Headscratchers / Crossed

• In Crossed +100, how does Future manage to forget and/or mangle the names of authors she just read that same day? "Olaf Stapleton" to "Olaf Staple the Don" is perhaps the most egregious. Nothing in particular indicates she (or anyone else) has any problem reading English text, even if the average vocabulary seems to have shriveled considerably.
• Am I the only one who noticed that the smarter Crossed actually seem to talk less, or speak in a more simplistic language? This is most obvious in the first volume by Garth Ennis, where the more berserk random Crossed will speak in complete (albeit deranged) sentences and are more prone to using personal pronouns and the like, while the more intelligent Crossed like Horsecock and Face will say things like "want my fun" and "where mommy?" This can also be seen in other Crossed works that feature what are known as "Alpha Crossed", such as Aoileann in Wish You Were Here. It's as if the smarter they get, the more like cavemen they become, but only when it comes to communication. What's the deal with that?
  • Some of the smarter Crossed are quite articulate, such as Addy's mom, the twins Ashley and Ashlynne, and Clooney. It really seems to depend on an individual level, with some Crossed being more talkative than others. And Beau Salt's personality and intelligence didn't change at all after he was infected, he even continued to write his journal years and decades after his infection.
  • It is hard to gauge how intelligent individual Crossed are, since so much of their behavior is rather self-destructive, self-centered and uncooperative. The most reliable indicator seems to be the ability to delay gratification. I get the sense that some of the time Crossed just don't feel like putting the effort into speaking in a particularly coherent and clear manner. There may well be a situational factor at work as well. A Crossed attempting to terrorize human prey into panic may want to speak in a clearer, more elaborate way, while a pack leader may feel that its followers should show obedience and dedication by filling in the missing parts of his speech.

• At the end of Psychopath, Amanda has her hands bound behind her back (with wire?). As a last resort, she is using friction to SAW THROUGH her wrists to get away from Harold the psychopath. As she does this she keeps a convincing dialogue going with Harold and this sawing is all done in secret behind the chair back. She shows no signs of pain, no tears, no screaming. How is it a person can saw through their hand like this and are we supposed to believe this for one second? She successfully amputates one hand and gets up and runs away.
  • Truth in Television, my friend. People have been known to go to crazy lengths, and survive horrific injuries, especially when their lives are on the line. When you consider that Amanda had not just her life, but her very soul on the line (going Crossed is generally considered a Fate Worse than Death by most), it isn't really all that surprising that she would be able to withstand such excruciating pain if it would help her escape a maniac like Harold.

• How the hell did Emiko's dad not get infected after he started killing Crossed with a katana? There's a reason characters never got up and close against the Crossed before; the virus spreads way too easily. Any contact with Crossed bodily fluids is a death sentence, and it looked like there was a whole lot of it everywhere.
  • That might explain why he and everyone else in the room is suddenly Crossed with no explanation when Emiko comes back in.
    • Actually, Al the Chemist is responsible for that, so the point is still valid.

• Ok a few....dozen questions about the end of the Thin Red Line arc, but these seem to be the most pertinent.
  • 1) How the hell did the medical team get infected? they had no contact with the crossed since the initial outbreak within the facility, and were shown to be taking all biohazard precautions imaginable when dealing with the virus, which each of them had seen the effects of so there was no chance in hell of them not taking said precautions seriously.
    • All that would be necessary is for one person on Chopra's staff to screw up once, and Chopra in particular is melting down fast as the storyline continues. She's exhausted and badly shaken when she's first introduced, only gets worse with each subsequent appearance (she even says to Harry in #54 that she keeps "making stupid little mistakes"), isn't working with full protective gear or equipment, and it's early enough in the outbreak that no one knows just how virulent the Crossed virus really is. Frankly, it's a wonder she didn't get infected sooner.
  • 2) How the hell did no one in the building notice the medical team getting infected? Setting aside direct communication, the building was swarming with soldiers and security, and everyone was on maximum alert due to the crisis and due to the infected already held within the building.
    • With Harry and his men gone, the only soldiers inside the building were busy making sure that "Patient Zero" didn't escape the room he was locked in, thanks to the "catamite," and the rest are outside dealing with the waves of Crossed that are assaulting the bunker. The guy Harry left in charge is outside when Brown shuts the door, which means there's no one who's specifically watching Brown's back. It's a perfect storm of questionable competence with a little blame for everyone involved, just as Harry says.

• Why oh why didn't Keller kill Greer before offing himself? Not only he had the bastard responsible for losing Chooga right in front of his gun, it would have somewhat hampered the Crossed's plans by killing their mole.
  • Panic. Pure panic. After seeing what the Crossed had done to his people, it's understandable that Keller would rather end it than risk becoming a churchface's chewtoy.

• Okay, I really want to know what Gordon Brown's final words meant: "And Harry? Broad sunlit uplands. That's the thing." It's a reference to one of Winston Churchill's speeches, I know that much, but the "that's the thing" comment is what's really gnawing at me. I kind of think that that's Gordon's sly way of saying the password to Porton Down, but I'm not so sure. It feels like there's more to it than that.
  • You're overthinking it. The speech in question is Churchill's "This was their finest hour" speech from 1940, during the Battle of France, encouraging Britain to stay strong against Hitler's attacks. Brown is drawing a parallel between the Crossed epidemic and World War II. He doesn't have to be sneaky about the password, because he handed Harry a piece of paper with full details on how to gain access to Porton Down.
  • Ultimately, Brown was just trying to encourage Harry - the one man he trusted the most to have access to Porton Down as a last resort - to be strong in the face of the oncoming apocalypse - and also encourage himself as well in the process. One can only imagine the sense of failure and hopelessness both men were feeling at that moment, how despite everything they'd done - including averting a nuclear war - Britain and the world was rapidly being overrun by the infected. Hence Brown talking about Churchill, essentially comparing himself unfavorably to the legendary wartime leader.
  • He's just saying "That's the thing that will save us." i.e. the hope of victory.

• Question about The Thin Red Line pertaining to the following quote. It's clearly talking about the infection, yes, but what really piques my curiosity is the infection's supposed name. Anyone got any clue as to what that last line, "...but he thought he knew its name," means?
  Caption: And he ran from the voice at the base of his skull, new like shining steel yet ancient as a dagger, that smirking hiss that made the things it bade him do feel like their own reward. He ran from it: but he thought he knew its name.
  • The keyword is that he thought he knew its name, the implication being that whatever Patient Zero thought was the virus's name would be rooted in his personal beliefs. However, since we know next to nothing about Patient Zero, it may very well be impossible to determine what he thought it was without outright confirmation from Garth (who is notoriously tight lipped about these things).
  • The voice in his head is his own, telling him to do terrible things to everyone he sees. Patient Zero only goes over when he stops fighting the infection, and in the first days, he chooses to externalize it and forget most of what he's done.

• In Homo Tortor, was the story written by the professor really made up? I mean, Washington logically makes that conclusion because there is no way the Prof would have known so many specific things... but we do know the virus gives strange visions about the past to some of the people it infects. The "god" at the end doesn't seem like it could exist, but it could simply be a metaphorical description of the Toba Supervolcano erupting and destroying the Blood Men's city. And in the case the core of the narration was fake, the larger details, the blood men civilization and the Crossed epidemic that went over there, were true? In the flashback the professor seemed sure about those claims and mentioned having solid proof.
  • The issue is that it dovetails too neatly with the professor's narrative, and with the Crossed epidemic. The notion that the professor succumbed slowly to the infection, with his theory concerning an earlier civilization as a "stabilizing factor," plays into a couple of other stories in Badlands so far.
  • But that doesn't answer the asker's original question, which was if the Homo Tortor were real. The sad truth to that is that we may never know. There are multiple reasons why they may have been real and multiple reasons for why they may have been made up. In the end, it's up to the reader to decide which one is the more appealing option.

• Why did Garth Ennis feature loose Expies of the Big Hero 6 team in Five Bloody Fingers? He was obviously not mocking/deconstructing superheroes when featuring them, so what was the point of the aforementioned Expies' inclusion?
  • Ennis can't be blamed for it, seeing as he didn't write the arc in question.
  • I see....still, it seems a bit out of place to have Big Hero 6 Expies in The Crossed Series. If anything, that sort of thing would make more sense in The Boys.

• I know that the Five Bloody Fingers are loose Expies of the Big Hero 6 team, and they arguably have their Baymax equivalent in the form of Usama (in the sense of the whole Team Pet thing, formerly Boss Yamada's pet lion, now Hazuki's pet lion).....but who is the Crossed Universe's Yokai equivalent?
  • Then again, I suppose one could argue that Boss Yamada himself is the Yokai equivalent.

• In the Sutter / Haven storyline of #57-61, what is being hinted at between Esperanza and Jane? In the last few pages of #60 Esperanza says (again) that Jane took good care of them and that why... then she is cut off emphatically by Jane, who insists that she does not have to ever say that. The most natural reading may be that Jane does not want Esperanza to think too much on how likely both of they are to die soon, but there is so much lampshade on Esperanza's strength of loyalty towards Jane that I suspect something else.
  • In her conversation with Sutter's Number Two Joe Collins, Esperanza said she and her brother had Abusive Parents and that Jane saved them, although the context (social worker? concerned neighbor? etc.) is unclear.

---