writing sideblog

Supernatural was very obviously always (at least in part) about the traumas of masculinity, its violence, its ruptured relationships, fathers who couldn’t take good care of their sons, sons who couldn’t live up to their fathers, brothers who would die for each other but would die before they’d say that out loud, the thrill of power and freedom and also the horror of having no one to turn to for help.  And there was so much of that bodily vulnerability – having your body invaded and violated, being driven to your knees, being forced to the point of blood and tears, it always seemed to me like there was a little edge of that same kind of fascination – not literally about sex, but erotic in how tangled up it was with the idea of submission.

So now the twist. Just as Kaestner was getting closer and closer to 10k, a previously unknown birder named Jason Mann suddenly joined an app called iGoTerra (not the most common app for birding records) and all at once added observations of close to 10,000 birds. Suddenly, Kaestner being the first birder to reach this milestone isn’t such a sure thing, and both he and mysterious newcomer Mann seem to be scrambling to count as many birds as possible as the race narrows.

On February 9th Kaestner announces he’s hit the milestone and seen his ten thousandth bird, the Orange-tufted spider hunter. The birding world rejoices! As a ~crazy~ coincidence, Jason Mann just so happens to announce on the same day that he has also hit the milestone and he actually did it before Kaestner. He writes an article about himself that is somehow both shamelessly masturbatory and also has that weirdly impersonal AI generated article feel.

Well obviously the birding world is a little skeptical of this random ass dude suddenly swooping in to snag this milestone that has been years in making. Naturally, people started looking a little closer at Mann’s list, and it has some… let’s say interesting observations. It appears from his own reports that Mann has casually rediscovered several species of birds and not bothered to tell anyone. Some of the most ludicrous observations include:

New Caledonian Nightjar- has not been seen since 1939

Manipur Bush Quail- only one suspected sighting since 1932

Zapata rail- Unbelievably rare, and largely inaccessible due to environment

Taiga bean goose- Not the rarest goose in the world but Mann’s reported sighting was from North Korea. And it was apparently the only bird recorded there. So he just went to NK, saw this goose, and that’s it? Weird.

These are just a few examples of many, many fishy recordings. The issue here is nobody knows who Mann actually is, and the only places providing information about him (such as his LinkedIn) are really bizarre in a way I don’t have time to dig into here. Mann (or someone claiming to be him) actually took to BirdForum.net to defend himself, where he offered a long-winded and somewhat fumbling explanation for his life list. He claims that all of these mythical bird sightings were erroneously counted by the iGoTerra app, and he hadn’t meant to include them at all. He assures us that the rest of the recordings are entirely legitimate. Mann said in his post that in light of these mistakes he is ceding his victory to Kaestner, but was quick to say he has still totally seen more than 10k birds- even if they’re not all recorded correctly. He sent Kaestner a vaguely condescending email that Kaestner responded to with, in my opinion, far too much grace.

So now the birding community is left trying to figure out this bizarre and unexpected outcome. Is Peter Kaestner in fact the first birder to record ten thousand birds? A shadow of doubt has been cast on a title that everyone has expected to be his for years. Some birders are sincerely congratulating Jason Mann for his accomplishment in the field, and others are suggesting he isn’t even a real person but in fact some kind of artificial intelligence birding psy op. It is absolute chaos, and nobody in my life wants to hear me rant about this

Behold, the digital artchery glove!

….but Wait…

…….!!!

FIRST.

- so denizens of the ever after don’t die (except when they do), they ascend; ascension occurs when they break or get used up; ascension “makes them into the them they wanted to be when they were still them” whereafter they come back to rediscover their purpose—which might be the same as before, but might not. a denizen who ascends leaves their memories behind, but emotional impressions linger

- ascension is reincarnation. they reincarnate.

- they reincarnate in a manner that does not allow trauma to accumulate across lifetimes, reincarnation can be either a renewal of one’s purpose or a transformation into something else, and the process at least seems to be fully voluntary; the cat suggests that herb had the opportunity to do so for quite some time but hadn’t taken it because he didn’t recognize that he had fallen into a rut, or as the herbalist put it he was a ‘workaholic.’

- (all of this makes the cat’s snark about how ozma reincarnates like 100x funnier THE CAT ALSO REINCARNATES!)

- the cat says that this information is not in the book because “exposition is terribly boring!” and they found even their own explanation to be tedious—blake wonders “what else alyx left out.” in 4, the cat describes alyx as “hilariously concerned with trivial things” and in this one they imply alyx was equally as upset and unsettled by ascension as team rwby is; per blake alyx’s ignorance of the local customs also started a war. it seems like a solid bet that ascension was one of those “trivial things” that concerned alyx so much, and if she was a real person who wrote her own story her decision to omit it raises some questions—but

the cat doesn’t say that alyx left it out. the cat says it isn’t in the book because exposition is boring. in 4, when weiss says that alyx wrote a book, they reply, “a book! is it well liked?” and they later praise team rwby’s tale of the origins of remnant as “a rather entertaining summary.” the girls are accustomed to the way ozpin uses fairytales—only a day ago he even cited this one to articulate his apology to them!—and they’re trying to interpret ‘the girl who fell through the world’ through that lens, but the cat’s concern is for the craft of storytelling itself; it doesn’t matter to them whether the book is accurate or not, they care about whether it makes a good story, and likewise their interest in remnant appears to come from emotional investment in the story.

there’s also an odd little discrepancy between 4 and 5; the cat is surprised when weiss tells them alyx wrote a book about her time in the ever after, and they ask “what did she write about? how am i portrayed?” …but then when blake remarks that ascension isn’t mentioned in “the story,” the cat confidently replies “of course not! exposition is terribly boring!”—an assertion that suggests not only close familiarity with the story itself but also with the author’s creative reasoning. if this were another character we might put the latter statement down to assumption founded on the cat’s own feelings, but the cat is meant to be curious. they do have some blind spots (like assuming that remnant must be structured similarly to the ever after), but when yang expresses confusion about how the ever after works, the cat immediately identifies their own incorrect assumption and asks a question to clarify. that blake’s confusion here does not incite any curiosity from the cat suggests that the cat knows the answer with certainty.

the cat knows the story and its author. they didn’t know that alyx wrote a book.

they also treat team rwby rather like characters from an interesting story—to them “when can we stop being six inches tall?” and “how are you going to stop that scary sorceress?” are problems of roughly equivalent concern. if alyx herself was a fictional character, i don’t think the cat would understand the difference?

i don’t… think they realize that “the story” means “the book alyx wrote.” i think the cat’s (mis)understanding is there’s The Story and then there’s the autobiographical book alyx wrote after she went home, when in actuality there’s just The Story and the girls have incorrectly attributed it to alyx.

- on a somewhat related note, the cat has a hard time with names. they mishear “weiss” as “wise huntress” and struggle to accurately recall the name of the “scary sorceress” the girls told them about—and they call the herbalist herb, a shortening of his chosen purpose. ruby and alyx are the only name-names that the cat has never stumbled over; but if alyx was a fictional character invented for the story, then in the ever after’s terms being alyx IS her purpose. (see also, “and to ‘ruby rose’ is your purpose?” and “how does one ‘little?’”—while most denizens seem to adopt descriptive titles, it’s established right off the bat that an actual name can count as a purpose if that is how a denizen chooses to think of themself.)

- (if we take the ever after as a fictional story then ascension fits very tidily as a representation of the function of character within a narrative; once a character has completed their role they disappear from the story, and if a character designed to fill a certain role turns out to not be quite right they might be ‘removed’ and reworked until they fit better—and of course no character ever truly disappears, writers recycle old characters and return to favored archetypes all the time. the same but different, both new and old.)

SECOND.

- neo’s constructs can mimic voices now.

- they also seem to be considerably more robust—the first one tanks a charge and then a kick from juniper and multiple punches from yang before it finally shatters.

- using neo’s upgraded semblance to dial up the jabberwalker’s threat level and give the girls something to fight without killing the jabberwalker is fucking brilliant, narratively

- i’m not afraid of you; you’re only the unwritten pages of my book LMAO??

- ahem. so, functionally within the ever after the jabberwalker is The Ending, said to be the only being capable of stopping the reincarnative cycle of other denizens. in ‘the girl who fell through the world,’ alyx fights a jabberwalker after meeting the hunter mice but before the peddler stole her knife; rust!jaune is disturbed by the horde’s onslaught because “there’s only supposed to be one.”

- but the jabberwalker we met in 1-3 doesn’t line up very well with the jabberwalker as described by the cat in 5—or rather, the cat’s description of the danger is notable in that it isn’t a description of the jabberwalker’s purpose. the jabberwalker is an ending, but he spends his time roaming, searching, watching. his acre is in ruins and he wants to fix it… and he shrinks away from confrontation and flees when he’s attacked.

- the jabberwalker clones created by neo are way more aggressive than the real thing and do in fact rip one of the denizens apart while team rwby escapes (so, another tally in the “the people from remnant are the true danger” column here, and one that raises the question of whether being eaten by one of neo’s copies has the same consequence as being eaten by the real jabberwalker?)

- there’s some interesting threads being tacked down here, is what i’m saying. the jabberwalker is an ending but ending things is not his purpose; he is timid despite his fearsome reputation and what he seems to actually want is a way to fix his ruined home; we last encountered him running away from neo, and now neo is in the gardens driving everybody away from the market with a wave of jabberwalker clones who actually live up to the fearsome reputation. what happened to the jabberwalker himself between then and now?

- i don’t think neo killed him. i don’t think it makes sense for the narrative to establish why the real thing is dangerous unless that danger is real, so either the real jabberwalker is still in play or we’re dealing with a “kill the jabberwalker, become the jabberwalker” kind of situation. the juxtaposition between the real jabberwalker’s behavior and the aggression of neo’s attack on the marketplace also does not seem like a thread the narrative is likely to drop, and i think the most intuitive direction from here is to connect the dots between reality and reputation (<- on theme). the specific possibility that he and neo teamed up and coordinated the attack on the market together is intriguing, particularly because the clones do not seem to be targeting ruby specifically and that suggests a really profound change in neo’s priorities.

- if neo and the jabberwalker are allies now, then the assault on the marketplace might have been motivated by need? the jabberwalker is feared, an outcast, whatever he needs to fix his home he can’t just stroll into town for—and before she got in way over her head in the apocalypse war, neo was a petty thief. simple math.

- otherwise either neo is just stalking them (but then why not chase after them?) or the jabberwalker’s purpose is to cause endings but only if certain criteria are met, hence the ‘searching, observing, retreat’ stuff—but in the latter case that opens the question of how in the world neo got involved, so it doesn’t seem altogether likely.

- HA. OH NO

which brings us to

THIRD.

- the blacksmith isn’t the carpenter the blacksmith is the tree

- or an aspect of the tree, at least. the symbol hanging over the entrance to her forge is a maple leaf; and you do not go to the tree, the tree goes to you

- the blacksmith invites ruby to “set your burden down” by choosing “any one of these [weapons] you like.” ruby answers “i already have a weapon, or… i did” and the smith says “and yet, here you are: searching for something else that you do not even know.” this is the first time ruby has directly acknowledged that crescent rose is missing and it is echoed later when she instinctively reaches for crescent rose only to flinch when it isn’t there.

- the weapons ruby examines in this scene are penny’s sword, alyx’s knife, and summer’s rifle-axe—two of which have no logical reason to be here and one of which might be outright fictional. there’s also the apparent peculiarity of the offer the smith makes to her: you seem to be carrying a rather large burden, choose any of these that you like to set your burden down. in the literal sense she seems to be inviting ruby to take up another burden, heft the weight of another person’s weapon—but.

- i think what the blacksmith actually meant is that each of the unique weapons is a manifestation of the burdens ruby carries—her grief for penny, her mother’s overwhelming legacy, the pressure she’s putting on herself to get everyone home by acting out alyx’s story; the invitation is not to choose a new weapon per se but to choose a specific burden to bring back with her to the surface.

- “you’re doing this all alone?” <- the blacksmith doesn’t make her offer until after little definitively states that ruby is their friend and they want to help her. ruby says “i can handle it” and the blacksmith goes alright, but if you change your mind, here’s what you can do. ruby takes what she sees at face value and assumes the smith wants to give her a new weapon, but the blacksmith replies that it isn’t what it seems; that ruby is here “searching for something else that you do not even know”—the weapons are a symbol, a metaphor for something else.

- and if the blacksmith calls to ruby and speaks to her in the depths of her subconscious, then metaphorically speaking choosing a weapon and bringing it back to the waking world means dislodging something buried and allowing herself to examine it and feel it openly, with the support of her friend(s), and in so doing lay the burden down

- but ruby declines the offer. she gets just enough of a glimpse at what her deepest problem is to rattle her before she ‘wakes up’ and it all gets buried again and what happens instead is her friends are irritated because she hasn’t done the One Errand she was supposed to do. nothing gets addressed. her pain gets buried again, she gives away her mom’s broach to get what her friends need, she can’t fight to protect them, she can’t get them out of danger, she has to run and hide with the cat while everyone else tackles the jabberwalker—like it’s all compounding and setting in deeper than before. the only way she can set any of it down is by choosing to lift it up and carry it into the light of day first.

FOURTH.

- if jaune really has been here for decades he must know some of the ever after’s secrets

- but i’m actually not convinced that’s the case

- because

- jaune is the hatter

- and the hatter’s relationship with time is fucky in a different way; time spurns him and abandons him, and as hatta he is punished for crimes he has yet to commit. the ever after is already riffing on wonderland’s spatial and temporal malleability and without knowing what happened to jaune after he fell i don’t think we have quite enough information yet to conclude definitively that he just happened to land a few decades before team rwby did

- the hatter becomes unmoored from time when the queen of hearts accuses him of murder and he is thereafter trapped in the purgatory of teatime, going around in circles with no time to clean the dishes (=rusted armor); if ruby’s devastation can twist the ever after’s weather within her vicinity, and trying to go to the tree causes you to walk endlessly in circles what might jaune’s guilt do to his experience of time?

- the blurriness between jaune-the-person and rusty-the-character is intriguing for what it might suggest about alyx; was she a person or a character? is the rusted knight of ‘the girl who fell through the world’ a character whose purpose jaune has chosen to adopt as his own or was jaune so displaced in time that he became the rusted knight alyx later encountered? (do people from remnant who decide to immerse themselves in the ever after also experience the cycle of ascension and reincarnation—and if that’s what’s going on why is jaune able to retain his memories?)

- like… 55% rusty ascends and comes back as jaune by the end of the volume, 40% rusty and jaune turn out to be separate entities after all and we’re dealing with a hatter/hatta split, 5% jaune just stays middle-aged for the remainder of the story