Because in the darkness

Update to the plan to try Linux Mint Cinnamon: I'm going to try Linux Mint XFCE.

Originally posted on Pillowfort on 21 January 2026 and cross-posted here on Dreamwidth on the same date.

I've tried very hard to not pay much attention to someone who follows along with the UK airings on my Tumblr dash, which means it's finally time for the US airing of season six.

Each episode's recap will go in the comments below, and like last year, I'll probably update the posting date later so this won't get lost amidst the Fandom Snowflake Challenge posts.

Challenge #2: Pets of Fandom: Loosely defined! Post about your pets, pets from your canon, anything you want!

I feel like I ought to have something light and fun: Bluebell the dog actor for Betty on 'Will Trent' is a beloved fan favorite, all the animals included in 'All Creatures Great & Small', or how fans fix the lackluster onscreen care of Sunshine the budgie from 'Prodigal Son'.

However, I'm not feeling very light and fun with this prompt. In 2025, my cat had to be euthanized. Probably about the point in November where I stopped doing recaps of 'Fire Country' actually. I did a lot of explaining with offline friends in the aftermath, but more or less, we think she did the cat-typical thing of hiding a health issue until it was suddenly too late. She wasn't a young cat, but that didn't make it any less unexpected.

I used a character as a vessel for some private catharsis (imagining them losing a pet), but I very much needed that to remain private. (There's no definitive proof, but it's not unlikely that a relative's insistence on sneaking our cat table scraps contributed to her burgeoning health issues. The signs of discomfort that we did pick up on and brought up to our vet were incorrectly attributed to arthritis, and I had to get that initial guilt and anger out somewhere that wasn't going to be seen by other people.)

I don't have an optimistic ending, but I know we'll get through this. Humans have been making it through this type of situation for thousands of years.

Originally posted on Pillowfort on 3 January 2026 and revealed on 21 January 2026.

Instead of a daily post, each day's word will go in a separate comment on this post.

From the tv_talk community:

S3E1 and E2

We did start this season off with Colter's brother Russell helping out (played by Jensen Ackles), so that might suggest seeing more of him going forward. E1 and E2 were a two-parter relating to 'The Process', and I hope the opening for the third person who was out of the country to potentially be doing The Process overseas is left alone. I appreciated that we got a clear origin of some sadistic people wanting to carry on a Grad school experiment, but I just don't click with the starting details of some shadowy 'they' orchestrating blackmail and forcing people to kill each other.

S3E3

E3 was the Halloween episode, and it played a little bit with the cultural boogeyman of the escaped murderer from the psychiatric facility. However, it didn't try to reinforce that fear by having Heston go on a murderous rampage. Heston's parents were the ones who hired Colter; they wanted him to get psychiatric help instead of being killed for escaping. It was actually the nun who had visited him who orchestrated kidnapping Heston in order to perform a ritual exorcism sort of thing. (She was in a fringe splinter group that believed in demon possession and this specific ritual killing to release the demon.) I kinda wish that Heston didn't have to die while saving the other person who was going to be killed in this ritual, but that's more to do with me not liking 'redemption through death' narratives.

Season 4 is here.

S4E1: Goodbye for Now

I had heard over the summer break between seasons that one of the three firefighters trapped in the assisted living facility was going to die because the actor wanted out of the show, but obviously, we weren't going to find out until the first episode. It turns out it was Vince, who died from smoke inhalation. Bode seemed a bit ridiculous with trying to get back inside, to the extent that he had to be locked up in the prison bus alone, and we had a lot of blame and self-blame going around. Sharon blamed herself as the highest ranking firefighter on scene, she kinda blamed Walter for pulling her out when they lost track of Vince, Bode blamed Jake for not letting him go back in, he kinda blamed himself since his knee was acting up, and it's clearly not going to be cleared up ASAP. There was a funeral for Vince, and Bode and Jake had words. (The writers have resurrected some talk of eventually being chief of Station 42 being 'Bode's birthright' which just sounds weird, but I guess we needed to undo a season of them being friendly or something.) Sharon benches Station 42 until they're not broken anymore.

Time jump to 8 weeks later. Manny is doing his best to make sure Sharon eats because she's a bit of a wreck. Gabriela is doing her best to make sure Bode sleeps because he's barely doing better. (The parallels of them checking in on progress while doing laundry at the station was a nice touch.) Eve has been helping Jake to study to pass some sort of exam to qualify for being chief, and the end of season 3 plan for him to move to another station has seemingly been scrapped. Francine is vaguely away, so the end of season talk of her wanting kids with Eve has been shelved for now. Gabriela has an opportunity to help with Cal Fire recruitment, which she takes, so she leaves towards the end of this episode. I side-eyed her having a talk about how she still loves Bode given the writers' insistence on trying to get these characters together for, like, half the show, but they seemed to part as friends. Audrey, Bode's girlfriend who shot Finn back in the season 3 finale, is still in limbo on whether she'll get a serious charge from the prosecutor, so she's temporarily out of the picture until that's cleared up.

It kinda doesn't matter while the entire station is out of service, but when the station filling in for them asks for back up and Bode convinces Jake to unbench Station 42, it did seem a little noticeable that we're down some familiar faces. Why didn't someone call Division Leader Sharon Leone? Well, Luke stopped by with Walter to check on Sharon, which she categorized as an ambush. She finally seemed to process some of her anger instead of insisting she was fine, but it mostly provided a reason for Luke's walkie-talkie to clue her in to her benched station going to provide back up. She kinda seemed to be waiting for someone higher up to reprimand her for still not doing things after 8 weeks, but she waited just long enough for Luke to have already called in someone else to be chief of Station 42. Brett Richards, who we met at the funeral when Sharon was furious for him showing up. (Walter was brought over on a so-described 'good day' which I'm pretty sure is going to foreshadow him having a bad day later in the season where he forgets that Vince has died.)

S4E2: Not a Stray

Chief Richards is here to stress test Station 42. He pages everyone relating to a 9-1-1 call to see how fast they get back to the station, I guess, and it's an unacceptable 6 minutes. He quizzes them on the safety rule book, 'tens and eighteens', (I don't think the exercise ball being thrown at them is really supposed to mean anything; it's just a visual of whoever catches is supposed to answer instead of calling out names). This is really more important in that Chief Richards will return to this safety rules quiz at the end, and he'll get a zinger in that they've memorized the rules but he doesn't trust them to save themselves. (This is directed to Bode, which isn't surprising.)

Station 42 is called to a fire that initially doesn't seem to be near any residential area, but it turns out that some people displaced by the Zabel fire are living in tents, campers, and other vehicles in an encampment in the woods. Initially, they sort of frame it like Bode is somehow operating the drone incorrectly when he says that there's no homes nearby. The title of this episode comes from a leashed dog appearing and leading Bode and Jake to the people. As far as Chief Richards is concerned, his order was simple: Go the encampment and evacuate the people from the area. The easiest way would be leading them out on foot on the path that they took in, but Richards wasn't there for them to all refuse because they want to take their remaining salvaged things from escaping the Zabel fire. Just leaving a car when you live in a house isn't the same as leaving a car when you live in it.

So, Jake and Bode decide to help them clear out the stuck pickup truck blocking the road to drive out. (Why did they let a truck block the only road out for more than one day? I dunno.) The setup isn't supposed to be one where you root against Jake and Bode for helping the people to take some things with them instead of doing the faster on-foot evacuation. (Granted, like, if that many people just refuse to walk out, you kinda need to do something other than carry them out to convince them to leave.) Sharon was upset that they weren't really following orders when she arrived to get a head count on how many people were there and supposed to be evacuating, but Eve and Manny were also trying to put out a fire that was tied into an illegal hook-up into the electrical grid, so Sharon needed to address the guy who was presumably electrocuted while trying to undo the hook-up.

Richards obviously found out that they were all doing something other than completing the simple evacuation order as quickly as possible, and the fire had reached the woods directly around the encampment. Someone just had to drop a container of fuel while speeding out, and a spark just had to land on that fuel to set off an immediate fire that blocked the lady who owned the dog from driving out. Was the dog just free roaming in the car so it could jump out? Of course not, and Bode risked his life to go back and save Tiberius. (It was around this time that I was personally done with the stakes continually being raised. Driving out of a forest fire is really enough stakes.)

Sharon didn't disagree with Richards that Bode doesn't prioritize his own safety. It was the sort of conversation where Sharon was absolutely not going to sugarcoat the truth, but it was framed in a way where Bode took it as an encouraging force for self-isolating. He's been running a lot and staring at the little baggie of five pills that Whatshisface nonchalantly gave him back at the end of season 3. Clearly, grief over his father's death isn't helping with the temptation to take one of said pills. Why doesn't Bode just reach out to someone for help? Well, he's already told Audrey that he flushed the pills. (Finn corroborated her story of self-defense, so Audrey's also back in this episode and no longer dealing with the spectre of charges hanging over her head.)

>.> The problem with going back and doing more than recap is that I can't remember which episode had a certain detail. Bode reaches a point of breaking down and taking one pill, which he immediately spits out in the sink. I think it was at the end of E2.

S4E3: The Tiny Ways We Start to Heal

Jake and Bode are barely hanging on to a civil level of interaction during work hours. It's not exactly helped by Bode seeing that Jake is using Vince's axe. For Jake, it's another annoying time to have Bode get upset at him. For Eve, it was a little unsurprising given the date. I'm unsure on if we've gotten a definite jump to a certain date, but it's Vince's birthday. (Bode got a chance to get in a dig that Jake obviously wouldn't remember Vince's birthday since he wasn't Jake's father, which just seems like a petty line.)

Sharon holds herself together rather well while going through his old clothes to donate to those affected by the Zabel fire, but she does focus on one of his jackets that wasn't supposed to get donated. In the end, she runs into an acquaintance at Smokey's who did find the jacket at a donation center and admitted that he needed to access this particular help. It doesn't sound very moving here, but Sharon was glad that he wasn't too proud to accept community assistance and didn't react badly to seeing him wearing the jacket. Eve sort of tried to help with the clothes sorting, but it was easier for Vince's ex-girlfriend Renee (who we briefly met in season 3) to help Sharon. I can't fault Eve for finding it a little odd that Sharon was bonding with Renee over stories of him in high school that she hadn't heard before, but whatever The Powers That Be choose to help Sharon heal a bit, we'll get through it.

Station 42 had to go help a guy who was stuck on a zipline. He had tried to set up some sort of proposal situation and gotten stuck. His friend had fallen from said zipline while trying to help him, which is who Manny and Audrey needed to help. Audrey had a flashback to Finn almost dying when a wound on the guy's upper chest started to bleed through its bandages, but Manny did help her get through the panic. Bode was sent off to use his knot tying skills on the zipline after Richards found him lacking in a speed knot tying test earlier in the day. (To be slightly fair to Bode, I don't think he reacted well to a bunch of the others needing to do pushups until he 'got it right'. Bode has been written to do well in the field and to not like when a group is punished because of him.) Unfortunately, when the zipline guy accidentally set off the fireworks display that were supposed to be part of his proposal, Bode absolutely lost it on him about stupid stunts like this putting firefighters at risk.

Somewhere in this episode, probably after watching Jake have to rein Bode in on the zipline guy, Richards told Jake that he was thinking of putting him forward as the permanent Battalion Chief at Station 42. (He sort of folded in a small comment about missing his cats, which I found a nice detail, but I figure it's not going to be significant to others in most recaps.) However, Richards is quite certain that the answer to fixing Station 42's problems is to let Bode go, and he asked Jake if he was really prepared to do that if he were promoted from captain to BC.

Sharon did check in on Bode towards the end of the episode, and he kind of lied that he was okay. He did open up about why the axe suddenly seemed so important: Vince wrote his will after Riley died, back when he was an estranged addict and/or prisoner, and finding out all the things that Vince left other people in his will is getting to him. Officially, Vince didn't leave anything to him, but Sharon tried to reassure him that she had talked with him countless times over the years about what they could leave Bode without it needing to be officially spelled out in an updated will. Still, Bode turns down the invitation to a dinner party and stays at the station to exercise and self-isolate a bit. (Renee, Eve, Manny, Jake, and Sharon eat Eve's attempt at making one of Vince's recipes, and I think Manny was the one who declared it better. Eve played a song on Vince's guitar, which he left to her.)

On that E2 note of spitting out a pill: I think it happened at the end of E2 because Bode went looking for the baggie of pills at the end of E3 and couldn't find it. Audrey didn't believe him when he said that he was okay and had gotten rid of the pills because, "Addicts lie for breakfast", as Manny and her talked about. Manny either puts the baggie back in Bode's locker at the very end of E3 or beginning of E4.

S4E4: Like a Wounded Wildebeest

Manny confronts Bode about the baggie and reveals that Audrey found them. Bode is upset, and he's at least partially upset because no one really believes him that he didn't take any of the pills. It's just a cascade of people hearing that he had pills in his locker and reacting, 'Well, what do you expect of an addict'. Manny doesn't want Richards to fire him, and he puts his own career on the line by saying that they'd have to get rid of him and Bode. Bode's rapid drug test comes back negative, and Richards takes Manny up on his offer to be responsible for Bode that day.

(Case of the week: A woman found hanging onto an old, rusty ladder on the side of a silo. They dramatically push a cart of hay underneath her as she falls, but she's really worried about her husband, Gary. Gary had gone all the way up to the top, opened the door, and had fallen into the silo. Mostly, Gary's there for his complaining about his wife haranguing him (and screaming like a wounded wildebeest when the ladder broke) to transition to being sorry for not listening to her on getting a professional to look at the silo for repairs. Bode and Audrey are there stabilizing him and trying to remove some of the corn from around his chest, and they kinda get to mirror the conversational arc from anger to being sorry.)

Manny is put in charge for the day, and Richards is impressed. He refers back to Manny's emotional intelligence with handling Audrey during her flashback and handling Jake today, and he's officially putting forward Manny as his recommendation for Battalion Chief. Manny breaks the news to Jake first, and he asks him to not leave because of this. There's still quite a few steps before Manny will officially be BC at Station 42, and there's no saying that Jake won't still get a chance at this before this season ends. (Jake's girlfriend Violet had gotten him to commit to staying in Edgewater back in E2.) As upset as Jake was initially, he does admit to Eve that he didn't like who he was becoming while trying to work towards that promotion; he cites being willing to end Bode's career, but I also think that the silo case was written in a way that he realized he wasn't quite ready.

(He rushed starting to cut the side of the silo without waiting for a water line, and a spark from the saw ignited some of the escaping dust, which is exactly what Manny had been worried about happening. On the one hand, Jake has handled other scenes as the one in charge quite well, and it feels a bit like his character has regressed to a less safety focused approach with Richards here. On the other hand, I can't rule out that the writers are trying to settle things back to him being okay with being captain, and they decided that him dealing with a small explosion and his own uniform being on fire was a tactic to force him to stop trying to take charge.)

Bode is finally honest with Manny that he took one pill and spit it out, hence the negative test result. He knew that Audrey had counted the pills and knew one was missing, though I'm not sure if that meant she found the baggie more than once or if I'm misremembering her being shown the baggie back at the end of Season 3. Bode apologized to her, but she still said that she was going to transfer to Station 58. Being back where she almost killed Finn was causing her to 'lose her progress' on staying clean herself, and she couldn't do this while Bode was also 'fragile' himself. They needed to work things out separately, and she was offering him the chance to win her back later. Jake and Eve reached out to Bode to offer to hang out with him, and he admitted that with Audrey leaving, he'd need to spend time with someone a bit.

Also: Richards is leaving. He stopped by Smokey's to talk to Sharon a bit, and we found out another humanizing detail about him. The mentor he lost, that he referenced back in his first day with them, was also his wife. Sharon asks him if things get better, and he said that it does. He feels guilty even admitting that it gets better, but after enough time, it does slowly get better.

S4E5: Happy First Day, Manny

(WIP)

For future me: Bode and Jake make up along the friendship front. Brigitte and Parmesan, the chickens. At Jake and Eve's urging, Bode finally shows Sharon the note that they found in the guitar case [technically known about since E3, but I didn't mention here], and she reveals that 'R' is her mother (and not Renee or some other possible affair).

S4E6: Your Voice in My Head

Airing the following Friday, 21 Nov 2025.

Instead of a daily post, each day's word will go in a comment on this post.

Challenge #1 - Lights On [DW link]:

Journaling Prompt: Light up your journal with activity this month. Talk about your goals for July or for the second half of 2025.

Creative Prompt: Shine a light on your own creativity. Create anything you want (an image, an icon, a story, a poem, or a craft) and share it with your community.

Looking back at my Fandom Snowflake Challenge goals for Challenge 4 [DW link], I've really just kept up with sharing some fandom events in PF's Fandom Calendar community. I think I was a little too confident in my ability to act like nothing changed when I switched from online work to in-person work. Even though I posted something on PF about this change as a forewarning of me replying to people at a different time of day, I wasn't really expecting that I'd have a whole bunch of time immediately after my shift where I'm just in recovery mode.

In terms of making progress on my existing goals:

1. Designate a certain day and/or time for reading.
Weekly feels like a more achievable goal than trying to do something every day after work, but as long I stick to it, it doesn't matter which day or how long. There's no specific amount pages that I need to aim for. Whatever gets done is what gets done.

2. Eliminate decision paralysis on picking a book to read.
(Oh, I should read the actual books I have. Wait, I keep getting told I should read Project Hail Mary before the movie trailer spoils me on something. But I've got all of Libby to choose from...) Nu, I need to just make a short to-read list and follow the list.

3. Reframe archival progress on SqWA as prep for the possible DW community for archiving [linked post is view-locked to logged in PF users].
I haven't actually decided that I will make a Dreamwidth comm for personal archiving just yet, but that's not the point. I need to turn the SquidgeWorld Archive progress from 'thing I've been avoiding because it's become a guilt-ridden chore' into 'neutral thing that will make the DW comm easier'.

Originally posted on 29 July and backdated to 2 July 2025. Can also be found on Pillowfort.

Instead of a daily post, each day will go in a separate comment on this post.

Instead of a daily post, each day will go in a separate comment on this post.