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Forward, but Never Forget/XOXO - Ch: 15 - Bloody Sunday (Part I)

Summary: Zaun is free—and must grow into its unfamiliar new dimensions. So must Silco and Jinx. A what-if that diverges midway through the events of episode 8. Found family and fluff, politics and power, smut and slice-of-life, villainy and vengeance.

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Chapters: 1| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |8 | 9 | 10 |11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54

CH 15: Zaun is poised for change. So is Jinx.

tw: for aftermath of war, and unhealthy coping mechanisms on both an individual and societal scale.

tw: for PTSD, trauma and the after-effects of war.

tw: for rape, not described, and in fact glossed over by the characters, but with suvivor's guilt that will manifest in both this chapter and the next.

tw: for a specific scene with animal abuse and animal death. To skip, stop at "She sits like a statue. Blue hair overspills around her body" and resume at "Stop yelling at me!"

cw: for mentions of alcoholism, drug abuse, and domestic violence.

As always, if I've missed anything, please drop me a PM!

Welcome to the room of people who have rooms of people That they loved one day, locked away ~"Heathens" – 21 Pilots

"Anything jumpin' off today?"

"'Jumpin' off'?"

Jinx rolls her eyes, "Anything happening today, Mister Busy Bee?"

"Business as usual."

They are where they begin their day: in Silco’s bathroom. Jinx is perched on the basin, in her striped pink nightshirt, wrestling a comb through her unruly wet hair. Silco stands facing the mirror, barefoot, in black pajama bottoms. Half his face is lathered in foam. The other half is sharp-eyed in concentration. His straight razor, with its worn leather strop, is laid out by the sink.

Vander gave it to him for his sixteenth birthday. Silco still keeps it sharp enough pare a skull in half at ten paces.

In practiced strokes, Silco positions the razor by his ear and drags it down his cheekbone. The blade makes a satisfying shing, shing as it cuts through the grain. It's the same blueprint for slitting a throat, and he employs it with a ritualistic precision. An idle skritch along each pulsepoint. A thoughtful backhand up the jaw. A scything sweep across the neck.

Afterward, Silco savors the smoothness with slow fingertips.

Jinx, half-hidden in her tangle of hair, watches. She'd honed her knifework from him, then practiced to perfection in combat—shaving men clean of their lives. But on the rare Sunday morning, Silco let her dandle his straight razor. She had a real flair. Even her dry-shaves glided off his skin as if oiled. But her expression—all big eyes and pinched mouth—peeled those moments down to what they were: a little girl playing with her daddy's toys.

She still resembles a little girl. Her nightshirt sags on her body—she's lost weight. Her hair is an unruly mop—all attempts at styling it have ceased. Her eyes are puffy—she's had a rough string of nights.

The sight is a fist strangling Silco's black heart.

Last month, she'd resumed—finally—sleeping alone. But the past week, he keeps finding her cocooned in the sheets beside him. Her body jitters at a restless frequency; her skin cooks with a queasy heat. At her behest, he reads to her from a dusty tome on his shelf: a collection of Shuriman folk tales. Jinx's favorite is The Princess and the Tower. A girl locked up since childhood in a tower, her hair grown epically long to mark time’s passage. Chopping it off, she uses it as a rope to climb out, and into a future unknown.

Afterward, Jinx falls into slumber. It takes longer for Silco to follow. Her nightmares shouldn't seem portentous in and of themselves. Except they’d resumed right after he'd captured Vi, and struck a backdoor deal with Medarda.

In the light of day, Silco can ignore the coincidence. On a primal level, he is spooked.

Jinx twists the tap. A trickle of green splatters the porcelain. The water at Entresol always comes pigmented lately—but drinkable. Zaun's infrastructure is in the grip of manic overhaul. Each morning, Silco awakens to the discordance of power-drills, buzz-saws, construction cranes. It goes from the city's edifice down to its bowels. The structural equivalent of a monster shedding years of accumulated rot.

Jinx dabbles a finger under the tap, "Still no heat, huh?"

"Repairs are happening at the water plant."

"Repairs?"

"Filters needs replacing. Valves need adjusting. The pipes alone..."

He reels back with a subaudible exhale. There is no end to the list. He's learnt to sketch a whitewashed version for Jinx, and keep the rest to himself. He can never tell when she'll demonstrate an interest, or take his remarks as a backhanded rebuke at her own unwillingness to re-inhabit her life.

(Her old life?)

Jinx jams a thumb in her mouth, gnawing the unpainted nail. A revoltingly infantile gesture; Silco stifles the impulse to yank it away.

"So that's today's agenda?" she mutters. "Laying pipe?"

Jinx has a talent for irrepressible innuendo. Silco's best strategy is to cut through it with a straight façade of literalism.

“I've a ride-along with the crew,” he says. “Meetings with the chem-barons. A gala."

"Booooooring."

"Bandle City's envoy will be there."

"Yeah?" Jinx eyes him sidelong. "That why you've been so busy? Sparkles and spells?"

Beneath her flippancy are fault-lines. Silco is adept at sensing the change in each cadence. Just as Jinx is adept at catching the cracks in his composure.

The girl always has his number.

Subconsciously, she knows something is awry. His days have devolved into a series of calculated steps: wash, shave, dress, eat, leave, return. They still talk, but seldom about the things that matter. Rather, it's the trivialities that cling to the surface like barnacles: How did you sleep? What do you want for breakfast? Did the weather turn foul while I was gone? The rest of the time is spent tiptoeing around each other's hurts.

Each other's trust.

Silco knows the dance can't prolong itself. Secrecy is his métier, but Jinx is an extremely sensitive instrument. His lessons have attuned her to the least perceptible disturbance. It was an old game between them. Two truths and a lie—except the stakes rose every year. From sussing out omissions in a lackey's story, to scoping out a turncoat's tactics, to predicting a rival's schemes. With each trap sprung, Jinx grew cannier, her appetite for mischief matched only by Silco's zest for intrigue.

This is different.

This is Vi.

So far, she's been barred from Zaun. Talis is heading the inquest into the blackguard's death. His missives—blunt, belligerent—would grate on Silco's nerves if he didn't already know the entire investigation is a sham. On Zaun's end, his network will ensnarl any efforts at fair-play. On Piltover's end, Medarda's bureaucrats will elide them. Meanwhile, Silco and Medarda will each polish the terms of their brand-new Peace Treaty, until it is devoid of loopholes or escape clauses.

Bargains are slippery things. Better to cover all the bases.

Keep Zaun strong.

(Keep Jinx safe.)

Otherwise Vi—the bitch—will smash his child's stability up like bombshell. Her old abandonment is such a deep-set wound. It throbs away inside Jinx, triggered by the barest change in pressure. If Vi finds her, she'll either collapse, or explode.

Like on the Bridge.

An acrid red taste invades Silco's mouth. His thumb smooths over the straight razor.

"No," he says softly, "No spells."

"So why all the late-nighters?"

"Bad head. I've been paying visits to the Doctor."

He almost regrets the fib when Jinx's brows pinch together. "Is it your eye?"

"I don't think so."

"Maybe it's a brain parasite? Or a flesh-eating fungus? Or—"

"Your concern is touching. But I'm better now."

He squeezes toothpaste on his and Jinx's brushes. Together, they lather up: Jinx with the deft rapidity of a cat scratching at a flea inside her mouth, Silco with sharp, raking strokes, as if scouring a blackened pot. Afterward, they spit wads of foam down the drain. Two pairs of teeth—all pearlescent sharpness—flash in the mirror.

"Shiny," Jinx says.

"You always are, my lovely."

Jinx smiles. But her expression stays incomplete. Dwelling on what's between his words, even as Silco dwells on what's under her silence.

Six in the morning—and they're already playacting for each other.

In a half hour, they convene at the breakfast table. Jinx sits across from Silco, the chairs tilted out of alignment so they are at right angles. He is in a dark three-piece suit. She is still in her nightshirt. Sunlit sinewaves beat against the skylight. The air is redolent of fry-up. Eggs and blood sausage for Silco; waffles, bacon and Shuriman orange slices for Jinx. She can be a picky pest—but lately, she devours everything on her plate, with a depth of hunger that's nearly bottomless.

Revival, Silco wonders, or ration?

He tips a cup of coffee to his own lips, a cigarette burning between his fingers. Moments like this, he's reminded, always, of the little waif he'd taken in. Between the veil of hair, her features hold the same kittenish softness. But there's a growing glint of predator in those eyes. A burgeoning blend part-wildcat, part-woman.

His to nurture—his to protect.

Through spiraling smoke, Silco matches her stare.

"What are your plans for today, child?"

"Same old, same old."

"Making any friends?"

Inventions, he means.

Jinx always used to make formal introductions. This is Buttons. He can spit fireballs. This is Snuff. She's full of knock-out gas! Ooh, and Whisker? He shoots out nails! In turn, Silco rewarded Jinx's trust by never forgetting her creations' names—or their purpose.

Lately, though, no colorful menagerie greets him after work. Just the residue of Jinx's throttled-back mania. When he returns, she is sitting crosslegged in the parlor, tools scattered everywhere. On every surface, Silco finds half-assembled trinkets, or starbursts of doodles.

Bizarre monsters from voids between worlds.

She no longer names her creations. Barely finishes one before leaping to the next, with a crazed itch in her hands and a wild gleam in her eyes. It is almost a torment; nothing like the muse's kiss that spun her into a charming tizzy in the past. She's not satisfied with any of the designs. Complains that they come out disfigured, disobedient, destroyed. At the height of her frenzy, she sets fire to the schematics, and kicks apart the trinkets. Stomping, screeching, then dissolving into tears, until Silco has to console her and tell her whatever she needs to hear, which takes some guesswork.

Privately, he isn't sure what it signifies. All Jinx's brain-children, born then unborn. Sprightly fiends, infused with Jinx's multicolored emotions, then demolished.

Silco wants her spikes to steady into a baseline. A bullseye. Whatever pulls all her scattershot impulses together. Except the notion seems laughable. As if Jinx is just an ordinary girl, an artist caught in a creative tailspin, who just needs to stretch up out of the debris of burn-out and take wing into the wide-open future.

Jinx isn't ordinary.

Seventeen-years-old and she's gifted him a nation. Won him a war. Now she's teetering on the precipice between old and new. Between reinvention and—

(Revolution?)

(Or ruination?)

The claw in his chest twists mercilessly. Red gorge shoots up Silco's throat.

Jinx shrugs. "Nope. No friends."

"What about the schematics from last night?"

"Those? Pssh. Old news." Then, tossing him a bone. "I might tweak 'em into a Puff-Puff 2.0."

"Show me when I'm back tonight."

“Mmkay.”

She dips her head, her hair sliding forward like drawn curtains to shut him out. She still won't wear it in braids. At his most lenient, Silco believes it is part and parcel of her recovery. At his most paranoid, he wonders if the blue shroud portends not a rebirth but a drowning.

(Are you in there, Jinx?)

Impulsively, Silco smooths the bangs out of her eyes.

"You should wear it to the side again," he says. "See more of your face."

Jinx bites her lip.

"It's getting unruly. Will you let me braid it?"

She parries his attempts to finger-comb it. "Just leave it."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

He can see the edginess of guilt beneath her smooth face. Teenagers always have guilt, though. The scene is a byplay of a dozen others he's shared with Jinx. The time she'd accidentally set his whiskey warehouse on fire during a rigging test-run. The time she took his limousine out for a spin and it sailed off the motorway to explode like a fireball down the cliffside. The time she snuck into his office and caught him and Sevika in flagrante delicto, her hands reflexively whipping out Puff-Puff and lighting up the room with thunder because she'd thought Sevika was cracking his skull between her thighs.

Jarring as the moments were, they've since then taken on a rosy-hued humor.

Not here.

The guilt under Jinx's surface is like the grind of tectonic plates. A sense of the earth cracking beneath Silco's feet.

She whispers, "Will you—?"

"What?"

"Will you be back?" Her lashes dip sulkily. "Or is it all-nighters forevermore?"

"Jinx—"

"I know what you're gonna say. 'Work to be done. Multi-front challenges. Threats from within and without.' Blah-de-blah."

Exhaling, Silco taps off ash from his cigarette into the ashtray. "We've been over this. A city isn't a battlefield. There are more options than violence now. That also means more risks. Allegiances change with circumstance. So do—"

"Enemies. I know."

"I hope so." His tone gentles. "I know things seem hectic. But we have a chance to rebuild. To make Zaun stronger than ever. For all of us."

"Uh-huh."

Jinx slumps back in her chair. With a sticky fingertip, she traces patterns in her plate. Silco rifles through the morning newspaper—the Baron's Bugle, part of a publishing house he'd 'rescued' from financial collapse, then bought the rights to—and eyes her over the pages. Within him remains the sumpsnipe raised not to play with his food. He is balanced on the verge of a rebuke.

Then Jinx meets his eyes, and observes, "April already, huh?"

"Hm."

"Tomorrow it'll be Bloody Sundae."

Silco keeps a smooth façade.

Bloody Sunday.

In Zaun, it shapes the collective memory of an event scarcely spoken. A precursor to the Day of Ash in September, thus overshadowed by its scope of carnage. It marks the Enforcers' raid at Janna's Temple, over twelve years ago. The hellfire of shelling. The lives winking out like candle-flames. Eleven men, thirty-two women, twelve children—all reduced to carcasses.

Every year, April resurrects their specters. By September, they stir the rage of the survivors. Crime spikes; sickness runs rampant. Suicides, domestic violence, overdose, arson, murder. Sometimes, the streets run red.

Zaun's houses of worship are safe harbors on these black-letter dates. The Fissures have long spun themselves in a gossamer veil of mysticism. Where Piltover fancies itself the summit of scientific progress, bending even magic to rational maxim, the Undercity has always been locked in intimate embrace with the occult, and the faith that flows from it. The streets are steeped in lore and superstition; the alchemy of survival.

If a city believes in monsters, after all, then it also believes in miracles.

In champions.

On Bloody Sunday, Fissurefolk gravitate to the shrines and temples. Each faith holds different mourning traditions. The followers of the Veiled Lady abstain from drink and merriment. For the Kindred, a sacrifice is slaughtered and a cupful of blood left in offering. In the Celestial Shrine, candles are lit to signify the lives lost; their flames flicker through the day, and like the souls represented, ebb into smoke by night.

Through ritual, they soothe. Through rites, they offer succor. Through prayer, they douse the flames.

Janna's Temple is unique in its outreach. By daylight it shelters the city's bereaved. At night, it becomes a stewpot. Fissurefolk of all social strata gravitate to the courtyard, eager to lap up the broth from its cauldrons. There is dancing, drinking and storytelling. Afterward, the lonely bed down on rough thatched mats and sleep on the stone steps, safe in the glow from hundreds of multicolored lanterns.

Innocents in a womb of vice.

Most singular are the Temple's funds. They come, not from Topside, but the Undercity's own pockets. The miners and merchants. The workhouses and whorehouses. The chem-barons and cutthroats. Everyone pays their due. Janna is a beloved goddess throughout Runeterra: equal parts a protectress and benefactress. But for Zaun, she is the patron deity. Even the city's most spiritually compromised hold her in esteem. They give homage as if at gunpoint.

Buying back salvation—or a piece of their souls.

Spirituality, Silco thinks, is like ransom. The trick is to give the impression that the victim can get out alive. If they learn their fate is predetermined, they'll see no point in cooperating. Better to breadcrumb them with hope.

Hope is what makes everyone pay—and what sets the price.

On his part, Silco sets little store by spirituality. He'd grown up in a superstitious household. But his own nature is indifferent to all matters devotional. He treats the ceremony of grief like a business transaction: the cost of past loss weighed against future gain.

Every year, without fail, anonymous funds are donated to the Temple. They cover the expenses of the feast and keep the coffers brimming. The volunteers never question the identity of their benefactor. Nor does the Priestess condemn the coin as filthy lucre. If spirituality is like ransom, then shakier bargains may be struck in the afterlife.

Anything in between leaves the odor of bad blood clinging to Silco's brain.

Thank the Ten for Jinx. Once she came into Silco's life, April’s shadow became bearable. Why look backward when he could look forward? It was the flipside of fatherhood. From wondering what he'd be doing if Nandi had lived, to inventorying the loss as if it belonged to another man. The tangibility of the past was sucked by the present. With Jinx, Silco was never sure what anniversary to privilege. He'd take the day off following those black-letter dates, not to grieve, but to congratulate himself on what he'd found in her.

What they'd found in each other.

Jinx looks hopeful. "Will you stay in tomorrow?"

Hating himself, Silco is nonetheless compelled to answer honestly. "I can't."

Her smile falters. "What? Why?"

"You know why."

Zaun never sleeps. On Bloody Sunday, the city will seethe with insomniacs. Their first as a free nation, rather than a slave state—literal, physical, psychic. The Fissurefolk are still reeling from the fallout of one of the bloodiest conflicts in their history. They need a steady hand and a close eye.

Silco's Eye.

Jinx's expression falls into sulky enigma. She whispers, "You think—?"

"What?"

"You think it's my fault?"

"Your fault?"

"You used to say we were partners-in-crime. Once this thing of ours was real, we'd split the work between us. I'd handle the engineering. You'd deal with the politics. And we'd spend our nights doing whatever we wanted. Free people. In a free city."

"Jinx—"

"Except now you're barely here. Too much on your plate. Even your pearly whites can't cut it down to size." A bitter laugh, quickly snuffed. "That's because of me, right? Got nothin' to show for myself lately except a pile of junk. Nothin's good enough anymore. I'm not good enough. And you've got to pick up my slack."

Silco sets the newspaper aside. "That's not true, Jinx."

"Don't patronize me."

"I’m not." He lays a fingertip on the delicate knob of her wrist, where the pulse tics. "It's not your job to rebuild everything. You were never meant for that."

"What then?"

What, indeed?

He wants to say they're partners-in-crime no matter what. But he also knows that his absences aren't about indifference to her—far from it. She remains his spark of passion. So much that it's difficult to care enough for Zaun when he cares for her so much more.

A city isn't a battlefield.

Each day, Silco relearns the lesson. The pleasures of politics are so bloodless. Especially compared to what it took to claw to the zenith in Zaun's underworld. He almost misses the days of inventive tortures and colorful threats, each hour infused with the rousing venom of survival.

He misses Jinx.

Over six months, he's gone without her company. He feels off-balance without her around—lurking in the rafters while he works at his desk, tinkering with her tools while he spins his schemes. Gods, would it be so bad if she accompanied him on tomorrow’s official duties?

Dragging on his cigarette, Silco pictures it. A revolving door of dignitaries beneath the glitter of chandeliers. His wild child draped in furs and dripping in diamonds, her small hand tucked into his arm as he leads her from trumpeting theatre premier to softly-lit soiree. The arenas where the threats idle in the shadows; out of sight. Probably it would bore Jinx to tears—if she didn't blow everything up first.

The cigarette's cherry glows. Silco hides a smile behind his cupped palm.

Strange.

He still wants her there.

Jinx slits a glower at him. "Glad you think it's funny, Big Shot."

"What? No—"

Jinx jerks away, legs drawn up on the chair, her head plunked on her knees. Exhaling, Silco grinds out the cigarette. Vander liked to say that, even if the Kindred came knocking on Silco's door, his features would betray nothing. Yet with Jinx, it's the opposite. His surface fails to harden: everything leaks out in a heady stew of love, vexation, terror. Sometimes, he fears slipping into a fugue state and forgetting who he is completely.

Or remembering who he's supposed to be.

(Is that fatherhood?)

Silco comes up out of his chair. Jinx's hair falls forward in a blue landslide. Smoothing it away, he tries to reclaim her gaze. "Why don't you come along today?"

"Huh?"

"Keep me company at tonight's gala."

Jinx's lower lip protrudes sullenly. "Are you kidding? You want me to get all spiffied up like a carnival freak for 'em to gawk at?"

"You are far from a carnival freak."

A dull anger hives in the air around Jinx. "You want normal. I can't give you that."

"Normal?"

He'd laugh if he were capable of it. What is normal except a box to suffocate ingenuity inside of? Nothing in Silco's world has shaped itself to its parameters. Least of all his kinship with Jinx. As if there is anything normal about two half-deranged souls meeting in a mad blitz of bloodshed, and forging their bond in crashing flames.

Jinx's toes curl; her leg twitches in stymied anger. Silco sets a steadying palm on her foot. "Jinx…"

Her eyes gloss sightlessly. At the touch, she comes back with a jerk.

"What?"

Quietly, he says, "I'm on your side."

"My side?"

"Family."

The word sinks into Jinx like a stone. She stills.

"Family accept each other," Silco says. "Normal has nothing to do with it."

"Then why d'you want me to go?" Her voice is shaky, inexplicably close to tears. "You think that's all I'm good for now? Set dressing?"

"I didn't say that."

"But?"

"But nothing." His palm curves itself to the shape of her head. Jinx sniffles, face a stubborn knot. "I promised to give you time, didn't I? And whatever else you need. But you can't languish your days away like a prisoner, Jinx. You are the fire that breathed life into Zaun. The city must see you for who you are."

Sunlight dims over the skylight. Jinx's eyes reflect the altering colors. "And who am I?"

"The girl who freed us."

She bites her lip. She can't seem to decide whether Silco has simplified the issue to black and white—or if he is telling her what she needs to hear.

"It's just..." She shakes her head, a strand of hair slipping over her eye. Silco thumbs it aside. "Zaun doesn't need me anymore. Neither do you. I'd just make a big mess of everything. Don't gimme that look! I would! I know you want me gung-ho an' dragging you along on my next big idea. But everytime I reach inside, it's all just pbbbbbbt." She blows an eloquent raspberry. "I'm better off... away. Outta your way and everyone else's—"

"Jinx, that's not true—"

"Don't interrupt! This is hard enough as it is!" She drops to a whisper. "You've got your dream. Your shiny nation of Zaun. That means everything to you, right? So you can leave me alone. Let me be a ghost, Silco. Give me space, and I'll stay in mine. Out of sight, and out of my mind."

"Jinx..."

He's heard these rambles before. The scars of despondency had dug into Jinx's psyche long before the war. Long before Silco ever met her.

Yet she's never declared her redundancy quite so bluntly.

The claw strangles Silco's chest. His bones feel like they will crack. It is rage by any other name. Not at Jinx—but at Fate's conspiracy to reduce her to this state.

Except it wasn't solely the Fates at blame.

It was Piltover.

It was Vi.

In a single moment, she'd undone years of Silco's efforts to make Jinx strong. Reduced her to wreckage, and left her on the Bridge with the same callousness.

(She will pay for it, Jinx.)

(Pay and pay and pay.)

The skylight turns the green of algae-blooming water. Jinx stares at the slanting rays. So much sadness in her eyes, and it twists something in Silco and gives him no peace, even as a chill of inescapability passes through him.

Because if Vi must pay, then so must he. Pay for his failure to protect Jinx. Pay for his failure to love her. Love her the way a marvel like Jinx was made to be loved—full-throttle. Sometimes he thinks it's karmic punishment. Other times, a double-edged blessing. All those soft-brained girls, and the soft pastels of emotion they inspire. Yet Silco was given an anomaly for a child. A comet destined to melt a path through history.

She deserves her due. More than that. She deserves her truth. To deny it is to jinx her into a fate every bit as fatal as normalcy.

"Name, nature," he murmurs.

"Huh?"

His cool-fingered caress falters across her cheekbone. "We must talk, child."

"Talk?"

"I have to share some details. About the night on the Bridge." His larynx is raw with last ropes. "And everything afterwards."

The parley with Talis. His demand for Jinx—and Silco's refusal.

Maybe if she learns the truth, she'll understand war was an inevitability. Maybe she'll forgive herself.

Forgive him.

(After such knowledge, what forgiveness?)

"Jinx," he begins. "I—"

At the bay window, a skittering sound.

Silco and Jinx turn. An insect—a bottle-green dragonfly—flits to the sill. The wings clatter with a noise like pinheads on glass. As Silco watches, a shadow swoops in. A raven. In an eyeblink, it snaps up the insect between its beak. The dragonfly twitches paralytically. Then it disappears down the raven's gullet.

Jinx’s breath makes a tiny hitch.

Bzzzzz.

The intercom.

Cursing, Silco crosses over to hit the switch. "What?"

"Sir?" His secretary's voice crackles through the speaker. "The entourage is ready downstairs."

"Tell them—" Silco glances over to Jinx's seat. It is empty. "—Tell them to wait."

"Sir—"

He disconnects.

Jinx isn't in the kitchen. Her bedroom is likewise empty. But the miasma of her creative meltdown hurts Silco’s eyes. The floor is coated with glittery detritus: magnets, cogs, corkscrews. Half-finished inventions lay belly-up in the desk, their innards spilling. The rest of the surface is scattered with drawings. Idly, Silco leafs through a pile. A girl with shorn blue hair in a tiptoeing pirouette at the bottom of a lake. A huddled shape trapped in the suffocating dimensions of a box, pink tears pooling from the polar-whiteness of its eyes. A red wheelbarrow breaching the shadowy nadir of a pit, full of spiky silhouettes with sharp-knuckled hands outstretched in welcome.

Fingers clammy, Silco drops the drawings.

Hours from now, he'll reason that he could have spared himself a world of turmoil—if he'd asked Jinx to explain them. But they were the bleedings of his child's broken heart. He didn't dare prod at them.

Caution a byword for cowardice.

(We have that in common, eh, Vander?)

There is no answer. There never is anymore.

Restless, Silco prowls to the balcony. Late spring; the Fissures are usually steeped in snow. Not this year. A spate of unseasonable rainstorms has heated the air, warmth cooking off the bricks and cobblestones. Often they merge with the bubbling stew of airborne toxins into Gnashers—all freak lightning and acid rain. The power grid strains under the demanding urban sprawl. Certain zones endure blackouts. He's ordered the construction of a new electricity substation to supply the lower-reaches. But the wait is knuckle-chewingly slow.

Progress.

It never comes fast enough. Especially when the price is suffering.

(Now I pay my share, eh, Nandi?)

No answer from that corner, either. There hasn’t been one in years.

With a thumb and forefinger, Silco rubs his left temple. For a moment, the red seltzer of rage ebbs from his bones. In its place is a dull ache, not grief but exhaustion.

He could stand that way, unmoving, for many bells.

A ribbon of smoke tickles his nose. Silco turns. Jinx is in the shadows, still in her nightshirt, sitting on the parapet. Knees drawn up, her two little feet lined up together, a lit cigarette dangling between her fingers. She butts it out when she sees him rounding the corner.

"I was only testin' your lighter!"

"You damnwell were not."

Silco snatches the cigarette and his silver case from her hands. Jinx pouts.

Weak sunrays crest through dark-bellied clouds. The skyline remains incomplete: blown-apart gaps in some spots, exoskeletons of slow-motion revival in others. To the southside, Factorywood is a landscape of pipes and smokestacks belching flames. To the northside, the Boundary Markets are a fascinating net of glittering lights. The city is like a moth pinned to five points of a page, some pieces alive with color, others moldering.

Silco takes in the contrast, and lets the rage fizz back into his bones. A reminder of old costs and future rewards. Bloody Sunday. The Day of Ash. The mines and the rallies. Nandi and Vander. Piltover and Vi.

Jinx.

She sits like a statue. Blue hair overspills around her body. Something is nestled, furtively, in her lap. The raven from before. It is not quite dead. One wing twitches. The head spasms at an unnatural angle. A single black eye stares glassily up at Silco.

Memory bubbles up like an embolism: the war, and bullets, and bodies. So many bodies, spasming in death throes. Coming apart to the steady piss of blood and the inexorable slashes of his blade. Rotting into putrid slop on the cobblestones, the stink growing thicker than death.

And Jinx.

Firing Fishbones at the Bridge, blast after blast, splintering the hellscape into silence.

A rill of revulsion rides up Silco's spine. "What in hell, Jinx?"

"No! No no no—"

Jinx spreads her hands over the raven. Seizing her wrists in one palm, Silco snatches away the jittering bird with the other. Its heartbeat is erratic. Silco encircles the head in a thumb and forefinger. Twists like a noose, until the animal shudders into stillness. Then he pitches the little carcass over the balustrade.

Jinx stares after it. Her eyes go strangely vacant.

"Quick and clean," Silco snaps. “If you make a kill—do it right."

Jinx's lips compress. "I wasn't killing it."

"What, then?"

"I needed it for something, okay?"

"That's not the way to—"

"Stop yelling at me!"

Is he yelling? He isn't sure. The claw in his ribs is a full-bodied grind. The redness is a fire coiling up from his heels, packing him full of rage. The sky mimics his mood, scarlet and swollen and zippy with noxious gases. Before his eyes, a Gnasher helixes to life.

Jinx jams her thumb in her mouth again, teeth grinding the ragged nail. Silco yanks it from her mouth. Taking her wrist, he drags her off the balustrade.

"Get inside."

"No."

“There’s a Gnasher coming.”

“No—"

Jinx lets off a strangled shriek when he scoops an arm under her knees. In three strides, he's hefted her towards the parlor. Jinx scrabbles at the doorframe. The wood splinters. Her nails drag loose.

Hauling her inside, Silco kicks the door shut.

A heartbeat later, the Gnasher spills acid rain. Sizzling droplets hit the balcony. A milky glaze of toxins fogs up the glass.

Outdoors, the city alarm sounds off. The brand-new turrets begin flashing red and instructing citizens, in a loud mechanical voice, to get indoors.

Well, Silco thinks grimly, at least the warning systems work.

Jinx is sitting on the carpet, facing away from him. She rocks forward until her skull touches her doubled-up knees. Her hair spills everywhere. Silco doesn't know if she's crying; her body is deathly still. Then he notices that her pinkie finger is oozing blood. She must have torn it loose on the doorframe.

At the sight, the hot-red rage sluices away, draining Silco of everything but remorse.

Fuck.

"Jinx—I'm sorry."

Snatching up a handful of tissues, he kneels. It only takes a few wipes before the blood stops. Her nail-bed is discolored but sealing up.

Enfolding her little hand in both his own, Silco kisses it. Jinx dares a peek over her knees. Her face is blotchy-pink, eyelashes glistening. Shame stings like acid rain. He should have been careful. But that's the nature of rage, isn't it? It puts everything else in a blind spot.

Like madness.

Like love.

Softer, Silco repeats, "I'm sorry."

Jinx bites her lip. "You are mad at me."

"No—"

"You're not mad because I killed the bird. You're mad 'cause I'm not Jinx anymore. The Jinx you want."

"Sssh. I'm angry at myself." Gently, he coaxes her to her feet. "I want to give you everything you need. Yet all I can do is rage." His voice holds a blistered rawness. "It's my fault. I keep... jinxing things."

Pinkish tears streak down Jinx's cheeks. Her lip trembles. "Name, nature, huh?"

Silco sweeps her in, encompassing her into his arms. Jinx looks startled. But she doesn't resist the embrace. She curls against him with an uncommon tenderness, tucking her head under his chin. It doesn't feel like a reconnection. More an indulgent leave-taking.

Again, the intercom buzzes.

"You should get moving," she whispers. "Your day's started."

"The day starts when I say it starts."

"And when does it end?"

"Twelve."

"Twelve?"

"Just before your bedtime. We'll talk then. All right?"

"Talk?"

"About everything. Before and after. And I'll schedule time off on Bloody Sunday. Same as before. We'll stay in bed late and read books and have eel pie. As much as you want. Whatever you want. Okay?"

Jinx nuzzles against Silco's chest. "Your heart's going wonky again."

"Ssh. Just sit tight for today. Tomorrow we'll start over. I promise."

A flash across her features, melancholy and inexplicable. The neon tints in her eyes dim to shadow. But she stays nestled close. Her hair tickles his jaw, the scent both sweet and grubby. Candied cherry and a trace of dust. Best smell in the world. Right up there with crisp banknotes, fresh-cut cigars and spindling factory smoke. The smell of progress made tangible.

The smell of home.

Jinx whispers, "Any chance of a goodbye kiss?"

Goodbye?

A strange way to phrase it. Then she meets his eyes, and Silco melts. Her forehead feels very warm; the cool brush of his lips makes her shiver. Her arms squeeze around him—painfully tight—before she goes on tiptoe and gives him an off-center peck at the bridge of his nose.

"Bye, Silly." Her voice is faraway. "Watch yourself."

"Always, child."

Jinx steps back to stare out into the rain-glazed cityscape. Bit by bit, the Gnasher diffuses. Sunlight crests in pale fingerlings. The fading shadows cling to Jinx’s silhouette, turning her body into a black mass against the sunrays.

A premonition in jittering freeze frame.

"Sir."

Sevika waits downstairs by the elevator, flanked by an entourage of blackguards.

The natural solidity of her body is set off by her outfit; heavy-duty boots, slim cut trousers, a dark red halter top. The tips of her bare shoulders gleam: coppery skin and real burnished copper. Her left arm has been refurbished to a sleeker design. Deluxe beryllium. Resistant to corrosion and packs twice the punch.

A springtime bonus.

Like any good businessman, Silco keeps his assets in impeccable condition.

Except today, a heaviness grits Sevika's features. Her shawl in slung over her forearm like a safety blanket. Silco doesn't ask why. Bloody Sunday. Scars hold grudges; so do memories. In this they are alike. But mourning a brotherhood soured by betrayal is different from a sister stolen before her time.

He doesn't ask. Sevika doesn't offer. They both prefer masking their troubles with work.

"Did the Gnasher leave any casualties?" Silco asks.

She shakes her head. "Just a spike in the bad air quality. We've started the filtration turbines at the upper-zones."

"Good. And today's agenda?"

Sevika consults her planner. "We've got a ride-along scheduled with the crew. The meeting with Crimson is at seven-thirty. Then the al fresco at Chross' estate with the investors at nine. By eleven, we'll lay out the strategy for handling the Firelights in the war-room. At twelve, the executive planning committee will assemble at Entresol. Later, you're free to make a solo trip to the Doctor's lab. After lunch, you're scheduled to have drinks with the communications firm from Demacia."

"Reschedule that for tomorrow."

"Any reason?"

"I've planned an address in memorial of Bloody Sunday."

Sevika's lips compress. "Going to visit the Temple?"

"Only in spirit."

"Hey—think of the optics. Man of the faith, and all."

"I'd burst into flame if I set foot inside."

He doesn't often venture to the Temple of Janna. Doesn't avoid it, exactly—to avoid a thing is to invite its exposure. But it reminds him of death, not life. The cold, arbitrary grip of death. It came for Nandi on Bloody Sunday. Crueler and more unfair than it had a right to be.

But the sum total of Silco's life has taught him much of cruelty—and little of fairness.

"I'll speak during the plenary session," he says. "Make sure the press have full access."

"Something to bring the city together?"

The thinning of Silco's lips is hardly a smile. But it lightens the grim mood struck. "And rouse the Cabinet from sleep."

Sevika chuckles. She enjoys when Silco plays one-man pendulum with the politicians. "Whatever keeps the fuckers on their toes, huh?"

"One should never pass up the opportunity for fun."

"Bad for the heart."

They fall into step, not quite shoulder-to-shoulder. Silco's polished shoes make no sound on the carpet. Sevika's boots are a heavy tread in his wake.

"What's on the itinerary afterward?" he asks.

"Tea with Margot and Renata to discuss their business venture—and give ‘em a little slap on the wrist for that stunt with your boy. Then there's a gala at the Promenade. You're meeting with Bandle City's envoy. I had the secretary put in some extra bells to make sure the evening accommodates your interests."

"Good," Silco says. "I want everything wrapped up by nine-thirty. With some leeway for contingencies."

This gets Sevika's frowning attention. "You expecting issues?"

Silco thinks of Jinx's silhouette on the balcony. Before taking the elevator, he'd imparted a succinct order to the blackguards: Watch her like hawks.

Jinx's warning overlaps his own: Watch yourself.

Unease ferments under his skin. He hadn't felt right leaving her alone in the suite. Doing so took an act of will. The turmoil shows no trace on his surface. Yet it rearranges his entire mood. His aura runs so black it is like every nightmare folded together.

Fortunate—because he has work to do. And no patience for interference.

He says: "Stay vigilant."

Sevika nods. But traces of her frown remain.

In the gleaming marble lobby, the security team is waiting to escort Silco to the limo. They snap off salutes; he nods but otherwise pays them scant attention. Their job isn't to entertain. Only to protect. Ran, Dustin and Lock stand ready by the entrance. At Silco's signal, they fan out, Ran and Dustin flanking, Lock pulling up the rear. They lead him through the revolving door, a chorus line of cutthroats cued by silent music.

The music is Zaun: a soundtrack of swarming industry. The smoky early-morning clamors with a seething stew of automobiles and pedestrians. Vertiginous stacks of architecture loom, a potpourri of neoclassical, art nouveau, and art deco girded by construction cranes. Desultory mizzle falls from the fading Gnasher. The air is green-gray with smog.

Yet the vista is a narcotic for Silco. A reminder that against all odds his city stands strong.

He says, "Ride-along."

In his network, it means: Time for meeting.

Just as Zaun is steeped in aphorisms, its underworld is rife with jargon. Each faction has its own lingua franca. For an ambush, the Hush Company uses words like "dangle" or "chokehold"; the Sledgerunners use terms like "snatch" or "smash and grab;" the Firelights employ phrases like "firework" and "boomerang."

Some slang predates Piltover's inception, passed down over generations of immigrants who fled their homelands to find a better life in the budding port city.

Among the criminal fraternity, Silco's network is distinct for its layered lexicon. From sign language to code words, each turn-of-phrase overlaps another, creating multiple levels of secrecy within the same organization. Even among Silco's most trusted lieutenants, few understand the whole picture.

But a handful of jargon is known from top to bottom. Ride-along—a meeting. Happy Hunting—prepare for an attack. Formals versus Casuals—armed to kill versus armed to defend. Bite the bullet—go hard. Code Red—all hands on deck. Code Black—no survivors. Code Blue—a Jinxian crisis.

Code Blue is the most dreaded.

The limo pulls a sleek U-turn across the boulevard. The miles peel into gray-noise. Inside, familiar bodies fence Silco from all sides. Lock plays wheelman, three-hundred pounds of tattooed muscle capable of cold-clocking a tank. Dustin is folded into the seat beside him, a twitchy-eyed lookout. Silco sits hugged loosely between Sevika's solid haunches and Ran's coiled limbs: shield and whip.

A loyal coterie is not the only ingredient for a kingpin's success. But it is a primary ingredient. During ride-alongs, Silco touches base with his own. They begin with professional debriefings and end with private disclosures. It allows Silco to delegate their varying talents for day-to-day minutiae, and use their varying drives to get the results his operation needs.

He focuses on Lock first. "What news on our Noxian warmason?"

Lock replies, "On the move, sir."

"And the Maven?"

"Sticking to him like white on rice. Just as you ordered. She's got the numbers of his strike team."

"How many?"

"A half-dozen. Give or take. They're laying low at Zaun's borders for now. Prowling Rotten Row for recruits."

Intrigued, Silco crooks a brow. "Bold play."

"Big balls on 'em for sure. Word on the wharves is they're hanging in the fighting-pits in the Rumbler's Den. Staging matches every fortnight—three a row. They approach the winners with coins, and an offer to join their gang. If the fighters refuse, the warmasons get... persuasive. So far, they've snagged a dozen men and women."

"Unfortunate."

"Yeah?"

"They'll be looking for new employers soon."

Lock bares teeth in a metal-studded gleam. "Hell, I ain't ever had trouble finding work."

True enough. Lock is the longest-serving crewman after Sevika. A hulking Shuriman bastard breastfed on gang warfare, he's been in and out of incarceration since fourteen. With awesome physical dimensions and a brutal streak, he quashes trouble in its tracks with a single blow.

But his real talent lies in reconnaissance. The literal 'lock' to Zaun's inner recesses, he knows everyone worth knowing—and most who are barely rumored. His tattoos go beyond aesthetics. They map Zaun's underground, marking hideouts and safe houses across the city.

Ran's arrow-shaped tongue touches their top-lip. "What about that Talis? His secretary keeps sending missives."

"They want an official pronouncement on the blackguard Violet killed."

"And our response is...?"

With a finger, Silco taps the scarred corner of his mouth. Deniable.

Ran grins. "Aye, aye, Bossman."

Ran's a clever cat. Silco can always count on them to catch the subtext. Unsurprising, given they didn't follow the stereotypical arc of criminality: petty theft to robbery to murder. Ran did bookwork for a heroin cartel. But a vicious anti-social streak cut the career short. They'd once knived a handsy runner to death, paying the price within an inch of their life when the cartel caught wind.

Silco uses Ran for greasing the wheels of operations. They're fiendishly observant: adept at blending into urban environments and a dab hand at fighting dirty. They also have a gift for languages. As a native Ionian, they speak Vastayan, Va-Nox and their own mother tongue with equal fluency. That makes them indispensable where tradecraft intersects with diplomacy.

"Stay in touch with our agents in the coming weeks," he says. "Make sure they have Vi under watch. She’ll spend three months stewing, but that’s all to the good. We want her pent-up for her first job."

"Which is?"

"A performance at the Rumbler's Den. Bare knuckles. Broken bones." He offers a chilly smile. "Right up her alley."

"Shit—I could do that," Dustin guffaws.

The rest of the crew trade glances. Their irritation needs no consensus. Dustin has a knack for testing the patience of everyone except Silco. A hyperactive troublemaker, Undercity-born and bred, he lacks Ran's finesse or Lock's fortitude. But in a fray, he is pure unhinged instinct. It's half his charm. The other half is his talent with a blade.

In Zaun, that counts for much.

His family were small-time merchants with a comfortable little flat near Nosh Avenue. The hellish constancy of Enforcer raids drove their business to ruin. Dustin's mother took to the bottle and his father to the belt. By fifteen, the boy ran away. He was living under a bridge when Silco met him, by which time he'd graduated from sump-rat to junkie, his young body poisoned with a cocktail of heroin and booze.

Silco offered him a place to sleep and a chance to polish his knife skills. In a year, Dustin was clean. In two, he was a proficient killer. By three, he'd joined Silco's crew full-time.

Nowadays, Silco wields him as a wildcard to keep enemies on edge. It helps that Dustin is ready to do whatever it takes to prove himself worthy to Silco. The fanaticism is useful, even if the results aren't always pretty.

"I'm sure," Silco says, in the modulated tone used for sick dogs. "But: no."

"Aw—c'mon, Mister S!"

"I've something else to discuss with you."

"Yeah?"

"A dead rabbit."

The tips of Dustin's ears redden.

Ran snickers behind a metal-tipped hand. Lock's jowls ripple. Sevika keeps her eyes, gunbarrel-dark, on the back of Dustin's head. As with everything else, Silco prefers a steady hand on his tiller. That goes double for his crew's extracurricular fuck-ups. It allows him to catch a problem before it leads to others—especially when conditions refuse to correct themselves.

A creeping addiction. An unpaid debt. A troublesome relative.

Last month, it was Lock's runaway nephew. Foolish boy. He'd broken the jaw of a chem-baroness' lover, then stowed away on a Bilgewater vessel to flee the gang-related crossfire. Silco's network successfully retrieved him. A well-worded warning to the chem-baroness quelled the drama.

Two months previous, it was Ran's older brother. A good boy, but the out of control on prescription pills following the horrors of the war. He'd overdosed on an insane amount—so many the excess ironically saved his life, making him so violently ill that Ran woke up at night and found him sprawled in the hallway. Afterward, Ran went to Silco for help. He pulled a few strings; a private rehab program with a competent medick. So far, the boy is staying clean.

This month's issue is minor. Dustin's latest squeeze is up the spout. Again. This has happened five times already: a girl gets knocked up, Dustin breaks it off, but can't help crawling back for one last tumble. This one is trickier. Not a whore, but a shipping mogul's daughter. The paternal ire threatened to spill into a blood feud.

Silco's intervention has cooled the risk of a blow-up. He's also placed a call to a midwife who specializes in bidding unplanned pregnancies adieu. Afterward, they'll negotiate terms for the mogul's silence.

Dustin's hangdog eyes meet Silco's in the rearview mirror. "Sorry, Mister S."

"Accidents happen."

"I'll wear a suit to the party next time."

"Do."

"Swear to Janna." Dustin zips and unzips his jacket in a fit of jitters. "Been one bad call after another since Gran's kicked it."

Silco withdraws his silver cigar case. "Nothing hurts like losing family."

"Yes, sir."

"Just remember one bad call is not the same as a half-dozen."

"Yes, sir."

"If this happens again, it will be the last bad call I tolerate."

Silco's tone is mild. The threat is not. Carelessness has consequences, no matter how small. The boy will either learn—or get taught. Be a shame if the rest of the crew had to clean up that mess.

A muscle jumps in Dustin's jaw. "Yessir."

Silence fills the limo. The rest of crew stay on stand-by. Younger, they'd jockeyed for his attention. Now they're trained to wait for Silco's cue.

It is not blind obedience. Silco prefers independent thinkers to drones. He hand-picks them personally, and always pays them well above market rates. They never go hungry, but they don't grow wings either. They are beholden to him for everything: money, opportunity, protection.

In exchange, they must demonstrate their fealty. If there is a traitor among them, Silco can cut off their privileges in double-time. He knows they can't leave because they have no alternate prospects. He also knows that soon they'll be desperate enough that they'll be all over him for a second shot. The one who doesn't show desperation—who is being fed elsewhere—is typically the turncoat.

A cruel system? Perhaps. But the higher the stakes, the sharper the blade.

Silco keeps his own buried gut-deep. All he needs do is twist.

Yet, as the years pass, he's found little cause to twist. His crew remain loyal. And why shouldn't they? Their commitment to Zaun is powered by the totality of Silco's own conviction. Like the old Shuriman myth of Odysseus: the voyager who vowed to lead his men through the sharp rocks of fate.

Follow me. I will guide you home.

And he has.

Now, at south of forty-three years old, he's become a strange father figure to them. It would be laughable to say they are family. But his approval is hugely significant. Zaun gives them an axis; he gives them guidance. In embodying the release from oppression, he's gained leeway to take them further still.

It takes courage to defy one's past, even if it is just a matter of degree. Most never escape.

"Zaun is free," he says, "And you've a right to its freedoms. But we are in the limelight now. Your actions reflect upon more than just a few."

"Come-up's easier than staying up," Lock grunts.

"True. Don't fall prisoner to old methods. Learn to meet different people at their level."

"Play by their rules, live by ours," Ran purrs.

"That's right. Because the higher you climb, the more distractions and deadweights will try dragging you down."

Dustin mumbles, "So no more bunnies, Mister S?"

"Fuck all the bunnies you want. But—" Silco crooks a finger in the air "—don't fuck up the house."

His tone, less monster than mentor, ekes out chuckles. A side to him the crew rarely see—but appreciate all the same.

A reminder that he grew up on the same streets as them.

Lock grunts, "You can rely us in, sir."

Ran's barbell glints between a sly smile. "Always."

Dustin nods vigorously. "Yep! No question!"

"Then act like it," Sevika snaps, "The sweet life and the smart life ain't mutually exclusive."

The crew nod in unison.

Leave it to Sevika to fire a succinct headshot. She navigates her role the same way. No games—just straight-shooting fact. Silco seldom has to order her to do anything; she is vitally proactive, focused on safeguarding the mission.

Out of everyone in the crew, she's proven Silco's staunchest asset. His oldest too: neither orphan nor street rat; the only one whose loyalty is not contingent upon Silco's favor.

Which is to say: hers is unconditional. It belongs to Zaun.

Her instincts may not always tally with Silco’s own. But in public, he relies on her judgment implicitly, because she's not afraid to challenge him in private. Then again, what alliance isn't tested by conflict? Even Odysseus sought Athena's counsel.

Silco balances a cigar between his teeth. Before he can whistle jack, Ran snaps open a lighter. The cherry glows; Silco tips his head and expels a mouthful of smoke. Housekeeping is done. So is business. All in a thirty-minute span. It's why he prefers ride-alongs to the chem-barons' assemblies. The agenda is laid out explicitly. Everyone knows why they're in attendance. A resolution is reached in double-time.

No fuss, no muss, as the Undercity saying goes.

A pity politics is less clean-cut.

Zaun zips past, a blurred film reel. The Boundary Markets: all colorfully pitched tents and refined exotica. The Pump Station, an imposing relic recently refurbished with gleaming high-tech vents. The consular zone, buffered behind blast barriers, its diplomats housed in the neighboring Hotel Muse; the Promenade, the elegant stage-set for the chem-barons’ stylish gallery openings, swanky fashion shows and five-star galas.

But Zaun's true commercial hub lays at the horizon, a geometric tangle of cranes and shipyards. Day and night, vessels dock at the Riverside Harbor: Bilgewater ships, fantastic nautical giants adorned with mastheads of kraken and mermaids; Ionian trading barges, festooned with mirrored sails and jangling bells like a dancer's skirt; Noxian gunships, great dragonlike beasts equipped with cannons and yet silent as ghosts. They bear riches from across Runeterra: exotic spices, rare metals, priceless gems.

Anything that can be sold on the open market.

Unlike Piltover, Zaun is free trade zone. Its only rules are supply and demand. Every deal is negotiable, and nothing is sacred. Even gods play dice here. For outlaws and up-and-coming trading houses, the region is an attractive alternative to Piltover's sky-high tariffs and mazelike bureaucracy.

For Silco, the potential alliances serve as long-term footholds. Last month, he'd passed an investment package in the Cabinet that included a 2000-mile-long economic corridor—nautical—spanning the shared sea that links the port of Bilgewater Bay with Tereshni in Southern Shurima. A joint battalion of Ionian, Bilgewater and Shuriman ships will protect the corridor. Any Topside vessels breaching its bounds will be taxed triple, or have their cargo seized.

Silco likes to think of it as a politer form of extortion.

He's also sanctioned twelve new mining projects in the Fissures. If the port is Zaun's mouth, the seams are its guts. Both must serve their purpose. There are vast deposits of iron, gold and uranium in Zaun's depths. These can be used for trade deals, armoring fleets against pirate raids or even building warships.

Most importantly, they can improve the infrastructure within the city itself.

The quality of life in the Sumps remains atrociously primitive. They are still lacking in basic amenities like reliable electrical grids and water treatment plants. Half the neighborhoods remain reliant on generators; the air quality is worsened by the Gray seeping from the waterways. The dilapidated pipes for gas have been patched up so many times it's hard to tell where one ends and another begins. Leaks and fire hazards are a dismal norm.

The chem-barons don't give a toss. They own most of the neighborhoods and exert godlike influence over the residents. In Vander's heyday, they'd cut deals with the Wardens, allowing them to pocket tax revenue while quashing revolt. When Silco took control as the de facto kingpin, he'd kept these slumlords close as crucial but perfidious allies. They needed his connections to fill their coffers; he needed their territories as a staging ground for Shimmer operations.

Now Zaun is free. The Wardens are defunct. And Silco’s symbiotic bond has hit its endgame.

The first step is wresting back territory—and transforming the swamp into terra firma. Silco has introduced a plan to upgrade the entire system, replacing old piping and installing filtration systems throughout the Sumps. It's garnered huge public support. But the chem-barons have vowed to oppose him. Some—for example, Crimson—have brokered deals with the local gangs to sabotage Silco's efforts.

Likewise, they've been strident in their disapproval of guild laws passed in the Cabinet, to protect the spectrum of local labor groups, from miners to dock workers to prostitutes. For decades, Topside has treated Fissurefolk with a neo-colonial contempt. Their dignity has been trampled underfoot, their bodies abused, their homes broken.

The city's psyche is all bruises.

Restoring balance means reclaiming their humanity. Fair wages and sanitary working conditions mean fewer corpses floating in the river. Richer food and sturdier homes mean healthier lives. Safer streets and better schools mean brighter futures.

Better lives, equals better profits.

Zaunites deserves a fair shake—and a fresh beginning.

To the chem-barons, this is anathema. They've reaped the rewards of Zaun's labor. Now Silco expects them to pay for its liberation, and that rankles the status quo. Some—for example, Margot—have already begun resorting to their usual tactics: blackmail, bribery, what have you.

Taking a mouthful of smoke, Silco exhales.

If revolution is like love, the progress is proof of its power.

One of the key elements of power is respecting its cost. The chem-barons have no fucking clue. They see power as an end in itself rather than a means to an end. They hoard it for their own selfish gains. Miserliness on the one hand; foolishness on the other.

Power is made to flow. To spread itself across the nation, into the hands of ordinary Zaunites.

Like magic. Like—

“Jinx,” Sevika says.

Silco rouses. “Hm?”

“Jinx.” Sevika points. “Over there.”

Silco stares out the opera window. A fine layer of smog blankets the sky. Behind it, the sun is a dim disc of brimstone. Its muted rays illuminate a crumbling jut of masonry equidistant between Entresol and Sumpside. Across its surface, someone has graffitied a figure twenty feet tall—fluid and loose-limbed.

Jinx, her braids flying like twin banners. She is balanced on a missile with arms spread wide. Her face is twisted into a grin, teeth bared with wicked sharpness. Surrounding her, in stark unshaded lines, are flames engulfing the silhouette of the Bridge.

Written below is the slogan: VISIT ZAUN BEFORE ZAUN VISITS YOU.

A memorial to a girl who freed a city

Sighing, Sevika says, "I'll order the blackguards to paint the wall over."

"Leave it."

"What?"

Silco continues to stare at the graffiti. His expression holds a flat absence.

"Let it stay," he says.

The crew don’t breathe a word.

At the Promenade, the sunlight sparks off the soot-filmed spindles of skyscrapers. The umbilici of filtration pipes perfume their rarefied interiors. Silco's mood spikes into blackness again when he enters Crimson's private apartments. The very air feels coppery on his taste-buds, like fresh blood.

Like fear.

Crimson, in his hairnet and silk pajamas, oozes fear by the bucketload. He'd been caught double-dipping into Zaun's coffers for the Sump renovations. His partner-in-crime, an oil magnate from Ionia, got tangled up in Silco's network, a spider-web who's each shiver alerts him to invaders on their way to morphing into prey. Last night, Sevika had dispatched blackguards to pay the Ionian a visit. They'd blown his brains out. Diced up the rest. Silco received his tongue and eyes in a ribbon-wrapped package.

Proof of death—and disloyalty.

At the sight of the organs, Crimson's face curdles. He vomits last night's gourmet dinner on his pajamas. The rest of the meeting is conducted with him slumped on the sofa. Trousers soaked with puke.

Fortunately, it is the only bodily fluid spilled. Where possible, Silco prefers bloodless compromises. A few residential blocks changing hands. A portfolio of real estate seized. A stack of bank statements passing ownership over the surface of a lovely mahogany desk.

Afterward, Silco suggests Crimson take a break from business. Crimson, too terrified to speak, nods.

In the limo, Dustin mumbles, "Why not just off him, Mister S?"

"Because Crimson is a particular favorite," Silco says patiently.

Lock spits a stream of tobacco juice out the window. "Makes him a great scapegoat."

True enough.

If plans go awry in the future, it's better to have a member of one's close coterie take the fall. The public will be less inclined to suspect foul-play, since nobody willingly sacrifices a friend. In the meantime, Silco can keep a close eye on Crimson's future antics.

Friends close; enemies closer.

(And family closest of all, eh, Vander?)

Chross' estate is a stone's throw away. The architecture of the zone is an ornate proliferation of stained glass and flamboyant statuary—under fifteen layers of filth. Yet in all respects, it mirrors the aristo's manors in Piltover: a gravel courtyard, polished parquets, marble portico.

Chross, in his wheelchair, greets Silco personally. Unlike Crimson, the pompous ass enjoys having visitors. It makes him feel important.

The al fresco passes without incident. The brocaded decadence of the parlor is filled with well-shod bon ton eager for a taste of the foreign trade deals. They come from all corners: Ionia, Shurima, Noxus, Demacia. Like a pawnbroker, Chross peddles pieces of paper, promising prosperity in return for a small slice of their wealth. Zaun's future hinges of substantial cash flow. Each party raises enough money for the reserves to survive the immediate future.

A fresh start means there is always going to be a tomorrow.

During brunch, Chross—the old prankster—sits Silco beside fashionable matrons and their eligible daughters. One by one, Chross makes a show of asking Silco about his private life, and the privations that go hand-in-hand with his seat of privilege. A farce worthy of the Demacian Bard. Silco plays his own part impeccably; half the game is being a good sport.

During a lull, he leans towards Chross and whispers, "Digging an early grave?"

They're old allies; Chross can take a joke. Even if it's only half-playful.

Chross offers a yellowing crescent of a grin. "Come now, Silco. One can do worse than choosing from such colorfully-arrayed dolls."

"Shall I take them home to Jinx?"

"Jinx is young and has her whole life ahead for dollies," Chross chides. "You, on the other hand, must choose one on the shelf. It will be a political statement. A symbol of inner stability. Our leader can't have a reputation as a hot-footer."

Silco circles a fingertip across the rim of his teacup. Pomegranate tea. An offshoot of a successful Ionian trade deal.

"I'll survive."

"Take it from a shriveled old relic. Many a gentleman survives the gilded halls, only to be gutted in the ladies' boudoirs."

"I do enjoy a good gutting."

"Don't tempt fate, my boy."

"Nor should you." Silco smiles, mouth a slash of serrated ivory. "Otherwise, I might propose a union." At the look of bemusement on Chross' face, he unhurriedly corrects, "Oh no, dear friend. I don't mean between old vipers like us. I mean with one of your charming daughters."

Chross laughs—a horrid faux-cheerful whinny. "Would you? Delightful!"

Pecking a sip from the edge of his teacup, Silco kisses the red droplets with his teeth. "No less delightful than they. Candidly, it's hard to choose. Marlene is so fiery. But I'd burn out for her in no time. Bianca is sweet, but a romantic. She'd end up disillusioned at best, heartbroken at worst. The best would be your eldest. Esmée. She's the most patient. That's what Zaun needs."

Is that a glint of dread in Chross' rheumy eyes? "She's fond of you, too."

"Of course. We share a common perspective."

"That you are an inveterate monster."

"Precisely."

They trade practiced smiles. The subject is dropped, as it always is.

Unless Chross wants to resume digging that early grave.

In the war-room, graves are the topic du jour. Terror razors the air. It shreds Petrock and his generals to raw meat. The Firelights are proving a stubborn nuisance. True to their namesake, they baffle the blackguards, flitting through gaps in their security. A majority have gone underground, scattering into the tunnels of Oshra Va' Zaun. If they aren't rooted out, Silco will lose footing in the southern recesses of the city.

He cannot allow that.

His rage enters like the whisper of a thunderstorm. The generals barely notice it coalesce—until pure blackness eats the air so they can no longer breathe. No civility here. Silco's voice echoes through the chamber, never a raised decibel and yet the walls vibrate to its timbre.

"This situation," he says, "cannot continue."

Drips of sweat track down Petrock's brow. "Agreed, but—"

"It's time to rethink your strategy. Zaun can't waste soldiers on wild goose chases. It is wearing down morale. If you don't end this nonsense, we can't rebuild the infrastructure in southside."

"With respect, Silco, if we knuckle down—"

"Knuckling down won't bolster the defenses. You've had six months for that. The Firelights show no signs of flagging. We are fighting a guerilla army. Secrecy, surprise and shadows are their weapons. The solution is to adopt the same tactics. I want shadowrunners ready by next month. Train them to meet the enemy on their own turf."

Petrock rubs at his bristling beard. "Training?"

"Patrolling tactics of rear and flank zones. Careful attention to intelligence work. Establishing a base of public support." Silco's jaw hardens. "Some Zaunites are sympathetic to the Firelights. Once we erase these sympathies, they will cease to flourish. I've already spoken with Chross on the matter. The media will begin undermining the Firelights by degrees. In a few months, there will be an 'attack' in Zaun's public square. No casualties—but enough to spread panic. As support for the Firelights dwindles, they will be forced to yield territory. Your blackguards must smoke them out."

Petrock rubs his beard, harder and harder as his thoughts work into a brushfire. "I'm a militarist, Silco. You know my thoughts on politics sidetracking warfare—"

"Without decisive military action, we won't achieve our political goals." Silco's eyes are scouring of bright and dark. "And without a victory over the Firelights, your usefulness isn't worth much either." He pauses. "Do we understand each other?"

Fresh sweat breaks out on Petrock's forehead. He nods.

"Good." Silco smooths his hair, bloodlust recontained in languid lines. "I expect weekly reports. In the meantime, Sevika will have full authority over the war room."

Petrock isn't given a chance to protest.

From her spot by the wall, Sevika steps forward. Brightleaf-scented smoke wafts after her. She marches by the generals, a walk of matter-of-fact authority. Turning, she regards the table and its mapwork.

Hers now—the closure of a transaction writ in blood.

"Guerilla warfare," she says, "is revolutionary by nature. Gentlemen—let's draw up plans for counterrevolutionary strategy."

At the civil office, ashy mid-afternoon sunlight falls in hot granules through the glazed floor-to-ceiling glass. The atmosphere is redolent of the antiseptic dullness of administration.

The crew stay by the limo; Ran perched on the hood, feline eyes inventorying their surroundings, while Lock smokes an old-fashioned Shuriman medwakh pipe and Dustin tunes the radio to a new station that plays heavy-metal, just loud enough that it seeps through the ambient soundtrack of the city.

Indoors, Silco and the committee discuss the national agenda. Zaun's freedom has not erased Topside's legacy: of political oppression and economic stagnation, of sclerotic institutions unable to meet the locals needs, of legal codes unable to adapt to the rapid industrial age, of rigid governance that is belied by its own shoddy execution.

For years, there has been strident call for reform at every fundamental level of the Undercity: the healthcare system, the schools, the architecture, the bloody air.

Everything is outmoded, defunct, unlivable. Fissurefolk have hung on by their fingernails.

Now, Silco gathers Zaun's representatives for education, healthcare, economy, security and justice. He listens to them carefully; they listen in turn. In addition to the nautical economic corridor, the mining projects, the guild laws, the sewerage overhaul, there are memos by the dozen, distilled into four overarching points of focus.

First, the city's ramshackle architecture requires urgent repair. He's unveiled a package to renovate the historic districts and convert certain zones into mixed use housing. There are deadlines for the completion of ten water treatment plants. An expanded power grid. A citywide speaking telegraph system. The projects, backed by a coalition of business leaders and civic activists, are making literal inroads.

Second, he wants to revitalize the arts. The Undercity has always been a scintillating hub of subversion. Now it will metamorphose beyond an aesthetic playground into a mecca for the cultural elite. The Cabinet's budget includes funds to build theaters, concert venues and art galleries. New recreational facilities—including cultivair’s hothouses, underground ice rinks, steam baths and open-air bazaars—will flourish throughout the city. It will stoke tourists with a taste for the decadent, luring foreign investors to the city's coffers.

Third, the city's educational facilities require mass overhaul. The current structure, a hand-me-down from Piltover, was antiquated even in Silco's boyhood. Now the curriculum is obsolete, the faculty unqualified, the buildings crumbling. The school boards are a morass of Topside cronyism. Silco has twisted arms to introduce a comprehensive program of modernization. It includes the remodeling of all primary and secondary schools. A review of curricula. New teaching staff. Upgraded facilities. And compulsory attendance for all sumpsnipes under fifteen.

Fourth, Zaun's healthcare system is in shambles. Meatball medicine, imported from the distant past, is the norm. Doctors are nicknamed 'Sawbones' for their talent to harm more than heal. Hospitals are scarce, and those that exist cater mostly to the wealthy. Clinics lack basic equipment, cleanliness and supplies. Shimmer is increasingly used as a cure-all to anything and everything.

A radical restructuring of the health care industry is required. Zaun has already forgotten more about body-modification than Piltover ever knew. The black clinics are renowned for their expertise in cosmetic surgery, reconstruction and organ transplants. It's time to apply that same ingenuity to their medical system. Shimmer is a volatile devil, but it is also a potent healing agent. With time and research, it could become a viable substitute for multiple pharmaceuticals, without the deleterious side-effects.

Subsiding into the sleek leather chair at the conference table, Silco listens to the debates unfold.

Civil bureaucracy grinds on; reassuring in its predictability. He has small appetite for the day-to-day minutiae. But hunger licks at him for results, a relentless fire. He understands that both gods and devils linger in the details. He delegates these details to men and women qualified to handle them, and holds them accountable in a weekly performance review.

Still, he wonders: how much more could be done with Jinx's brains powering the project? How many lives saved, rather than lost, with her brilliance applied directly to each problem? A city of jagged steel—shellacked into a pearl by her ingenuity.

Her oyster. Her kingdom. Her home.

(You just need to claim it, Jinx.)

Silco stirs a fingertip through reports of dry prose, and says, "Insofar as I am able to control events, I will ensure the implementation of our plan. If the committees fail to deliver, then I'll take matters into my own hands..."

Late noon. He visits the Doctor's laboratory.

The F12 specimens are showing promise. Tiny buds of tomatoes; ripening sprouts of wheat. They grow faster than expected. The lab's latest batch of seeds was sown weeks ago and already show signs of accelerated maturation. Still, the F12's yield is nowhere near marketable levels. Their growth rate slows when exposed to cold temperatures or dampness. And despite their rapid development, the fruits are still smaller than normal.

All in all: promising, but not yet profitable. Next week, samples will be sent to cultivair's hot-houses throughout the city. If they prove viable, farmers could start planting within three months. With any luck, the first harvests will arrive on store shelves by mid-winter.

Baby steps.

Silco knows piecemeal momentum is pragmatic. Progress too fast is just a byword for myopia. Too much force; too soon. And the costs incurred, too high.

Bloody Sunday is proof enough.

Afterward, before the Cabinet, he prepares to deliver the memorial speech. Accustomed to speaking ex tempo, he seldom collaborates with speech writers. But he's enlisted a specialist this time, outlining a gist and rhythm. The results are good: emotive without being overblown. But it doesn't spare the writer from Silco's umbrage. The smallest slip-up sets him off; he orders the script revised on the spot.

The poor girl hurries off to re-type the draft. Sevika watches her go with a half-smile, "Sweet Janna, I'd eat that ass like vanilla ice cream."

Silco, arms folded and eyes unblinking: "I'd watch. But—"

"What?"

"Not before she's finished proofreading."

“Does everything have to be perfect?”

“Have to? No.” With two fingers, he rubs the skin above his bad eye. “But history isn’t made with half-measures.”

The address itself is somber. Brevity paired with gravity. And yet, standing at the pulpit, Silco feels like a man waiting for a verdict. Not from the public, but from ghosts beyond conjuring. They do not haunt him, and yet their undercurrents pull at his bones to be elsewhere.

With Jinx.

Her absence in his daily life is a deeper emptiness than hunger. Unmet instinct tears him inside. He isn't just skewered; he is split in two. His mind and body move forward at a breakneck pace. By force of will, so does Zaun. Yet his heart stays inside the skyscraper suite.

Hidden. Halved. Shared.

(Yours, child.)

In the evening, he has tea with Renata and Margot.

The pair are working to merge Glasc Industries and the Vyx for a joint venture into Sextech. Beyond artificial limbs or prosthetics: neural interfaces designed to replace lost senses like sight, touch and taste. Organs grown in vitro. Body modification. Synthetic hormones.

A veritable smorgasbord of sensation.

Their collaboration is symbiotic; they're each other's muse. When he arrives, they greet him charmingly: Renata with a perfumed air-kiss along his unscarred cheek, Margot with a coy squeeze of his hand in both her own. They are dressed to kill in contrasting gowns of champagne silk and silver mesh. On both their hands sit a pair of impressively-sized engagement rings.

Silco gives them his wry admiration. "My congratulations, ladies. Or is it condolences?"

"Tsk, Silco. You do tease."

Renata proffers her hand to flaunt the ring. Like most Undercity jewels, it is made of black diamonds from the mines. Piltovans hanker for white and colored gems. They are less opaque, thus easier to grade by color intensity. But black diamonds are rarer still—and because of their scarcity, fetch higher prices.

Silco would know.

As boys, he and Vander nearly suffocated during a tunnel collapse to collect broken diamond ore and haul it to the surface. They were taught to value black diamonds above everything else. Including—especially—their own lives. A sumpsnipe was as common as shit in the alleyside. A black diamond was priceless.

The stone is rough-cut, an iridescent blue vein running down the center. It is sharpened to a spike, and retractable like a claw. The design serves a dual purpose: a glittering proof of partnership and a hard-edged tool for self-protection. This one could puncture steel.

"Truly a work of art," Renata says. "Twelve miners died in the making of this jewel."

Margot giggles. "I think they would celebrate the result."

"Blood is far less pedestrian than champagne."

"And leaves a sweeter aftertaste."

They laugh in ribald collusion.

To Silco, they resemble a pair of hyenas draped in designer silks—predacious and patently phony. Their laughter spills like blood through a tourniquet. On the rare occasion he finds himself in their company, he feels a sense of amused ennui that these creatures, a dark nadir to Piltover's bright apex, are his nation's crème de la crème, its end-product of proud aristocracy.

How will it end? He can hazard a guess: with bloodlines as watery as the Pilt, and as poisonous, with dull-eyed socialites and blustering buffoons at the top of the slag heap, their children grown fat on imported decadences and their minds washed complacently clean of history by fashionable frippery.

That is Zaun's future if it forgets its roots. It is why he must cut deals and cut throats. Safeguard legacy against entropy.

Protect Jinx's future.

He settles back into his seat, good eyelid drooping half-shut. "You'll forgive me if I don't ask for particulars on your engagement."

"That's a man for you," Renata scoffs. "Little is worth lingering on. But yes—you're forgiven. And darling, I know you told me not to have supper prepared. But I took the liberty of having Elza fix oyster pâté. Your favorite, I recall."

"Divine," he lies.

"And tea, of course. You could use some tea."

"The day has been long."

"Ah, but your speech." Margot flutters her eyelashes. "I listened to the broadcast this afternoon. You were magnificent! So passionate!"

"That was the idea."

"You should likewise rouse my workers. Cheeky things—they deserve a proper tongue lashing! I'm still a-blush over the last's misconduct."

"Photography is hardly a crime. But there is a time and place. Jinx's bedroom is neither."

"I hope his impertinence can be forgiven."

"On the contrary. I was amused. Boy thought a lot of himself. I quite cured him of the notion." His small smile doesn't bother to hide its sharp-toothed secrets. "But is that why you sent him to me? To play Krampus to the intransigent?"

"You have such a fine hand for discipline."

"And a better eye for blackmail."

Margot colors up. Renata purses her lips.

Silence hangs heavy as a noose.

Silco cuts to the chase. "The new ordinance on brothels," he says. "Neither of you approve."

Renata raises a single, fastidiously plucked eyebrow. "It's less approval than mystification, Silco. Do the prostitutes really need a guild?"

"It would increase tax revenue. And make life easier for the ordinary Zaunite."

Margot pouts girlish censure. "Surely, as procuress of the Vyx, my workers are exempt?"

"Regrettably: no."

"But Silco—"

He cuts her off with a gently-worded warning. "Your concerns are noted. But let us keep things in perspective. Our priority remains Zaun. That means more than just Sextech and warm bodies. It means the safety of our citizens. And those who perform acts of service on their behalf."

"We're not safekeepers," Renata says archly. "We are businesspeople."

"Then it behooves you to take care of your investments. Before they become liabilities."

"Hence your endless ordinances."

"Exactly."

The cords on Renata's neck rise, as if she wants to spit in his face. Instead, she smiles sweetly. "How paternalistic."

Silco's own smile is slow, cold. "We each serve different mistresses. Mine is Zaun, and her welfare."

"Your one true love."

"Interminably."

She titters. "You'll work yourself into an early grave, Silco."

"I'll have plenty of company."

"Good gracious!" Margot says. "What poor company the dead would make."

"Then liven it up while I'm breathing." Silco consults his pocketwatch. "If we've concluded our business..."

Margot nods demurely. "I'll ring for Elza to pour tea."

She starts to rise. Silco lays two fingertips on her wrist. He is still smiling. But his eyes have taken on a dark and deadly shine.

"Tea is sweeter when you pour it, Margot," he says. "And incidentally, Renata—I hate oyster pâté."

Nightfall.

The gala is held in honor of Bandle City's envoy. Warm bodies everywhere. Too warm for the likes of Silco. He experiences time as an unseen passage of the moon cycling invisible over the smogged sky, imagining the roof of the banquet hall peeling away like the lid of a tin can, his own patience pared in the same stroke.

But now that he is a public man, he must seem a pristine paragon. Ironic, given not a soul in the room has spotless hands. By mutual agreement, they pretend not to smell the murder staining each other's fingers.

Bargains are cut. Toasts are made. Laughter seeps deep-red; Silco's smile is a sidelong slash.

There are, if not heartfelt delights, small satisfactions in the game.

Undeniably.

The gala concludes at nine. A success trade-wise. Bandle City even presents Zaun with two faerie charms as a token of goodwill. Silco accepts them graciously, in exchange for Zaun’s promise to consider Bandle's proposal to establish a port in the city.

As a trade gesture, it is useful enough. If nothing else, it keeps relations between the two nations civil, and brings more business to Zaun's shores.

The cham-barons are already raring for the after-party. The Eye's bashes are legendary, and never without a frisson of danger. Like everything else in Silco's life, they are also a smokescreen for business: a place to see and be seen, to make or break deals, to tease truths or twist tongues.

In short: to maintain his edge.

They are also the only event that Jinx is never allowed to attend.

Silco, for all his exquisite politesse, keeps security merciless. Jinx is still too young for what goes on at these after-parties. The risk of exposure outweighs any possible gains.

His child deserves to stay a child—in any small way possible.

And tonight, he'd rather be with Jinx than anywhere else.

So he holds the after-party. He makes the speeches. He accepts the accolades. Then, as soon as the final toast is drunk, and guests high on the fumes of debauchery, he slips into the shadows. His wristwatch shows 9:50. He promised Jinx to return by twelve for their talk. He finds himself thinking about what he will tell her. How he'll break it down piece by piece until he has nothing left but the barest whisper.

Will it be enough? Is it even a question of enough?

(Watch yourself.)

Such grim intensity behind her words. Not a parting. A threat.

"Sir."

Sevika materializes at his elbow. The shawl is slung around her shoulders. The top button undone on her red halter is the only signal of the night's end. She holds two glasses of clear liquid in her hands. Silco accepts one with a nod. They're a pair of day drinkers; imbibing whiskey in slow sips while the sun burns. Nicotine is their vice; alcohol a passing indulgence.

By nightfall, they prefer their senses sharp. No spirits—only water.

Silco takes a steady swallow. Sevika downs her own in one gulp.

"I checked with the blackguards at HQ," she says. "Jinx is staying put."

"Good."

"Gonna call it an early night?"

Her tone is mild. Her dark eyes are a query.

Bloody Sunday.

A time the mourners typically spend in somber togetherness. For Silco and Sevika, togetherness isn't an ordinary state. They both prefer the sound of one hand clapping. Yet in the wake of Bloody Sunday, they gravitate to one another like two animals following the same pheromone trace.

Silco meets her stare impassively. "That is the plan."

"Any chance of a derailment?"

Tempting to leverage the needle of his natural distance against her. Keep her at an arm's length; keep their parting perfunctory. He needs to be with Jinx. He pictures her hair like a twisting blue fuse leading him directly home. To sanctuary—or sanction?

(What is owed must be paid.)

Except a ghostly debt is owed to Sevika as well. At least tonight.

Silco says. "I'll allow a short detour."

Sevika draws in a soft breath. "I'll have the limo brought around."

"Do."

The exchange is businesslike, sentences clinking like bullets. Everything of significance sits inside the words.

In the corridor, the crew bid him goodnight. Once upon a time, buzzed on the night's jubilations, they'd have waylaid him with petitions: a line of credit at the gambling dens, free rounds at the bar, a joyride at the brothels. Six years of serving Silco have taught them discipline. They offer congratulations, but keep their respectful distance.

Silco tells Ran: "Watch for sinking ships." i.e.—Keep an ear on secrets spilled at the after-party.

Ran blinks once. They know the score. By tomorrow, they'll be compensated handsomely for their efforts.

To Dustin: "Leave Thank-You cards," i.e—Eliminate any troublemakers.

Dustin grins ferally, eager to please. "Sure thing, Mister S."

He won't sleep tonight. After a successful night of mayhem, he'll run wild at the Vyx's brothels, where Silco has already replenished his accounts. It's Dustin's nature to stir up trouble. Silco would rather he do it where the fallout is contained.

To Lock: "Tighten up." i.e.—Take care of any loose ends.

Lock nods stolidly. "Count on it, sir."

He'll pick up any slack left by the others. Stay sharp; stay sober. The week after, Silco has already scheduled a block of uninterrupted downtime for him. A chance to recoup on all the hours lost to shadowing Noxian warmasons and dodging night terrors from the war.

Wounds heal on different timelines. So do scars.

Bloody Sunday is proof enough.

Outside, Sevika is waiting by the limo, her impassive face wreathed in cigarette smoke. The crew see her off with chorus of goodnights. Dustin is already antsy, a dog on a short leash, bloodlust foaming in his veins. Ran's eyes pass from Sevika to Silco, slitted in neutrality, a cat watching tigers through a cage. Lock keeps a stoic mien, but lingers at the portico.

"Watch yourself, sir," he says.

"And you." Silco flips him a Hex, which Lock catches mid-air. "See that the streets stay quiet."

"Will do." A beat. "Know when you'll be back at HQ?"

"Midnight by latest."

Lock's pale blue eyes flicker to Sevika, then away. "Guess Sev needs company on Bloody Sunday."

Silco's stare holds a paralyzing remoteness. "Good night, Lock."

Lock doesn't flinch. But the respect in his features shades to fear. Some lines, he knows not to cross. Some facts are best left unspoken.

He says, "G'night, sir," and turns away.

The sky is scudded with clouds, presaging a smog-tainted Gnasher. The blackguards at the cantilevered gates snap off salutes as Silco's limousine rolls out. It is near 11:30 when the explosion tears apart the tunnels of Oshra Va' Zaun, a ball of polar whiteness pluming skyward.

Shortly after, Silco receives the emergency message via pneumatic tube.

Code Blue.

In his network's parlance, it has one meaning:

Jinx is missing.

#arcane #arcane league of legends #arcane silco #silco #forward but never forget/xoxo #forward (never forget)/xoxo #arcane jinx #jinx #arcane vi #vi #arcane sevika #sevika #arcane zaun #zaun #arcane piltover #piltover #silco x sevika #sevilco

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consumed-by-fandom · 8 months

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Dude being 45 in TTSD and not having any grey hairs yet is probably the only plot hole I have in this entire fic, mainly because BD happens after this fic, and then I usually headcanon Dude to be 54 in Postal 4, and like 47-49 in BD.

My reasoning? Radiation screws up his genes so that while he is aging, it’s juuuust a tiny bit slower than usual. He’s not like immortal or fountain of youth style, it just makes him like younger than he is.

The moment Dude fuses into the final Dude though he starts aging like normal in a symbolic kinda way (its my fic and I get to be slightly whimsical)

I know its a silly excuse but if Dude can keep Champ since that fucker is immortal at this point he can have a little immortality too.

While we’re on the topic of age though, mentally these fuckers are ping ponging around the spectrum.

Dude himself is technically a decade younger than the body, he’s 34 by this point and he is PISSED OFF that the body is basically older than him.

D tends to slide a little, since he got stuck in dormancy when they were 27 he’s still kind of around that age mentally? So like he’s basically 28 despite the fact he’s logically the oldest system history wise. When he gets too overwhelmed, or has a breakdown or an episode, he does sometimes regress to a much younger age. I don’t exactly have an exact, but he loses himself in his memories which tend to be of when he was a kid.

Alt’s the oldest mentally (ironically since he’s only been around a year). I like to think he’s quite comfortable with the body’s age and is around that mark, and mentally he’s a lot more mature in that regard too (when he wants to be.)

#ramblings #DIDude #postal dude

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emetophobiahelp · 1 year

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Vampire Diaries (Masterpost)

In season 2, both Mason and Tyler r* and * and possibly v* from drinking Wolfsbane before they turn into a werewolf. I forgot which episode Mason was but Tyler is episode 11. Masons is a little hard to catch (and it’s on a video that is watched), but Tyler’s is easy because you know it’s coming from seeing what happened to Mason. Sound is bad, not so much visual.

Also in season 3 ep 18, Sage and another guy g* and then v* blood or liquid around the 28 minute mark.

Season 4, ep 2. At 4:30ish immediately after Stefan and Elena make out against the tree, she quickly runs away and is shown g*ing/possibly v*ing on the ground. Same episode at just before 17 min, after Elena talks to April in the church it cuts to her v*ing blood in a toilet and then in the sink. Very graphic.

Season 4, Episode 10: At about 26:20 April starts coughing in a classroom with Bonnie and then v*s a bunch of water.

Season 5, ep 2. Just before 2:30 Katherine is shown in the woods looking s* and possibly v*s by a tree. Same episode a few minutes later, Elena is with Stefan by the water and she starts v*ing a TON of water, it was very graphic and the sound was bad.

Season 5, ep. 7. Around the two minute mark when Silas and the couple are at the bus stop, the male starts v*ing blood and r*ing.

Season 6, ep 4. At about 5 minutes in, Jeremy suddenly v*s into a blue bag. It’s extremely sudden, it cuts right to the scene after Elena and Stefan are talking on his motorcycle.

Season 6, ep 15 (to add to other comment) after Jo v*s, Kai shows up at the door and also suddenly v*s. He also v*s again at 11 minutes in.

Season 7, ep 6. “Jo” v*s right after Caroline feeds her her blood at about 19:45.

Season 7, ep 17. At about 13 minutes in, Stefan is running thru the woods handcuffed and he drops to his knees and g*s and v*s. Same episode he v*s again around 29:30.

Season 7, ep 18. “Stefan” suddenly v*s blood into a bag while in the car with Damon. Opening scene, 50 seconds in.

Season 8, ep 1. A girl v*s blood with Caroline at 27:45ish.

Season 8, ep 6. Enzo g*s and v*s in a bowl at 12 minutes. It’s a cut scene so be careful. Mute/look away after Caroline and Alaric go into the empty diner.

Season 8, ep 15. (Multiple scenes, all same person): Matt’s mom goes into a bathroom with a bloody nose and v*s blood in the sink at about 10:40. Same episode at 20:15, she v*s again after Peter says “I gave it to Stefan already.” Same episode, at 35:40 at the wedding right after Damon grabs her throat. And again at 41:05 after Vicki rings the bell.

#submission #the vampire diaries #vampire diaries #tvd

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rayllurn · 1 year

Note

hi!! can you tell which episodes the last two gifs from this gifset are from? thank you!!! ❤️

Hello! They are both from season 4 episode 8 “Rex Igneous.” In my notes, I wrote that the first one happens around the 4:45 minute mark and the second one happens around the 11:30 minute mark. I hope this helps!

#ada answers

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dybdahlsvisitportugalspainfrance · 7 months

Text

Mont Saint Michel

September 30, 2023.

We awoke early and said good-bye to "nos cheri" Francoise. What a delight to meet her and I had a lump in the throat as we said good-bye even though it is for just 4 months.

Our final destination for the day in Paris - but we could not be this close to Mont St. Michel and not see it.

Annie & Carl had been there - but they insisted we go since Mark and I had not.

Let me just say WOWZA!!! You can see this from miles away - FYI.

If you want better pictures and a professional explanation here is a 5 minute snippet from Rick Steve's show on Normandy. Go to minute 21 if you just want to learn about Mont Saint Michel. It is great and will give you a good look at all the steps Annie and I climbed to get to that Abbey.

However, this film was done in 2004 so there have been some changes - not in the abbey - but in the approach to the Abbey. Gone is the causeway.

Beginning in 2009 the causeway and parking areas were removed. It was replaced by a bridge open to the residents on the town (less that 50 at latest count), delivery trucks and shuttles to bring the millions of visitors to the Abbey. Since April 2014, the new car park on the mainland has been located 1.5 miles from the island. Visitors can walk or use shuttles to cross the causeway. The light bridge allows the waters to flow freely around the island and improves the efficiency of the now operational dam. The island is once again an island.

I have a little more info about how this abbey became an abbey too. According to a legend, the archangel Michael appeared in 708 to Aubert of Avranches, the bishop of Avranches, and instructed him to build a church on the rocky islet. But the bishop thought his dream was just that - a dream. Weeks passed and Michael came again. Still, the bishop thought - surely this didn't happen. The third time came and Michael was a little ticked off. He once again commanded him to build an Abbey and church to honor St. Michael and this time he put his finger on Aubert's head - a little too hard and caused a hole in his skull. When he awoke with the hole in his head - he thought - uh-oh, I better get busy! The first part of the abbey was dedicated on 16 October 709. The picture below is from that first building.

And to prove that that story is 100% true, Aubert's skull, complete with hole where the archangel's finger pierced it, can still be seen at the Saint-Gervais Basilica in Avranches, Normandy.

Now, today is place is still a pilgrimage site - but most of the people who visit have no religious interest in St. Aubert or St. Michel. They are just tourists and stores abound everywhere to fleece those tourists. BUT - and this is interesting - once the first part of the abbey was built the monks created flyers and distributed them all around Europe encouraging a pilgrimage to Mont. Saint Michel. Then they built inns and restaurants and stores to buy items made by the monks. - like pieces of word with a cross branded into the wood. The church recognized the this was a steady income source and as the abbey grew so did the town.

The cloisters were beautiful.

Rick Steves says that the tide comes in and goes out at the speed of a galloping horse - but that is not true. It is a legend that has lived more than 1000 year though. The highest tides in continental Europe are found at Mont Saint-Michel, reaching a difference of up to 15 metres (45 ft!) between low and high tide. During high tides, the sea withdraws 15 kilometres from the coast and rises very quickly.The tide is AMAZING but it travels about the average speed of a fit person jogging.

The Abbey was used as a prison during the Napoleon times and one of the most interesting things was that there was a lift or a crane there to bring up supplies. Under the reign of Louis-Philippe d’Orléans (1773-1850), there was a population of approximately 700 prisoners. A fire destroyed in 1834 the roof of the abbey. By 1852, due to problems with the tides, the supply of the prison became very difficult. The poor state of the prison was such that it became inoperable, which forced Napoleon III to close it in 1863. The prisoners were transferred to other prisons and the abbey was rented to the bishop of Coutances.

Convicts were used for the operation of the Treadwheel crane, walking inside the wheel. Possibly there were two for each wheel and the estimated load capacity was three tons. The diameter of the crane wheels is 4.3 meters. There are indications that there was another Treadwheel crane of somewhat smaller size on the north side, to supply the winery. More than lifting loads were used as drag. So you can say that more than a treadwheel crane was a treadmill crane

I have no idea how many steps we climbed but I think my watch said 21 flights. I believe THAT! We asked an employee where the restrooms were and she said - "just up 90 steps." You can imagine my surprise when the bathrooms were in the middle of a flight of stairs.

At the top of the steps we finally reached the cathedral

The place is simply breath-taking. We stayed about 4 hours total. Annie and I took a t2- hour tour and the guys found a place to sit and chat while they waited on us to meet them for lunch.

They found a very small garden with a table and a couple of chairs and they were very happy.

When we arrived it looked like this:

When we left it looked like this:

And there were people everywhere on the mudflats.

It is quite a place and we're glad we got the chance to see it. We didn't see it at night - but now it is much easier to imagine.

We continued on toward Paris and we arrived at our hotel around 8:00. Thank you so much Annie & Carl. Great friends and so easy to be with. Lucky us.

As you know - we took our flight home on October 1 without incident. My brother picked us up and our Mom celebrated her 97th birthday.

Happy Birthday Mom!

We have had a amazing month of travel. We are happy to be home, but feel energized by all we have seen and done. Travel is the best education!!! So, signing off.

Mark and Gayl

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adj444 · 1 year

Text

NOV. 9 ‘22

note to self - MAKE LUNCHES BIGGER!!!! IM STARVINGGGG!!!!

BUSINESS: just a lot more discussion about indigenous businesses and the adv/disadvantages to foreign companies locating in ireland and vice versa, admittedly didn’t focus much, finishing unit 7 tomorrow

BIOLOGY: started excretory system 2day! kidneys, skin, lungs, lot of talk about urea (made by the liver through deamination- filtering amino acids) -> urine (urea + salt + water) and we got two new diagrams of the kidney and then the nephron, where the aorta brings oxygenated blood into the kidneys and the product of the kidneys is passed through the ureter into the bladder and out the urethra controlled by the sphincter muscles, and then the deoxygenated blood leaves thru the vena cava, lots more info i have to sit down and look at soon

FRENCH: went over two short reading comprehensions in class and then got our midterm tests back with that little reflection sheet, unsurprisingly i got 33% which is an H8 and an H8 = ZERO points. well on the page amidst the deathly silence and then umm The Tantrum (not important just know that it happened) i did better on my grammar (50%) and my aural comp (45%) than i did my written productions which were both 20-30% but ultimately the test was marked out of 180 and i only got 60:/ i wrote down on that little reflection page i think i’m just going to drop out of HL french because its been obvious since day one that it’s just not working with me

ART: romanticism! JOHN CONSTABLE (THE HAY WAIN 1821) = suffolk, wealthy ag bg, 1803 royal academy exhibitions, struggle 4 english acceptance v france, elected to royal academy at 52yrs old, $$ unsuccessful, central themes of nature + rural life + industrial revolution + evolution of machinery, style chars realistic nature landscapes + oil on canvas + "cultivated natural approach to nature & depicting it" vs. JOSEPH TURNER = troubled family life, royal academy student, exhibiting in 1796, themes of maturity + light as "emanation of gods spirit" + tragedy, style = chromatic palette + atmospheric watercolor wash + calculatedly careless/sloven brushstrokes (texture)

ENGLISH: went through key moment 6 (kate says bye) and started episode iii part i, lots to be written and said about kate who still obviously holds affections for gar and sees him as as friend especially in her seemingly functional/loveless marriage, but gar is all fucked up and gets especially messed up in the head by kate saying his father will miss him, big explosion (misdirected anger and aggression - miscommunication) about how he hates ballybeg (we know this isn’t true) and that she’s going to die there while he’s free as a birdie, etc etc, ends in a stream of consciousness that nearly resembles a panic attack or something, kinda sad kinda pathetic kinda tragic cuz he callls out for his dad at the end:(

MATHS: nothing new, still working on cubic functions and wrapping my head around how to parse the whole x < y < z thing, still working on the whole positive/negative & increasing/decreasing graphs thing but i’m definitely better than i was on monday when i last looked at it

#daily

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bloomintune · 7 years

Quote

Fucking up is better than giving up (and actually thinking about what the hell you're doing is better than either)

DWK

#quote #DWK #inspirational #fucking up #totally legit recap #happens around the 4:45 mark of the episode

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jojotichakorn · 2 years

Note

ARCHER ARCHER ARCHER!

I was just watching the ep 7 again and I just noticed that when Pa gives Pat the note that she got from the senior and Pat’s reading that note we can hear Wai’s voice! It’s Wai! He’s the one who gave her the sweets/ cupcakes. Ep 7 1/4 at around 12:45 mark. You can hear Wai’s voice!

What the hell P’Aof doing now? I swear to god I need InkPa endgame or I’ll just die.

-Jennie

hey, jennie!! let's do a breathing exercise together, and not panic just yet.

i went back to watch it, and it is indeed jimmy's voice. however, that doesn't mean that it is wai. that would be a bit too on the nose anyway, don't you think so?

the thing is, in this episode, we are clearly shown that wai finds pa cute. in general, he is one of the two only people we know who might be trying to hit on her. so this could easily be a love simon situation, where simon's letters were voiced by whoever he thought might be blue. except for this time around it's whoever the audience thinks might be pa's secret admirer. and it is also perhaps to be aligned with pat's theory about it being a guy? we are still in pat's pov and it would be quite comical if we heard a girl's voice before he says that it's most certainly a guy, also because we are kind of supposed to be following his lead and seeing things the way he does at the moment. this is not all, though.

first of all, pa says that their peer mentors gave them out these snacks, and i am pretty sure that not only is pa not studying architecture (this is DEFINITELY true, her parents would never let that happen), i think she is in the same faculty as ink. they've discussed it in previous episodes while she was still in high school, and it makes sense why ink is always around and can help out a lot. i don't think the peer mentor could be from a different faculty unless every single thai drama in existence lied to me before.

frankly, i think this is evidence enough that it can't be wai and that they are very clearly trying to be cheeky specifically with their cishet audience that might not even see inkpa coming (and it seems to be working, i've seen some genuine waipa shippers emerge o.o). but let me put one last nail in the coffin as well. the moment where pa runs into wai seems like their first meeting. not just because jimmy seems to have acted it this way, but also because 1) this is likely the first time pa would be near architecture territory and could meet any of those students, and 2) don't you think that the guy who wanted her line id so bad (and who is a giant sleazeball lmao) wouldn't immediately go in with "did you like the cupcakes? 😏" or some shit like that. it makes zero sense for wai to go about it in a subtle way, but it makes absolute sense for ink.

that note is ink's, and so are the cupcakes. i swear to goods they are.

#this is the first time a note is voiced as well #they are doing this on purpose #bad buddy #archer responds #jennie tag

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shihalyfie · 3 years

Text

A timeline of Ken’s fall into the Kaiser persona

The timeline of Ken meeting Wormmon and going through a sequence of events that made him into the Kaiser is relatively unclear, especially because Ken’s own memory is distorted, but production notes and other minor clues in the anime hint at a timeline that works with it:

August 2000: Ken goes on some kind of adventure with Akiyama Ryou and Wormmon

Late 2000-early 2001: Osamu dies

Around 2001: Ken goes on a second adventure with Akiyama Ryou, is hit by the Dark Seed, Oikawa sends him the fateful email, Ken visits the Dark Ocean

Late 2001-early 2002: Ken begins his conquest as the Kaiser

Yep, that’s right: Ken went on two different adventures with Akiyama Ryou.

A further breakdown of this timeline is under the cut!

So the thing you’re probably wondering is “wait, this is supposed to be a Tag Tamers tie-in, but Tag Tamers doesn’t make sense with this at all! Didn’t it say Ken went on an adventure with Ryou in March 2000 right after the Diablomon incident?” The thing is that for as much fanfare as there is about Tag Tamers being important to 02′s timeline, in fact, very little of Tag Tamers makes sense with 02 itself, and the game is is so contradictory that it doesn’t actually help you understand 02 much at all. This is, unfortunately, par for the course with Bandai licensed games, which don’t exactly have the greatest track record of keeping true to anime characterization or being remotely consistent with it at all (Daisuke’s characterization in Re:Digitize is borderline insulting), and everything we know about Adventure and 02′s planned lore doesn’t make sense with it either. In the end, we’re just going to have to follow our very loose attitude towards the concept of canon and default to the anime’s depiction of things for the sake of this particular analysis, pulling from Tag Tamers only when we can incorporate details from it in a way that doesn’t contradict everything.

02 episode 33 has Ken explicitly bring up the idea of “an encounter with a Digimon” that led to him becoming a Chosen Child happening in August 2000 (Koushirou had just mentioned the recent wave of Chosen Children having had a preliminary encounter via the 1999 incident). Unfortunately, we don’t know any more than this, due to Ken’s own memory failing, and the subject is left there.

(Again, yes, this is contradictory with Tag Tamers, but remember that said depiction of “Ken and Ryou watching the Diablomon incident” also contradicts Ryou clearly being seen by himself in Turkey in Our War Game! The anime is consistent with itself; the game is the outlier here.)

So when the Digivice emerged from Osamu’s computer (actually meant for Ken) in the flashback in 02 episode 23, we see a very young Ken with a purple shirt. Let’s take a closer look at this design.

We’ve received a lot of versions of this design sheet over the years, but all of them are consistent about one thing: this design depicts Ken as nine years old, in third grade. (Whether it gives grade level or age depends which version of this reference sheet you’re following, but everything is consistent about this.)

All of Ken’s various designs as depicted in this episode and other flashbacks are very clearly marked and depicted, and even the younger design of “Ken at the time of blowing bubbles with Osamu” has its own sheet (he’s four years old at that point). Moreover, the above nine-year-old design has an explicit instruction on this particular sheet: “please use this for his interactions with Osamu,” meaning that this is the design everyone was instructed to follow up with during any scene where Osamu is alive.

The Animation Chronicle confirms that this happened in August 2000, so it seems to be shortly after Ken’s “initial encounter”. (Or maybe this is the “initial encounter”? Ken might have conflated both.)

This is the same design Ken is depicted with when he first is sucked into the Digital World (again: he’s clearly depicted as going in alone, not with Ryou as Tag Tamers depicts). While Ken’s memory is understandably very muddled, a lot of the details here make sense with each other:

The worst thing we see of this little venture is Wormmon having to fight a Gazimon. It’s not a big deal of a thing they have to fight through.

It’s clearly short enough that Ken can go in and out during the duration of an afternoon without anyone in the real world noticing (besides Osamu).

Ken’s looking like he had a lot of fun -- definitely not the kind of thing that seems like he went through a lot of trauma.

It’s unlikely anything much of a big deal happened during this point, other than some emotional bonding with a new best friend.

Osamu also died shortly after, given that Ken is still depicted with this design in the surrounding events as depicted in 02 episodes 21, 23, and 45. (Spring 2003 also refers to the titular spring as “the third spring” since Osamu’s death, confirming that Osamu must have died within the time period of late 2000 to early 2001.)

Ken is depicted at Osamu’s funeral in 02 episode 48, and while his clothes are different and we don’t get a full-body shot of him, note that there’s attention paid to making sure his design aligns with the above purple-shirt one -- his bangs drop in the center, rather than pointing left.

However, Ken remembers a trip through the Digital World in 02 episode 43, and Ken is depicted with a very different design that doesn’t match up with the one depicted in 02 episode 23. This has often been passed off as animator error, or Ken’s memories perhaps being extremely muddled, but what we know about the surrounding circumstances doesn’t actually suggest that...

This design is consistently written in notes to depict Ken as ten years old, in fourth grade. Not only that, if you look closely, Ken is visibly slightly taller, so it’s not just a simple question of clothing; his bangs are also depicted as pointing left, the same way they’re generally depicted with him at eleven, and not dropping in the center the way his nine- and four-year-old designs depicted.

On top of that, the surrounding circumstances behind this adventure depicted in 02 episode 43 also seem to be very different from what was depicted in the one from 02 episode 23:

The battle is clearly depicted as being against Millenniummon, and, regardless of whether this is following Tag Tamers or not, that’s clearly a big deal of a defeat.

Ken’s injury from the Dark Seed is enough to completely send him on the verge of death, which probably would not elicit the same kind of casual reaction he had during his emergence in 02 episode 23′s flashback. It was mild enough that Ken “recovered from his injuries and went home,” but that’s definitely not the kind of thing you’d expect to result in Ken be emerging with a big smile on his face (especially since Osamu’s violent reaction back then was implied to be out of jealousy for Ken’s happiness). Moreover, Ken returning in a poor state of health would probably be much less likely to be noticed by his family when Osamu is dead (and therefore not there to notice) and Ken’s parents are deep in grief.

This incident is the one that directly caused Ken’s trauma, meaning it’s more likely that this incident is going to be the one that got scrambled up in memory (it didn’t take long for Ken to recall his initial adventures with Wormmon in comparison back in 02 episode 23).

Ken refers to this incident as “two years ago”, but recall that, on top of his own unreliable testimony and scrambled memory, 02 episode 43 (when he brings this up) takes place during late December 2002, meaning that an early 2001 date doesn’t necessarily fall out of the question here, and it’s also not the first time 02′s final quarter taking place at the very end of December has thrown off date references. (02 references to “age” and “relative time” are often very rough in general and a bit too overly realistic, considering how long of a period 02 spans over and the question of things like exactly how long Daisuke can be said to be “eleven years old” over the course of the series, or the fact Osamu is said to be 7 when Ken is 4 and 11 while Ken is 9, so the more important part is paying attention to the fact the design sheets are so explicit about referring to different things.)

Moreover, this design of “ten years old, in fourth grade” is used in 02 episode 23 to show the events that we retroactively know happened right after that:

Once Ken had the Dark Seed in him, it makes sense that Oikawa wouldn’t hesitate to reach out to him, since he now had a great opportunity to exploit him mentally! Remember that this design debut all the way back in 02 episode 23, which meant that we knew that there was some kind of “timeskip” between Osamu’s death and Oikawa emailing Ken, but...if that were all there was to it, why would Oikawa wait so long between Osamu’s funeral (which clearly had Ken with his nine-year-old design) and now, especially since this “timeskip” would have given Ken extra time to mull over and recover from Osamu’s death? It makes much more sense when you apply 02 episode 43′s context that Ken’s Dark Seed implantation happened between Osamu’s death and the email, with Ken still having a really horrible year mulling over Osamu’s death, then getting dragged out like this and having something traumatic stuffed into the back of his neck that had the potential to feed on his already thick emotions of grief, and finally being at the right emotional point for Oikawa to make use of him.

It also explains why the Kaiser didn’t become enough of an issue to merit intervention until all the way in April 2002 -- presumably, of course, the Holy Beasts needed time to prepare, but if Ken wasn’t implanted with the Dark Seed until 2001 and Oikawa’s email shortly after that, that means Ken building up his persona as the Kaiser only really had less than a year to form (especially since 02 episode 23 states that Ken suddenly “doing well in school” didn’t start happening until Ken roughly got to the same height as Osamu was when he died, and the illusory meeting between the brothers in 02 episode 49 shows that Ken’s not actually that much taller than said height at eleven).

Moreover, if you do know the development circumstances behind Tag Tamers and 02: Tag Tamers already existed by the time 02 episode 23 was released, and so did Ken’s ten-year-old design (hence why it and Ryou’s design consistently show up together in concept art). This ten-year-old design had already been associated with “the time Ken got hit with a Dark Seed” (which really seems to be the only holdover in common between Tag Tamers and the anime) by the time 02 episode 23 was made, and despite that, Ken was given a completely different nine-year-old design for the flashbacks in 02 episode 23 that consistently got its own sheet. And you can’t say the animators forgot the ten-year-old design existed, because they clearly were fine using it for the other flashbacks in 02 episode 23 that happened to not be that flashback -- it’s hard to easily pass that off as “animator oversight” when it’s conspicuously introduced in the anime in a context it’s not known for and only revealed to be in its original context later.

Why did they suddenly change designs and depict such a “timeskip” back in 02 episode 23 when, if it really were supposed to all be related to the same events anyway, they could have just reused the designs and called it a day instead of making a whole new model sheet for an entirely new one? Whole entire character designs don’t just come up for no reason, especially when sheets are so consistent about them corresponding to different things, and the nine-year-old design seems to be made specifically for the purpose of having a distinct one for anytime Osamu was alive -- so it’s much more likely that this distinction is actually intentional (regardless of whatever the game says in terms of specifics).

As an amusing side note: Ken’s unusual height has been pointed out by a lot of people, and it’s sometimes been speculated as a bit of fridge horror that his unusual height growth might have also been impacted by the Dark Seed (especially given the 02 episode 23 comment about Ken reaching Osamu’s height correlating to when he started expressing similar “genius” tendencies), but even putting aside the fact he’s consistently portrayed as tall even in Kizuna and the epilogue: if Ken indeed got hit by the Dark Seed at 10 instead of 9, that means the kid had some pretty considerable height growth between those ages even before anything supernatural came into play. His father’s also tall, and Osamu was pretty obviously around the same height as Ken at age 11, so there’s clearly something in the Ichijouji family overall. Ken’s just tall.

#digimon #digimon adventure 02 #ichijouji ken #ken ichijouji #shihameta

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nexility-sims · 3 years

Note

Storytelling asks 12, 13 and 14 ❤️

𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘𝐓𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐀𝐒𝐊𝐒 / accepting !

these were fantastic questions !! thank you !! ❤️❤️❤️

12. do you actually play the game or do you just use it as a storytelling medium?

lately, it’s been 100% storytelling, but i am so eager to actually play the game soon. i’ve been working on my historical legacy for ........ geez, like five years or so? i guess it began as my bastard version of the decades challenge, lmao. anyway, long story short, i haven’t finished it, and i need to so i can replay the parts i miss. additionally, my plan is to finally get the cottage one when i finish part ii of the story !!!!!!! and do some legacy gameplay (haven’t decided if it’ll be canon yet but it will, as i’ve said, be jered circa 2007).

13. from basic planning to a finished post, how long does that take you?

OOF. it varies? here are the steps u didn’t ask for

get an idea, scribble some notes in my journal or on scraps of paper i then stuff into the journal. draw diagrams as needed.

scour the internet for poses (detour to make my own sometimes)

build a set (this is what i do 65% of the time. sometimes it takes half an hour, sometimes it takes a few hours. depends on if i need to download cc, build an exterior, spend 45 minutes arranging deco items NO ONE WILL SEE ssdjflksgfs)

occasionally, a detour to recolor / convert objects (not often but often enough that i know how to do these things now djfshgkjsg)

dress up my sims !!! make sure they have different versions with accessories as needed, etc. (ex. for the bachelor party, alf & his friends each had six outfits. nightmare.)

take screenshots !!!!! i do this... based on the mental script in my head. so 60% “i know what happens,” and 40% “vibes only.” takes longer if i have to mess around with lighting (using reshade and/or by ... breaking everyone’s poses to adjust the light fixtures. usually for night scenes.)

pick max of 10 screenshots from the 1287398494 i took. i just upload them to photoshop & click around until i’ve got the best of the bunch. sometimes i post the rejects as previews or outtakes.

upload screenshots to tumblr drafts & let them marinate.....

add captions !!!! i’ve started writing them in photoshop, aka the most cursed approach. i just revise & rearrange until it reads well & hits all the marks i had in mind for the scene. i’m WORDY so seeing the text on the image helps them ... not be giving a monologue in every episode. just most. then, replace drafted shots w/ captions screenshots.

potentially, after marinating, i decided i hate the screenshots & redo them !!!!!!!!! not all the time, but maybe 3-4/10 times.

write the scene. this varies wildly bc sometimes i slap two sentences & call it a day, but other times i pull out my writing laptop & pour over it for ... anywhere from a week to twenty minutes.

ideally, the draft marinates again, then i queue it at least 10 minutes before midnight

SO ........ overall, i would say this process can take anywhere between 2-3 hours to a few days. the longest i’ll have an average draft waiting is a week ??

14. do you have any regrets about your story so far? if you could go back in time, how would you fix these?

my number one regret is ... not realizing how invested in this hobby i would be, so therefore not bothering to properly plan things !!! winging it was fun and easy, but now i’ve learned so much—from both trial and error & the amazing storytellers i’ve met. still, rather than going back in time, i’m excited to apply all of this to the upcoming parts. hopefully the story will be much tighter, richer, and visually pleasing as a result !!!! also. wish i’d known about the tool mod sooner ......... sigh. lastly, i wish i’d learned how to make my own cc any of the previous times over the years i’ve attempted it. sure would come in handy, what with all the period specific fashion i want >:^( maybe next time.

#oof sorry this is a #long post #ask #story stuff

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turtle-paced · 3 years

Text

A:tLA Re-Watch: Fine-Toothed Comb Edition

Well, not quite on the long weekend, but here’s the recap anyway.

Book 1, Chapter 6 - Imprisoned

(0:55) Previously, on Avatar, the Water Tribes know what it’s like to be stuck at the ass end of the world slowly dying, but Katara’s hope is actually inspiring and she and Sokka found the Avatar for a reason. It’s going to be a Katara-centric episode. The group is still heading to the North Pole, while Zuko continues chasing them.

(1:45) We’re out of the snow! It’s still winter (seeing as the next episode is titled ‘The Winter Solstice’), but yeah. No snow. At the very least, this area’s warm enough that snow isn’t an all-winter condition.

(2:02) This is what I mean by the show bringing up supplies when they’re an issue. Note that Sokka doesn’t actually know what any of these nuts are. He hasn’t spent enough time in the Earth Kingdom to know what’s edible.

(2:48) The character contrast in two nutshells. Aang and Katara run towards the loud booming noises in the forest, Sokka advises hanging back (but goes with the majority). Then, when they find Haru, Aang and Katara want to make friends, but Sokka says he looks dangerous so they should be cautious. It’s a joke, mostly at Sokka’s expense, but it’s also consistent characterisation that helps give Sokka an important role in the team even when he’s outshone by ridiculous amounts in the direct combat department. He thinks very differently in some ways to his sister and his friends. This is sometimes unhelpful and sometimes downright necessary for the characters collectively to succeed. Today is an unhelpful day.

(2:56) Upon seeing Katara, the practicing earthbender drops everything and runs, going so far as to block pursuit. No questions, no chances, just immediate flight. Weird reaction, hey?

(3:06) Aang says that Haru must be running somewhere. Like a village. Which should have a market. Like I said back in episode one, every main character is smart. Showing it in these tiny, low-stakes, incidental conversations makes it believeable when they do big, dramatic smart things.

(3:21) Pan over this Earth Kingdom village. It’s pretty different to Kyoshi Island, and honestly looks a fair bit more prosperous. Earthbending means this village has got a very neat-looking mine and that building a wall around town isn’t a big deal. Interestingly, most building here are made of wood, or at least significantly involve wood in their construction (lintels, structural beams, doors, floors, I think even the rooftops).

(3:40) We get Haru’s name here as Katara spots him and follows him into his mother’s store.

(3:55) As soon as Aang says ‘earthbending’, Haru’s mother slams the doors and windows closed. Until now, the gAang has only travelled in free territory. Scared, paranoid territory, but free territory. This episode is a quick and brutal look at life in an occupied Earth Kingdom village. There’s a lot of fear here.

(4:09) Right on cue, Fire Nation soldiers drop by. The taxes they’re collecting are extortionate and their schedule for payment is arbitrary. The occupying force is taking financially and using this as a terror tactic. This becomes more explicit as the soldier says “we wouldn’t want an accident, would we?” and creates a fireball in his hands.

(4:58) Love the worldbuilding on this show. Why’s the Fire Nation here? Sokka asks, and Haru’s mother has an answer. Turns out all those coal-fired ships the Fire Nation uses? They need coal. The village is being exploited for its natural resources, too.

(5:09) Katara asks why Haru doesn’t help fight back, as he so clearly wants to. Especially since it means not bending, which she says is part of who she is. Haru’s mother explains that Haru would be arrested and taken from the village for earthbending (hold on to the information that the walls and mine are clearly products of earthbending), just like Haru’s father was. So let’s add some deeply personal and cultural oppression to the list of things going on here.

It’s also a tough lesson that resisting the Fire Nation in places like this isn’t as simple as saying “fight back.” There are serious risks involved.

(5:43) More panning over Earth Kingdom scenery. Vegetable patches and a silo can be seen. Little visual touches to remind the viewer that these background characters were in this place before the story arrived there, and will continue on offscreen once the story leaves. It helps make the world feel real.

(6:08) Katara and Haru go off and bond. Katara apologises for accidentally bringing up any hurt related to Haru’s father, ‘cause she’s a good, considerate person.

(6:18) Haru tells Katara how brave his father was to resist the Fire Nation invasion, against what odds. After which Haru’s father was taken away, and his family haven’t seen him since. The only way Haru can feel close to his father is by practicing earthbending, which also puts him in danger.

The entire backstory here gets into the big issues - invasion, mass internment, cultural oppression - by linking it with the much smaller slice of life. Just Haru, missing his father.

(6:48) Katara gives the exposition on her necklace, the last memento she has of her mother. The conversation leaves off pretty brutally as well. “It’s not enough, is it?” “No.” And that’s it. There’s only acknowledgement of their mutual pains, not closure. There’s not enough. There’s a hole there that cannot be filled.

(7:05) As Katara and Haru head back, they pass the mine collapsing. What happens when an earthbender-produced mine has to operate without earthbenders? It seems very likely to me that earthbending is a major part of mining safety and maintenance in Avatar world, and the removal of earthbenders from town would logically result in more mine collapses and accidents.

(7:32) Haru bravely earthbends to rescue the old man from the mine collapse.

(7:59) One of the really nice things about Aang? He’s impressed by Katara’s accomplishments, even one as small as inspiring Haru to his own little rebellion.

(8:12) Sokka brings up that point from back in 1.04 that if they hang around a village (especially an occupied village) they’re going to be in trouble. They have to keep moving. Continuity! Learning the lessons of previous episodes!

(8:41) Fire Nation soldiers show up in the dead of night to arrest Haru for earthbending, on the information of the old Earth Kingdom man Haru saved. Informants and midnight arrests - it’s a freaking scary depiction of life under occupation. Not to mention the moral texture it brings to the series. The Fire Nation is inarguably wrong and oppressive. But that doesn’t make the people of the Earth Kingdom saints. Individuals have a range of responses to the Fire Nation, and here we see it’s up to and including willing collaboration with their oppressors. We’re never going to see this old man again. He never gets any on-screen comeuppance. He never gets told he was wrong. This is just a lesson for the main characters.

The show’s worked up to this idea, with the hostility of the Kyoshi Islanders and Bumi placing the gAang under arrest. Now it’s serious. The characters can’t assume that Earth Kingdom people will be on their side.

And this ultimately leads up to the point that this conflict isn’t about one nation being inherently bad and the others being inherently good.

(8:56) Love to see some mundane uses of bending - in this case, Katara doesn’t bother actually pumping water, she just yanks it out of the pump.

(9:23) And a nice thing about Sokka - when he sees Katara is upset, he moves to comfort her physically. However, also notice what Sokka actually says. Part of his idea of comforting Katara is working on solutions to the external problem, working out what happened and what they might be able to do about it. It’s very pragmatic and not very touchy-feely. While it comes with the best of intentions, and Katara doesn’t even have to ask for Sokka’s support and assistance, you can see where Katara might want a friend who’s a little more emotionally supportive. Different people fill different roles.

(9:31) But on to the main event! Katara’s got a plan to break Haru out of Fire Nation prison. Thus far Katara’s been strong and capable, and particularly impressive in how she’s dealt with a grief-stricken Aang. This marks her first opportunity to take up the foremost heroic role in an episode. She’s making the plans, she’s driving the action, she’s saving the day. It starts with her getting arrested for earthbending.

(9:49) A team plan! Katara had the basic idea of using airbending to simulate earthbending, but it looks to me like Sokka did the actual engineering of finding the vents that connect, while Aang’s going to be doing the actual bending. This is also a classic example of how Sokka’s character development is going to go over the course of the series and the reason he’s such an important part of the team. He puts the details into the big ideas.

(9:55) And here’s Aang’s fun-loving, lighthearted nature shown as a flaw rather than a virtue (in a fairly comedic, low-ish stakes kind of way) before the serious long-term implications become most apparent in season three. He’s goofing off and not taking responsibility for his part in this plan. Later, when Aang doesn’t want to find a firebending teacher and doesn’t want to think about how he’s planning to deal with Ozai, that’s perfectly believeable. We’ve seen him skip out on small details, so we can believe Aang would skip out on the big ones.

Furthermore, in character and plot terms, the character trait that’s a minor hiccup in the plan this episode causes serious problems later, and yet remains an important strength in other episodes (and across those episodes in how Aang actually keeps moving forward). There’s nuance there in Aang’s character, and nuance in the plots that recognise that things aren’t usually as simple as ‘this character trait good, that character trait bad’.

(10:18) This entire scene gives me the giggles so bad, starting with this Fire Nation soldier’s bemused reaction. Earthbending style.

(11:17) The group exchanges a bunch of anxious looks. Despite the comic nature of the faked fight, they did just arrange for Katara to get arrested by the Fire Nation and hauled off to a prison for dissidents. This is serious stuff.

(11:30) Cut to a port, and Katara on a boat. Nobody seems surprised that the prison is offshore.

(12:15) Cameo from George Takei here, hamming it up.

(12:41) The faux affability of the welcoming is shown by the Warden’s willingness to use fire on a prisoner when the prisoner simply coughs. Followed by condemning the man to a week of solitary imprisonment. Also worth noting that the Warden is completely unfazed by the presence of a young teenager amongst the prisoners.

(13:05) The Warden helpfully points out that the rig is made entirely of metal, which earthbenders cannot affect with their powers. (At this point in the series.) It brings a pretty significant limitation of earthbending to the table in a series set just as their world’s industrial revolution is going global.

It’s also a good indication of how hard imprisoning a bender is. This rig must be absolutely brutal to live on, for the guards as well as the prisoners. It couldn’t have been cheap to build, either. I’ll come back to the topic of criminal justice and bending ability later in the series, but for now just keep in mind that prison for benders a) requires cruel conditions and b) is logistically burdensome to say the least.

(13:16) The Warden also describes earthbending as ‘brutish savagery’, so here’s some fire supremacy for you all! Again, the big thing - the Fire Nation taking over the world and thinking that’s okay - is reflected in the little thing, a Fire Nation character casually dismisssing any worth in earthbending (when we just a few minutes ago heard Haru speak about how important it was to his family bonds).

(13:47) Katara looks over the prisoners and sees a lot of people in absolute despair. Keep an eye out for female prisoners. I keep raising this background detail thing because it tells you how the writers and animators are thinking about the “normal” state of the world.

(13:52) A nice touch from a design standpoint is that Haru is about the only person wearing a deep, living green, rather than the prisoner brown/grey/very dried-out green combination.

(14:11) Haru did at least succeed in finding his father, Tyro.

(14:29) This exchange does nicely to set up Tyro as a kind individual whose sense of humour has not been totally eradicated by the situation he’s in.

(14:52) Tyro tells Katara that there’s no escape plan, only a survival plan.

(14:58) There are some female prisoners in this shot! Which is evidence of female earthbenders, even though we still don’t see very many in the rest of the series.

(15:14) Much like in town, Katara is reminded that things aren’t necessarily so simple as “fight back”. She’s talking to people who have been dealing with the Fire Nation, unsuccessfully, for years. What does fighting back look like to these people, after all this time? What do they stand to lose?

(15:21) I do love this exchange. Tyro says, “I’m sorry, but we’re powerless,” and Katara replies, “We’ll see about that.” What she wants and what she aims to achieve is to give the prisoners here their power back. She’s trying to help them to help themselves. Even though this speech doesn’t work. Very eloquent for an impromptu speech, too.

(16:44) Aang and Sokka arrive to provide backup.

(17:01) Katara refuses to leave the prison until she’s accomplished her objective. She emphasises that it’s the people she’s not giving up on. For all her character development over the series, this trait stays exactly the same, arguably the very core of her character.

(17:30) We get the split in group opinion again. Katara and Aang want to stay and help, Sokka wants to leave. Outvoted, and aware that he’s not going to overcome Katara’s stubbornness on this point, Sokka says they’d better hide.

(17:48) Two guards report an Appa sighting to the Warden. This is actually a really good drawback to the convenience of having a flying bison, narratively - he’s just not all that inconspicuous.

(18:06) The Warden throws a man overboard for questioning whether the difference between a flying bison or a flying buffalo is all that pertinent. Love this show. I’m also getting serious “do the tides command this ship?” vibe. Only less competent. Though the Warden does have the competence to get the core point that there’s something amiss, and orders a full search of the rig.

(18:42) Aang wishes he knew how to make a hurricane, because then the Warden would run away and the party could just take his keys. Now this is what people mean when they call Aang naive. Note that this wishful thinking from Aang doesn’t involve direct confrontation with the Warden. He wants the problem to go away. It’s not an issue with Aang’s intellect, it’s an issue with Aang’s psychology.

(18:53) Sokka wants to give the earthbenders some literal power. Some literal substance they can bend so that they can free themselves.

(19:08) It’s Aang who points out that earthbenders are able to bend coal, and the Fire Nation keeps coal on the rig. Naive, not stupid!

(19:22) Like I said, Sokka doesn’t often lead the way or deal with the party’s biggest ideas, but he is absolutely unmatched when it comes to making their goals into workable plans. As Katara asks Sokka “are you sure this is going to work?” we can be sure that the details here were Sokka’s doing. Moreover, he’s applied knowledge of vents he picked up earlier in the episode.

It’s also worth noting that Sokka was against staying to rescue the earthbenders and still put his all into coming up with a plan once he was outvoted. He works with Katara and Aang in good faith so that the disagreement doesn’t wreck their teamwork.

(20:02) Once again, Aang provides the muscle as he airbends some staggering quantities of coal onto the deck.

(20:22) Again, quite realistically, the earthbenders are hesitant to take the opportunity Katara’s just provided. The Warden underlines the point that it’s Katara’s inspirational words versus years of oppression and despair. Sure, that is the problem here. Katara tries, and she’s mocked by the villain for trying.

(20:59) But as the lump of coal crashes into the back of the Warden’s head, the show says that Katara was right and the Warden was wrong. Katara’s faith was not misplaced and her words and actions did make a difference here. Even if it sounded silly to start with.

(21:09) Love that the coal actually ignites when hit by fireblasts.

(21:25) Yes, we did see a female earthbender prisoner fighting back there! And I’m still pretty sure that this is one of the vanishingly few occasions we’ll see female earthbenders active in the background of the series.

(21:57) The earthbenders prioritise getting off the rig.

(22:05) Here’s Katara again. This is the first we see her actively participating in this skirmish. She hasn’t actually done much fighting - the point here was always what she could do to empower others to fight. She’s still got her necklace at this point. Notice also Aang’s creative use of airbending to propel small pieces of coal at the Fire Nation soldiers.

(22:33) The earthbenders steal a Fire Nation ship and head back to the mainland. Katara’s lost her necklace in this shot. Haru and Tyro spell out the effect of Katara’s actions.

(23:04) Tyro declares his intention to take back all their villages, which tells us that the prisoners were not from just one place. They must have been brought in from several towns and villages in the general area. Looks like the gAang’s leaving some insurgents behind them, right in Ozai’s coal supply.

(23:26) Haru thanks Katara for her help with that small thing of returning his dad for him, and wishes he could do the same for her. She also realises that she’s lost her mother’s necklace at this point.

(23:35) And who should pick it up but Zuko, who we haven’t seen for almost two whole episodes. Presumably he’s followed a report of Avatar-based shenanigans, and he’s got real sharp eyes to pick out the one Water Tribe thing in all this.

#a:tla #fine toothed comb edition

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i-know-my-value-darling · 4 years

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Supernatural stars reflect on the show's undying legacy

Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, and Misha Collins discuss 15 years of fantasy, family, and flannel.

"We only get one shot at this." Sam and Dean Winchester are surrounded. The monster-hunting brothers are standing on the edge of a cliff. They look to Castiel, their brother in arms — or is it wings? — but even he can’t help. One move in the wrong direction could ruin everything. After years of fighting demons, going toe-to- toe with Satan himself, and saving the world multiple times, they once again find themselves in a position of having to perform under pressure. But this situation is unlike anything they’ve ever dealt with before. All eyes are on them as they have one shot…at getting the perfect picture.

It’s a dry, hot August day in Malibu — when people were still allowed to gather outside — as Supernatural stars Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, and Misha Collins prepare for the last setup of their final Entertainment Weekly cover shoot. With a bottle of champagne in each of their hands, Ackles once again reminds them they get “one shot” to do this right. But if their characters can shoulder the weight of the world, surely these three can handle a photo. Read the whole story below

The champagne soaking is meant to be a celebration of 15 years, of making television history. Supernatural, the story of two brothers destined to save the world, is the longest-running genre show in the history of American broadcast television. (So old, the first three seasons shot on this thing called film.) What started as an underdog story, living its first few years on the verge of cancellation, has become an institution, a milestone to which other shows aspire. Supernatural not only survived the move from The WB to The CW after its first season — it’s now the final WB show left standing — but became the backbone of the now highly successful CW network. Over the years, the sci-fi series has aired on every weeknight, helping to launch shows including Arrow and The Vampire Diaries. The network moved it one final time, most recently, to Mondays, to help Roswell, New Mexico expand its audience. “Supernatural is a major link to many of the shows that we have successfully built to market,” The CW’s chairman and CEO Mark Pedowitz says. “Almost every one of our shows has had it as a lead-out or a lead-in.”

And to think, it all started as a promise to bring horror to television. After Supernatural creator Eric Kripke had finished working with Warner Bros. on 2003’s Tarzan series, he pitched the idea of a reporter who travels around hunting urban legends. As he puts it, it was a Kolchak: The Night Stalker rip-off. But when he realized the story would benefit from having brothers at its core, he started writing. “At the time, The Ring and The Grudge were huge hits in theaters,” Kripke remembers. “We said, ‘We’re going to take that experience and we’re going to put it on TV,’ and the initial goal was to be scary.” After Warner Bros. passed on his first, what he calls “uptight,” draft, Kripke had to reassess the kind of show he was creating. “I canceled all my Christmas plans and wrote that second draft in three weeks,” he says. “That was when the show got its sense of humor, because I was locked alone, over winter break, in my office. I couldn’t do anything fun, so I started entertaining myself.”

The show was still scary, but it was also funny and, over the years, would continue to evolve. Sure, you could say it’s a little bit X-Files — in its early days, the show often used the line “The X-Files meets Route 66” — and there were definite Star Wars influences (Sam and Dean were originally based on Luke Skywalker and Han Solo). But no combination of pop culture is going to perfectly describe Supernatural because the show has managed to do something remarkably rare in the age of peak TV, where audiences are so overwhelmed with content that an original idea seems foreign: It’s created a truly one-of- a-kind experience.

For starters, it’s a show about two flannel-wearing, beer-loving, blue-collar dudes from Kansas who for a good chunk of their lives traveled from cheap motel to cheap motel, paying for gas and greasy diner food with a mix of fake credit cards and money they earned scamming people at the pool table. “Almost all television is about rich people or, at the very least, middle-class people,” co-showrunner Andrew Dabb says. “The fact that we’ve been able to take this Midwestern blue-collar approach to this genre feels like we’re breaking the mold.”

But the mold-breaking didn’t stop there. Supernatural might’ve started out as a horror show with some snarky one-liners, but it evolved into some of the boldest, most experimental (and certainly strangest) stories on the small screen. “We’re a show of big swings,” co-showrunner Robert Singer says. “I used to say, with every idea, ‘This will be a home run or they’ll cancel us,’ but every year we wanted to do something really nuts." And when he says nuts, we’re not just talking about the episode with the talking teddy bear or the murderer targeting imaginary friends. Those are just some standard monsters of the week. We’re talking about the black-and-white episode shot like a classic Hollywood monster movie, or the episode that introduced Chuck (Rob Benedict), a prophet — who’d later reveal himself to be God — who was famous for writing a book series called Supernatural. That, of course, led to Sam and Dean attending a Supernatural fan convention as the show continued to redefine what it meant to inject a series with meta humor. And the swings never stopped. Season 13 featured a Scooby-Doo crossover as an animated Sam, Dean, and Castiel solved a case alongside the Mystery Inc. gang. And in season 14, after giving God a sister a few years prior, the show made the Big Man Himself its final villain. “I don’t think any idea, barring some production concerns, has been viewed as too crazy,” Dabb says. “Because we know that our fans are smart and that they’ll follow these guys anywhere.”

So long as each episode features Sam and Dean — and the occasional heartfelt talk on the hood of the Impala — the show can do just about anything, which is another reason Kripke had to rewrite his first draft of the pilot. Originally, Dean was the only brother who knew about monsters growing up, bringing Sam up to speed later in life. It wasn’t until Kripke figured out that they needed to be in this together that the series snapped into place. Because at the end of it all, they’re two brothers bonded by the loss of their mother and a life spent on the road with an absentee father. (It just so happens that their mother was killed by a demon and their father hunted them.) The familial dynamic — the irrational codependency, as the angel Zachariah (Kurt Fuller) once called it — is the most important part of the show. “The first inkling I had that we had something special was shooting the pilot,” Kripke says. “It was the scene on the bridge when Sam and Dean talk about their mother. It was the first time that you really saw their chemistry and their connection as brothers on full display. Because I’ve always said this show begins and ends with whether you believe that sibling relationship.” But Sam and Dean weren’t just the center of the show. For many years, they were the show.

Supernatural has never been an ensemble drama. For the first 82 hours of the series, Ackles and Padalecki were the only long-running series regulars — Katie Cassidy and Lauren Cohan briefly joined for season 3, appearing in 12 episodes combined. But Sam and Dean weren’t just in every episode; they anchored every episode. (They skipped table reads because there would’ve been only two actors there.) “I had many moments of not only questioning, ‘Can I keep this up?’ but an answer of ‘I cannot keep this up,’ ” Padalecki, 37, who’s been vocal about his struggle in the early seasons, says. “I borrowed strength from Jensen.” But even Ackles, 42, admits it was a tough job. “The 23-episode seasons were nine and a half months of filming,” he adds. “It was a lot of work, but I always came back to: I still enjoy it, I still like telling the story, I still like these characters and the people I work with.”

Not only did the guys stick around, they built a reputation of having created one of the warmest sets in the business, with a number of crew members staying with the production all 15 seasons. It all dates back to a talk Kripke had with his stars during the filming of the series’ second episode. “I said, ‘The show is about your two characters, and with that comes this responsibility,’ ” Kripke says. Padalecki remembers the exact setting of what he calls their “Good Will Hunting moment,” a bench in Stanley Park in Vancouver, where they film. It was a chat both actors took to heart. “We’d both been on other sets,” Ackles says. “We knew we wanted to enjoy it, to have fun with our crew; we wanted them to like us and us to like them and to have fun doing what we do.” It’s an attitude Pedowitz hopes bleeds into other CW shows, an attitude that launched an annual tradition where the CW chairman/CEO takes his new casts out to dinner with the Supernatural guys, a chance for the vets to share advice. “It’s always the most flattering situation,” Padalecki says, recalling a moment he had a few years back with the late Luke Perry, who was a part of the Riverdale cast. “Luke was sitting next to me and he was like, ‘What y’all have done and what we hear about you guys, it’s really cool to be associated with y’all in some way, shape, or form,’” he recalls. “And I’m sitting there pinching myself.”

It’s a behind-the-scenes legacy that’s perhaps just as impressive, if not more so, than the onscreen legacy. Collins, 45, who started as a guest star and the show’s first angel in season 4, has become the show’s third-longest-running series regular, and he still remembers walking onto set his first day. “When you’re coming onto a show as a guest star, it can be a little bit nerve-racking,” Collins says. “Coming to this set, it was an immediately different vibe. Think- ing about working on other shows in the future, that’s something that I aspire to bring with me.”

A similar reputation extends to the fans as well. Not only is the #SPNFamily one of the most dedicated fandoms out there, it’s also known to be a pretty nice one. (Not many fandoms can say they’ve helped launch a crisis support network for their fellow fans.) But their dedication isn’t just about seeing what crazy twist God throws at Team Free Will next. Thanks to fan conventions and social media, the viewers are just as invested in the lives of the actors. Supernatural’s not just about the words on the page, it’s about the actors saying them. “When you’re dealing with the public taste, there’s an alchemy of great writing, a great idea, and the close-up that’s required,” Peter Roth, chairman of Warner Bros. Television Group, says. “You need stars who you want in your living room.” And you need stars who want to be in your living room, and who, even after 15 years, care so deeply that they get emotional while taking photos in Malibu.

"It's going to be a long eight months," Ackles declares. Standing on that same ledge, an hour before the champagne shot, Ackles, Padalecki, and Collins walk away from a group hug after unexpectedly starting to tear up. It might be the setting — looking out over the ocean — or the occasion: their last-ever photo shoot. Or maybe it’s the fact that they’re almost a month into filming their final season.

It had been a question posed to the stars for years: How long will this show continue? How long can it continue? “Even my mom and dad were like, ‘When are you going to be done with this?’” Ackles says with a laugh. It was a decision the network and studio had ultimately put into the actors’ hands, and it was a conversation they’d been having for a while. Back in 2016, Padalecki told EW, “If we don’t make it to [episode] 300, I think Ackles and I will both be truly bummed.” But in season 14, they hit 300…and then kept going. While filming episode 307, they announced the upcoming 15th season would be the end, which will bring them to a total of 327 episodes when all is said and done. “[Jared] and I were always married to the fact that we never wanted to go out with a diet version of what we had,” Ackles says. “We wanted to have enough gas left in the tank to get us racing across the finish line. We didn’t want to limp across.” Padalecki remembers the moment it hit him — not the decision to end it, but rather the opposite. “We had that moment where he and I both realized that we didn’t want it to end,” he says. “It finally got to a point, ironically, where it was like, ‘I never want to leave this. I could do this until the day I die, and then if I get the choice when I’m dead, I’ll re-up!’ But you never want to be the last person at a party. We just knew. That’s not to say there haven’t been vacillations, but we all trust the decision that was made.”

Starting in July 2019, the cast and crew returned to Vancouver to begin filming the final season, but in March 2020, with two episodes left to go, they were sent home. For years, fans had wondered what, if anything, could stop the Winchesters, and now it seems we have the answer: a global pandemic. As sets closed amid social-distancing measures due to the spread of COVID-19, it didn’t take long for fans to start connecting the dots, sharing relevant GIFs from episodes that featured viruses, most notably Chuck telling Dean to hoard toilet paper “like it’s made of gold” before the end of the world in season 5’s “The End.” (Did we mention that Supernatural is also kind of psychic? In a season 6 episode, Dean calls Sam “Walker, Texas Ranger,” which just so happens to be the role Padalecki has lined up after this ends.)

When production paused, it all felt a little like we were living in an episode of the show, just waiting for Sam and Dean to drive up in Baby, open those creaky doors, and save us. They might not be able to do quite that, but the thing with the Winchesters is that they never stay down for long. When Supernatural is able to safely resume production, it will. And though there are only two episodes left to film, fans will enjoy a total of seven unseen hours, including the return of Charlie (Felicia Day) and a mystery woman who visits the bunker and, for some reason, gives Sam and Dean all the holidays they never got to celebrate. “She makes Christmas for them and Thanksgiving, birthday parties, and all that. It’s a very good episode,” Singer says, adding, “I don’t know when it’s going to air.”

That’s the thing—no one knows, not even the guys who took out Yellow Eyes, stopped Leviathans, defeated Death himself, and are supposedly destined to be the messengers of God’s destruction. But Sam and Dean do know the value of a good plan B. “Obviously it’s a horribly unfortunate situation we’re in, but the silver lining is that it gives us an opportunity to recharge,” Ackles says. “We had just finished episode 18, we shot one day of episode 19, and I was reading these two monster scripts thinking, ‘It’s like we’re at the end of a marathon and they want us to sprint for the last two miles.’ I feel like this almost gives us an opportunity to refocus and go into the last two episodes and hit them with everything we got.” Because when they do return to set, shave their quarantine beards, and step back into Sam and Dean’s shoes for the last time, they’ll have one shot at ending this thing…and they’re determined not to miss.

Photos: Peggy Sirota for EW

https://ew.com/tv/supernatural-stars-cover-ew-to-reflect-on-the-shows-undying-legacy/

#supernatural #jensen ackles #jared padalecki #misha collins #last season #season 15 #entertainment weekly #cover story #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #full post #SPN #spn family #new photo #new photos

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jess-rewatches-prodigalson · 3 years

Text

Bad Manners (S2, E5)

My time-stamped thoughts for this episode. As always I reference Malcolm’s mental health. A lot. So if that’s going to be a trigger for you, don’t keep reading.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

0:35 - Martin totally thought John Watkins abducted and killed Ainsley. Mark my words.

0:44 - Holy. Shit. Ainsley is FIVE years old (or younger) here right? A five year old with that much determination?!?! She literally stayed silent in that clock for probably hours......and no one was concerned about this kid when Martin was arrested because...?

1:09 - Anyone else impressed with Malcolm’s aim here? Just me?

1:20 - Gil and Malcolm talking about sleep and murder is so freaking sweet. <3 Honestly, they’re acting like friends instead of co-workers and it warms my cold dead heart.

1:29 - Does Gil become a grumpy old man when he doesn’t get 8 hours sleep? I really want to know now.

1:39 - OMG. Gil pointing at Ainsley here is hilarious. He’s totally acting like some weird mix of a stern pissed off high-school teacher, and a step-dad trying to discipline an unruly teen. hahaha AND MALCOLM’S FACE. Look how done Malcolm is. He looks so so tired, sad, and exasperated.

1:44 - Wow. Girl power. Ainsley has those camera guys bending to her will. I honestly would’ve thought they would just read the situation and turn the camera off themselves.

1:47 - “It’s not a game.” Yikes. I have thoughts about this:

Malcolm is right - it’s not a game.

Malcolm is a bit of a hypocrite for saying that to Ainsley. Although, to his credit even when Malcolm is excited/inappropriately happy about murder it’s always pretty clear that he thinks murder is wrong, and that he has sympathy for the victims and their families.

Ainsley does not have that same sympathy for the victims. That much is clear later in this episode.

Pretty sure the writers are trying to turn Ainsley into a serial killer this season.

2:13 - “You know I like to share these things with my friends.” .....does this mean Malcolm thinks Dani and JT are his friends now? Last I checked (Ep 1x05) Malcolm didn’t have friends. This absolutely melts my heart. <3 I’m honestly so happy that Malcolm considers someone other than Gil to be his friend.

2:18 - “We lost Dani to vice.” .....What is vice? AND WHAT IS THE REAL LIFE REASON THAT DANI WASN’T IN THIS EPISODE?!?

2:19 - Edrisa has a medical degree right? She has to know how dangerous consuming that much caffeine is right? Plus aren’t energy drinks super dangerous if you drink a lot of them (or maybe that’s just what adults in my neighbourhood told kids)?

2:30 - Edrisa SHINES in this episode. She’s so funny and awkward and I just love her.

2:36 - hahaha Gil has adopted the whole team. Look at him throwing the “Dad warning stare” at Edrisa.

3:31 - Why does Edrisa start bouncing around looking upset when Malcolm says, “rejection is a powerful motivator”?!?! Has she recently been broken up with or something? Is this a reference to how she has a crush on Malcolm (who doesn’t reciprocate)? I WANT MORE INFORMATION.

3:47 - TWIZZLERS!!! <3 Damn I love how this tiny detail about Malcolm’s character keeps coming up.

3:55 - Ainsley is on a rampage this episode. She’s so determined ...actually she’s acting a lot like Jessica (think girl in the box bracelet). However, unlike Jessica, Ainsley’s motives aren’t about justice or the safety of her loved ones. Ainsley is chasing personal gain (career) with a side of (a subconscious?) need to be exposed to murder and her father’s twisted world.

4:05 - This whole interaction between Ainsley and Malcolm is really interesting. Ainsley is knowingly manipulating Malcolm to get the answers she wants. We’ve seen her do it in 2x4 and 1x19. She knows her big brother would do anything for her. It makes sense, they’re five years apart and after the trauma they experienced as children Malcolm felt responsible to protect Ainsley. He never wants to disappoint Ainsley. Not a burden he should’ve had to deal with but I digress. PLUS Malcolm looks weary of Ainsley here. He knows what she’s doing. He’s scared that she’s turning to the dark side. But he still gives her the answers because if he doesn’t - that means something has changed. He thinks that would make Ainsley suspicious and then she might remember what happened to Endicott. He’s scared of and for Ainsley.

4:32 - OKAY. I’ll say it. The thing that annoys me the most about this episode is that it suggests that Ainsley was a debutant when in 1x6 AINSLEY TELLS MARTIN SHE WAS NEVER A DEBUTANT. She went to etiquette school - I guess that doesn’t strictly mean she also did debutant balls but it sort of suggests it in the context of this episode? Did she actually graduate from the etiquette school (there was bullying, maybe she was expelled/dropped out similar to Malcolm and Remington?)?

4:59 - “No stabbies” OMG. How is this show not classified as a comedy?!? Istg I laugh harder watching this ‘drama’ then I do watching most of the shows that call themselves ‘comedies’.

5:35 - It’s honestly kind of amazing that Ainsley and Malcolm are as ‘sane’ as they are. They were raised by a stubborn predatory psychopath and a stubborn rich meddling socialite. They had no chance of normalcy. Look at the amount of pleasure Martin is currently getting by throwing his son under the bus with regards to Jessica.

5:45 - “No actually, I cleaned it up.”.....does this have a dual meaning? Did Martin do something to make Malcolm dispose of the body? We already know that Martin has tried some sort of conditioning on Malcolm (remember ‘C’mon boy!’ from 1x14? The stabbing?). What if Martin said some sort of trigger word to control Malcolm and coerced Malcolm into getting rid of the body? What if this isn’t the first time?

6:05 - Ainsley is a sociopath. I’m calling it again. I called it when I first watched Q&A (1x7) because the way she treated Malcolm was more than just selfish/careless. It was cruel and she didn’t feel any remorse for literally broadcasting her brother’s private health details on television. That is messed up. I honestly won’t be shocked if the writers make Ainsley a full blown serial killers (although I’m not sure I want that because I don’t know how Malcolm would remain the main character if the story goes in that direction?).

6:12 - Poor Jessica. I honestly feel really bad for her. Sure, she’s a headstrong alcohol dependant crazy rich woman. She also has a good heart. She’s been dealt a pretty shitty hand when it comes to relationships (minus Gil but she ruined that because she’s a MORON) and now she’s terrified that her own children have become monsters and she blames herself. She definitely hasn’t been a perfect mother but I don’t think she’s to blame for Ainsley and Malcolm’s obsession with murder. If these kids had a different bio dad, they would probably just have a low-key drug problem or some other common rich kid baggage.

6:15 - “You know that’s not how cancer works right?” LOL. hahahaha

6:33 - Martin kind of has a point. There’s no rehab for murder. That’s why he’s been in jail for 20 years and he still wants to kill people. In my opinion, given what we’ve seen of Ainsley’s personality: as soon as she fully remembers that night - she’s gone. She’ll go full serial killer and Jessica and Malcolm will lose her forever.

6:40 - Jessica’s little jazz hand finger twinkle as she spins on her heel and leaves Martin kills me. It’s so extra. It’s so funny. And it’s sooo Jessica.

6:47 - Damn. Martin is pissed. I’m worried. That’s murder-level rage. If he escapes ISTG Martin is going to try and kill Gil. For so many reasons 1) because he hates Gil, 2) it’ll hurt Jessica, and 3) killing Gil will eliminate his ‘Dad’ competition.

6:54 - Edrisa on caffeine is AMAZING.

7:43 - I love Edrisa but her blatant, unreciprocated crush on Malcolm is honestly getting a little creepy.

7:52 - Gil spent all last season drinking out of a Yankee’s mug. Doesn’t that mean he’s a baseball fan? Why doesn’t he know this pitcher guy?

7:56 - hahahaa “Where is JT?” Because obviously JT is the team sports fan.

8:22 - Does Gil get nightmares about cases? He always seems really uncomfortable around the dead bodies.

8:45 - “And suddenly I’m wide awake” SERIOUSLY - is anyone else laughing every 60 seconds when they watch this show? Is my sense of humour just super dark and messed up?

8:54 - YES. The liquorice is BACK.

9:00 - I love Malcolm talking to JT about his obsession with candy. I love how Malcolm doesn’t even hesitate before giving JT an honest answer. Malcolm is acting like JT’s annoying little brother and I am here for it. One thing I did notice though - Malcolm specifically mentions candy+dopamine but doesn’t mention his depression/anxiety. Processed sugar can be a short-term (unhealthy) way to boost your mood. It’s why some people eat their feelings. I really want more backstory about Malcolm with the lollipops and licorice though.

9:19 - “But you didn’t do anything wrong.” Awwww Malcolm is so soft here. I love how much he genuinely cares about JT. <3 I love how JT is comfortable enough with Malcolm to give him an honest answer. <3 THEIR RELATIONSHIP HAS GONE THROUGH SUCH A GLOW UP. <3

9:32 - “Like toy dolls?” hahaha the way Malcolm perked up here. All I could think was “SQUIRREL!” hahaha.

9:41 - Malcolm is doing better than he has been the past few episodes? I mean he’s still suffering and he’s still in a terrible mental state. BUT he also seems happier? IDK maybe he’s just entered the more manic nervous energy stage of his emotions as opposed to the depressed and scared stage.

9:49 - “Deep childhood trauma”. So we’re looking for a debutant killer with childhood trauma who is chasing perfection? Debutant = rich lady culture. Like Ainsley. AND Ainsley went to the same etiquette school as the first two victims. The writer’s wanted us to assume the killer was Ainsley for the first 15 mins of this episode right? I’m not the only one seeing it?

10:04 - “My sister went there too.” ....why is there something super attractive about the way that line was delivered?

10:08 - I’m so done with this absolute tom foolery. Why does the team keep splitting up into two teams - where one team is JUST MALCOLM. The one who is unarmed and technically a civilian?!? This makes no logical sense to me (except for plot).

10:25 - Was Martin just about to say, “Just like the old days”?!? Is Martin referring to Endicott? OR is Martin referring to something that Malcolm’s repressed from his childhood?

10:30 - “I always root for the bad guys.” .....finally some truth from Martin.

10:40 - Soooooo I guess Mr. David doesn’t know? I promise you Mr. David has suspicions though. How could he not?!?!

11:24 - “It was brutal for Ains.” Look at how sad Malcolm is! Ugh. This hurts so much. He clearly loves his sister so so much and what she’s done is slowly killing him. I honestly think that part of the reason Malcolm helped Ainsley dispose of the body is that Malcolm doesn’t want to loose his sister. His sister is one of the only good things he’s always been able to count on. If word gets around that she’s a killer - Malcolm’s fragile world gets shattered a little more and I don’t know if Malcolm can recover mentally from that.

11:36 - “Teasing made her capable of...stuff.” C’MON. There’s no way Mr. David doesn’t know.

11:45 - Sooo is Martin saying that he recognized that Ainsley was a sociopath when she was a small child? Or did she just respond to his (or John Watkins’) grooming much ‘better’ than Malcolm?

11:56 - “Because she’s her mother’s” Okay. So I see the point. I can see that Ainsley is driven and stubborn like Jessica. BUT it feels like Martin is suggesting that Jessica is capable of murder? Which - I honestly don’t think she is. If anything - Malcolm is more like Jessica than Ainsley is.

11:59 - There was a look in Martin’s eyes when he was comparing Ainsley to Jessica that really freaked me out. I can’t figure out why. It makes me wonder if Martin still somehow views Jessica as ‘his possession’ (he refers to her as his wife all the time but I always assumed that was just to get a rise out of people?). Martin’s dream from 2x4 certainly suggests that he still wants Jessica romantically. I honestly think he’s going to try to escape and rekindle the romance with Jess; and it’s going to go very poorly when Jessica rejects him.

12:06 - Preach JT. Preach. This is creepy af.

13:00 - Ugh. Of course this creep has a history of indecent exposure. Now I understand why Gil and JT were hostile with the dude right from the start.

13:12 - Man. People will use the Bible to justify anything. No wonder people hate Christians ( I say this as a practicing Christian).

13:18 - JT is such a good dude. I’m so glad he’s a dad now. <3 He’s going to be such a good one. <3

13:26 - “One phone call and this place will be shut down.” OH SHIT. GIL THAT IS VICIOUS AND I RESPECT THE SHIT OUT OF IT.

13:35 - I soooo thought that dude was going to sprint out of that room.

14:30 - THIS. YES. This is why I have a problem with Ainsley’s enthusiasm for murder vs. Malcolm’s. Ainsley’s enthusiasm is centred on her nee to ‘get the story’. She’s obsessed with forwarding her career and as a result she’s treating crime like a competitive sport. Malcolm’s obsession (while it can border on creepy and reckless) is always centred on his need to find the killer and stop the murders. Malcolm is seeking justice and his heart is in the right place. I can’t say the same for Ainsley.

14:31 - “We’re brother and sister, everything is a competitive sport”.....whoever wrote this doesn’t have a sibling they experienced trauma with as a kid (and as a result was raised by a single parent). Seriously, my dad was abusive he lived with us until I was 10 and my brother was 7. Then my parents got divorced and my mom was a single parent (he didn’t pay child support or see his kids after the divorce). Are my brother and I competitive? Sure sometimes. But the way we grew up forced us to become partners. Annoyed with Mom? Let’s rant about it together. Is he struggling in math? I’ll tutor him in exchange for a Reese cup. Am I struggling at daycare because I have massive social anxiety? He’ll include me in whatever he’s doing so I’m not sitting alone in a corner. My point: siblings who experience trauma together don’t have the typical sibling relationships that are widely televised in North America. There’s a lot less fighting and competition and a lot more teaming up and commiserating.

14:39 - “It. It’s terrible.” - Notice how Ainsley didn’t actually say how it made her feel? She gave the standard “TV response” to a murder “a terrible/horrific/tragedy has occurred”. She doesn’t feel bad that these women are dead. She’s too consumed with getting a story to even stop and let herself feel anything. I’ve been saying it since last season - the way Ainsley shows no regard for other people and their feelings when she’s obsessed with her job is concerning.

14:50 - “Remind me of the people who cut us off after Dad’s arrest.” ...Are you kidding me?!? The whole fandom has been speculating about this since early season one and they’re not going to elaborate on that line?!? I’m going to need some more information about this and it better be in the upcoming episode where Jessica’s younger sister appears.

15:40 - She thinks of her students as family? Sooo what does she think of Ainsley? Wasn’t Ainsley bullied at this school? Did she do anything about it?

16:00 - this is like a ‘weekend/evening school’ right? Kids aren’t living in this house like a boarding school/summer camp?

16:01 - “Mr. Whitly” UGH. This bitch preaches etiquette and she doesn’t even have the common courtesy to call Malcolm by the name with which he introduced himself? Nah. I don’t like her.

16:13 - Ugh. Ainsley, seriously? Why don’t you help your brother solve the case. AND PREVENT MORE MURDERS. Why are you indirectly but purposely obstructing justice?

16:37 - “Of course.” Huh. Do you think Martin might try and manipulate Ainsley into killing Malcolm? Ainsley definitely capable of it. She doesn’t actually seem to care about Malcolm nearly as much as he cares about her.

17:17 - WTF?!? That’s creepy af. How did no one in this show think this assistant was a suspect? She has a super creepy doll that she ‘forgot’ on the floor the middle of a hallway. AND THE DOLL WAS STANDING UP. Not sitting, not dropped carelessly, STANDING UP.

17:30 - Look at Malcolm’s face. He’s definitely going to be having nightmares about that doll.

18:25 - OMG. This was amazing. JT just totally bulldozed his way into catching that dude. Very badass. Also kind of funny (maybe that’s just my messed up sense of humour again?).

18:44 - Ugh. This dude has a thing for dolls. I don’t want to kink shame but - no. no. There’s something really gross about that.

18:48 - I’ve seen some people say that this doll looks like Ainsley and how that’s supposed to be some sort of foreshadowing/symbolism. I kind of see it? I mean the hair colour is similar and if you pause the screen at 18:48 the angle kind of looks like Ainsley? It would be an interesting metaphor though - Ainsley played with dolls as a little girl. John Watkins gave her angel statues. She is Watkins’ and Martin’s doll’ in the sense that she was the object that murders manipulated/groomed.

18:53 - Then again, pause the screen here and there’s something about the facial structure that looks like Dani to me.

19:00 - Jessica lets Ainsley work in the murder office?!? No. No she doesn’t. This is garbage. Jessica would’ve forbade it. Jessica would’ve bordered up this room immediately after Watkins.

19:57 - Poor Jessica. She’s clearly terrified that she’s losing Ainsley and terrified of Ainsley. BUT Jess, sweetie, running to Europe won’t fix this.

20:16 - “She wanted the dolls to look like her students.” AND PEOPLE SEND THEIR CHILDREN TO HER?!? WTF?!? NO. NO. NO. NOT OKAY.

20:31 - HAHA look at Gil’s face when Trevor tells him he can make the ‘perfect woman’. Gil’s like WTF - can I arrest you for thinking you can fabricate a ‘perfect woman’?!!?

21:06 - Malcolm is having so much fun playing with Trevor’s doll head. Look at how excited he is. It’s kind of adorable but his manic energy is showing which is concerning.

21:10 - Why is Trevor giving his doll fancy 1940s(ish) names?

21:31 - Props to LDP. I honestly believed Gil was annoyed with Malcolm for barging in on the interrogation the first time I watched this.

21:42 - “They got a word for everything.” hahaha OMG. This is so reminiscent of a teenager explaining some new tech to their tech-illiterate parents.

22:00 - I can’t tell if Gil feels sorry for this creep or if he just thinks the dude is really gross. Probably a mixture.

23:00 - Oh we’re bringing up the chloroform again. At least Malcolm knows not listen to Martin about this nonsense.

23:25 - “It doesn’t feel fun.” - THIS. This is why I honestly don’t think Malcolm will ever become a serial killer. His guilt complex is just too big.

23:56 - Are. You. Kidding. Me? This is next level. Ainsley is so out of line here. AND SHE SHOWS NO REMORSE. SHE DOESN’T THINK SHE’S DONE ANYTHING WRONG. THIS GIRL HAS GONE DARK SIDE (she was already halfway there).

24:17 - I’m getting papa!Gil vibes when Gil is talking to Ainsley and I want more scenes of them interacting. Seriously, did Gil have a relationship with Ainsley when she was a kid? I MUST KNOW.

24:45 - Ainsley has no conscience. I honestly don’t think Ainsley has a conscience.

25:00 - “Who is that!?” Malcolm is totally acting like he’s Ainsley’s father-figure right now. I’m here for it.

25:22 - SORE LOSERS?!? I’m sorry. What? If you weren’t concerned about Ainsley you damn well should be now. That is seriously messed up. People are dead. This is not a game. Do you know who else thought murder was a game? Martin Whitly.

25:31 - Okay. Ainsley has a point. Malcolm lecturing anyone about being reckless is pretty hypocritical. But at least Malcolm cares about her.

25:54 - Heart. Shattered. Look at how terrified Jessica is. Look at how gentle and reassuring Gil is. UGh. WHY DID SHE BREAK UP WITH HIM??! I mean, I know why I just think she’s a moron for doing it.

26:00 - Poor Gil. He’s so confused and so concerned. The whole Whitly family is acting crazier then usual and he doesn’t know why.

26:11 - “Both you and Malcolm are at an 11 and I’ve never seen Ainsley like that.” FIND YOURSELF A MAN WHO CARES LIKE GIL AND NEVER LET HIM GO. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 Seriously. The love and concern he shows for this family warms my cold dead heart.

26:16 - “Her father?!” Oh shit. Now Gil knows there’s something BIG happening. Jessica would never run to Martin unless she absolutely had to.

26:19 - annnnd Gil’s also being a prideful man who’s feeling are hurt. “You went to him?” He’s right to be though - the woman he loves went to a serial killer for advice before going to the guy who practically co-parented with her.

26:33 - “I’m here. Whatever you need. I’m here.” <3 <3 Gil is the definition of a good man. <3 I’m in love with it.

26:48 - “You were right on time for me.” ....*snort* subtle Gil (and in front of JT!!)

27:08 - Edrisa is hysterical on caffeine. hahaha. This whole scene is perfect.

27:20 - You know someone is acting manic when Malcolm Bright is concerned about their eccentric behaviour.

27:34 - Annnnnd Tom Payne was a split second from breaking character here. I don’t blame him. hahaha

28:05 - EDRISA flipping and dropping that pencil. HAHAHAHAHAHA

29:10 - “Absolutely not.” hahaha this is funny but also really sweet. Malcolm knows that Edrisa hopped up on caffeine isn’t safe to have near an active killer. Who knows what’ll happen. I wish he’d care that much about his own well being. Looks like calling for backup last episode was a one time thing.

30:37 - I’ll give the writers one thing - Miss Windsor makes a convincing murder suspect.

31:22 - GIL. STANDING. UP. FOR. JT. IS. EVERYTHING. Where is O’Malley’s back up? Oh yeah, they’re not brave enough to defend him.

32:00 - Huh. Bright texted for backup. This is growth. I’m proud of him.

32:15 - YES. This JT arc was handled right. Sure JT could’ve complained. It would’ve been episodes upon episodes of bureaucratic nightmares and injustice. This show isn’t about racism. They showed enough to portray that the system is broken and they had JT act like a responsible adult. It’s not fair that JT had to go through this or that he’ll likely experience something similar to it again. But the fact that JT is acting like a bigger person is perfect. JT will protect his family. Always. That includes Malcolm. So JT avoids putting through a formal complaint because he knows that will take time away from doing his job, from protecting others, from hanging out with his wife and kid. JT’s taking the higher road, it might not be gratifying or fair but I respect the hell out of him for taking it.

32:28 - Gil is so so proud of JT. Look at him. <3 <3

33:40 - Look, Miss Windsor is a bit of a stuck up bitch but she has a good heart. Look at the way she immediately tells Malcolm where Ainsley is when she realizes what’s happening.

34:14 - This confused me during the first watch - Ainsley obviously didn’t drink any tea - so why is she drugged? (obviously I know now).

34:17 - Big brother Malcolm frantically looking for Ainsley is so so sweet. <3

35:42 - The music, the dolls, and Miss Windsor’s speech here. There’s something about this part of the episode that is strangely reminiscent of 5x16 of Criminal Minds.

36:20 - ......does Miss Windsor have some sort of mental illness? She’s talking to herself and ranting erratically. Is this just emotional stress or something deeper?

37:00 - This is why Malcolm’s not a serial killer. Even now- looking at a killer - he’s trying to sympathize with her. He’s trying to understand why. He’s trying to calm her down, diffuse the threat, and get her mental help.

39:00 - Oh yeah. Ainsley was definitely going to kill without remorse. Again. I’ve seen some theories that Ainsley only ever tries to kill to protect Malcolm. I disagree. I think Ainsley’s trying to protect herself. Ainsley is pissed off that this girl tried to drug her and kill her because she thinks Ainsley is wicked. Ainsley was pissed at Endicott for whatever he did to Ainsley before Malcolm got there. I think Ainsley felt threatened and scared so she reacted. I don’t think this has anything to do with protecting Malcolm.

39:41 - Malcolm isn’t a killer. Look. He smells gas but he takes the time to carry an unconscious murderer (who literally just tried to kill his sister) out of the building.

40:00 - The drama. Holy hell. What a weird ending to this case.

40:48 - Who gave Ainsley a police jacket and let her keep it?

41:14 - She almost died and she’s still obsessing over ‘winning’. This is seriously unstable behaviour. Way more concerning than anything Malcolm’s done since 2x1.

41:45 - “My father was a serial killer also.” Anyone else super irritated by that phrasing?!? Just me?!? Something about the ‘also’ feels super wrong to me.

41:53 - Oh sweetie. I’d argue that you are more messed up than Malcolm.

42:06 - Jessica went to see Martin twice in one episode. THIS IS BAD.

42:15 - “Maybe even more so than Malcolm if that’s possible.” Jessica knows her kids. I’m on her side here.

42:20 - Martin is way too happy about Ainsley showing signs of serial killing.

42:30 - Jessica? You married an act. That man never existed. He’s always been a serial killer. You just didn’t know it. He’s manipulative and you were a victim to it.

42:50 - “A partner.” OH THIS IS NOT GOING TO END WELL. ESPECIALLY FOR THE GIL/JESSICA ARC.

Okay....so definitely the weakest episode of the season so far. AND the fact that we got no mention of Tally and/or the baby this episode is a crime.

BUT I’M SO SO SO EXCITED FOR THE NEXT EPISODE. It’s going to be a televised fanfic and I can’t wait.

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