are, apparently, many Popo islands in the world, and I couldn’t find one that I think directly connects to the ARG or Pathologic, but maybe someone else out there will, or perhaps that line has a different meaning to it. As for line 18, it says “ов испустивших” and according to Russian wiktionary, the second word is one letter off from the word “Emitted.” I looked a bit deeper, though, because that didn’t satisfy me (why would they use the incorrect spelling of a word after all?) and I didn’t see much, but I did find two things that used the exact word “испустивших” that interested me: A Saudi Arabian newspaper that has been translated into Russian, as well as a Russian poem from 1777 celebrating the birth of Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich, also known as Alexander I of Russia. The latter is more interesting to me for numerous reasons, the first one being that it might serve my theory about the connection between line 1 and 15, as line 1’s bolded letters end with попо and line 15’s end with пепе. The connection is weak, too weak for me to make it a separate bullet point, but strong enough for me to want to explain. So, as we know, there is a connection between line 1 and 18, it’s what this whole bullet point is about, and this theory (using the term “theory” loosely) relies on us seeing them as very closely connected. Basically, Alexander I was the ruler of Russia during the French invasion, which is interesting because, if you’ll remember, Guglielmo Pepe’s brother, Florestano Pepe, took part in the French invasion. This, to me, is an interesting connection, but I do admit it’s definitely a reach.
That’s where I’ll stop talking about the bolded letters on the left side of the paper. If you’d like to see what other bolded letters there are, what they could possibly mean, and try to decipher the meaning for yourself please go to my linked Google Doc(s).
As for the right side of the Newspaper, there are some bolded letters, but I can't seem to make much sense out of them, and by this point in my research I was starting to pursue more promising ARG leads, so this section is rather incomplete. Just as a reminder, the right side of the newspaper is an advertisement for a lantern/kerosene shop. I personally think the right side is more interesting than the left for a couple reasons, but most of them are either self-evident or will be discussed later.
The lantern on the right side of the paper is the same model that’s used throughout the Haruspex’s route, but most notably it’s used a ton during The Marble Nest as set dressing. And when I say "a ton" I really mean it.
I also remembered vaguely an unused lantern item found in the game files of Pathologic 2, so I went to the Pathologic wiki to look for it, and surely enough the exact lantern used by Artemy, the one that appears so many times in The Marble Nest, is also an unused item present in the game files. When using console commands to give yourself the item, you’re able to click on it and select the “touch” option, upon which you’ll see the number 6192355001378070 where the name of the item should be, and 6192355001378072 where the touch text should be. I’m not sure exactly what these numbers are supposed to mean; my first thought was that they seemed long enough to be coordinates, so I put them into google maps and it does lead to a location in Russia! Nonetheless, the numbers are a little bit too long to make sense as cohesive coordinates. Still, it might be something worth investigating. You'll see later in this post just how significant numbers and number patterns are in this ARG.
The word used to describe one of the victims of this inferno, “academician,” has sorta interesting connotations in countries that were once part of or heavily influenced by the USSR. This person is referred to as “Mr. F.L.” in the article. This guy is also said to be a historian and a “бытооописателя,” which as you can probably tell by the fact that I’m not using the translated English version is a weird word. Perhaps the strangest thing about this word is the fact that it clearly has 3 o’s where there should only be one. The actual meaning of this word is odd, as it’s very rarely used, and according to all sources I could find (including native Russian speaker and linguistics enthusiast @kurury-chan) it is either an archaic term for a historian or a term meaning “writer of everyday life.” I’m honestly not sure what that means, and at first, I thought it meant something like a blogger. The most complete and coherent definition I could find describes it as “author of works describing everyday life.” A different translation I found seems to say it means something like "chronicler," which I suppose makes some sense.
In the bottom right part of the paper, you will notice what at first appears to be a signature. Admittedly I had almost no hand in this part of the investigation, except for the isolation and upscaling of the text. Most of the work here was done by @cryingsyren with some help from @kurury-chan and @ded-not-ded. Here is the image that I got for them of the text, and here is our current interpretation of it: It at first seemed to be Russian cursive (and it probably is supposed to be), which complicates things quite a bit, and @cryingsyren spent a couple days trying to figure out exactly what it says, (with some help from @kurury-chan) and as far as we can tell it’s four letters, which are separated into either two or three sections. I think we have a decent grasp on what they’re supposed to be in Cyrillic, but the interesting thing is that they do look a lot like both Russian and Latin cursive. I’ll describe them now using what Latin character they look like in quotes followed by what Cyrillic character they look like in parenthesis. The first section is an “M” (М) and a “K” (К), which are very clearly connected. The next section is either an “H” (Н) or an “H” and an “n/u”. We’re not exactly sure whether the H and the n/u are supposed to be connected, but the n/u being lowercase seems to imply it is. The interesting thing about the n/u is that, while it looks like it could be a Latin n or u, it also looks like it could be a Cyrillic и, which is the italicized version of the Russian letter и. It seems all too coincidental that all of the letters they used have almost exact visual counterparts in the Latin alphabet. At the moment our working theory is that it could be initials, and this is where I come in, because for days I knew I recognized the "MK" part of the signature, but I couldn't remember exactly where from until today. For anyone that has played too much Pathologic Classic HD like me, you may recognize the "MK" signature from the center of the loading screen in that game, scrawled in a way that most people wouldn't pay attention to it, and certainly that most people wouldn't have it committed to memory like me. During the roughly 170 hours I've spent playing the game I've probably looked at that MK more than I've looked at my youngest brother. This presents the question, who is MK? Well at first I thought it could be Mr. Katzman, as referenced in the "Mask" post, but that didn't seem right to me. This is when the fact that so much of my brain is Pathologic lore facts came to help again, when I remembered state inquisitor Mark Karminsky, who you may remember as being one of the men people thought would come to the town before Aglaya Lilich showed up. As for the rest of the writing, I'll leave that up to you guys to figure out.
Something to note for later on: We know there to be 19 inquisitors when Pathologic takes place, and in this ARG the number 19 becomes very important with later clues.
"Mask" Fyodor Vitin post
Arguably this is the Fyodor Vitin post I’ve done the most research into, and it eventually led me to develop a very deep and passionate interest in the Buryat peoples that has so far caused me to read several books and around a dozen academic papers about them. I haven’t only done research into the Buryats for this post, though, because although the Buryats are the primary inspiration for The Kin, they’re not the only inspiration. Despite all of this research work, this section will be rather short because I’ve already been through and exhausted most possible leads I’ve found, and this is what remains. Since the post is in English, and I think everyone that follows me presumably knows English (если вы не говорите по-английски, я хвалю вас за то, что вы зашли так далеко) I won’t summarize it, so I’d recommend reading the Vitin post and then coming back.
We see in the post the mask of “Muu Shubuun,” which we’ll immediately notice is almost the exact same mask as is used by the Executors in the game. Actually, in the Marble Nest, you can acquire the Executor mask, and its touch text reads, “The mask of Muu Shubuun, ‘the wicked bird.’ Part of the Reaper costume from the local theatre.” I have found several different sources that lead me to believe this is based on actual Buryat folklore, however, I’ve heard several conflicting accounts on whether Muu Shubuun is an evil spirit that tricks people by taking the shape of a beautiful woman, or if it’s closer to what we see in the game/ARG, but both seem to be documented as existing within sources on the Buryats. I think this confusion between the two likely means the stories and connotations associated with Muu Shubuun vary based on different groups of Buryats. An alternate spelling I’ve seen used is “Mu Shuvuu.” Possibly related to this is the character “Shar Shuvuu” (which means “eagle owl”), who appears in The Marble Nest during the “marriage” scene in the steppe camp behind the cathedral. In fact, a surprisingly high number of NPC characters in this DLC are named after birds.
The phrase used in the post to describe a seasonal festival, “dosoo ba beshē tēēhēē” is where I’ve devoted much of my research, with most of that research being from about a month ago. Only the third word in this phrase, beshē, appears as a kin word in the games as far as I know. However, we can use a method here that people in the Pathologic community have been using for years to figure out the meaning of kin words: Most of the steppe language in the game is based on one of many languages: Buryat mostly, Mongolian sometimes, Tibetan sometimes, and some parts of it also take inspiration from other languages of similar origin to these. A majority of the language seems to be based on Buryat, and many Kin words come straight from the language. A few words in the game seem to be made up entirely by Ice-Pick Lodge, and many are based on words from the aforementioned real languages but tweaked slightly, as if to indicate that the steppe language spawned from those languages but has some distinctive elements. To determine what this phrase means, I tried my best to dig into the languages and find parallels:
“Dosö” in Buryat means “inside”
In Mongolian “dooshoo” means “down”
In Mongolian “ba” means either “and,” “we,” or “sorcery”
In Tibetan, “ba” means “cow”
“Beshē” in the game’s steppe language means either “not” or “other”
The prefix “të-” in Buryat means “to transport”
In Mongolian the prefix “te'e-” also means “to transport”
As for the “-hee” part of the word, I have not found a single source that could tell me what it means. I’ve found several Buryat words that end in “he,” but I can’t seem to find a connection between them strong enough to suggest what it denotes.
Upon first seeing this festival mentioned, I believe I commented somewhere on the Pathologic subreddit that it might be the same one we see in the Kin’s camp behind the cathedral in The Marble Nest. While I’m not 100% convinced still, I also don’t doubt it that much. One interesting thing to note for any people that might wanna investigate this in the future is that I’m pretty sure what we see in the Marble Nest is the same thing that Nara and the Haruspex perform in the abattoir, as they both seem to happen on day 10, and if you look close you can see that Nara is the one that is cut open in The Marble Nest. Seemingly with the Haruspex gone, there is no one that knows the lines and so the ritual doesn’t go as smoothly as it could.
“Messages” Fyodor Vitin Post:
This particular Fyodor Vitin post is the third one, which if you know Ice-Pick Lodge certainly has some importance to it. The post is a series of letters and images, one depicting an Executor and one depicting Voronika Kroy, who's a minor character in Pathologic 2 and the main character in the Pathologic Feverish Feelings ARG. The letters detail how the recipient’s reports about Voronika Kroy have been seen and have started an investigation by the Federal Bureau. What’s most interesting to me are two things: the jumble of (Latin alphabet) letters in the bottom left, and the number used within the letters (the post-card letters in this case).
The number in question is “196-17-1” which is apparently the case number used for the Voronika Kroy investigation. This number will be more important later in relation to other clues. One interesting thing I've found is that the RGB value for 196-17-1 is a deep red.
The jumble of letters at the bottom of the picture is “eiamrucdvrturxoevecid”. It is 21 letters and can be divided up into chunks of 3 or 7 letters. 3 and 7 of course being Ice-Pick Lodge’s favorite numbers. Up until this point, it has been assumed that this is an anagram, and I have no reason to doubt that. It has already been pointed out in the Pathologic subreddit that the words “Executor” and “Corvid” can be found in the anagram, as well as the Latin words “Cura”, “Curare”, “Curari”, “Medici”, and “Vivam.” Credit for finding the Latin words goes to u/apostforisaac who is apparently studying Latin at university! Additionally, u/Own_Sympathy_9814 deduced a possible meaning by unscrambling the anagram and finding “MAVRUD + VERIDIC + EXECUTOR”, which they believe hints toward the answers lying in the Marble Nest (I wrote the entire Marble Nest section of this post before finding their post about that, so I do feel pretty validated by it). Many people have been approaching this anagram, like many other parts of the ARG, as if they have one right answer, and frankly, I just don’t think that’s in the style of Ice-Pick Lodge. I’ll quickly list out some words/phrases I found in the anagram and what they mean/how they could relate. I will also include words that have already been discussed, and they’ll be marked with a “*” so you don’t think I found them. Most of the ones marked with a * I won’t be discussing, as most have already been discussed extensively. I also won’t be discussing the ones that I think probably don’t have much meaning, but I’m including them because it still could be something later on down the road.
I am
You don’t actually even have to unscramble the letters to get this one, as the second, third, and fourth letters of the jumble simply spell it out. What's interesting is that the 7 "I am" discourses are a crucial part of the Christian Gospel according to John. The Gospel according to John was an important clue during the Feverish Feelings ARG, which revolved around Voronika Kroy and her Inquisitor father, Peter Kroy. If we're speaking of the four canonical gospels, we must also address the Gospel according to Mark, which coincidentally is the name of an inquisitor that has popped up elsewhere in this ARG. Following this theme, there is actually a non-canonical Gospel According to Peter, which seems too cool to be a coincidence.
Eve
This is one you don’t have to unscramble also. Interestingly, Daniil is often compared to a snake, even being called a snake-man in Marble Nest by Shaazgai, a man belonging to the Kin. In the biblical story of Adam and Eve, it is a snake, often thought to be the devil, that convinces Eve to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Retroviridae
The scientific name for a retrovirus. If I was more knowledgeable about biology I would say more, but this seems important.
Rex Iudaeorum
Translating in Latin to “King of the Jews,” this was the inscription that allegedly was put on the cross that held Jesus of Nazareth, as detailed by 19:19 in the book of John. Very interesting as Daniil does compare himself to Jesus at least once in the Haruspex route, on the night before Aglaya comes. The Gospels, as discussed before, all detail the life and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The "19" connection is also interesting because of the inquisitor detail, and I'll talk about more of the connections to 19 later in the post.
Cardio
Commonly used medically as a prefix for heart conditions, “cardio” is a Latinized version of the Greek “kardia,” which simply means heart. Heart imagery is very common and significant to the Bachelor.
Eva
This is similar to the Russian version of Eve.
Corvid*
Cura*
Curare*
Curari*
Medici*
Vivam*
Mavrud*
Veridic*
Executor*
Order
Could relate to the committee in The Marble Nest and the fact that after they’re replaced by tragedians the absurd order begins getting sent out to the orderlies.
Carex ericetorum
This is a plant that would almost definitely be present in/around the Town on GorkhonThis is a plant that would almost definitely be present in/around the Town on Gorkhon
Creature
Marble Nest:
The Marble Nest, as we know, is very concise, only really lasting half a day in-game. Because of this, the dialogue does tend to feel a lot more intentional, as though the named characters are not necessarily speaking only to The Bachelor but also trying to convey a message to the player. This, of course, is because The Marble Nest takes place inside Dankovsky’s head. If this ARG will be revolving partly around The Bachelor, as it seems to be, then there’s no better place to start than digging into his head, which is why I’ve played so much of the Marble Nest for this.
There are several specific stories/myths/historical figures that are mentioned through Marble Nest. First, we’ll go through some of these.
There is a very interesting conversation that The Bachelor has with Georgiy Kain, where he is trying to justify his decision to lift the quarantine restrictions to The Bachelor, who is rather upset obviously. I’ll cut down and paraphrase most of the dialogue, since if I didn’t this would be much longer, but basically the conversation goes as:
[Georgiy introduces himself, and says he decided to let The Bachelor sleep so that he would have the strength to face the upcoming trial]
[Daniil asks if Georgiy lifted the restrictions and let the plague into The Stone Yard]
Georgiy: “Quite so. It's plain to me that you are on the verge of shredding me into pieces. But still your wrath. As a great Athenian once said, ‘Strike, if you will, but hear.’”
Daniil: “Themistocles, I know. He met a rather gruesome end, by the way. Died of plague.”
Georgiy: “No, it was Pericles. You are a learned man, but history is not your strong suit. Which is why you should listen to me. Perhaps it will help you see something that you missed in your previous studies.”
[Georgiy then goes on to explain a bunch of other stuff about the plague, which as far as I’m concerned isn’t all that useful to the task at hand.]
I find this so interesting because The Bachelor, in his own head, poses a question to himself, gets it wrong, and then has another separate figment of his imagination correct him, and then proceeds to tell The Bachelor that he’s not great at history and should listen to Georgiy more. What’s even more interesting is that, as far as I can tell, Georgiy and Daniil are both wrong, it was actually Themistocles that said “Strike, if you will, but hear,” and it was Pericles that died of plague. I found this interesting enough to look into who Themistocles and Pericles were, and here’s what I found:
Themistocles was a politician and general that broke the mold by being non-aristocratic and populist, which gave him the support of the people but put him at odds with the nobles and some of his peers. He turned 30 in 494 BC, which qualified him to run for the position of Archon, which he did, and won the position the following year. He had a prominent rivalry with another politician named Aristides. Whereas Themistocles was populist, Aristides primarily fought for the upper class. Themistocles eventually 20the rivalry after Aristides was exiled. Years later, though, Themistocles himself was exiled, and while he was gone his enemies took the opportunity to charge him with treasonous activities, knowing he could not defend himself. Because of this, Themistocles could never return to Athens, and so found employment and a home among the people that he once fought against while serving Athens. Given military command once more, he was actually Themistocles who said “Strike, if you will, but hear,” and it was Pericles who died of plague. I found this interesting enough to look into who Themistocles and Pericles were, and here’s what I found:
Pericles, to me, has less interesting things about him in relation to Pathologic, with the main two being that he rehabilitated the image of Themistocles and he died of a plague. What could be interesting is the fact that General Block and Captain Longin are in both Pathologic 1 and 2 often compared to Achilles and Patroclus, two Greek soldiers from ancient folktales, primarily known for being two of the most important characters in The Iliad. To me, drawing a connection between Achilles and Block, as well as Pericles and Longin, isn’t that absurd. What could also be interesting to note is that Pericles was the main character in a play written in part by William Shakespeare.
While Themistocles' life almost exactly fits the character arc of General Block, down to the weird connection between him dying of the plague in The Marble Nest and Themistocles drinking bull blood (as well as Dankovsky thinking Themistocles died of the plague), I think how Pericles fits in could lie in the Shakespearean play, as we all know how important theater is to Pathologic. You see by now at least partially what I think this alludes to, but I’ll talk more about it in the additional notes section.
Next, I’ll discuss a mythical story brought up in the Marble Nest: The Tower of Babel. This is brought up by the clerks sitting directly outside Georgiy Kain’s house. I think most people would talk to these guys right before talking to Georgiy, but I have more to say about it so it’s written second. When talking to one of the clerks during their argument about the plague, one man mentions that he thinks The Polyhedron is at fault, and no matter how Dankovsky replies (he has 3 options), the man then says “History already knows an example of people trying to erect an impossible tower. It ended in tragedy.” I could go on explaining why I believe this guy is talking specifically about the Tower of Babel, this post is already long enough so just trust my reasoning here, please. Notable to the point I’m trying to make, one of the other clerks brings up that he thinks the plague was started because of the irreconcilable differences between The Kin and the town, and the fact that the Kin have been forcibly mashed into the town. When Dankovsky asks the man if something is holding the Kin in the town, preventing them from leaving and returning to the earth, the man says “Someone is… our rulers. They have embedded the steppe people into this town, carved them into its warm flesh. This isn't a town, it's an honest-to-God minotaur. A chimera. And chimeras have remarkably short lifespans and bad health. Can you breed a snake and a crane? You can, yes. But the progeny won't live long.” This dialogue is interesting for a few reasons, one related to the tower of Babel and two related to other possible ARG clues. The first interesting thing is that what he’s describing, drawing a connection between the Tower of Babel and the Polyhedron, actually makes a lot of sense. To him, the Polyhedron is not only an affront to God, but its accentuation of human hubris coincides with a beating down of nature and the earth, represented in part by most of the Polyhedron’s mass being concentrated far above the earth while also piercing the earth’s heart. The story of the mythical tower, to oversimplify it, is essentially a tale of people from many different walks of life all coming together to construct a giant, seemingly impossibly tall tower in order to avoid the possibility of a second biblical flood destroying most of humanity. God sees this attempt as an affront to both him and the natural order, and so before the men are able to finish the tower he divides them all by making them speak different languages, making it impossible for them to understand each other. So, in this second clerk’s interpretation, the plague is a result of the town both rebelling against/abusing nature and also taking the Kin into itself. Unlike the first man, who believes the tower itself is at fault, this second one believes it’s all because of the town making itself into a “chimera,” which he believes cannot live long. What’s clear to me, though, is that although these men believe they disagree, their explanations complement each other very well, which brings us to our third man, who has a rather simple but somewhat confusing explanation. This clerk believes that this plague occurred in the town because men should not be “remodeled or altered,” and when asked what that has to do with the epidemic he replies “I don’t know… It wasn't we who designed the world like this. I believe in men, Doctor; in superhumans, I do not. This earthly life wouldn't fit them. Immortals have no place in the world of the living. This is just how it works. Take from it what you will.” This man seems to be implying that Simon Kain, the immortal man, is the reason why this plague appeared in the town. This is when it all started to come together for me: these men's stories do really all complement each other, because here they are posing the Polyhedron, chimera, and Simon as all the same. This will further be explained in the additional notes section. Three parts of one whole if you will.
Now, the mention of the Tower of Babel is interesting for two other reasons, one of which will be discussed in the additional notes section and one of which I’ll discuss here. In the Fyodor Vitin “One can work here” post there are numerous items displayed in the room pictured, but perhaps most interesting to me is the golden bull statue that sits at the front and center of the photo. My first thought when seeing that image was “Oh! This reminds me of the biblical story of the golden calf statue, which I bet is what they’re referencing.” For those who aren’t familiar, I’ll be oversimplifying another biblical story now. While trekking from Egypt to the holy land, Moses leaves his people behind to climb to the top of a mountain and commune with God. Moses is gone for forty days, upon which the people are fearful that he will not return, and so they molded a calf statue out of gold to worship. God, upon seeing this, sends Moses down to the base of the mountain to punish his people for their sins. Moses burns the golden calf in a fire, ground it to powder and water, and forced his people to drink it. He then killed all of them basically. My thought process was related to the fact that The Bachelor is punished severely by The Powers That Be for his own affront to God, the pursuit of immortality. Now, after that previous discussion about the Tower of Babel, I am noticing some very interesting things in this picture, and primarily that there are two other related statues. Now that we have the previous context about The Tower of Babel and the clerks in our mind, we can see new meaning in these statues: a black statue of a centaur, and a white bust of a man. The interesting thing about the centaur should be obvious, it is another chimera. The bust of the man, which seems to be made of marble, reminded me somewhat of ancient Greek statues that are chiseled to glorify certain leaders and make them seem somewhat perfect while also immortalizing them in stone. You can probably see the connection I’m making here, and so I will leave the rest of the explanation for the additional notes section.
Another thing that's interesting to note is the aforementioned three men, unlike most characters in Pathologic 2 and the Marble Nest, do not stop moving when you pause the game; their animations continue to play even after you bring up the pause menu. If you’re unaware, there is actually a small detail in Pathologic 2 where pretty much everything nature-based or that is a natural force of the world, as well as everything that’s supposed to be seen in a meta-narrative sense, does not stop moving when you pause the game. This includes rain, leaves falling, the particle effects that come off the clocks, fire, executors (not orderlies), plague particles, etc. Once I noticed this (while trying to get a screenshot of some things to analyze) I tested out some other NPCs in The Marble Nest, and all of the other people I tested seemed to freeze when the game was paused. However, this is not to say that no other characters in the Marble Nest move when the game is paused. I only tested about 4 guys besides the primary trio we're discussing, mostly just to make sure it's not a thing that all Marble Nest characters do. If one of you people reading this would like to go through and see which characters in The Marble Nest also possess this trait, it could prove fascinating.
Finally, I’ll talk about two somewhat modern (at least modern compared to the previous two) stories that are brought up in The Marble Nest, although not directly: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells and The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe. Admittedly, I have not read either of these stories (it’s possible I read the EAP story 5-6 years ago and just don’t remember it), but I do actually know quite a bit about the stories and their themes from a couple of literary studies on specific genres I’ve done over the years. Additionally, for this section, I have done some more research on the plots and themes of these stories which yielded fascinating results.
The Time Machine is brought up when The Bachelor visits The Cathedral and speaks to a Tragedian standing within. The Tragedian talks about how the building is not a temple, but a machine. Daniil asks what kind of machine, and The Tragedian responds “This is a time machine. Time works differently on the inside and on the outside. It's frozen now. I think something's broken.” To which Dankovsky can say “A time machine? Are you saying it can transport me to the past or to the future? Like in that Englishman's book, what's his name…” For this, I did some research into what book he could be referring to, and almost instantly Time Machine stood out to me for a number of reasons. I think there might be something interesting to be said about how this relates to the ARG, but I’m not going to be the one to say it, because I’m honestly not sure how or if it does. I will describe how it connects to Pathologic though, in case that sparks anyones mind. The work is apparently seen as popularizing the idea of time travel and the time machine, which relates to what IPL has said about The Bachelor’s route I suppose. As for the plot, it’s about a Victorian man using a time machine to travel to the year of A.D. 802,701. He meets two races of people, one descended from the oppressed working class and one descended from the pampered owning class. Over hundreds of thousands of years of this lifestyle, the two races have started to diverge, with the owning class becoming child-like and basically useless, while the working class has been forced into a life of toil and hardship which has shaped them into a race of underground-dwelling animalistic race of people. Essentially the novel is a depiction of class struggle and the class contradictions inherent within capitalism, but with a bit of a metaphorical twist. The toiling of the working class underground is what allows the upper class to live in abundance without the need for work. There is very interesting commentary here to be made on the worms/odonghs in the game, as well as the eternal youth that is present in some elements of the stone yard, but this isn’t a Pathologic essay, it’s a Pathologic ARG essay.
The Masque of the Red Death is alluded to by The Bachelor in a dialogue with a wandering citizen, who opens up the conversation by saying “A masquerade ball will be held in the main square this evening. People want to celebrate our victory over the sand pest. You don't mind…?” To which The Bachelor has 3 possible replies, one of them being “I seem to vaguely remember a rather famous story about a masquerade held to celebrate a victory over a plague. Remember how it ended?” To summarize, The Masque of the Red Death is about a group of noblemen taking refuge in an abbey to hide from a plague (the plague is known as the Red Death). The plague’s symptoms are gruesome, and all people who contract it apparently die within a half hour. The main character, Prince Prospero, and his fellow noblemen believe themselves to be entirely safe, though, as they have welded shut all the doors and isolated themselves in the abbey. To entertain the guests, the prince holds a masquerade ball that takes place in seven of the rooms of his abbey, each colored differently. The first six rooms are blue, purple, green, orange, white, and violet, with the last being black and illuminated by a red window. No guests venture into the seventh room, as they are all scared to enter it. Every hour a clock in that room chimes, upon which the guests freeze and go silent momentarily, before resuming normal activity once the chiming stops, only to do the same thing after an hour. Once midnight comes, a person appears in robes covered in blood and resembling a funeral shroud, wearing a mask that depicts a person clearly infected with the Red Death. This figure walks through six of the chambers before the prince starts chasing them with a dagger. Confronting them in the seventh room, the prince immediately falls dead upon seeing this person’s face. The other party-goers all charge the figure, stripping them of their clothes and mask, only to find that there is no one underneath. The conclusion of the story states that the figure was not a person, but rather an embodiment of the Red Death. The Red Death also appears as a reference in the novel The Phantom of the Opera, as well as several film and musical adaptations. The titular phantom dresses up as The Red Death, and in many adaptations wears a skull mask as part of the costume.
I believe Hamlet is also brought up at some point in The Marble Nest, but I can’t seem to find the dialogue so I’m unsure if that’s true.
Next, I'll talk about another random Marble Nest clue
The Bachelor’s hover text for the beetle item says “I used to collect these as a kid. Left the collection with my father.” @pseudoquiddity found that a paper on the top of “The Beginning” Fyodor Vitin post spells out Mechnikov, which is almost definitely referencing Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, who was a Russian zoologist and immunologist who achieved incredible scientific discovery during his life, and notably for us he was largely focused on the issue of aging and extending human life. Mechnikov was actually brought up in an IPL teletype post as one of the Bachelor’s main influences scientifically, alongside Albert Einstein and Max Planck. The relevant thing about Mechnikov here is that, as a zoologist, he did many notable studies on insects throughout his career to see how their bodies reacted to things compared to how ours did. One thing that’s interesting to me is that the type of beetles we see in the game, I believe, are based on Trypocopris Vernalis, commonly known as the spring dumbledor or spring dor beetle, which is not known to inhibit the region that the Town on Gorkhon would reside in. Another thing I find interesting is the touch text from the Alpha version of the game, which reads “Some fifteen years ago, the Soul-and-a-Halves, the gang of children who are defined by sharing special bonds with their pets, actually considered to allow flower chafers as their "Halves" due to the beetles ‘looking as though they knew something’. The idea was quickly abandoned as ridiculous.” Maybe I’m just 8.6 thousand words into this post and have finally gone insane, but I think the beetles “looking as though they know something”, combined with their close connection to Dankovsky, it seems too intentional.
In the “Feverish Feelings” ARG, the Beatles (the band) were brought up indirectly and used by the players as a clue to get more information. This also related to the clue relating to the Gospel according to John.
Additionally, speaking of Mechnikov, u/Fantastic_Advice5593 theorized that the numbers on Daniil’s train ticket from one of the original ARG notes could be hinting toward the date May 15th, or 5/15 (15/5 if you use the non-American dating system I believe), which is Mechnikov Day, and is commonly recognized as Mechnikov’s date of birth. Proving this connection further, the “Messages” Fyodor Vitin post was posted on May 15th. Another interesting thing is that if we convert the time that the “Messages” image was posted to the time scheme used in Pathologic (that is, a 24-hour clock), it comes out to 19:35 (Using GMT+3 time zone, as that’s where Moscow is located.) This is interesting because “Messages” was also posted 19 days after the previous post, and I know for a fact that 19 is an important number in this ARG: The newspaper from the “The Accident” post was labeled as issue number 19, the bible passage that we saw referenced in the anagram from the “Messages” post is John 19:19, the jumble of letters that we found in the touch text for the unused lantern item includes “19,” and so does the 196-17-1 number from Messages. In a way, the number 19 is sort of a self-checking method to substantiate some of the clues we’ve found thus far.
Griffins’ Tower
Many of the details in this section wouldn’t be possible without @kurury-chan who, upon my inquiry about the tower and its accompanying pharmacy, actually visited it, got tons of cool pictures, and translated a ton of the history for me! I literally cannot thank her enough for her help with many elements of this post, but especially in this section.
In the original Pathologic ARG, “Feverish Feelings,” the Griffins’ Tower is brought up a couple of times throughout, and was part of an intensive fandom discussion because many elements of it paralleled many themes and plot points of Pathologic. The following connections/possibly related facts are a combination of fandom discussion from the time and my own research:
The tower is connected to a pharmacy that has existed since the 18th century. Both were once owned by the Poehl family, who were a rather eccentric yet somewhat mysterious rich family. Rumors from the time (The 18th/19th century) speculate that members of the family engaged in “…alchemy and witchcraft, and in the basements of the house he turned mercury into gold and bred griffins. Since ancient times, it was believed that griffins, mythical creatures with the body of a lion and the head of an eagle, were the guardians to secret sacred knowledge and treasures.”
In 1994, the artist Alexey Kostroma, together with the society "Here and There" (Tut i tam), organized a demonstration/art-piece to advocate for the preservation of the tower and the revitalization of the city, which they believed was falling apart before their very eyes. During this demonstration, they hoisted a large egg (approximately 1.5 meters) onto the top of the tower, and they painted (I’m not sure what was used to put the numbers on the tower, but I assume it was paint) numbers on almost every brick of the tower. While the purposes for the those two additions rarely get brought up in conversations surrounding it, the egg and the numbers are now some of the most well-known parts of the tower, despite the fact that neither of the two are there anymore. The Polyhedron, as we know, is a tower that at the top houses children and is made from its own complex blueprints. Additionally, in the Marble Nest, but also throughout Pathologic as a whole, there is a common piece of imagery that connects eggs and the Utopians. In the opening of The Marble Nest, the item that’s used on the loading screen is an egg. If you look at the egg sprite in P2, you’ll see a crack in it that heavily resembles the Polyhedron. Daniil Dankovsky commonly uses the Latin phrase “ab ovo,” which means “from the beginning” but when literally translated means “from the egg,” and his touch text for the egg in Marble Nest reads “To understand anything, start ab ovo — ‘from the egg.’”
While playing through The Marble Nest several times for this ARG, I noticed something that gave me more confidence in The Griffins’ Tower playing a role in it. If you guys have played Pathologic as much as I have you’ll know there’s a tower in between the Stone Yard and the steppe that you can’t enter and is barely ever really explained. If I’m picking apart my brain correctly for Pathologic 1 knowledge, I believe it is implied to be a Focus of some sort. If you’ve only played Pathologic 2, or you haven’t played through The Bachelor’s route in P1 enough, or you haven’t read through the Pathologic “Corpus” entries, you probably have an incomplete idea of what a “focus” is and all that it entails. I won’t go too deep into it now, but it’s said in one of the Corpus entries that, on top of the Polyhedron, Cathedral, Stillwater, Crucible, etc., there were a number of experimental Focuses that were built for Simon Kain to test the limits of what buildings could capture the human soul and memories. It’s a building you can’t ever enter, but it does have a visible door, which is very similar to the way that Simon’s focus is described by Victor Kain. I’d like to draw your attention to the visual similarities between that tower and the Griffin Tower. I’d also like to draw your attention to the fact that, in the original design concepts of Pathologic 1 every character is associated with a specific animal, and Simon Kain’s is a griffin. What is a griffin? Well, it’s a fusion between two drastically different creatures, a lion and an eagle; a griffin is a chimera.
Interestingly, in 2005 (the year Pathologic came out) the pharmacy connected to The Griffins Tower was closed for a while because it became flooded with water while trying to extinguish a fire.
There is a photo in the pharmacy connected to the tower (which has now been converted into a museum about the history of the place and pharmacies in general) that depicts, during the early 1900s, the pharmacy sitting next to a theater called “Simpatiya” (Sympathy).
While @kurury-chan was on a tour of the pharmacy/museum she found an interesting marmite that was on display. It was created by Samuel Clarke and it’s called “Pyramid,” and the marmite has an accompanying poem:
Когда ночи темные, подумайте о Кларке,
который попал точно в цель.
Его ночные огни создают светлые ночи,
в которых вы прекрасно видите.
(When the nights are dark, think of Clark
hitting the mark.
His night lights create bright nights
in which you can see perfectly)
This is interesting largely because the poem reminds me somewhat of the body text for the lantern ad found in the newspaper post.
In the original email mentioning the Griffin’s Tower, Voronika Kroy appends the message by saying “P.S. I feel like I’ll need this memory later.”
Seventh Seal
I watched this movie after discovering all of the allusions to General Block we’ve seen thus far, but being unsure what to do with any of them. For those that don’t know, the movie The Seventh Seal’s protagonist Octavius Block has been listed as one of the main inspirations for Alexander Block, and since IPL seems intent on leading us to analyze certain works of literature/film/theater for this, I decided to look into it. What I found is incredibly interesting I think, because it seems that one of the main inspirations for The Marble Nest is The Seventh Seal.
The title is based on a bible verse (from the Book of Revelations) that reads “And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” This verse appears both at the very beginning of the movie and then again toward the end. This thirty minutes/half-an-hour element appears prominently in both this story and The Masque of the Red Death. One other place it appears is on the pocket watch in the first Fyodor Vitin post, where the time on it is 2:30. I am very confident that it also appears in The Marble Nest once or twice, but despite looking I was unable to find it. If anyone else knows where it might be, either comment on this post or message me, and I will put it in this section and credit you.
The movie's plot revolves around Antonius Block, a disillusioned medieval knight returning from the Crusades. Block is struggling throughout the movie with his inability to believe in God and his realization that his whole life has been wasted. He wishes more than anything to do one last deed before his death to give his life meaning. The movie is set during the Black Death, with prominent elements of the story revolving around the plague. The movie largely focuses on how Block takes in several poor and out-of-luck folks fleeing the plague, inviting them to stay at his castle and escorting them along the way.
Toward the beginning of the movie, Death comes to take Block, but he convinces Death to play him in a game of chess for his life. This game of chess continues throughout the movie, with Death allowing Block to take several breaks in order to find clarity about his life and death. Toward the end of the movie, he allows Death to take his queen, effectively ensuring he would lose the game in the next turn, so that his companions could get away without Death noticing. After returning to his castle, everyone has a nice meal before Death arrives and takes everyone, excluding the people that Block helped get away by tricking Death.
Many things from Pathologic seem to take inspiration from this movie; most notable being the storyline of The Marble Nest (Dankovsky’s “People” screen categorizes people as chess pieces, essentially implying that his struggle against death is a sort of chess match), but there are also some smaller things. For example, there is a scene where the characters encounter someone afflicted with the plague who cries out for help, and one of the women tries to get closer to give the man water, but another person stops her, as giving water to a plague victim is futile and dangerous; almost immediately after this, a personification of Death appears. This heavily reminds me of the intro/tutorial of Pathologic 2, where a similar scene occurs.
While watching the movie, it’s very easy to see how Block was directly inspired by the main character, but it’s hard to convey exactly how without describing many scenes in detail, so I will simply describe one of them. After leaving a church confessional where he admits to his faith faltering and wanting to perform one meaningful deed before he dies, Block encounters a young woman who’s about to be burned at the stake for allegedly having ties to the devil. He takes pity on this woman, seeing something special in her, and believes she can tell him about life after death. This, to me, seems very reminiscent of Block’s storyline with the Changeling in P1.
Another small lead before this part of the post is finished: This lead, I will admit, I stumbled across completely at random, and will not talk about much because there’s not much I can say about it that isn’t obvious. It might be worth looking into the Russian philosopher Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov, and perhaps thinking about if Fyodor Vitin was based partially on him, since we know Vitin works closely with Daniil.
Additional Notes/Comments:
In the newspaper clipping, it is said that a man with the initials “F.L.” had been one of the apparent two victims of the fire that burned down several buildings. This man (who I’ll simply refer to as “F” from now on) is an academician, historian, and writer of everyday life, which obviously fits well with the man that we know as Fyodor Vitin, and it has been assumed up until this point that he was the victim of this fire. I think there are three possibilities here: Fyodor Vitin was not the victim of this fire somehow, Fyodor Vitin is not his real name, or the newspaper is lying to us. In connection to the light/lantern emphasis in the newspaper, it might be worth it to note that the word “vitin” in Faroese means something like “the lighthouse”/“the beacon”, while in old Swedish it means something like “to know.” What’s more interesting is that Vitin in old Swedish is a second-person plural present indicative, and for people that got a useful education, that means it’s a verb that’s used to factually describe the current actions of the people that the speaker is saying it to. If Vitin isn’t his real surname, his username could mean “Fyodor beacon”, or “Fyodor (that you all) know”.
As discussed extensively in the section on the Tower of Babel, there is a direct connection drawn between the Polyhedron, Simon, and chimeras. We elaborated a bit on this connection in the section on the Griffins’ Tower. What’s especially interesting then is the fact that, in The Marble Nest, the Polyhedron is labeled as “focus,” implying that Simon’s essence is infused in the Polyhedron, as is what happens in the first game. This, I believe, confirms our theory about the connection even further. What then makes this even more related to the ARG is the fact that in the “One can work here” post by Fyodor Vitin, we see the three statues depicting the golden bull, the centaur, and the marble bust of a man. It is then worth noting that this bust of a man made of marble could be a reference to The Marble Nest, perhaps trying to get us to look there for clues. I believe, if the golden bull is meant to represent the Polyhedron (or at least the Polyhedron argument in The Marble Nest), and the centaur is meant to represent the chimera, then the marble bust of the man is meant to represent Simon (or, once again, represent the Simon/immortal man argument from the Marble Nest). This is supported by my point about the marble busts both immortalizing men and also making them more into concepts than men (as the statue can only depict a small part of a man’s life, usually depicting him in battle, leading a governmental position, etc). In the original game, and as can slightly be seen in hints of the second game, Simon is sometimes seen as more of a concept than a man; he is the ideology of the utopians incarnate, the perfect man that represents everything humanity could be. As a chimera is vital to Burakh’s quest, so too is it vital for Dankovsky’s (and it’s interesting to note that Burakh has the chimera revelation while in conversation with Dankovsky.) If the Marble Nest is used to represent the stone yard, or the “town” in its purest form, then Simon Kain is the marble man. It then becomes important to figure out where the “One can work here” picture is supposed to be depicting. I believe, if the statues there are supposed to represent all that we’ve said so far, the location should be representative of Dankovsky’s fight against death, and therefore I say it probably has to be Thanatica.
Now, as for all the connections with General Block, there are obviously many of them, from the Guglielmo Pepe hypothesis to the mention of Aristides/Pericles to The Seventh Seal to the whole “ash” thing, it seems far too much to be a series of coincidences. I don’t think it’s too crazy to connect the prominent appearance of the number 30 in the Block/Pepe/Aristides context to the prominent appearance of the number 30 (as in half an hour) in The Seventh Seal, which makes the appearance of the number 30 in that first Fyodor Vitin post even more interesting. It’s long been theorized that, from what we see in the Haruspex’s route and what we’ve seen in Pathologic 1, the Bachelor’s new route will probably feature General Block much more prominently. Perhaps, as the first ARG was so focused on the inquisitors, we’ll also get to learn more about the army in this one. Maybe General Ashes even had something to do with the building that was reduced to ashes?
The topic of religion, and specifically Christianity, comes up a lot in The Marble Nest. I think all the connections I’ve made in this post to Christianity have convinced you that it’s seemingly an important part of this ARG. In the first ARG, there were certain biblical passages that acted as clues, specifically from the Gospel according to John, which we talked about in the section on the “Messages” post. As is also mentioned in that section, the connection to Inquisitors Peter Kroy and Mark Karminsky seems to be driving us toward looking into The Gospel according to Peter and The Gospel according to Mark. It’s also talked about in that section how these both relate to Daniil. Mark Karminsky specifically also seems to have had something to do with the "Accident" mentioned in the newspaper, and so perhaps combining numbers from the newspaper within the Gospel of Mark could lead to some clues.
Still, as much as I’ve said in this post, there is more I wish to analyze but have not yet. This post has been in the works for a while, though, and I don’t want people to be waiting any longer, so I’ll have to save that other stuff for another day.
If anyone can somehow get into the game files of the Marble Nest and retrieve the texture/model for any of the letters or books (like the two linked images), that will end up being very helpful.
Other screenshots from Pathologic 2/The Marble Nest that could be of interest:
Grigory Gorky (Pathologic 2)
Grigory Gorky (The Marble Nest)
Mikhail Goba (The Marble Nest)
Daniil Death Certificate (The Marble Nest)
Rug (The Marble Nest)
Book (The Marble Nest)
Familiar Bloody Handprint (The Marble Nest)
Tipped Over Lantern (The Marble Nest)
Staff Sergeant Plover (The Marble Nest)
Avrely Gubar (The Marble Nest)
Odd use of Roman Numerals (The Marble Nest)
Cathedral Letter (The Marble Nest)
Plant that I found several times in the Cathedral (The Marble Nest)
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thank GOODNESS I could finish this- beneath the cut's a profile for them!! :D
buckle up, because it's a lot of information-
TENEBRIS!!!
Goes by they/them pronouns :D
Don't ask them for their age. Even I don't know how old they are.
The one and only leader of the Obitus Cult/Cult of Obitus!!
A very egotistic and anti-social being that has utterly devoted their loyalty to their "god" Obitus.
Can be quick to anger as well, lashes out on their members if they're really frustrated.
Of course, they're nothing like this around newcomers. Needs to somehow convince them to join, right?
Well, they can just force people if they wanted to with spells.
The magic they're capable of involves more chants and recitals, as well as making very strange substances and potions.
Their shopping list looks very strange, as you can imagine.
Kind of tying in the shopping thing, they get all of their resources delivered to their temple. Tenebris very rarely leaves the premises, and the members aren't allowed to leave at all.
They hate children. And chocolate.
And bright lighting- all the rooms in the temple are very dimly lit and all their clothes are darkly coloured.
This is their voice claim!
Their hair is quite heavy (and well taken care of) so you can guess that they're very slow.
MORE THINGS ABOUT THE CULT ITSELF!!
You can call it either the Obitus Cult or the Cult of Obitus- Tenebris calls it the latter.
This group made up of almost 100 people places their faith and loyalty to Obitus.
According to Tenebris- who claimed to have witnessed them in their sleep one night, starting up the cult the next day- Obitus plans on completely obliterating the Earth of humanity and civilization and told them to prepare for the end of the world. basically.
When this will happen?....Tenebris wasn't told that.
They also do not know what this otherworldly overlord looks like- however, they know an eye-shaped symbol (on Tenebris' hat and necklace) is very important as that appeared in their dream too.
The temple is located in a very secluded mountain range- Tenebris was simply told to go there by Obitus and it was already there. Convenient.
As pictured above, members have to have the eye symbol engraved into their wrist (or palm)- after this, they happen to be almost under a trance or brainwashed.
When praying to Obitus, they expose out the arm with the marking and their other arm behind that one, raised up to their face. Like this:
I hope that makes sense sjkksjks- while they do have lengthy prayer times and different types of prayers, a short and simple one they use is "We place our faith in Obitus."
The temple is full of many different rooms, including a dining hall, summoning room and bunkers (Tenebris gets their own room, obviously.)
They also follow a strict schedule- They must be asleep by 8 p.m. and awake and ready for the day by 4 a.m. They have two food breaks- one for breakfast and one for dinner. Once a month, they also hold a summoning ritual in order to attempt communicating with Obitus once more.
Members have their own jobs as well as worshipping Obitus though- cooking, cleaning, assisting Tenebris; that's all done by them as well.
While Tenebris mainly targets lonely people or those who don't have a social life, they are happy to accept anyone in! Well, that is if you're over 18.
I'm afraid teenagers (and children) are not allowed to join. However, Tenebris does take note of minors who do want to join and if you're REALLY nice, may let you visit the temple if you do some errands for them.
EXTRA FACT STUFF ABOUT TENEBRIS:
I based them more off of what first comes to mind when you think of cults- and, unintentionally, they also partially remind me of the cult in Spooky Month which I forgot existed ;-;
Because, after researching real life cult leaders, I felt like their stories weren't really what I was going for with Tenebris.
I guess the Peoples Temple founded by Jim Jones and the Family Cult by Anne Hamilton-Byrne were partial inspirations- oh, and religious experiences I've had, Catholic-Christian ones that is. (this is in no way meant to portray anything bad about that religion- or any at all- I just wanted to make the cult-y side of this more interesting by basing it off of what I know.)
My sister nicknames them Tenny and I (as well as others hee hee) nickname em Tennis, so you might see that often lol
I'm pretty sure they're the first oc I posted about on here! Although I think the post got like 7 notes-
When I first drew them, which was a while ago, they were more like a triangle shape and had larger eyes- my sister likes this version more but I think it just looks goofier- might post it once I find it :D
Tenebris means Darkness in Latin (according to translators) because I couldn't think of a name for them and just thought "think of something kinda edgy, then make it Latin to sound cool >:D"
Obitus means Death in Latin (according to translators once more I can't speak Latin-)
Thank you for reading this far!! I'm going to just tag @night-terrorzz @lobotomize-d n @gummy-worms-in-my-brain since you lovely people seem to like this cult leader :>
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one thing that's been percolating in my mind about mina and her relationship to women's history this time through is that like... it can be tempting (for me too!) from a contemporary perspective to kind of think as "traditional" and "progressive" as opposite sides of a spectrum upon which women can be linearly placed in terms of their beliefs. but it's a little more complicated than that, obviously. mina i think can be a little jarring to the modern reader because she is as a person obviously so independent, bright, curious, and hard-working, but her vocational ambitions as expressed in the text are limited to supporting her future husband, and i think there can be a tendency to sort of slot her as like, "ok, well, she's a little bit progressive, but not that far along," or whatever, and there's, again, a lot we can do to unpack that, but for me there are two things that have been coming up for me revisiting the topic on my second time through (disclaimer: i'm an idiot with a blog who doesn't know anything about anything & if any actual experts want to weigh in please do! also if anyone has any accessible readings on the new woman please do @ me because that phrase is it turns out fucking ungoogleable):
(1) i think it's important to remember that for all human beings on earth ever, there's not a simple unidirectional relationship between internal beliefs and external action/reality, nor do beliefs come out of nowhere or out of some ether from which we pluck ideas out of pure abstraction. a lot of looking at women's history is looking at how women chose to navigate the options available to them, which both inform ideology and also make it frankly sometimes just not that important. a book that really powerfully shaped the way i think about this stuff is kathy peiss's cheap amusements: working women and leisure in turn of the century new york. the way she explores her source material for that space and time really brought home to me that it's very difficult as a woman who came of age (for example) in the US after second wave feminism to really understand just how beside the point the question of "what do i as an individual believe about women's role in society" was for (as just one example) many women in that location, class, and period. it just doesn't matter compared to things like being able to pay your rent, or being able to afford a night out once in a while - which might mean letting a guy pay your way not because you think it's "the man's job" but because you don't make enough to go out with your own money ever - so maybe you do think it's the man's job but it's not because of some like disembodied attachment to traditional gender roles, it's because the men are the ones with the fucking money!
anyway. different place, different class position, slightly later period, but the general principles from that book have really stayed with me and have been echoing thinking about mina. like: how much does an assistant schoolmistress in 1890s london make? i'm not an expert but willing to bet it's not a lot? she's an orphan, actively aware that she and jonathan have only what they can cobble together. if she remains in the professional world after her marriage, who does the labor of running a two-person household - something we here on tumblr complain in 2023 is difficult if everyone has a full-time job, and which was much more difficult with more than a century's progress in domestic technology still to go (and this isn't getting into childrearing). would their combined incomes be enough to afford a domestic servant? idk shit about the economic position of late victorian women so these are not questions i am presenting as having ostensibly "obvious" answers - i really don't know. but i think these are things that are worth considering when we think about mina, her ambitions, & her relationship to shifting cultural currents (which were really shifting quite quickly - the "new woman" was such a recent coinage at the book's publication that if you assume, for example, that the epilogue is meant to take place in its publication year, the events of the novel precede its first appearance in print), and i think it's just never really quite as simple as "well this is what she Believed." our world makes our beliefs at least as much as the other way around.
(2) the other thing that's been in my head is that in a more contemporary framework of how gender operates, it is easy to assume the dichotomy of technology/science/jobs/boy stuff vs. domesticity/home/housewife/girl stuff extends backwards throughout time forever. but, first off, domestic labor is labor and mina is still very much looking ahead at a life of working full time - just not at getting paid. but secondly, homemaking was one of many things getting brought under the umbrella of "science" in the late 19th century (along with, to name examples from the book, psychology and criminology). like a lot of things in my brain the "scientific housewife" is something i vaguely remember hearing about in some college class or book but don't have any ready cites for, but while googling last night i found this very cool recent article [linked below because the app will not fucking let me make a text link] that looks at the evolution of instruction in science, housework, and domestic science at two english day schools for girls in the late victorian/early edwardian (the kind of school i think mina may have attended and taught at, as i don't believe we're ever given much detail about her place of work), and which provides some background info on the idea of the "scientific housewife":
Scholars have since recognised that the middle-class home was “the locus of back-breaking toil” Domestic servants were not as prevalent as once thought, and in some cases it was common for mistresses to work alongside them. The average middle-class woman would likely have been at least partially a housewife, or, in other words, she would have undertaken some domestic labour herself. In contemporary culture, a link was also being forged between housework and science; historians have charted the ideology of “scientific housewifery” or “scientific motherhood”, which encouraged women to embrace science, medicine, and technology in the nineteenth century, to enhance domestic life and make it more efficient, more enjoyable, easier, and healthier for the family. Work by Judy Giles and Joanne Hollows has suggested that ideals of a modern, scientific housewife emerged in the first half of the twentieth century with the decline of domestic service. Given that many middle-class women would have been undertaking housework themselves in the nineteenth century, this article asserts that the cultural construction of the scientific housewife existed before the decline of domestic service. This article builds on the work of Nakagomi by considering the place of domestic subjects and science in schools as a window into a broader societal conceptualisation of housework and the housewife.
one interesting thing in this article is that the two schools profiled actually had strong differences in how they conceptualized and approached their domestic programming, which reminds us that big-picture ideals are always being navigated, redefined, and contested in practice. it also emphasizes that for at least some teachers and schools for girls, the teaching of science was considered an important part of the intellectual development of the students - a position, fascinatingly, NOT taken by comparable boys' schools of the period, which tended to marginalized science education in favor of the classics, which was a wonderful little reminder for me about just how incredibly fake gender is. but also i think this article (which identifies some shifts happenings in the 1890s, like really this novel came out at The fulcrum point of the culture) helps us consider that the seriousness with which mina takes her future home-making as a vocation can be read as part and parcel of the novel's fascination with modernity, technology, science, and progress - and indeed given the moral panic about lazy mothering the article mentions as arising in the press a few years later it even lets us consider that mina's status as a female victorian ideal and her temperament of someone deeply pro-science may not have appeared to be in as much tension as we might assume.
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Case study and analysis of the 1992 Good Omens movie screenplay (“the shitscript”) in light of the ongoing WGA strike
As one could suspect, the topic of the 1992 Good Omens movie screenplay and its infamy has recently emerged from the depths of the fandom. In light of the ongoing WGA strike it’d be good to properly address this issue, starting with Neil Gaiman’s own recollection written in 2004:
It’s basically the same old story — of brilliant creative workers struggling under the pressure of detached studio executives and being legally forced to mutilate their work again and again for no artistic or economic reason — we’ve heard before in many different contexts.
If you’re reading this and somehow still wondering why writers are fighting for their rights at the moment, their job security hasn’t changed much since then. Please follow the WGA, SAG-AFTRA, and other unions’ official channels for detailed information and ways to help the cause.
Anyway, it took over a decade and an enormous effort to print the screenplay in a limited edition of 552 copies. It can’t be distributed otherwise due to IP law, but some fans shared its fragments online and heavily criticized them, dubbing the 1992 source material #shitscript
There’s been obviously a lot of controversies over the changes in the plot and the relationship between the main characters. And rightfully so — the number of iterations has created something very different from the beloved book and the award-winning show we can all enjoy today.
It’s… objectively not good. Wouldn’t be considered a hit back then and certainly not by today’s standards. I don’t think I would watch it in any other way than through channel surfing. However, it’s not a monstrosity some people believe it to be and not a case of low effort.
Let’s start with the world building: the setting wasn’t changed to the US. It’s still very much based in the UK, mostly London and Tadfield, although the latter lies now by the sea and seems much more ominous. Interestingly, the British Museum becomes a prominent location as well.
The main character and the designated hero is not surprisingly Crowley, this time in his 90s anti-hero glory. If you haven’t watched many movies of this era, esp. dark fantasy, this trope involves middle-age disenchantment, cynicism, as well as hefty doses of sarcasm and brooding.
90s anti-heroes are a dark, grim, and unnecessarily violent embodiment of power fantasy, matching the destructive ideology of that time. Combined with uber-masculinity and performative strength over weaker characters, nowadays they naturally evoke more cringe or worry than awe.
1992 iteration of Crowley is basically in his Furfur era. Deeply unhappy and stuck in a dead end job, all he talks about is how he hates Earth and his assignment here, considering a transfer to Alpha Centauri as his one and only possibility of career advancement. Or life, really.
The talking part is important here, because he clearly compensates by insulting everything and everyone. He hates on the whole planet at length only to confess that he’d rather stay here with Aziraphale due to “no good restaurants”, “no decent bottle of wine” in Alpha Centauri.
Yes, he’s verbally abusive in his automatic response to stress. But doesn’t hate Aziraphale. In one particular scene he calls Azi stupid twice only to assure him that they are friends and to offer to solve the problem when he sees that his words were taken seriously and hurt him.
Crowley refers to him as “my angel” and “my dear Aziraphale”, agrees to Aziraphale’s suggestion of sharing a room, praises the angel as a “miracle worker around the home”, drinks the tea he makes for him, and generally proves to be much softer towards him than he wants to admit.
Aziraphale, on the contrary, wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s the one engineering ways to spend more time together, following Crowley around, checking up on him (including miracling himself into his apartment and office when no one answers the door), offering help right away.
He’s successfully calming Crowley down through his anxiety attacks, overcomes his dislike of heights (!) for Crowley, directly challenges him and even breaks rules only to make Crowley stay with him. Crowley seems to be his main motivation in this movie, not the saving the world.
1992 Aziraphale also has the most badass scene in the whole Good Omens multiverse to date, taking a 180 degree turn from the typical guardian angel we all know and love to the real angel of wrath protecting Crowley from harm in his true form.
But there’s no Their Side in this universe. The only semblance of that concept appears in the context of Anathema not representing either of their respective bosses, but humanity. “That’s the trouble with the humans. They’re on their own side.”
This Crowley appears not as much on Hell’s side as under Satan’s heel. He’s scared of him and subservient, and needs Aziraphale to prevent his escape as a pretext to do what is right. He lets the angel stop him by pretending that he doesn’t even see him cheating during their duel.
By finally standing up to his toxic boss (Satan is like Gabriel during the body-swapped trial, suave and cruel) and leaving Hell’s side to do good, Crowley takes an emancipated and employee-focused stance instead of fighting for his relationship with Aziraphale like shown in S1.
Which is a shame, but matches the overall tone of the screenplay and the times it was written in. The concept of free will, while simplified in a true Hollywood-style to issues like mind control and fear, is still crucial to this interpretation of the Good Omens original plot.
Especially the character of Anathema is seen fighting both of these things. There’s no Agnes Nutter with her prophecies here, only a 21-year-old witch and her will to thwart the ultimate evil versus her fear of doing it at a cost of one boy’s life, versus Satan’s brainwashing.
Madame Tracy appears slightly redesigned as a new character as well, but isn’t 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 for the most part. She’s been enjoying her youth way too much to see how fast it was fleeting, and this sudden realization left her in shock from which she denies to come back.
Unfortunately she’s also the one who took in baby Adam and now stays under his care. The level of his parentification is unnerving, much like his bullying and loneliness. He struggles to be loved and ask for love, which becomes his main quest beyond, y’know, the apocalypse thing.
Don’t worry, despite everything all ends well just like in the book. The family of two gets a chance to start again on much healthier terms and Anathema to live for herself for the first time in years. Our heroes get back in their car, Crowley tempting Aziraphale with an apple.
All in all, this whole post is a very long reminder for Amazon Prime to #PayYourWriters, #PayYourActors, and #RenewGoodOmens! The strike is still ongoing and crucial for any new content for this and many other fandoms #GiveMeS3orGiveMeDeath
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