...But so good to be home!

No Evil stuff from my sketchbook

There was no main conflict; I could not tell what most characters' goals were, or what tied them all together. The story was just a bunch of stuff that happened. (Ties into the flaws of late no evil not really having a clear conflict and suffering for it.)

Focus heavily on background and human characters; not what anyone reads this series for!

Explained some lore, but did not explain most things of note, such as what happened to silver sorrow, what Scrowleyow (sic) is, or why the golden spike was even stolen by Wrip? I'm genuinely so floored. I hope I missed something.

The art, paneling, and text-setting is considerably worse than Judgement. Compare side-by-side:

That Lee has moved away from comics and focuses on animation now really shows, but what extra sucks is that her backgrounds are visibly worse as well. Here are two similar forest scenes, from 11 years ago to this week:

EDIT: HOLD ON A FUCKING SECOND

it has been made very clear (in humble and back and forth and in the continuation of the temple-rebuilding plotline) that the temple's existence (or rather, the relative ease of blood sacrifice) is important for practical reasons. humble sets the stage with the expectation that the concerns are not theoretical and have measurable stakes (i.e. a set timeline. back and forth articulates the sacrifices as being both a part of appreciating and appeasing the earth, and makes it clear that consequences of sacrifices not being provided are expected, but nevertheless not necessarily taught with specificity.

i do think, with that, that the connection to tlaltecuhtli is pretty clear with regard to the ritual's purpose and the appearance of the caves of sacrifice. to quote from her wikipedia page a bit, because it does a better job of conveying the information that i want to (important bits in bold).

Tlaltecuhtli is described as a sea monster (sometimes called Cipactli) ... One day, the gods Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca descended from the heavens in the form of serpents and found [her] sitting on top of the ocean with giant fangs, crocodile skin, and gnashing teeth calling for flesh to feast on ... they set out to destroy her ... In the fight that followed, Tezcatlipoca lost his foot and Tlaltecuhtli lost her lower jaw, taking away her ability to sink below the surface of the water. After a long struggle, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl managed to rip her body in two — from the upper half came the sky, and from the lower came the earth.[6] She remained alive, however, and demanded human blood as repayment for her sacrifice. [...] As a source of life, it was thought necessary to appease Tlaltecuhtli with blood sacrifices, especially human hearts. The Aztecs believed that Tlaltecuhtli's insatiable appetite had to be satisfied or the goddess would cease her nourishment of the earth and crops would fail.[12]

both metztli and tonaltzintli have their own cave, which can be interpreted a lot of ways but i am setting that aside for this post. the cave for tonaltzintli looks like this (as shown in back and forth, when the water isn't flowing as much)

now, i do think the consequences for a lapse in sacrifice are real, but i do not think it's necessarily crops failing (or certainly not just that).

to get started i'm just going to quote another section of her wikipedia page:

Tlaltecuhtli is typically depicted as a squatting toad-like creature with massive claws, a gaping mouth, and crocodile skin, which represented the surface of the earth. In carvings, her mouth is often shown with a river of blood flowing from it or a flint knife between her teeth, a reference to the human blood she thirsted for.

familiar right??

chupacabra my beloved beasts!! a reptilian sanguivore that hops and have jagged teeth!!

in amaroq explains: recognizing chupacabra, we get a couple other details about them laid out:

"it's been around forever and it needs blood to survive. it doesn't seem satisfied with the blood of random varmints in the woods; it's almost like it needs to cause a lot of heartache when it takes its dinner."

"these beasts are said to come from the bowels of the earth and that [the] smell [of sulfur] never leaves them"

"now these things never stop growing as long as they got their food...they're the sort of beast that will grow out of a skin and leave it behind"

now, in tour guide, edmonia expresses concern about the ritual blood sacrifice potentially summoning the chupcabra from the cave of sacrifice - if chupacabra come from the earth, and need blood, why tempt fate? (we have not seen tonaltzintli or metztli since tour guide - no evil: revelry is set a little before - so we don't know if the chupacabra + cave connection is 1) new information to anyone in the city other than charles and 2) if it is 'new', how anyone reacts)

there's a different ways to take this. you could say chupacabra are a symptom of not enough blood being sacrificed in a given area, and are "sent" to take the earth's due (and that's why they target humans and livestock specifically). you could say that the caves either contain (or are themselves) some ancient and therefore huge versions of chupacabra that are sleeping that need to stay sedated with blood. you could say that doing the blood sacrifice is staving off a plague of chupacabra in general - if they're sated in the bowels of the earth, why would they leave? that kind of thing.

i imagine that any or all of those things could be in play. we don't really know. but i do want to include something else.

when i was talking with @clementine-trees about the nomes, she referenced calamity observes: the land and sea, which includes the following:

long ago, the world was all living. i mean all living, not just us. the rocks, mountains, pillars of land moved, ate, slept - or maybe i shouldn't say was. if something's body is that big, their time might be big also - taking a short eon nap beneath a quilt of aqua blue. the strange habits of those people near the water's edge come from somewhere. things done for centuries lost to living memory. i might do some strange things too if it meant keeping on friendly terms with the landscape

which was an EXTREMELY timely reminder so i cannot thank faer enough. it promptly pivoted my inclinations away from the earth (just) sending a chupacabra calamity catastrophe to 1) the potential Giant Chupacabra and 2) The Earth Rising Up.

now personally i like the idea of just two giant chupacabra clawing themselves out to start eating people, but given we also have calamity observes: sky and earth i am inclined to think that we are going to see a personification aspect to it.

i would hazard a guess in general that we're going to have some of what's mentioned in those two calamity observes episodes - the sky, sea, land, and deep earth (the distinction between the latter mostly from sky and earth). both include the implication that such large actions might have stopped, but they might just be stopped "for now", so i'm personally running with that foreshadowing.

just to pull it back a bit to the cities, though (like this post isn't long enough), i do think that tonaltzintli and metztli were the choices to house the red and white tezcatlipoca because they were the respective followers of either coyolxauhqui (metztli) and tepeyellotl (tonaltzintli). my main basis for that thought is the statues at each of their entry areas:

(the first screenshot is from banishing babies and the second is from black white and red all over)

you can see the visual similarities if you look at the other depictions that we have of the two of them. from no evil: judgement:

the first statue (from metztli) resembles coyolxauhqui, wielding what resembles a larger version of the tuning fork. it appears to have cloven hooves, like a goat, and long hair.

the second statue (from tonaltzintli) resembles tepeyellotl - the shape of the ears on top of the head, the nose, the spots on his legs. he is holding something that could be compared to the mirror.

i would not be surprised if either/both of the statues are referencing specific statues (or a specific statue) but someone smarter than me can make that post

between the statues and the presence of the red/white tezcatlipocas, i'm reasonably confident in this connection (though i am extrapolating a bit for the "follower" aspect, but i think it's a relatively natural extension)