wurmeon

I do not know why the hive chose me, but it did.

And I think that it always had. The song is loud and beautiful and I am so very afraid.

There is a wasps’ nest in my attic.

Perhaps it can soothe my itching soul.

His first 4 Marks (Web, Eye, Corruption, and Spiral) were things that were done to him. He didn't seek them out. Mr Spider was in the pile of books his grandma gave him. he had no way of knowing The Magnus Institute was haunted. Jane Prentiss hunted him down, and so did Michael.

the next 2 were brought about by his own curiosity. he knew the risks of accosting Jude and Mike, but he went willingly. his desire to seek out knowledge got him Marked by the Desolation and the Vast.

Elias sent Daisy to Hunt Jon, so that would make it the 5th Mark that Jon had no agency in, and the 7th Mark total.

then comes the Unknowing. in an attempt to save the world, Jon's willing to give his life to destroy the ritual. Marks 8 and 9 (Stranger and End) are purely altruistic on his part.

and from there on out, he continues to only get Marked via Protecting People.

Slaughter's from saving Melanie. Flesh and Buried are from saving Daisy. Dark is from trying to stop yet another ritual, something that he still believes could potentially end the world. Lonely is from saving Martin.

[this brings the final count to an exactly even split; 7 from external forces, 7 from Jon's attempts at protecting people]

as Jon becomes less and less human, he tries to save more and more people. and he's willing to give his life to do so!! he's willing to die!

I would never pay money for a redbox. if you ask politely and are very very persistent (i.e. annoying) they will let you take it away

here's my dad and i taking it away

luckily there are no shortage of freaks like us who will just take them away on our own volition. we did it all "by the book", too: we set up cones and caution tape, disconnected electricity properly, used an angle grinder to grind down the bolts in the concrete so nobody would trip on them, then cleaned everything up afterward and sealed off the electrical panel so the store would know everything is safe and tidy. though they were hesitant when we were first contacting them, they were honestly very relieved and grateful when we finally took it away, especially once they saw that we "knew what we were doing" (we don't) and look like we've "done this before" (we haven't).

the fun part: the reason why this redbox, in particular, was completely full and unraided is because the computer hardware inside had failed some months before the bankruptcy, and a failing company sure as hell wasn't gonna send a tech out to our podunk dipshit city to fix it, so it was impossible to rent movies or take any discs out. plus, for who knows how long, people were returning old redbox discs to this machine and not taking any out, leading to a much higher variety of movies than your average redbox.

there is a thriving community of redbox hackers and modders out there, as well, creating open-source software for repurposing the machines and not letting their very interesting and robust disc-management hardware go to waste. this one belongs to my brother (who was very annoying persistent and did all the legwork of contacting managers and securing permission) who is a programmer by trade and will be hacking it into a family-access movie library, with whatever discs we want. i mean the machine is completely weatherproof and has a built-in AC unit, it would be such a waste to not try to turn it into something cool.

if we get another one, i'm gonna try to mod it into some sort of art or zine vending machine. the disc boxes are just the right size for small print art or stickers. would make a great "little free library" too.