#THE ENORMITY OF MY HEART CANNOT FIT IN THESE CHARACTERS AND I AM PLAGUED

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RPG CUSTOMIZATION OPTIONS ALLOW ME HAIR BODY HAIR FACIAL THAT DOESNT LOOK BAD HAIR HAIR HAIR I AM SO TIRED OF PRETENDING IT ISNT NORMAL!!! YOU SHOULD KNOW HOW TO OPTIMIZE BODY HAIR BY NOW!!!!!!! GIVE GIVE GIVE IT I AM SO TIRED OF PRETENDING TO LIVE THIS LIE I AM TIRED OF THE PERFECT SMOOTH HAIRLESS BODY !!!

[centaurianthropology]

The Magnus Archives ‘A Matter of Perspective’ (S03E26) Analysis

Melanie takes the reins for this outing, and we get a statement that has been hinted at since early season 3.  After that, there are particularly fun revelations, then … well, then.  The good times just can’t last on this show, can they?

Come on in to hear what I thought about ‘A Matter of Perspective.’

It’s interesting to contrast Melanie’s presentation style from Jon and Martin’s.  She very much still has an entertainer’s training and instincts.  She’s the only one who cues herself and gives a clap like she expects cutting and editing after.  And yet she seems as gripped by the personality of the statement as they are. It’s hard to tell where her instinct for entertainment ends and the Archivist begins, but suffice to say she’s blurring the line.  She’s not as deep into it as Martin and Jon, but she feels it.

The statement itself is a different perspective on the Daedalus Station, this time from the elusive Jan Kilbride, who has been referenced several times this season.  He’s clearly someone touched by the Vast, and was picked for the mission quite specifically by ‘Mr Fairchild’, likely Simon Fairchild.  So we’ve had the person picked by the Lukases (totally isolated, saw the Earth vanish), and the Fairchilds (got sent so far out from the Earth he perceived the Vast). That probably means that Manuela was chosen by the People’s Church of the Divine Host.  One wonders what sort of experiment they requested of her.

I love that we got to see Simon Fairchild again, even if only for a moment.  Of all the potential human monsters, I have a soft spot for this guy, who seems to me to be the horrific TMA version of a wacky wizard.  He seems to focus on people who were already drawn to the Vast, and then he gives them far more of it than he could ever want. He’s always struck me as the sort of character who knows perfectly well that most people he throws at the Vast end up dead, but he can’t see why that should be a bad thing.  He’s giving them what they want.  It might not come in a palatable form, but they still did want it, at least at the beginning.  Of all the parties in TMA, he often seems the most jovial in his perspective.

We know that he’s trying to find the Vast, and has been collecting pieces of it, experiences of its various facets.  I have to wonder, then, if Kilbride wasn’t his greatest success.  What Kilbride perceived between the stars, far out beyond our own solar system, seems as close as we’ve come to the whole of one of the great old ones. Something so vast his mind couldn’t even comprehend it, couldn’t pick out its edges or define it in any way besides its Vastness.  Was this merely another aspect of the Vast, or did he touch the being itself?  Could he touch the being itself?  

I feel like he hit the nail on the head when he stated that we cannot truly perceive the great old ones, and they can’t really perceive us on any meaningful level.  Their aspects interact with us, but more like we’d interact with ants or other very small insects we notice.  We crush them or brush them aside or sometimes just move them away.  Some of them we take a liking to for a brief moment, and we’re gentle with them, but we forget them soon.  That’s the best analogy to the great old ones I can think of.  The Vast is, in many ways, that enormous incomprehensibility made manifest.  

Once the statement was done, it was also interesting to hear Melanie’s reaction to it.  She seems startled that it’s done, but less so because she seems to be waking up from the sort of out-of-body experience that Jon and Martin go through.  If anything, she seems more like season 1 Jon (and I think there’s a reason those two clash so often, as they are remarkably similar in some ways), wanting to dismiss Kilbride’s experiences, particularly as he didn’t describe ever returning to the Daedalus.  She acknowledges the reality of the supernatural, yes, but without good evidence she has a hard time believing the statement.

Then Basira arrives, and their snarky chats are things I need a lot more of in my life.  The two actresses have great chemistry, and through them we got some wonderful little revelations about the other characters and how they’re perceived by Melanie and Basira.

The first thing that happened was the confirmation that Martin’s little crush on Jon is not only canon, but has probably been noticed by everyone except Jon.  Basira and Melanie both agree that Martin got rather hostile when he found out Jon was confiding in them rather than him, which is fantastic.  I’ve read that sort of thing into so many shows, only to have them deny it later. To have it outright confirmed by the other characters that Martin has it bad for Jon, and that his crush explains a lot of his actions?  Yeah, that’s awesome.  

And the awesome kept coming with the following revelation, second-hand from Georgie, that Jon is asexual. Apparently not aromantic, as he and Georgie did date for a time, but asexual.  It’s fantastic to see representations of various sexualities so seamlessly integrated into the show, and for each of them to fit the characters so well.  As soon as they got confirmed, it felt like an ‘of course’ moment.  Of course Tim is bisexual.  Of course Martin is in love with Jon.  Of course Jon is asexual.  It just works.

I don’t know if they planned on dropping these revelations during Pride, but it’s really fun nonetheless. I feel like this is the best way to do LGBT representation: by simply integrating it when it seems appropriate to the character and the situation.  By not making it some ‘very special episode’.  We got confirmation about Martin and found out more about Jon just through some office gossip.  It makes my heart happy (and, yes, the Dinghy shipper in me more than a bit pleased too). Like, seriously.  Fucking solid job, TMA.

And then.  

And then, Elias.

Fuck me, I wasn’t anticipating that poor Melanie’s dad was at Ivy Meadows, the nursing home taken over by John Amhurst and torn apart by the plague of insects and disease that accompanied him in ‘Taken Ill’.  That remains one of the nastier episodes of TMA ever, and to know that Melanie lost a relative to that, and didn’t even know is horrible.  Even more horrible was how she found out how her grandfather died, by Elias inflicting the information and possibly even some of the feelings he went through upon her.  

His desire to maintain control over those around him, to maintain a true stranglehold on the Institute, is horrifying in its scope and ruthlessness.  And we now know he can take information and plant it into the memories of those who weren’t there.  Turning the truth into a weapon continues to be his cruelest trick, and I hate to think what he might do to Tim or to Martin if they tried to turn on him.  

One thing’s for certain, I don’t think this is going to work out the way he wants it to.  He thinks that this will break Melanie, but she has a core of rage that I think will only get stoked by this.  She may well act cowed, but her mind is still her own. Elias can hear words and see actions, but so far as we can tell, he isn’t a mind-reader.  So Melanie’s can and will still plan.  She might not be able to directly research now, but that doesn’t stop her from plotting.  If he wanted to convince her that he didn’t deserve to die, this sure as hell wasn’t the way.  I think it’s fairly certain that Melanie will kill Elias, but the repercussions of that action … yeah, I worry.

Because Elias does use the truth as a weapon, so I have a tendency to believe him.  He obfuscates, but he rarely outright lies to people. He gets too much satisfaction out of hurting them with the truth as he sees it.  Do I think everyone will drop dead if he dies?  No.  But do I worry that whatever it is that is piggy-backing on Elias like the Archivist piggy-backs on Jon will jump to Melanie when she does it?  Yes.  And then Melanie would become Elias.  Maybe not instantly, but slowly the woman we know would fade, and Miss King would take her place.

Conclusions

An interesting statement (it’s always fascinating when this series really leans into the cosmic part of cosmic horror) from someone I feel like will hold significance in the future. You don’t bring up a character several times and then drop him after a single statement.  

But really, the real meat of this episode came after.  We got confirmation that every single male character in the series is a flavor of queer, that Basira and Melanie’s friendship is excellent and good, and that Elias is 100% the scariest thing on this podcast right now.  Hell of an ending to a good episode all around. This third season is of ridiculous quality, seriously.

And while so much horror is happening, and Elias is absolutely the worst, I am so very pleased with the level of queer representation we just got.  It fits with all the characters, it came out when it felt appropriate for it to come out, and it made my Pride Month feel just a bit more awesome.  Rock on, my very queer podcast.  Rock the fuck on.