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Spiraling oil paint brush strokes fill the night sky, filled with stars. The Nightcrawler is nestled into itself, and then rises in the next panel. Roman numeral two appears above its head in large bold text. The Nightcrawler faces towards the viewer, the triangular mark on its head now visible and glowing. As a result, it resembles Comet's cloak more closely.

this panel is pretty self-explanatory- a nice introductory page to reaffirm that nightcrawler is the second half of comet's ""survivor duo"" now that they're here!

A black and white page is filled with textured brush strokes resembling singe marks. Some finer details are strewn throughout, like a spine, Comet posing with and without clothes, and eyes that stare at the words on screen. Surrounded by a real photograph of a dried flower arrangement is a poem. The poem reads, Dusk to dawn, Florid prize, Song is loud, Rein is mine. And oh it's terror to love no one. But I love someone. In the darker parts of the page there is a spiral textured overlay.

to the best of my understanding, this page is a poem that has been altered by removing specific words to change the focus perhaps from a love story or romantic piece of writing into something more akin to what comet is currently experiencing. line by line, 'dusk to dawn' obviously represents comet's episodes going from being set during the day to instead taking place exclusively at night- 'florid prize' may simply relate to the flowers on the page or perhaps the honeysuckles the nightcrawler gifts to comet later in the episode. next, there's 'song is loud'. i believe the "song" in question here is the often-shown humming sound produced by hivecores:

(it is important to note this hivecore in specific is from episode 19, the first sighting of a hivecore and more importantly a comet episode! fossil dialogue is from epsiode 29. there's a similar one in 64 as well)

this makes the most sense to me, given the fact that starsheet and therefor apparitia are a direct result of hivecore signals corrupting the minds of survivors. it could also reference comet's flute, maybe?

and finally, for the first verse, there's 'rein is mine'. i think this line is meant to be ironic, considering comet's growing loss of control due to fatal insomnia; it may also be referring to the nightcrawler 'taking the reins', so to speak. this will become much more obvious at the end of the post

the second verse is probably the strangest, though- 'And o it's terror to love no one, but I love someone'. my theory on this one requires some context we'll get to in a bit.

A fraction of Comet's face is shown in the next panel. On her face is a fly, which her pupil points towards. In the next panel, the fly walks down her face. Her eye and pupil are still, not following the fly's movements. In the last panel, a wet squelch noise is made with text on screen as one of her extra irises forms a pupil and moves to stare at the fly.

obviously, this is meant to show comet's deterioration due to apparitia; she seems to be in a state between conscious and unconscious, seeing as her eye moves to focus on the fly with one of her pupils without actually batting it away. there's not much of a deeper meaning here than to say "hey guys, comet is decomposing while still alive". definitely very concerning!

The Nightcrawler towers over Comet's tent. On the ground in front of the tent it hovers for a moment before leaving. In place of its silhouette is a small pile of food including an apple, a honeysuckle flower, and some berries.

so the nightcrawler is feeding comet, then?

The scene remains still for one panel, and in the next panel Comet's fingers begin to snake out of the opening in the tent towards the pile of food. Feeling around blindly for it in the grass, Comet extends their arm enough to reveal that their entire upper arm is covered in a thick layer of flies.

good god. hello comet. if the first fly panel wasn't blatant enough, here is direct confirmation that comet is wasting away. not JUST the flies, look at how skinny and sickly her arm is compared to previous episodes:

sadly... comet is not gonna live much longer in this state. unless by some miracle the hivecore nearby is destroyed, which likely wouldn't even cure her ailment, she's going to be following in minty's footsteps sooner rather than later.

She grabs the food, pulling it inside. In the next panel, the Nightcrawler is heading in the direction away from the tent and back towards the Rings.

i'd really like to draw attention here to just how cloak-like the nightcrawler looks in this panel. keep that in mind going forward! it'll be relevant again later.

i'll let the final pages speak for themselves, because there's not much to add:

It looks back towards Comet, when suddenly a bright light begins shining down towards it from the sky. The Nightcrawler swivels around towards the light.

The Nightcrawler then leaps backwards, away from the bright light. In a panicked state, its body has more defined shoulders, back, and some ribs showing. The jade beads attached to its body can also be seen as it throws itself backwards. The light touches its arm, burning it. The text describes the sound of hissing burning flesh.

It skids backwards in the grass on its two feet. Text describes the sound of its claws scraping the ground. The sky above parts, shining with an even brighter light. A speech bubble descends, calling Comet's name as the Nightcrawler stares upwards.

so... yeah, that's episode 101! the biggest question: what does it all mean? i'll give the theory i've seen the most commonly, why i disagree with it, and what my own interpretation is.

by far, the most common interpretation of the nightcrawler i have seen is that it is, in fact, morrigan. i think this is mostly due to the fact that comet's cloak is made of crows and obviously has a death motif around it- but i have several issues with this theory, the most important one being: morrigan is being assimilated in the rings. all of her sentinels, from EVERYWHERE, are going straight there. we've already seen this happening in a previous comet episode extremely prominently:

in fact, morrigan may not even have control over this mass-migration of her sentinels. she appears shocked in the very next page before disappearing into smoke:

so if morrigan's entire body mass is going into the rings, why would some of them hang out around a random inconsequential vagabond in outskirts? it doesn't make sense. additionally, if the nightcrawler is morrigan in the form of comet's cloak come to life, how on earth could she control it? we already know those crows died of blunt force trauma, which morrigan's sentinels do not handle well:

we've seen no evidence that morrigan's sentinels can come back to life thus far and we're over a hundred episodes in now. if that was possible, why didn't they just come back and kill citrus and spool? it seems obvious that if she could've done that, she already would've ages ago. we also have no evidence that her sentinels can take any form other than standard crows. i think all the crows in comet's episodes are moreso meant to represent exactly what they do in real life: death, misfortune, and curses. so, then, if the nightcrawler isn't morrigan... what is it?

the answer is simple: the nightcrawler is comet herself.

there's so much evidence for this it's actually insane and i will eat my hands if i'm wrong. let's start at the very beginning: the name of this episode, gemini, is obviously a reference to the zodiac sign gemini, the twins.

within astrology, the sign of gemini is represented as a stylized roman numeral two. sound familiar? it should! we've already seen it right above the nightcrawler:

(not part of the theory, but gemini is also a constellation- similar to the constellation imagery we see with razor and brandy during delirium sequences)

next, there's the matter of the nightcrawler's design. not only does it obviously resemble a cloak (remember how i said that would be important later?), it also has the exact same marking as comet's cloak does on the forehead of the skull:

as WELL as her beads, which we see her making to add to her bag, likely as well as her cloak!:

i feel like this is also the reason the nightcrawler appears to only have two limbs. what appears to be the back half of its body is actually just the trailing tail of the cloak behind comet, shrunken in and sickly from malnutrition and sleep deprivation. this would also explain why the nightcrawler appears rather skinny itself when startled; as an extension of comet, it retains the withering of her body to skin and bones.

in the final panel, we see the sky opening up to call down for comet and the nightcrawler appears to look up in response. this may just be someone looking up at a strange sound, but... how on earth would the nightcrawler be able to hear an apparitia hallucination we've already seen comet have once before? the only way this makes sense is if they're the same person. it's almost like the hallucinations are coming straight down from the sky... maybe this could all be a very elaborate reference to gemini home entertainment as we've already seen with thermos, but i think it's multifaceted.

of course, there's also the fact that even when seeing the nightcrawler walking away from comet's tent, it keeps the neon starlight associated with starsheet. if the nightcrawler is truly an unrelated entity, why would it keep the exact same spiral imagery unique to comet? gum also has apparitia, but there's no spirals to be seen within her episodes. maybe the nightcrawler is another object with apparitia, but what would the point of giving comet spiral symbolism be if it'd also go to a new character the second they show up? the simplest answer is usually correct, and in this case, the simplest answer is far and away comet and the nightcrawler being one in the same.

one piece of evidence i really like in particular relates to the scene where the nightcrawler gifts comet fruits and flowers- obviously, as we've seen dozens of times at this point, outskirts is an entirely barren grassy plain. the only things in it are occasional fields of dreamer's flowers; not a single berry bush or apple tree to be seen. we also see in the alt. text that the nightcrawler is retreating back into outer ring:

the Nightcrawler is heading in the direction away from the tent and back towards the Rings.

this obviously suggests that the gifts originated from outer ring, right? but if comet is the nightcrawler, why would she suddenly be getting over her fear of-

oh.

that's right: comet has been going into outer ring for food and supplies this entire time.

but why show this through the nightcrawler and not through comet herself? for this, i think we can turn to some of the more supplemental content on the website:

the description for the very first episode showing the nightcrawler is simply "epidermis". this puzzled me at first, but i think this post by @cypherthesilliest explains it much better than i could:

(thank you to cypher for allowing me to include this as part of my post, i really appreciate it!!)

and finally, there's the artwork released alongside the episode. i can't add it here because i hit the image limit (yes for real), but here's a link to the two images in question: one, two. in these two images, comet almost appears to be... engulfed within the nightcrawler? almost like it's growing over her or taking control in some way.

the nightcrawler, with all this evidence in mind, seems to be created unconsciously by comet as a sort of protective 'skin'; one that protects her from the horrors around her, from parasites to other objects to the apparitia slowly killing her. it's a coping mechanism at its core- and with every panel, every episode, she is further giving the reins of her life up to the nightcrawler.

and this is where i'd finally like to explain the final line of the poem:

And o it's terror to love no one But I love someone

it's true, comet has no one around them to love, no one to share there life with... no one but their own cloak, their protection from the outside world, though whether it's through courage or through madness they're finally able to confront their fear of society remains to be seen.

hell, you could say comet themself has been reduced to remains to be seen.

1- A5 WAGYU and eating as control

Wagyu is a character surrounded by the act of consumption. He had grown up in a home that was actively abusing and using him for his flesh, in an area of the Rings that would rather jump through endless logical hoops to justify eating the corpses of Wagyu and his siblings than consider his well-being. Wagyu, naive as he is with this upbringing being his only experience with life, struggles to see the problem. In fact, he prides himself on this persistent lack of control that he doesn't realize he's missing, and that mindset never leaves him. He's been successfully groomed into believing he is meant to be eaten, and little else is allowed of him. One could argue that Wagyu has thrown himself into the same logical leaps as his abusers. Still, this gives him a false sense of control, and he is able to indulge himself in the luxuries that this life affords him, notably food-- One of the things he laments about missing often.

When the apocalypse hits and Wagyu is forced away from his family, he eats. He eats so much that his teammates hate him because he is starving them. He associates food with control so much that it is all he can think to do in a world that is ripping it away from him so quickly. However, as the assimilation begins to seep into him, Wagyu loses his hunger more and more. His control is ripped away from him once more, piece by piece, both metaphorically and literally as he begins to do the bidding of what is presumably the Symbiote and parasite hivemind at large, and with it his hunger fades. This loss of control seems to be something that he almost takes pride in. It's comfortable, when he doesn't think about it too much. Most that are traumatized will often find a loss of control comforting, as part of a self-harm driven desire to return back to their restrictive shell.

One could also argue that this in itself is also consumption, as more and more people are 'fed' into the parasite hivemind as a result of his actions, though it's not to Wagyu's knowledge and is more in relation to the parasites themselves. On this note, are the parasites not also actively consuming Wagyu over and over, just as others did in his normal life? It's just a bit more.. Visceral, this time.

2- RAZOR, DYNAMITE, and identity

Razor takes pride in being a carnivore. She is, in fact, an omnivore, but she seems to want to hide this fact in an effort to be more intimidating (and enact violence, likely as an early sign of delirium).

It's easy to imagine this is related to her pride regarding her pack and Fuzzball. Razor packs aren't necessarily any more vicious than any other Outer Ring bestial, but nearly every member of the pack hasn't been afraid to bare their teeth and throw a threat or two to whoever gets in their way. It's part of the identity of being a razor, to our Razor, as it's what she's grown up with. Razor also successfully killed an object and got away with it at a young age, which may be a point of pride for her ego.

I also believe this is tied to Razor's relationship with her father, Warhammer. All of Packmother's children seem to take pride in also being Warhammer's kids, and this is no different for Razor.

This is, unquestionably, a part of her identity. Warhammer is a man of great prestige in Outer Ring, and other bestials in the ring seem to heavily covet his very presence and yearn to follow in his footsteps.

I was instead quickly distracted by the finer details of the dead tree. Embedded within Warhammers claw marks were smaller claw marks of other monsters. I am still unsure what to make of it.

He is also someone who seems to be revered as strong and intimidating, despite his seemingly practical approach to things. Warhammer casts a heavy shadow on the pack, and especially Razor, who feels even closer to him as she wears Fuzzball's corpse much like Warhammer wears Faux's. Razor's desires to be someone of power and respect likely have seed here, and it's easy to imagine that someone without wisdom would include a penchant for violence as part of that desire.

Dynamite, on the other hand, seems to initially actively reject being a carnivore. It is something he seems to have wanted to hide for all of his life. It's also implied that the other kids in Middle Ring have made these feelings even worse.

I'm also aware that the panels with him eating rocks were intended to be kind of an in-joke, but it's hard not to look at them and imagine that Dynamite has a form of pica (an eating disorder that causes cravings for non-food items) as both a manifestation of him wanting to hide that he needs to eat meats and a potential sign that he has deficiencies as a result of potentially not eating in front of others.

Thankfully, of course, the razor pack is successfully managing to start teaching him the 'right way' to be a carnivore without being able to buy food, a way that he doesn't regret every move of. In finally succeeding to hunt an animal for food purposes, this seems to be the beginning of accepting who he is as a person. He is gaining his sense of identity as an individual and embracing this, and this is near entirely portrayed through his consumption.

However, upon the killing and eating of Drum and others, Dynamite remains haunted. Over time, he tries as hard as possible to justify his actions, but the trauma stays. He can't imagine how others might see him if things ever go back to normal, and has been increasingly unstable and anxious over the course of the comic as a result. The guilt lives within him, despite just doing what he needs to to survive. In this way, he shares a little bit of overlap with our next subject…

3- CITRUS and the guilt of staying alive

The act of eating, as we know it, is inherently greedy. Both humans and animals alike eat for the sole purpose of keeping themselves alive in favor of others, and this perceptive greed is exaggerated further when things like the underpaid work put into tending fields or the mass slaughter of animals is put into consideration.

This concept is kind of put into overdrive when we look at Citrus.

The first real victim Citrus had, as we know, was his (unknowingly) adoptive mother, Calamondin. This is directly tied to the fact that his birth mother, Morrigan, created him as essentially cattle to be slaughtered. Although he tries not to show it, these two facts are things that would proceed to haunt him for the rest of his life. They seem to live within him practically every waking moment, and he will often see signs of and subconsciously reference both things throughout the comic.

Citrus has dedicated his entire life to holding people at arms length at closest as a direct result of this. As far as he's concerned, anyone getting in any sort of relationship with him is completely out of the realm of possibility, due to his relationship with eating. After all, he dared to feel a connection to Cal, and.. Well, we saw what happened there.

However, as we see him throughout the comic, despite his best efforts, Citrus falls for Spool, and immediately he begins to tie this to his traumas. His angelic vision of Spool has black wings to represent fear stemming from what was instilled in him from Morrigan, and once they have time together, all he can think of is how he took Cal's life away piece by piece.

Living for Citrus is something he actively feels the need to repent for. He doesn't show it as visibly as Dynamite, but this is only due to his lack of emotional connection. Once emotions come into view, he crumbles. Some part of him knows how greedy he is for the very act of existing, and he feels strongly about it.

And yet, whether it's out of obligation or emotion, Spool either ensures he is fed or willingly gives parts of himself to Citrus. Although Spool doesn't really have his own relationship to consumption, it's clear he sees it as important to some degree, and keeping Citrus fed is a priority to him one way or another, and this desire only grows stronger as the two get closer (whether that's due to starsheet or otherwise).

4- MINTY, BRANDY, and food as love

Minty and Brandy are a unique pairing of characters for objectified in that their relationships with food come up very little throughout the comic so far. To most casual eyes, we know that Minty's dietary restrictions mean he has mostly been eating dry crunchies ever since his world began to end, and that's about it. It's rarely brought up if ever, and isn't even given as a reason for them to leave the apartment, for short or long term.

This is something that has admittedly stumped me for a while, so I reached out to our resident Minty expert @mintyobjectified. Thanks, Minty! It was able to point some things out for me.

Although food isn't of extreme concern for them just yet, it was something that had a focus on it earlier in the comic. Once things start going to hell, Minty brings up the specific fact that he will starve in the outskirts. Brandy shortly goes out and gathers food for the group, but specifically, especially Minty. Later, we get a sequence of Minty and Brandy eating dinner together. Minty sees this as a romantic scene, close and gentle, with vague hopes that all of the problems between them could go away, while Brandy only sees Minty as colder and farther away than ever before. The sight of him seems to disgust Brandy.

After this, food is never brought up again between them. It's easy, therefore, to come to the conclusion that food and the act of eating between them is an act of love. One could even argue that their lack of focus on food is a direct parallel to their relationship. In the beginning, Brandy still harbored some feeling for Minty, a softness. There was still the ghost of their love looming over their heads. Brandy didn't have the heart to kick Minty out on the street, and he certainly didn't have the heart to let Minty starve.

But not anymore.

The lack of focus on food between them is in direct parallel to the lack of focus on themselves and each other. They are hiding their relationship woes from Sugarcube as best as they can, just as they hide their hunger.

And then, y'know, Minty dies, just as Sugarcube begins to question how strained things are getting, and she is soon to be forced to face the reality of everything, despite her fathers' best efforts.

SIDE TANGENT: DRAGONSCALE AND GUM

Dragonscale distinctly does not have much of a relationship with food, but I do think she belongs here in some fashion for similar reasons. Dragonscale notably was surrounded by food objects in the Burning Aisles, especially with her parent, and we rarely see her eating. I do believe this has something to do with her lack of care and potential lack of affection in her upbringing, as we see her eat quite a lot with Ghost Pepper by her side and little otherwise.

Gum has a closer relationship with food, as she actively tries to keep herself and her teammates fed and this is what brings her closer to Razor. This is where the obvious food/love parallel comes into play, but I also believe there's something to be said about her being a living food object and the majority of her targets/exes taking physical bites at her. In this way, "food" (Gum herself) represents love when it is abused or otherwise taken for granted by others.

5- MUSHROOM, COMET, otherness, and the dead

I'm a little bit weaker with Comet, as she suffers from not having a buuunch of screen time like the other main cast do, but I do want to make note of her before I move on to Mushroom. Most notably, Comet hunts her own food, and she is dedicated to using every part of the bodies that she creates and comes across.

This, I believe, is inspired by Native American practices in meta context, but here in the world of Objectified I am going to attempt to analyze this from the perspective of Comet as a character. A lot of this is heavy speculation.

From what I can understand, Comet, to some extent, sympathizes and feels connection with the dead. Her cloak, her dagger, everything she does is steeped in death. To live in the land known for killing nearly all who enter is not an easy task, and Comet is far more comfortable surrounded by corpses than living beings.

Comet is also an outcast by choice. She actively thinks about how much she dislikes the Rings, and how terrified she is to get any closer. It's no surprise that the parasite that tormented her is shaped like a person for an exceedingly long time. I believe her isolation, in a way, makes her a proverbial 'corpse' to the world at large, and this is where she's most comfortable. I think this is a concept brought even further with her hallucinations and the state we see her in in Gemini.

Swiftly moving on.

Mushroom is, as we know, a decomposer. She feasts upon the dead and decaying. This is played off as her being picky, but considering how characters with other diet types have specific requirements, this is likely something she seems to need to do for her own well being.

This is something built into her, much in the same way that Dynamite's carnivore diet is built into him. For Mushroom, this isn't something that effects her immensely horribly, and is something she's simply used to and comfortable with despite it often being seen as odd by others. Otherness is a theme that's impossible to ignore in Objectified. In Dynamite's case, it's explored by fear, but in Mushroom's case, it's explored by connection. Without Mushroom, Dynamite would be incredibly alone (and probably long assimilated by now). Mushroom's abilities naturally caused by her existence also bring her closer to the razor pack, even if it's only because she can be deemed useful.

She is also the only character we know of that can eat parasites, and actively does so with fervor. Between her and the spores created by her, it's possible she may be seen as a sort of cure to the parasitic outbreak.

So… Mushroom kind of ties into all of the above, here. She is able to (quite literally) gain control due to being her specific type of decomposer, eating is tied directly to her identity, she seems to have a growing guilt for her lifespan that seems is going to be much longer than Dynamite's, and, notably, she insists upon keeping herself and her best friend fed out of love for him.

As far as I'm concerned, she is the personification of Objectified's core when it's all taken into consideration. And frankly, I welcome our spore overlords!

--

Characters in Objectified eat as a language, and it seems to mean a little bit of something to everyone. We eat what we love and what we fear. We yearn and grieve and fight and consume. I don't really have a grand thesis, I just think it's all very neat and wanted to compile my observations.

Hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for getting through all of this if you did. Feel free to let me know if you have anything that sticks out in your mind regarding all of this, I'd love to chat!