#MAG013

[fractal-voidling]

MAG013 - #0161301 │ Alone

John, you're such a dxck sometimes, show some compassion for the poor woman ffs

[two-idiots-one-thought]

MAG013 - Alone

[martinbabywood]

also so far there’s been 3 Michaels and 3 Johns. and we’re only 13 episodes in lmaooo

[thevoidcannotbefilled]

I’m having big feels over Naomi Herne again. 

Just...Jon Was Going To Leave The Room. She Was Going To Be Okay. BUT SHE DIDN’T WANT TO FEEL LONELY SO SHE ASKED HIM TO STAY. AND HE DID!!!! JON DID!!! BECAUSE SHE ASKED AND HE WAS BEING KIND IM-

I will never get over how much that one little scene retroactively just wrecks me so much. 

[gonnahaveabigtalklater]

hey do you guys remember when episode 13 confirmed that dead Lukases have the ability to speak to their loved ones from beyond the grave?

so! what are our thoughts on ghost!Peter floating about and giving (unhelpful) advice to s5 Elias?

--

Elias: hmm which suit should I wear for a new day of ruling over my ruined world? The black with gold trimmings, or the little emerald number with--“

Peter, spookily: how about the pastel blue suit i found in this drawer?

Elias, exasperated: for the last time, Peter, those are pajamas

[tma-latino]

MAG013 – Caso 0161301 – “Sola”

Testimonio de Naomi Herne, sobre los eventos ocurridos después del funeral de su prometido, Evan Lukas.

[Disclaimer/ Aviso]

[MAG012] | x | [MAG014]

[lunagalemaster]

Relistening to MAG013: Alone 

A few thoughts:

Season 1 is amazing and infuriating to relisten to at the same time. Looking back, so many things are just straight up said in a basic fashion, but without the information or context behind them they go WAY over your head. So listening again, you’re just YELLING and recognizing not only characters, but phrases, information that is super important even now, and in general, the Powers being super obvious in what they’re doing.

This episode is the pinnacle of that.

So, there are quite a few things going on, the Lonely and with that, the Lukases. But, since we still don’t know too much about them and in general, what Peter is you know actually doing atm, I’m gonna put a pin on that and talk about other things. Mainly: Anchors and monster Jon stuff.  

(Gonna add here: Laughing at the fact that Naomi said Evan wasn’t close to his family bc they were “religious”.  Evan took one look at his fog creating, sea family and went “You know I actually like people so uh bye~”).

Anyway, anchors. 

“I tried to back away, but the ground was slick with dew and I fell. My fingers dug into the soft cemetery dirt as I looked around desperately for anything I could use to save myself, and my hand closed upon that heavy piece of headstone. It took all my self-control to keep a grip on that anchor, as I slowly dragged myself away from the edge of my lonely grave.” -MAG:013

Gonna focus on the particular choice of wording. Literally, what is described as an anchor is what help pulls her out of a grave. Falling into the lonely grave with no way to get out is the full fear (something that is confirmed later on in MAG:120).

“At last he’s in the moonlit graveyard, the oldest of the dreams. It is peaceful, cool and damp as the rolling foggy fields stretch out in all directions. He hears her calling pathetically from the bottom of the graves, but by now he knows there is nothing he can do but stare. She begs to be released, to dream of this place no more, but there is nothing he can do.” -MAG:120

Okay, so that’s just one thing. Could just be creative wording used to foreshadow actual anchors later on. Sure. Except….later on, there’s the emotional anchor.

“And then, as I found myself in the middle of that open, desolate field, I heard something. It was the strangest thing, but as I tried to run I could have sworn I heard Evan’s voice call to me. He said, “Turn left”. That’s it. That’s all he said. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that’s what he told me to do. And I did it. I turned sharply to the left and kept running. And then… nothing.” -MAG:013

Evan, despite being…well, dead, was Naomi’s emotional anchor. Which, makes sense! He grounded her when she was alive and made sure she didn’t feel lonely. In her hour of need, he was there to be that anchor and lead her back home.

All the way back in episode 13, not only do we have a mention as an object as an anchor, but a person as well! They’re a bit different, but it does show that as early as this, one way to escape the Powers and their presence are through anchors. Whether the form is an object or a person depends on the situation. 

…But that’s not the only reason why I brought up the MAG:120 quote.

Gonna go a bit subjective here, but… this was the first episode that really started warming me up to Jon as a person. Season 1 Jon is an absolute bastard man and relistening makes him even funnier because he’s basically a toddler stumbling around and making a mess of things about things he doesn’t understand and calling himself smart for it. And he’s still a bastard this episode don’t get me wrong. He’s annoyed and snooty and sounds like he’d rather be anywhere else.

But at the beginning of the episode he’s with Naomi. He tries to give her privacy for her recording. Then she asks for him to stay, so she doesn’t feel alone. And he does.

At the time, that endeared me a bit. It’s small and it didn’t make him into a good person, but it showed there was much more to him than being an arrogant bastard man. It showed that he cared for these people who gave statements and cared for their comfort, even if he begrudgingly showed it.  

Knowing what we do now, Naomi was his first victim. By giving her statement to him, she’s now cursed by the Archivist and the Beholding to relive her trauma for the rest of her life.

All because he chose to stay. 

And he was going to leave!!! Is the worst thing!!! He was going to leave and if he left, Naomi would have been fine!!! She would have said her statement and she would have been on her way!!! But he stayed!!! Because she asked and she wanted someone there!!! He was being kind and in turn he accidentally doomed her!!!

Jon’s first moment of compassion in the series turns out to also be his first monstrous one.

It fucks me up a bit.

One last thing. In MAG:017, Elias mentions that Naomi lodged a complaint against Jon. There aren’t any specifics at all. The only details Elias says is this:

“Regardless, I would prefer that you not antagonise anyone connected to the Lukas family. They are patrons of the Institute, after all.” -MAG:017

This makes me think that the complaint wasn’t about Jon’s bastard behavior towards her. Rather, I think it may have been the nightmares. The Lukas did not care for Naomi at all. In fact, they drove her out because they pretty much blamed her for their son’s death.

“My son is in there. He is dead.”-MAG:013

The way this line is worded...it sounds like that the latter could have been avoided. While we still don’t know exactly the limitations of the monster powers, Peter has talked about living until seeing the next Lonely ritual and there’s the vague idea that The End can’t take Jon. It’s not too much of a stretch to think that the Lukases blame Naomi for Evan’s death because without her, he could have possibly been on the path of the Lonely and been unable to die. 

With all this being said, why would the Lukases CARE if Noami makes a complaint against Jon? They made is clear she wasn’t welcomed that she wasn’t a part of the family. 

..But she was their victim.

I’m thinking that Elias warned off Jon because by taking her statement he accidentally stole the Lonely’s victim and gave her to the Beholding instead. We STILL don’t know what exactly is going on between Peter and Elias, but there has to be some sort of alliance or something, and Mr. Archivist here accidentally doing monster things and messing with Elias’ allies might not help with that.

I don’t have much more to say on this episode, and I think I’ll make a few more of these as I go through the rewatch. This episode in particular though...it’s a bit haunting (no pun intended). When I first listened, I was so intrigued by this new person and hearing her words and her experiences. It was different and it showed that there was something more dynamic going on with the storytelling because instead of just Jon the narrator, we had actual people in this world living these statements. It’s weird, with how technically important this episode is, with all the rest, it’s so easy to forget about Naomi and her tale within the now literally over hundred statements made throughout the series.

It’s been said before how well TMA does mundane horror. It’s usually described with objects, or an odd neighbor, or a job you don’t think about. There’s something else to be said about this though. For the statements, there’s an expectation. If something horrible happens...well, we know. That’s the point. Later on, we can expect horrible things to happen both in meta-narrative and the statements because we’re actively engaging in both.

But...this is so early in the series. We haven’t even met any of the other main cast yet. Hell, Jon really isn’t even a full character, mostly just a personality we’ve come to be familiar with. And yet, one of the the worst decisions, probably one of the most important moments in TMA for our main character, the moment that starts his life down the road of destruction feels like almost nothing. Just… a character building moment at best. 

And if I hadn’t gone back and relistened to the series, I wouldn’t have even thought about it.

“And I wish that I could convince myself that ignorance was the same thing as safety. But then, how many weeds have you unthinkingly stepped on in your lifetime?” -MAG:106

Weeds indeed..

[tmisaccidentreportbook]

MAG013, Alone

Case #0161301, Naomi Herne Release date: April 21, 2016 First listen: 15th October. Think it was on the walk into work.

OK, straight off the bat, this being a live recording gives us a more accurate idea of the date in universe. The statement was given January and releases April, so the delay from events occurring to us hearing about them has dropped from about a year to a few months.  

- The addition of a new voice threw me I won’t lie. And this may be harsh, and I’m sure she is a talented soul, but I didn’t really vibe with her delivery and in my opinion, Jonny was acting her out of the room when he was speaking. Her delivery just felt a little… detached? A little by rote to me? To be fair, I don’t know how long she had with the script before recording. But I like the fact that we get a new voice for the introduction of The Lonely, seems suitably ironic.

- The series long bit of sassing the equipment. I would like the Archivist to know, that I personally would be charmed, as someone who still owns and uses a filofax.

- I’d like to know, what prompted the Archivist to take this statement in person. He mentions in MAG011 Dreamer that he wants to hear about anyone coming in predicting his death or anything along similar lines, but this does not concern him in any direct way. Admittedly, she does ask hm to remain for the statement giving, but why not have her leave a written statement like anyone else coming to the Institute? Why’d she get special treatment? Is it the connection to the Lukas family? ‘Connection’ being an odd word choice seeing as they’ve seemed in one more claim her and ignore her. The Lonely’s a capricious beast.

- I won’t make any excuses, I don’t like Ms Herne. I do not care for her attitude. Yes, grief can and does alter a person’s behaviour and their rational thinking, but she sounds like a brat. She’s scoffing at everything the Institute is, everything the Archivist is, but she’s still expecting to be believed and supported. She feels she has the right to ask for the Archivist’s company and support after she’s spoken to him so. As she says, she’s desperate but she still has the gall to be so scornful.

- Lukas! The first mention of the Lukas Dynasty. The power behind the Watcher’s Crown… Kinda… The coin any how. Jonah somehow bestowed the hereditary title of ‘Sugar daddy’ on the Lukas family, the canny bastard.

- ‘...but I was distraught. I still am.’ Why do I feel like she’s reading a script? I mean, ok, literally the actress is reading a script, but I get the impression Naomi may not understand exactly what she’s feeling but is consulting some unknown human interactions manual and going, ‘yes, distraught, that   seems like an appropriate response.’ It feels like a mask being pulled on without the person wearing it either committing to the character or full aware that it is a guise, but somehow lost between the two.

- ‘...to be bullied you need to be noticed’. … Well, isn’t that an uncomfortably familiar mood.

- ‘...maybe happier isn’t quite the right word.’ No, but I get it. It’s a contentment, hot through with melancholy, like a seam of silver through rock.

- ‘I didn’t need other people and they certainly didn’t need me.’ *deep breath* … God, OK, here we go. Right, if you don’t want personal introspection, skip to the next bullet point. On the first go around, I imprinted hard on Martin and when I told dodgylogic so, there were some concerned noises. And it only got more acute as the series went on, as we saw more of Martin and his relationships with the other characters and The Lonely. People like to talk about which Entity they’d serve or which domain they’d fall pray to. I think I’m caught somewhere between The Lonely and The Desolation, between the burn out and the break down. A sot blackened light house. But like Martin, I’ve spent so much of my life setting myself on fire to keep others warm. I think it’s a family trait. But going to Uni was a bit of a wake up and a shock. Primary school, I’d gone somewhat unnoticed by my peers, same at secondary and my teachers only really noticed what I’d accomplished quietly as I was leaving. But to so many of my peers, I wasn’t a friend, I was a resource. I was a work horse that was brought out for the heavy lifting and long hours but never really for the gymkhanas or shows. I used to say of myself I was a Clydesdale amongst show ponies. There’s several instances I can name where my chest went hollow, because it’s not even a case of being ignored or missed. It’s being seen and passed over, and it being known you will weather it without a word. But Uni was different. I wasn’t expected to burn myself for anyone else, and when people asked after me and meant it genuinely, it was only then that I realised how scorched I was. Long story short, The Lonely fucks me up fam. When I finally seek counselling, I am handing over this blog and my AO3 profile.

- OK, after all that I’m going to the gym for a bit.

- ‘...the children were a thick, entitled lot.’ … Ma’am, with the way you are conducting yourself, pot calling kettle much.

- ‘(The relationship) never seemed like his being there stopped me being myself, or crossed into spaces that I saw as my own.’ Right, so as previously mentioned, I suspect myself as being somewhere on the aroace spectrum. And a big component of that is the idea of someone else’s happiness and well being being dependant on me and my actions is something I find terrifying. For multiple reasons, but there’s also a significant amount of self preservation at work, see previous introspective out pouring above. Might the situation change if I was in a situation where I felt confident I would not lose myself? Maybe?

- The way Naomi rattles through the event of his death is telling but of what, I’m not quiet sure. I think it indicated she hasn’t processed it and is still mentally stuck in March of 2015. The fact that it’s Evan’s heart that gave out, is that anything? Especially when you consider that Gerard died of a brain tumour. The Lonely, preying on sentiment and emotion fears. The Eye, being a more cerebral fear, more analytical?

- Evan describing his family as ‘very religious’. Religion, well Christianity, gets mentioned a few times. Her mother’s Methodist faith, a Pastor counselling her. Seems all the more cruel when it’s a chapel building she finds herself lost at, but I supposed you don’t really find many grave yards without a church building of some kind or another in the Kent countryside. The fact that the piece of masonry she kept hold of and was her anchor was engraved with a cross. I wonder if Naomi turned to religion after this statement giving, if The Lonely hadn’t already claimed her? Became part of a lock for community?

- ‘I’d never met or visited them, or even been told their names, as far as I remember’…. You were engaged… If he hadn’t completely cut himself off, then I think that’s a bit of a telling red flag. If he had cut himself off completely from the family, that just makes the fact that they completely reclaimed him in death all the more sad.

- ‘But they must have known me enough to invite me.’ I doubt Evan would have mentioned her, if he was distancing himself from the family, I imagine the last thing he wanted to do was draw his family’s attention to Naomi. I can only assume that she had already touched by The Lonely, the same way Avatar’s have found folks despite not having addresses or other contact information.

- ‘Moorland House’. Nothing quiet says bleak and imposing like moorland. Wide open wild places, subject to a climate all their own and oh so very easy to get lost on. Also put me in mind of the Moors Murderers, who used Saddleworth Moor to dispose of their child murder victim, one grave has still not been found after 60 years.

- The storm that hit the UK at the end of March 2015 was Storm Katie, sharing a name with Naomi’s actress.

- ‘I don’t know what I expected from Evan’s father.’ We don’t get any confirmation that Peter is Evan’s father, do we? We certainly don’t get name here and I can’t remember it being mentioned. I don’t think we ever get mention of Evan again come to think of it.

- ‘I felt guilty enough about his death, though I have no idea why.’ She has no reason to be, she’s no medical professional, but I imagine guilt and wanting to avoid others because of that guilt is another wedge The Lonely would use.

- She says ‘coffin’ and ‘casket’ interchangeably, oh no. There’s a difference I promise you. Let Caitlin Doughty tell you more.

- And while I’m on Caitlin’s channel, I want to link another video. Naomi’s realisation and description of how in death and back under the control of his family, he’d become ‘alien to the life that had he had created for himself’. The family was reclaiming Evan but force in death, and that made me incredibly sad. It reminded me of a video Caitlin made about protecting a person’s identify in dead, specifically a trans person’s identify, which may be contested by next of kin, and as next of kin, they have all the legal say. But there are ways to stop that from happening.

- Have I linked 3 Caitlin Doughty videos in the last 2 submissions? Yes, yes I have. She does good work.

- The loss of the track of time is something to be expected with grief and also when you get too close to any of The Entities really.

- Y’know, for devote followers of the manifestation of isolation and loneliness, there seem to be a fuck tonne of Lukas’. ‘Dozens of black-clad figures.’ If anything, having large families just to ignore an isolate themselves and each other is all the more fucked up.

- Losing the phone, cutting off any semblance of connections, even non tangible, indirect ones.

- And the fog comes rolling in. The use of fog is very Gothic and very effective. Obscuring, smothering. You could be yards from salvation and never know it if the very air around you obscures and silences it.

- ‘I realised afterwards that the night should have been far too dark to see the fog.’ I remember thinking that too, especially after she got out of the wrecked car. Also, sunset on Monday 30th of March was around 7:46pm, so it may not have been dark when she arrived, but depend how long she was at Moorland House, it may have been dark when she left... It’s amazing what you can find on the internet.

- ‘Even here among the dead, I was alone.’ Ooof, what a line. And we’ve all heard it before, haven’t we. ‘Everyone dies alone.’ And while there may be a truth to it being a solitary action, no one should die lonely.

- ‘Through that door, where the inside of the chapel should be, was a field’. Oh we ain’t in Kansas any more Toto. As the scene progresses, I start to feel a little but of The Spiral at the edges, and The Buried dragging from beneath. Naomi talks of feeling dragged towards the graves, of the fog push and pulling.

- ‘I heard Evan’s voice call to me. He said, “Turn left”.’ This is a reach, literally, but this little moment reminded me of a scene in the first Critical Role campaign. Vax’ildan, my sweet goth bi bird son, had just gotten expelled out of a wound in the flank of a black dragon in flight… As you do, it was a Tuesday for Vox Machina. But as he’s falling, he prays to the Raven Queen, Goddess of Death, to whom he’d traded his service to save his sister’s life. He’s falling, he accepts his role as her champion and she buys him enough time and a whisper instruction of ‘Left’ for him to reach out and save himself. Something beyond the veil telling you to keep going.

- ‘Some time with a more… qualified care professional might also prove helpful.’ Whether he believes you or not Ms. Herne, that is solid advice. Go get psychological help.

- ‘All requests to the Lukas family for information or interviews have been very firmly rebuffed.’ I imagine they were but I also wonder how long it took Peter to steel himself to contact Elias directly and say ‘you need to rein your new man in, ok.’

- ‘The only text that can be made out simply reads “forgotten”.’ And that’s the real death isn’t it? Being forgotten. And I think The Lonely works best when it knows it can leave you forgotten yet you’re still breathing.

- Like I’ve said, if any of The Entities have their claws in me, it’s probably The Lonely. Which is why I refuse to forget, I refuse to be forgotten. “No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away...” GNU Sir Terry Pratchett.

[webtable]

the fact that naomi proposed to evan, and not the other way around, feels oddly important to me. 

not even in a “breaking gender roles” way, but a “she grew up in a situation where she probably found it incredibly hard to ask for things, and yet learned to do it anyway” way. she wanted to spend the rest of her life with the person she loved, and so she got up and asked him.

[thevoidcannotbefilled]

Honestly.... yes actually! For three reasons:

1) Evan or at least Evan’s ghost/memory led her out of the Lonely. Other people and the connections you make with others is what counters the Lonely. And that connection, I’m pretty sure has to be mutual. That’s why Gerry asked in MAG 48 if the statement giver and her mother were close. In order to reach out, someone has to reach back. 

2) Evan made Naomi feel less lonely. She was the least lonely in her life when she was with him, and unless he got with her purposely knowing he was going to die and stayed with her in order to make her feel lonelier in the long run, I think it’s safe to say he wanted her to feel loved. 

3) Evan’s dad said this: “My son is in there. He is dead.” So this is weird, but I’d like to interpret this line as accusatory. It’s implied that Peter was around for a long while and we know that most avatars live long lives one way or another. So, I’d like to think that they thought Evan wasn’t Lonely because Naomi was there. 

So, long post short: Yes, Evan loved Naomi and if he hadn’t died, they would have spent the rest of their lives together and in love. 

About Episode 13

Do you think Evan genuinely loved Naomi? Or was it just the Lukas' usual business of marrying weird singles? It's not really important to the overall plot, but I think about it a lot.

[chemical-bunz]

“And then, as I found myself in the middle of that open, desolate field, I heard something. It was the strangest thing, but as I tried to run I could have sworn I heard Evan’s voice call to me. He said, “Turn left”. That’s it. That’s all he said. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that’s what he told me to do. And I did it. I turned sharply to the left and kept on running. And then… nothing.”

Mag013 - Alone

[bugsinthebayou]

mag013!

[lyrebright]

Had work today and I actually remembered to grab my headphones when I went on my lunch break so in the latter half of my work day I got through a good chunk of TMA episodes (I assure you I wasn't doing anything that required my full attention. I paint houses. No thoughts, head empty work).

Episodes I got through ranged from very investing to very...not (my apologies to all lovers of MAG014 but I am not one of you); MAG012 & MAG013 are definite highlights so far. I had no idea Gerard Keay was going to be a recurring character in the statements but I'm excited to see more of him now that I do. I'm going to guess I can slot MAG012 in as a "fucked up books" episode since that seems to be like, his thing?

MAG013 took me by surprise mostly because I wasn't expecting a like..."present" day episode? With like, narration from someone who isn't Jonathan Sims? I enjoyed the change up though. That family was for sure doing some fucked up cult shit for real.

Oh! I got so distracted by the goodness of the episodes that followed that I totally forgot the fuckery revealed in MAG011. Like MAG011's actual statement is Very Interesting but. Jon. Jon. Stupid man, I am gripping you by the cheeks.

When your boss says that your predecessor, and I quote, "died in the line of duty," and you're both fucking archivists, that's really really sus my guy.

Can't wait to learn more about Gertrude in wildly out of chronological order chunks though. Queen of a stunning lack of organisation.

[martinbabywood]

I listened to mag 13 this morning and just keep thinking about it. The fact that the first in-person statement Jon has is from a victim that escaped The Lonely… and whose lover died from his association with the Lukas family 😭 PARALLELS

[thevoidcannotbefilled]

Naomi Herne: "I felt... Forsaken."

Me, relistening for the third time: Do you now? Imagine that-

[haunthouse]

welcome to a meta that, in retrospect, seems glaringly obvious, but that has hit me like a freight train this morning. we’re talking about the lonely as a ghost story.

ghosts as an entity are inherently about disconnect. but kaylee, i hear you say, ghosts are dead people, wouldn’t that make them in the end’s domain? but when it comes down to it, death is a good framing device for ghosts (and yeah, it’s necessary to make ghosts), but people don’t tell ghost stories just because they’re afraid of death. ghost stories are told because ghosts are irrevocably disconnected from the living in a way that terrifies us — sometimes they’re intentionally scary, knocking shit around or yelling boo!, but a lot of the time they’re just... there. and that’s the terrifying part. something that’s there and shouldn’t be; something that can’t interact with the world around it and is completely, utterly, terrifyingly alone.

ghost stories are about isolation, about being a person without any of the framework that being a person requires, without society or connection or love. being unseen and unheard and unknown to all around you — and trying so hard to reverse all those un-words, to be seen, heard, known. that’s exactly the domain of the lonely!

and onto the meat of this meta: all nine lonely-centric statements (and the journey of one martin blackwood) through the lens of ghost stories.

(spoilers for mag170 at the end, but each episode section is clearly marked, so feel free to skip it if you haven’t gotten that far yet!)

MAG013: ALONE

the first lonely statement we get (and also the first in-person statement! which is such a good inversion of the lonely being about lack of connection! jon doesn’t do a great job of comforting naomi, but he does stay with her as she gives the statement when she asks!! that’s beside the point but it is something i really love), and right off the bat, the ghost vibes are off the charts.

truly i am feeling absolutely idiotic for not really thinking about the ghosts-lonely connection before now because this statement? peak ghost story.

naomi’s fiance dies. naomi has several near-death experiences (crashes her car, then is hit by another car and winds up in the hospital), which is also a staple in a lot of ghost stories; nearly dying is set up as a way to get the living closer to the realm of ghosts, able to interact with them more clearly. it was a dark and foggy night in a graveyard, and standing at evan’s (open, empty) grave, naomi hears his disembodied voice leading her home.

when ghost stories are told from a distance, they’re about the horror of it — disembodied howling, faces in the window that keep you up at night. but when they’re told by someone close to the now-ghost, they’re love stories. it’s my grandmother hearing her father’s breathing one last time after his death, giving her a chance to say goodbye. it’s a familiar and loving presence, comforting you. that’s what naomi’s story is — the ghost of evan showing his love for her one final time.

MAG033: BOATSWAIN’S CALL

so, ships are meant to be places of community, right? ron @gerrydelano​ has a really good post about this regarding shanties. but ghost ships are an established trope of ghost stories: the inversion of what a ship should be, lacking all life and community, silently traversing the waters on its own.

the tundra is a ghost ship. it’s quiet (”very quiet... it was like they were doing everything in their power not to think about each other”) — the people there move around one another as if none of them are there, all so taken by the lonely. their cargo containers are empty. all they’re transporting on that ship is the ghosts of those aboard.

this episode falls into the trope of ghosts want the living to join them — though there’s still a mourning atmosphere when sean kelly is taken fully by the lonely, that final bit of life on the ship extinguished. (”no one said a word, but i could have sworn a few of my shipmates were crying.”)

MAG048: LOST IN THE CROWD

this one’s one of my favorites! andrea nunis’ statement deals with different kinds of loneliness — she begins it with explaining that she prefers to travel alone, but later, that loneliness is something terrifying. she’s in a crowd of unrecognizable people, unable to fit herself into the world she’s seeing — she’s completely separate from the rest of the world. she’s a ghost. 

“it wasn’t italian being spoken ... or any other language i recognized. the more i listened, the more i realized it wasn’t a language. there were no words, it was just noise.” “their faces were a blur, each and every one of them.” and, the crowning point: “i tried to talk to them or to shout, to scream at them, but there was no reaction.”

by being taken in by the lonely, andrea’s been turned into a ghost. she cannot interact with or even recognize her environment, and that’s the real horror — it isn’t just being alone, it’s being surrounded by something that should be familiar; a crowd is something she’s been in a thousand times, as someone who travels a lot, and people are the most familiar thing in the world, like looking in a mirror! but it isn’t. everything is strange and she is outside of it all and that’s what a ghost is.

and her connection to her mother is what pulls her out. people have talked at length about how love is the antidote to the lonely so i won’t go on too long about that, but the connection between that & ghosts’ relationships to the living often being what keeps them around is sure something.

also, after getting out of the lonely andrea says “i made sure i was always in sight of at least one other person” — and there’s something to be said there about needing to be seen to be real. 

chiara @red-reys​ brought up this feuerbach quote which fits very well: “that which i alone perceive i doubt; only that which the other also perceives is certain.” being the only one to perceive something (for example, a ghost), or the only one who is utterly unperceived, is a very lonely thing — it isolates you entirely from those who do not perceive it. being perceived, or having someone else see what you see, can give you an anchor.

wow i’m sure that won’t come back later!

also, far be it from me to talk about this statement without mentioning gerry keay. because it means something that he’s the one to give andrea the tools she needs to pull herself out of the lonely. gerry is someone completely lacking in human connection, who is literally haunted by the ghost of his mother and later is seen as a ghost himself. gerry doesn’t have friends; he tells jon “i always wanted my friends to call me gerry,” but in a tone that makes it clear he didn’t have anyone who could’ve. and of course he didn’t. a life so entwined with the entities and cut so short, a life so ruled by the cruelty of others that he certainly did not want to rope anyone else into. 

though gerry’s never directly stated to be affected by the lonely, he’s certainly lowercase-L lonely at the very least, and he’s certainly got enough experience with ghosts to understand the lonely. 

gerry is the trope of the helpful spirit. he’s the ghost who’ll give you directions on a deserted road and disappear when you turn around. he gives jon the information he needs to understand the entities, he gives andrea the information she needs to not become a ghost.

MAG057: PERSONAL SPACE

alright so this one is, admittedly, more cosmic horror than anything else, but if y’all’ve seen any of my comics you probably know i’m very passionate about space ghosts & haunted spaceships. and as such, i’m extremely interested in how the daedalus mission echoes ghost stories.

carter chilcott’s story pretty directly acts as a ghost story — unable to communicate with the others on the ship even when he tries, unable to interact with the world to the point of looking out the window at one point to find the world entirely missing. this is all stuff i’ve said already about the other statements, so i’m glossing past it, because what interests me more is the daedalus as malicious architecture.

because the daedalus was created specifically for this union between vast, lonely, and dark (all of which i think have significant ghostly tie-ins). everything about how the ship itself and the mission came to be is a mystery, even to those involved — manuela says “i don’t know how he convinced the lukases and fairchilds to help finance the project,” “i don’t know if they were working on rituals of their own,” “exactly how the launch was arranged, i couldn’t tell you.” 

a piece of the traditional haunted house is a sort of timelessness, and mystery inherent in its building. hill house in shirley jackson’s haunting of hill house “seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders... it was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a place fit for people or for love or for hope.” the oldest house in the game control is malicious architecture at its finest, and it’s called the oldest house. it predates people. it exists as a giant piece of brutalist architecture smack dab in the middle of new york, but no one knows why or how it came to be. as a real-world example: the winchester mystery house is wrapped up in mythos about its creation. was sarah winchester just a lonely old woman with a hobby for architectural design, or did she create endlessly spiraling staircases and doorways with a steep drop into the yard to keep ghosts away? who knows! we sure do like to speculate, though.

yes, i’ve talked about this in tma metas before. highly recommend jacob geller’s control, anatomy, and the legacy of the haunted house for more of this content.

even manuela dominguez, the only person on the daedalus mission who actually knew what she was doing and wasn’t just there to be a victim of entities they did not understand, does not know how the mission came to be. 

and the entire purpose of this spacecraft is to be malicious to its inhabitants! the very architecture is meant to make the people within into perfect snacks for their respective entities! the station is cramped (”so cramped that i could only fully stretch out in the section used to exercise,” says jan kilbride), but when the vast takes hold it’s suddenly endless — “a hollow pretense of a shell that did nothing to separate me from the void.” (cue me shouting about how much trust we put in the places we live, and whether or not that trust is warranted, how easily it can be turned against us!)

a few other bits of this statement that really echo ghost stories: “twice i was woken up by the sound of the door opening, only to find it as tight as it had ever been. throughout the daytime i would occasionally hear footsteps, which shouldn’t even have been possible in zero gravity.” and then the empty, ghostly spacesuit that floats past chilcott’s window — there are so many stories about disembodied wedding dresses or mourningwear walking the halls silently, so why not a spacesuit?

i started this section saying this statement was more cosmic horror than ghost story but i’m finishing it by saying this is actually one of the clearest representations of haunted architecture in the whole podcast. (other examples off the top of my head include upon the stair & a cosy cabin, the latter of which i actually already wrote a meta about.)

MAG092: NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS

the moment i started thinking about the lonely-ghosts connection i remembered this episode, because it’s so clear. complete disconnect, existing entirely alone in a shadow of the world you once knew, unable to interact with the living in any way.

very small bit but. “as the cab pulled away, it seemed to have no driver that i could discern” vs the theme of ghost carriages in older ghost stories. i am looking directly at it.

barnabas bennett can “almost think i hear the mocking joy of my friends, but there is nobody here.” he can see evidence that life continues around him, unseen — “i know that what is done by those i cannot see might be felt here — i have found glasses broken and pages torn that were not so the night before.” just as a ghost is unseen to the living, the reverse is true: bennett can see others having an impact on the world in small ways, and his letter is found by jonah, but he can’t really affect the world in any real way.

MAG108: MONOLOGUE

this one is so exciting to me because theater ghosts are a huge trope in ghost stories! theater people are some of the most superstitious people you’ll ever meet! especially regarding ghosts having an impact on their shows — there’s the superstition regarding The Scottish Play™, the tradition of leaving a ghost light on onstage to appease the spirits. there’s that time all the kids in my production of brigadoon when i was in middle school circled around the makeup mirrors to play bloody mary and got thoroughly chewed out by the adults in the cast. theater’s full’a ghosts!

(i think it’s something about the intense amounts of history behind it — and how, in playing a part that a thousand people have played before, you’re echoing their exact words, becoming a repetition of those long gone. and on a stage, blinding lights in your face washing out any view of the audience — you could, technically, leave the stage and interact with the people down there, but it seems pretty entirely impossible when you’re up there. you’re being perceived but can’t see in return. you’re essentially a ghost putting on a show for the living on a loop.)

the statement-giver for this one, adonis biros, echoes a lot of those sentiments, actually. “your words heard by no one — and in that no one, an entire universe.” “have you ever had stage lights in your eyes? ...you can look out into the audience and see nothing at all. just you.”

i said before that “when ghost stories are told from a distance, they’re about the horror of it — disembodied howling, faces in the window that keep you up at night.” the disconnect between the anonymous audience and the singular actor onstage makes the distance here extreme — so this is the sort of ghost story that’s unquestionably a horror story, focusing on the most chilling aspects of ghosts. their inhumanity, their anonymity. the theater masks adonis sees in the audience are “empty. it was a hollow shape of a man that had no life, no presence to it.” even adonis himself says he “had no doubt that what i had seen was some sort of specter or omen.”

he sees a “masked mockery of a human figure” in a window while walking at night. ghosts looking through windows is enough of a trope that once, when i went on a ghost tour in williamsburg, at least half the stories were about people seeing ghostly faces in windows, and i completely freaked out when i saw someone moving around in one of the houses before realizing, oh, some of them are still actually occupied.

this one’s undoubtably a collaboration between stranger and lonely, but i think that intersection’s one of the best for ghost stories — something not-quite-human-anymore, if it ever was, haunting you.

MAG150: CUL-DE-SAC

a lot of the bare bones of this statement are things i’ve already covered, so i’m not gonna go too in-depth on it. herman gorgoli’s statement is about disconnect (from alberto, and then from the rest of humanity), about isolation, about houses-gone-wrong (his and alberto’s house in cheadle, which he views by the end as a place imprisoning him, and the titular cul-de-sac).

we’ve seen the malicious architecture trope in the form of the daedalus already, but this time it’s on earth. it’s something that should, by all rights, be familiar. the houses in the suburbs are all the same, but it’s at least a sameness you know. but they’re all bereft of any irregularities, ghostly echoes of what a house should be.”there were no lights on in any of the houses.” he even finds a dead body in one of the houses — but the woman who’s body he finds is not the one haunting them.

it’s herman haunting the neighborhood, until his love for alberto brings him out. herman making his way through houses he cannot interact with in any meaningful way, whos details he cannot interpret. “how many corpses lay waiting behind the placid facade of this endless false suburbia?” he wonders, and i have to imagine he’s also wondering if he’s already joined their ranks, if he’s the haunting in a haunted house.

and connection brings him back and the houses are no longer empty, no longer waiting for a ghost to take resident in their hallways.

MAG159: THE LAST   (& martin’s journey in season four, generally)

we’ve all analyzed 159 within an inch of its life but i’m here to do it again, with the context of martin’s whole journey into the lonely. because the lonely turns people into ghosts. the lonely takes away humanity and life and leaves a hollow echo in its wake.

literally the powers lonely avatars have involve turning invisible. what else is often associated with invisibility? ghosts. checkmate. i’m running out of steam a bit but i swear these are good points i’m making. trust me.

what makes ghost stories so good is that even if the narrator is not a ghost themselves, just experiencing a ghost puts them at a fundamental disconnect from society. it’s something disbelieved by so many people. (there’s parallels to be made with mental illness here, but i... don’t really feel like making them right now. they’re definitely there, as is the very potent lonely-depression connection that made ep170 hit so hard for so many of us.) in hill house, the more eleanor is wrapped up in the goings-on of the house, the less she’s able to relate to the other people there. the closer martin becomes to the lonely, the less he’s able to talk to the people around him — he’s told not to talk to them by lukas, but he’s also just... unable to relate. their experiences are different than his, at this point.

nicole @brunetteauthorette99​ said something really good in our conversation about this, about ghosts “being stuck in... spaces that have moved on without them, reenacting their defining moments in life over and over again without the possibility of change.”

martin is stuck in the institute. he probably has an apartment, but we don’t see it, and i can’t imagine he as he is by season four has put much effort into decorating it or making it feel like a home. every place is impersonal — somewhere he exists without really living.

and the institute moves on without him. jon goes into the coffin and martin doesn’t know until he’s already in there. and martin can impact his environment only in small ways — leaving tape recorders on the coffin in an attempt to anchor jon home, leaving the tape of jon’s victim for melanie, basira, and daisy to find. he will not or cannot speak to or touch other living beings, just move objects around in a desperate attempt to get a message across, a ouija board of tapes and post-it notes. his moment of rejecting the lonely’s plans in 158 is dropping the knife peter has given him — another expression more through his interactions with his environment than any human connection.

martin says the lonely always had him, and with how much his story revolves around people who may as well be ghosts, that’s true. his father disappeared and left only the image martin had of him in his mind, only the echo he himself provided in the mirror, the ghost of someone who hurt him overlaid on his own reflection. his mother was only present so far as she could be malicious, disapproving; a vengeful ghost, taking out the revenging instinct she had for martin’s father on martin. and then everyone else martin cares about dies — sasha’s gone and not!sasha acts as her malicious echo for a while; tim dies; jon dies. and yeah, he comes back — but he’s different. a ghost of sorts. martin’s already pretty ghostly by then, too.

so martin is, essentially, a ghost throughout season four, and probably beforehand, as well. jon literally! asks martin! if he is a ghost! in season one! which brings us to 159: “are you real?” martin asks the first living person he’s really talked to in who-knows-how-long. because martin doesn’t feel real, so how could anyone else be? “nothing hurts here” may be a contradiction of the literal experience of ghosts we see in tma (gerry saying “it hurts, being like this”), but is a very real perception of ghosts in ghost mythology as beings beyond pain, beyond the suffering of being alive. sometimes they exist to cause others that suffering they can no longer feel, but a lot of the time, they’re just melancholy, having forgotten what it’s like to be a person or hanging on just enough to yearn to return to that feeling of life.

“i’m the reason he... i did this to him as much as you,” jon says. in ghost terms: martin died for him. of course his connection to jon, then, would be the only thing able to bring him back.

mag159 is an orpheus/eurydice story — people have made posts about that before, i’m sure, and i have too, how jon and martin invert the orpheus archetype by being saved rather than damned by the act of sight. and it feels obvious to state it, but for clarity: eurydice dies. orpheus, alive, tries to save eurydice from the underworld, where she is a spirit, a ghost, an echo of herself.

MAG170: RECOLLECTION   —   (SPOILER WARNING!)

this episode is the reason i’m making this post, but i may as well copy-and-paste the entire transcript for this section, because there is truly not a single part of it that doesn’t resonate as a ghost story. 

the lonely house as a malicious location. the chairs are all uncomfortable, the house is large enough that just by wandering it (as a ghost might) martin grows tired enough to sit in them regardless. the decorations are wrong — all the rooms are the same and martin doesn’t like it, said he doesn’t know “why i’d decorate my house like this.”

it isn’t a small house. there’s a reason a lot of ghost stories take place in twisting mansions where you can never quite find your way back to where you started. ghost stories thrive on that isolation, that loneliness — if you see a ghost while you’re alone, are you sure you’ll be believed? doesn’t that just isolate you further? architecture can twist around those within it until they’re trapped, doomed to haunt it themselves. “it's such a - such a big house, my house, there must be other people!” martin says. 

but the only others in the house are ghosts like martin. 

“hundreds, thousands of lost souls, wandering the halls. hollow memories, with eyes full of tears. i’ve seen them. they’re all trying to remember.” 

“i found someone else, wandering around. they were all thin and gray. faded. like they’d been here for ages.”

the ghosts cannot remember their names, why they are there, whether or not it is their house they exist in. they’ve become near-inseparable from the fog around them and the architecture that holds them hostage.

and the house itself, it takes all of that, and its quirks — the size, the chairs, the decorations, all of which martin openly does not like — are all made from the people haunting it. the house is wrong because the people within it can no longer change it. martin’s comment on the decorations sticks with me because it’s such a simple example of this: presumably, he could affect the house in some way in the past, but he no longer can, and he’s stuck with the results of his past mistakes, echoing over and over from room to room. the impacts remain even when the people have faded so far as to be practically nonexistent.

and once again: love is what makes him remember, over and over. he remembers jon, and then the lonely steals that memory — but the remembering is what’s important, because the act of loving anchors martin, and it helps him remember who he is, repeating his name over and over.

ghosts lack identity. whether it’s because they’ve been forgotten by all who knew them in life, whether it’s because it’s too painful to hold onto that when they can no longer do anything with it — we assign names to ghost stories, connect them to the living, but there’s always a disconnect there.

and that’s what helps jon find him, helps martin keep himself from fading out again. and even jon says “you were faint” upon finding martin. martin was a ghost haunting that house.

but not anymore.

the lonely is a ghost story. the lonely is about people who’ve become unmoored from human connection and their own identities, who haunt places, or who’ve been lured into places that are hauntings in and of themselves and have no choice but to take up residence as ghosts within those walls.

and ghost stories, often, are love stories. love keeps us tethered to life, and love is what saves people from the lonely, over and over again.