#and bartosz was probably so done with them | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nikkzwrites · 4 years

Text

(They Long to Be) Close to You | Dark Fix-It Fic Series Part 2 | Chapter 2

A/N: This fic is one that I started with my OC because honestly, I personally didn’t like how season 3 ended. So I am rewriting all of Dark with my OC Annalise Dahlheim. I hope you all like it. Some things will be expanded more on just for more depth to Dark that season 3 kinda skipped over so…. yeah. This is part two of the series! You can start the full series here!

CW: Canon Typical Triggers: Smoking, Sex, Language, Drugs, Drinking, Death, Violence.

Word Count: 5.4k

[First Chapter] [Next Chapter]

“And because their eyes and hearts were blind,” Killian continued with the play, “they were punished for their sins. Here and now.”

Mary looked down at her watch and nodded towards Noah. She pointed to her watch and said, “It’s time for us to go Noah.”

Noah nodded as he walked out to his car with the woman following behind him. She got into the driver’s seat and the man got into the back, preparing his rag.

Mary’s heart raced, but she knew. She knew she had to do this. She also knew they wouldn’t get caught. This was all part of the cycle that needed to be continued. This was the last run for them. Her and Noah. One last before she, Noah, Bartosz, and Noah’s wife were free of this disaster. Free from this sin they were wrapped up in.

“And what flew plummeted to Earth,” Killian spoke to the audience, “And what was on Earth changed its shape.” One of his hands still covered Martha’s face as he spoke outwards to the auditorium, “And revealed its grotesque face, which was nothing but blasphemy made of flesh.”

Annalise stared at Martha as they slowly dissolved into small particles of lights. Almost like the small embers let off of a bonfire. She nodded and stayed close to her friend as they dissipated. When they reappeared, Annalise’s hand squeezed her friend’s hand. She looked around to see Erit Lux. She smiled widely and gasped. It was so beautiful. She ran around the main room studying everything with so much delight. She adored this place. It was as if it were made specifically with her in mind. She turned to her friend and her eyes shined, “What is this place?”

The short haired Martha smiled for the first time in what felt like eternity. She walked to the excited girl and explained, “This is where we plot to save the world. You and I.” She wrapped her arm gently around Annalise’s waist and led her to one of the chairs. Her face slowly changed to one of serious melancholy. She knelt in front of Annalise, who was now sitting in one of the chair, and asked, “Do you trust me?”

Annalise nodded, “Of course.” Her eyes filled with admiration and care as she caressed her friend’s cheek, “What is going on and what are you going on about?” She heard the large doors at the other end of the room open and the girl turned her head. Martha stayed perfectly still knowing who was coming. Annalise’s lips trembled as she saw an older woman approach them. Annalise’s heart raced. There was a boy, man, and older gentleman following close behind her. The girl felt something inside of her telling her to run. She grabbed the other girl’s arm and stood up. Before she could get a word out, she heard the woman’s voice.

“My sweet Annalise,” Eve smiled at her, “I’m so happy to see you again. I haven’t seen you like this in many years.”

Across town, Jonas watched tearfully as Killian moved Martha’s hair and kissed her neck causing the girl to break character and giggle. She turned to her boyfriend and gave him a kiss. They had to stop there so that the parent’s meeting could start. Killian wished his girlfriend goodbye before both of their phones went off. Killian looked panicked at her and asked Martha, “Well, I haven’t heard anything from her since school ended. Have you?”

Martha shook her head, panicked, but looked through her phone. There were texts from right around the time her father claimed her best friend had gone missing. She looked up at Killian and asked, “Can you go talk to Bartosz? Find out what’s going on and if they are together?”

He nodded and said, “Let’s still meet up at the tracks at nine. Maybe she will show up there. Hopefully she’s okay.” He jogged off to try and contact his other friends.

Jonas slowly approached Martha as she hurried to pack up to go back to her childhood home to talk to her father about what was going on with her best friend. He stared at her for a moment and then spoke, “Martha.”

She turned to him annoyed and told him angrily, “I have no idea what you want from me, but I want nothing from you, okay? So get lost.” She growled then remembered Annalise’s reaction to him earlier that day then asked in a harsh whisper, “Did you have something to do with this?”

Jonas shook his head and pleaded with her, “Please listen to me. Maybe you don’t know who I am. But today is November 4, and Mikkel…” He grabbed her arm.

She shook her head and pulled away from him, “What? Mikkel?” She stared at him, “Don’t tell me you are a part of this.”

Jonas shook his head, “Michael Kahnwald? Hannah’s husband. He’s not who you think--”

“Hannah’s husband,” She interrupted him, “Are you joking?” She started to tear up and growled at him again, “I don’t know any Michael Kahnwald. Hannah’s husband is my dad and his name is Ulrich and he is looking for my best friend who went missing. So, I don’t know what your deal is, but just fuck off already, okay?” Martha stormed away from him. She was so angry. What was he playing at? What was going on? Where was her Annalise? She needed this information and soon. Her chest constricted at the thought that what happened to Erik could have happened to the girl she held secret feelings for.

Jonas stood there in confusion. He whispered to himself in contemplation, “Annalise?”

Annalise looked at the woman and tilted her head, “Excuse me? Do I know you?” She placed the taller girl behind her as if she was going to protect the bigger girl from the danger in front of them.

Eve smiled kindly, “You are just the same. You may not know me like this, but look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t know.”

Annalise walked closer and studied the woman more thoroughly. She gasped. Her hand shook as she reached over to glaze her hand over the older woman’s face. Her voice quivered as she whispered, “Martha?”

At the bunker, Magnus walked to meet up with his girlfriend. They both needed each other so much. They had arranged this meeting earlier at school while they had hid out to make out in one of the unused gym equipment rooms. He smiled to himself as he walked to go meet up with her. He opened the large metal door.

Annalise trembled as she woke up. She was surrounded by darkness and something cold was pressed near her. It smelled horribly. A smell she never would forget. The last thing she remembered was being grabbed by a large blond man and trying to scream out to Hannah for help after the short haired scarred Martha disappeared without her. She looked around. There wasn’t a lot of space where she was trapped. Slowly, her mind started to come together and her eyes adjusted to the darkness. A small boy, probably no older than Mikkel was there, blue and dead chest to chest with her. His eyes burned to a crisp leaving him unrecognizable. She gagged and covered her mouth trying to hold the food she and Hannah had just ate down. She took a deep breath and swallowed it back down as tears ran down her face. Annalise started to scream, crying out for anyone to help her. She sobbed uselessly. She continued to scream until a woman opened a slit in the door allowing light to enter the room.

“Shhh…,” Mary comforted the girl, “You’re okay. You don’t have to be afraid.”

Annalise choked on her tears as she readjusted herself to put her stomach flat against the door so that way she could talk to the woman in the slit. “Please,” the girl pleaded, “Please let me out.”

Mary shook her head, “I’m sorry. I can’t. It’s the only way for us to get our husband back.”

Annalise stared at her confused, “Our? Who are you?”

Mary smiled gently at the girl and asked, “Don’t you know?” She shook her head and said, “You have feelings for both your best friend and her ex-boyfriend. You later marry him by the way. Your first kiss was with a blond boy you’ve only met in your dreams. A dream where you got accidentally shot by him.” She watched as the teenaged girl slowly started to come to terms with what was happening. To help push her younger self closer to the answers, she whispered, “I am you. My name is Annalise Dahlheim. Everything you are experiencing, I’ve done already, but I was on the other side of it then. We have to follow this path, over and over again.”

Annalise cried, “Why did you lock me in here?”

Mary shook her head, “I didn’t. Noah did.”

“Who’s Noah,” Annalise asked desperately.

Mary shook her head, “He is someone who works for Adam.”

Annalise sobbed, “But who is Adam? Why can’t you just let me out? We, you, don’t have to do this! Please let me out.”

Mary shook her head, “I can’t, because then you won’t become what I am today. If I now change my past, I will change who I am at this very moment. Then we can’t save Bartosz and help save everyone else from destruction that Adam wants. I’m sorry. You will get the answers you want in time.” She shut the slit and allowed her own tears to fall. She pressed her back against the metal door and started to cry remembering what it was like being trapped, alone, and scared with only Mads’s dead body as company.

Elisabeth opened and closed the door to her house. Her grandfather was mumbling to himself again, “It will happen again.” He just kept repeating that one phrase over and over again. The girl looked around and called for her parents. When there was no reply, she slowly made her way to her grandfather and sat down next to him. He started to then say, “Tick Tock. Tick Tock.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her close. This action surprised the poor girl, causing her to gasp. Helge held her hand close and told her, “The beginning is the end. And the end is the beginning.” When Elisabeth fought away from her, Helge went back to repeating, “Tick Tock. Tick Tock.”

Jonas stumbled his way to the church. He knew if Annalise were anywhere, that’s where she would be. When he got to the graveyard, something caught his eye. There. Instead of his father’s grave, rested his best friend’s mother’s grave. He panted and looked up. He couldn’t dwell on this. He tried to think about how and why Annalise would be in the past now. Who even would have taken her there? How could she have replaced Mikkel’s place? This was all puzzling to him.

“Can I help you,” Peter’s voice snapped Jonas out of his thoughts. The pastor walked over to the strange young boy. He could tell from the look on Jonas’s face he was on a journey for something. Peter asked him, “Are you looking for something in particular?”

Jonas looked at him and then stated, “I have two things. I wanted to know if you’ve seen Annalise and if someone was buried here.”

Peter simply asked the boy, “Who?”

Jonas paused for a moment, “Kahnwald, Michael Kahnwald.”

Peter shook his head, “No. We have a Daniel Kahnwald, died in ‘64, but no Michael Kahnwald. Annalise isn’t here either.”

Jonas’s eyes furrowed and shook his head, “Maybe that’s why I’m here.” He looked around, “So it doesn’t happen.”

Peter asked the boy, “So what happens? Do I know you? I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before. Are you two related?” He looked at the boy questioningly. When the boy looked at him confused, Peter explained, “You know… David’s granddaughter? Daniel’s son, David? Annalise?”

Jonas blinked and stormed past the man without an answer to his question.

Annalise walked back home replaying the conversation she had with Eve in her head. She shook her head. Was she really going to marry Bartosz, was that clef lipped boy, man, and old man really all the same person and also her and Martha’s son? How did Martha and her even have a son? Did Bartosz know about that? Was this really all to save their world against the blond boy she met only today? Was he really the same person as the old man who was obsessed with her? Why were they in love with her anyway? She eventually walked inside the house not even noticing all the cop cars outside the house. She could hear Hannah crying and Ulrich trying to comfort her as she walked in. “Hello,” Annalise called confused.

Ulrich heard the door open and close, but assumed it was another one of his officers walking in and out of the house trying to get one of Annalise’s things so that another dog could track her scent. When he heard her voice, He let go of Hannah and stood. He ran to the doorway and scooped up the girl crying. He cradled her as he hid his face into her neck, “Annalise!”

Martha ran down the stairs after hearing her father and stood behind him. She was breathing heavily staring at her friend. There she was, safe and sound. Back home. Martha’s heart raced. When Ulrich put Annalise down, Martha took his place by holding her. Martha started to cry and asked, “Where were you?”

Annalise blinked. She held her friend back and slowly ran her fingers through her friend’s long dark hair. Her chest convulsed as she slowly came to terms with what was going on. Her lips trembled as she explained, “I was just visiting Daniel’s grave. I’m fine.” She looked around at everyone’s worried faces.

Hannah waddled into the room and told the girl, “I heard you scream and were dragged into a car.”

Annalise shook her head, “Some guys from school thought it would be a fun prank. I’m sorry. I would have called, but my phone died.” She took Martha’s hand and led her up the stairs. She asked the group, “Can Martha stay? I’m a little freaked out and I’m sure everyone would feel safer if she was here with me too.”

Ulrich looked at Hannah with hope in his eyes. Hannah nodded and sighed. “Just please don’t keep us up all night you two. Martha, call your mom and update her please.”

Martha nodded as she felt herself being dragged into her old bedroom. Annalise pulled her inside the room and shut the door. The next thing Martha knew, Annalise’s lips were pressed against her own. Martha took a second to get her bearings from being pressed against her childhood door by her girl crush. She slowly allowed her eyes to close and kiss the other girl back.

Annalise clung to Martha as if a lifeline. When the taller girl wrapped her arms around the smaller girl’s waist as she allowed herself into the kiss, Annalise deepened the kiss allowing their tongues to dance. Her fingers trapped themselves in Martha’s long curly locks. Annalise could tell Martha had been drinking tea recently with the floral taste she had. It was probably Martha’s favorite that Ulrich still had in the cabinets. Martha could still taste the Coca-Cola on Annalise. It wasn’t too long before Annalise heard Martha’s phone going off. As their lips disconnected, a small bit of saliva left their tongues still connected. It eventually broke from gravity and Annalise wiped her mouth and turned away from the other girl.

Martha answered the phone, “Yeah. She came home. She said she was at the graves. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’m going to stay with her. Yeah, Dad said it was okay. I will. Okay. Bye.” She hung up and looked at Annalise. Martha pulled at her dress and rubbed her thighs together, “Are you going to tell me what this was all about?”

“Who was that,” Annalise asked first.

Martha raised her brow, “Magnus? Everyone was worried sick about you. Tell me what’s going on.”

Annalise shook her head and said, “I just…” She blushed as she figured a small lie, “I just thought I should try it. You know? I…” Annalise looked down towards the ground ashamed of herself for lying to her best friend, but what else could she do? Nothing. Martha wasn’t going to believe her.

Martha felt bad. Her heart broke seeing Annalise so ashamed. She thought that her best friend felt ashamed for just allowing her feelings to get the best of her. Especially since she shared the same feelings. The taller girl walked closer to her small friend. Martha shook her head as she lifted Annalise’s chin to look her in the eye, “It’s okay. I understand.” She giggled and asked, “Do you want to try it out more?”

Annalise blushed more. She realized that she got herself into an even worse position. The girl nodded though to keep up everything.

Martha smiled and pressed her lips gently against Annalise’s. She used her knee to open Annalise’s legs so that way they could entangle more.

The boy walked up to the Doppler house in 1987 followed by his older selves and a confused looking Annalise. The man turned towards her and said, “We have to come here first before we go to Adam’s office. You trust me, right Mom?”

Annalise swallowed and asked, “Can I stay out here? I don’t think I’m ready for this part of the job yet?”

The man smiled, “Of course you can.” He kissed her head and his other two forms did the same before going into the Doppler mansion. The boy opened the door first.

“Hello,” Bernd greeted the boy from his wheelchair, “Can I help you? You must be lost.”

The boy slowly approached the man and stared at him. He then said simply, “The master key. For the nuclear power plant.”

“Is this a joke,” the man asked.

His eyes stared straight into him, “You kept it.”

“Do you think this is funny,” Bernd asked the boy. He watched as the boy seemed to zone out for a second before going to grab an apple. The man told the boy, “If you don’t leave, I will call the police.”

The boy looked at the apple as the other two forms of himself walked in. The middle aged one hung up the phone and took out his tool. He told the man, “Nothing is in vain.” He started to get his weapon ready, “No breath. No step. No word. No pain. An everlasting Miracle of the One.” All three forms started to surround the man then the middle form choked him.

Annalise closed her eyes and cried as this happened knowing soon she was going to have to see her own body.

Aleksander handed Erik and Kilian’s father the money telling him, “You know what you have to do.”

Martha rode her bike down to the bridge with Annalise standing behind her, holding onto the girl’s shoulders. Annalise had stolen Martha’s yellow jacket and with a smile. They giggled as they slid their way down to the train tracks. Annalise smiled and asked, “Why don’t we surprise everyone else, yeah?” She scrambled her way back up, “We can see how Kilian and Bartosz react!”

Martha nodded and watched her friend go for a second. She turned, feeling a second set of eyes on her. She called out, “Kilian? Stop screwing around.” Then she saw the blond boy approach. She took a step back, “What is this?”

Annalise froze seeing Jonas there. Her heart raced. What was he doing there? Why couldn’t she move? She felt as if she were trapped in her spot by some ungodly force. Her eyes teared up as she watched them.

“I don’t want to scare you,” Jonas explained to the other girl.

Martha then asked, “Why did you say we know each other? Were you the one who took Annalise? That wasn’t fucking funny.”

Jonas shook his head, “I had nothing to do with Annalise’s disappearance. But, we do know each other. Not now, but in another time.”

Martha felt a wave of comfort. Something inside of her knew he was telling the truth. This had happened before. She looked at him with tears filling her eyes, “What does that mean?”

Jonas could tell on her face that she knew what he was talking about now, “You’ve seen this all before. The light. The forest. Me. It’s deja vu. Or a glitch in the matrix.”

Martha knew instinctively what came next. Tears fell from her eyes as she asked, “What?”

“I think I know why I’m here now,” He explained. He slowly approached Martha, “Why you came to get me. So I can change it.”

“Change what,” Martha sneered.

Franziska saw Annalise frozen and hurried to the girl. She looked towards Magnus who was wholly focused on his sister. She helped Annalise up and walked with her down. Magnus turned to his sister and asked, “Who is he?”

Jonas looked confused, “Where’s Mikkel?”

“Mikkel,” Magnus asked.

Jonas motioned and asked, “Mikkel isn’t with you?”

Annalise felt tears falling from her eyes. Something inside her screamed. An echo resonated into her head, like a faint memory of her own voice saying, ‘H-h-hello. I think my brother has gone missing in the Winden woods. We’ve been calling for him, but he won’t respond.’ She shook her head and hid her face in Franziska.

The redheaded girl turned to her friend and signed, “Are you okay?”

Annalise nodded, but continued hiding her face. Magnus asked Jonas, “Are you blind or what?”

Kilian walked up with Bartosz trailing behind him and asked, “What is he doing here?” He looked to Martha and asked, “Did you bring him along?”

Bartosz honed in on Annalise and rushed to her side. He slowly took the girl away from Franziska signing a, “Thank you.” He smiled down at Annalise and gave her a giant hug.

Jonas blinked watching how different everything, everyone was. He watched as Annalise wrapped her arms around Bartosz’s neck with a large smile. He knew that face of relief on her well. He whispered under his breath, “Annalise?”

Magnus approached the boy more and asked, “What is this? How do you know my brother?”

Jonas shook his head, “This can’t be. You took him with you. Heide, the babysitter, is sick. And he didn’t want to stay home alone so he came along.” He looked towards Annalise who was now putting Bartosz between himself and her. The boy with his best friend’s face slowly putting himself between them as well.

Magnus shook his head looking at this insane boy. He looked around then back at Jonas, “No idea what the fuck this is, but Mikkel is old enough to look after himself. Now you’d better fuck off.” When Jonas didn��t leave immediately, getting lost in the strangeness, Magnus told him, “Get lost, freak.”

Jonas took a step back and watched them leave. Magnus and Kilian howled as they walked away. Annalise smiled as she stole Bartosz’s scarf, placed it around herself, and put his arm around him as they followed the others. She howled at the moon with them. Martha stayed and stared at him a moment before turning back to follow the rest of the group.

Ulrich walked into the police building and called to Charlotte, “Charlotte? I’m going to the parents’ meeting. I can give you a ride if you’d like. I can give you Annalise’s report of what happened on the way.”

Charlotte nodded and said, “All right.” She turned to her co-workers and handed off some of the other paperwork, “Can you take it from her?”

Woller and the female officer nodded and watched as Charlotte walked away with Ulrich to his car.

Hannah walked back into the home after going grab snacks for Annalise and Martha’s sleepover to find the house completely empty and Ulrich’s jacket nicely folded on the table. She looked down and sighed.

Annalise’s sobs were so faint now. Her throat burned from lack of hydration. She was so scared. There alone with the dead Mads.

After setting the room on fire, they all surrounded the girl to give her a gentle embrace. Annalise watched as her soft innocent dead mirrored self in Adam’s world became engulfed into the hellish flickers. She turned with her sons and started to memorize the plans for the time machine. She looked up at the middle form and nodded. He turned the sphere and the group slowly dissipated into embers right when Sic Mundus Franziska and Magnus ran in. They stared as a version of their once friend disappeared.

Killian looked towards Martha and asked, “Why did he act like he knew you? Do you know him?”

Martha shook her head, “No.” She glared towards Bartosz and Annalise laughing and holding hands, “I think Annalise knows him though.”

Bartosz looked at the girl disappointed hearing Martha’s accusation. He let his hand slip away from Annalise’s and he shrugged, “Who knows.”

Annalise blinked and realized what she had to do. She danced over towards Martha and took the other girl’s hands. She led Martha to walk with her and Bartosz, “Martha is joking. I only really hang out with all of you. Where would I know him from?” She grabbed Bartosz’s hand with her free one with a giant smile.

Bartosz sighed and wrapped his scarf more around the girl’s neck so that she wouldn’t trip, “Did you know that Nostradamus predicted the world would end this year?” He smiled at Annalise causing the girl to blush as he admired his handiwork.

“What a load of crap,” Magnus rolled his eyes.

Bartosz shook his head and looked towards the rest of the group, “No. Really. The apocalypse is practically around the corner.”

Suddenly, the trapped girl felt as if blessed with new knowledge. She felt as if she knew what happened after going with Martha, but she didn’t go with Martha. She also knew how to get herself out of here. She dried her tears and started her work. She hissed as a spark flew and scared her. She needed to escape though. She needed to get back to her friends. This rudimentary time machine was just going to have to give her the basis of what she needed. She silently thanked her son for helping her get to this point. She, then, blinked. Since when did she and Martha have a son? How did that even work? She shook her head. She didn’t have time to try to explain this to herself. She had to do this and quickly.

Mary heard noises of the machine being messed with. She looked at her watch and dried her tears. She whispered to herself, “See you soon.” She walked away to go back to the Erit Lux headquarters with Noah to talk to Eve about the fact their job was done. Now it was time to allow Noah and his wife out of the cycle… For now….

Magnus chuckled and pulled Franziska close to him, “Glad I got a girlfriend with her own bunker.”

Annalise slowed to a stop hearing about the bunker. She felt weird. The girl reached to her head. What was going on?

Jonas jogged to his childhood home. He started to cry. He walked around to try and get inside.

“And you think you’ll find something here,” Bartosz asked Kilian.

Kilian nodded, “Erik sometimes spent nights here in the summer. Maybe the police overlooked something.”

Magnus smiled and chuckled, “Have you heard the story of the cave monster?”

Kilian shook his head, “Spare us the bullshit man.”

“It’s not bullshit,” Magnus defended, “Some 100 years ago, just after WWI they did experiments here.”

Bartosz chuckled as Annalise squeezed his hand. He leaned his head against hers as a way to comfort her. Martha rolled her eyes and looked at her brother to continue, “What kind of experiments?”

Suddenly they all heard a branch break. They all turned with their flashlights. Then there was a noise from inside the cave. The lights started to flicker. The teens all freaked out and started to run. Martha and Annalise stood there frozen. Annalise shook her head and blinked as Martha grabbed her, “Come on!” They both ran together before getting separated again. Martha tripped and looked around. She called out for anyone to hear her. She slowly turned, hearing her name being called. She saw herself covered in black liquid. Martha shook her head and ran back to the rest of the group.

Annalise growled as she used her teeth to strip one of the wires. Her hands were trembling. If she couldn’t make it home, her body would need to be disposed of and there would be still only one of her, but what if Ulrich or someone found her? Surely they were looking for her. She needed to get home. She jolted from an energy surge. Pain seared through her arms. She huffed as she tried to push past the numb feeling in her arms now. She couldn’t let Adam get her. No matter the cost, Adam could never get ahold of her or this body. She needed to get out.

Katharina walked into the school forcefully. She was surprised by the lights just as Hannah was. Ulrich and Charlotte’s makeout was interrupted by the birds falling. Aleksander stood by as the man helped hide the waste down into the other part of the cave. Kilian ran back to find Martha. He grabbed her hand and led her to the bunker where the rest of the group waited for her. Jonas walked into Annalise’s old room. Tears fell from the otherworlder’s eyes seeing his father sleeping peacefully as if nothing was going on around him. Jonas knew though someone was travelling. He just didn’t know who. The rest of the Dopplers looked around wondering what was happening while Magnus trapped the group into the bunker.

“Is it over,” Kilian asked, panting.

Magnus nodded, “I think so.”

There was a swirling noise as the portal sprung to life. Annalise laughed hard and happily. She did it! She figured it out! She was going home!

A rip in space opened in the bunker. Annalise slowly zoned out. Magnus panicked, “What… What is that?” They all stared intently at it as a body of a small boy crashed onto the floor and Annalise fainted into Bartosz’s arms after hearing the sound of Mads’s dead body thump onto the cement.

Everyone started to curse, but Martha jumped into action. She knelt over the boy and said, “I think he’s dead.”

“Who,” Killian asked, “Who is that?!”

Bartosz held Annalise in his arms, “Anna. Anna! Wake up! Are you okay?”

Martha opened up the boy’s jacket to reveal his name card. She lifted it up, “Mads Nielsen.”

Jonas walked out of his home and turned to look at it one last time. When he turned back to go to the caves, there was a figure of an older woman there. She told the boy, “I’ve waited for this moment for so long. For you to come back.”

Jonas cautiously approached her and asked, “Who are you?”

The woman walked forward and said, “Mikkel. He didn’t travel back. He won't become your father. And you… will never be born in this world. A world without you. Isn’t that what you wanted?” Jonas stared at her debating as she continued, “Yet, despite that, this world is doomed to the same fate as yours.” The woman walked over to him, “Everything will fall apart. In this world, just as it will in yours. Again. And again. Because of you. Because of me.” She whispered to him, “and because of Annalise.”

“Martha,” Jonas started to tear up in understanding.

Annalise stood in the mirror, she listened to Martha sleeping in the bed. She slowly removed the coat and her long sleeved shirt to reveal electrical burn marks on her. She looked up into the mirror. All of what had happened was real. She touched her hand to the mirror. She was in three places at once. Three points in space and time and now she was all together again. Tears fell from her eyes as she ran to the bathroom to throw up and cry from being trapped with a dead body of a long lost boy for hours as he decomposed. Rotting there, with only her who was rotting inside from all the death she’s seen and from the knowledge of Adam.

#yesterday once more fanfic #(they long to be) close to you fanfic #dark fanfic #dark netflix #dark netflix fanfic #dark (netflix)#dark (netflix) fanfiction

9 notes · View notes

gellavonhamster · 4 years

Note

for the ask meme: 001 for dark (even though i still haven’t watched it yet but i’m really excited to eventually) and/or 002 for beatrice/bertrand/lemony

001 for Dark:

Favorite character: Claudia - the cleverest player in the time travel game and the baddest bitch with an amazing character development

Least favorite character: Ulrich. Objectively speaking, he is hardly the worst person out there, but I just find him so annoying

5 favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Aleksander/Regina, Agnes/Doris, Hannah/Katharina, Jonas/Martha (I couldn’t care less about them for the first two seasons, but s3 changed my mind), annnd Bartosz/Silja

Character I find most attractive: AGNES

Character I would marry: do I absolutely have to marry into that horrible town? The 1950′s version of Egon seems like an okay option, I guess

Character I would be best friends with: Regina or Ines

A random thought: a fic I recently read opened my eyes to the fact that the snake biting its own tail - the symbol associated with the time travellers - could signify not only the ouroboros, in which the beginning is the end and the end is the beginning, but also (in its secondary meaning) the serpent, which seems quite appropriate for a story that has Adam, Eve, (the myth of) Paradise, and the (White) Devil, and wow... there are truly endless possibilities for analysis, what a mindblowing show (she said for the 100th time)

An unpopular opinion: I... don’t feel as strongly about Noah/Elisabeth as everyone else seems to. That must be because we didn’t see much of them as an actual couple, it was mostly a grown man around a little girl (creepy) or a young adult around a girl who is still significantly younger than he (less creepy, but still a bit weird). They obviously loved each other a lot and deserved better, but I guess I just didn’t have enough time to get attached to them as a ship

My Canon OTP: Aleksander/Regina

My Non-canon OTP: I don’t really have one at this point, but the idea of Hannah/Katharina is slowly growing on me... who needs cheating men, lol

Most Badass Character: Claudia (see the first point)

Most Epic Villain: I don’t think there are any clear-cut villains on this show, but if we’re talking those morally gray characters who cause the most problems, then probably Eve (sorry, Adam!)

Pairing I am not a fan of: the first ship I thought of is very spoilery, so I’ll just say instead that Ulrich/Hannah was an unhealthy trashfire of a relationship that made everything worse for everybody

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Silja (underdeveloped, needed more personality, I still love her though), Agnes and Doris (their subplot got neglected towards the end)

Favourite Friendship: weirdly enough, I don’t know? Everyone in this story just keeps screwing everyone over. But I enjoyed what little we saw of alt!Martha and alt!Bartosz together, and, if sibling dynamics count, Martha & Magnus.

Character I most identify with: I’ve definitely made this joke somewhere already, but Wöller because comic relief eye injury + I, too, never have a clue about what’s going on

Character I wish I could be: uhhh, no one? Maybe Claudia if I really have to come up with an answer (not pre-time travel Claudia, though).

002 for B/B/L:

When I started shipping them: god, I don’t remember. Some time after joining the ASOUE fandom and reading some fics and realizing that this is a possibility and I like this possibility a lot

My thoughts: I know I’ve said this before, but it makes canon less tragic (no love triangle) and MORE tragic (Lemony loses both people he loved) at the same time, and I think that’s beautiful. Also, each dynamic between each two characters within this OT3 is so interesting in its own way! There’s Lemony/Beatrice that must have grown from a passionate relationship of two dramatic and loving people who were probably too similar in their personality and not similar enough in their aspirations to what is basically the poet and the muse (probably because writing about a muse is not as painful as mourning a real woman). There’s Bertrand/Beatrice, which I see as a more mature and healthy, if less romantic, relationship of two people who share the same goals and the weight of the same crime on their shoulders and decide to change their lives together. And then there’s Bertrand/Lemony - two gifted men who got compared to each other (well, at least L sure got compared to B) even before they first met, and who, logically, must have been rivals, except that there is a lot of fondness in how Lemony writes about the man who married his ex-bride... inch resting..... what I’m saying is that it’s a facinating dynamic made up of three separate fascinating dynamics and they live in my head rent free

What makes me happy about them: see above for fascinating dynamics + I like to imagine that whatever time they spent together was very happy for all three of them

What makes me sad about them: oh, I don’t know, the fact that two of them die, and one is left alone and depressed? :))

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: I think I liked, at least more or less, all B/B/L fics I’ve read, so I have no answer

Things I look for in fanfic: at this point I just look for fanfic, period. Also smut bc I can’t believe the closest thing to smut w/ this ship was written by me, of all people

My wishlist: I don’t see how this point is different from the previous one? Anyway, gimme all the fanfiction and fanart and headcanons and everything

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: Beatrice with R, Bertrand with Ernest (Vera sold me on this ship :D), Lemony with his Kind Editor

My happily ever after for them: B&B both survive the fire, start looking for their children, run into L, and then all three of them together manage to find Violet, Klaus, and Sunny

#thank you!#asks #littlestsnicket #gella talks dark #gella talks snicketverse #lemonberry ice

12 notes · View notes

scottsumrners · 4 years

Note

did you like the dark finale? it kinda bothers me even back in s2 when the show badly tried to make martha this timeless tragic love interest and then made that the whole thing in s3 instead of focusing on the parent/child relationship of mikkel and jonas bc i think the best thing that came out of dark in terms of story is the many different parent/child relationships that are shown and not whatever jonas and martha are. i wish it would’ve been less about her and them as soulmates in fate thing

i absolutely loved the finale. i thought it was really well done, and it brought perfect closure to the show in ways that many others shows have tried but none have succeeded.

that being said, i’m with you there 100%. i think that, even at the very end, the “a parent’s love (or lack thereof) for a child” as the motivator was present - from mikkel killing himself so jonas can live, to katharina dying at the hands of her mother, to claudia doing all she could to keep regina alive, right down to the qualm between adam and eva to keep seth alive (i’m just gonna keep calling him seth because it has a nice ring to it. or maybe “apfel”? he was the temptation for eva, after all)

and while relationships were present (and extremely heterosexual) in the series, even then jonas/martha stood out; first because they were related (although at the end, who wasn’t?), and then later on because martha was....barely even a player in the first two seasons? she was either there as an unattainable/star-crossed love for jonas, or as a reason for the fight between jonas/bartosz. i really like that they expanded her role in s03 to be some sort of foil to jonas, but i like i said in another post, i hate that they had to do it at the expense of her being an incubator ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

but also we have to consider that the finale would probably not have been able to play out quite as well if it had happened between, say, jonas and mikkel, though

#dark netflix #dark rewatch #dark spoilers

7 notes · View notes

bettsfic · 4 years

Note

Please bestow is with your Dark thoughts Betts. When they used Hozier’s ‘somewhere in the woods’....put a fork in me I’m done.

when i had to pause the show to google “quantum superposition” i realized that i wasn’t enjoying the direction it had taken.

mostly, i have questions.

where did the fifth martha come from? the one adam killed with the god particle? she wasn’t on the same path as eva’s martha and never got the face scar but she died?

what were magnus and franziska doing when bartosz and jonas were being cranky in the nineteenth century?

bartosz says that jonas’ appearance got all fucked up because of traveling but? where did he travel? how did he get the god particle to work?

where did those fucking round time/world machines come from and how does everyone know how to use them without being taught?

if young noah sees agnes kill older noah, doesn’t he already know that jonas betrays him, before he even betrays him? (i might be remembering that wrong)

if there’s an original world that deviates in 1986, am i supposed to believe that every single character born from time travel just doesn’t exist in the original world? and if that’s true, doesn’t there mean there would have to have been a first loop to tie the rest of the knot, and if that’s the case, then the first iteration would be distinctly different from the rest? this is the biggest plot hole in the entire show

am i supposed to believe that jonas’ existence is such a bad influence on bartosz that he’s a burnout in adam’s world but a goddamn nuclear physicist in eva’s?

if both eva and adam’s world came from the same initial point, what set off the differences? why are there so many color differences and architectural mirroring, which implies the architects and designers across both worlds are the same but prefer mirrored layouts and different color palettes?

did eva want the loop to continue and adam wanted it to stop? for all they reiterated what both of them wanted, i still can’t tell how they were in conflict?

where did the third claudia come from, when we watched claudia prime shoot her in the head?

how is everyone suddenly able to travel at any point in time and presumably any space, when before they could only go in 33 year intervals?

where did the broken time machine come from that claudia gives to adult jonas, who gives it to tanhaus who then discovers time travel?

what was the result of tanhaus’ experiment that split the original world? did he see any results or was he just like “damn that was a bust” and have no idea he superimposed 3 realities on top of one another?

why is the bunker a bunker all of the time except for 1986 when it suddenly turns into a fully furnished boy’s bedroom complete with a television set? and why did the first time machine require killing boys when technically the time machine itself is a paradox, because it has always existed? (but again, the ending implies there was a first time loop, so it can’t have always existed)

why did eva’s apocalypse result in a bunch of sand??

adam presumably spends 33 years trying to figure out the god particle or whatever, but eva in her world just...has it already? who figured it out?

how does the noah in eva’s world exist if there’s no jonas to take bartosz back in time to meet silja, who wouldn’t have been born anyway if hannah didn’t go back in time to spite fuck egon?

who fucked helge?

am i the only one who thought noah was going to start making out with jonas after charlotte kidnaps herself?

in the original world, regina isn’t with aleksander. does this mean boris doesn’t murder anyone in the original world, and does that mean the murder was a result of time travel? and since the murder happened outside winden, are we supposed to believe that the time travel that happened within winden had a greater affect on the entire planet? or did he only not show up so that bartozs couldn’t be born and therefore fuck adam’s sister and have agnes, who fucks adam’s son, and have tronte?

if tronte isn’t regina’s father, who is?

why does charlotte spend so long in s1 and 2 developing her character as a sharp-witted skeptic only to immediately begin doing adam’s bidding?

when egon arrives in eva’s world to help hannah give birth, do they just both die in the apocalypse? and if so, why did eva bother to send egon back at all? and also, in eva’s world egon doesn’t even know hannah so why tf would he care?

what is katharina’s name in the original world if hannah isn’t in 1954 to inspire helena?

if adam and eva’s rhetoric revolves around “if you don’t work for me, everyone will die” why is it then suddenly okay to make sure most of the characters never existed at all?

are we sure the apocalypse doesn’t happen in the original world? does that imply that the apocalypse is the result of time travel? did claudia travel to the original world to confirm for absolute certain the apocalypse didn’t happen? since it was kind of her fault in both worlds?? and does adam-world claudia meet up with original-world claudia at all to tell her the situation? if not, why wouldn’t she??

am i supposed to believe agnes voluntarily fucked the original, or is this a coercion situation in order to have tronte?

am i also supposed to believe agnes would never go back for doris? that she put her allegiance to adam above everything?

why did they spend all of s2 trying to solve the detective’s brother’s murder if they only mentioned it in passing in s3? just, aleksander admits to bartosz that it happened, and that’s it?

why are there so many people who hit other people with rocks (and a fire extinguisher)?

why is everyone crying in nearly every scene?

lastly and most importantly, WHAT HAPPENED TO WOLLER’S EYE?

i have more questions probably but they’re impossible to answer because they’re either plot holes or rhetorical. i still love the first two seasons, but the third fell prey to what i feared would happen, which is that the ambition of the conflict became too unwieldy for its container. my biggest disappointment is the major time travel plot hole, which had otherwise been so seamless. i found myself this season not really caring about the characters at all, because everything was so focused on plot, which imo is what made s1 and 2 so special, a show that values its characters over the ingenuity of its plot. s3 does not hold that same standard. there’s a bizarre amount of crying that does not at all add to the emotional stakes. i wasn’t bored while watching, but i definitely was not as compelled as the first two seasons.

i know this show will never have a lot of fic, but here’s an incomplete list of fics i’d die to read:

noah/elisabeth falling in love after the apocalypse

jonas/noah post-apocalypse friends to lovers to enemies

jonas/bartosz 19th c. friends to lovers to enemies

agnes/doris reunion and HEA

egon/hannah 1950s unrequited angsty love

adult!jonas/hannah s2 mother/son time travel shenanigans

adult!jonas/teen!martha 19th c. sad angst

literally anything that addresses and fixes some of the plot holes

ultimately i think the show ended on the right and inevitable beat, but the path it took to get there didn’t make any sense, and i think would have been better utilized if the writer stuck to honoring the characters rather than exploring the thematic implications of time travel.

#dark #spoilers #Anonymous

4 notes · View notes

metawitches · 4 years

Text

After the Harry Potter costume party of getting to know Martha/Eva’s world in S3EP1, in episode 2 it’s finally time to visit Adam’s post-apocalypse world, which is a form of the world without Winden that Hannah and Ulrich have dreamed of for decades. Ironically, Hannah and Ulrich both flaked out on the apocalypse and have retired separately in the Winden of previous decades. Katharina followed Ulrich.

Peter and Elizabeth serve as our point of view characters for the aftermath of the shockwave as they search for Charlotte and Franziska. Charlotte has jumped forward 33 years and is now in the barren future with Adult Elizabeth. The version of Young Alt Martha who transported Jonas to her world, then left him behind, is with Stranger, Bartosz, Franziska and Magnus in 1888.

We spend much of this episode in 1987, where things have changed in the last 3 months.

Note: I’m going to continue calling Adam/Jonas’ world the Prime world and Eva/Martha’s world the Alt world, because that’s the easiest way for me to keep track of them in my head. I’ll label the characters the same way. It gets too cumbersome to say Adam’s world Jonas and too confusing to use a code when the character movements get complicated, though eventually I will have to differentiate the Young Alt Marthas with 1 & 2.

Recap

The episode begins with the first sex dream of the season. The Young Alt Martha who’s in 1888 dreams about having sex with Young Jonas in her bedroom, in her world. Soon Jonas disappears and her hands are coated in blood and grime, while holding the St Christopher medal that they pass between them as the symbol of their connection. She tries to stop Jonas’ bleeding the way Jonas tried to stop Prime Martha’s; she tries to wash the blood from her hands the way Prime Claudia did after Egon died; and she stands at the mouth of the cave in front of police tape the way… Well, that’s a universal experience on Dark at this point.

Then Martha startles awake in 1888. She’s in the guest bedroom at the Tannhaus clock factory B&B, or the boarding house that will become Erna’s in 32 years- where the travelers sleep is never made completely clear. Stranger sits and stares at her the way Adam will watch Jonas sleep someday, only Stranger manages to be creepier about it, blowing all of my S2 arguments that he could never grow up to be such a mean old man.

The personality change that goes along with a cycle change anyway and another failure to save his Martha have taken their toll on his fragile sanity. He was always a stalker, but the look in his eye now is no longer calm or benign. It’s malevolent, even though he doesn’t know this woman. It’s enough that she’s the wrong Martha.

He’s holding the letter from “Martha” that Young Noah gave him in Hannah’s kitchen in S2E8, which told him to save Bartosz, Magnus and Franziska with the device. He followed those instructions and left the kitchen, leaving Prime Martha to her fate. He’s probably figured out that this is likely a version of the woman who wrote that letter.

Stranger looks like he has a moment of hope that she’ll recognize him when she wakes up. When she doesn’t, he coldly tells her to get dressed, then leaves the room. He’s left her a pile of period appropriate clothes on a chair.

Despite what I said earlier about the world without Winden, Winden is always Winden, and it always rains there, every month except June, so it’s pouring right now.

Stranger hasn’t warned the others, so Magnus and Bartosz have the fun of thinking Martha survived, then learning it’s not her. Franziska apparently didn’t care about Martha all that much.

Alt Martha: “He’s right. I’m not Martha. Not your Martha. I promised I would make everything right again, so none of this would happen. So that you all don’t die in my world and I don’t die in yours. So that Ulrich… Dad… Mikkel… so you all come back. So all this can really end at last.”

Did she just imply that the other 4 people in that room die in her world? Which would mean Prime Young Jonas does, because her world doesn’t have its own Jonas. Hmmm.

A loud alarm goes off in the Prime world version of Jonas’ bedroom. Another joke/warning that carries between scenes. The alarm is in the form of Mikkel’s clock/radio playing the song “You Spin Me Right Round”, which played in the bunker when Erik Obendorf was held there back in S1. It’s also a little foreshadowing for what we’ll hear on the radio in Claudia’s upcoming scene.

I will never stop admiring this show’s ability to layer and multitask.

It’s September 22nd, 1987. Most of the episode takes place on September 22nd in one year or another. Something big must happen then or be close to happening, but I don’t think we know what yet.

[I’m still writing Snowpiercer recaps while writing Dark, so my head is in 2 very different apocalyptic, symbolic dystopias right now. Give me another week or so, then Snowpiercer will be done for the season and I can focus on this more closely. But also, ugh, 3 seasons of constantly rewritten details, help. As always, I reserve the right to edit my work for a while after publication so I can add what I forgot or figured out a little too late. Also, check out Snowpiercer, it’s a good show!]

Katharina wakes up in Mikkel’s bed. She was in the passage when the apocalypse hit at the end of S2. It’s 3 months later and she’s become Stranger Katharina, sleeping in her son’s bed in his abandoned house.

Did the adult version of Mikkel with the black goo/cesium 137 appear to her in the passage, the way he appeared to Stranger Jonas at the end of S1? And if so, did that affect her sanity even more than all of these other events would have? She saw Mikkel in the guilt/love montage, so we know he’s her hallucination/ghost visitation of choice.

Katharina gets dressed and goes downstairs. Sadly, she doesn’t check the milk like Jonas and Martha always do. She does listen to a phone message for Ines saying that the phone bill is 3 months overdue, which means that Mikkel and Ines must have left the house not long after Old Ulrich tried to rescue/kidnap him in June.

Katherina has stacks of “Missing” flyers on the table with Mikkel’s photo on them. She’s searching for Mikkel here as her own child, despite the fact that legally he’s Ines child now. The flyer says Mikkel has been missing for 3 months. Katharina leaves through the French doors, where she’s broken a hole in one of the windows.

Jana and Tronte are holding the funeral and burial for Mads’ empty coffin today. Hermann Albers (Katharina’s absent father) comforts Jana that at least having the coffin and grave will give them some closure, even with an empty grave. And she and Tronte have each other. Jana looks at Tronte across the room and raises her glass to him sardonically.

Jana: “At least we have each other. Now we can get our closure together, looking at a coffin that’s empty. Tell everyone where you were when Mads vanished. F–king your girlfriend. When my son disappeared, he was screwing Claudia Tiedemann. If only you’d devoted as much energy to finding your own son as you’re wasting on finding your mistress. Then maybe Mads wouldn’t have gone.”

In the previous cycles, Jana lied to the police and gave Tronte an alibi other than Claudia. Ulrich never knew his father was with Claudia until he went through the police records in 2019 and realized his mother had lied to the police, so I doubt this conversation became common knowledge.

The conversation and the fact that the gossip didn’t spread are both shocking in a small town like Winden. Either this is the first time this conversation has happened or Tronte’s long standing affair with Claudia is such common knowledge that no one cares anymore.

Still, this is Jana’s finest moment as a character and a huge change from previous cycles- she started out in S1 as a depressed recluse, then was at least seen at a party, having fun, in Cycle 2. Now she’s able to stand up for herself and fight for what’s rightfully hers. This is the way it’s always been, but also due to the small changes Claudia and Jonas make each cycle, if we are to believe their interpretation of the eternal recurrence and its loopholes.

Tronte’s devotion to Claudia never really changes, because why would Claudia change one of her greatest assets?

I thought what Jana said was quite clear, but Tronte says that he doesn’t understand what she’s saying, which will become one of the catchphrases of the season.

Every season of Dark is about secrets, lies and confusion. S1 focused more on the confusion between what was real and what wasn’t. S2 was about keeping secrets while clearing up some of the confusion. In S3, secrets will be revealed and questions will be answered, but at the same time, the characters lie, lie, lie. To each other, to themselves, to the audience. Question everything that everyone says.

When someone does finally tell the truth, the person on the receiving end frequently says, “What are you saying?” They hear the truth so infrequently that they can’t process it. Or it doesn’t fit their worldview, so it bounces off their ears. Or, as with Tronte in this scene, it’s an inconvenient truth, so they’d prefer it remained unspoken. They’d like anyone within hearing range to believe it’s the truthteller who’s lying or delusional.

Jana’s not backing down this time. She dumps her purse on the floor. There are several newspaper articles with headlines about Claudia disappearing within a week of her father’s death, questioning if the two are connected. Jana implies that Claudia could have had something to do with Mads’ disappearance as well. Tronte walks out of the house without another word.

Finally, we really are going to post shockwave Winden, September 22, 2020. Of course it’s pouring rain. A figure in a mud gray raincoat removes a makeshift door from the front of the police station (most of the glass in town was broken by the shockwave). It’s Adult Claudia. She has the place encased in plastic and boards, locking it up pretty tight, which is a good thing, because she’s leaving her dying daughter in there alone most of the time.

I doubt Regina could get out easily if she needed to, but Regina is in such bad shape that she can’t even sit up, so it’s not really an issue. Claudia has her on a makeshift bed, with a heatlamp pointed at her and a radio playing, like she’s a pet lizard. Or a science project.

The radio is playing a report about what’s known of the cause of the June 27 global natural disasters.

Radio Announcer: “The world’s scientists are still looking for an explanation for the events of June 27, 2020. The epicenter/origin of the global catastrophe is still thought to be the small town of Winden. A French research team believes it is possible that our world stood still for a fraction of a nanosecond on June 27. Tidal forces may have diverged as a result. This would explain the global tidal waves, weather phenomena, and disturbances of electrical systems, which in turn could explain the countless number of airplane crashes and the simultaneous loss of power supply to nuclear power plants worldwide. There is currently no sign of the situation stabilizing…”

Claudia turns off the radio. As a physicist, she helped create this world and she already understands what’s going on. She has work to do to achieve her next goal, but the apocalypse was no accident, at least to her older self, who was quite clear that everything had to happen the way it always has. And we’ve known since S1E10 that this apocalypse has happened before. This is where it gets a little tricky to figure out who told which version what and when. This is, at the very least, the 3rd or 4th cycle with an apocalypse, since both Young and Stanger Jonas have seen it before.

But good on the French researchers for finally figuring something out! I bet they get to see the God particle before Elizabeth executes them this cycle, too!

Claudia pulls out a tattered box of Tamoxifen, Regina’s breast cancer medication, and goes to her daughter. Regina is lying very still and breathing shallowly, as if she’s in pain. She’s bathed in red/orange light from the heat lamp. Claudia asks how she is. Regina says, “Mama?” Claudia leaves the medicine pack next to Regina and turns to walk away. When Regina realizes she’s leaving, Claudia says she’ll be back at sunset.

Well that was cold. Regina looks like she’s barely alive and Claudia is leaving her alone in the cold, dark police station where she also left Aleksander, Regina’s beloved husband, to die in the shockwave. Do they even know if Bartosz is alive or dead, since Claudia couldn’t be bothered to save her grandson?

Adult Claudia is just the worst. She can’t find anyone to help with Regina, like a clinic or field hospital? What was the point of rescuing her from the quick death of the apocalypse for this long, slow torture? Regina is living through many people’s worst nightmare about how they’ll die. Claudia has made her a homeless person, slowly dying alone, in pain and in desperate poverty. The only comfort she has is the heat lamp, which is a fire hazard. The medication is prolonging her torture at this point.

Claudia is keeping Regina alive for her own comfort, because she can’t bear the idea of losing her daughter, but she still wants nothing to do with the mundane realities of a relationship with another human being. It’s hard to understand why she’s bothering, when she treated Egon and Tronte the same way.

She’s always, since she was a child, cared more about science and math, yet still had a need to keep a person or two on the string. But there must be other people helping her with the God particle at this point.

Young Elizabeth and Peter Doppler are staying in Benni’s trailer on the edge of town. It’s metal, so maybe its roof survived better than regular houses and the rest is easier to board up than their house. When they leave the trailer, Peter turns on a geiger counter to see if the rain is too radioactive to go out in. The levels are safe enough, so they walk to the military encampment near the power plant that was still in place when Jonas traveled there in S1/2.

The guard tells them that the area will be closed off in 5 days. They’re evacuating the zone and sealing off the restricted portions (which includes the power plant).

Peter, becoming agitated: “What are you saying?”

Guard: “We’re walling it in.”

He lets Peter and Elizabeth through, but asks why Peter would do this to his daughter. Young Noah lurks behind a truck and watches his future wife.

Stalking future, former and alternative loved ones is such a habit on this show.

The wall they’re talking about building is the one which surrounded the power plant in the future in S2. Jonas, Silja and Elizabeth had a spot where they could sneak under it to get to the God Particle in the power plant.

Back in 1888, Alt Martha and Stranger Jonas have explained to Magnus, Franziska and Bartosz that she’s from a parallel world which ends in an apocalypse, just like the Prime world. Magnus can’t accept that there could be another world with a different history.

Stranger asks Martha how she found him. She says that Jonas told her where Stranger was when Jonas traveled from the Prime world to the Alt world. Franziska brilliantly points out that Martha said there isn’t a Jonas native to the Alt world. Stranger is at least smart enough to figure out that a version of himself could have given Alt Martha the information, but even he gets stuck on the fact that he doesn’t remember traveling to her world or meeting her before.

He accuses her of lying, then asks if she wrote the letter Young Noah gave him, what she used to travel between worlds and if Adam sent her. He manhandles her while he’s trying to get answers out of her.

You’d think backwards and sideways time travel wasn’t possible in this universe. She’s standing right in front of them, having just come from another world. That means that a future Jonas or a Jonas from a past cycle could have traveled to her world. We saw the Unknown trio take the instructions for the world hopping sphere from Adam’s lair, so Adam had that capability before 1987, even though we didn’t see him use it. Or did we? He might have used a sphere to leave 2020 before the shockwave hit after he killed Prime Martha in S2Ep8. It would explain how he traveled as quickly and quietly as he did.

The group is interrupted by an older man who’s noticed that they’re late in starting their experiments today. He’s blind, but as soon as he enters the room he senses Martha’s presence. Stranger walks out of the workshop without speaking. The older man, Gustav Tannhaus, touches Martha’s face and figures out that she’s the reason Stranger is in an even worse mood than usual. Gustav tells her she doesn’t need to be afraid of him. Even though he has the reputation for being not quite right in the head, what he really has is the gift of foresight.

In 1987, Katharina stands in the high school hallway and hands out “Missing” flyers between classes. None of the kids recognize Mikkel. Young Ulrich stops to talk to Adult Katharina and mentions that a “lunatic” might have gotten Mikkel. Young Katharina shows up and is impatient, so she and Ulrich leave for class, ignoring Adult Katharina’s questions. Young Hannah hangs back and tells Adult Katharina about the old man who tried to kidnap Michael last summer.

Adult Katharina thanks Hannah for telling her how to find Ulrich by shoving her against a wall and warning her to stay away from Mikkel and Ulrich, Hannah’s future husband and her lifelong friend.

Hannah looks at Katharina like she’s deranged. At this point, I think she is. Hannah just went out of her way to help a stranger, again, and has no idea who “Mikkel” even is.

Tronte is dealing with Jana outing his affair with Claudia by questioning Claudia’s assistant, Jasmin, about Claudia’s disappearance. Since the whole town knows about them and his wife has stopped pretending, he doesn’t have to skulk in the shadows anymore.

Jasmin tells him that Claudia, who had always been meticulous about her appearance, really let herself go in her final week at the plant. She wore the same thing twice! And her hair was a mess. She forgot about appointments. Jasmin thought it had something to do with the old woman and dog who came to visit her (Old Claudia and Gretchen), since Claudia was different after that.

Jasmin is right- Old Claudia brought Claudia’s childhood dog, Gretchen, back to her after her pet had disappeared in the caves 33 years years earlier, as proof that time travel is real. That was the final proof that Adult Claudia needed, in combination with what Bernd showed her: the barrels of cesium 137 stored in the caves and the odd data from the power plant accident in the summer of 1986, which pointed to the existence of the God particle.

In the 2020 post shockwave bunker, Adult Claudia begins to assemble her family tree on the wall. The strings that connect the photos form one of the Gordian knots that she’s slowly deciphering.

Peter and Elizabeth have reached their destination, the official Winden corpse ID tent for the dead lost in the blast. There are rows and rows of photos showing the faces of the dead on the wall. This is what the checkpoint guard thought that Peter should spare Elizabeth. The faces of almost everyone she’s ever known are on this wall.

But Elizabeth is strong and avoiding the truth doesn’t change it. She’s always preferred to have information rather than be left out. This is the stuff of nightmares, whether you sees the photos or see the town itself.

We’re shown photos for Officer Justina Jankowski and Aleksander Tiedemann, who were in the police station. Benni was probably at home. Inspector Clausen and Torben Wöller were in the power plant with Charlotte, in the room with the barrels where the rift formed. No idea where Jürgen Obendorf was, possibly also working somewhere on the power plant grounds. Their heads are all easily recognizable and in relatively good shape, for having been through an apocalypse.

Peter and Eli look through the rows, then check with each other. Neither has found Franziska or Charlotte. A soldier tells Peter that all of the bodies that have been found are represented on the wall. When he relays the news to Eli, she suggests that maybe they time traveled. He hugs her.

We know they won’t find Charlotte and Franziska among the dead because Eli’s right, but they have no idea where their family members were when the shockwave hit.

Katharina rushes to the police station and demands information about the man in the psych ward who tried to kidnap Mikkel. Police Chief Martin Döhring says he’s told her before, he’s not going to give her any information relating to Michael Kahnwald, no matter how much she wants it. She has no proof of who she is or that Michael is her son.

But then Döhring does give in and tell Katharina that Child Protective Services has known where Michael and Ines were all along. They decided to go into hiding for a while for Michael’s safety and to give him a break. The “lunatic” is back in the psych ward, where he’s been for the last 34 years. That number rings a bell with Katharina, so she asks Döhring the kidnapper’s name, but he’s done with her and tells her not to come back again.

As Tronte is driving by the only bus stop in town, he notices Regina sitting there with Gretchen the Dog in her arms. He stops and asks if the dog belongs to Regina. Regina says that the dog belonged to Claudia.

Now that he’s established that Regina might have some information about Claudia for him, he offers her a ride.

Once she’s in the car, he mentions that the dog looks just like the original Gretchen (because Gretchen is a time traveling dog). Regina figures that’s why Claudia kept her. She asks Tronte if he thinks Claudia is guilty of the crimes she’s rumored to have committed, like murdering Regina’s grandfather and her close friend Mads Nielsen, Tronte’s son. Tronte doesn’t know.

I guess they know Claudia well. Since she did commit 2nd or 3rd degree murder on Egon, they are right to wonder what she’s capable of rather than blindly supporting her.

Tronte asks Regina if Claudia said anything about an old lady in the week before she vanished. Regina tells him no. Then he asks if she said anything about him. Both of them get emotional. Regina tells him Claudia didn’t mention him and asks to get out of the car. She’ll walk the rest of the way home. Belatedly, Tronte remembers to offer to help her if she needs anything, then drives away.

This is the man that everyone assumes is Regina’s father and he hasn’t even asked her how she’s been surviving for the last 3 months without a parent to to support her. Even if he’s not her father, he’s her mother’s oldest friend and lover. You’d think he’d care about her a little, for Claudia’s sake. It’s clear that he only cares about Claudia.

Regina is just so alone in the world. She didn’t need to be used by Tronte to further his obsession with her mother.

In 2020, Claudia begins work on the God particle. She makes the first of the tapes documenting her process. Jonas will listen to them when he arrives in the future in S2.

Peter and Eli visit the Kahnwald house, as everyone eventually must. It’s tattered, but still standing (which we knew, since Jonas sleeps there years later). Peter leaves Eli in the kitchen while he looks upstairs. Hannah’s photos are still there- blown on the floor and ragged, but otherwise still recognizable. Eli looks at one while she waits.

Young Noah startles Eli, but moves slowly so as not to scare her further. His hair is black instead of blonde, the way Magnus’ is in the Alt world. In both speech and partial sign, he tells her he’s looking for food and asks if she is, too. She pulls out a notepad and writes down “mom and sister”, then asks where he’s staying. He writes “cave” on the notepad, so she won’t forget. Now the page says “mom and sister cave”.

Peter comes back downstairs and accuses Noah of following them. He says that he told Noah to stay away from them.

Noah: “You want to protect her, I know. So do I. And I will. After you get killed.”

Noah speaks his answer, but doesn’t sign it. Then he leaves. He did speak the words in full view of Eli, so depending on her ability to read lips, she may have understood what he said.

That evening, it’s still pouring rain. Bartosz visits Alt Martha in her room and apologizes about Jonas. Just, you know, his general surly Jonasness. (It’s all Jonas’ fault.)

When they left 2020 at the end of S2Ep8, Stranger wasn’t aiming for 1888, but they traveled at the exact moment of the shockwave and this is where they ended up (this is where Time sent them). The device is out of cesium 137 and they can’t get anymore in this time period, so theyre stuck here until Jonas can create a new God particle.

Bartosz doesn’t seem to consider that someone else could come from the future and rescue them. Or Martha could help them. But they’d have to have a destination in mind if they left, so maybe that’s the issue.

Martha asks about the workshop, Gustav and what they’re doing. Bartosz doesn’t answer her questions. Instead he tells her he needs to show her something.

Down in the workshop, Gustav asks Stranger if Martha is a traveler, like they are.

Gustav: “When I found you, now that was a sign. A God-sent miracle. Whatever this woman means to you, don’t forget what we’re going to create. Paradise. Every calamity can be reversed. The world’s suffering can be destroyed before it even exists. A perfect world. Sic Mundus Creatus Est.”

Jonas listens to what he says. He still hates the sound of Sic Mundus, but he’s drawn to rest of Gustav’s prophecy, now that it’s not coming from Adam. He wouldn’t be Jonas if his mind weren’t spinning in self-hating circles.

He’s reached his Faust moment of temptation and he hates himself for being drawn to the same ideas and promises that he thinks corrupted Adam. Gustav is his White Devil, promising him a world without Winden, where suffering has ended, if only Jonas will put in the hard work and self sacrifice necessary to bring it about.

Gustav referred to the travelers as a miracle from God in all sincerity, but Jonas knows what that future brings. The temptation is to give in and believe it will turn out differently this time. Yet, what choice does Jonas have, other than to keep walking the same path? Bartosz and Alt Martha won’t let him settle down in the 19th century and forget about who he really is. Neither will his own conscience. And another White Devil, Old Claudia, always shows up eventually to stir the pot. Or she sends an emissary.

Katharina goes to the mental institution to look for Ulrich. She discovers that the nurse at the desk is her mother, Helene Albers. Helene is wearing the St Christopher medal that we’ve usually seen with Jonas and Martha. When Katharina asks for Ulrich and explains that he’s her husband, Helene judges Katharina for being with a patient who’s also a much older man and refuses to let her see him. Katharina uses her knowledge of the medal to talk her way in. She says that her mother also had a medal just like that. St Christopher renounced the devil and carried Jesus, the creator of the world. She begs Helene to let her see Ulrich.

Katharina describes the medal to show she’s a pious Christian, a good woman by her mother’s standards. But calling Jesus the creator of the world in that moment is an inside joke based on Ulrich’s favorite song, Pleasure to Kill by Kreator. “My only aim is to take many lives. The more the better I feel.” If I remember right, Helene never liked Ulrich. Katharina passed the favor down to Martha by pulling her away from Stranger Jonas.

Helene says that Ulrich was just released from solitary. He’s sitting at a table, playing chess by himself. Katharina sits with him. As soon as she gets his attention, she promises to break him out.

Jasmin is the last one at the power plant. She turns out the lights as she prepares to leave. The Unknown Trio turn them back on, then surround her threateningly. After confirming her identity, Adult Unknown tells her, “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

He shushes Jasmin, who is about 8 months pregnant, then strangles her with his garrotte.

At least he made sure to kill the correct pregnant secretary.

Jana fiddles with an ouroboros bracelet as she sits in her living room in deep thought. Tronte comes home and sits next to her. She tells him that at some point he’s going to have to choose between his family with her or Claudia. He says that he saw Regina today. She looks like a grown up. Jana remarks that Claudia has never said who Regina’s father is and she’s always wondered if it’s Tronte. Tronte doesn’t respond directly to that opening. He agrees that he has to decide between the two families and takes Jana’s hand.

It’s not hard for Tronte to choose Jana right now when Claudia has disappeared without a trace or a word. He cares even less about Regina than Claudia does, that was made clear, though we’ve never seen much evidence that he cares about Ulrich either. He imprinted on Claudia when he was young and everyone else will always come second, no matter what. We know he runs right back to her when she shows up again.

In 2020, Regina is alone and trying to sleep in the damp police station while it storms outside. Old Tronte comes in and squeezes her hand, saying, “I’m so sorry, but it has to happen. She said it’s the only way to save you.” He smothers Regina with her pillow.

Well, at least Regina’s suffering is finally over? I don’t think she ever did anything worse than say a few snappish words to the people who had done terrible things to her. And people were so awful to her. I hate the way both she and Aleksander died alone, after they were so devoted to their little family in life.

Prime Old Tronte wasn’t saved from the shockwave by any means that we saw, so how is he alive now? And did Claudia or Eva send him to kill Regina? Regina was definitely right to be nervous around him when she was young.

Back in the trailer, Peter heats up cans of soup while Eli thinks about Noah. She asks Peter what Noah said to him, but Peter refuses to tell her. She pulls out the triquetra diary, which he’s somehow held onto since season 1, and demands that he tell her more about what’s going on. They shove each other back and forth in the trailer, but not hard enough for either to get hurt.

Peter must know from the book where Franziska and Charlotte are, but he won’t tell Elizabeth, out of a misguided attempt to preserve her childhood.

Leaving her in the dark is worse than telling her a little of what he knows and turning it into a story she can handle. This is why fairy tales exist.

On September 22, 2053, Charlotte sits in the cave and looks at Elizabeth’s photo of Noah, Eli and herself as a baby. Eli returns from outside and sits next to Charlotte. Charlotte gets up to leave, maybe to take over standing watch outside the cave. Eli tells her it will be okay and they press their foreheads together.

In 1987, Young Katharina does her homework and listens to music at the kitchen table. Helene smacks her on the back of the head, hard, and in a vicious voice, tells her to clear the table.

We’ve seen Magnus smack people the same way, especially Mikkel, many times, though not as hard. This is another version of an eternal recurrence. The behaviors and personalities that recur in families down through the generations, in addition to physical similarities, become like seeing the same people and the same dynamics repeated over and over, with no exit possible other than blowing up the cycle by walking out and not reproducing.

Or going through extensive self examination and being self aware at all times, in order to avoid falling back into old patterns, as Stranger recommended. But the Faustian White Devil of similar personality types will always be there, bringing with them the temptation to revert to old patterns of behavior. Nietzsche was specifically thinking of never ending relationships with his difficult mother and sister when he worked with the ideas of the eternal recurrence and amor fati, love of fate. Dark shows these recurring behavior and thought patterns through the generations in each family cluster in Winden, even before we know that characters are related.

It’s montage time. This episode, the song is Broken Sleep, by Agnes Obel.

Adult Stranger Katharina takes her leave of Old Ulrich in the psych ward. They both have the same air of desperation about them, despite how far apart they are in age now. Ulrich’s advanced age didn’t make Katharina hesitate even for a second, after she tried so hard to keep Stranger and Martha apart.

In 2020, Prime Adult Claudia finds Regina dead in bed and is devastated. She wasn’t the one who ordered Tronte to kill her daughter.

In 1987, Young Aleksander comforts Young Regina, who misses her mother.

Adult Jana sleeps with her head on Tronte’s lap. Mads is still missing. So is Claudia. They are lost in their separate grief.

In 2020, Young Elizabeth looks at the page in her notepad that says “mom and sister cave”. Whether it was on purpose or not, Young Noah told Eli where her mom is. She’s just 33 years in the future.

Young Noah works to clear rubble out of the passage. If he can clear it out enough so that it works, Charlotte and Young Elizabeth could make contact. In his life, it’s probably not that long since he finished building the passage the first time. No wonder he seems slightly resentful.

Stranger Jonas enters Martha’s room, probably hoping to creepily watch her sleep again. She’s the wrong Martha and she’s not there, but he’s still drawn by the unbreakable tether between them.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

youtube

Martha is on a field trip with Bartosz to the caves. He takes her to the Sic Mundus Temple of Doom, which has has fallen into disuse. The room that will become Adam’s study is set up as a classroom, with a triquetra knot in the place of his favorite painting. While Stranger is looking for her, she’s looking at what he’ll become.

Bartosz: “It’s like a secret society. Old Tannhaus is the only one of them left. His father was convinced he could supercede the rules of space and time. He dedicated his entire life to doing just that. And so did his son.”

Martha: “They tried to build a time machine back then?”

Bartosz: “Jonas is trying to rebuild things the way he saw them. He’s been here already. Not now. In the future. He asked you something earlier. If Adam had sent you. He said that Adam killed Martha. Who is this Adam?”

Martha: “He didn’t tell you that? He is Adam. Jonas.”

We swoop to the Alt world, where Old Eva is telling Young Jonas her truths.

Old Eva: “We don’t know our end, but our end knows us. Salvation or damnation. We can indulge in the illusion of free will if we want, but we cannot escape our ultimate destiny. The choices we make in each world may be different, but nevertheless, they converge on the same moment. Things may not happen in the same way, or at the same time. But they always happen. You believed a world without you would be a better one, but they’re all going to die. Mikkel. Mikkel will die. Everyone will die. The apocalypse occurs in my world, just as it does in yours. In mine, it will happen in 3 days time.”

But no pressure.

As they’ve been speaking, she brings him over to a family tree that’s made from stone inlays in her floor. Let me take this opportunity to tell you that even when something is literally written in stone, it isn’t always true.

Commentary

Old Eva confirms that the 2 worlds are roughly parallel, though not exact mirror images. Her world operates under the same fatalism that the Prime world is subject to, so it probably doesn’t matter whether there’s 3 years or 3 hours until the apocalypse, it can’t be stopped. Let’s get Jonas home before it hits though, ‘kay?

I know we’re working on letting go of attachments this season, but I’m pretty sure Jonas is an essential part of the symbolic balance of light and dark in this universe, so we need him, or the rainbow ponies will take over and it will be all sparkles, all the time.

Sun fairy Metamaiden asks what would be wrong with that? (She has actual rainbow hair.) I am a creature of the night okay? (How do you think I knew Jonas didn’t want to be left alone in the light?) I’m just advocating for balance here.

I’m convinced the Kahnwald house is the black hole machine that gives birth to other black holes. There’s a device hidden there that Jonas put under his bed and then forgot, 200 cycles ago, when they were all new at this. Everyone is drawn there and will eventually sleep in that bed. In fact, it’s probably the bed that’s the ORIGIN everyone is looking for. The time travel plot was hatched there, in the distant early twentieth century past, and won’t be destroyed as long as the house and the bed are standing. 😉

The school and the factory have similar silhouettes. Could the factory have been reworked into the school?

Foresight like Gustav’s is believed to be seen through the metaphysical 3rd eye, located in between the eyebrows in the lower forehead. I talked about Sic Mundus as a mystery school back in S2Ep1 & S2Ep8. Though Bartosz doesn’t characterize it that way, Gustav’s foresight firmly locates it in that arena, rather than as simply an academic and scientific endeavor.

Katharina and Ulrich have both gone about their investigations in an uncompromising way that didn’t gain them any trust from the authorities, despite the fact that they are both local authorities themselves. But it’s not like there’s a rule book to follow for losing your child to someone else in another time period or solving child murders and kidnappings by time travelers across 3 times periods.

The soldier at the checkpoint, played by Maximilian Dirr, seems familiar to me. I think he might still have been one of the guards in the 2052 episodes, but IMDB isn’t crediting him. If I notice him when I get to that point next time I rewatch, I’ll note it here. Or someone else can let me know in the comments. Maybe he was a cop or worked in the power plant.

Family Trees- Skip If You Don’t Want to Know What’s on Them Yet!

My screencap of Old Eva’s full family tree might come out too blurry to read, so I’ll add the family tree on the Netflix website for this episode, though they are a little different. If you visit the website yourself, make sure to stop on the home page first and select which episode you’re willing to be spoiled up to.

Katharina’s father is listed as Hermann Albers (Thomas Arnold), the farmer whose sheep died in S1Ep3, Past and Present. In hindsight, the death of the flock of 33 sheep and the Bible verse Albers quoted to Egon were warnings to Egon that he’d be dead soon. Albers told Egon he was a member of Noah’s church. (Mark 13:33, “Be on your guard. Be alert. For you do not know when that time will be.”)

In the same episode, Mikkel spends his first day in 1986, Claudia starts work as the director of the power plant and HG Tannhaus finishes work on the time device. It must be that once those things had happened, Egon’s future was solidified. Helene Alber’s religious medal also pegs her as a member of Noah’s church.

Old Gustav Tannhaus is HG Tannhaus‘ grandfather, with Leopold Tannhaus in between the two as Gustav’s son/HG’s father. Gustav was born in 1813 and HG was born in 1913, 100 years apart. Gustav’s father is Heinrich Tannhaus. Sic Mundus’ history stretches back as least as far as Gustav’s birth in 1813 and forward at least as far as 2053, the farthest we’ve seen anyone travel forward, a period of 250 years.

The big shocker on these trees is the pairing of Bartosz and Silja (Girl from the Future) and then them being the parents of Noah and Agnes. Agnes is Tronte’s mother and Tronte is Jonas’ great grandfather, which makes Bartosz his great great great grandfather. Silja is the child of Egon and Hannah. Agnes and the Unknown give birth to Tronte in both worlds.

So now Bartosz knows that EVEN MORE STUFF is all Jonas’ fault. That should make for some fun times ahead. Maybe Bartosz isn’t so much blaming Jonas for everything as exasperated with him, the way you get with a favorite child who just can’t stay out of trouble, no matter how hard you try to keep him safe. Bartosz wants to keep his favorite progeny alive and well and Jonas keeps screwing everything up. Bartosz also prods Jonas along his dark and uncomfortable path.

Was There Originally A Jonas in the Alt World?

It is odd that Stranger doesn’t remember going to Alt Martha’s world when he was Young Jonas. I get the distinct impression that there used to be a Jonas in Martha’s world, but he wanted to be erased. So they kept Mikkel from going back to 1986, just like Jonas wanted in the Prime world, and as Eva indicated to Prime Young Jonas. To make up for Jonas’ absence in the Alt world, they have to bring him over from the Prime world for a brief time to interact with Martha to trigger certain events.

That’s an arguable interpretation, it’s true. It’s never said straight out, but Eva has said to Jonas twice now that he wanted a world without himself, with the hope that it would be a better place, but it’s not. In this episode, she specifically said that even Mikkel dies, and as a child instead of as an adult, so there was no point to making a world without Jonas.

But she didn’t say that there had been cycles where Jonas existed as a native in the Alt world. However, the way she practically blames him suggests that the Alt world exists in its current form because some version of Jonas, either from his world or hers, talked her into trying out the “world without Jonas” concept he’s been so keen on for 2 seasons. So either he used to exist there as a native or the Prime version has been visiting there for a while and talking Eva into experimenting.

There is a 3rd option, that Jonas willed Martha’s world into existence as a place where she could live and he wouldn’t be there to kill her. It’s an attractive option. But she still goes and gets Jonas and brings him to her world in every cycle, so either Martha didn’t agree to Jonas’ plan, that’s not the correct option or Jonas just can’t be written out of Martha’s code because he’s too essential to the way her story goes. Jonas’ own story seems to require Martha at various points.

I’ll explore this more fully as the season goes on- don’t want to give away spoilers now.

But I do think Martha was always the chosen one in the Alt world, whether or not Jonas was ever native to it. That’s one reason why it didn’t make much of a difference for Jonas to disappear there.

Did Season 1 Show A 3rd World?

The way that Martha’s world reflects her personality and Jonas’ world reflects his, argues for the main actor within the world being the one who imagines/dreams/Wills the world into being, with the world following the characteristics of that person’s mind. And that makes me wonder if we’ve actually seen a different world each season. I haven’t thought it through enough to figure out whose world it would have been in season 1, but season 2 was Jonas’/Adam’s world.

Since we know we’ve seen Jonas and Martha’s worlds, I wonder if there’s something about being young that makes it easier to create the new world or connection between worlds? I think if S1 isn’t also Jonas’ world, Teen Charlotte is the best option for whose world it is. Charlotte is both the only person we know of who’s time traveled as an infant and who is connected to Tannhaus (the narrator of S1). He set the tone for the scientific understanding and the worldview of the season.

We see quite a bit of Charlotte as a teenage and an adult investigator that season and of Tannhaus in two time periods, 3 if you count his TV show. Charlotte’s daughter Elizabeth also plays a part, with Noah seeking her out and Yasin disappearing. The two of them revolve around each other exactly the same way Mikkel and Jonas do.

Or else it could be Mikkel’s world, but I feel like Mikkel has too little control. Same with Helge. It could be Claudia’s world, since she’s all about control.

Sic Mundus Creatus Est: Faust meets the Devil and a Prophet Meets a Saint

From a scientific point of view, Jonas ends up taking over Sic Mundus because he figures out the importance of their work to improving on the scientific work he’s already done with Claudia. For that reason, the scene where Bartosz introduces Alt Martha to the Sic Mundus classroom and tells us their true history for the first time is important. It shows that Sic Mundus wasn’t just a crazy cult that Adam made up to keep his followers in line or a symptom of his madness.

Instead, the organization has has a rich history of scholarship and alchemy created by multiple generations of researchers who devoted their lives to the work. Jonas/Adam learned from this history to create his own version of Sic Mundus, which added elements to the overall time travel scheme that were missing from the approach based purely on scientific theory. HG Tannhaus eventually stored some of the sources Sic Mundus studied in his clock shop along with the Sic Mundus group photo, suggesting that elements were incorporated into the version of time travel that worked. Tannhaus’ ideas were largely based on Einstein, but even Einstein couldn’t solve everything.

This is the prophecy Sic Mundus lives by in the future versions of the organization that we’ve seen, including Adult Elizabeth and Teen Silja in the 2050s: Forsake family ties in favor of the Paradise Sic Mundus will create, with Jonas as the savior. In Paradise, all of the suffering will have been worth it, because the suffering will be reversed, as if it never existed, and more.

Stranger Jonas fought for decades to avoid becoming Adam, to avoid becoming the leader who believed in and led others to believe in this prophecy, yet now he’s falling into the trap that he knows will lead him there, based on promises he swore he’d never listen to.

What changed? Why is this temptation ensnaring him now, when it never has before?

His frame of mind has changed. Emotionally and mentally, he’s been pushed beyond anywhere even he’s been before. His last chance to save original Martha, the one he spent 33 years pinning his hopes on, has failed. He’s stuck in the 19th century, helpless. Or maybe hiding. He really hasn’t been honest about his full history with the teens.

This episode is notable for how exhausted so many of the characters look. Everyone is tired of the fight right now, and Stranger is not only tired, he’s more hopeless than he’s been since he had to send Mikkel back to 1986 and Michael to his death.

He doesn’t have the strength to push down what his heart wants anymore. He wants to believe what Gustav said: that Paradise is possible and that free will isn’t. That it’s preordained he’ll succeed, so he will. That he’s always given in to the lure of Sic Mundus, so he might as well do so again.

Stranger needs some kind of relief and religious conversion can be an incredibly soothing drug.

Jonas has met his White Devil, and the devil told him he’s the savior who can bring about Paradise. Up until this point, Jonas has always believed that change was possible through his own sheer determination or Claudia’s science and plans or Adam’s authority and knowledge of the future. Here in 1888, as far as he can tell, that all lies in ruins at his feet. He’s failed; he’s been betrayed; the very universe is working against him.

Maybe it’s time to make a deal with the devil and study the occult/alchemy seriously. Maybe science isn’t enough and the missing ingredient can be found there.

Jonas has fought a mighty struggle for more than 30 years, which probably should qualify him for sainthood. Most saints have these sorts of relapses into doubt and despair, then find their strength again, even Jesus. Especially saints who mostly go it alone and live in their own heads, like Stranger.

In this sense, he’s not really a classic Faustian character. Claudia and Ulrich, the 2 White Devils from S2Ep7, the episode of the same title, are much more like the classic Faust, the character who can’t resist following their Will and Desires and so is easy prey for the Devil.

Ulrich is the classic Faustian sensualist with a heart of gold, who we root for but who just can’t stop himself from following his big heart into the next barrel of trouble he’s attracted to, whether it’s a new woman or thinking he can save the children. He’s a boy who will never grow up and we love him for the innocence at the center of his mistakes, even though eventually he becomes too toxic to live with, since he never stops to consider the consequences of his actions. The devil promises him he can be a hero or be a king, but he’s always eventually the architect of his own demise because he can’t control his tendency toward excess.

Claudia’s Deadly Sin of choice is ambition, in the form of scientific advancement at any cost. Literally any cost, whether it’s her child or her soul. Or anyone else’s soul. Since Goethe’s Faust was a sheltered academic who left his books behind to gain experience of the world and was then burned by falling in love and getting an unmarried woman, Gretchen, pregnant, Claudia is probably meant to be a combination of the Devil, Gretchen and Faust.

One of the important implications of Goethe’s Faust is the concept of earning salvation vs escaping damnation. Though characters ostensibly are meant to use their lives accruing points that will send them in one direction or the other, in the end, God acts as a referee with veto power. He can use His Grace to do whatever He wants with the characters. If He decides He likes their style, or their deathbed conversion, no matter how they’ve behaved previously, He can pick them up and bring them into Heaven. Or He can send them in the other direction. Christianity has a lot of loopholes and God is fickle.

Personally, I’m going to stick with karma/eternal justice.

Ulrich is the King David model of Faust, God’s chosen one who’ll always be forgiven eventually. Jonas is more in the tradition of Job, where God makes a bet to see how far He can push someone before they crack. Claudia is a version of Eve, who won’t stop until she’s eaten all of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and ruined Paradise for everyone. God sets her up for both great success and great pain, for His own reasons.

Martha is a saint, the opposite of a Faust. We were told this from the moment we met her in S1Ep1, when she was on a hunger strike to save starving children. Same with Noah. Everything he’s done has been for his family and he’s suffered terribly because of it. Martha is a compassionate saint and Noah is a martyred saint. Those are two ways to transcend to a higher plane of existence, which is why saints can perform miracles. Mikkel also martyred himself for his family and the greater good.

A lifelong sinner who repents and redirects that energy toward God also becomes a saint. This is the reason God loves to make bets with the Devil. It builds up karmic energy, which eventually creates a surge in one direction or the other. This will be true of any unbalanced life, whether it leans too far toward good or evil, saint or sinner. In Dark, Time is God, so the build up of karmic energy and the surge of it seeking eternal justice at death will affect Time.

Martha and Jonas are tied together to balance each other as light and dark, care for the individual (he saves those closest to him) vs care for the greater good (she saves the planet) and hope (she finds comfort in myth, stories that prove she’s never alone) vs nihilism (he’s always a stranger, always alone). Claudia is a third element, the neutral, unstoppable centerpoint of the will, which assumes it’s balance, but is merely unfeeling.

S1 can be read as Part 1 of Goethe’s Faust and S2&3 can be read as Part 2, but I’m not going to do a close examination. Part 2 is also a blatant rip off of Dante’s Divine Comedy and I’d rather just discuss that source, even though it’s not German. I have no trouble with the many other versions of Faust, and there are many, from the original 1580s religious commentaries, which are fascinating, to Pinocchio, which most everyone knows in some form, but was originally written as a novel in 1883. Goethe’s version of Faust is based on so much misogyny that my brain forms a protective wall and won’t let me take it in too deeply.

If you want to look more closely at the ties between Goethe’s Faust and Dark, here are a few links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethe%27s_Faust

https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Faust-Parts-1-and-2/plot-summary/

themes: https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Faust-Parts-1-and-2/themes/

symbols: https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Faust-Parts-1-and-2/symbols/

https://lettersfromthedustbowl.com/faustusE.html

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” -Shakespeare and Adult Unknown

This is a quote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest which is relayed secondhand to a deposed king. While the surface meaning of the quote is obvious, the nuances of what it means coming from Unknown’s mouth as he kills a very pregnant secretary depend on which character you take to be the true author of the words.

The original speaker was a prince who was leaping from a ship that was burning because it had been set on fire to gain revenge on the king, his father, who was on board. Prince Ferdinand had nothing to do with his father’s crimes. Unknown is sympathizing with the fact that Jasmin herself is largely outside of the Winden social circle that’s involved with time travel conspiracies. She’s collateral damage. (As far as we know.)

But in the play, the audience hears the line spoken by Ariel, a magical being, who relays it to the former king, Prospero, the brother of the current king, Alonso. Many years ago, Alonso betrayed Prospero and drove him from his kingdom. Ariel reluctantly works for Prospero, who is also a magician, in return for his freedom from an evil sorceress, Sycorax. Prospero ordered Ariel to set fire to the ship in order to wreck it and bring its occupants to Prospero’s new island so that the former king can carry out an elaborate revenge plot.

Coming from Ariel, the line applies to just about everyone.

In the play, Ariel is the symbol of justice personified, much as I have compared Unknown to Schopenhauer’s Eternal Justice or karma. Unknown’s use of Ariel’s line suggests that he is aware that he is playing the role of both Eternal Justice and Prince Ferdinand, rather than blindly following orders or randomly perpetrating acts of violence.

Prince Ferdinand becomes the love interest for Prospero’s daughter, Miranda, who speaks the famous phrase, “brave new world”. From the close up on Eva’s family tree we know that Unknown is Tronte’s father in both worlds, making him part of the Nielsen line and the only one who spans the two worlds. Prince Ferdinand and Miranda’s pairing helps bring the two warring kings back together, which means that Ferdinand also acts as a bridge between kingdoms.

Ariel has worked for two powerful masters and also has his own power. Both masters have been dubious, but Ariel has chosen to stay with Prospero. I believe Unknown has ties to both Claudia and Martha. When this scene occurs, he’s just watched the Prime world go through an apocalypse which helped either created martha’s world, created a link to it or solidified the link to it. An apocalypse is about to occur in the Alt world.

Ariel has watched Sycorax perform evil acts, and now is watching Prospero risk lives for his own purposes. This is another layer to Unknown’s use of the quote. Is he expressing despair that he has to watch these apocalypses occur, but can’t stop them? Is he, like Jonas, trapped in this never ending loop of of death and loss that has to be repeated every cycle and he can’t get out of it?

There are several potential reasons why someone might want Jasmin dead. For one thing, there’s the bootstrap paradoxes. Those have been created over time by erasing the causative events and memories, so that only results remain. Both Jasmin and Bernd were instrumental in providing Claudia with the information she needed to figure out the complete theory behind the God particle, which she and Jonas then used to turn the God particle into a time machine.

In the scene where Jasmin dies, she walks in on the Unknown examining the binder which held Claudia’s early research into the God particle. This is the binder which was originally handed to Claudia by Bernd when he gave her the data related to the accident at the power plant in 1986.

Claudia first discovered financial discrepancies in the power plant’s books thanks to obscure records which Jasmin obtained for her. Jasmin looked over the records as well and noted the issues. Bernd told Claudia that the plant was cooking the books to hide the accident, then Claudia demanded to see the records of the accident.

Unknown takes the binder with him and kills the two people who know about the data trail. Is he trying to erase the memory of the origin of the God particle in future cycles? Is he stopping someone else from investigating in the future?

Or maybe there was some reason why Jasmin’s baby couldn’t be born? She’s always at the power plant- maybe she knew too much in other ways, as well?

The deaths of Jasmin, her baby, and Bernd, along with the destruction of the abandoned Sic Mundus lair, all in 1987, must be part of some larger plan.

I was struck by how exhausted and ragged the Unknown look in this scene. This is hard on the Child and Old versions, especially, as it should be.

The Day the Earth Stood Still- The Science

youtube

According to those tenacious French researchers, the Earth stopped spinning for a nanosecond during the shockwave, which is 1 billionth of a second, then started spinning again.

The video above is the best explanation I could find for what would happen if the Earth stopped spinning, but it describes what would happen if the world just stops cold and never restarts. It’s more catastrophic than what would happen, though the basic process is the same and I think we’d all still be very dead eventually in reality.

The video goes on to discuss some fascinating concepts of time, such how atomic clocks measure time and the fact that all sorts of things affect the speed at which the Earth rotates, so it’s not an accurate way to measure time. Did you know the Earth is turning more slowly as time goes on? We’ve lost more than 20 seconds since the 70s. Time is relative.

The show listed just about all of the apocalypses- tidal waves, earthquakes, hurricanes and other intense storms, electromagnetic pulse, all of the planes crashing at once, all of the nuclear power plants melting down at once. They didn’t list war, plague and famine, but those sometimes take a few months to develop in the aftermath of the other disasters. If they showed us the world outside of Winden in 2025, it would be filled with disease, hunger and people fighting over the few resources that are left.

My best guess is that the tiny lack of movement when the Earth stopped for a nanosecond, combined with intense inertia causing everything possible to move a teeny tiny bit, would create small, hairline cracks in everything that was attached to the Earth’s surface. As the Earth restarted, then continued to move, those cracks would grow, and things would crumble and fall even worse than they normally would in the resulting tidal waves, earthquakes and storms.

This video goes on to discuss some fascinating concepts of time, such as atomic clocks and the fact that all sorts of things affect the speed at which the Earth rotates, so it’s not an accurate way to measure time. Did you know the Earth is turning more slowly all the time? We’ve lost more than 20 seconds since the 70s. Time is relative.

Also we are such a nerd family that we had loud disagreements about the theoretical physics of this. Don’t ask.

This is the result of my husband the mathematician’s calculations on the issue. Despite the way he wrote it, I am the practical catastrophist in the family who believes the apocalypse is always nigh and should be prepared for. He is the theorist who never believes there will be damage in the real world. Metamaiden is the balanced middle.

Since the speed of Earth’s rotation varies based on latitude, I chose the latitude of the city of Weimar in central Germany, which is at about 51 degrees north. Earth’s rotational speed at that latitude is 655 miles per hour, or 1,054 kilometers per hour, or 293 meters per second (calculated at https://www.vcalc.com/wiki/MichaelBartmess/Rotational+Speed+at+Latitude).

That means the Earth’s surface would move 293 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in the nanosecond that the Earth stopped. That’s about a thousand times the diameter of a water molecule (0.27 nanometers), and about 29 times the diameter of PG5, the largest synthetic molecule ever made (10 nanometers). Depending on how closely packed together two substances are, that 293 nanometers of travel could provide plenty of room for the molecules of one substance (say, water) to smack into the molecules of the other substance (say, rock) in that billionth of a second, potentially triggering havoc.

As more comparison, the width of a human hair is 75,000 nanometers. 293 nanometers, the distance inertia would shift everything on Earth when it stopped, whether it was attached or not, is so small it’s hard to imagine, but it’s enough to throw off cycles, set off chain reactions and fracture inflexible masses when done with the weight and velocity of the Earth behind it.

The Day the Earth Stood Still- The Film

They are definitely referencing the film.

In this short documentary, Decoding Klaatu Barada Nikto, the filmmakers and others discuss how The Day the Earth Stood Still purposely relates to the Cold War, fear of nuclear proliferation and and the pro United Nations sentiments of the filmmakers. Dark has spent 3 seasons showing us how a group of people who were interested in traveling to other times and to other timelines/worlds will stop at nothing, not even global mass destruction and death involving all of the apocalypses at once, to achieve their scientific goals. And nuclear science is at the heart of what they do.

The Day the Earth Stood Still believes scientists, with the help of the UN, can save the world. Dark seems to be saying we can’t trust the scientists anymore. Unless the message is that the scientists will take us to the golden glitter Harry Potter world, which I’m totally okay with. But that world is threatened, too, so it’s not the ultimate answer. The science and technology that came out of the Enlightenment and have continued through the Industrial Revolution to the present day, which are seen as both progress which will unquestioningly aid humanity and as beneficial knowledge which must be pursued, have led to many of the ills our culture and planet now face.

Unless we somehow put the brakes on- stop the world- the apocalypses we currently live in will only get worse. As I write this, it’s currently 102ºF (39ºC) outside my window, there is smoke in the air from the forest fires that are burning all over the Southwestern US, including one about 20 miles from my home, and my state diagnosed a record number of COVID-19 cases yesterday. That’s 3 apocalypses. Famine from joblessness isn’t far behind. How many riots and shootings does it take to make a civil war?

We need to start getting the message and acting on it without worrying about the details.

Which brings me to the importance of the code phrases. Klaatu Barada Nikto is a code phrase which the alien, Klaatu, his human friend, Helen, say to his robot guardian after he’s killed, to stop the guardian from destroying Earth in retaliation. It tells the robot that the damage done to the alien is repairable by their standards, so the situation can still be salvaged. But no direct translation for the phrase was ever written into the script or otherwise. It’s been left to the viewer to interpret the exact meaning, though the gist of it is clear. Fans have obsessed over its exact meaning for decades and even the cast and crew all have slightly different interpretations.

The important thing about the phrase Klaatu Barada Nikto is that it triggered the correct state of mind and action in Klaatu’s robot, Gort. The meaning helps trigger Gort’s action, and it’s extremely important that Gort understand the message correctly, so it’s worth analyzing, but on the level of meaning, not exact wording. Having an exact direct translation might help us, but isn’t essential for Gort or Helen, who brings him the message in the film.

In the same way, the characters in Dark are triggering each other with certain words and phrases. Sometimes the meaning matters, but I don’t think it always does. Sometimes just the sound of the words acts as a reminder to their inner selves of where they are in the cycle and what the next step is. Many of them are following difficult paths and want out, while at the same time their memories are being erased to form the bootstrap paradoxes. They need nudges along the way to keep them following the same footsteps they’ve created in previous cycles.

Are the bootstrap paradoxes a reference to the way history tends to be forgotten in the real world, so that we are condemned to repeat it endlessly, never correcting our mistakes, repeating the same platitudes and religious doctrines to justify our actions?

Images courtesy of Netflix.

Dark S3E2: The Survivors-It's time to visit Adam's post-apocalypse world, the world without Winden that Hannah & Ulrich spoke of for decades. Like Stranger, those 2 skipped the apocalypse & traveled to previous decades. #DarkNetflix After the Harry Potter costume party of getting to know Martha/Eva's world in S3EP1, in episode 2 it's finally time to visit Adam's post-apocalypse world, which is a form of the world without Winden that Hannah and Ulrich have dreamed of for decades.

#Andreas Pietschmann #Dark #dystopia #Lisa Vicari #Louis Hofmann #metacrone #Paul Lux #post apocalypse #recaps #review #science fiction #The Survivors

2 notes · View notes

lunarqueen · 5 years

Text

Dark Season 2 Theories

1) What I love is that everyone of the characters has a bad, or rather, a dark side. Honestly, Jonas appears to be one of the only characters that is good. (If you leave out the daydreaming about fucking your aunt. But you know, just 200 years ago it was the hippest thing to be married to your cousin so I guess they just live in the wrong time with the wrong coonventions). And yet this good character is supposed to become the most evil character we know on the show.

2) The family tree. So there are still a few gaps in the family tree and I think they are very important ones that are going to be unravelled in Season 3. First off: Who are Noah’s and Agnes’ parents? I found it very fitting if Jonas was Noah’s father (since biblical Adam is an ancestor of biblical Noah). If Jonas was Noah’s and Agnes’ father the Nielssens, Dopplers and Kahnwalds are all connected to each other by blood. And Adam would be the beginning of the line amd Jonas is the end. Theories make me doubt this though (with whom but with Martha should he suddenly have children?). However, the way Magnus and Franziska look at Noah in episode 7 or episode 8 makes it very possible for them to be his parents and thus, the three families would still be connected in the same constellation. The only ones that fall out of the muster are the Tiedemanns who are obviously just as connected to each family as the other families are to each other. It will all probably depend on who the man with whom Claudia had her daughter with is.

3) Charlotte Doppler and Elisabeth Doppler. The most important question is: Why was Elisabeth in the future and not with her “daughter”? Did she and Noah travel back in time to have their child there - as Charlotte was presumably born in the 1960s or 1970s. Then why did she go back to the future?

4) Okay, so Jonas and Claudia literally spent one year together where she told him everything she knew about the Winden situation if I understood correctly? I think it will explain somethings in Season 3

5) Michael Kahnwald and Mikkel. Okay, it really was a twist that future Jonas was actually the one who led Michael to kill himself in order to save his son. But... what I have first thought about this: Could it not be possible that Michael kept on to live and then, after Mikkel’s disappearance, would tell Jonas the truth? Of course, Jonas would think him crazy at first but as maybe some people guessed Jonas appeared to be very close to his father and Michael could have accompanied and helped Jonas on his time travels and conquest to save the world. Also couldn’t Jonas still exist even if he brought Mikkel back or maybe? Because the book “Eine Reise durch die Zeit” was technically never written but still exists so why should Jonas suddenly disapppear? I’m also curious about future Jonas motivation on why to abduct Mikkel to 1986 in the first place because that is definitely going to be crazy

6) Aleksander Köhler. This was a weird storyline and I don’t believe we’ve heard the last of it. Why would they have introduced it otherwise and then not have it solved at any time?

7) Bartosz’s role in everything. I was a bit confused because in the first episode Noah wanted Bartosz to work for him again but never got back to him? Many people have also had the theory that the man young Noah kills in 1921 is future Bartosz which makes a lot of sense and I guess Noah did it based on Adam’s orders. In the first episode Adam also calls Bartosz “naive” and makes it appear that he does not think much of him. So maybe Bartosz worked against Jonas until he could no longer stand that? Definitely something that they have to adress in Season 3.

8) The alternate universe. And this, my friends, could be really ANYTHING. I just hope they do not chicken out by solving all the mess they have made in this universe by saying something “Oh, we found this alternate universe where everyone can be happy and everything we have done does not matter” like. Because that would be really lazy of the writers.

9) How is it going to end? I guess it is going to be DARK. Probably Jonas eventually kills himself. Here, the question remains whether he will kill himself as teen Jonas or whether he kills Stranger Jonas. I don’t really guess killing Adam will help him much with his problems

#dark #dark netflix #dark spoilers #dark theories #dark characters

133 notes · View notes

tortuga-aak · 6 years

Text

Everything you need to know about the confounding season finale of Netflix's 'Dark'

Netflix

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the season one finale of "Dark."

Netflix's new sci-fi series "Dark" is a tangle of time-travel loops, wormholes, and mysterious characters. The season one finale ended with a shocking reveal, jettisoning the protagonist Jonas into the future while leaving dozens of unanswered questions in the past.

We're here to break down all the major revelations in an attempt to make sense of the paradox presented in the finale. Let's dive in, starting with the enigmatic Noah.

Noah is a sinister character seeking to control time travel

"Dark" appears to ultimately be the story of an infinite war for the control of time travel. The main antagonist is Noah, a priest who appears immortal due to his ability to move with ease between decades.

He lives as a priest, though he evidently does not believe in God. He might even be the Devil, but more on that in a bit.

At one point, while explaining his aims, Noah implies that he is attempting to harness the power of time travel in order to save humanity from itself. Noah used an underground bunker in the forest to build a time machine.

Netflix

"The world is doomed to be destroyed. But this here — this is our ark," Noah says, gesturing to the chair he built in the bunker. "And I'm Noah. If we can harness this energy, we can change everything. Then we decide the world's fate, far removed from all the evil and from all pain. We'll create a time machine that reorders everything, the beginning and the end."

Here's what the Future-Jonas explained to his younger self trapped in Noah's bunker:

"This is a kind of prototype of a time machine. You're the guinea pig. The passage in the cave lies directly under this bunker. If opened, the energy flows through this room. But it needs to be increased. No DeLorean. No hissing or steam. The first time machine is a bunker with four walls. But it still doesn't quite work."

We come to learn that Noah enlisted a man named Helge to help him kidnap children.

Netflix

Together Noah and Helge travel through the cave's wormhole portal to kidnap young boys and use them as guinea pigs in a time machine they built in a bunker.

But the machine doesn't work properly, and kills each boy as it drops them through a wormhole and into a different year. Whenever the portal is opened beneath the bunker, the chair amplifies the signal. But it's broken — hence the dead boys. The machine burns their eyes and bursts their eardrums, killing them as it transports them.

Helge then uses the cave portal to find and hide the body in a location away from the bunker. The most direct example of this is when we see the body of Yasin (a boy Helge kidnaps in 2019) at a 1953 construction site.

Netflix

Let's take a brief pause on Noah to explain Helge's role in all of this.

How Helge came to work with Noah

As a young boy in 1953, Helge was attacked by Ulrich and left for dead inside the bunker. But in the future, in 1986, teenage-Jonas was in the bunker at the exact same time of day. Then adult-Jonas set off the machine inside the cave portal, triggering a wormhole to open inside the bunker.

Helge and Jonas touched each other through the opening, and Helge was transported to 1986 while teenage-Jonas was transported to the future (presumably 2052).

Netflix

Though it was left unexplained, we can guess that Noah then entered the bunker in 1986 and found the boy-version of Helge. Their partnership likely began then, when Helge was young and impressionable and weakened from his head injury. Noah probably sent Helge back to 1953 through the cave portal and let him reunite with his family.

Once Helge was an adult, Noah used him to help move bodies through different decades and kidnap other children.

Claudia is the second person fighting for control of time travel

Unlike Noah, we see Claudia age from a young girl into an older woman through the decades. In 1953, Claudia is a bright girl who tutors Helge. She is the daughter of Egon Tiedemann, the police officer who is investigating the death of the two boys whose bodies were placed at the construction site.

She meets the young Tronte Nielson and together they walked through the forest and past the caves with Helge. After Claudia dismisses Helge, he gets Claudia's poodle to run into the caves. The dog is lost, presumably because it somehow entered the wormhole passage.

Netflix

Flashing forward to 1986, and Claudia is the new boss at Winden's nuclear power plant. She has a daughter, Regina, but there's no direct mention of her having a husband. She's having an affair with Tronte Neilson, who is married to Jana.

Tronte and Jana's son Mads (Ulrich's brother) was just kidnapped and killed by Helge and Noah. But no one in 1986 ever learns what happened to him.

Claudia finds a discrepancy in the data reports at the plant, and is told by Bernd Doppler (Helge's father) that there was an accident which produced radioactive material over the summer. While investigating the cave section where Bernd had the barrels of waste stored, Claudia finds her poodle from 1953.

Netflix

From there, Claudia's actions are a mystery. Since Helge gifted her the book "Journey Through Time" (which he might have done at Noah's instruction), Claudia seems to have figured out the truth about the wormhole in the cave.

In 2019, she turns up right when Mads' body drops through a wormhole into the bunker, and tells Peter and the now-old-Tronte that they need to move the body to the place where it will be found.

Then she gives them a notebook (with half its pages missing) so they can predict each subsequent event. She is also shown traveling back to 1953 to give the blueprints of the wormhole machine creator to H.G. Tannhaus.

Netflix

We also know that in the future where Jonas is launched to, presumably 2052, Claudia is now living out of the same bunker where Noah once held his victims. She has a wall of photographs up, mapping out all of the characters who played a role in the events of 1953, 1986, and 2019.

We know that she meets Jonas in the future, and convinces him that if he fixes the wormhole machine then he can undo all the madness by destroying the wormhole. But Noah says this was a lie, and that Claudia actually had adult-Jonas use the machine to trigger the wormhole's existence — a confusing paradox, we know.

Noah, Hermeticism, and the Trinity Knot

Based on the Trinity Knot (or triquetra) symbol on Noah's notebook, paired with his enormous back tattoo showing The Emerald Tablet, he seems to subscribe to a brand of religion and philosophical belief called Hermeticism.

The Emerald Tablet, the source of which is unknown in history, is where the phrase "sic mundus creatus est" ("and thus the world was created") originates. That phrase is etched on the doorway of the cave portal.

Netflix

Another phrase from the Emerald Tablet is the basis of occult beliefs, and seems to connect to the supernatural elements of the wormhole on "Dark":

"That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing."

Believers of Hermeticism and the texts of The Emerald Tablet (alchemists are one such group, for example) put stock in the idea that all actions on a macro and micro scale are interconnected.

This in turn ties into the explanations of time, space, and infinite loops given by the clockmaker character on "Dark," H.G. Tannhaus.

Netflix

"Time loops have a significant impact on the principle of causality, on the relationship of cause and effect," Tannhaus tells adult-Jonas on episode eight. "As long as a wormhole exists, there is a closed time loop. Inside it, everything is mutually dependent."

"The past doesn’t just influence the future, the future also influences the past," Tannhaus continues. "It's like the question of the chicken and the egg. We can no longer say which of the two came first. Everything is interconnected."

Claudia and the myth of Ariadne and the Labyrinth

Throughout this first season of "Dark," the myth of Ariadne is mentioned or alluded to several times. Martha is cast in the role of Ariadne for her school play, and adult-Jonas has several photos linked to Ariadne on the wall of his hotel room.

In Greek mythology, Ariadne is the daughter of King Minos in Crete. Minos placed Ariadne in charge of the labyrinth on the island, which houses a Minotaur at its center and is used for ritual sacrifice.

Netflix

According to the myth, the hero Theseus came to the labyrinth to kill the Minotaur. Ariadne fell in love with Theseus and decided to help him navigate back out of the maze by giving him a ball of thread. After they escape Crete, however, Theseus abandons Ariadne.

In Martha's Ariadne monologue, she speaks about her mother and how Theseus left her.

"The old world came to haunt her like a ghost that whispered to her in a dream how to erect the new world, stone by stone. From then on, I knew that nothing changes. That all things remain as before.

The spinning wheel turns, round and round in a circle. One fate tied to the next. The thread, red like blood, that cleaves together all our deeds. One cannot unravel the knots.

But they can be severed. He severed ours, with the sharpest blade. Yet something remains behind that cannot be severed. An invisible bond."

Netflix

Both Claudia and Jonas have thematic connections to Ariadne and myth of the labyrinth. Claudia appears to be the guardian of the cave portal in a way, given how she eventually teaches Jonas how to navigate it. Then Jonas in turn is akin to Theseus — he perceives himself to be the hero who will defeat the Minotaur (which could be an analogy for Noah or the wormhole itself). He also severs himself from Martha after learning that she's really his aunt.

The Faustian connection between Bartosz and Noah

On the fourth episode, a brief scene in a 2019 high school classroom brings up the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. His seminal work was the tragic play "Faust," a story of a man who makes a deal with devil.

Faust trades his soul for knowledge and power — which means Bartosz might be the Faust of "Dark," while Noah is the Devil.

Helge could also be a stand-in for a character in "Faust," Mephistopheles, who is a representative of the Devil. Since Helge appears to act on behalf of Noah frequently, and carry out his orders, the parallels line up.

Plus we can't forget the scene in which adult-Jonas and H.G. Tannhaus discuss the importance of the number 33. Not only do the lunar and solar cycles match every 33 years, but Jonas mentions that 33 is the age at which the Antichrist's reign begins. Then the scene immediately cut to Noah standing outside of Winden's church.

Netflix

Another odd but probably meaningful connection to "Faust" is the poodle Claudia loses in 1953 and then finds again in 1986. The dog's name is Gretchen, which is the same name as Faust's love-interest in the fictional story.

What the finale tells us about infinite time loops and the bigger picture

So ultimately, Noah appears to be the stand-in for the true Devil or Anti-Christ who is stalking Winden in an attempt to wield control over time. Claudia somehow became aware of Noah's mission and is locked in the eternal time loop with him while they both try to break the cycle.

By the time adult-Jonas triggers the wormhole's opening, several things are happening at once. But perhaps the most telling is the conversation Noah has with Bartosz in the car.

"Most people are nothing but pawns on a chessboard, led by an unknown hand," Noah tells Bartosz. "Their lives exist only to be sacrificed for a higher goal. Jonas, Mikkel, the children, they’re nothing but unfortunate, yet necessary chess moves in an eternal war between good and evil."

Netflix

"There are two groups out there fighting to control time travel. Light and shadow," Noah says. "We belong to the light, don't forget that."

Noah tells Bartosz that even though they make sacrifices along the way (aka the children he's murdered in the bunker during the time travel experiments), they are the "good guys." Noah also makes it clear that he's actively keeping the loop of events going for the time being.

"As long as we’re in this time loop, we who know have to make sure that every step will be repeated exactly as it was before," Noah says. "No matter how inhumane it seems to us. No matter what sacrifices it demands of us."

Then he told Bartosz that "the others" are the ones who are inhumane.

"They belong to the shadow," Noah says. "Your grandmother, Claudia, belongs to the shadow. Never trust her. No matter what she says."

Netflix

Given what we know about Noah and his connections with the Devil, we have a hard time believing that Claudia is truly the "evil" one at work. She instead seems to be the human foil to Noah, while her grandson Bartosz is being wooed by him.

"Time is an infinite field — millions and millions of interlocking wheels," Noah says. "We have to be patient to be victorious. But our time will come. We will free humanity from its immaturity. From its pain. But you must be strong. Can you do that?"

One thing we must raise here is the possibility that Bartosz and Noah are the same person. In "Dark," several characters come face to face with their past or future selves, so it's possible that the offer Noah made Bartosz was more of a weird time-warp recruitment of his younger self.

Netflix

But Bartosz (in his teenage years as we see him) seems shallow and anti-intellectual. Could he really grow up to be Noah? We doubt it. Bartosz makes more sense as the stand-in for Faust — a flawed human who enters an unwise bargain with the Devil. But we shouldn't rule anything out.

Open-ended questions we're still grappling with

Clearly there is still so much we don't know as of the first season finale of "Dark." Mikkel is still a mysterious figure. How did he wind up in 1986? Was he captured by Noah or Helge and brought through the tunnel? Or was there a second wormhole opening we haven't seen yet?

And what's going on in 2052 with Jonas now? Was Winden destroyed when he triggered the wormhole? Or just the areas immediately next to the power plant? Is the whole area stuck in some post-apocalyptic war zone?

Also, when was Noah born? Does he age? Is he truly an other-worldly immortal being, or the Devil himself?

Last but not least is the issue of causal determination and time loops. As Tannhaus posits earlier in the season: "Is time an eternal beast that can't be defeated?"

Netflix

Based on the twisted way in which all of the events of season one are connected and tied to this time loop, it's hard to see how Noah or Claudia could ever manage to break it. Are they just playing into a set of pre-determined events themselves, or can they really break the laws of time and space that have been established?

We're hoping this risky undertaking from Netflix is granted a second season, so all these questions might be answered — though we're sure more mysteries will present themselves too.

NOW WATCH: Here’s why your jeans have that tiny front pocket

from Feedburner http://ift.tt/2B5QKW1

#Feedburner

3 notes · View notes

tristanleggett · 5 years

Text

Behind the Marketing Scenes of Top Web App Design Company: Monterail

Technology alone is not enough to succeed, every product needs a team of passionate people who will give it their best. Monterail

And what is the best for Monterail, the awarded web app design company? By now it meant:

Achieving a 400%+ revenue growth in 2013-2016 and being featured in 2018 Financial Times 1000 Europe's Fastest Growing Companies.

Achieving a 206% revenue growth in 2014-2017, featuring for the second time in a row in FT1000.

A marketing campaign that brought them EUR 750k worth contracts.

New business that accounted for 46% of all 2018 revenue

Worth investigating all of this, right?

So let there be marketing! The content strategy, the social media efforts, the community involvement.

We’ve analyzed everything. Follow us along to learn more about their strategy and “steal” their successful tactics and strategies to implement in your company.

TABLE OF CONTENT

Monterail Web App Design Company- Short Overview

Monterail’s Marketing Strategies Reverse Engineered

Brand Awareness at Monterail

Monterail’s Website and Conversion Rate Optimization

Monterail’s Traffic Acquisition

Content Marketing

Monterail’s Social Presence

Employer branding and hiring

Wrap Up

More than 90% of potential clients who visit the Monterail office decide to work with them.

Kudos to you, guys!

Now, let’s see what makes Monterail such a magnet for clients.

Monterail Web App Design Company - Short Overview

Szymon Boniecki and Bartosz Rega, co-founders of Monterail, were recognized in 2017 New Europe 100 list as changemakers in emerging Europe and as individuals who are improving people's lives with ideas that scale up in the digital world.

But let’s see what other stakeholders have to say about this Wroclaw-based web app design company: their own clients.

Exceeding expectations and overcoming challenges

Proactive, responsive, transparent & flexible

Solution-oriented

Top notch communication

Well organized and professional

Speaking of clients, new business accounted for 46% of all 2018 revenue, compared to 28% in 2017.

What are the secrets behind the success of this web app design company?

We’ll try to follow in their footsteps and reconstruct their employer branding and marketing strategies.

So, let me tell you a story about:

How inbound marketing combined with efficient promotion can get you mainstream

How a team-centered company is of utmost importance

How you can establish leadership through community engagement

Monterail’s Marketing Strategies Reverse Engineered

With Deloitte and Financial Times nominations, 100+ projects covering IoT, web, mobile, Node.js, Ruby on Rails and Vue.js development, Monterail is writing history in Wroclaw IT outsourcing.

Content strategy, offline events, marketing automation, these are just a few of the stories we’ll tell you next, stories that led to the inspirational growth of Monterail.

Brand Awareness at Monterail

As Marty Neumeier says it in his book “Zag”, a brand is not:

A logo

A corporate identity

A product

A brand is “a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or organization”.

How can you influence one’s gut feeling?

Through a lot of social proof.

For software houses for example, the reviews on Clutch, Google, Facebook or Goodfirms are of utter importance.

Awards are also essential if they are done by trustworthy companies.

Monterail’s Awards

Monterail features in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 in Central Europe in 2017.

Monterail, as you’ve probably guessed, they’re into Ruby on Rails. Clutch ranked them second in their world Top 15 Ruby on Rails Development Agencies.

The company also ranks 10 in Top 15 Web Developers in Poland - by Clutch.

Monterail’s Website and Conversion Rate Optimization

The website is plain and simple, no mystery there. But beauty lies in simplicity.

It’s easy to find an answer to the buyer persona’s most important questions:

What do you do?

We design and develop web & mobile apps to support startups and businesses on their missions.

How can I trust you?

Case studies, testimonials, client listing.

How can I contact you?

Through a contact form or via chat bot.

They have a projects section where they showcase products and services they’ve designed.

They want to make it clear what the workflow is, they can begin from scratch, with an MVP or scale existing products.

What I like about them is that they have two types of newsletters, focusing either on business, either on technology. This means that personalization is essential in business.

Speaking of personalization, the Hubspot chat bot is used to better qualify the leads and offer a customized experience:

The conversion rate optimization efforts are supported also with automation. It's all about improving the processes and being customer-centric for Monterail. So, Hubspot is their weapon of choice for marketing and sales automation.

CRM, chat bot, forms, CTAs, pillar pages, workflows, CRM - Monterail tried to take the most out of Hubspot when designing the Vue.js campaigns.

Monterail’s Traffic Acquisition

The main website traffic sources, according to Semrush, are:

Direct - 15%

Referral - 1%

Search - 71%

Social - 13%

Social brings more than 10% of the traffic. From our research, this is one of the biggest percentages encountered so far, so we’ll try to understand what strategies lay behind this number.

The 15% direct traffic makes sense because of two main reasons:

Monterail has a team of 6 involved in business development, meaning that they do email outreach, networking

Monterail organizes a lot of events: Monterail Academy, meetups and workshops, but also have a lot of speaking gigs at all sort of tech conferences

30k+ search traffic, give or take, is a considerable amount of search traffic. This is why we’ll dive more into the content strategy to see the strategies behind it.

Content Marketing

The blog is updated kinda bi-weekly. The main tags are agile, culture, project management, Vue.js, product design, Javascript, development, business, mobile development, ruby/rails.

The more technical posts are written by the developers, and these are the posts that bring more traction.

An example is Zuzanna Kusznir, from the back-end team, that wrote a blog post ending up generating 8.4% of the blog’s traffic in 2018.

According to Spyfu, there are 65 keywords showing up on the first page, and 61 are almost there. Thumbs up, guys!

This next screenshot is telling an interesting story:

The technology related keywords are really valuable, bringing in traffic, but the “outsource” cluster is trying to make its way up to the first page.

Non-branded keywords bring traffic to blog post pages. Branded “monterail” traffic, leading to their homepage, is almost insignificant.

Now, I’m gonna peek a bit at their high ranking blog posts.

The most traction was brought by a blog post that covers becoming a certified tester, it’s almost 2 years old, but still bringing in fresh traffic.

They’ve got content also on Slideshare, like this great piece on Storytelling in data visualization, written by Paweł Hawrylak, the Head of Design.

Their account also features a story about Marketing B2B, that accrued 1300 views.

But in content marketing, not everything revolves around blogging.

Besides, blog posts are merely addressing their personas in the awareness stage. The same with the newsletter.

When moving down the funnel we encounter other types of content, such as case studies, which can be leveraged for the consideration phase of the buyer’s journey.

The Vue.js campaign

So, we’re finally here, the campaign that brought Monterail clients worth EUR 750k+

Monterail has a thing for Vue.js.

An untapped framework potential, not enough buzz around it: why not take the lead and be the Vue.js go-to company? So, challenge accepted.

It was 2017.

Was it risky? Hell, yeah. No benchmarks, no assurance that the marketing budget won’t be thrown out the window.

As Monterail rolled up its sleeves it began developing content:

Blog posts

State of Vue.js report

Newsletter

Pillar pages and landing pages

Additional elements on the website

At the core of all this content lays the all-mighty survey:

A four-week period in August and September of 2017

1,126 responses, mainly from software developers and CTOs of organizations using Vue

Responses from 88 countries

+ Lots of promotion and outreach:

Vue conference

Sales activities

Drip email campaign

PR and sponsors

Paid ads: Google and Facebook ads

Social media channels

Medium & Quora

Vue.js official channels + influencer Evan You (the creator of Vue.js himself!)

The tools:

Hubspot: forms, CTAs, workflows, CRM

Ahrefs: SEO

Google Analytics

The results:

Valuable backlinks

4500+ downloads of the report in 3 months

300+ Vue conference attendees

10k+ visits ro Vue related content

EUR 10k+ cost (time and ad spend) by Jan 2018

Contracts worth EUR 750k+

Vue.js goes mainstream

The campaign’s key takeaways:

Original content is paramount

Content production and content promotion are equally important

Plan everything

Have goals, KPIs, proper measurement

Consistency in messages across channels, consistency in time

Educate your potential clients

Invest in tools and people. 0 budget, no can do

Be patient and don’t give up, SEO takes time to show results

Know your persona and buyer’s journey

Get influencers on-board

Prioritize your channels, you don’t have to be everywhere

Data manipulation - the right people for the job if you want accurate info

Next: State of Vue.js revisited.

Monterail ran a survey with the purpose of creating the new state of Vue.js report. After having collected the responses and prepared case studies, the updated 2019 State of Vue.js report is out. I’m really curious how the 2019 inbound B2B campaign will turn out. We’ll be watching you guys!

So, Monterail managed to take something relatively unknown and make it mainstream - the Vue.js framework, all through inbound marketing and quality promotion.

They’ve reached their objective of being recognized as the experts in the field.

Chapeau!

This was a great inbound marketing lesson.

Backlinks to Support Content Marketing

Do-follow links from 70+ domain ranking websites link back mostly to the Monterail homepage, and Mozilla is the main attraction.

Backlinks

Putting the pieces all-together, from high search traffic to a solid blog, high-quality backlinks, it’s clear that inbound is at the core of their marketing strategy.

Looking back at the 2018 performance in terms of blog traffic, in comparison to 2017, according to their blog post, the numbers are:

6% more users and 63% more sessions on the website

110% more sessions on the blog itself.

Monterail’s Paid Traffic Acquisition

Monterail is also leveraging Google Ads. From Spyfu’s research, it seems that they are bidding on node.js and vue.js keywords.

We know that they used the power of retargeting during the Vue.js campaign also. And it's not only Google ads remarketing, but also Facebook and Twitter.

But they also use the power of sponsored post for topics such as:

Node.js development

Nearshoring/outsourcing

Successful case studies

Progressive web apps

Monterail’s Social Presence

2500+ Facebook followers

1300+ Twitter followers

1200+ Linkedin followers

Not all of the organic and paid efforts in social media are responsible for these numbers.

All of the other offline or inbound efforts might translate into followers and likes.

Everything connects, and the end result is branding.

Monterail’s Facebook Page

2500+ Facebook followers get regular updates from Monterail regarding events they’re hosting, webinars they’re organizing, jobs available, blog posts and case studies. Vue.js posts seem to be very appealing to Monterail, lately.

Facebook’s posts are headed two ways:

Getting more clients

Increasing employer branding

Most popular posts talk about the team or Monterail’s events. And check this out, Discovery featured Monterail in a series on entrepreneurship. Kinda cool, I’d say!

Some of the posts get traction, but the average engagement per post is around 14.

Instagram

The Instagram account is all about the team, reinforcing the Monterail idea that “every product needs a team of passionate people who will give it their best.”

The images are praising a company culture:

that revolves around communication

which happens in a cozy ambiance

where work and play are equally appreciated

On LinkedIn profile news from the industry and blog posts are shared. It’s clearly client-oriented content.

The image being portrayed on LinkedIn speaks of Vue.js leadership, React expertise, products they’ve built.

The platform is also used for hiring because jobs are being posted.

Twitter

Monterail almost replicates the Facebook content within its weekly tweets.

Blog posts and news from the industry are being shared.

They also promote webinars and events they attend to in order to build awareness around their business.

The purpose of the account is more about gaining new clients, than building employer branding.

Dribbble

The 290 Dribbble followers get updates from Monterail regarding

Latest web-designs

Apps made by Monterail

Design for events

Most of the shots are published by the Monterail Head of Design, Paweł Hawrylak.

Monterail’s Community Involvement

Webinars, tech summits, meetups, the Monterail Academy - these guys are really busy. But this is how you build a community, establish leadership in the field, for both future employees and clients.

And let’s not forget they’ve hosted a conference around Vue.js with 300+ attendees.

Employer Branding and Hiring

Now, let's mingle with Monterail’s current and former employees and see what they say about the working environment. It seems that the company’s culture and remote working possibilities are highly appreciated.

The quality of code and the learning process are among the pros of working at Monterail. Some say that the management team is a bit un-experienced and decision making takes kinda long.

They want to expand their team by hiring developers and product designers. Salaries and other perks are transparent. There’s also an employee testimonial on the page to increase the chances for conversion.

They are really proud of their office and the friendly atmosphere. They make use of social media to promote the cozy environment. Speaking of the office, it’s not like any other offices. There was a whole strategy around it in the design phase.

Monterail commissioned sociologist Karolina Dudek for an in-depth study of the spatial and cultural needs of the staff. From her observations, they decided to set up rooms for projects, instead of having an open space. So, using science to design the proper working environment, kinda cool, right?

They support learning among the team, that’s why they introduced Self Development Time, meaning every employee has 2 hours per week to spend on whatever they like for personal development.

Wrap Up

From the B2B marketing point of view, it seems that a consistent content strategy, seasoned with some events and marketing automation, is the recipe of success for Monterail.

But let’s make a more comprehensive list of takeaways:

Build an effective team - of engineers, of marketers, of business developers, don’t settle for less

Inbound at the heart of marketing efforts. Get the developers team involved in creating original 10x content

Promotion is key, it should be consistent and carefully planned

Get out there, get noticed, host events, go to speaking gigs, create buzz around you

Plenty of marketing lessons from Monterail, right?

But we ain’t stopping here.

We’ve got more companies up our sleeves.

And, more so, our Ultimate Guide To IT Outsourcing Companies in Central Eastern Europe. will give you a birds-eye view on the IT outsourcing landscape within three ex-soviet countries: Poland, Ukraine and Romania. They’re fast, they’re furious and they’re reshaping the industry.

if(window.strchfSettings === undefined) window.strchfSettings = {}; window.strchfSettings.stats = {url: "https://man-digital.storychief.io/web-app-design?id=256846048&type=12",title: "Behind the Marketing Scenes of Top Web App Design Company: Monterail",id: "4f08255c-5e51-436c-99aa-71482a308009"}; (function(d, s, id) { var js, sjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {window.strchf.update(); return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "https://d37oebn0w9ir6a.cloudfront.net/scripts/v0/strchf.js"; js.async = true; sjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, sjs); }(document, 'script', 'storychief-jssdk')) from Digital Marketing Automation Consulting | MAN Digital https://mandigitalblog.blogspot.com/2019/04/behind-marketing-scenes-of-top-web-app.html via https://mandigitalblog.blogspot.com/ Read more on our blog MAN Digital MAN Digital Blogger

#Digital Marketing Automation Consulting | MAN Digital

0 notes

yellow-dejavu · 2 months

Text

It was unexpected for me that Claudia, Jonas, Noah and Elisabeth ended up being the post-apocalypse group, but the four of them fit so well together.

They don't really had screentime together, but I can't stop thinking about the apocalypse family and how much they can relate to each other.

Each one of them lost their naivety when they discovered time travel and learned a little more about the reality of their world, but they lost their innocence when they experienced the reality of their dads death.

Each member of the group carries the guilt for the death of their dads.

Noah literally killed his dad, influenced by sic mundus.

Claudia tried to prevent her dad's death and accidentally caused it.

Jonas was led to believe that he could prevent his dad's suicide when in fact he was the trigger.

Elisabeth was not to blame for her dad dying, but she probably felt guilty that he died trying to protect her.

They were completely broken, and the person who came to comfort them and give them hope was a member of the apocalypse family.

After Bartosz died, Noah told his younger self that he knew how it felt and that the pain of what he had done would pass. Noah knew that wasn't true. It would be a pain he would never forget. Since he was the one who had defined the irony of his dad's fate, it had only become more painful.

Claudia met Jonas for the first time after what happened with Egon, and she realized that she couldn't change things. Jonas appearead and let her know that they could change things. This happened after Jonas had spent a year traveling with an older version of Claudia.

Jonas met Claudia for the first time when he realized that he wasn't there to stop his dad and that his attempt to save him had failed again. At that moment, Claudia came and told Jonas that he could save them all. So Jonas goes to spend a year with Claudia learning about time travel.

After Peter dies, Elisabeth only knows of a place somewhere in the woods where Noah stays, and Noah only knows that he would protect her. In the cave, they find the passage, and Noah tells Elisabeth about paradise. Their connection gave them hope. Even when Noah felt hopeless himself, he only wanted to give Elisabeth hope.

They just tried to give them some comfort. In one of their darkest moments, they were there for each other and tried to never give up hope.

Also everything that losing their moms represented for them.

Silja died when Noah was very young and apparently Bartosz became distant.

When Doris left, Egon started to drink. It was probably at that moment that his relationship with Claudia became colder.

Their relationships with their dads deteriorated when they lost their moms. A disagreement resulted in the death of their dads. Noah and Claudia eventually saw their dads again, but it was a younger version of their dads who didn't yet recognize that version of them as their kid.

I think it is similar with Elisabeth and Jonas.

The first thing Jonas did when he got home was look for his mom, and he couldn't find Hannah. He probably thought he couldn't save his mom just like he couldn't save his dad.

Peter and Elisabeth were still trying to find Franziska and Charlotte, and after months she just thought they were dead. When her father died, I don't think there was any hope of seeing her mother again.

For years, Jonas and Elisabeth probably assumed that their moms had died in the apocalypse. It was unexpected the way they were reunited with their moms, and the revelations that came from it.

This group is so interesting to me because they experienced many years of friendship and then all that was left was betrayal. Although I will never forget all those years of friendship that I never saw.

63 notes · View notes

nikkzwrites · 4 years

Text

Yesterday Once More | Dark Fix-It Fic Series | Chapter 2

CW: Canon Typical Triggers: Smoking, Sex, Language, Drugs, Drinking, Death, Violence.

Word Count: 5.1k

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter]

Nine hours had passed since Mikkel’s disappearance. A man with an older looking suitcase overlooked the police canvassing. His dirty scruffy face bent down to scoop up a dead bird.

Jonas shot up from his bed. He looked next to him to see Annalise missing. He threw off his duvet. He guessed it must have all been a dream. Tinnitus ringing in his ear caused him to walk towards his mirror. He turned to check his ear to see black liquid flowing out of it. Jonas studied it on his fingers for a moment trying to figure out what exactly it was. It almost seemed like ink or like a waste product of some sort.

“Jonas,” a haunting familiar voice called to him. The boy used his mirror and turned it to be met with the face of his father covered in the black liquid dripping down from him.

Jonas shot up. His breathing was hard and unsteady. He swallowed his breath as he checked his ear to make sure that he wasn’t dreaming again. As he looked down at his hand, he realized there was the sound of soft breathing next to him. He turned quickly to see that Annalise was there. His terror slowly subsided as her gentle energy embraced him once more. His half-lidded blue eyes studied her. They must have fallen asleep not too long ago. As he made a move to carefully leave his bed, Jonas heard a faint whimper.

Magnus stood in the woods. He didn’t know exactly what he was doing there, but he felt like he needed to be there, for Mikkel. He just wanted his little brother back. His heart wounded from despair. He looked up hearing a noise to spy Franziska walking towards him.

Franziska just looked at the boy who stood in her way for a moment. This moment was unwieldy for her. What was she supposed to say to him? What did he want her to say? Those questions rushed around in her head. Instead of trying to dwell on it, she just tried to move past him.

Magnus quickly grabbed onto the smaller girl and pushed her against a tree. “What were you doing there,” he asked angrily.

The girl complained, “Ouch! Are you crazy?” She studied Magnus’s face. It was full of turmoil. A face that was filled to the brim with emotions he didn’t know how to let out and where to properly put them.

“What were you doing,” He rephrased his question.

Franziska pursed her lips for a second getting more annoyed at his questioning. She stared at him and answered honestly, “I heard you guys talking at school. About the caves… And Erik’s drugs… So I thought… I don’t know what I thought.” She looked down at Magnus’s lips then back into his eyes.

Magnus started to shake before he let her go. He just stared at her trying to understand his life.

“I’m sorry about Mikkel,” she said finally understanding the words she wanted to say to him. But in the end, Magnus just turned angrily to storm away leaving Franziska there to watch him go.

Annalise wept as she slept. She kept reliving losing Mikkel in between her fond memories with him. First, she woke up in her bed with Mikkel huddled next to her from the night before. The poor young boy had gotten scared from a horror movie the three teenagers had been watching. Mikkel, not wanting to get anyone in trouble, had tried his other siblings who both turned him away before Annalise had welcomed him into bed. She could still remember his squeaked, ‘Thank you, Lise.’ After watching him sleep gently, the scenery slowly changed around them to the two of them in the woods. Mikkel curled up in the dirt and leaves shivering and crying. He was in the red puffy coat and the silly skeleton outfit that he loved so much. Annalise tried to call for him, but her ears just filled with Mikkel’s cries. He never responded to her but just kept crying out for help. Annalise started to see dark liquid start to drain and puddle around him. His cries became more desperate.

Jonas couldn’t take seeing her crying softly. He gently leaned over her. He rubbed her shoulder. “Annalise,” he whispered her name. He watched as her face contorted into more anguish. Jonas filled with panic. He gently shook her awake and in a harsh hushed voice demanded to her, “Annalise.”

Annalise slowly awakened by a force and voice. Her face was wet. She wiped her eyes and sat up. She looked to her side to realize just what had happened and how close she was to the sweet boy who took her in. She sniffled and scoot back, “sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“It’s okay,” Jonas soothed, “I had fallen asleep too.” His lips forced a small gentle smile, “I guess we both are having a rough time.”

Annalise forced a small giggle to escape her. Jonas noticed once more that she wasn’t just muted color like everyone else. Her sunset tones filled him with comfortability even as she teased, “Did you just imply that we wouldn’t?”

Jonas actually smiled and nodded, “Yeah. I guess I did.” He laughed at himself. There was nothing else they could have done, he told himself. They sat awkwardly for a moment. He looked her over again. He didn’t know how to feel when he remembered that Hannah had given the girl some of her own pajamas to borrow while there. They were rather baggy and big on the small-statured teen.

Martha stared at the pictures on the counter as she laid on the couch with her head in Katharina’s lap. “When Dad’s brother disappeared, how old was he,” she asked.

The picture of Mads and Ulrich they had given to Jana in 1986 for Mother’s day sat in between the pictures of the Nielsen’s and another with Annalise with the family for Halloween when they all matched costumes from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ for Mikkel. Mikkel had a cool trick to actually simulate the Wizard’s, Martha dressed as Dorothy, Magnus and Ulrich being the scarecrow and tin man in their respective order, Annalise dressed as the Lion seeming to be having a lot of fun, and Katharina as the Good Witch. They all seemed to be having a lot of fun. Mikkel was right in the center of all of them with a giant grin that he had gotten his family to do a giant group. Little did they know that it was going to be his last Halloween.

Katharina stared at the pictures and said, “Your father was 15. Mads was three years younger.”

Martha looked up at her mother, “And he was never found?”

Katharina started to play with her daughter’s hair hoping to just let the question and the distressing conversation drop.

“We talked about Erik,” Martha continued, “In the forest. Mikkel thought that was the worst. When someone isn’t found.”

Katharina comforted her daughter and herself, “Mikkel’s coming back. Definitely.”

Annalise shifted uneasily under Jonas’s gaze. She asked, “Got a problem Kahnwald?”

Jonas nodded, “Yeah. Those clothes are too big for you.”

This caused the girl to blink. He was just so honest about it. She looked down at Hannah’s sleepwear and asked, “Is it really that bad?” She looked up at him, “I can go change.”

Jonas shook his head, “I think my mom said something about washing the clothes from last night.” He swallowed hard. His mind started to piece together how he was sounding. He blushed and shot up to walk to his wardrobe. He absentmindedly rambled as he looked for some clothes, “I think I have some old clothes that may fit you though. They are from before I went to the hospital so they are a bit too small for me now.”

“You were in the hospital,” Annalise questioned. She started to look around his room. It was messy as normal teenaged boys’ rooms were but something stood out to her. A pill bottle. She studied it for a second before turning her attention back to the blond.

Jonas replied back without thinking, “Yeah. My first day officially back was yesterday.” He finally found what he was looking for and stopped. He turned horrified now fully aware of his mistake.

Annalise blinked, “I thought Bartosz said you were in France.” Her brow furrowed as she tried to put the pieces together herself. It wasn’t long before she gasped and exclaimed, “That’s why you didn’t text Martha or talk to anyone! You couldn’t!” She shook her head then asked, “But, why didn’t you tell anyone?”

Jonas slid himself down to sit onto the floor, “Why would I want to?”

Annalise sat next to him. She sighed and rest her head against his shoulder, “I get it. I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to.”

Jonas nodded. He let his head fall back to look up at the ceiling, “Thanks.”

They sat there in silence for a little bit. Their breathing synchronized. Time stood still as the two teenagers just tried to process their life leading up to this moment. Being together alone with practically a stranger that was somehow closer than any other person in the world right at that moment.

Jonas spoke up first again, “Do you ever feel like you were just meant to meet someone?”

Annalise looked up at the ceiling with him and asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Jonas motioned with his hand at nothing, “Just someone that you meet and it changes your entire life. Better, worse… whatever. Just someone who changes you.”

Annalise looked up at the boy and took a deep breath, “My dad used to say, ‘We are lead to those who help us most grow if we allow them and we help them out too.’ So I guess I know the feeling.”

Jonas sighed, “He sounds like a wise man. You must miss him.”

“I’ve missed him every day for a while,” Annalise explained, “My dad died not too long ago too. Probably what drew me to come here.”

Jonas swallowed a breath. Tears started to fall from his eyes, “You think…”He couldn’t complete his sentence. It didn’t seem as though he needed to though.

Annalise nodded, “Yeah.” She turned and reached around to give the boy a hug. She buried her face in his shoulder to hide the fact she was starting to cry as well. She started to laugh though thinking about something Jonas had said the night before. She pulled away from him with a warm smile through tears, “What? Dead dad, bad topic?”

Jonas burst into laughter. His entire body shook with his entertainment. His eye squeezed close from the force of his smile.

Hannah must have heard the laughing from downstairs because she called “How come I haven’t heard either one of you go clean yourselves up yet? I didn’t offer Annalise to stay here for you two to be joking around.” She puffed out her chest. She honestly had taken Annalise in knowing that Ulrich would come to check up on the teenager eventually. It just gave her even more of an excuse to be alone with the man.

Jonas rolled his eyes, “I’ll go first that way I can get the water warmed up for you.” He laughed then walked towards the direction of the bathroom.

Annalise called after him, “That sounds more like you are going to take all the warm water for yourself.”

Hannah looked up the stairs seeing the two teens playfully teasing each other. She rolled her eyes and called to Annalise, “Come here. We need to make a list of what we are going to need to pack from the Nielsen’s to get you moved here for a few days.”

Annalise nodded, “Yes ma’am.” She hurried down the stairs to do the activity Hannah had asked of her.

The cool water was just what Jonas needed to calm down. He closed his eyes and allowed his mind to focus on making sure he was clean. As the shower warmed though, he felt his heart start to race once more. Images of Martha and Annalise spun in his head. He could barely concentrate for long. He quickly turned the water off and panted as he looked at himself in the mirror. He quickly dried off, brushed his teeth, changed, and walked out. He called down towards where he heard Annalise’s voice and called, “Your turn! You need help?”

Hannah blushed. She called upstairs to her son, “What would Annalise need help with? It’s a shower! Not a group project.”

Annalise stifled a laugh. Her snort had caused both Kahnwald’s to look at her. Annalise lifted her hand, rushed past Jonas on the stairs, “Sorry. I’m going to go.”

Jonas watched as Annalise closed the door and argued, “To make sure she knew how to use our shower. Some people have different ones.”

“Oh, you think the Nielsen’s have a different shower,” Hannah replied flushed.

Jonas shook his head, “What are you talking about?” He rolled his eyes. The boy used this time to go into his father’s shop. Talking with Annalise finally made him feel ready to be there again. The boy wanted to have some time to himself just surrounded by Michael. He walked in and sat right in the middle of the room.

Warm water refreshed Annalise more than she could describe. She lathered her hair and body in shampoo and soap to get the grime off of her. The feeling of being clean intoxicated her. She hummed happily as the water washed away the forest from her. As the water started to cool, her brain started to fill with images of Jonas. Her heart raced. Her hand rushed to end the shower to stop those thoughts from happening. Her chest heaved as she tried to calm herself down. She wrapped her hair up and brushed her teeth. Then she got dressed into Jonas’s old clothes and walked out.

Across town, the bearded stranger walked out of the shower. His things scattered across Regina’s eighth hotel room. He dried off his hair as he kept the memory of his loved one close in his mind. She would have been getting out the shower about now right? He looked over to the time. He had timed it right. He hummed to himself pleased with the little luxury he was able to give himself. He threw the towel for his hair onto the bed then went to look at his charts and diagrams on the wall.

Jonas laid on the floor. His legs crossed. From above he was reminiscent of an angel. As the rain started, he decided to start to explore more of his late father’s workspace. He walked around. As he studied the closet, the boy noticed one of the boards slightly off kelter. He reached up to uncover its secrets to reveal a map of the Winden Caves.

As it started to rain, Katharina found herself outside. She was just standing there her mind wandered through possibilities hoping for her baby to come home to her. The rain had forced Magnus to also return home. Katharina turned hearing the noise of someone walking behind her to see the tormented face of her eldest son. She turned back to look out into the rain.

Magnus walked into his room to lament. He finally allowed himself to let out the agony he felt. He walked to his wall and just kept punching until he could feel something on the outside just as hurt as he felt on the inside.

Martha looked out of her window. She longed for Mikkel just to be there and walk past the view of her window again. She looked down at her phone and sent Bartosz’s call straight to voicemail.

When Annalise walked out, she realized she was completely alone. Jonas completely quiet and on his own somewhere in the house and it didn’t seem like Hannah was still there. The list they made was gone as well. Annalise made a face. She looked at her phone and figured now would be the best time to Face chat with her family. The girl holed herself into the room Hannah had put her in and started the call.

Freida answered quickly and scolded her daughter in their native English language, “What is going on over there?! I got an email from Katharina that you are staying with a family friend because her son Mikkel disappeared?! Please tell me you are okay. You weren’t there were you?”

“I’m fine Mom,” Annalise calmed her mother, “I-...” She looked off into the distance hearing shuffling inside of the house. “Hold on,” Annalise put her phone down and walked out to see what the noise was.

Jonas was trying to scramble into his room without anyone noticing but he heard the door open near him. The boy looked then let out a breath relieved. He smiled, “Hey Lise.”

Annalise smiled, “Hey. I’m on the phone with my mom. Want to meet her? It’s only fair yeah?”

His ears turned red but he nodded, “Yeah. Let me put this in my room real quick then I’ll be right there.”

“I’ll leave the door open,” Annalise slipped her head back into the room. She did just as she said then settled into her bed. She lifted her phone back up. She took a second to remember to speak English again then said, “Sorry Mom. That was Jonas.”

“Oh, the cute one yeah,” Freida laughed forgetting what had panicked her for the moment, “He’s going to come to say hi right? I’ll go get Zayde so he can be here too.”

Annalise blushed, “Mom, really. There is no need.” She shook her head trying to convince her mother not to get her grandfather, “I only wanted him to meet you since it’s only fair because I know his mom and am staying here for a few days.” But it was no help, she had already gotten close to his chair for them to share the screen.

Jonas smiled as he walked in. He laughed and settled in next to Lise leaning his back on the bed. “Hello,” Jonas tried his best to speak English, “My name is Jonas. It’s nice to meet you.”

David looked at the blue-eyed blond boy sitting next to his granddaughter and spoke in German, “Oh, you think I can’t speak my native language?! Fuck you.”

Freida tried to calm her father down and Annalise laughed. She looked at Jonas and said, “I should have warned you that my Zayde is from Winden, huh?”

Jonas laughed and nodded, “Yeah. Rather than the first words out of his mouth being fuck you. I can see why German terrified you.”

“We can hear you,” David replied. He spoke up again, “Anyway kid, this is my daughter Freida and that’s her daughter Annalise. I’m David. Don’t do anything to her. I know people in Winden.”

“Yes Sir,” Jonas laughed. He looked towards Annalise who was just shaking her head.

Annalise spoke up in English, “Anyway, we are safe. You know where I am and who I’m with. I’ll chat with all of you tomorrow. Bye Bye,” She waved.

Jonas stuck his face in once more to wave bye as well. He chuckled. Just as he was about to say something to Annalise her phone made a small text received tone. He didn’t really want to pry but he was right there. ‘He is cute’ Her mom had texted her. He couldn’t help but chuckle a bit.

Annalise’s face started to glow red she quickly texted back, ‘Mom, if he can speak English, what makes you think he can’t read?’ She looked at Jonas and apologized, “I’m sorry about that. She and I talk like every day so Martha had ended up talking to her at some point too and-”

“It’s okay,” Jonas shook his head. He looked at the girl nervously. They sat there awkwardly for a second before Jonas spoke up, “Martha called me cute?”

Annalise pushed him gently, “Go away, Jonas. God. Is that all you think about? Martha?”

Jonas stood up forcing a laugh, “Sure. Why not?” His plan had worked, now he could go investigate the map on his own without worrying too much about Annalise. He walked out of the room and went inside his own.

Hannah pulled up at the police station. She sighed and waited for Ulrich. He had to be back at his work sometime, she reasoned with herself. The woman walked to the waiting area and crossed her leg over the other. She watched the door.

Drenched, Ulrich walked into the station. He was walking to his office when he spotted her. He turned and asked, “What are you doing here?” His hands finding themselves in his jacket pockets.

“I wanted to see you. We have-” Hannah started.

“Come on.” The man interrupted the woman by grabbing her arm and pulling her down to the archives. Once inside he asked her, “What is this? Why are you here?”

Hannah shrugged a bit and replied, “I’m so sorry.” She stood for a second before she sighed. Hannah wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him close and kissed his jaw. She held him close for a second. She then moved to press their foreheads together. “Have you found out anything,” She asked.

Ulrich had wrapped his arms around her in momentary weakness. He really needed to be held close after everything going on. His youngest son, his Mikkel, was gone with no explanation and no trace. Ulrich simply shook his head and tried to hold back his sorrow. He pulled up his face in a moment of clarity. When he did though, Hannah took that as a sign to try and kiss him. As the woman tried to continue, Ulrich whispered against her lips, “Stop it, please.” He pleaded with her, “Please.”

Hannah pulled her face away in slight annoyance. She took a step back from him and looked up a the tall man.

“I can’t do this,” Ulrich explained, “Not now.” He reached over to move some of the hair out of Hannah’s face. He watched her as she looked around feeling guilty about what had just transpired. His heart still aching, Ulrich reasoned, “I’ll call you, okay?” He pulled away completely and walked out of the room leaving Hannah just standing there.

Annalise used this time to try and text her friend. She really didn’t know what to say other than, ‘I love you. If you need me, I’m here.’ She stared at the picture of her and Martha in her contact picture. Annalise, then, went to the full photo to go and look through the pictures she had with the Nielsen’s. Seeing all of them happy, laughing, completely unaware of the future turmoil made Annalise start to cry again. She zoomed in on Mikkel. He was such a great kid. He had a popsicle stain all around his mouth and a big old cheesy toothy grin. Annalise then allowed more of the picture in the frame to see Magnus holding his little brother up in the air about to toss him back in the water at Martha who was, despite trying to look annoyed, had big sparkles in her eyes. Annalise laughed through her tears.

Jonas’s hands traced over the map he had found in his father’s studio. He carefully started to read all of the text written on it. It seemed as though his father was exploring and trying to make his way through the caves. Something seemed very off to him when he was studying it. His fingers went to the anomaly that read, ‘Where is the Crossing?’

Bartosz was getting frustrated. Martha wasn’t contacting him back. He looked around. The boy hated this feeling. He was alone. Completely alone. He looked at his phone deciding that desperate times meant to do desperate measures. He pressed Annalise’s name and tried to call her.

Annalise stared at the picture only to have a surprising thing happen. Why was Bartosz Tiedemann calling her, she questioned. She declined the call and texted him, ‘What do you want?’

Bartosz stared at his phone. Another straight to voicemail. He growled. He was just about to throw his phone when he saw her text. He walked back to his sofa and texted her, ‘Can you tell Martha to call me back?’

Annalise rolled her eyes. Of course, she thought. She texted the boy back, ‘She hasn’t talked to me either. I’m not there anyway. I’m at Jonas’s.’

Bartosz scrunched his nose. Why was she there, he thought to himself. He shook his head and decided to just investigate and get the answer himself, ‘Why?’

Annalise’s brow furrowed. Did he just, the girl questioned. She rolled her eyes again, ‘Why do you care?’

‘I am worried about my girlfriend, thank you,’ Bartosz replied.

Annalise texted back, ‘I think she needs her family right now. Not either of us. I really don’t think where I am makes a difference right now. Chill out. One of the things she asked us to do is be cordial towards each other so let’s just try to do that and wait for her to talk to us. She will come around eventually.’

Bartosz growled. That girl really knew how to push his buttons. He looked out the window. She’s right though, a tiny voice within him spoke. He shook his head and texted back, ‘Fine. If she texts you first, can you let me know how she’s doing? I’ll do the same for you.’

‘Deal.’

Hannah walked into the house to find both teenagers deathly quiet. She called up that she was home and started to make some food for herself. Footsteps started down the stairs. She turned to see her son standing there. He walked over to the counter and sat on it. Hannah pulled herself up and sat next to him to give him some company after lighting a few candles since the power wasn’t working again.

Jonas started first, “Do you think they’ll find him?”

“I hope so,” Hannah answered her son honestly. She stared at the refrigerator with her hands in her lap.

Jonas looked towards his mother for guidance. He sat in silence for a minute before asking, “Do you think he had a secret?” He thought back to the maps that he found in his father’s studio.

“Mikkel,” Hannah asked confused. She looked towards her son for his input. She wondered if he knew more than he let on.

“No, Dad,” Jonas replied quelling all of his mother’s questions instantly but now creating new ones. Jonas thought of how to ask his question then asked, “Do you think he was keeping something from us?”

“Why do you say that,” Hannah asked Jonas. She was growing more concerned for him. Maybe she had done too much or had him come back home a bit too early, she worried internally.

Jonas sat trying to process everything going on. He let Hannah’s question drop to the floor then questioned, “Do you miss him?”

Hannah lightly sighed, “I think I miss the notion of him.” She didn’t want to lie to her son and tell him she missed someone she really didn’t know if she did. She shook her head and told Jonas, “I don’t know who he really was. Maybe we never know that, what a person is really like.”

Jonas looked at his mother, “Did you love him?” Right when he asked, the lights in the house illuminated once more.

Hannah looked around noticing the lights then let out a small scoff at how ironic everything at this moment was.

It wasn’t too long though before the lights of Winden started to flicker leaving most of the town confused. Birds started to fall from the sky once more. Dead instantly.

The Stranger pinned up the news article about Mikkel on his board. The headline read, ‘Where is Mikkel?’ He stared at it, then the boy in the photo. He reached over to scribble his own inscription. He crossed out the ‘Where’ and replaced it with ‘When.’ He stood back to admire the new headline reading, ‘When is Mikkel?’

Mikkel climbed his way through the caves he was trapped in. He limped his way out of the cave. The boy looked around. Something seemed different about it and it wasn’t just because it was the morning. Mikkel just couldn’t place his finger on it. He decided instead to try and run home. He knew everyone would be worried about him. When he finally arrived, he started to notice other strange things. Vehicles parked that he had never seen before. On his way into the house, he stopped to look at an older fashioned motorcycle. He shook his head. He figured it must have just been people who were there helping his family look for him. Mikkel just tried to continue his way inside. When he walked up and tried his keys, it didn’t work. His eyes furrowed. It wasn’t long before a teenaged boy opened the door. Mikkel looked up at him and asked, “Who are you?”

The teenager looked down at the strange boy with scrapes all over his face and chuckled a bit, “Why? Who are you?”

“Mikkel,” the younger boy answered just as confused as the older boy in all of this, “I live here.”

“Ulrich,” the teen laughed, “And I live here.” He watched as Mikkel swallowed hard, “You going to grow roots? You’re at the wrong house, fool.”

A girl’s voice called him outside. She stood in the driveway, “Hey Ulrich. Come on, we need to go.”

“Yes, Katharina, I’m coming,” Ulrich responded.

Mikkel and Katharina stared at each other. Both of them trying to understand why it felt like they knew each other.

Ulrich interrupted their staring content with, “Are you dense? You don’t live here.” He pushed past Mikkel and grabbed his bike.

Katharina looked at Ulrich and asked, “Who is that?”

Ulrich looked back and laughed. He turned to Katharina to tease, “The Grim Reaper. Can’t you tell?” Katharina gently popped Ulrich in the head causing him to complain, “Ouch! Katharina.”

Mikkel watched as the two drove off. Katharina still looking back at Mikkel every so often. The boy then looked at the newspaper on the doorstep. The headline read, ‘Chernobyl - Half a Year Later.’ Mikkel started to panic as he looked at the date of the paper that read, ‘5. November. 1986.’ His mind focused completely on the year, ‘1986.’

#yesterday once more fanfic #dark fanfic #dark netflix #dark netflix fanfic #dark (netflix)#dark (netflix) fanfiction #dark (netflix) fanfic #fix it fic #break it differently

11 notes · View notes

standuphippy · 4 years

Text

March Favorites

Making this list really reinforced how much I miss seeing live music. Here’s what I enjoyed in March. Spotify playlist is here: https://spoti.fi/2xpcxYy (Some of these records weren’t on Spotify so I made substitutions where necessary.)

NEW MUSIC:   Anna Calvi “Hunter: Hunted Version” A remix album of songs from last year’s Hunter LP.  Basia Bulat “Are You In Love?” I discovered Basia Bulat thanks to Daytrotter twelve years ago when she released her debut, “Oh, My Darling.” Scarcely missed an LA show since then. Her records are glorious chambers of melody and I love her voice.  

Caroline Rose “Superstar” Great pop record. I love the art direction on her albums.  CocoRosie “Put the Shine On” The Casady sisters sound like no one else: Sierra has a soaring soprano and Bianca speak/ sings in what could best be described as a crone voice. They’re still making standout records.

Disq “Collector”  Young rock band from Madison, WI.

 Father John Misty “Off-Key in Hamburg” Available on Bandcamp. It’s a great set.

Four Tet “Sixteen Oceans”  The track that I picked for the playlist is regrettably called “Love Salad.” I hope it’s simply an answer to whether or not he likes salad.

Half Waif “The Caretaker” I like this record.

Helen Money “Atomic”  Alison Chesley was the opening act at a Shellac show that I saw many years ago (always catch the opener at a Shellac show) and I’ve been a fan ever since. This record is particularly good.

Human Impact “Human Impact” Unsane’s Chris Spencer has a new band with ex-Swans/ Cop Shoot Cop members and it satisfies a noise rock itch that’s hard to scratch.

Julia Holter “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”  Holter’s spare soundtrack to adds so much to the film.

Matt Wilson and his Orchestra “When I Was a Writer” A catchy, witty record from the former Trip Shakespeare frontman.

Moaning “Uneasy Laughter”  Well, the album title fits the cover art. I liked their first record as well. Deadpan anxiety.

Stephen Malkmus “Traditional Techniques” Has it really been a year since Groove Denied? This is his third in as many years. Knocking them out before that second Pavement reunion.

U.S. Girls “Heavy Light” Another pop original.

Waxahatchee “Saint Cloud”   Katie Crutchfield’s new record is excellent, easily one of my favorites of the year. (Related recommendation: Waxahatchee “Out in the Storm”)

Yumi Zouma “Truth & Consequences”   Four people in different cities making pop perfection.

OLD MUSIC (record store finds and new discoveries) :   Belle & Sebastian “3..6..9 Seconds of Light”  I found a copy of this at Amoeba. This EP was the first thing I ever heard by Belle and Sebastian over 20 years ago. I was living in San Francisco and had heard a lot about them and they didn’t disappoint. “Century of Fakers” is at once catchy, delicate, witty and cruel. I listened to that track over and over before I moved on to the next one. Happy to have it on vinyl, the type on the back was all but illegible on the cd.

 The Jesus Lizard “Show” The best rock band I’ve ever heard, the best live act I’ve ever seen. I had a lot of missed connections before I finally got to see them live. This record came out eight months later and it’s a great document of that tour. David Yow’s banter is top notch. A year ago Amoeba had a copy of this on their website and I missed it; I finally picked it up on eBay. This is probably only the second time I’ve bought a record on that site.

Le Butcherettes “Don’t Bleed” This EP came out in in February. The best part of seeing Le Butcherettes live is watching an unsuspecting audience get bowled over by Teri Gender Bender. I didn’t even see her during the throwing-raw-meat years.

Shannon Wright “Providence” I discovered Shannon Wright when she opened for Sleater-Kinney at the Fillmore. She played a cover of the Smiths’ “Asleep” and it was glorious. I saw her again, years later, opening for Shellac (if you needed more proof of Shellac’s opening-act acumen). She’s made records that cover a variety of styles but anything she does is worth checking out. Having said that, this record came out months ago and I just found out about it. I need to get on more mailing lists.

NEW MOVIES (theatrical):  Corpus Christi A delinquent on his way to a work camp poses as a clergyman and helps a village confront their grief. It was the Polish Academy Award nomination for Best International Feature Film. Bartosz Bielenia is riveting as Daniel.

First Cow The new Kelly Reichardt movie is about a pair of frontiersmen unsuited for their time and location who take advantage of a business opportunity. Almost all of Reichardt’s films are intimate personal dramas. I love them.

Sorry We Missed You Ken Loach film about the British family getting crushed in the gig economy. It’s a heartbreaker.   Never Rarely Sometimes Always  Incredible film about a teenage girl who travels to New York with her cousin to get an abortion. The film says so much very quietly. The performances, cinematography, and Julia Holter’s score are all amazing.   OLD MOVIES:   Tokyo Godfathers Any opportunity to catch a Satoshi Kon film in the theater is worth taking. The backgrounds show realistic details that other animated features would gloss over or ignore entirely. In a time before digital effects, Satoshi Kon was doing things in animation that simply couldn’t be done in live-action films. BOOKS:

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt Two psychotic brothers are hired to kill a prospector. I wasn’t a big fan of the movie but I enjoyed the book. Somehow the shifts in tone seem steadier when narrated by Eli Sisters.

SHOWS:

Kim Gordon Zebulon 03/01/20

A last minute tour warm-up show. Kim Gordon wasn’t slated to play more U.S. dates until the summer and wasn’t going to be back here in CA until August. A knockout show. The set was simply her entire album “No Home Record” resequenced for a live set. It will doubtlessly be the last show before a long drought but it was a good one.

#favorites #March 2020

0 notes

digitalmark18-blog · 6 years

Text

SEO & JavaScript: 6 Things You Need to Know by @grybniak

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/seo-javascript-6-things-you-need-to-know-by-grybniak/

SEO & JavaScript: 6 Things You Need to Know by @grybniak

Knowing the basics of JavaScript has become a vital skill for the modern SEO professional, although until recently the relationship between these two disciplines has been a highly debated subject.

The crucial question that hovers at the interface of SEO and JavaScript is whether search engine crawlers can perceive a website’s content properly, and realistically evaluate user experience.

While HTML, which works with PHP, CSS, etc., can be read directly by a crawler, a JavaScript-based website cannot be accessed right off the bat. Google crawlers first analyze the DOM, and only afterward do they render the website.

Basic Definitions

Before we delve into best practices for optimizing JavaScript, let’s take a quick look at some basic terminology:

JavaScript is a programming language used to make webpages dynamic and interactive. You can place JavaScript into an HTML document, or make a link or reference to it.

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. In simple words, it is a content organizer: HTML provides a website’s structure (bullet lists, headlines, subheadlines, paragraphs, etc.) and defines static content.

AJAX is Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Basically, it updates content without refreshing the whole page. AJAX enables web applications and servers to communicate without intruding on the current page.

However, you should note that starting in Q2 2018, Google will no longer need AJAX to render JavaScript-based websites.

A modern SEO professional should also have a basic understanding of DOM (Document Object Model). You can think of DOM as a tool used by Google to explore and analyze web pages.

First, Google receives an HTML document and identifies its JavaScript elements. Then the browser initiates DOM, enabling the search engine to render the page.

1. Let Search Engines See Your JavaScript

Robots.txt is set to provide Google search engines with appropriate crawling opportunities. If you block them from seeing JavaScript, the page will appear differently to web crawlers than it does to users.

This means that search engines won’t get the full user experience, and Google may interpret such actions as cloaking.

The best approach is to provide web crawlers with all the resources they need to see webpages in the exact same manner as users.

Consider arranging a meeting with developers, and decide together which files should be hidden from search engines, and which of them should be made accessible.

2. Internal Linking

Internal linking is a strong SEO tool used to show search engines your website architecture and point to the most important webpages.

The most essential advice here: use internal linking, and do not even try to replace it with JavaScript on-click events.

Yes, end URLs are likely to be found and crawled with on-click events, but web crawlers won’t associate them with the global navigation of your site.

Therefore, you would be better off to implement internal linking by using regular anchor tags within the HTML or DOM, to provide users with a better experience.

3. URL Structure

JavaScript-based websites used to include fragment identifiers within URLs, but lone hashes (#) and hashbangs (#!) are not recommended by Google.

A highly recommended method is pushState History API. It updates the URL in the address bar and allows JavaScript websites to leverage clean URLs.

A clean URL is also called a search engine-friendly URL, which consists of a plain text, easily understood by non-expert users.

Consider using pushState for infinite scroll, so the URL updates each time the user hits a new part of the page. In a perfect scenario, the user can refresh the page and still remain at the exact same spot.

Also, explore SEO best URL practices and start using them to improve user experience.

4. Test Your Website

Google is able to crawl and understand many forms of JavaScript, although some of them may be more challenging than others.

Here is an experiment by Bartosz Góralewicz that shows how Googlebot interacts with JavaScript on different frameworks.

This study helps us to understand when it is time to worry and act proactively.

However, it’s always better to predict possible mistakes and problems and avoid them, so why not conduct some testing?

Follow these two basic steps to detect possible breaks:

Check whether the content on your webpages appears in the DOM.

Test a couple of pages to make sure that Google is able to index your content.

It is crucial to find out whether Google is able to see your content and JavaScript in your robots.txt and analyze it properly. Therefore, consider manually checking pieces of your content and fetching them with Google to see if content appears.

Test your website by following this short guide from Google.

Done all your testing and the results look promising? Great!

But what if something isn’t working?

If there is any indication that Google can’t see your content properly, call your development team for help.

Meanwhile, an HTML snapshot may salvage the situation.

5. HTML Snapshots

Google introduced HTML snapshots in 2009 and disapproved them in 2015. That is a long story and an ongoing topic.

The thing you should know is that Google stills support HTML snapshots, although it has determined them to be elements to “avoid.”

HTML snapshots may be necessary for a couple of situations, so you should at least be familiar with them.

For example, if search engines cannot grasp the JavaScript on your website, you can provide them with an HTML snapshot, which is better than not having your content indexed and understood at all.

In a perfect world, a website would use some kind of user-agent detection on the server side and show the HTML snapshot to bots and users.

Note that Google strives to see the exact same experience as a viewer. Therefore, it is better to return HTML snapshots to search engine crawlers.

However, only do so in cases where there is currently something wrong with JavaScript, and it isn’t possible to contact your support team.

6. Site Latency

When a browser creates DOM using a received HTML document, it loads the majority of resources exactly as they are mentioned in the HTML document.

If a massive file exists at the top of an HTML document, a browser will load this huge file first, and all other information will appear only afterward, with a significant delay.

The key idea of Google’s critical rendering path is to first load pieces of information that are crucial for users. In other words, to place the most essential content for users above-the-fold.

If your JavaScript files or some unnecessary resources clog up the page load speed, you probably have a render-blocking JavaScript, also called a perceived latency.

This means that your pages have the potential to appear faster, but JavaScript code is slowing them down.

Check how long it takes to load a page with Page Speed Insights or other similar tools. Analyze the results to see if there is a render-blocking JavaScript.

Here are a couple of top solutions to resolve it:

Add JavaScript in the HTML.

Add the ‘async’ attribute to HTML to make your JavaScript asynchronous.

Reduce JavaScript elements within the HTML document.

When trying to improve the situation, keep in mind the basic rules of JavaScript.

For instance, scripts must be arranged in a certain order (order of precedence). If some scripts reference files, they can be used only after the referenced files are loaded.

You should constantly stay in touch with your development team to make sure that any alterations do not interrupt user experience.

Conclusion

Search engines are constantly evolving, so they will no doubt interpret your JavaScript better and faster in the future.

For now, make sure your existing content is crawlable and obtainable, with proper site latency. Hopefully this article will help you to optimize your website.

More SEO Resources:

Image Credit

In-post Photo: Stock Snap

Source: http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/9902870

0 notes

writingsubmissions · 7 years

Text

UFC Fight Night 105 Preview

WHAT'S HAPPENING: *UFC 208 was not good. I could pretty much just stop there and just write "Sigh." about thirty straight times and call it a wrap, but I guess I do have an obligation to go over exactly what happened. Germaine de Randamie won a narrow decision over Holly Holm to become UFC's first women's featherweight champion, even though a division doesn't really exist, and the fight wasn't ever really good enough to not feel as pointless as it did going in. It was a perfectly fine kickboxing match, but after about five hours of mediocre action (and only one finish, a record-low for a UFC event), the crowd wasn't really having it, and it just fell sort of flat. De Randamie won the early rounds, but began to tire and allowed Holm to take over, and the scoring basically seemed to come down to who you thought won the third round, even though de Randamie was much more accurate in countering Holm throughout the balance of the fight. Anyway, besides the group of people who thought Holm won, the other big controversy was some late strikes by de Randamie after the horn in two rounds, one of which seemed to rock Holm pretty badly. There was an outrage in the moment that referee Todd Anderson should've at least docked a point from de Randamie, but once people looked into the rules, they didn't really have a case - apparently the by-the-book rule is that the round doesn't end until the horn sounds AND the referee steps in, and Anderson was in fact late stepping in between the fighters on both occasions. So while it's probably still a bit of a cheap shot by de Randamie, with the caveat that in the moment, she may have not been focusing on the horn, it's also hard for Anderson to punish her for his own mistakes. So, de Randamie won, and it's not unclear where any of this leads. The close scoring and the late punches by de Randamie would normally generate enough controversy that you could try to book a rematch, but nobody really cared about this fight going in, and it was uninspiring enough in practice that I don't really see any sort of clamor to run it back. During the aftermath of the fight, and on a lot of their post-fight programming, UFC was pushing a fight between de Randamie and Cris Cyborg, who was in attendance, but Cyborg's status is up in the air thanks to a failed drug test; she might be out as long as two years, though there's no whispers of UFC trying to strong-arm USADA into granting her a retroactive exemption. And complicating matters further, de Randamie said immediately after the fight that she needs surgery to repair a nagging hand injury, which should put her out of action for a bit. Fitting, though - we might as well have a champ who can't fight in a division that doesn't exist. *The co-main wasn't any less strange, as Anderson Silva won a unanimous decision over Derek Brunson despite, well, not really winning the fight. As someone who expected Brunson to pretty much run over Silva on the first exchange of the fight, Silva actually did better than expected in places - he just kind of threw enough movement and bullshit at Brunson to keep him from getting too aggressive, and did an excellent job of stifling pretty much all of Brunson's takedown attempts. But at the end of each round, you'd just sort of take stock and realize that while Silva was dictating the terms of the fight, and did a lot more in terms of attention-grabbing stuff, at the end of the day it was Brunson pretty much doing all the damage in the fight, while Silva was mostly just playing defense and missing most of the stuff he tried. But that was apparently enough to win over the judges, and Silva gave an excellent post-fight interview after, talking about how he's probably getting too old for this, but loves to fight. Still, Silva looked diminished enough here that he should probably retire by the end of the year - the upcoming card in Rio might be a good spot for that to happen; plus there's a certain dream match that's suddenly on the table again, but more on that in a bit... *Alright, let's just run through the rest of the results. Jacare Souza got the lone finish on the card, tapping out Tim Boetsch in a stay-busy fight as expected. Glover Teixeira's win over Jared Cannonier was the big disappointment on the card - there was the promise of some fireworks here, but Teixeira, who was apparently injured going into the card, just decided to take Cannonier down and work for a submission. It was impressive that Cannonier survived, and a solid sign for him as a prospect, but it was death to watch. The only really good fight on the card opened the pay-per-view, as Dustin Poirier won a decision over Jim Miller that was surprisingly tough going at times, showing that Miller still has a lot left in the tank. Miller also worked over Poirier with leg kicks that really seemed to take their toll - there was some worry that Poirier may have broken his leg, but it seems like there's been no structural damage, and he'll be good to go. The only real solid prelim was Wilson Reis's win over Ulka Sasaki that continued to cement Reis as a flyweight contender; Reis looked great here, but so did Sasaki, who has seemingly improved a ton, hanging with Reis on the feet and even getting the Brazilian's back at the very end of the fight, even though he wasn't able to get the finish. Other than that, the undercard was a whole ton of nothing - prospect Randy Brown looked flat and lost to Belal Muhammad, Islam Makhachev out-wrestled Nik Lentz, Ryan LaFlare came back from a long layoff with a solid win over Roan Carneiro, and Rick Glenn won a fairly blah decision over Phillipe Nover. Whee. *You might notice two fights missing from that rundown - on Friday, the card was seemingly set at twelve fights, but two still managed to fall through in more or less the day leading up to the fight. The heavyweight bout between Marcin Tybura and late-notice replacement Justin Willis got scrapped once Willis had complications making weight. Willis is in fact a gigantic man, but it's still surprising, since nobody can seem to remember the last time someone wasn't able to make weight for a heavyweight bout. And, of course, Ian McCall's fight with Jarred Brooks fell through, continuing a comedy of errors. This marks McCall's sixth straight scrapped bout for some reason or another, with four of the six happening during fight week. This time, there was apparently some sort of digestive issue, possibly related to gallbladder issues, as McCall had to be taken to the hospital the day of the fights. At this point, one just has to wonder what the hell seems to be going on with McCall, even though a lot of these fallings-through have been due to his opponents. Ridiculous. *Well, the ax finally fell. The UFC roster has often been hard to keep up with - on the UFC website, it'd often be out-of-date in spots, leaving fighters on the roster that were long cut or retired, and you were basically better off just gleaning what you could from fighters firsthand, or seeing who popped up in other promotions, rather than wait for the infrequent announcement from the company, which often didn't even cover everyone who was off the roster anyway. But on the brief times they would update it, the UFC website was still sort of the "end all be all" of who was on the roster - there was a period in say, 2014, 2015, where the company was reliably keeping up with the roster churn every month, and various bots and accounts dedicated to tracking who came and went were often pretty accurate. And on Friday, the day before UFC 208, UFC finally caught everything up to speed. It was initially guys who had long signed with Bellator (like, say, Matt Mitrione and Josh Koscheck) and fighters who had retired (like Urijah Faber and Miesha Tate), but by the time all was said and done, UFC had deleted over one hundred fighters from the listed active roster. Now, a great majority of these cuts were public knowledge, but that still left about 35 or so cuts that were news to everyone, including some surprises. For one, it appears like when people's contracts are over, UFC is more or less just letting them walk - known free agents Lorenz Larkin, Rick Story, and Cole Miller were taken off the roster, following up similar reports with guys like Ryan Bader, Ali Bagautinov, and Zach Makovsky - all solid, all ranked (save Miller) fairly highly, and some in thin divisions that just need talent. But it essentially seems like new ownership has taken the tact of trying to slash costs, offer guys low contracts, and then letting them go if they don't like it, unless they're a proven star. Quite short-sighted, but WME-IMG also has debt to pay off. There's also some other contract weirdness, as a bunch of guys coming off wins, but weren't known to be free agents, were taken off the roster, led by Erik Perez - but the agent of Bartosz Fabinski, a Polish fighter who was 2-0 in UFC, but was still removed in the roster, is saying that Fabinski is just facing a long injury layoff, and UFC has frozen his contract in the interim. I guess there must be some sort of time component involved in these contracts, since I don't think UFC is paying these guys while they're hurt, but, here we are. Strange new world. *And it looks like two highly-ranked contenders might be joining them in fairly short order, as Kyoji Horiguchi and Misha Cirkunov are apparently set to leave UFC. There hasn't been much publicly, but word is that Horiguchi is now a free agent after negotiations to renew did not go well, which would be yet another blow for a flyweight division that's rapidly hemorrhaging talent. Horiguchi got rushed into a title fight with Demetrious Johnson due to a lack of other options, but the Japanese prospect has shined since, putting on showcase performances against Chico Camus, Neil Seery, and Ali Bagautinov. Horiguchi's pretty obviously a top-five talent in the division, and still young enough to improve, so it's kind of ridiculous UFC would let him walk, though that looks like it's going to happen. Hell, Horiguchi can probably get a ton of money from RIZIN and other Japanese promotions, though, so good on him. And in another dumb move, Dana White said that UFC is letting Cirkunov walk after negotiations with him also didn't go well. Cirkunov's a Latvian-born judoka who emigrated to Toronto and was talked about in Canadian MMA circles for years as a stud prospect. And he lived up to pretty much all the hype, capping off a 4-0 UFC record with a win over fellow top prospect Misha Cirkunov in December. It looked like UFC could turn Cirkunov into something - they had put some promotional effort into him, and he could fulfill two badly-needed spots as both a young Canadian star and a rising light heavyweight - but instead the promotion is going to look at someone who could be a star, say that they aren't there yet, and let them walk just to save some money in the short term. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. *And in one last cost-cutting note, WME-IMG also seems to be further squeezing fighters, who already don't make enough, on the margins. Carla Esparza groused on social media that for her fight in Halifax, UFC is apparently not willing to pony up the cash for her traditional walkout music by Metallica - hopefully this is just a one-off with a notoriously litigious artist and not a sign of things to come. And Brandon Gibson, a coach with Jackson-Wink who's worked wonders for a lot of different fighters, most notably Donald Cerrone, has said that UFC is no longer willing to offer camps footage of their fighters; instead, coaches must use UFC Fight Pass, and, of course, will not get it comped, instead being forced to pay $10 per month. In addition, Fight Pass doesn't provide a lot of things (slow motion, frame-by-frame rewinding) that the old footage did, so not only are you pissing off your cheap labor, you're making it less productive. But hey, you may get a few hundred more bucks per month. Bravo. *Whenever this happened, I never thought it would be this far down on the list, but hey, among all that bad news and penny-pinching, it looks like GSP is back in the fold! Ariel Helwani is reporting that UFC and Georges St. Pierre have come to terms and are hammering out a new deal for the former welterweight champ and MMA legend, and, well, good. It looks like GSP will be set to return sometime this fall, roughly four years after his last fight, and it'll be good to see what he has to offer, since St. Pierre does seem like the kind of guy who will age well. And, hey, way to save the pay-per-view fiscal year. *So, the state of Nevada promoted Staci Alonso to take the vacant spot in the state athletic commission in December, and about two months later, someone did some research and found that, hey, she's an executive at Station Casinos. And, of course, Station Casinos is the company owned by the Fertitta brothers, who apparently still have a fifteen percent or so stake in UFC even after selling the majority of it to WME-IMG. That's not good. Nevada addressed the conflict of interests concerns by saying that, well, they trust her to report any conflicts of interest, but this is just the fox watching the hen house. *UFC announced the cast for this upcoming season of TUF, which reportedly was going to have some sort of "All-Stars" theme featuring fighters from past seasons. And, uh, they forgot the stars. The biggest names here are TUF 2 winner and former lightweight title contender Joe Stevenson, and...Jesse Taylor? It may actually be a pretty solid season, since a lot of these guys are talented fighters who just don't move the needle, but I don't expect this to draw any viewers back in. Also notable is that James Krause, a TUF alum who was already on the UFC roster, is among the cast - apparently the deal is that contestants get $10,000 for every fight they win, with $250,000 going to the winner. So, go get paid, James. ------ BOOKINGS: *UFC announced a bunch of stuff this go-round, as the company fills out its schedule for April and beyond. The headliner is, better late than never, Jose Aldo and Max Holloway unifying the featherweight and interim featherweight titles, which will main event UFC 212 on June 3rd in Rio de Janeiro. The fight was initially slated to headline UFC 208, but Holloway wound up jacking up his ankle after beating Anthony Pettis in December, so the fight had to be pushed back to here. *During the UFC 208 broadcast, UFC announced a bunch of fights for some cards in April, particularly the Fox card in Kansas City and a newly announced FS1 card in Nashville. And the Nashville main event is a weird one, as fresh off his fight of the year candidate against Doo Ho Choi, Cub Swanson will face...Conor McGregor training partner Artem Lobov, who's coming off two wins over Chris Avila and Teruto Ishihara, the latter of which was his only impressive UFC appearance to date. Um, okay. Lobov seems like a really nice guy, but this is just MMA politics slapping every fan in the face, since Lobov, who was a solid European journeyman, only even really got his UFC chance because of his ties to McGregor, and definitely only stayed on the roster because of it, since he showed nothing while losing his first two UFC fights. Admittedly, Lobov did look the best he ever has against Ishihara, but, come on, man. On the plus side, the Nashville card at least has some other fun stuff - the co-main will see the return of Al Iaquinta against Diego Sanchez, Sam Alvey gets his biggest fight to date against Thales Leites, and Dustin Ortiz and Brandon Moreno are set to square off in a fun flyweight bout. Plus Jessica Penne/Danielle Taylor, Hector Sandoval/Matt Schnell, and Scott Holtzman/Michael McBride all figure to be fun undercard bouts. As for Kansas City, no main event has been announced, but UFC did announce one fun bout that figures to be the co-main, as "The Karate Hottie" Michelle Waterson returns from her win over Paige VanZant to face Rose Namajunas. Also, top middleweight prospect Andrew Sanchez moves up the ladder against Anthony Smith, and Devin Clark and Jake Collier face off in a fight originally set for December. Strangely, the arena in Kansas City, when putting up the listing for ticket sales, initially listed Doo Ho Choi against Renan Barao, complete with UFC graphic, as the main event, but per the promotion, that fight is not happening. I assume it was probably targeted for the card, but someone got hurt or there was a snafu somewhere. *UFC 210 in Buffalo added two more really fun fights - former Bellator lightweight champ Will Brooks will take on Charles Oliveira, who moves back up from 145 after repeated weight issues, and top welterweight prospects Kamaru Usman and Sean Strickland square off. Plus the London card in March finally has a viable co-main as Gunnar Nelson and Alan Jouban will square off in a really fun grappler-versus-striker welterweight bout. Plus in some undercard bouts, bantamweights Joe Soto and Rani Yahya will go at it on the Brazil card in March, while UFC 211 in Dallas added a third heavyweight bout between Germany's Jarjis Danho and Ukrainian newcome Dmitry Poberezhets. *And lastly, it looks like some top strawweight fights are coming together, though UFC hasn't announced anything officially. Rumors out of Poland said that Joanna Jedrzejczyk would be defending her strawweight title against Jessica Andrade at UFC 211 in Dallas, but Jedrzejczyk herself debunked that shortly thereafter. Still, Jedrzejczyk/Andrade looks like it's the next title fight, particularly since Michelle Waterson, the other obvious potential contender, is now booked. And per Claudia Gadelha, who's probably still the biggest threat to Joanna Champion's crown, she'll be facing Karolina Kowalkiewicz next, though there's no indication about when or where that fight is taking place. ----- ROSTER CUTS: 1) Brock Lesnar (5-3 [1] overall, 4-3 [1] UFC, last fought 7/9/16, NC vs. Mark Hunt): Of all the new deletions on UFC's website, Lesnar was by far the biggest name - it was assumed at the time it was UFC, somewhat unsurprisingly, cutting ties with Lesnar for the time being, but it came out shortly thereafter that Lesnar has notified UFC of his retirement from MMA...however long that lasts. Let's at least do a rundown of Lesnar's career as it stands right now, since looking back, it is fairly ridiculous. Lesnar, a former heavyweight wrestling champion at the University of Minnesota, was one of the top stars in WWE before getting burned out and deciding to leave the company in 2004, and took a pretty circuitous route to the UFC, initially trying to make the Minnesota Vikings (and apparently coming damn close), then winning a lawsuit over WWE to wrestle a bit in Japan, and then going into MMA. Lesnar's MMA debut was a bit of a scene, main eventing K-1 Dynamite!! USA, a one-off show in the L.A. Colosseum in a giant spectacle, and there, Lesnar destroyed Korean journeyman Min Soo Kim in a little over a minute. And, from there, UFC signed Lesnar and the sideshow was on, as at that time, a company signing a 1-0 fighter just for his notoriety was fairly unheard of. UFC promoted Lesnar's debut heavily through the pro wrestling media, and purchased commercials during WWE programming, and it paid off with a big buyrate, and even though Lesnar lost, his fight with Frank Mir went absolutely perfectly to set things up down the line. Lesnar immediately took down Mir, a former heavyweight champion who, at the time, was still struggling to recover from a career-altering motorcycle accident, and started beating the piss out of him, but things got restarted when Lesnar accidentally punched Mir in the back of the head. From there, Lesnar got another takedown, but got caught in a kneebar, and Mir got the submission win after just 90 seconds of a crazy sprint. It was better than anything Lesnar had scripted for him in WWE - Mir and his fans could claim that he used skill to beat the big, dumb beast, while Lesnar's contingent could, rightfully, say that most referees wouldn't have stopped things after the accidental blow to the head, and that Lesnar was well on his way to running through Mir in short order. After that, Lesnar rebounded with a win over Heath Herring, and then, in just his fourth MMA fight just seventeen months into his career, Lesnar knocked out Randy Couture to become the UFC heavyweight champion. That set up a rematch with Mir at UFC 100, and the banter between the two (along with a stacked card) built things up to create the biggest-drawing UFC card of all-time at that point, with Lesnar getting a stoppage win over Mir in the second round. But the post-fight antics were probably even more memorable, with Lesnar foaming at the mouth and flipping off the crowd, then giving one of the most infamous interviews of all time, where he said he was going to go lay on top of his wife and then drink a Coors, because UFC's primary sponsor, Bud Light, wasn't paying him anything. And that was pretty much the peak of Lesnar - he wouldn't fight for a year thanks to a sudden bout of diverticulitis, and after a comeback win over Shane Carwin (and another gigantic pay-per-view buyrate), Cain Velasquez pretty much destroyed Lesnar to take the heavyweight crown. From there, Lesnar coached a season of TUF against Junior dos Santos that was shockingly drama-free, missed another large chunk of time with diverticulitis issues, and then got finished in the first round once again, thanks to a debuting Alistair Overeem. Lesnar retired after that fight, theoretically ending a crazy, brief MMA career, and popped back up in WWE a few months later on a limited schedule, doing an excellent job of melding his MMA background into his pro wrestling skill. And so Lesnar went on, as a top attraction in WWE, though there was a brief tease that he might return to MMA before announcing he was signing a new deal with WWE, until the night of UFC 199, when a teaser for UFC 200 ended with an unexpected shot of Lesnar, who suddenly found himself back in UFC for one fight. There was apparently some sort of deal in his WWE contract that he could do a fight if WWE signed off on it, and I don't know how they got Vince McMahon to agree to it, but the fight was on. And...well, it was sort of a clown show from the start - even though the agreement had apparently been set a few weeks prior (thanks again to UFC's website briefly accidentally putting Lesnar on the active roster), UFC obtained a waiver so Lesnar could fight without going through the mandatory four months of drug testing for an unretiring fighter. Lesnar had his fight, mostly taking down Mark Hunt at will in a strange sideshow that just added to the weirdness that was UFC 200, and, of course, failed his drug test shortly thereafter. Lesnar blamed it on some foot cream, but still got fined a nominal amount and suspended for one year, which probably would've been how long Lesnar would've waited to fight anyway. Good work. And now, Lesnar's announced his retirement, though I have the feeling that when he's clear of any suspensions and the money is worth it, he'll be back. 2) Lorenz Larkin (18-5 [1] overall, 5-5 UFC, last fought 8/20/16, W vs. Neil Magny): Larkin, who was a free agent, apparently won't be given an offer by UFC, which about says it all for the state of things - a few years ago, UFC held onto Larkin even as he was losing, but now that he's come through on his talent and gone on a winning streak, the new management doesn't want to pay him. Larkin was expected to do big things when he came into UFC - the Californian was undefeated during his time in Strikeforce, and after a run as one of their top young light heavyweights, Larkin cut down to middleweight and capped off his Strikeforce career with a win over Robbie Lawler. But for whatever reason, when Larkin came over to UFC, he just showed...nothing, losing a bunch of flat decisions and going on a 1-4 stretch that included a knockout loss to Costas Philippou. Larkin then cut down again, this time to welterweight, and it looked like his January 2015 bout against John Howard was more or less his last chance in the UFC, and Larkin made the most of it. Since cutting to welterweight, Larkin has suddenly rediscovered his old fire and looked absolutely awesome - there's a narrow loss to Albert Tumenov in there, but that came after a scintillating brawl and knockout win over Santiago Ponzinibbio, and Larkin's last two fights were a win over Jorge Masvidal that continues to just look better, and then an absolute annihilation of Neil Magny, as Larkin just destroyed him with leg kicks before putting him away at the end of the first round. That was supposed to be the big win that got Larkin into big fights and title contention, but instead he's just found himself out of the company. Surprisingly, rumor is that Bellator hasn't even made him an offer yet - surprising, given his Strikeforce ties and that former Strikeforce head Scott Coker is running Bellator - but hopefully Larkin gets some solid money wherever he lands in the current landscape. 3) Rick Story (19-9 overall, 12-7 UFC, last fought 8/20/16, L vs. Donald Cerrone): Story's pretty much the most unsurprising surprising cut, if that makes sense, as he's the type of guy that UFC has often let go - a really good veteran who's probably a top ten or so fighter in his division, but not getting any better, not particularly exciting, and not particularly near getting any sort of title shot. Story's big run was from 2009 to 2011, shortly after he signed with UFC - Story's a relentless wrestler, and he used that tenaciousness to grind out wins over then-undefeated prospect Johny Hendricks and Thiago Alves. But after the Alves win, and near a title shot, Story decided to do UFC a solid and take a fight with Nate Marquardt on a four-week turnaround. Marquardt wound up having issues with his testosterone use and was pulled from the card, so instead Story faced late replacement Charlie Brenneman in a fight that Brenneman shockingly won, scoring a career-defining upset and completely derailing Story's title hopes. Story's career honestly never fully recovered from that - he'd be highly regarded, but trade wins and losses. A one-sided win over Gunnar Nelson in a main event on a smaller card looked like it was reviving Story's career, but an eighteen-month injury layoff kind of killed that momentum, and after winning a solid fight over Tarec Saffiedine, Donald Cerrone handled Story rather easily this past August. Story's good, so hopefully he finds a spot somewhere that'll pay him, but if his asking price was too high, I see why UFC would balk. 4) Takeya Mizugaki (21-11-2 overall, 8-6 UFC, last fought 12/17/16, L vs. Eddie Wineland): Sadly, this was probably the right time for UFC to cut Mizugaki, as the Japanese vet had lost four out of his last five and just seemed to be spiraling downward. Mizugaki was a solid upper-card bantamweight in WEC, and pretty much continued that after joining UFC, alternating wins and losses for a bit. But in 2014, everyone just sort of looked around and suddenly realized that Mizugaki was a bantamweight contender, as he had strung together five straight wins over decent competition without anyone really taking much notice. That earned him a shot to be Dominick Cruz's comeback opponent, and Cruz proceeded to take out all his years of injury-induced rage on Mizugaki, showing uncharacteristic aggression and knocking out Mizugaki in just 61 seconds. Sadly for Mizugaki, that was the beginning of a trend, as a win over George Roop was the only one Mizugaki would have after that, and his losses to Cody Garbrandt and Eddie Wineland were both brutal knockouts. Mizugaki was always sort of a jack of all trades, master of none, and once his athleticism and skill dipped a bit, things were pretty much all over, especially now that it looks like his chin is gone. Given his emotional interview after the Roop win where he talked about fighting for his career, I feel bad saying this, but Mizugaki's best days are probably behind him. 5) Cole Miller (21-11 [1] overall, 10-9 [1] UFC, last fought 12/17/16, L vs. Mizuto Hirota): Miller probably lasted longer than anyone could've expected, as the gangly Georgian carved out a niche for nine years a solid gatekeeper at lightweight and featherweight. Miller was pretty much the perfect test for guys rising up the ladder - Miller was skilled everywhere and ridiculously lanky for his weight classes, so UFC could basically use him to see if guys were able to adjust to an unorthodox test. And Miller had a bunch of success, winning about two fights for every loss until things turned sort of sour near the end. Miller was facing a three-fight winless skid heading into his bout Hirota - Max Holloway beat him, as expected, an eye-poke turned what was looking into a win over Jim Alers into an early stoppage and a no contest, and Miller was set to face B.J. Penn before Penn got flagged for an illegal IV, instead resulting in Miller losing to short-notice replacement Alex Caceres. So Miller was already feeling his back against the wall, and then his relationship pretty much fell apart when the Manila card in October got cancelled; the Miller/Hirota fight was initially slated to take place there, and Miller had to find out about it second-hand while he was on his way to the airport to catch his flight. UFC re-booked a lot of the Manila fights in fairly short order, but they waited a while to do so for Miller/Hirota, which pissed off Miller to no end, per an interview he gave - this basically forced him to pay for a second training camp, UFC didn't pay him anything to make up for the cancelled fight, and worst of all, he was getting the cold shoulder when he wanted to meet with UFC higher-ups about his concerns. In that interview, Miller was basically openly contemplating retirement just from being frustrated with the whole deal, and that showed in his performance against Hirota, which was a flat loss. Miller was also in the last fight of his contract, and unsurprisingly, it looks like he won't be re-signed, and frankly, it seems like both parties are going to be okay with that. 6) Erik Perez (17-6 overall, 7-2 UFC, last fought 11/5/16, W vs. Felipe Arantes): I assume there must be something else going on here, since Perez really should be in UFC's plans, since he's finally coming through on some of the potential he's had as UFC tried to push him as a Mexican star. Pretty much upon his arrival in 2012, UFC saw dollar signs in Perez, then a super-young talent who showed up just when the company was looking for someone Mexican to showcase, and his development happened in fits and starts, as whenever Perez would chain together a win or two, they'd immediately rush him into a fight against a Bryan Caraway or a Takeya Mizugaki, and then when he lost, start the cycle anew. But after missing over a year thanks to injuries over parts of 2014 and 2015, Perez returned and looked like he was finally cashing in on his potential, somewhat amusingly just as Yair Rodriguez was supplanting him as UFC's next big Mexican hope. But Perez put together wins over Taylor Lapilus, Francisco Rivera, and Felipe Arantes that were both exciting and showcased Perez's newfound striking skills, and while it didn't look like "El Goyito" would be quite the star UFC hoped, he could at least be a Mexican fan favorite with some notoriety going forward. I'm hoping that Perez being taken off the roster has something to do with him seemingly suffering a major knee injury during the Arantes fight and either freezing his contract or just letting him be a free agent until he's healthy, but I don't think they'd be paying him either way, so the whole thing is just weird. UFC's not dumb enough to let Perez go just as he's becoming a going concern...right? 7) Francisco Rivera (11-7 [1] overall, 4-6 [1] UFC, last fought 7/30/16, L vs. Erik Perez): Rivera's one of those cuts that almost had to happen, as he's lost five out of his last six at 35 years old, though it still sucks to see. Rivera's first UFC run was over before it began, as he was coming over from WEC after a loss and got cut after one more against Reuben Duran. But the Californian earned his way back and then came out of the gates blazing upon his return, winning four straight and earning some shots at bigger names. Takeya Mizugaki just straight up out-wrestled him, but the fight after that is going to be Rivera's biggest "what if," as he probably could've gotten a win over Urijah Faber in December of 2014. Rivera was pretty handily winning the first round and the earlier stages of the second, when Faber accidentally poked Rivera in the eye. But neither Faber nor the ref seemed to see what happened, and as Rivera cringed from the poke, Faber used the opportunity to just take advantage, swarm Rivera, and then eventually get a submission. Rough luck, but it looked like Rivera would be alright in the long run, as he absolutely annihilated Alex Caceres in his next fight. But that turned out to be the end of the good times - Rivera lost one of the best fights of 2015 against John Lineker, a two-minute sprint that saw both men just swing at each other in ridiculous fashion, got robbed via decision against Brad Pickett, and then simply got outclassed by Erik Perez to lose three straight. Rivera's pretty reliably a fun striker, so I was hoping they would keep him around for one more fight, but given his age and the way his record was trending (even if it did include two controversial losses), it's understandable that they cut him. 8) Phillipe Nover (11-8-1 overall, 1-6 UFC, last fought 2/10/17, L vs. Rick Glenn): Nover wasn't part of the massive UFC roster cuts, instead announcing his retirement a few days after losing at UFC 208, in his hometown of Brooklyn, to Rick Glenn. Nover was a fine journeyman, but he'll pretty much live in infamy as one of a few "next Anderson Silva"s thanks to Dana White. Nover starred on season 8 of TUF, finishing all three of his opponents in rather one-sided fashion, leading White to throw a whole bunch of crazy hyperbole Nover's way - he was the next Anderson Silva, the next Georges St. Pierre - pretty much every ridiculous thing you could think of. So, of course, Nover didn't even wind up winning the season, instead getting out-wrestled by Efrain Escudero and losing the final. Nover then lost his next two fights - though one was an iffy decision - and found himself out of the promotion within a year, at which point he started popping up on regional cards and the occasional Bellator prelim. But apparently UFC kept his name in their Rolodex, as when they decided to run Manila for the first time, they surprisingly brought Nover back, probably because the Filipino-American was one of the few "hometown" fighters they could think to bring in. Nover probably didn't deserve to win his comeback fight, a decision over Yui Chul Nam, but it was a nice moment, especially since it wound up being his only UFC win. After that, Nover's luck sort of reversed itself, as he lost a clear decision to Renan Barao that was sandwiched between split decision losses to Zubaira Tukhugov and Glenn. All of those fights showed off the flaw in Nover's game at a UFC level - he was pretty much solid everywhere, but he just didn't really have the style to finish fights or win rounds against better competition, so it just wound up being tough loss after tough loss. All in all, Nover seems at peace with the decision, as he's going back to focusing on his other job as a nurse, so good on him - despite not living up to the ridiculous expectations, he still had a fairly solid career, all in all. 9) Jessamyn Duke (3-5 [1] overall, 1-3 UFC, last fought (in UFC) 7/25/15, L vs. Elizabeth Phillips): Oh, poor Jessamyn Duke. Edmond Tarverdyan has ruined a lot of careers, and Duke's a somewhat forgotten name on that list. The Kentuckian was an interesting prospect discovered by Invicta - a former model, Duke has marketable good looks, and thanks to her leggy, lanky frame, the thought was that she could be a lot of trouble once she figured out how to use her reach. But Duke struck up a friendship with her coach on TUF, Ronda Rousey, became one of her "Four Horsewomen" group of BFF's, went to train in Glendale, and that was pretty much the beginning of the end. Duke did win her first post-TUF fight over Peggy Morgan, but after that showed nothing - Bethe Correia outboxed her handily, Leslie Smith more or less annihilated her, and Elizabeth Phillips won a fairly clear decision, as Duke just basically had no idea how to use her range or, even worse, defend anything as she was getting hit. The Phillips loss figured to be Duke's last in the promotion, particularly when she popped up back in Invicta, but word got out that UFC had allowed her to head to Invicta while still remaining under contract, because that's the kind of leeway being a friend of Rousey gets you. But Duke just looked completely broken in her last two fights, getting wrecked by Irene Aldana and tapped out in short order by Cindy Dandois, so it's not a surprise that UFC decided to cut their losses somewhere along the way. I don't know how successful Duke would've been in a different camp, but I feel bad that she wound up in Glendale. 10) Maximo Blanco (12-8-1 [1] overall, 4-5 UFC, last fought 9/17/16, L vs. Chas Skelly): Well, at least Maximo Blanco went out in appropriately ridiculous fashion. Blanco, a Venezuelan fighting out of Japan, was pretty much guaranteed entertainment every time he stepped into the cage, since he was ridiculously aggressive and it was often unclear if he was aware of the rules. His November 2013 fight against Akira Corassani is a perfect example - Blanco just decided to throw a knee full-bore at Corassani's head while Corassani was down, getting himself disqualified. And weird stuff would just follow Blanco around - there was that fight, his win over Mike De La Torre where the ref stopped it way too early, and his last fight, where both him and Chas Skelly decided to start the fight with running, flying karate kicks, Skelly's landed cleaner, and Skelly clamped on a choke for a submission in just nineteen seconds. Ridiculous. Anyway, it's probably better off that Blanco is probably headed back to Japan, where he can stomp people in the face to his heart's content. 11) Taylor Lapilus (11-2 overall, 3-1 UFC, last fought 9/3/16, W vs. Leandro Issa): UFC seems to sign fighters to four-fight deals to start, so I'm assuming Lapilus is a case where he fought out his contract, since it seems unlikely they'd go out of their way to cut a talented mid-level prospect. Lapilus had an interesting entry into the UFC - as a backstory, before UFC ran a show in Sweden back in 2014, the country's commission had pretty much ruined some smaller-level shows by refusing to license a few different fights, citing the difference in experience between some of the opponents. Local promoters cried foul about a double-standard between themselves and UFC, so when Lapilus was signed as a late injury replacement to face the much more experienced Dennis Siver, Sweden caved into local pressure and denied Lapilus a license. Lapilus wound up being a pretty solid fighter, one of UFC's better signing out of a burgeoning French scene - he lost to Erik Perez, but otherwise more or less styled on low-tier competition like Ulka Sasaki and Leandro Issa. But even after winning his last fight impressively, Lapilus didn't have enough of a name for WME-IMG to see him as worth keeping. 12) Seohee Ham (17-8 overall, 1-3 UFC, last fought 11/26/16, L vs. Danielle Taylor): Seohee Ham is awesome, and it sucks that she's off the UFC roster, particularly since he last loss was a complete robbery. Ham was one of the top atomweights in the world when UFC signed her as a late replacement to face Joanne Calderwood, and she was good for a fun action fight every time out - despite being tiny, Ham mostly lived up to her "Hamderlei Silva" nickname, constantly throwing punches, with the added benefit of much better dance moves coming to the cage than Wandy ever showed. After a 1-1 start, Ham lost a narrow decision to Bec Rawlings, which showed that the Korean had a clear ceiling and was facing an uphill battle in the UFC, since Rawlings was just able to shut down Ham at times due to her size; thankfully, UFC matched her up with the similarly small Danielle Taylor in her last fight, which everyone figured Ham had won, but somehow Taylor was gifted the decision, and it looks like that cost Ham her UFC job. Sad face. 13) Sean O'Connell (17-9 overall, 2-5 UFC, last fought 12/9/16, L vs. Corey Anderson): O'Connell was fun as hell for a few different reasons. Outside the cage, he was a fascinating guy - his full-time job was as a sports radio host in his native Utah, he wrote a sci-fi fantasy novel, and he was one of the more reliable characters at weigh-ins, often trying to get a reaction out of his opponent or the fans. But for such a renaissance man, inside the cage, O'Connell's game was fairly simple - he was a pure brawler, just trying to punch his opponent in the face as hard as he could while attempting to walk through damage to do so. Sometimes this got him annihilated, like against Ryan Jimmo and Ilir Latifi, but sometimes magic happened - a forgotten fight against Gian Villante highlighted UFC's lone card in New Zealand, and his fight last June against former hockey enforcer Steve Bosse was just a ridiculous bit of violence, a back and forth bar fight that just saw each guy seemingly knock the other out multiple times. Coming off a decision loss in that fight, UFC then pretty much fed O'Connell to rising contender Anderson, and it sounded like O'Connell was ready to retire after the fight, stopping just short of making it official. He experienced some hope that UFC would have him on in a broadcasting role, given his background in the field, but it doesn't look like that'll be the case, sadly. 14) James Moontasri (9-5 overall, 2-4 UFC, last fought 12/17/16, L vs. Alex Morono): Like Nover above, Moontasri wasn't a part of UFC's massive roster purge, but instead retired over social media in the past week. Moontasri was frustrating as hell - a former Tae Kwon Do champion, when Moontasri was on, the Californian could string together some fun, violent combinations, but more often than not he just found himself looking for the perfect shot, and would just not do much of anything while losing rounds. And as time went on, opponents like Kevin Lee and Alex Oliveira figured out they could take Moontasri down and beat the piss out of him, and that was the beginning of the end. 15) Augusto Montano (15-3 overall, 1-2 UFC, last fought 9/17/16, L vs. Belal Muhammad): Ah, the ballad of "Dodger" Montano. When UFC decided to break into Mexico in 2014, that meant they needed Mexican fighters, and to be fair, Montano was one of the better ones they could find out of a thin scene. A popular veteran, Montano had a fun, one-sided win over Chris Heatherly on UFC's debut card in Mexico City, but things fell apart the next time around, when Montano faced Cathal Pendred. The fight was awful, with Montano suddenly losing all of his aggression and not doing much of anything, to the point that he got booed by his hometown crowd, and then Montano failed a drug test shortly thereafter, getting suspended for a year. In the interim, pretty much every Mexican fighter UFC had under contract was doing way better than expectations, thus making Montano sort of expendable as an ethnic draw, and after coming back from his suspension and looking fairly blah in a loss to Belal Muhammad, he was, in fact, expended. 16) Anthony Birchak (12-3 overall, 2-2 UFC, last fought 7/7/16, W vs. Dileno Lopes): Birchak was a known free agent, and I guess this is the sign UFC isn't going to renew his deal, which is a bit disappointing, since Birchak was fairly fun. A solid prospect, Birchak lived up to his "El Toro" nickname, just sort of charging forward a lot of the time and trying to overwhelm his foes. In his UFC debut, this caused him to run immediately into an Ian Entwistle leglock, but he annihilated Joe Soto in his next fight, and looked alright against Thomas Almeida before getting dropped in one of the scarier knockouts of 2015. Birchak looked good in his last fight, a win over Dileno Lopes where the loser would seemingly get cut, and now neither man is with the promotion. 17) Bartosz Fabinski (13-2 overall, 2-0 UFC, last fought 11/21/15, W vs. Hector Urbina): Poland's Fabinski was one of a bunch of Polish fighters that UFC signed for their show in Krakow back in 2015, and he did well enough in his two UFC fights, out-wrestling Garreth McLellan and Hector Urbina fairly effectively, even if neither fight was all that exciting. Fabinski was slated to fight Nicolas Dalby in Croatia this past April, but pulled out due to injury, and as mentioned above, per Fabinski's management, his contract is being frozen as he takes time off to recover. Alright then. 18) Tiago Trator (20-6-1 [1] overall, 2-2 UFC, last fought 12/9/16, L vs. Shane Burgos): It's strange for UFC to cut someone after only one loss, but this could also be a case where UFC just decided not to renew Trator's contract after a four-fight deal. Anyway, Trator was expendable, and might be the guy I have the least to say about on this list - he wasn't particularly impressive anywhere, but on the upside, he also wasn't bad enough that I could really talk about any of his weaknesses. Trator was a Brazilian man who didn't really win that impressively, but didn't lose in blowout fashion either. He was there, and it's about right that he's near the middle of this list. 19) Lance Benoist (7-2 overall, 2-2 UFC, last fought 6/7/14, W vs. Bobby Voelker): Benoist is sort of the American version of Trator, just a guy who was decent everywhere, though there's at least the intrigue of wondering where the hell he's been for the last two and a half years. It's unclear if his contract is frozen, or if he just retired, since Benoist doesn't appear to have much of a social media presence anymore. Anyway, all four of Benoist's fights went to decision, which about says it all, but hey, at least the Midwestern vet ended his UFC career with a win over Bobby Voelker. 20) Tony Sims (12-4 overall, 1-2 UFC, last fought 1/2/16, L vs. Abel Trujillo): In another time, Sims would've probably gotten another chance in UFC after two straight losses, since at his best he was pretty exciting. Sims's first two UFC fights showed the Colorado native's strengths and weaknesses pretty clearly - his UFC debut saw him knock out Steve Montgomery on the feet, but his sophomore effort saw Olivier Aubin-Mercier just take him down and out-grapple him at will. I guess Sims tried to be well-rounded after that bout, but it cost him against Abel Trujillo - after doing pretty well on the feet, Sims decided to mix things up for the sake of mixing things up, and when he went for a takedown, he just pretty much dove right into a guillotine that cost him the fight and his spot on the UFC roster. Whoops. 21) Yaotzin Meza (21-11 [1] overall, 2-4 [1] UFC, last fought 2/27/16, L vs. Arnold Allen): Hey, Meza made it about four years in the UFC, which isn't that bad for someone who only got the gig because they were willing to step in and get smoked by Chad Mendes on about a week's notice. Meza, a training partner of Benson Henderson, was cornering Henderson on a UFC card the week before Mendes needed an opponent in Australia, so he begged for the spot, got it, and then parlayed that into a solid low-level gatekeeper role. Meza was pretty much matched up with guys in their first or second UFC fights so they could have a showcase, and for the most part, that's what happened, although Meza won just enough to keep the gravy train going for seven fights. Not bad. 22) Geane Herrera (9-3 overall, 1-3 UFC, last fought 11/26/16, L vs. Ben Nguyen): Herrera was sort of a victim of the weird structure of UFC's flyweight division, as well as the company often not having any idea about how to bring along raw prospects. Herrera was pretty much all athleticism when UFC signed him in 2015, and they immediately threw him against top prospect Ray Borg in a fight that Herrera unsurprisingly lost. And at flyweight, pretty much half the division is top-fifteen worthy veterans, so after a win over Joby Sanchez, Herrera was immediately thrown back into the fire, put in way over his head in losses against Ali Bagautinov and Ben Nguyen. The Nguyen fight was the last on Herrera's deal, and he was apparently pessimistic about being re-signed; looks like he was right. 23) Clay Collard (14-7 [1] overall, 1-3 UFC, last fought 9/5/15, L vs. Tiago Trator): Utah's Collard had an impressive late-notice debut in August of 2014 - he was completely overmatched against Max Holloway, but Collard made it entertaining, pretty much charging like a zombie through whatever Holloway would throw at him until he finally got put down late in the third round. After that, Collard rebounded with a win over Alex White, but in both that and his next two fights, Collard was more frustrating than effective, a physical talent that basically had a lot trouble turning that into anything resembling a functional MMA game. 24) Elvis Mutapcic (15-5-1 overall, 0-2-1 UFC, last fought 12/3/16, L vs. Anthony Smith): It's nice Mutapcic finally got his UFC shot, though his run wound up being fairly disappointing. Mutapcic, who fled Bosnia at a young age and grew up in Iowa, was one of the better regional middleweights out there, racking up wins against solid competition and earning a brief stint in WSOF, but UFC-level competition pretty much showed all of his weaknesses and none of his strengths. Mutapcic was just too passive to do anything against Francimar Barroso, and both that fight and his other two UFC affairs were mostly just boring slogs, at least until he got knocked out by Anthony Smith this past December. It would've been nice to see Mutapcic at least notch one UFC win, but sadly, no dice. 25) Jon Delos Reyes (8-5 overall, 1-3 UFC, last fought 10/24/15, L vs. Neil Seery): Like a few guys on this list, Guam's Delos Reyes probably would've gotten another shot at a different time in UFC roster management, since his fights were fun as hell. Delos Reyes was often overmatched, but he would throw power behind every punch and had a fun, scrambling submission style, so while he'd often lose, he'd often lose in exciting fashion. Though, that said, his lone UFC win, over Roldan Sangcha-an, was probably his most fun fight. 26) Fredy Serrano (3-2 overall, 2-2 UFC, last fought 12/17/16, L vs. Hector Sandoval): Serrano was an interesting curio for a bit - a former Olympic wrestler for his native Colombia, Serrano looked impressive in his first two fights against the dregs of the roster, knocking out TUF: Latin America castmate Bentley Syler and breaking TUF: China alum Zhikui Yao's arm on a takedown. But once Serrano faced any legitimate level of competition, it became apparent he really wasn't that good, with an offensive game consisting of little except power takedowns, and, strangely, axe kicks. Serrano didn't get into the sport until his late thirties, so there's an alternate universe out there where he starts much earlier and develops into an actual prospect, since he's a hell of an athlete, but unfortunately that universe is not this one. 27) Buddy Roberts (12-3 overall, 1-1 UFC, last fought 8/11/12, L vs. Yushin Okami): I'm not sure anyone remembers Buddy Roberts, but yes, he was still on the UFC roster. Roberts needed two tries to get his UFC debut back in 2012 - the first time, his debut got scrapped literally minutes before it was set to start, as his opponent, Sean Loeffler, managed to injure his ankle while warming up backstage. But Roberts did wind up winning his eventual UFC debut against Caio Magalhaes, then actually had a pay-per-view fight at UFC 150 as a late replacement against Yushin Okami, where Okami, then still a top contender, pretty much ran through him. And that was the last we ever saw of Roberts - he was slated to face Michael Kuiper on a card in January of 2013, but pulled out due to injury, and, well, that must have been a hell of an injury. 28) Hector Urbina (17-10-1 overall, 1-2 UFC, last fought 9/24/16, L vs. Vicente Luque): Urbina showed little on season 18 of TUF, but UFC needed Mexican fighters for their debut card in the country, so Urbina, a Mexican-American fighting out of Indiana, got the call anyway. He got a debut win over fellow underwhelming vet Edgar Garcia, but lost in one-sided fashion in his next two fights, and was cut. Amusingly, Urbina's already resurfaced as a cast member of this upcoming TUF season, so...good on him for somehow already finding a way back in, I suppose. 29) Lukasz Sajewski (13-3 overall, 0-3 UFC, last fought 10/8/16, L vs. Marc Diakiese): Poland's Sajewski was a fine prospect when UFC picked him up, but didn't really get the chance to show much in the UFC, losing a flat decision to Nick Hein and then getting matched up against top prospects Gilbert Burns and Marc Diakiese. Sajewski took the Diakiese loss on late notice, so there was some thought that doing the favor could've bought him a fourth chance, but it looks like still being around to even take the Diakiese fight may have been the favor. 30) Milana Dudieva (11-5 overall, 1-2 UFC, last fought 11/19/16, L vs. Marion Reneau): Dudieva didn't really show a whole hell of a lot over three UFC fights, although the Russian did manage to eke out a split decision win over Elizabeth Phillips in her UFC debut. After that, she got annihilated in Julianna Pena's comeback fight from a major knee injury, and then wound up taking time off due to pregnancy - I believe she was the first UFC fighter to do so, though I know Alexis Davis also got pregnant around the same time. Anyway, Dudieva came back about a year and a half later, still didn't really do much in a loss to Marion Reneau, and that's that. 31) Roldan Sangcha-an (4-2 overall, 0-2 UFC, last fought 5/16/15, L vs. Jon Delos Reyes): Sangcha-an was one of a few raw Filipino fighters that UFC signed in 2014, during the company's failed expansion into Asia. The most notable thing about Sangcha-an, frankly, was his young schoolboy looks, although his last UFC fight, a submission loss to Jon Delos Reyes, came in a hell of a barnburner. That fight was fun enough that I thought Sangcha-an might at least get a third fight whenever UFC ran a card in Asia again, but no such luck. 32) Brendan O'Reilly (6-3 [1] overall, 1-3 UFC, last fought 12/3/16, L vs. Dong Hyun Kim): I'm kind of surprised UFC even bothered as long as it did with Brendan O'Reilly, though I suppose he did have some popularity in his native Australia. O'Reilly didn't really do a hell of a lot on TUF: Nations, but eventually got the call when UFC needed someone, anyone, that TUF: China winner Lipeng Zhang could beat. And, frankly, when you're starting your UFC career by getting out-wrestled by Zhang, the bar is pretty low. O'Reilly managed to beat TUF: Nations castmate Vik Grujic in Australia, and that was pretty much that - O'Reilly was then weirdly pitted against Alan Jouban and absolutely annihilated, and then showed little in a loss to Dong Hyun Kim. 33) Joe Gigliotti (7-2 overall, 0-2 UFC, last fought 12/9/16, L vs. Gerald Meerschaert): Well, Gigliotti's UFC tenure ended quickly, lasting only two fights over four months. An Ohio native, Gigliotti had some hype thanks to some impressive finishes against solid competition outside the UFC, but Trevor Smith just out-wrestled him and wore him out, and Gigliotti could do little against solid vet Gerald Meerschaert before getting tapped out. Gigliotti's still only 23, so I wouldn't be surprised if he just keeps improving and winds up in a major organization once again, even if his run was brutally disappointing. 34) Zhikui Yao (2-4 overall, 1-3 UFC, last fought 11/26/16, L vs. Jenel Lausa): I actually watched TUF: China, and I liked Zhikui Yao, as he was one of the better prospects on the show, since he had some athleticism and a basic understanding of what he was trying to do. UFC picked him up, but he never really developed, and wasn't particularly good, with his only win coming over Nolan Ticman in a decision that Yao mostly earned with aggression rather than doing anything actually effective. C'est la vie. 35) Joey Gomez (6-2 overall, 0-2 UFC, last fought 9/17/16, L vs. Jose Quinonez): Gomez apparently quietly retired in December, but when he was deleted from the UFC roster and that wasn't common knowledge, the cut was still rather expected. Gomez was an interesting flier when UFC picked him up at the beginning of 2016 - a former Marine, Gomez actually faced some solid competition in the Northeast and racked up a 6-0 record with six knockouts. But UFC-level competition was too much, too soon, and Gomez lost one-sided fights to Rob Font and Jose Quinonez. 36) Fernando Bruno (15-4 overall, 0-2 UFC, last fought 7/8/16, L vs. Gray Maynard): I saw Fernando Bruno get to the finals of TUF: Brazil 4, but I'm still not really sure how it happened, since Bruno didn't seem to be particularly good at anything. Still, he got there before getting tapped out by Glaico Franca, and Bruno's follow-up fight saw him tire out early and just lose a flat decision to Gray Maynard. Alright then. 37) Anton Zafir (7-3 overall, 0-2 UFC, last fought 7/8/16, L vs. Jingliang Li): Zafir, a full-time teacher, was a late-notice replacement on a card in his native Australia, and ran into the same problem a lot of Australian fighters that are dependent on their wrestling have - people in the UFC can actually defend wrestling, so that tends to leave guys like Steve Kennedy, Damien Brown, and Zafir without a lot to fall back on. To make matters worse, Zafir took damage probably worse than any UFC fighter in recent history, as James Moontasri and Jingliang Li put his lights out with the first solid blow of each fight. Eek. 38) Adam Hunter (7-1 overall, 0-0 UFC): Adam Hunter joins the ranks of guys who wound up getting cut by UFC without ever making it to a fight. Hunter, a New Brunswick native, was signed to fight Ryan Janes in Vancouver over the summer, as UFC looked to add whatever Canadian talent they could find. And Hunter was a solid pick - an aggressive striker, Hunter ran through opponents, with all seven of his wins coming via first-round knockout. But right before the Janes fight was set to happen, Hunter was notified that his drug test had been flagged, and it turned out that he had failed for a rather impressive, Chael Sonnen-like combination of drugs. Well done. It was unclear if UFC would keep him under contract, but it looks like they decided against it. ----- UPCOMING UFC SHOWS: 3/4 - UFC 209 - Las Vegas, NV - Tyron Woodley (c ) vs. Stephen Thompson, Tony Ferguson vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov, Mark Hunt vs. Alistair Overeem 3/11 - UFC Fight Night 106 - Fortaleza, Brazil - Vitor Belfort vs. Kelvin Gastelum, Edson Barboza vs. Beneil Dariush, Mauricio Rua vs. Gian Villante 3/18 - UFC Fight Night 107 - London, England - Corey Anderson vs. Jimi Manuwa, Alan Jouban vs. Gunnar Nelson 4/8 - UFC 210 - Buffalo, NY - Daniel Cormier (c ) vs. Anthony Johnson, Gegard Mousasi vs. Chris Weidman 4/15 - UFC on Fox 24 - Kansas City, MO - Rose Namajunas vs. Michelle Waterson, Gilbert Melendez vs. Jeremy Stephens 4/22 - UFC Fight Night 108 - Nashville, TN - Artem Lobov vs. Cub Swanson, Al Iaquinta vs. Diego Sanchez, Sam Alvey vs. Thales Leites 5/13 - UFC 211 - Dallas, TX - Stipe Miocic (c ) vs. Junior dos Santos, Ben Rothwell vs. Fabricio Werdum 5/27 - UFC TBA - Copenhagen, Denmark - Christian Colombo vs. Damian Grabowski 6/3 - UFC 212 - Rio De Janeiro, Brazil - Jose Aldo (c ) vs. Max Holloway (ic) ----- UFC Fight Night 105 - February 19, 2017 - Scotiabank Centre - Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada What better way to celebrate President's Day weekend than with a Sunday night fight card from Halifax? (There are many better ways.) This is a fairly solid, if thin card - the top two matches are pretty well-matched, and should do a lot to show exactly where each of the four guys are at, but past that it's a few fun fights and then just a lot of weird matchmaking in the recent mold, with interesting fighters sort of slumming it against lower-level talent. But, hey, it probably won't be as bad as UFC 208. MAIN CARD (Fox Sports 1 - 9:00 PM ET): Heavyweight: (#8) Derrick Lewis vs. (#9) Travis Browne Middleweight: (#10 Welterweight) Johny Hendricks vs. Hector Lombard Featherweight: Sam Sicilia vs. Gavin Tucker Middleweight: Cezar Ferreira vs. Elias Theodorou Women's Bantamweight: (#7) Sara McMann vs. Gina Mazany Lightweight: Paul Felder vs. Alessandro Ricci PRELIMINARY CARD (Fox Sports 1 - 7:00 PM ET): Welterweight: Santiago Ponzinibbio vs. Nordine Taleb Women's Strawweight: (#3) Carla Esparza vs. Randa Markos Bantamweight: Reginaldo Vieira vs. Aiemann Zahabi Middleweight: Jack Marshman vs. Thiago Santos PRELIMINARY CARD (UFC Fight Pass - 6:30 PM ET): Middleweight: Ryan Janes vs. Gerald Meerschaert THE RUNDOWN: Derrick Lewis (17-4 [1] overall, 8-2 UFC, 0-1 Bellator) vs. Travis Browne (18-5-1 overall, 9-5-1 UFC, 1-0 Bellator): So...is Derrick Lewis actually a prospect? He's only 32 years old, which is young for heavyweight, and he's racked up five straight wins, so I guess Lewis kind of has to be in such a thin division, but there's a ton of red flags that "The Black Beast" has a clear ceiling. But, then again, Travis Browne is going through a whole bunch of issues of his own, so he might not exactly be the right guy to test how good Lewis is at this point. Lewis came into UFC with a bang in 2014, basically looking like the living nightmare of a white supremacist - Lewis is a gigantic black man from Houston, and his gameplan is pretty much based around using his enormous power to bash his opponents' faces in, and he did just that in quick wins over Jack May and Guto Inocente to kick off his UFC career. But after following that up by losing two out of three to Matt Mitrione and Shawn Jordan, both by fairly one-sided knockout, it looked like Lewis was more sideshow than anything else, and that he wouldn't be much more than someone who could annihilate lower-level guys and get exposed fighting anyone better than that. And since then, it's been a weird mixed bag, even though it's resulted in a five-fight winning streak for Lewis - outside of running over Damian Grabowski, Lewis has struggled as opponents have been willing to wrestle him. While he's often able to use his strength to just get opponents off of him (even Roy Nelson, who was the one man with a chin tough enough to at least take Lewis to a close decision), it's probably a bad sign that his last win over Shamil Abdurakhimov looked a lot like the first one of this streak, over Viktor Pesta, as Lewis was just helpless on the ground and losing a fight to a not-particularly-good heavyweight before coming back to get the late knockout. And Lewis's whole approach in the Abdurakhimov fight was particularly worrying, as even after getting taken down on the first kick of the fight, Lewis just kept continuing to throw kicks and get taken down, not showing an ability to adjust to the goings-on in the fight. On the one hand, Lewis has the power to knock out anyone in the division, save Nelson apparently, but on the other hand, that'll only get you so far if opponents figure out how to avoid it, and as Lewis moves his way up the ladder, guys are going to have more and more tricks to do so. But, that all said, none of this applies to Travis Browne, who's purely a striker, and is going through a ton of gameplanning issues of his own. On the same card Lewis debuted on, Browne was headlining in a #1 contender's fight against Fabricio Werdum, and was actually favored to earn the next title shot. But, well, that fight turned out to be the beginning of the end for the Hawaiian, as Werdum just outboxed him for five rounds and made Browne look completely unclassed. That started a bit of a downward spiral for Browne, who went from vicious contender to just sort of an athletically talented, but defensively crappy kickboxer, and that makes a hell of a lot more sense in retrospect, since that's about the time Browne left Jackson-Wink in Albuquerque and started training in Glendale, with the same team as his girlfriend, Ronda Rousey. After a frankly embarrassing performance in his last fight, a rematch with Werdum, and Rousey getting blown out by Amanda Nunes, there were some rumors that Browne had started training with Kings MMA, whose aggressive style would make for an interesting fit with Browne, but Browne himself debunked those, which is...not a good sign. Well, unless you hate Travis Browne, which would be completely understandable given his background of domestic violence, in which case, good sign. And it also makes this fight a whole lot harder to call - for as much hype as Lewis has, his best win is that narrow decision over Nelson, and his second-best UFC win after that is...Abdurakhimov, I guess? Add in how dependent on the finish Lewis has gotten as he's fought better competition, all of which is worse than Browne, and it gets harder and harder to consider Lewis an actual prospect and not just a fun knockout artist. But, with that all said, as long as Browne is training in Glendale, he's there to be hit - admittedly, he can probably hit Lewis himself, and Lewis's losses have shown that he can be knocked out - but Browne's probably going to box with him, not be particularly defensively sound, and wind up getting himself lamped. So, despite being fairly low on Lewis, I'm still picking the Texan to win by first-round knockout, and then probably wind up being in way over his head in his next bout. Johny Hendricks (17-6 overall, 12-6 UFC, 2-0 WEC) vs. Hector Lombard (34-6-1 [2] overall, 3-4 [1] UFC, 8-0 Bellator, 0-2 PRIDE): This is some delightfully fun and weird matchmaking, as two of 2016's biggest disappointments square off in what may be the last chance for both. Johny Hendricks, man. I remember that going into 2016, I thought Hendricks was probably the best welterweight in the world - the former champ's title loss to Robbie Lawler in 2014 was a nip-tuck decision, and Hendricks's lone fight in 2015 saw him come back in the best shape in years, outwrestling Matt Brown in one-sided fashion. Sure, Hendricks had issues with his weight cut that scrapped a prior fight with Tyron Woodley, but that seemed to be a weird one-off thanks to some kidney stones. And then, well, 2016 happened. Hendricks kicked off the year by getting absolutely destroyed by Stephen Thompson as part of Thompson's run towards a title shot, and while things would eventually get better inside the cage, they spiralled out of control outside of it. Leading up to Hendricks's fight with Kelvin Gastelum at UFC 200, word was that Hendricks was having another tough weight cut, and the scenes from the early weigh-in were rather harrowing, as Hendricks had shaved off his signature beard, was visibly shaking out of weakness, and still missed weight by three-tenths of a pound. And then a loss added insult to injury, as Gastelum won a close, but clear decision. So it looked like it was Hendricks's last gasp this past December, at UFC 207, and things somehow went even worse there. A few days before the card, at media day, Hendricks, who seemed visibly out of it, just suddenly went a little crazy, talking about how people talking about his weight didn't know what they were talking about, just sort of railing into the media, and challenging individual media members to cut weight themselves and see how difficult it is. All the while, Hendricks was promising he would be in great shape come weigh-ins, so, naturally, Hendricks missed weight by two and a half pounds, resulting in an iconically sad image of Hendricks covering his eyes as he stepped onto the scale. And it was once again a frustrating loss for Hendricks - much like the Gastelum fight, Hendricks didn't look shot or anything against Neil Magny, but just...diminished and ineffective, as Hendricks got his wrestling game going a bit, but didn't really do much while Magny did a ton of work from the bottom, and the striking was a bit of a wash. But that's now suddenly three straight losses for the former top contender, and with the weight issues, Hendricks has decided to move up to middleweight, which is understandable, but also a bit strange, given that Hendricks was somewhat small at welterweight. Though, on the plus side, that may not matter here, as Hector Lombard is a welterweight-sized middleweight himself. It was considered a coup when UFC signed Lombard away from Bellator, where he was middleweight champ - Lombard had put together a 24-0-1 record over the prior five years, a lot of which were explosive knockouts from the Cuban-Australian judoka. But his UFC run was pretty much immediately a disappointment, as Lombard lost two out of his first three - first an awful decision against Tim Boetsch where neither guy did much or anything, and then a narrow decision loss to Yushin Okami. After the Okami loss, Lombard decided to cut down to 170, and actually had some success, even if the fights weren't that great - he scored wins over Nate Marquardt, Jake Shields, and Josh Burkman, though the Burkman win was soon overturned due to a failed drug test that kept Lombard out of action for pretty much all of 2015. Still, Lombard was expected to come back in 2016 and keep gaining momentum, but instead he got two knockout losses for his efforts. He blitzed Neil Magny fairly early, but Magny survived, wore Lombard out, and eventually finished him, and then Lombard moved back up to 185 to receive of one of the more memorable knockouts of 2016, as he caught a Dan Henderson kick and then got elbowed upside his head and sent completely unconscious in Henderson's last huge bit of brutality. Now at 39 - in Cuban years - Lombard does seem to have his early burst of explosiveness left, but it's not as effective as it used to be, and honestly, there doesn't seem to be much else. This is similar to the main event, as it's kind of hard to have faith in both guys, only here it's even more extreme - I suppose I actually favor Hendricks, despite what figures to be a strength advantage, since I actually think all the weight issues and outside-the-cage stuff just winds up making Hendricks's decline seem bigger than it is. Sure, Hendricks is diminished, but there have been other fighters who have been completely shot, and even though Hendricks's game suddenly doesn't seem like it's working, I still have some confidence that he could beat guys outside the top ten or so, like, say, Matt Brown in a rematch. However, Lombard's dangerous, and while Magny and Henderson were able to survive his early offense, there's no guarantees that Hendricks can, particularly moving up for the first time into a new weight class. Still, if Hendricks survives, I like him to win a fairly clear decision - while Hendricks has had gas tank issues his whole career, Lombard's are even worse, and while I don't really think it'll be a fun fight, I just trust Hendricks a bit more to push the pace and sort of do more stuff to earn an uninspiring win. Though, at this point, for either guy, a win's a win. Sam Sicilia (14-7 overall, 5-6 UFC) vs. Gavin Tucker (9-0 overall): UFC's gotten into the trend of putting hometown fighters higher on cards lately, and this is the most obvious case in a while, as Halifax's own Gavin Tucker makes his debut against journeyman Sam Sicilia. Sicilia's pretty much the perfect gatekeeper at featherweight - he's solid enough to go about .500 over his UFC career, but save a weirdly grappling-heavy win over Yaotzin Meza, Sicilia's pretty much a one-dimensional boxer who can put on an exciting fight while testing up-and-coming prospects. After one-sided losses to Doo Ho Choi and Gabriel Benitez, it was assumed that Sicilia might be on the way out, but here he figures to get one more shot against Tucker. It's hard to know what to make of Tucker - he missed two straight years, from February 2013 to February 2015, due to injury, and has only had two fights since coming back, both of which were fairly quick knockouts. And there's not even a ton of footage out there on those, so all there is basically to glean is that Tucker looks like a pretty solid, athletic striker, though not so much so that he particularly jumps off of whatever film there is. Tucker being such an unknown makes this a coin flip, so I'll favor Sicilia via decision pretty much based solely on experience, though on the plus side, this should be a really fun bout no matter how good Tucker turns out to be. Cezar Ferreira (11-5 overall, 7-3 UFC) vs. Elias Theodorou (12-1 overall, 4-1 UFC, 1-0 Bellator): One of the nicer stories in the UFC undercard during 2016 was the sudden resurgence of Cezar "Mutante" Ferreira, who looked like a complete bust of a prospect as recently as a year ago. Ferreira won the middleweight bracket of the first season of TUF: Brazil, and the Vitor Belfort protege fought a lot like his mentor, an explosive finisher that ran through his opponents in fairly short order. But Ferreira didn't really cash in on his hype in any manner - he wasn't particularly popular with the Brazilian fans, who just plain didn't like him, and once Ferreira got any step up in competition, things pretty much went to hell. As it turns out, Ferreira was pretty much the platonic ideal of a "glass cannon" - sure, he was explosive, but if an opponent was able to weather the storm, or even just get in before it happened, Ferreira turned out to pretty much have no chin whatsoever and wound get his lights turned out on the first exchange of the fight. An ill-advised cut to welterweight for one fight didn't help, as Ferreira just looked drained before suffering another first-round knockout to Jorge Masvidal, and after a bit of a layoff, Ferreira's fight against Oluwale Bamgbose this past April looked to be his last chance. But in that fight, and his follow-up win over Anthony Smith, Ferreira showed that he had suddenly reinvented himself as a grappler, outwrestling both opponents with relative ease. And in his last win, against European vet Jack Hermansson, Ferreira flashed a pretty solid range kickboxing game while mixing in his grappling, eventually scoring a second-round submission win. It's been an impressive re-tooling, as Ferreira has basically learned to plan around his weaknesses, and just rebuilt his game in such a way that he doesn't really have to get hit. Compared to Ferreira, Elias Theodorou's slow progression up the middleweight ranks has been fairly normal. I was among a solid group of people that tabbed Theorodou for potential stardom coming off the Canada versus Australia season of TUF - Theodorou has dreamboat good looks, even appearing on the cover of some romance novels, and a star's personality that walks a fine line between likability and cockiness. And in the cage, he's been pretty solid, even if it's a bit amusing that someone so pretty fights so ugly - Theodorou just prefers to grapple and take things into the clinch, where he'll try to wear down his opponents or eventually work for a submission. Theodorou's added a bit of a striking game, mostly built around weird single karate strikes, but it's hard to tell if that's effective - his last fight against Sam Alvey just didn't see Alvey try to do much of anything, and his fight before that was a narrow loss where Theodorou had trouble with the athleticism of Thiago Santos. And that brings to mind one of the more frustrating things about Theodorou - he never really feels like he has a ton of momentum because he just doesn't fight that much. Add in the fact that a lot of his fights are on FS1 cards like these or Fight Pass, and Theodorou really does feel like a guy who would've been a star when there were fewer, more focused cards rather than sort of lost in the shuffle here. But anyway, the fight. It's a really well-done piece of matchmaking that could go either way, but I'll favor Theodorou. I figure both guys will generally want to take things into the clinch, and Theodorou just seems to be more powerful there - while Ferreira is skilled on the ground, I'm not really sure how good he'll look if it's Theodorou that's taking the advantage and getting control throughout the fight. On the other hand, I do think if Ferreira can keep this standing, Mutante's newfound mobile kickboxing game is probably too much for Theodorou to keep up with, though again, while Theodorou's not really a knockout artist, that does increase the chance of him finding Ferreira's jaw for a finish. But I do see this mostly taking place in the clinch and on the ground, and I do think Theodorou will mostly be able to control things - while it may not be pretty (outside of Theodorou himself), I'll say the Ontario native wins a clear decision. Sara McMann (10-3 overall, 4-3 UFC, 1-0 Invicta) vs. Gina Mazany (4-0 overall): So, it finally seems like Sara McMann is putting it all together, and reminding us all that sometimes prospects don't all improve on the same timeline. When McMann came into UFC as part of the first wave of female fighters, a lot of people looked at her Olympic silver medal in wrestling and thought she could be the one to neutralize Ronda Rousey's judo game and beat the most unstoppable fighter in the game. And, well, no - McMann was sort of rushed into a fight with Rousey in just her second UFC bout, and got chewed up in pretty quick fashion, falling to a standing knee in just 66 seconds. And from then on, it was just disappointment after disappointment - a wrestling-heavy decision win over Lauren Murphy that nobody really seemed to think McMann actually won, and then two fights that saw McMann's opponent pretty much take her down and beat her up, as Miesha Tate and Amanda Nunes both scored big wins over her. So heading into 2016, there were a lot of questions if McMann was really that good - her wrestling game wasn't translating much defensively, her striking was still a work in progress, and she just generally didn't seem like a fighter you could rely on to gut through for a win. But the past year has seen McMann's game surprisingly click - her win over Jessica Eye wasn't a scintillating affair, but saw her neutralize a dangerous opponent, and then she just looked excellent against Alexis Davis this past December; McMann's striking game was suddenly on point, and when she needed to, she went to the ground with a talented submission expert and wound up getting the tap herself, clamping an excellent arm triangle onto Davis. So McMann suddenly has a ton of momentum, and surprisingly seems to be a contender once again, just when it seemed like she was a lost cause for good. Initially, this was supposed to be a matchup against fellow veteran wrestler Liz Carmouche, which would've been interesting, but with Carmouche out, UFC somewhat surprisingly found Alaska's Gina Mazany to step in against McMann. Mazany wasn't really on anyone's radar, as her sole high-level exposure was getting destroyed by Julianna Pena while trying to get into the house on TUF, during the Rousey/Tate season. That was in 2013, and Mazany's only had one fight since then, a win on an Alaskan regional over a fairly overmatched opponent. In that fight, Mazany just looked like a trained athlete in taking her opponent down, getting quickly to the mount, and then winning via ground-and-pound, and having watched a surprising amount of Alaskan MMA, just being athletic and trained by a decent camp (in Mazany's case, Xtreme Couture in Vegas) puts you ahead of pretty much everyone else. This is a ridiculously tough ask for Mazany - hell, she's only fought four times since her MMA debut all the way back in 2008 - and given that McMann looks as good as she ever has, she's probably going to destroy the newcomer. Mazany may be tough enough to just survive getting taken down and mauled for three rounds, but I'll call for this to be over with merciful quickness, and for McMann to score the first-round submission. Paul Felder (12-3 overall, 4-3 UFC) vs. Alessandro Ricci (10-4 overall, 0-1 UFC, 1-0 Bellator): UFC has no idea what the hell they're doing with Paul Felder, basically. The Philly native had a solid debut against Jason Saggo, and then absolutely styled out on Danny Castillo, finishing him with a spinning back fist, and that was enough for UFC brass to decide to push Felder in way over his head. And while fights with Edson Barboza and Ross Pearson were fun, they also didn't really do Felder any favors, as he lost two straight and was facing the cut line in pretty short order. And so UFC continued to yo-yo him around - fights against Daron Cruickshank and Josh Burkman, both Felder wins, were a solid progression for Felder, but then UFC rushed him against a top fifteen opponent once again, and Francisco Trinaldo pretty much split his eyebrow open for an injury stoppage. And while this fight just sort of happened since both men's opponents got hurt, UFC is zig-zagging wildly with Felder's opposition once again, heading to the bottom of the card to face Alessandro Ricci. Ontario's Ricci made his late-notice UFC debut in August, and while he's ostensibly a muay thai expert, Ricci didn't really get the chance to show any of that, as Jeremy Kennedy more or less held him against the fence and kept him under control for fifteen straight minutes. On the plus side, this should be pretty close to a pure striking match, so if Ricci does in fact have striking chops, this is a fight where he'll get to show it off. But on the downside, this is also a ridiculous step up in competition from fight to fight. I'll give Ricci the benefit of the doubt and say he hangs in there for all three rounds, and this should be pretty fun, but this seems like it should be a pretty clear Felder win. Santiago Ponzinibbio (23-3 overall, 5-2 UFC) vs. Nordine Taleb (12-3 overall, 4-1 UFC, 2-1 Bellator): Santiago Ponzinibbio is pretty great. The Argentinian started out as a bit of a curio, a TUF: Brazil standout with a funny name, but he's turned out to be a pretty great addition to the welterweight roster, a high-volume knockout artist who's started racking up the wins. 2016 saw Ponzinibbio become the first man to stop Court McGee via TKO, then follow that up with a fun beating of Zak Cummings, and now Ponzinibbio's become a guy where those in the know perk up whenever they hear that he's fighting. Ponzinibbio might be able to win over some hearts and minds here in Canada with a win over Quebec's Nordine Taleb - based off some of the matchmaking UFC has tried to do with Taleb lately, it seems like they consider him an action fighter, but while he's not quite that, he's still a solid welterweight entrant himself. Taleb is a fairly technical, meat-and-potatoes boxer/wrestler - he's big for the division, but as a tradeoff, he's glacially slow, though Taleb more often than know just knows what he's doing and is able to handle his foes. His most recent fight was his most fun one to date, as Erick Silva got over-aggressive and sort of brought Taleb out of his shell, and Taleb eventually wound up getting his biggest win to date, catching a kick and then putting Silva's lights out with a perfect punch. I just wondering if that's a bit of false advertising, though, since as mentioned before, UFC seems to subsequently be trying to match Taleb up with action fighters in hopes of sparking up a brawl. I favor Ponzinibbio here, though I think the current betting odds that have him as a three-to-one favorite are a bit much - Ponzinibbio's not much of a wrestler, so I could easily see a boring fight where Taleb is able to take Ponzinibbio down and use his size to neutralize him for three rounds. But I think Ponzinibbio's speed and combination punching will be too much for the Quebecois, and I see him slowly wearing down Taleb before scoring a knockout or TKO stoppage sometime in the second round. Carla Esparza (11-3 overall, 2-1 UFC, 3-0 Invicta, 0-2 Bellator) vs. Randa Markos (6-4 overall, 2-3 UFC): This fight shows that sometimes, timing can be everything, as there was a point where I was hoping this fight would be made, and now that it's here, my interest is, well, not so much. UFC decided to crown an inaugural strawweight champion via a TUF season back in 2014, and Esparza and Markos were probably the two standouts; Esparza was the reigning Invicta champion and favorite to win the whole thing, and Markos was the breakout star of the whole thing, a relatively unknown fighter out of Canada who had an impressive backstory as an Iraqi refugee and came out of nowhere to score wins over Felice Herrig and Tecia Torres. And Esparza/Markos seemed to be the fight the whole season was building towards - Markos was portrayed as the obvious rooting interesting for the show, while Esparza led a pack of "mean girls" that constantly tormented her. Add in the post-show segments and interviews where the two would just throw catty shade at each other, and for a while, a fight between the two seemed like the biggest fight UFC could make at strawweight. But it didn't work out - Esparza did indeed pretty much run through the competition en route to becoming the first strawweight champ, but Markos lost her first post-TUF fight in a close split decision against Jessica Penne. After that, Joanna Jedrzejczyk suddenly burst onto the scene herself to annihilate Esparza and put her on a shelf for a year, and by that point, the moment had more or less passed. And, frankly, the ensuing two years or so haven't been particularly kind to either fighter. Esparza's struggles have mostly been outside the cage - she had that long injury layoff, and then after returning with a flat win over Juliana Lima, she apparently just had trouble getting booked - she'd openly grouse at not being able to get a fight on social media, and then apparently had to sell the motorcycle she won on TUF just to make ends meet in the interim. Meanwhile, Markos's career has just gone off the rails...and crashed...and now it's on fire, and the rails are also on fire, and everything is on fire. After a solid win over Aisling Daly, Markos moved to Tristar for one fight against Karolina Kowalkiewicz, and then left because they were making her "too passive" of a fighter, in her mind. So instead she trains in Michigan, with a team led by Daron Cruickshank, and...the results have not been great. Funnily enough, she actually looked really passive in a decision win over Jocelyn Jones-Lybarger, which was a sloppy fight that really did neither woman any favors, and then a subsequent fight against Cortney Casey just saw Markos continue to look kind of aimless, eventually going for a head-and-arm throw and leaving herself open enough in the aftermath that Casey was eventually able to work for an armbar win. Markos badly needs to figure things out, and putting her against someone as good as Esparza seems kind of cruel, frankly. Esparza's quite underrated - between her portrayal on TUF, the way she was annihilated by Jedrzejczyk, and the long layoffs between fights, people just seem to forget that she's an excellent strawweight, and probably the best wrestler in the division, with a knack for chaining together all sorts of takedowns while dragging her opponent to the floor. And given that that's theoretically Markos's wheelhouse, that only makes the fight even more difficult for the Canadian - it's not even a case where she's overmatched but has a good style matchup. Unless fighting Esparza suddenly awakens the old Markos or something, this seems like a one-sided win for Esparza all the way - I'll give Markos credit and say she hangs on for a decision, but a stoppage wouldn't surprise me. Reginaldo Vieira (13-4 overall, 1-1 UFC) vs. Aiemann Zahabi (6-0 overall): Aiemann Zahabi's a pretty interesting prospect - because of his talent, yes, but also because of his last name, as he's the younger brother of Tristar coach Firas Zahabi, GSP's main man and one of the brightest minds in the game. But as far as Aiemann goes, his record to date is a mixed bag - unfortunately, he's been relatively inactive and has faces a relatively weak level of competition. But on the plus side, Zahabi's done exactly what you'd want a top prospect to do, finishing all six of his opponents within the first round, all in fairly one-sided fashion. So it's hard to tell what to make of Zahabi - the history of high-level MMA is filled with guys who destroyed some cans on the way up and just flamed out as soon as they faced actual competition, but thankfully UFC has given Zahabi a bit of a softball to see where he's at in his UFC debut. Reginaldo Vieira was an unlikely winner of TUF: Brazil season four - for one thing, he probably didn't deserve to win the final, a narrow split decision win over Dileno Lopes. Vieira was considered a non-prospect before he won the show, and that's pretty much held true - he's a tough, experienced guy, and a bit of a solid trashy grappler, but his lone post-TUF fight saw him get tapped out by Marco Beltran, and when you're getting beaten at your own game by Marco Beltran, that's probably a sign you're not long for UFC. Vieira could easily win here - even with me being so down on him, he's still by far the best, most experienced guy that Zahabi has ever faced, and we have no idea what Zahabi's game looks like past the first round or if he can't get the finish. But I'll say Zahabi gets into some early trouble, adjusts (particularly since he's the brother of one of the best gameplanners in the sport), and gets a second-round knockout. Jack Marshman (21-5 overall, 1-0 UFC) vs. Thiago Santos (13-5 overall, 5-4 UFC): A really fun middleweight bout here, as it seems like UFC matchmakers are embracing Thiago Santos's destiny as a mid-tier action fighter. Santos has had a weird run - brought in essentially as cannon fodder to lose to Cezar Ferreira on late notice, Santos shockingly rebounded by knocking out top middleweight prospect Ronny Markes, and then suddenly became a thing. Santos was ridiculously raw when he came into UFC, enough so that it didn't look like he was going to make anything of his athleticism before he got himself cut, but after a rocky beginning, Santos strung together four straight wins, three via brutal knockout, and actually became a ranked fighter. But the latter stages of 2016 saw Santos pretty much lose all his momentum - a loss to Gegard Mousasi was nothing to be ashamed of, but Santos followed that up by getting tapped out by Eric Spicely in one of the biggest upsets of the year. In a weird bit of symmetry, it was sort of a similar situation as the win that got Santos on the map, as the theoretical cannon fodder instead wound up getting a first-round finish. Santos looks to rebound against Jack Marshman, the first Welshman to be signed by UFC (although countryman Brett Johns beat him into the cage), who's coming off an impressive UFC debut win over Magnus Cedenblad. That fight pretty much showed off all of Marshman's pros and cons - Cedenblad outwrestled him at will, showing Marshman's lack of grappling, but Marshman got the comeback KO and showed off that he's a fun as hell blood-and-guts brawler, who'll gladly walk through danger for a chance to hit his opponent in the face. Thankfully, Santos still has basically no grappling, so this should be a really fun stand-up fight for as long as it lasts. And it's a hard one to call - Santos's offense can just be ridiculously violent, particularly his kicks, but Marshman does seem like the kind of guy who'll be punching Santos in the face before he can try to get anything off. But that said, I still trust in Santos's athleticism and power, and I think he'll find the knockout in, say, the second round, after some fun back-and-forth action. Ryan Janes (9-1 overall, 1-0 UFC) vs. Gerald Meerschaert (25-8 overall, 1-0 UFC): Saying they were "standouts" is probably a bit strong, but this fight puts together two guys who got big UFC debut wins on the Albany card this past December after long waits to get there. Gerald Meerschaert's wait was the more typical one - after about nine years just taking fights across the country (and beating Sam Alvey in the process), the longtime Midwestern vet got the call as a late injury replacement, and handled raw prospect Joe Gigliotti pretty easily, fighting calm and taking what was given to him before getting an early submission win. On the other hand, Janes's path to the Octagon was a bit weirder. The Canadian had your typical path to getting signed, winning fights in your typical Canadian promotions, but it took him three tries to make it to the cage. Janes was first slated to debut on the Vancouver card in August, but his opponent, Adam Hunter, got pulled on about a day's notice after failing a drug test. So Janes was then slated to fight Dongi Yang on the card in Manila this past October...until that card got entirely scrapped. So Janes finally made his debut in Albany, and made it count, getting a decision win over Keith Berish. Despite being advertised as a submission expert, Janes actually depended on some solid striking to get the win, although it still wasn't all that pretty - Janes is technically fine, but just looks sort of stiff and mechanical, standing completely upright and leaving himself open to getting annihilated against someone who can connect with his chin. I'm not sure Meerschaert is that guy, but he should have more than enough well-rounded experience to handle whatever Janes throws his way. I'm not sure it'll be a pretty fight, but I just like Meerschaert to be better more or less everywhere and then coast his way to a decision, though a finish is certainly possible.

#ufc #mma #ufcfightnight105 #ufc fight night 105 #ufn105 #ufn 105 #ufchalifax #ufc halifax

0 notes

nikkzwrites · 4 years

Text

Yesterday Once More | Dark Fix-It Fic Series | Chapter 17

CW: Canon Typical Triggers: Smoking, Sex, Language, Drugs, Drinking, Death, Violence, Suicide Mentions, Cutting, Violence.

Word Count: 4.6k

[First Chapter] [Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter]

People are particular creatures. All their actions are driven by desire,

Adam looked up from his sadness to see Annalise and Martha staring at him. Martha in a pitch black dress and Annalise in a pure white one. Both of their faces were the same though. Both held disdain, anger, and disappointment across them. Martha sat in the chair across from him as Annalise slowly stood from her sitting position on the arm of the chair to walk towards him. She placed a hand on his teary cheek. Even in her hauntings, she was still his guardian angel.

Their characters are forged by pain.

Stranger Jonas slept in his bed holding Annalise down under him. His shoulder was all bloodlied from the girl’s earlier desperate means to try and escape. Now though, she lay completely exhausted under the man who was once the boy she loved. Her head tilted so that the top of her head touched his as their breathing synchronized.

As much as they might try to suppress the pain, to repress desire,

Hannah started at them. She felt horrible, but she knew what she needed to do. The woman didn’t really want to leave Annalise behind, but she had to. Hannah couldn’t continue to ruin lives here as she’d been doing for all these years. She stood and took the time machine with her, away from the two of them asleep in her son’s bed. Hannah looked up to see a ghostly form of Ulrich staring at her.

They cannot liberate themselves from the eternal servitude to their feelings.

Martha looked at the old pictures of Jonas and herself. She felt as if he was still there with her. The phantom of the boy’s innocent standing just a bit in her room with her, watching her. Helping her slowly come to terms with what was happening and what she herself needed to accept.

As long as the storm rages within them, they can find no peace.

Katharina sat in her lost son’s room. She looked over to her son’s favorite chair to see him sitting there. He felt so close, yet he was so far from her.

Not in life, not in death. And so, day after day, they will do all that must be done. Pain is their ship. Desire is their compass. All that humankind is capable of.

It was the 26th of June. There was one day left before the Apocalypse. In 1954, the police looked over the older Claudia’s evidence.

“The deceased woman is 5’7”,” the coroner explained to the two officers with him, “Caucasian. Probably 75 to 80 years old. Cause of death, a shot to the chest. The eyes are notable. One blue, One brown.” Egon slowly wandered up to look at the woman’s eyes to confirm. This was the same woman he had seen not too long ago. The coroner continued, “It’s known as heterochromia.”

“This woman,” Egon stated, “she...She was at the police station. The same day Helge reappeared.”

Daniel blinked and shivered for a moment. He shook his head and asked, “And?”

Egon explained, “She was confused. Not entirely there. She apologized for something… I… I didn’t understand for what.”

Daniel shifted and pointed at the dead woman. He asked, “The same day Helge came back?” When Egon gave him a small nod, Daniel told him, “Maybe she’s the madman’s accomplice. Could be his mother. And she had Helge with her the whole time.”

“There’s something else,” The coroner interrupted, “I only happened upon it by chance. Her body is heavily contaminated.” Once the officers heard that and the radiation detector going off, they took a step back. The coroner outlined that this radiation was all over her body, “She must’ve been exposed to heavy radiation for a prolonged period.”

Daniel shook his head perplexed, “Peculiar.”

The coroner shrugged, “Perhaps she was a radiographer?”

The police chief made a face and nodded. He looked at Egon and told him, “Visit the Doppler boy. Show him her photo. Maybe he’ll recognize her.”

Egon nodded and went off to do just that.

In 1987, Claudia spoke into the microphone, “The date indicates that the particle regularly decays into two protons, at a mass of 125 gigaelectronvolts.” She flipped through more of the notes on the God Particle so that she can record her findings. She sighed and continued her long tedious work, “In one case, however, it decayed into four muons.”

Yasmin walked into her boss’s office and looked at Claudia, “You’re already here?”

Claudia paused the recording and started to look around realizing how long she must have been doing this, “I must have lost track of time.” She looked up and asked her secretary, “What day is it?”

Yasmin took a step forward as she stuttered in confusion, “It’s...eh… the 26th of June.” When she looked at her boss grab her date book, she asked, “Did you spend all night here?”

Claudia found exactly what she was looking for. She pulled out the article about her father’s death, “June 26th…”

The other woman asked her boss, “Is something wrong?” When she saw Claudia start to rush to leave, Yasmin plead with her, “I rescheduled the meeting with the French for this morning.” When Claudia rushed past her, she asked, “Ms. Tiedemann?”

In 2020, Two of the pieces trapped within this tragic knot slept. The middle Jonas slowly awoke. He let out a tender sigh seeing Annalise passed out next to him. He moved his face closer to hers to place a gentle kiss against her temple. When he did, he felt her wiggle under his body. He allowed her to turn over and wrap his arm around her as if he were simply a blanket to keep herself warm. He let out a small chuckle. It was nice seeing her so calm after yesterday. This sweet moment would last long though because soon his brain processed something was missing. He sat up in terror awaking Annalise. When the girl groaned at him, he hushed her and tucked her back into bed. He slid out the bed and gave her a small kiss on her temple again, “Go back to sleep, my love. You need your rest.” He watched her lull back into sleep once more as he used his fingers to brush her hair. Once she was asleep once more, Jonas stood and grabbed his clothes heading towards Hannah’s room. As he got dressed he called out, “Mom?” The room was tidy and looked as if she had already left. Jonas let out a small growl realizing what must have happened.

Hannah stood at the entrance of the cave with the suitcase, before slowly walking in.

Katharina lifted her shirt sleeve to look at the tattoo of her and Ulrich’s initials on her arm. She touched it lightly before turning to look at his notes on the Nuclear Power Plant and what was behind that door. She grabbed her jacket and walked out.

Peter stared at the polaroid of his wife as a baby being held by Noah. Charlotte whispered, “It all has to do with me.” The man looked at his wife as she told him, “Noah said the world will end tomorrow. And that only people in the bunker will survive.” They both sighed as Peter tossed the picture onto their coffee table. Charlotte continued to explain, “And he said she’s alive.” The woman started to cry as she whimpered out, “My mother.”

As this was happening, Clausen got the news that there was only one Aleksander Kohler in that time. He started to say, “And then my eyes saw, the ears heard, and nothing remained concealed.” He looked up at the woman who handed him the documents and told her, “Tell Mr. Woller.”

Magnus looked at the group and said, “We have to tell someone.”

“Who,” Bartosz asked him annoyed, “And what exactly?”

Magnus looked at his sister who was turned away from them. She held a picture of Jonas in her hands. He asked the girl, “Do you have anything to say?”

Martha looked back at the group and told them, “I think he’s here.”

“Who,” Magnus demanded.

Martha sighed and took a step closer towards them, “Jonas. I think Bartosz is right. He’s back.”

Annoyance grew within Bartosz. He growled at her, “We traveled through time and that’s all that fucking interests you?”

“You said he’s a part of it,” she yelled at him, “Unlike you, he might know what this all means! Why don’t you think your precious princess Annalise isn’t fucking here? Huh? Maybe he knows where Dad or Mikkel is or who knows what!”

Franziska sighed and interrupted their quarrel calmly, “Magnus is right.” She looked at Martha trying to get through to her, “We have to tell someone.” She explained to Martha’s back, “Everyone has been up to their own shit for months.” She looked down and whimpered, “Everyone’s silent.” Magnus looked down at his phone causing Franziska to look at Bartosz, “What good has that done? None at all.”

Bartosz looked down guiltily and compiled with the small redhead, “Okay. Then we should do it.”

“We,” Martha asked frustrated with the boy, “There is no ‘we.’ There never has been.”

“What is that supposed to mean,” The boy asked defensively.

“You knew what was going on for months,” wailed Martha, “And YOU never told me or anyone else here!” When everyone stared at her and didn’t turn on the boy as they had earlier, she turned and walked away, “Do whatever you want.”

In 1954, Greta told the police, “I hope it won’t take too long. Helge is still very exhausted.”

Egon nodded and quickly reached into his suit pocket. He handed it to the boy and asked, “Do you know this woman?”

When Helge didn’t reply, Greta told him, “Answer the sergeant.”

Egon soothed the boy, “Were you with her maybe? Did she lock you in?”

“He told me about her,” Helge said, remembering David, “The White Devil.”

Egon knelt to the boy’s level in surprise. He whispered his question to the small boy, “Who? Who told you about her? The man who did that to you?” Helge looked as if he was going to cry so the man stopped pushing the question. He smiled and tried to lighten the mood, “The White Devil. Tell me about her.”

“She wants to kill us,” Helge told him looking up at the man, “All of us.”

Egon shrugged and tried to comfort Helge, “She’s dead. She can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

“But she hasn’t even started yet,” Helge countered him.

Egon’s face slowly dropped at Helge’s seriousness.

In 1987, Claudia rang her dad’s doorbell. She burst into his apartment and tried to plea with him, “We discussed you moving in with us. Have you already forgotten?”

“You said I should think it over,” Egon countered, confused by his daughter’s rush on trying to get him to move.

Claudia tried to figure out a way to convince her stubborn father, “I just thought… why waste time? Then you’ll be out of here.”

Egon laughed and shook his head, “I like it here. I have to go to the hospital. It’s my first chemo.”

Claudia walked towards him with baited breath, “Can I… May I maybe join you? That is, only if you’d like.”

Egon slowly smiled and nodded, “Yeah.” He thought a bit before continuing, “That'd be nice.”

Claudia smiled at him, hopeful that the article was soon going to be obsolete.

“What do you want here,” Aleksander asked Clausen 33 years after Claudia and Egon’s conversation, “I’ve already told you everything.”

Clausen nodded, “I’d like you to look at something. Mr. Woller?”

When Woller handed him the paper, Aleksander asked, “What is this?” The man slowly started to open the document in his hand.

“A copy of a document from the Marburg Registry Office,” The man explained, “The info on your last ID before you left Marburg.”

Aleksander smiled at the man, “I have no idea how this is relevant.”

Clausen shook his head, “Nothing stands out?”

Aleksander looked at the paper then shrugged, “No. What should stand out?”

“5’6”, I’d say… Tops.” Clausen described, “That document says 5’8”. So where are they? The two inches.”

Aleksander closed the paper and tried to hand it back to Clausen, “This is ridiculous.”

The man sighed, “I’m arresting you. On suspicion of identity theft.”

Aleksander shook his head, “You can’t.”

The older Jonas sat at the table looking through the pictures Hannah and Annalise had tried to start reorganizing when there was a knock on the door. This made him jump then turn his head towards the stairs to see if Annalise was disturbed from her hibernation. He heard Martha’s voice calling. She was so loud. He slowly walked towards the door and opened it figuring there was nothing else he could do to make her not wake the girl upstairs.

Martha stopped when she saw a bearded man open the door. She was taken aback, “Who are you?”

“Please come in,” He led the girl inside.

She followed him inside and looked around. The man stood a good bit away from her, but she was still nervous. There was no sign of Hannah nor Annalise. She looked at him and said, “I wanted to talk with Hannah.” He seemed so familiar, yet she knew that there was no possible way for her to have known him.

Jonas nodded and motioned, “She’s not here and Lise is asleep.” He shifted uncomfortably and asked, “Do you want a drink?” Watching Martha back away from him, the man asked, “Do I scare you?”

Martha’s brow furrowed, “I think I’m just having deja vu or something.” She turned to leave, “I’m going.”

“A glitch in the matrix,” Jonas called after her.

Martha stopped. She turned back to him and whispered, “What?”

Jonas nodded and said, “Or a message from the beyond. You read that somewhere.”

“How do you know that,” she started to approach him. She slowly started to look at him. She started to realize who he reminded her of, but it wasn’t possible. Her eyes watered as she whispered, “Jonas?”

“Do you think I was a good police officer,” Egon asked his daughter 33 years prior.

Claudia comforted him, “Oh, Dad. No idea.” They sat as he got his chemo treatment. The daughter continued, “I’m sure you were good at what you did.”

Egon sighed and shook his head, “Actually, I don’t think so.” He turned his head and held out his hand for his daughter. Claudia slowly put her hand into his and squeezed. The man smiled, “You were always different.” Claudia started to cry as the man continued, “You saw the world differently from the very start. Sometimes I think… that that’s my problem… That I can’t see the world as it truly is. I think I did something very, very stupid.”

“What do you mean,” Claudia asked, shaking her head.

Egon bit his tongue and asked, “Do you know that film… The one with the young man who has this car that can take him to the past? I know this sounds crazy, but… the stuff in that movie… I think it really exists. Time travel. And somehow it all has to go with Mads and Helge. And with things that happened over 30 years ago.”

Young Egon walked through the station when he was stopped by another officer to be told there was a woman there claiming she knew things about the man who killed the boys. He slowly walked into his office to see a beautiful woman sitting in a chair waiting for him. She turned to see him.

Hannah turned towards the man and nodded. “Hello,” she greeted him.

Egon walked to his desk and sat. He raised his brow and asked, “How can I help you?”

“I…” Hannah started, “I’m looking for my husband. It was in the paper. The dead children. And the photo. There was a photo. I think it’s my husband.”

Upon hearing this, Egon looked through the files on his desk until he found Ulrich’s. He opened it and took out his photo and placed it in front of her. He nodded towards it and asked, “Is that your husband?”

Martha and the Older Jonas sat staring at each other. They listened to the water running upstairs for a second before Martha turned to him and asked, “Where were you all this time?”

He sighed and said, “I promised you I’d make it alright again.” He sat back and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

Martha put her hand over his, stopping him. When he looked up, he watched a stray tear roll down her face as she rubbed her hand up his arm. “Suddenly, it all makes sense,” she whispered. She caressed the side of his face with tears forming, “Once you know, it’s obvious.” She sighed and pulled away.

A bang on the door interrupted them causing them to hear a large fall from upstairs. “Hannah,” Katharina yelled as she banged on the door.

Jonas held Martha back, “Please don’t get that.”

As Katharina barged down the door, she spotted Martha behind the older Jonas. “Martha,” She asked, confused. She never would have thought of seeing her daughter here. She stormed over and grabbed her daughter’s wrist and flung her behind herself. She sneered at Jonas as she asked Martha, “You know who this is? Hm? Did he tell you where your brother is? Huh?”

As she was yelling at Martha, Annalise slid down the banister effortlessly and hopped off in between Katharina and Jonas. Seeing Katharina’s face and pause, Annalise just waved her hand, “Oh, don’t stop on account of me. I want to see this play out.” She walked into the kitchen and grabbed a bagel as Martha stared baffled at the girl in Jonas’s old clothes.

Katharina glared at everyone then sneered at Annalise, “Why don’t you continue this?” Right when it seemed like Annalise was going to open her mouth to say something, Katharina turned to her daughter, “Did he tell you WHO your brother is?” She turned and pointed, “That man is your brother’s son. My grandson, your nephew. Mikkel is Michael Kahnwald! You hear me, Martha? And you’re his aunt!”

Martha looked between Katharina, Annalise, and Jonas. There was so much going on. She shook her head when Jonas himself started to apologize only to confirm her worst fears. She looked at Annalise who looked completely dead, lost all emotion and reaction, sitting at the table eating a bagel as if this was all just something that had to happen and she had no way to stop it. She looked as if a phantom in the space. There to affect things in only miniscule ways and never directly involve herself with the living. Martha started to wonder if her friend ever did truely come back or if they were all simly mass hallucinating or wishing she was there. That they all had gone so far down into grief that they had all gone mad.

“Where is your time machine,” Katharina asked the man, “The one you travel through time with?”

Annalise finally finished half her bagel and walked between the angry woman and the tearful Older Jonas, “Hannah has it.” She shrugged and made a hand gesture of something ‘poofing’, “She vanished.”

Katharina shook her head, “Tell me how to get Mikkel back.”

Martha walked forward and said, “Mom! Magnus has the device.”

“What,” Katharina and Annalise turned to look at Martha.

Martha nodded, “We travelled with it.”

Katharina looked at her daughter, “You were there?” She walked away from the other two and approached Martha, “Did you see Mikkel?”

“Mikkel,” Martha whispered.

Katharina turned towards Jonas and said, “Keep your filthy fingers off my daughter. You got me?” She turned and grabbed Martha’s hand dragging the girl away. She slammed the door closed behind her, ending the conversation.

Annalise and Jonas sighed. She looked at the man and asked, “Will you be okay?” Tears welled into her eyes. Instead of answering, he grabbed her arm and pulled her into an embrace. He kissed the side of her head as she cried into his chest. Slowly her cries turned into screaming. She started pulling away from him and slowly sunk into the ground screaming. He crept around her and wrapped himself around her as she tried to cling to the slowly slipping away hope that none of this was really happening.

“Your husband never confessed,” Egon explained to Hannah as they drove, “He kept insisting that he wanted to save the children. You and your husband. You have children, right?”

Hannah shook her head, “No.”

“No,” Egon asked, “Strange. He kept saying he’s looking for his son. This may seem a bit odd, but… Have you ever heard of the White Devil?”

Hannah turned towards him suppressing a laugh, “No. What is that supposed to be?”

Egon turned his head towards the road once more and asked, “If he talks to you… That is, if he should talk to you, persuade him to talk to the police. Persuade him to confess.”

“And the man came from the future,” Claudia asked her father in 1987, “Back to 1953? That’s when you arrested him? And yesterday, that man tried to kidnap the boy?”

“No,” Egon replied, “Not that man. I mean… the same man. But older.”

Claudia asked, “Because that was his alleged son?”

Egon shrugged, “I know. It all sounds completely insane.”

Claudia asked, “The man, the old man. Where is he now?”

Egon shook his head, “Back in psychiatric care.”

“That’s it,” Claudia told her father, “You’re moving in with us. We are going get your things.”

“So you believe me,” Egon asked her.

The rest of the group sat at the Dopplers’ with the device in front of them. Peter spoke up and asked, “So you traveled with it? To what year?” He looked angry. Magnus, Franziska, and Elisabeth really didn’t know what to tell the man. Peter yelled, “To what year?!”

Seeing her mother study her, Franziska stood up annoyed, “So this is what’s going on? You knew about this time travel shit? Why didn’t you say anything?”

Magnus’s phone started to ring. He looked at his girlfriend and explained, “Martha.” He then answered his phone telling his sister that he had the device and that they were at Franziska’s. He paused for a moment and told her, “Yes. I’ll be right home. You what? Who?” He pulled the phone away from his face and stood up, “Jonas is back. Like Bartosz said.” He looked at Franziska confused, “But he’s older.”

“You guys should stay out of it,” said Charlotte.

Franziska started to sneer at her mother and father, “Unbelievable. So you two knew it too. That’s exactly what ruins everything! All your fucking secrets! You couldn’t even talk to us when Dad screwed Benni! What incompetent assholes you are!” Franziska stormed out of the room.

Hannah walked through the jailhouse to Ulrich’s cell. She had convinced Egon to let her have five minutes alone with the man. Her heart hurt seeing the bloodied and bruised man before her in chains. He couldn’t even look up at her for a minute. She had to coax him to look up at her.

“Are you an angel,” the man asked her. He was so defeated. He just wanted to go home. He started to cry when he asked again if it were really her and when she confirmed it. He smiled for the first time in eight months, but slowly started to sob. He asked about his family.

This broke Hannah’s heart. She caressed his cheek and asked him definitively, “If you could choose today, between Katharina and me?”

“What do you mean,” Ulrich whispered, “Why?”

Hannah spoke, “Back when we were together, you… I… I tried to remember if you… if you ever said, ‘I love you’ to me.”

Ulrich responded quickly, “I loved you. I still love you. Get me out and I’ll leave Katharina. I love you. Okay? I love you.”

Hannah told him, “He said I need no one, but the truth is you don’t need me.”

Ulrich started to beg, “But I do Hannah. Please. I love you. Please get me out of here. I’ll do anything you want.”

Hannah turned and left him causing him to yell after her calling her a liar and that he needed to get out of there.

Katharina stared at the family picture with Mikkel. Martha slowly walked over to her mother, “Mom?” She held the woman from behind and started to cry, “Everything will be fine okay?”

Magnus walked in interrupting the moment. Katharina turned to him and asked, “Do you have the machine?” The boy slowly revealed it to his mother. She turned and asked, “Do you know how to use it?”

“I don’t,” Magnus admitted, “Bartosz used it.”

Katharina closed it up and walked out of the house. Martha looked at Magnus with hope in her eyes, “They’re alive. Mikkel. Dad..”

Magnus searched his sister’s face, “What?”

“They are just not here,” Martha explained, “They’re in another time.”

Claudia and Egon walked into his apartment and Claudia told him to grab his pills and they would get everything else later. Egon slowly grabbed the pills and started to talk about Ulrich once more. He started to piece together that there must be something in the caves that Ulrich wanted. He looked at her and started to back away, “You knew about time travel… It must have something to do with the power plant… You’re involved in all of this.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Claudia told her father.

“We have to have the caves searched,” Egon concluded.

“There’s nothing in the caves,” Claudia yelled, “There is no time travel!” She looked down. Egon walked to the phone and started to call the police when Claudia stopped him. As they fought over the phone, he fell causing him to bash his head into the counter. She started to cry as she realized that she was going to have to let her father go. That he was the sacrifice she needed to make for her daughter to live.

With his last breath, Egon strained, “You’re the White Devil.” Claudia cried over her father as she watched him fade away.

The young Egon sat with Hannah speaking with her, sparking their cigarettes like their new romance. Claudia walked out of her father’s apartment. The older Claudia became covered in a sheet by the coroner signifying that her case was closed. Katharina sat in Mikkel’s room trying to figure out the machine. Martha lay in bed thinking of the two across town. Annalise snuggled to the older Jonas trying to stop crying.

Claudia walked inside of her home and found a note from Regina. She walked to her sink and cried as she washed her father’s blood from her hands. The woman sobbed as everything hit her more. She slid to the floor crying. Soon she heard a door open. A boy with a hood walked in. She asked, “Who are you? Why do you have a key to my home?”

Jonas slowly took off his hood and told her, “You gave it to me before you left. We’ve got to go. There isn’t much time. I know what you did. She told me.” He walked to her and held her, “But she also said it didn’t have to happen that way again. Next time.” He pulled away and led her out, “We’re going to the future.”

#yesterday once more fanfic #dark fanfic #dark netflix #dark netflix fanfic #dark (netflix)#dark (netflix) fanfiction

5 notes · View notes