#also this episode is making me start genuinely liking jon DAMN IT

[godslittlesadge]

[zabala0z]

Oh my god. Okay hi. Welcome back to “New TMA listens to season 2” and guys holy shit I’m freaking out. I just listened to The New Door. So much is happening in 3 episodes and I gotta write it down oh my god. Guys. Guys.

MAG 44: tightrope

Gertrude Robinson!!!! She sounds so nice. Didn’t even realize there was a mention of this circus before until Jon said it. Gotta up my game. The guy who played the steam organ, Nikolai Deniken, was featured in Strange Music. Or his granddaughter was. I looked over the transcripts again; Gertrude mentioned that Deniken leaving in the 70’s made the circus tamer. Makes me wonder if the steam organ is essential for the circus . Also the circus of the other is such a metal name for a circus like okay damn.

I’m thinking the circus is gonna pop up again. New main villain??? Maybe??? Or maybe that cult that hadn’t appeared for a bit.

MAG 45: blood bag

Ewewew. It’s literally summer, the definition of mosquito season, why did I go through with this episode, I’m literally gagging. Anyways. Not many notes but the antiques dealer who bought that Victorian syringe off of Thompson is also from Lost and Found (MAG 38) and Piecemeal (MAG 14). Like all bro did was buy it and shit went off the rails. Wonder if he’s like cursed or something. Also small note for piecemeal: the guy who made the statement said after Mikaela Salesa left, Noriega was missing teeth, an eye and fingers. He may have had them before Salesa came but who knows. Salesa seems suspicious.

Also the description of the mosquitoes. Like. Eugh.

MAG 46: literary heights

Yooo Michael crew! He appeared in Pageturner as the childhood best friend who got his shit rocked by the lightning. He also apparently appeared in a boneturners tale when he returned a book. He seems like a book nerd now after his near death experience. That lightning figure that was chasing him at the end sounded like it was from the book but another thing: Michael was chanting that shit before y’know jumping out the window but he mentioned “The Vast”. I already vaguely know that name, along with a couple others. Like the fear entities or whatever?? I knew them before going in because Im into Hatchetfield and the lords in black got compared to them a couple times so I guess i didn’t go into this fully blind. More like 94% blind. I’m guessing The Vast is important though. We’ll see.

Finally the one I’m still freaking out over: MAG 47

Holy shit. If anyone saw my abrupt post, congrats. Anyone who didn’t: OH MY GOD MICHAEL APPEARANCE. The voice was so creepy, genuinely I’m freaked out. The whole premise of the episode was scary to me just because one of my fears generally is just being alone and having no one and just being lost so obviously, yeah. But also..god. Starting to doubt my assumption on how morally correct Michael.

Also SASHA. FAKE SASHA. She sounds completely different, thought it was fun they changed voice actors for this. I think fake Sasha has been rifling through Jons stuff. He’s been mentioning that someone has been going down in the tunnels and I think it’s fake Sasha.

Not many notes, I’m just freaking out. Couple things though: Michael said to Jon “do you even know they’re lying to you?”

Now they could either refer to fake Sasha as some gender neutral term since whatever replaced her is definitely not human and maybe doesn’t have a gender but I think more likely it’s referring to multiple people. Thing is, it could be anyone. I’m still suspicious about Elias, like he seems to know something no one does, jon had his rant about Tim and how Tim was here for practically no reason which is true and Martin is chill, I trust Martin. If Martin ends up like killing someone, I will die.

Just god. Michael is so creepy. It makes me wonder about its “domain”. It said it came to collect what is “mine.” The one who entered its domain. Is it like some underworld shit where you go in, you can’t come out? “The wanderer had a brief respite but it’s over now” like that’s just cruel.

Like I screamed when Michael said “did you notice which door she left through?” Like I full on got chills. Also “I am not a who, I’m a what, yada, yada” Okay pop off but you just stabbed a man wtf.

I have seen that infamous Michael line before in like fanart but god nothing compares to hearing the words actually coming from my phone while lying in bed when it’s pitch black outside. Props to the voice actor. Also that buzzing noise that happens in the background of fake Sasha and Michael disappearing when they leave? God it’s beautiful.

Anyways. Uh. Sorry for the long post but you guys gotta understand, I am literally going insane, I love this podcast so much. I got I think like 17 pages of notes/details from episodes to keep in mind like genuinely I am so invested. It like invigorates me. Fully.

Anyways, my only takeaway is bring back Sasha and Michael is terrifying

[historicallyaccuratecheese]

I’ve finally started listening to Season 2 of The Magnus Archives, so as per usual, here are my thoughts on the first 10 episodes of the season, from 41 to 50! Already this season is shaping up to be a wild ride and I’ve really enjoyed it so far. But as always, here are some things to consider if you plan to read this post.

1: This post is extremely long and in depth, the longest of these I’ve made so far in fact. Read it only in chunks or if you have enough time on your hands.

2: There’s obviously spoilers for everything in The Magnus Archives up to Episode 50, so please tread carefully if you haven’t gotten that far. Also, please do not spoil anything from future episodes for me.

3: I recommend you read my previous posts before this one, as I will be referring back to those older posts. I’ve made a link to the masterpost here for you to easily access them.

Anyways, enjoy my rambling! :)

- Episode 41, Too Deep ⬇️

Statement of Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, regarding exploration of the tunnels recently discovered below the archives. Statement taken direct from and recorded by subject.

That episode title is right, the show of going a bit too deep for my liking, I’m SCARED. You know what, I’m happy to say that Jon has blossomed into quite the relatable protagonist. He has an undying thirst for the truth, and is extremely paranoid and traumatized by the events of Season 1. He’s just like me fr! Anyways, thankfully the content of this episode was much simpler and easy to digest than I thought it would’ve been initially. It does feel like Rusty Quill wanted to ease listeners back in by giving us an episode that establishes the new status quo, but that being said, this one still gave me quite a bit to think about. Firstly, we have Jon’s mental state which is…yikes. Like, I know a month has passed an all, but I still feel like he needs a hug and a long nap. I know I joke about wanting to bash this guy’s head in like a piñata, or throw him off a skyscraper, or squeeze him like a squeaky toy…but now I’m genuinely concerned for him. Knowing how Jane scarred him physically and mentally is really upsetting, but hey! At least Martin seems to be taking good care of him, although considering what happened to him last season I still have to question if he’s ok as well, just…I want everyone to take care of themselves as well. Also, I know this sounds wrong, but I kind of hope that jar actually does have Jane’s ashes in it, because I miss her and it would be nice for her to still kind of be with us. Also I hope Tim gets back to work ok :(. Also Not!Sasha still terrifies me-OK! Back to Jon! It is really cool that the season begins with a statement directly written by the protagonist, and while I’m certainly concerned about his paranoia (which I’ll get to later), it’s nice to see him actively engaging in the mysteries and looking for answers. But with that out of the way, what about the tunnels? Well, firstly, I’m glad that this episode clarified that these tunnels are like…a new discovery? Because when Tim mentioned them in Episode 39, he spoke about them as if they were common knowledge, which was just…kind of weird to me? Now, it’s become a lot more apparent that the tunnels are quite a recent discovery, and they make for a very intriguing new mystery! I’m certain they’ll show up more throughout the season, but for now, they are just…really terrifying. Firstly, I’ll mention some of the things we discovered about them that were followed up on here, and then go on to the brand new information we got. …GOD DAMN POLICE! I WANTED TO LISTEN TO THOSE TAPES!!! Look, I get WHY they took them, it’s just…UUUGGGHH!!! Gertrude Robinson, WHAT ARE YOUR SECRETS?!! On top of that we have the matter of the weird circle of worms. I still think they were trying to open some sort of hidden passage, but the implications that…someone else was there are certainly concerning. I assume it’s whoever seems to be lurking around down here (who might also be the voice Jon heard), but…I really don’t know what to think of this. I really don’t know what to think of…ANY of this! But as for the new information provided, we obviously have the facts about Millbank Prison.

Firstly, it’s always a pleasure to see TMA incorporate obscure real-world history into its story, I just think it’s generally kind of neat whenever they do that. But outside of that, I don’t really know what to make of this information outside of a couple of things (like the institute being built on top of a prison being potential symbolism for Jon being stuck here now that he’s gotten wrapped up in the mystery). The two things that really caught my attention however, was that they make sure to bring up the panopticon format of Millbank. This kind of ties into the whole them of “being watched” that’s been coming up. Also, I guess now’s a better time than ever to mention the whole idea of Jon being watched. I honestly don’t know who or what is watching him, but my best guess is that it’s whatever is in the tunnels, or if I’m crazy, ME. (Although I’m technically listening so…idk. It still makes me feel kind of guilty though.) The other big takeaway is that Millbank, and likely the tunnels, we’re built by our beloved Robert Smirke. The tunnels already did remind me of Episode 35, so this isn’t all that surprising, but it’s nice to get further confirmation that these places are fucked up! It does make me wonder if he had a hand in building the institute itself though…hmmm… But after that lore drop, we get to the creepiest part of the episode. I’ll just say it: No, I do not know who is in the tunnels, my best guess is Gertrude’s killer but I don’t think that’s saying much. I also do not know what the wine bottle means, (although I literally just made a post about a wine bottle on a street that felt like the beginning of a TMA statement? That’s really weird?!) nor do I know who or what drew that arrow, or told Jon to leave. All I know is that, yes, this heavily reminds me of Episode 15. Like, not just this scene, but honestly the episode as a whole. This makes me think that maybe the thing in the tunnels is the same force behind Lost Johns’ Cave, and combine that with the fact I suspect said force to be the same as the darkness from Episodes 9 and 25, and that Jon’s torch apparently started to dim strangely quickly…I just feel like The People’s Church of The Divine Host might have some relevance here. Either way, this just makes me more and more concerned for the institute staff. It just goes to show that they have gone…well, too deep, and that even if he runs out of those tunnels, Jon is not truly safe from, say it with me everyone…✨the horrors✨. Oh Jane Prentiss’ Ashes, we’re really in for it now.

But of course, that’s not all, as the episode ends with a secret supplemental from Jon! …The fact that exists at all just makes me more concerned for his paranoia and mental health. So you know how I said I’d love it if Season 2 was a murder mystery? Well…be careful what you wish for I guess. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very excited by the plot point but…Jon can you please just calm down you’re scaring me. It’s interesting that he too is most suspicious of Elias though. I’m still very suspicious of him as well but..I don’t know, usually when a show tries to steer you in one direction like this, it ends up going the other way, so this oddly makes me like…2% less suspicious of Elias, simply because I feel like the show’s trying to bamboozle me. As for the other potential suspects, well, Sasha would be an interesting choice given that she’s…you know…although oddly enough I doubt Not!Sasha did it, since she probably wouldn’t have been at the institute when Gertrude was murdered. So congratulations Not!Sasha, I’m not suspicious of you for once! There’s a decent enough possibility for the killer to be Tim, but I’d genuinely be STUNNED if it was Martin. Like, it could be an excellent twist if done right but WOW. That would be genuinely insane. Overall I’m still most suspicious of Elias by a wide margin, but much like Jon, I’m keeping my suspects open just in case. The last thing I have to mention here is how this supplemental made me think about how…me as the listener fits into this. In canon, I feel like I’m supposed to be either Jon’s successor, his killer, some random shmuck who just came across the tapes, and MAYBE whoever Jon feels like is watching him although that seems a bit more unlikely. Anyways, that’s a wrap on this episode! In conclusion, it was a good episode, and I’m as scared as I’ve ever been, but hey, I’m also excited to listen to the rest of the season and see where the mysteries go! (Also ALEX READING THE END BIT? HELLO?! That’s the scariest part of the episode.)

Sorry if this one was also a bit incoherent (is this like a curse with Robert Smirke statements or something), like I said, this one kind of feels like one meant to ease you back in, so I don’t have too many coherent thoughts on the reveals of the episode just…a lot of emotions. I’m sure that’ll change as the season progresses though. Although, I did have one theory brewing in my head, it doesn’t really connect to anything in this episode that I’m aware of but I just thought I’d put it here. So, I was thinking about some of the cults from Season 1, namely The People’s Church of The Divine Host and the heat-based cult. I’ve assumed that they’re completely separate, since they seem to serve separate powers, but in retrospect, they actually had some very notable things in common, outside of just…being creepy cults. Namely, they both seem to be in opposition to both Gertrude Robinson and Gerard Keay. The PCOTDH performed a ritual on the supposed date of Gertrude’s death, while the heat cult contained pictures of her in their creepy bottles. Meanwhile, Gerard straight up kills the person who seeks to be a member of the heat cult, and his symbol seems to be an eye, while The PCOTDH has a closed eye as their symbol. So either these two groups are intrinsically linked at the hip, maybe even different sects of one larger cult, or Gertrude and Gerard just both had knacks for pissing cults off. Eh, food for thought.

- Episode 42, Grifter’s Bone 🎹

Statement of Jennifer Ling, regarding a live musical performance she attended in Soho.

This is literally just Killer Track from Nightmare Time lmao. I mean not really, but like…come on, they’re about songs that kill people, and also both contain instances of songs that cannot be remembered. This episode was MADE to fuel my hyperfixations. Also, fun fact, I recall seeing a post about tma before I started listening, where it mentioned how some episodes are deep looks into trauma while others are about a song so shit that it kills people. That post was actually one of the first things that got me to consider listening, so it’s cool to have finally come across that same episode! Although granted, I don’t think that’s the most accurate description, but I’ll get to that soon. Anyways, even if I didn’t find the episode super scary until the end, I’m more than willing to excuse it simply due to how creative it is. I know I just compared it to another piece of media, but all things considered I think this is a very fun one conceptually. Music journalism of all things isn’t something you’d expect to get tackled in tma, but it surprisingly worked really well. I actually quite liked Jennifer as the protagonist here, while she’s not nearly as shaken by the events as someone like the guy from Episode 37, I still got this…uneasy feeling from Jon’s narration, like from the beginning, you could tell something bad happened without it being TOO obvious. And…learning what happened to her after she gave her statement…yeah I can see why she’d be on edge! I thought Grifter’s Bone itself was really creepy and I do hope we learn more about them going forward, like, yeah, this was just a fun, kind of creepy, and very creative episode that I had a good time with. But then the post-statement investigation is revealed and…wow. Look, I think the jokes about the music being so shitty it kills people are funny, there’s some genuine gold about that in the YouTube comments. I mean hell, it’s a joke in-universe! But, part of me thinks that’s doing a disservice to what the episode is actually about. Because by the end, we see that it’s about a song so good that it causes people to harm and/or kill each other. I think there’s a good few ways you could interpret the meaning of this, but I personally see it as a metaphor for toxic fandom behavior. Look, I’ve BEEN in music fandoms before, I can say with certainty that this works as a metaphor. But, who knows? I’d love to hear other people’s takes on this as I think it can be seen in multiple ways. On top of that, there’s a few weird things about the circumstances i which Grifter’s Bone plays. Like, when it was just Alfred playing, Lee had no memory of the concert, and also survived. But when the entire band played, Jennifer remembered the concert, even if she wasn’t in the venue, and for some reason it triggered a…gathering between ghosts that killed each other again? I don’t know, there’s just some strange things going on here, and while it’s hard to really find anything that Grifter’s Bone might connect to right now, I hope some connections and answers pop up later. (Well, in retrospect, they do actually kind of remind me of The Piper from Episode 7, since that thing also played music and drove someone to bloodlust, but granted, the themes between the two episodes seem to be pretty different so I don’t know if that actually means anything.) However, one connection I found interesting was the presence of the crystal shop, which I really can’t see being anything other than the same one Jane was working at. This, along with the description of his expression, leads me to believe that the man who tried to warn Jennifer was the “Oliver” who Jane saw. And…I will concede that this could make the theory of him being Antonio Blake more plausible. Antonio is obviously important, and assuming this guy is Oliver, then he’s important as well. Also, someone in the comments pointed out that maybe he foresaw Jennifer’s death, which…yeah, I can see that! I still think I need more time and evidence before I’m fully sold on this theory but…I won’t deny it’s plausible.

So yeah, I had a really good time with this episode! Creative concept, fun execution, it’s up there with Anatomy Class as being…as “chill” as a an episode of tma can be. I’d really like to see this develop into a larger plot, but I’m also happy with just this statement (although some answers would be nice). But obviously, there is one thing that I have failed to mention. That is of course…the legendary supplement. Oh. My. God. Martin, you poor poor soul. You know, I had some joking suspicions after listening to one of the bonus shorts with his poetry on it (which I probably should’ve waited for, but like, I needed something to calm down with after the Season 1 finale), but…I actually can’t believe it. Martin has a genuine thing for Jon. And it is adorable, sad, and absolutely hilarious. Adorable in the sense that Martin’s crush is really cute and that I think they could make for a really cute couple, sad in the fact that Jon is the most dense human being in existence and that this is a horror series, so the relationship is probably doomed by default, and hilarious in the sense that Martin is trying his best to get Jon to fall in love with him, and not only does Jon not recognize it, but. But. He- he thinks he’s trying to SABOTAGE HIM. This. THIS PARANOID LITTLE FREAK I LOVE HIM SO MUCH. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very concerned for him right now, but I’d be lying if I said that this wasn’t the ship dynamic of the century. Damn you Rusty Quill, I can’t solve the overarching mystery now because I’ll be too busy thinking about THIS. (Also I find it both really funny and really sad that Jon’s so suspicious of Martin when Not!Sasha is. RIGHT. THERE. If there’s a single scene where he goes “Sasha is the only person here I can trust” or smth I will lose my mind.) There’s also the matter of his note which could mean…honestly anything. All it tells us is that Martin is lying about something, which could be anything from his crush on Jon to him actually being the killer (although I think the latter is unlikely since this is only the second episode of Season 2), and that his mother probably has…some sort of relevance. It could mean a lot of things but for now I’ll just put a pin in it. So yeah, really enjoyable episode with a fantastic supplemental.

Also, we have the million dollar question. What do I think Grifter’s Bone sounds like? Well, that’s easy:

- Episode 43, Section 31 🚔

Statement of Police Constable Basira Hussain, regarding her time investigating strange occurrences as part of Section 31. Statement taken direct from subject.

NOOOOOOO NOT THE COPS!!! WHO LET THEM GET INVOLVED???!!!! Nah I’m just kidding, Basira Hussain was actually pretty cool. So, this episode is quite the interesting one, as despite it technically being another statement, the way it’s structured makes it feel pretty unique. Obviously this episode has some very interesting reveals in terms of the overarching plot, but I feel like it’s purpose here was to establish the importance of the police force, namely Section 31, to the plot of Season 2. I mean, given what we learn about them here, and the fact that they’re in charge of a lot of matters related to Gertrude, I’m not surprised that they seem to be playing a decently significant role here. But uh..anyways let’s start off by talking about Basira. Yeah I like her :). She was chill, and I like how she’s very willing to help Jon out despite the fact that she probably shouldn’t. It’s a nice change of pace considering how I, and I assume many others, are used to cop characters being very stuck-up, and I think her seeming frustration with being sectioned was pretty endearing. I also kind of liked the buddy-cop dynamic she had with Jon as well, and I especially liked how this is really the first instance we have of Jon being very open to what the statement giver is saying. It really shows a lot of growth from his Season 1 denial, even if it comes at the cost of him going insane in this season. I’ll touch more on her deal with Jon at the end, but for now I’ll talk a bit about the experiences she describes. Obviously, the experience with the burning building was by far the most interesting one. I’ll start off by saying that as creepy as his death was, the sectioned officer Basira was working with has it coming. That’s what you get for being racist! Or misogynistic…Or, generally prejudice- Look. What I’m saying is that he probably deserved his fate. But who cares about that because OH MY GOD EPISODE 12. Obviously the episode has come back in multiple ways via stuff like Gerard and The Cult of Asag, but finally getting some confirmation on who the other burnt guy was is really cool! Diego Molina is quite the enigma, and the episode really got me thinking about his abilities, the book in red leather (which I struggle to see being anything other than another Leitner, although I have to question what Jon mean’s when he said he had a suspicion as to where Diego got the book. Like it was obviously in Jurgen’s library at some point but that doesn’t mean he got it directly from there. Maybe I missed something, IDK), and generally what the deal with The Cult of Asag is. Also, it seems Diego got burned and later killed by Gerard after the events of this episode, which makes me wonder about how he got burned there, since he was completely fine here. And also he has a zippo lighter, like Gerard and Jon? What does that mean? Is it the same as Gerard’s? But…his had an eye symbol, not a flame or whatever. I don’t know, I have a lot of questions regarding this guy and the cult he’s a part of. but I’ll just have to wait and see what pops up as time goes on.

Now, Basira’s second encounter with the paranormal doesn’t have as much going on, but I still find it very curious. The person she finds in the room is pretty interesting. The thing that really stuck out to me was that his house was in complete darkness. Given how this episode definitely deals with The Cult of Asag, I have to wonder if this is supposed to hint towards involvement from The People’s Church of The Divine Host. Someone in the YouTube comments also pointed out that the guy could’ve been one of the grim reaper people from Episode 29. I won’t deny the possibility, given the domino cases, attempt at suicide, and the fact that he was still alive after death, but I’ll keep other possibilities in mind as well just in case. However, something that obviously stuck out to me here was the presence of Daisy, Basira’s partner during this incident. She mentions having an encounter with vampires, and while Basira brushes it off as a joke…come on, there’s no way this doesn’t mean anything. And I actually have a small theory regarding this. You see, from Episode 36, we obviously know that Trevor Herbert, the vampire killer himself, is a relatively important character. We also know that he has a currently unnamed woman as his companion, so I’m wondering if that woman might be Daisy. This would probably mean that they departed from each other’s company at some point but…I just can’t shake the feeling that this is a possibility. The only potential hole I can see in this theory is that the woman had a scar on her eye, which seems like a pretty notable detail that would be weird for Basira to leave out, but it’s equally possible that she just didn’t find it worth mentioning. Either way, I am certainly interested by that line about vampires. One other line here that stood out to me was Basira’s mention of a spooky clown doll, which HAS to be a reference to Episode 24. We know that “weird” incidents are usually dealt with by Section 31, and that Section 31, is a rather small team, so it’s possible that Basira has been involved in police investigations of multiple statement, but I still felt it was a interesting thing to quote.

So overall, this was a pretty good episode. It’s not an all-time favorite for me if I’m being honest, but it set up some very interesting potential plot threads, I really liked Basira, and I thought it was cool to get a first look at what I assume will be a good amount of involvement from the police in the future. But of course…we have that supplemental. Oh thank fucking god we didn’t have to wait too long to get Gertrude’s tapes. Basira, you’re an absolute G, I hope to see more of these come through in the future (although I also hope she doesn’t get fired in the process lmao). I’m…probably not prepared for whatever will be on these tapes going forward but, hey! Let’s just appreciate the fact that we’re getting them at all! I…am getting more and more concerned for Jon though. Like, sweetheart, you REALLY need to lie down for a bit, I know it’s rich coming from me, but this constant search for the truth is going to bite you in the ass if you keep on going any further. You could also use some more help from Martin as well…no reason… Anyways, so far the season is going great, only three episodes in and it already feels like it’s going places. (I would like an update on Tim though, and…”Sasha”….ehhhhhh…)

Supplemental: “Martin just kissed me, I THINK THERE WAS POISON IN HIS MOUTH” - Jon, probably.

- Episode 44, Tightrope 🎪

Case 9790302. Yuri Utkin. Incident occurred in the village of Algosovo, Central Russia, November 1952.

WOOOOOOOOO GERTRUDE!!!! FINALLY we get to hear her, and while she’s still obviously shrouded in mystery, I was very satisfied with what we got of her. Firstly, I absolutely love the fact that she’s voiced by Jonny Sims’ mother, I always find it really funny whenever the roles of characters reflect the relationship between the actors, so I just though that was really cool. And she did a great job in the role, honestly I felt like I was being read a bedtime story. Specifically a fucked up German bedtime story (or I guess Russian…technically…). Honestly she’s pretty in line with how I imagined her, although I kind of thought she’d be a lot more cold when she comes off as just…pretty chill in reality, at least in comparison to Jon. And that’s probably the element of her character that interests me the most, outside of what she was doing and what really happened to her. Compared to Jon, who is frantically searching for the truth with very little answers, Gertrude seems to be much more aware of what’s really going on. She’s SO familiar with The Other Circus that she’s able to read this extremely creepy story and be like “wow this guy got lucky.” Like…WHAT HAS THIS WOMAN SEEN?! Obviously there could’ve been a period in time where she, like Jon, was in a frenzied state looking for answers, but in the context of what we’re seeing, it provides for an interesting contrast between her and Jon that I really like. But it raises SO many questions. Like, what exactly would it take for Gertrude to react extremely to a statement when she’s this unbothered by what she’s reading? How much did she know? I mean, I think it would be safe to assume she died because she knew too much, but like…how many weirdos and cults did she piss off in the process? I’m really anticipating where they might go with her in the future, as there’s a lot of interesting routes they could take. But outside of our first look at Gertrude, we obviously have the statement itself, and FUCK YEAH IT’S THE OTHER CIRCUS!!! Even though it’s only shown up in a couple of episodes prior to this one, this circus has actually been one of the most intriguing plot threads for me personally. I’m just a sucker for creepy carnivals, so finally getting an episode with a big focus on it makes me very happy. Ultimately this episode confirms my suspicions that this thing is a cult, because like…come on. There’s no way it isn’t. However, I still don’t really know what power they might serve, and the ringmaster Gregor Orsinov remains shrouded in mystery. As do…ALL of the cult leaders now that I think about it. We really only know the names of two of them, those being Gregor and Maxwell Rayner, but that’s about it. Regardless, I do feel like this episode gave a better idea of what The Other Circus wishes to accomplish, or at least what their deal is. The tiger, the freaks, the people in the audience, and…maybe the Ivan we see on the tightrope (I haven’t made my mind up on that one), are all implied to be not entirely…real, or as Yuri says, impossible. I think they’re basically artificial copies of real people and animals, but with some minor differences like glassy eyes or impossible anatomy, hence why it’s called “Another Circus”. For what purpose other than creeping people out, I have no idea, but I feel like that’s what’s going on here. As for the bag…well, I think it probably did contain Ivan but…I don’t really know what’s up with it, although it did kind of remind me of Episode 5 with the trash bags, and I think that episode connects to Episode 34, and…now that I think about it, the slightly off people and animals here are kind of like the anatomy students. Yeah I think I’m going in insane circles now! Also I guess I haven’t really talked about the story here, truth be told it’s not the most interesting element of the episode but uh…yeah I liked it as always, I feel pretty bad for Yuri and Ivan. God, imagine having severe mental trauma as the best case scenario simply because Gregor and his circus are just that dangerous, that’s messed up!

Well, outside of all of that, I obviously have some connections to discuss, so what about those? Well, obviously this one connects to Episode 24 more than any other, most notably via the calliope organ. So…yeah, I guess Nikolai Denikin wasn’t that good of a person! My initial assumption was that he caught onto whatever messed up things The Other Circus wished to achieve, and then quit and hid the calliope (…I miss Sasha) to stop them. Now that could still be the case, but this episode suggests that Nikolai was aware of The Other Circus’ horrific tendencies, and gave them a lot of power, meaning that he’s not entirely without a bad streak, and very well could’ve still been affiliated with them even after he “left” in the 1970s. Secondly, we have the clown in purple and white with polka dots which…almost perfectly matched the description of the doll from Episode 24. From that episode, it seems that doll was capable of turning other people into dolls…but does this episode signify that the clown doll was also originally a person. Maybe they sacrificed themselves in order to turn other people into dolls, or they were turned into a doll as punishment and the curse goes to other people whenever the calliope plays…I don’t know but it’s suspicious, especially since Basira Hussain seemingly mentioned the doll in the previous episode. But most interesting to me is the presence of who it seems very likely are our beloveds, Breekon and Hope. This is the first time we’ve seen them affiliated with a faction other than their own (although I do think they connect to Mikaele Salesa but that’s a different topic), which is very interesting. I already suspected they were the guys who stole the calliope in Episode 24, (looking back they were also probably the “two strong men” in the picture Jon described) and I believe that even more now. However, this episode gave me two ideas as to why they might have stolen the calliope in the first place. The first idea is dictated by the idea that Nikolai Denikin was no longer affiliated with The Other Circus. If that were the case, then I believe that Breekon and Hope are still affiliated with The Other Circus, and tried to steal the calliope back, but then it ended up in the institute’s artifact storage through unknown means. More likely though, I think that Nikolai was still affiliated with The Other Circus, and Breekon and Hope left, explaining why they are shown with their own company in modern day. As for what reasons, I don’t know, but I believe that it gave them enough motivation to steal the calliope as revenge, and then deliver it to the institute. Either way, their presence here is very interesting, and it makes me wonder if there’s any connection between The Other Circus, and all of the items that Breekon and Hope have delivered. Specifically the table because…well, it’s implied there were fake people in the audience and…you know… How many episodes do you think it’ll take for my brain to explode now?

Overall this was a VERY intriguing episode, getting a first look at Gertrude and more on what is one of the most intriguing plot points so far for me was very satisfying, and I’m sure I’ll be spending a lot more time mulling this over. As for the supplemental…well that is certainly concerning. I feel like they want me to be suspicious of Martin due to that note, and I am to an extent but…this has Not!Sasha written all over it. I mean, it’s implied she already stole a few tapes so I wouldn’t be surprised if she was snooping around. (The irony of one of the tapes she stole being Episode 24’s as well, lmao.) Well…that’s about it. All in all I’m very intrigued, I hope Jon is able to take care of his supplemental and..uh…I don’t really know how to end this part so EPISODE 45!!!!!!

- Episode 45, Blood Bag 💉

Statement of Thomas Neill, regarding his experiences working in malarial research during the spring of 2010.

EW EW EW EW ICKY BLEGH. I…do not do well with mosquitoes. Worms I can handle, like, I can relate to that, but mosquitoes? No. Devil spawn. Even worse when they spread malaria. So suffice to say, considering that this IS a horror podcast, this episode did a pretty good job! Ultimately some of the plot details here are a little bit vague, and the episode itself doesn’t have as much to unpack as some of the others so far, but I’ll discuss what I can regardless. Firstly, I do really like the general setting of this statement. I’ve always found lab accidents to be very scary if done effectively, what with how fragile and dangerous that kind of environment can be. I also thought they handled it really well with the slow build of paranormal activity, up to the…extremely gruesome ending. Like, YIKES. Honestly I feel really bad for Neil, poor guy was just being silly in the workplace and needed some cash, yet he got SO screwed over. Why am I surprised though, reality just seems like a massive bitch in tma, maybe even more so than in our timeline! But hey, at least there was another theatre kid Jon moment when Thomas was describing Neil’s death, so that’s nice! Neil’s death also did kind of remind me of just…everything Jane, what with a whole bunch of creepy crawlies enveloping him, although worms aren’t really traditional insects so I don’t know if those similarities mean anything, especially since this episode lacks the theme of toxic love that was extremely present with The Flesh Hive. (Although there was fire extinguishers involved…hm…) Speaking of that though, I want to talk a bit about the syringe. I think the implication here was that the mosquitoes wished harm on Neil due to his attempts to work against them, which is…an absolutely horrific thought. Those things are already little assholes, but the idea of them having a PERSONAL GRUDGE…oh no no no no no. Anyways, I think the syringe protected him from them, so when he lost it, they went full ham, infecting the haemoglobish with a bajillion diseases, and later killing him. (And also Thomas later on, what a bunch of assholes!) But this idea, the concept of an insect ecosystem being sentient enough to wish harm on a human out of a personal grudge…yeah it’s very adjacent to The Flesh Hive. And considering that the syringe was last seen with someone as important as Mikaele Salesa, I feel that it might be important if the institute ever has to deal with something flesh hive-adjacent once again. Oh yeah, Mikaele was here too. Kind of surprising considering it hasn’t been that long since he last showed up in a statement. Ultimately this statement didn’t really tell us that much more about him, he just continues to be a mysterious guy who’s probably bad, but maybe not as bad as some other people. And while there are rumors of his death…I highly doubt he’s really gone. Either way, I’m interested to see where they go with him in the future. (Also Jon just starting his closing thoughts with “yeah I hate mosquitoes too”…he’s real for that honestly.) Um…what else? Well, I find a few small details curious. Firstly, the rising heat in the lab is VERY reminiscent of a lot of previous statements, such as Episode 12, 37, and the Hill Top Road cases. To me it signifies some sort of connection to The Cult of Asag, although I have no idea what said connection could be. A lot of people also pointed out that the only blood type mentioned so far in the entire series is 0-, which is kind of curious, although once again, I don’t what that might mean. And finally, we have the reveal that Thomas started working at King’s College, the same place where Dr. Lionel Elliot taught in Episode 34. Overall, the connection are pretty vague here and don’t reveal all that much new, so either this episode is setting up stuff that hasn’t shown up yet, or it’s less relevant than I think. But as always, I still enjoyed it! Neil’s death will probably give me nightmares but who cares? Still a very good episode!

So…the supplemental. You know, if I worked in the archives, I would find Mikaele, get the syringe, and provided it’s not some kind of cursed talisman, I’d use it to sedate Jon because SWEETHEART YOU NEED TO LIE DOWN. On one hand, seeing Jon slowly go insane has been very entertaining, on the other hand, it makes me terrified for literally everyone. This isn’t even a visual show and yet I can still clearly see him shaking violently and eating things from off the ground. I mean, just look at him. Martin has a crush on him and yet Jon thinks he’s secretly plotting a murder. (Also what a sweetheart he is giving his boss/crush tea during his moments of insane paranoia, very glad to hear him again.) “Sasha” is, as far as I know, the most objectively suspicious person in the archives, and yet she is the only one Jon hasn’t batted an eye at yet. And Tim…Jon’s LITERALLY just stalking him?! No?! I mean, I guess I’m also a little curious as to why he’s working at the institute despite no signs of prior interest in the paranormal but like…I wouldn’t go as far as to start taking pictures of his fucking house! (Although how come Martin knows what his house looks like…hm…) Also HOW could you even think that Tim “Joe Spooky” Stoker is capable of murder?! He would never! (…please let me be right when I say that) …Look, I know I’m the one writing insane analyses of this podcast, and I’m probably a massive hypocrite saying this since I am LITERALLY setting up a cork-board in my room for connecting the dots, but that doesn’t make Jon any more sane, okay? Maybe…maybe we should both just lie down…despite the truth being just out of reach...I’ll listen to Episode 46 tomorrow…uuugghhh…

- Episode 46, Literary Heights ⛈️

Statement of Herbert Knox, regarding a repeat customer to his bookshop in Chichester.

Stupid idiot mother fucking god damn fool Jurgen Leitner is lucky that this episode was so fantastic, or else his sad frail old man twig bones would’ve simply flaked apart under my epic huge meat fist. (Look, I have to quote it SOMEWHERE ok?) Anyways, this episode was…absolutely phenomenal? Like, I’ve really been enjoying the season so far, but this episode coming out of nowhere and worming it’s way into…I don’t know, at least my top six episodes, is kind of insane. There’s obviously quite a bit to unpack here, so I guess I’ll start with just a few basic observations. Firstly, this episode opens with one of the best examples of theatre kid Jon so far. Like, the shift in his voice is absolutely hilarious. Secondly, and I feel like I need to address this, there has a been a metric fuck-tonne of Micheals in the show so far, so being able to refer to one as Mike is an absolute blessing. …I have a theory surrounding that though, but I’ll get to it in a minute. But I guess that works as a good segue into the main topic of interest here, Mike Crew. Truth be told, as good as it is, I don’t have much more to say about the episode on its own, as I think most of the intrigue comes from the implications for the overarching narrative it brings, although just to be clear, I’ll say that the episode has a fantastic story to tell on its own. Anyways, enough preamble, MIKE CREW! It’s genuinely such a treat to get a better look at just…what this guy is even like. I’ve known that he’s important for a while, but that’s only because he was mentioned in two separate statements, and I never knew WHY he was important, but this episode comes with some really interesting reveals. Firstly, I have to say that this guy is absolutely one of my favorite characters from the statements so far. His whole vibe is just so intriguing, and you get the sense that he has a better understanding of ✨the horrors✨than most other characters so far, but that he’s also terrified by what he’s witnessed. Anyways, I think the most interesting element of his character is how he’s clearly…just a very haunted man. This episode definitely suggests that him getting struck by lightning as a child was a paranormal experience that…connected him to something. I think it would be cool if we maybe got a statement from him later on that talked about that more, but for now, it’s just very interesting to see those powers over storms and electricity he seems to possess, willingly or not. It also seems like maybe he was studying Leitners and other books on demonology in order to get a grip on whatever was haunting him, with The Boneturner’s Tale obviously being one of them. Oh yeah, there was also some interesting stuff about Jurgen Leitner here. I do have to wonder if all of those strange deaths that occurred in the old book trade were caused by either him or his fucked up books, although he supposedly went into hiding in 1994 so I’m not entirely sure what that means. I’ve also started to notice how the Leitners…compel people. Like, Dominic Swain just…decided to go on a wild goose chase in order to learn more about Ex Altiora, Sebastian Adekoya was adamant on getting The Boneturner’s Tale despite knowing that it was bad news, Jared Hopworth was lured in by the same book despite clearly not being much of a reader, and now we have both Mike Crew and Herbert Knox fighting desperately for Ex Altiora. It’s…just very odd how much these books draw people in. And I think this is another good segue into talking about the glorious return of Ex Altiora.

Firstly, I nearly screamed at the name drop, like oh my god that was so exciting. Secondly, it’s really cool to finally learn what the story in the book even was. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’d end up in a perilous situation if I did so, and that I don’t know Latin, I’d honestly read it, it sounds pretty cool. Either way, Mike’s possession of it is very interesting to me. Obviously it seems like it’s because of him that the Lichtenburg Figure showed up in the book, meaning that it’s unlikely that Mary Keay was trying to trigger Dominic’s childhood trauma, I guess. It’s also very curious how Mike somehow knew how to wield its power correctly from the looks of things, and I also have to wonder why it ended up in some random bookstore when it seemed to be so important to him. But I think the most interesting thing about it is how it connects to whatever was haunting Mike. Jon suggests that he was trying to use it as a ward, which I do agree with, but I wonder if it backfired in the end. Maybe Mike thought that its raw power could protect him, but in reality, the book was connected to the force pursuing him without his knowledge. I mean, Ex Altiora causes vertigo and is about a high mountaintop village being terrorized by a vast and unknowable massive monster, and Mike is connected to the sky, so I think it adds up in the end. (Also, if I didn’t already think so, I’m absolutely certain that the events of this and Episode 4 connect to the ones of Episode 21, meaning that yes, the fucking sky is an eldritch horror in this timeline, and chances are Ex Altiora and the skydiver guy are harbingers of it. What does this even mean for tma’s world structure, holy shit.) Anyways, I think this theory also works because of Mike’s fate. I mean, he says “I am yours” (which is very similar to Edwin Burroughs saying “I am not for you, I am marked btw), and then throws himself out of a window. I feel like in the end he submitted himself to the forces chasing him after Ex Altiora ironically drew him in further. Said force might also be called “Vertigo” or “The Vast” based on what he says during his chants. (Also I don’t really have any theories as to how the bell tower was opened up just so you know.) As for Mike’s fate, well…I honestly don’t really know, although I think the lack of a body and his clear significance to the plot mean that he’s not…entirely dead. Maybe the Lichtenburg Figure is supposed to suggest that he’s inside Ex Altiora? Maybe…the sky ate him? I can’t quite tell yet, but I’m sure this isn’t the last I’ll hear of him, he just seems too significant (and just…way too cool) to write off here. Although…I do have one more theory about this episode, one that I’d like to proclaim my crack theory (as if my other ones already aren’t cracked). Oh boy here we go…

So I mentioned that there’s a lot of Micheals in this show, so much so that from what little I’ve seen it’s a meme in the fandom. I mean, it makes decent sense, Micheal is an extremely common name after all…but what if this goes deeper. What if every major Micheal in this podcast actually has direct connections to each other? So far we have three Micheals that seem to hold plot relevance (please, PLEASE let it stay that way.) They are Mike Crew, obviously, Gerard’s grandfather Micheal Keay, and the mysterious “Micheal” that Sasha meant, who is presumably the person that was pursuing Ivo Lensik’s father. Keep in mind the word PURSUING. Because…you remember how bony-hand Micheal appeared all weird and distorted in the window of Sasha’s apartment building. Well, it’s probably just my imagination, but…it reminds me a hell of a lot of the thing chasing Mike. On top of that, I originally doubted that bony-hand Micheal was the same person as Mike Crew due to the lack of a Lichtenburg Figure on his body (although Mike does actually seem to be capable of hiding it based on Herbert’s description of him, but said description is notably different from that of Sasha’s Micheal anyways), but I did throw out the possibility of him actually being Micheal Keay. This could also explain why he had all of those strange attributes, as Mary Keay seemingly learned how to live beyond the grave, yet she came with a number of visual differences from when she was, like, actually alive, so maybe something similar happened to her father. (and then maybe Gerard…please…please let my favorite MCR reject guy be alive…) So, here’s the basic premise of my theory. Micheal Keay found some sort of way to live after death, becoming the strange distorted Micheal that Sasha saw. This new form of Micheal Keay would form a connection to fractals, terrorizing Ivo Lensik’s father, and also a connection to the sky/vertigo/the vast/whatever you want to call it, and then start terrorizing Mike Crew. (I mean, the fractals give off the same vibes as the Lichtenburg Figure right? RIGHT?!) And then, and I know this is a huge reach but like I said, it’s a crack theory, Mike was absorbed by the being that was pursuing him. Micheal Keay is alive, and absorbing people, one of whom just happens to have his name. If Ivo’s dad was named Micheal Lensik I might just go insane. Now, do I expect this theory to be true. Oh god no! Like I said, this is absolute crack, but I think it would be very funny if every Micheal in this podcast is actually just the same person. There’s a lot of other mysteries surrounding these guys, and I’m sure I’ll be satisfied with whatever they pull off.

So that’s Episode 46. Overall this was a phenomenal episode, it’s absolutely my favorite of Season 2 so far and at the very least one of my favorites in the entire podcast so far. It’s given me so many things to think about and I’m really excited to see where they go with the plot surrounding Mike in the future. As for the supplemental, well…you know what, Brian David Gilbert- I mean Jon (yes I finally made that connection) has every right to be concerned about this one. It is admittedly a little bit unnerving that there’s another person exploring the tunnels, my best guess is it’s Not!Sasha because…well, she’s just suspicious by nature, but it could easily be Martin, Tim, and especially Elias as well. Or worse…whatever’s down there is trying to get out. There’s also the matter of the spiders which is…very interesting. Episode 32 already separated the spiders from The Flesh Hive, but I didn’t think they would go as far as to kill the remaining worms. In fact, I suspected they were in some form of collaboration, since Jon smashing that one spider lead to the infestation of worms, and the worms were present in Episode 16. But no, they’re actively killing the worms. Maybe as like…a punishment for failure or something? I really don’t know what the deal with the spiders is, but it’s certainly interesting. Anyways, great episode, can’t wait to see what comes next.

Oh, one last thing. I have this copy of Dracula in my house, and it really reminds me of Ex Altiora. Like this is what I imagine it looking like. (Also STOKER? As in TIM STOKER? Ok I’ll stop.)

- Episode 47, The New Door 🚪

Statement of Helen Richardson, regarding a new door in the house she was selling. Statement taken direct from subject.

What what what what what what what what what what what what what in the everlasting FUCK?! I don’t…what do you MEAN? RIGHT AFTER MY FUCKING MICHEAL CRACKPOT THEORY YOU GIVE ME THIS?! I CAN’T…WHAT…THERE’S SO MUCH GOING ON I LITERALLY CANNOT HANDLE THIS UAAAGGGGHHHHHHHH. Ok…calm down calm down calm down calm down just CALM. THE FUCK. DOWN. You can do this. You are a TUMBLR. ENBY. You can coherently summarize this episode. Right? …right? Oh no….

Ok so…let’s just start from the top with the things that are easy to summarize. Firstly, this is a statement recorded live from subject, so we obviously need to talk about Helen Richardson. Oh god….what a poor soul. I REALLY feel for her, compared to every other statement giver, at least the ones who gave their statements live, she was absolutely the most distraught by her experiences. Her VA did a fantastic job portraying her fright, I liked how she was frantically drawing a map at the beginning, and overall it’s just really not hard to feel for her, especially given her…fate, but we’ll get to that later. It was also extremely gratifying to finally have an instance where Jon fully believes the person he’s talking to, he was decent with Lionel and Basira, as well as his coworkers, but after his interactions with Naomi and Melanie, seeing him fully believe Helen was honestly really nice, just shows how much he’s developed since most of Season 1…although it has come with him being extremely traumatized and erratic but hey! It’s still cool that he was genuinely trying to help Helen out, because if this was Season 1 he would have not believed her. Anyways, what about her actual statement? Well…that’s absolutely terrifying. Like, I am never going to be able to look at doors the same way ever again, am I? This is already a terrifying experience on its own, but the fact that Helen is an ESTATE AGENT of all things makes this so much worse, like you could just tell that this was her personal hell. And then we have the backrooms themselves which-yeah I’m going to call the corridors the backrooms until further notice because god damnit sometimes you just need to be annoying. Anyways, everything about that place(?) makes me uncomfortable. Firstly, the opening of the door reminded me a little bit of the coffin from Episode 2, and the corridors especially reminded me of Episode 30 with the slaughter house. But outside of those interesting yet admittedly tangential connections, there’s so many terrifying aspects of the backrooms that are just so extremely terrifying in their own right. The way the door just shows up out of nowhere and lures you in, the way Helen’s face looked like it had been crying for hours when she looked in the mirror, the repeated paintings, the temperatures that don’t make sense, Micheal just…lurking there waiting to kill her, how she ended up somewhere entirely new when she finally “escaped”, and of course, the fact that it functions like a Cthulhu city with how it just DOESN’T. MAKE. SENSE. That seems to be the main theme here, just…everything not adding up, confusing people, nearly making them go insane, that is the nature of these corridors, and Micheal himself. And you know what, I think it’s about time we talk about the end of the episode. While the statement is fantastically written and viscerally terrifying, it is overall very short, and I’d say the true meat of the episode comes from the ending. Because Oh. My. God. I have some thoughts.

I’m just going to start off by saying that the drawn-out door noises that played when Helen left initially just came as a “haha funny trauma noise” moment from Rusty Quill, and nothing more. …Oh how naive I once was. Anyways, before I talk about tall blonde and Handsome, I guess I should address the glorious(?) return of Not!Sasha! …Oh no. I don’t know if it’s more or less unnerving that she’s actually speaking like a somewhat normal person now. That…that is very very bad. But she still sounds so noticeably different from the real Sasha, so much colder…I…I really do not like her! The way that she avoids re-recording Sasha’s statement because she doesn’t remember the whole thing, and the funky audio distortion that plays in the room it’s…no! No no no no no! Well at least someone seems to know what’s really going on, and that is of course, the man who speaks in hands (woah reference), Micheal…something! Apparently there’s no such thing as a real name so I’m going to assume he just doesn’t have a last name for the time being. Anyways, ever since Episode 26, this guy…thing…door has been haunting me for ages. He’s never quite at the center of my mind, that honor goes to people like the worm wife, god damn fool book-collecting dust-eating rat old bastard shithead idiot avatar of the whore, my goth son, and Jon and Martin but only if they are holding hands. But still, the way he was so enigmatic with his motivations, where he stood morality wise, his generally creepy vibe that makes me imagine him as a guy that’s always smiling, his big-ass hands, and the sense that he was so above everything and everyone in this entire story, it always kept me terrified and intrigued. And now that we’ve finally met him…yeah, he absolutely lived up to the hype. I’m sorry Jane, but I think I’ve found a new obsession. I want this thing and his gender carnally. His VA does such a phenomenal job, like I know it’s somewhat filtered but still, the tone and especially the laugh, like HOLY SHIT that is a creepy laugh, it’s all fantastic. And I mean, yeah, it still feels like he’s so above everything else, like everything connects back to him, but also like he’s so vastly beyond everything that it doesn’t connect at all. All of his dialogue is so confusing but also interesting and…well, I guess I should discuss his dialogue, because there is actually quite a lot to unpack from a good amount of his sentences.

So, when Micheal first shows up, the strange pitch that started playing when Not!Sasha entered the room changes, suggesting that Micheal and Not!Sasha are either very different from one another, or very similar. (Also, I’m assuming that the pitch playing when Not!Sasha was around is a different one from Micheal’s, because it sounds really similar to the sound that played when Sasha came across the table in artifact storage.) Either way, his first line “Do you even know they’re lying to you” seems to confirm that Micheal knows the truth about what happened to Sasha, showing how powerful he really is. Now granted, when you consider his naturally maddening personality I doubt he’s going to reveal the truth anytime soon, but it’s worth keeping in mind. (Especially since it’s implied that Elias knows what’s going on, or at least has a hunch so….hm….) Going forward, Micheal refuses to elaborate on how he got in, like the silly king he is, and then says his name is "a real name." This is interesting, as he later contradicts this by saying there's no such thing as a real name. Obviously that last quote ties into themes of inhumanity and lack of identity that seem to follow him, but I'm just going to assume the contradictions are a result of him just, once again, not making sense. I'm sure there's a deeper meaning, I just don't quite know what said deeper meaning is yet. Also I love how when Micheal said he wasn't going to kill Jon, Jon was like "oh :/". Just like...end his suffering I guess. That seems to be another prevalent theme with Micheal. He's not exactly...good, but he's also not really a major antagonistic force...yet, at least. Regardless, it's next that we learn why he's here and...oh...oh no. That's genuinely really off-putting. So yeah, Helen got trapped in the backrooms AGAIN, right after she gave her statement. I...I don't think her chances are all that good if I'm being honest. Damn. DAMN. Also, the part where Jon realizes that the door she left from was never there...that was absolutely chilling. (Although isn't it like...a yellow door? Wouldn't Jon have noticed that? Unless the doors in the archives are already yellow?) But like, imagine if this was a common occurrence. Like, what if Jon just read, I don't know, Jason North's statement from Episode 37, and then immediately got set on fire? Because that's what this feels like. Interestingly, when Jon questions if Micheal is the owner of the backrooms, he responds with "does your hand, in any way, own your stomach?" This seems to suggest that Micheal and the backrooms are one and the same which is...not confusing and terrifying at all! I'll take a bit more about what I think Micheal even is in a second but for now just keep in mind that this information is...very concerning. Also "let her go!" followed by "no :)" was kind of funny. After all that, Micheal...stabs Jon? I mean, that's absolutely not a good thing, but it didn't seem that major or painful all things considered. I'm just going to assume he used his big-ass knife hands to stab Jon in an ultimately non-vital place, because that's what the audio seems to suggest. Now, I'll touch a bit more on Micheal's comments about his own identity in a second, but for now, the last things he says correspond with his motivations. Apparently he helped Sasha learn about The Flesh Hive because he did not want the institute to disappear too early, as it would have "unbalanced the struggle." Jon believes that this implies the existence of a war, and given how I've been speculating that all of the horrors and their servants are at each other's throats...I have to agree. It also suggests that Micheal is a lot more aware of how things are going to pan out in the future than Jon, which is...interesting. Anyways, he then mysteriously vanishes, and Jon ends the recording. It's so serious that we don't even get a supplemental. So with all of this in mind...what are my overall thoughts on Micheal?

Let's just run through everything we know. Micheal is a weird tall blonde guy who has an uncanny laugh and massive hands. He is connected to some sort of maddening pocket dimension that is accessed through a teleporting yellow door. He lured Helen Richardson into there twice, and she is still stuck there. He also probably got rid of Ms. Richardson's actual clients, and he's implied to have some sort of connection to fractals (which admittedly to line up with how maddening he is), meaning there's a good likelihood he was the being chasing down Ivo Lensik's father, and he maybe had some sort of encounter with Jane given how she also mentions fractals. He seems to be antagonistic and has bad intentions, but wants the archival team to stay alive since he views them as important, and believes the loss of the institute would "unbalance the struggle" implying the existence of a war. (my theories are being validated kind of!) Despite this he chooses to stab Jon anyways, and his whole character seems to be built around insanity, doubt of one’s own mind, and contradictions. So…who or what do I think he is? Well, I think our best hints come from the one major piece of dialogue from him I neglected to mention. That being when he calls himself a “what” instead of a “who”, saying that a “who” represents a level of identity he “can’t ever retain”, and how he isn’t used to talking about himself. This all suggests that Micheal is obviously not human, but also can’t function under the human understanding of identity. However, he also says that his identity is something he can’t “retain” rather than “obtain”. This suggests that he might have actually been something more human than what he is now in the past. And…funnily enough, this kind of lines up with the theory about Micheal Keay and Mike Crew I just made. (And, yes, hearing him in this episode immediately after writing that down was indeed very exciting.) I mean, in the slim chance that theory is correct, then..yeah, a guy who lived beyond his natural lifespan and then absorbed another guy, possibly even more people, would not really be all that human. They’d have multiple identities conflicting with each other. But granted, this theory is pretty cracked in my opinion, so maybe something more logical would be…something like the anatomy students! They also kind of had this lack of identity and weird way of speaking, so it could line up very well. Also, they contorted their bones at one point (which is admittedly more similar to The Boneturner’s Tale but still), and you know how they were all functioning under the basic bitch names of different cultures? Well…Micheal is one of the most common names in the west so, who knows? And this might connect back to Not!Sasha! After all, I’ve already made comparisons between her and the anatomy students, and Micheal is aware of her true identity, and he plays a different yet still pretty similar pitch to her when he’s in the room, and the hypnotic pattern on the table might be similar to FRACTALS? Look…I’m basically saying that Micheal is an enigma, and there are a lot of opportunities for what he could be. But what I do know…is that this thing is so far above everyone else like holy shit. He just…I don’t know what it is, I feel like he’s basically god. Everything connects back to Micheal, but it also doesn’t because he couldn’t care less about all this shit. It feels like almost everything has at the very least a small connection to him. I don’t know why I think this it’s JUST. THE. VIBE.

Wow. That was certainly quite the episode. While the statement itself was very short, and while I am confused out of my goddamned mind, this was another phenomenal episode. It should be a crime to put this right after Literary Heights, I’m just saying. It had a really well-written main character, a terrifying scenario, dozens upon dozens of implications, and…Micheal. Just Micheal. There is probably so much that I didn’t even touch on here, but that’s just because my brain is so scrambled trying to figure this all out! Which you know, given the themes of the episode, I feel like that’s by design, and I’m ok with that. I’m very excited to see…whenever and however this all pans out, but for now, I’m going to take a three day-nap. Honk shoo mimimi or whatever the kids say.

I said “Micheal” like…26 times in this section alone…Fuuuuuuuccckkk. Am I really about to ditch the worm wife for the hallway husband? (Update: No, but that’s only because I realized I have two hands.)

- Episode 48, Lost in the Crowd 🧳

Statement of Andrea Nunis, regarding a series of encounters in the streets of Genoa, Italy.

Ok, so thankfully after Micheal’s Marvelous Maze of Madness ft. Micheal, this episode was a bit of a more standard affair, and a lot easier to digest and process. That being said, this one kind of fucked me up! Generally I’m a pretty introverted person, so I’ve found it kind of interesting how the couple of statements where the idea is “character who likes being alone gets karma” are some of the scariest for me personally. Also, I will mention that while there is a common theme between this and Episode 13, I don’t necessarily think they’re connected for a couple of reasons. Firstly is the lack of any tangible signs of The Lukas Family, and secondly is the fact that Naomi’s experience manifested in the form of a wide open field with nearly nothing in it, while Andrea’s was in the form of a crushing crowd. Granted there was a gray sky in the alleyway she went into, which could connect to Naomi’s fog but…eh, I’m not too sure. I personally think the one thing that connects this statement to the rest of the series is Gerard’s presence, which I’ll get to later, but still, those similar themes of one’s own introverted tendencies being turned against them felt worth mentioning. But outside of that recurring theme calling me out a second time, there were quite a few other things that really spooked me. Ethan’s fate was genuinely pretty sad as he seemed like a nice guy, the mentions of heat popping up once again were unnerving as usual, and…the crowd itself. This…this genuinely had me curled up in a ball. I hear people say that you will inevitably find at least one tma episode that feels like it’s targeting you specifically, and while I can’t confirm if this is that episode for me, I…wouldn’t be surprised if it was by the time I’ve finished listening. I have a very bad relationship with crowds so…yeah, this one hit very close to home. The description was…so, so visceral. The blanked out faces, the garbage noise, the constant shoving…I think it put how I subconsciously view crowds into words perfectly, and…yeah, I don’t really have that much more to say about the statement other than it was sad and terrifying for me. Needless to say I don’t think I have any desire to go traveling any time soon lmao. But hey, that all just means it’s doing a damn good job as an episode of a horror podcast!

But outside of the core story, we obviously have the very intriguing return of who is presumably…MY GOTH SON HELL YEAH! GERARD KEAY NATION LET’S FUCKING GO!!! Honestly, considering that he has to live a life of fighting the horrors (and maybe…spreading them…), and also seems to have a fucked up family history, I genuinely hope that he was just on vacation here, whether he’s good or bad or morally gray, I think he deserves a break. Anyways his appearance here is certainly pretty intriguing. Not only is this the first statement he appears in that seems to be completely unrelated to any Leitners, but he also mentions that Andrea had been “marked”. Marked by…what exactly? If I had to guess, I would assume that it would be the entity possessing Hill Top Road. When it fully took over Edwin Burroughs, he said “I am marked”, and on top of that, it also has connections to heat and distorting the world around people until they snap back to reality, both of which are things that Andrea experiences. Honestly, this being seems to pop up all over the place, as it seemingly has some level of ties to The Cult of Asag and maybe even Micheal (though that’s probably just the brain rot talking), and while it definitely seems to be at its strongest on Hill Top Road, it’s implied that it possessed the girl who Edwin Burroughs attempted to perform and exorcism on, so I think it can still appear in other places. Thankfully Andrea seems to have been able to fend it off by thinking of her mother, but that just makes me more intrigued as to how Gerard knew that would help fend off some sort of eldritch heat god. On top of that, this is like…the one statement so far where he shows up and doesn’t do anything that is potentially morally questionable, outside of Pageturner in retrospect I guess, so…yeah, even though this episode was a lot more easy-going than the last one, it’s still given me a lot more to think about. Gerard’s presence and actions, whatever marked Andrea and caused all the bad stuff to happen…it is certainly all very intriguing. Overall, while this isn’t an all time favorite episode for me or anything, I still thought it was a very good one and…genuinely really unsettling for me personally. I’m glad we got to see another look at Gerard and, yeah, there’s not much more to say, just another good episode. Well…there’s not much more to say outside of the supplemental at least.

Oh god fucking damnit Jon. He has clearly not heeded my advice to lie down because what the fuuucckkk. I understand if he’s a little bit shaken after the encounter with Micheal, and obviously watching a real-estate agent basically die without you knowing would probably fuck you up but OH. GOD. Ok well, it’s at the very least a good thing that he finally realized that something’s up with “Sasha” but…did he really need the god of confusion or whatever he is to tell him that?! You are an ARCHIVIST. An ACADEMIC. YOU SHOULD BE BETTER THAN THIS!!! He’s all like “I didn’t suspect her because she’s handled the Prentiss attack better than anyone else”…AS IF THAT’S SOMEHOW NOT CONCERNING?! IF I WAS HIM, I WOULD BE EXTREMELY CREEPED OUT IF SOMONE WAS JUST…CONTINUING AS NORMAL AFTER ALL OF THAT! God, what an absolute dumbass. His density knows no bounds. I love him dearly. Still though…it’s a good thing he caught on at least. And then we have his conversation with Elias, and yeah, that doesn’t do him any favors! Don’t get me wrong, the entire scene is absolutely hilarious, I love how he questions if Dr. Elliott or Micheal were filing complaints, how he chocks up being a fucking stalker to being “worried about Tim and Martin’s mental health” (oh god Martin’s crush is going to end up being so fucked I can already tell), and I love to envision him just standing outside Tim’s house with binoculars in a very easy-to-see location. But..wow! You know, when I said it would be nice to see him grow out of being a skeptic, I DIDN’T MEAN IT LIKE THIS! And then he finishes the supplemental by saying he’s most suspicious of Elias which like…yeah, me too, but I don’t think it’s for the same reasons! If anything, this is the least suspicious Elias has ever been, honestly hai requests of Jon seem pretty reasonable. Well…at least Jon knows who to be the most suspicious of now…I guess. Someone please just knock him out with a frying pan, he really needs it (affectionately)….

- Episode 49, The Butcher’s Window 💪

Statement of Gregory Pryor, regarding his investigations into one Hector Lorado during the summer of 2007.

I’m going to start off by saying that for some reason, on the YouTube upload, the little title card didn’t fully load for this episode. What was up with that? Is “butcher” or “window” some sort of British swear I’m unaware of? Well, regardless….EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW!!!! Yet another episode that makes me feel really uneasy like…wow! I expected some body horror or meat related stuff given the title, but…I did NOT think it was going to go like…that. But outside of my sheer terror, this was another really great episode! It was terrifying, but it also built on some things that I…honestly kind of forgot about, helped fill in some gaps, and also came with some very fun reveals at the end. (oh my god I can’t wait to talk about that) As per usual I’ll start off with just some fun and interesting things about the episode that are easy to talk about. Firstly, I actually really liked Gregory Pryor as a protagonist here. I’ve always kind of had a fondness for the statement givers that are just…honestly pretty big dicks, as I think it adds a good level of realism to the world and helps to shake things up. Honestly the whole vibe of the statement was so gloriously shitty, I just got the sense that no one involved with what happened was particularly likable. I also was a little bit curious about the presence of the Ukrainian mafia here, initially I thought the guys who were bargaining with Hector were supposed to be Breekon and Hope but I think that was just me going insane. If I had to make one minor complaint about this episode, it’s that I felt like it took a while to get into the weird horror aspects. I mean, most episodes don’t get into the real meat until later on, but they usually add intrigue with just…little oddities here and there. For example, Episode 46 doesn’t get truly freaky until later on, but the mentions of the weird smells and lightbulbs whenever Mike entered the room helped in making me feel uneasy, while this episode doesn’t really have much of that. But this is overall a very small and meaningless complaint, because when we do get into the actual horror…oh my god. I have some things to say.

So…yikes. Before we discuss the return of the big beefy bully boy, I’ll just talk a little bit about how FUCKING GRUESOME this part is. Like…I was very disturbed. Gregory hiding in the locker, Hector turning out to be alive, all of the shit that Jared did, the teeth hole underneath the floorboards, the discarded clothes and the body of the original owner that was later found, the general atmosphere of a morgue inside a butcher’s shop, the fact this went on for four fucking hours, and Gregory’s escape attempt which led to…the arm. I initially thought it got chopped off, which would have been terrible already, but then…then we learn that Jared FUCKING RIPPED THE BONE OUT THE SOCKET AND EW EW EW. All of this was tense and horrible and I absolutely loved it. Happy that Gregory got a prosthetic though, even if I just said he was kind of a dick. But anyways uh…Jared Hopworth is back! Honestly I kind of forgot about him, but it is really cool to see that he’s a more prominent recurring antagonist, given that his whereabouts were kind of a loose end at the end of Episode 17. And…I mean, I do not know how to feel about where he’s been. On one hand it’s..good for him(?) that he was able to capitalize his abilities (especially alongside the fucking mafia of all people), but on the other hand, he’s clearly a terrifying meat bone monster thing that is no longer human and is dismembering people in order to morph himself even further. So…yeah, overall I’d say his return isn’t exactly a good thing. I mean, he could change the medical world with these abilities but instead he does this. What an ass! But in all seriousness, I’m absolutely terrified of this man. Just the knowledge that this…thing is STILL out there, still turning people’s bones, is…not exactly a pleasant thought. Like, obviously this is fiction, but I LIVE in England, I still feel like Hulk: Bone Edition could come at me and that’s not a good thing. It’s also interesting that Jared is not seen using The Boneturner’s Tale to…you know, turn bones anymore. I’ve seen someone suggest that maybe he also put the book inside his body, which could definitely be the case, but Mike Crew still seemed to have some sort of connection to Ex Altiora even before he found the book so…I just get the feeling that a single encounter with a Leitner is enough to give someone some weird abilities, although it does make me question where the time might be now…yikes. (Also, if he opened the book at one point, does that mean that Mike could also turn bones? Or did the book specifically choose Jared as if it’s sentient? Honestly I’m just starting to get the vibe that this old-ass bibliophile is responsible for every little bad thing that happens in this podcast.) One other thing about Jared is that now that I think about it, his weird shape is very similar to that of the anatomy students and Micheal. There very well might be some connections there, but I’ll just have to wait and see where they might go. What’s also very curious to me is that…interesting hole that Jared started throwing the bones into. For some reason, it kind of reminded me of that part in Episode 30, where David Laylow was nearly fed to a massive meat grinder. I only say this because Jon straight up says that this statement reminds him of other meat-centric ones, such as Episode 30, but also others like Episode 18, probably. In fact, I wonder if this butcher’s shop is where Toby Carlisle from Episode 18 was getting the meat, maybe he knew Jared. Now, I can’t say how all of these episodes connect perfectly, I just know that there’s a connection. What I do find interesting however is that this episode is home to both meat and bones and…that got me thinking about a theory I had on ✨the horrors✨.

When I wrote about Episode 35, I listed out what I thought the driving forces behind all things spooky in the timeline were, and I mentioned something associated with meat, and something associated with bones as two of them. However, given what we have here, I now think that these “two” are actually the same being. Rather than one being meat and the other being bones, I think there is one singular being with command over bodies in general, and that’s what has been witnessed in every episode with either concept involved so far. This revelation doesn’t really give much, as I still don’t know…what the hell this thing even is, but it has made me want to revisit my list of ✨the horrors✨ with a new coat of paint. So, here it is: Eldritch Gods 2.0!

- The Anglerfish (1, 28)

- Vertigo/The Vast (4, 21, 46)

- The Flesh Hive (6, 22, 26, 32, 36?, 39, 40, 45?)

- The Piper (7, 42?)

- Asag (8, 12, 19, 20, 37, 43, 48?)

- Devouring Darkness (9, 15, 25, 41)

- Eyes (12, 20, 23)

- Isolation (13, 33, 48?)

- Body Horror (14, 17, 18, 30, 35, 49)

- Spiders (16, 32, 38, 48)

- Whatever The Other Circus deals with (24, 44)

- Micheal :-) (8, 26, 47)

And then like…maybe one or two more if the passages Robert Smirke designed do indeed represent ✨the horrors✨. I also guess I should mention the remark I made about these things representing different fears, since I said that one of the reasons I scrapped that theory was because “bones” were just too specific. Now granted, I am not fully reviving this theory, as just because something is scary does not mean it represents fear (even though I still think fear is a core theme of the podcast(, but I will concede it makes the theory…slightly more plausible, but I’m still kind of on the fence about it. So um…yeah! That’s about it for the content of the statement! Overall another great one, a bit of a slow start but it more than made up for it with what happened later on! But of course, I can’t neglect to mention the follow-up and the supplemental because…oh my god this is absolute gold.

“Come on down to The Magnus Institute. We have Jonathan “Ex-theatre kid turned crazed conspiracy theorist” Sims, Martin “pines after his emotionally constipated boss that either hates him or suspects him of murder and steals tape recorders to write poetry” Blackwoood, Sasha “she is totally normal” James, Tim “bisexual icon otherwise known as Joe Spooky” Stoker, and Elias “smokes weed” Bouchard! Simply sell your soul to ✨the horrors✨ of academia, and start your work now!”

So…there’s certainly some interesting things to talk about here. There’s nothing about the statement that really sticks out, or that I haven’t already mentioned, but most of the interest comes from information on the institute staff. Firstly…hell yeah Tim you fucking get it. The man comes back from a horrific worm infestation and gets back to his hobbies of being silly and seducing cops for information. What an absolute legend, I wish he ran the institute, nay, the country. Also find it interesting that Basira has “refused to compromise her position any further”. Hopefully that just means that she doesn’t want to anything outside of sneaking in Gertrude’s tapes, as it would be a shame if those stopped coming in, given how interesting the first one was. It is very funny to me however that Jon says he doesn’t want to get involved in “personal drama”….when he is literally outside Tim’s house stalking him. Never change Jon. Actually please do change. Actually I don’t know. Also we have Not!Sasha, and while I can see why some might interpret her computer troubles as relating to the ones that force Jon to record statements on tape…I personally think she’s just really fucking weird. It also made me realize that doing I.T. in a place like this must seriously suck ass. (Oh god…imagine being in H.R. though…how would you manage the worms…HOW WOULD YOU MANAGE JON OH GOD.) So (almost, looking at you Not!Sasha) all of that is fine and dandy, but things get very interesting when we start to look at Jon’s investigations into Elias. Finally some substantial lore on this guy! (Sure, Jon should probably be looking into Not!Sasha but…he’s still suspicious as well so I won’t hold this one against him, even if his reasoning for suspicion from last episode is dumb as all hell.) So, we learn here that the institute was previously ran by a man named James Wright, who ran from 1973 to 1996. Not only does this mean that Episode 44 was recorded not too long after Elias took over, but it also means that…James Wright probably ran for an unusually short amount of time. I mean, I doubt you’d start running an institute like this in old age, and while he could’ve died in an accident or due to medical complications…I can’t just shake the feeling that he was murdered, despite the lack of information on him. Like, if Elias is being set up as antagonistic, which I feel like he is, then I could see him killing James just to gain his position. But on top of that lore, we learn that Elias joined in 1991, and worked in artifact storage, becoming head of the institute unusually quickly. But more importantly…HE CANONICALLY SMOKES WEED FUCK YEAH!!!! I don’t CARE if the implication is that he doesn’t do so anymore, I will forever believe that he still does it in secret because the amount of hilarious scenarios that could come from that are too good to pass up. But…yeah, this information on his past is weird. Like, you would not expect a stoner with a lackluster university degree to become the head of an eclectic academic institution so easily, let alone to have the personality of the Elias we see here. I saw someone suggest that maybe the real Elias was taken and replaced by one of the things that took and replaced Sasha, since he worked in artifact storage. I personally think it’s unlikely, since that event only transpired due to the table, which was only delivered to the institute fairly recently, but it’s a fun theory nonetheless, and it could explain why Elias seemingly knows that Not!Sasha isn’t who she says she is…and for some reason chooses not to tell Jon and the others. And hey, the table has definitely moved around before given it’s presence in Graham’s house, and maybe Hill Top Road, so it’s technically possible that it’s been to the institute before and was just temporarily moved to victimize someone. But as cool as this idea is, I have a bit of a different theory. It’s looser, but it makes more sense in my head.

You see, I think that Elias Bouchard has done some bad things and that he isn’t entirely moral, but I don’t think he has the worst intentions at heart. Based on all of the information, and the vibes he’s giving off, I think that he has likely witnessed the horrors first hand. This would explain his possible change in demeanor, perspective and personality after joining the institute, his supposed great knowledge on the paranormal, and why he was able to recognize Not!Sasha, without him being some horrific monster. I don’t think he was impersonated, but..he could’ve definitely seen something in artifact storage, or maybe even before then, as it would explain why he started work at the institute in the first place. And…I personally think he wants to avoid ✨the horrors✨as much as possible. He’s seen them first hand, and he wishes to keep them far away. This would explain a multitude of things. It would explain why he’s quite discouraging towards Jon’s attempts at investigation, why he was willing to sacrifice Jon and Martin to deadly C02 if it meant killing Jane, why he’s so quiet about details surrounding Gertrude. And mentioning Gertrude, if we assume that Elias did indeed kill her (which I still think is the most likely course of action, even with the potential of him being a red herring) then this potential worldview of his would explain why he would’ve killed her. Gertrude clearly knew quite a lot about ✨the horrors✨, much more than Jon at least, given how she talks about The Other Circus with such familiarity. And given how it seems that at least two cults have something against her, it’s safe to assume that she made an enemy of eldritch forces. So, Elias killed her out of fear for what she could’ve caused. And that’s why he’s trying to keep Jon calm (and desperately failing, might I add), as he does not wish to kill him as well. I know all of this is a huge claim to make but honestly…I could see it working out. I feel like Elias will end up being a very morally compromised character, one that has good yet potentially misguided intentions at heart, and had to do some terrible things to keep ✨the horrors✨ at bay. …I’ll just have to wait and see, I guess.

So yeah…that’s Episode 49. Another great episode as always, it definitely went some interesting places, and I’m very intrigued by the information on both Jared and Elias. Also, I hope that Tim’s polycule ends up successful (I’m just going to go on that assumption because it’s more fun.) I…once again don’t really know how to end this so uh…here’s a wacky link I found!

http://paypal.com/IFuckingHateJurgenLeitner

- Episode 50, Foundations 🏛️

Statement of Sampson Kempthorne, regarding the workhouse architecture of George Gilbert Scott.

And here we are! I’m now 25% of the way through The Magnus Archives, woohoo! So, did this episode conclude the first quarter of the series in a satisfying way? Well…I mean I guess yeah? Overall, I think the general concept of the episode makes it more than worthy, as having another statement given directly to the guy who founded the institute here does feel very totally fitting. But…I don’t know, it isn’t exactly a favorite for me. Not due to any particular flaws, as always it’s still very enjoyable and far from bad, but I guess I just don’t have that much to say about it, especially in comparison to some of the other episodes from this first quarter of the season. Regardless, there’s still definitely quite a few things worth talking about so uh…how about I get into that?

I’ll start off by saying that this episode does immediately get points for incorporating real-world history into it, which I��ve already said is something I really like in this podcast. As it turns out, Sampson Kempthorne, George Gilbert Scott, and Henry Roberts were all real people, along with the returning Robert Smirke, so it’s cool to see them get incorporated into the plot here. Although, I did find it funny how the case number was “8141206” as that error makes it seem as if the statement was given in 1814…and all of these guys would’ve been children at that point in time. This episode also thankfully gives a bit more information on Jonah Magnus, the founder of the institute. At this point in time he would’ve actually founded the place, unlike in Episode 23, and honestly, I think he would’ve had a lot in common with Jon. I mean, both of them probably talk like the haunted protagonists of Victorian gothic horror novels, and also need some rest, I can see some similarities there. I’ll touch a bit more on Jonah later, but for now I’ll just say that…yeah, those letters are a little…not all that heterosexual sounding. I mean, most old letters between two rich guys do feel kind of fruity by modern standards but…you get what I mean right? But as for the statement, well, I’ve got to say I love how we now have multiple instances of people leaving to New Zealand for the sake of escaping ✨the horrors✨ of England. I don’t know I just think that’s kind of funny. But when we get into the paranormal stuff that happens here…well, it’s pretty vague, but I think I can make some sense of what’s happening here. Obviously the person behind all of this is “The Governor”, someone with the ability to make buildings compress and kill people. My current assumption is that this “Governor” is indeed George Gilbert Scott. Both of them are…well firstly, they’re both really weird, but there’s some other things worth noting here as well. They both have some sort of interest in compressing architecture, we’re nearby the sites of The Governor’s actions, and on top of that, George’s plans were found in Sampson’s house after it started to close in on him. If they are not the same person, then they are at the very least strongly related and working together. However, the existence of The Governor does bring up some interesting ideas. You see, I initially assumed that the darkness worshipped by The People’s Church of The Divine Host was the same thing that appeared in Episode 15 and Episode 41, having the ability to morph rooms in order to trap and kill people. Now, that darkness could’ve still been there in those episodes but…honestly, aside from Sampson’s incident taking place at night, this darkness doesn’t really seem to be present here. This actually makes me think that the darkness and the compression are the results of two different eldritch horrors, and if we go back to the theory on what I think ✨the horrors✨ are, that brings us to a total of thirteen. Now, I still think that there’s actually fourteen eldritch beings at that the death number is meant to throw me off, as the passage that led to the central room in Episode 35 also had weird properties. In fact, that specific passage might actually be meant to represent the compressing horror. So, I still think I’m missing something here if my theory is in the right place, but I feel like I might have made a step in the right direction here. So, uh… Eldritch Gods 3.0!

- The Anglerfish (1, 28)

- Vertigo / The Vast (4, 21, 46)

- The Flesh Hive (6, 22, 26, 32, 36?, 39, 40, 45?)

- The Piper (7, 42?)

- Asag (8, 12, 19, 20, 37, 43, 48?)

- Darkness (9, 15?, 25, 41?)

- Eyes (12, 20, 23)

- Isolation (13, 33)

- Body Horror (14, 17, 18, 30, 35, 49)

- Compression (15, 41, 50)

- Spiders (16, 32, 38, 48)

- Whatever The Other Circus deals with (24, 44)

- Micheal :-) (8, 26, 47)

So there you go! This is my current list until further notice! One last thing I feel is worth mentioning is that Smirke suggests that George had a “patron”, but I have to wonder what that actually means. It could definitely mean The Governor, if he’s a different person, but if George is The Governor…then you could maybe take more a D&D Warlock approach to the term “patron”. Also, I fee I should address why I view ✨the horrors✨ as “eldritch”. Simply put, some spoiler-free content on tma I saw called it eldritch horror, so I’m just going on the assumption that’s what’s being dealt here. I only say this because there is still some good evidence for all of this to be the work of demons, or something along those lines, so I wanted to explain why I have this interpretation. Anyways uh…back to the statement! So, the other main thing of intrigue that came from this episode was of course the return of Robert Smirke, which also acts as our first look at him as a character. And…he’s pretty confusing to me. You see, with the way that he talks about George’s architecture, how he bashed it and says that Sampson was lucky to not have to work with him much longer, you’d assume he stands in opposition to whatever George / The Governor is doing. But then again, HE built the passages underneath the reform club, as well as the ones beneath the institute, so he’s not entirely resolved of making creepy architecture either. Now granted, I have suggested that you can serve one horror and be against others. For example, I believe Gerard serves whatever horror connects to eyes, but that he’s against Vertigo/The Vast and Asag given his actions. The problem however is that Smirke built the tunnels which I believe reflect ✨the horrors✨, so…that would mean he doesn’t really have a side in this conflict (which I assume to be the conflict Micheal talks about). Overall Smirke’s motivations and morality are very enigmatic at the moment. But what’s even more interesting here is that based on Sampson’s words, it seems that while the institute was founded in concept by this point, the actual building might not have been, since Jonah was working at Edinburgh Townhouse. This makes it possible that Jonah built the institute over the tunnels even though he had knowledge of Smirke’s strange designs. Which like, I get it, if you have an interest in the paranormal that’s fair enough of a move to make but…it just makes me worry about the purpose of the institute a lot more, and also makes me concerned for Jonah’s fate. I feel like an overarching theme of the story is that if you dig too deep, you’ find something you wish you hadn’t found, which makes me very fearful for the history of the institute, everyone currently working there…and myself, now that I think about it. (And if the institute has a stake in the “struggle” Micheal mentions…are they aligned with the compression horror?) Overall, while this episode isn’t an all-time favorite for me, it’s given me enough to think about going forward. The history of the institute, The Governor and the…odd themes of poverty abuse that follow him now that I think about it, and Smirke’s architecture are all very interesting topics that I would love to see get expanded further. While it’s not my favorite episode, I think it certainly works as a finale to the first quarter of the podcast.

Oh yeah, the supplemental. Uh….I mean, this one is fairly brief but that’s fine because it’s funny as fuck. Oh Tim…you have no idea do you? I mean, that’s not me saying that Jon reciprocates Martin’s feelings at the moment, because have you SEEN the man? What I am saying is that…Tim really is a bestie ignoring the plot isn’t he? Like, I love him, but he has NO idea where the romantic subplot is going. But outside of that, it’s nice to know Basira is still trying to give out the tapes, and it’s also good to see that Jon is finally in…some form of therapy. Hooray for marginal improvement!

Well, that’s a wrap on the first quarter of season two, as well as the first quarter of the entire podcast! In conclusion, season two has been absolutely fantastic so far. So many great episodes like Grifter’s Bone, Tightrope, Literary Heights and The New Door have already blown me away, and it makes me even more excited to see what the rest of the season will dish out. The supplementals are a great way to advance the plot, and the directions all of the characters and storylines are taking are extremely satisfying and/or interesting. Looking back it’s…kind of insane that I’ve gotten this into the podcast. I initially started listening because I wanted to write my own horror, and thought something to have in the background for inspiration would be nice. But then I listened to the first two episodes while doing mundane busywork in a class and…it absolutely hooked me. And here I am, writing ass-long posts about them. I still intend to write my own works in the future someday, and I’m working on it as we speak, but I’ve just got to say it’s been such a delight getting deep into this, and everyone who worked on this podcast has my highest respect. And as always, thank you for reading of you’ve made it this far, I consider you an absolutely legend of perseverance if you’re able to listen to someone ramble for this long. In conclusion, Jon needs a nap, Martin needs a happy relationship, Tim needs all of the riches in the world, Not!Sasha needs to die, Elias needs to explain himself, Gertrude needs to explain herself, Basira needs to be careful, Helen needs to GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE, and Micheal needs to get in my life right now. See you next time :).

[thekisforkeats]

Love Languages

Info: The Magnus Archives, JonMartin, rated T probably for swears. Canon-Compliant. Set post-MAG 22, with a coda post-MAG 159. Everyone is ND and everyone is trans because that’s just how my personal S1 Archives gang rolls.

CWs: Mentions of ableism and Martin’s mother. I’d say canon-typical worms but the worms don’t really come up except in passing.

I do not know anything about BSL, so I did not try to describe the signs.

Summary: A love language is not just about how you best show love and affection; it is also about the ways you best receive love and affection. And so, for someone like Martin, who shows love by going out of his way to help others, someone going out of their way to help him, well. What better way for him to realize just how loved he is?

--------------------------------------------

The first time Martin went completely non-verbal after starting work in the Archives, it was the morning after giving Jon the statement about Jane Prentiss.

It wasn’t a surprising development, really. Martin didn’t go fully non-verbal that often, but when he did it was almost always a thing that started in the morning and lasted most of the day. Sometimes it wore off by the time he went to bed, sometimes it lasted until the next morning.

After his mother’s diagnosis, he’d been unable to speak for an entire week. That hadn’t gone over well--as much as his mother wanted him to be quiet, she didn’t like the “silent treatment,” as she called it.

Martin hated that she’d called it that, as though his non-verbal episodes were anything he did on purpose. Some days talking just felt like a chore; those days he could get by only forcing words out when he had to. But some days, the worst days, he just couldn’t talk. He could understand other people just fine, he could make noises, sometimes he could even hum. And he could definitely read and write. But speaking words, aloud? No. He could not speak, on these days, however much he may have wanted to.

As Martin grew older and learned more about himself, he learned words and reasons and coping mechanisms. He realized that some of the problem came from dysphoria and the longer he was on hormones the less often it happened. He realized that he was autistic (even if he never got diagnosed), and learned how to handle the episodes that still occurred. He took sign languages classes because it was a good and useful thing to know regardless, to be able to communicate with more people.

As many Deaf people had learned before Martin, he’d found himself in plenty of situations when nobody around him knew BSL, so he’d found a phone app that let him type out things he wanted to say and repeated them in a tinny, mechanical voice. Feminine, but he found it didn’t cause dysphoria; it wasn’t his voice. It was the app speaking for him, a robot lady translating his words.

Martin was fairly certain he was going to need the robot lady to speak for him today, and he was dreading the whole idea. The app got him a range of reactions from scorn to derision to faux sympathy. The last time he’d done so at work, the Institute library staff had regarded him with such pity that he’d called in sick the two other times it had happened since.

He’d woken early, because he was always awake fairly early, to ensure he looked presentable and got to work on time. He did not want Jonathan “Crisply Professional At All Times” Sims giving him that look again. The particular look that was “I highly disapprove of your sartorial choices but I’m not going to get into it right now because I have so very much else to do. Nonetheless, if I could fire you for what you’re wearing I would.”

Jon had a lot of looks. Martin fervently wished he could stop categorizing them; he very much disliked his boss, and very much wanted to stop thinking about Jon quite as much as he did.

Jon was attractive, that much Martin had noticed the first day he’d come in, with a jawline Martin would’ve loved to trace with his fingers, eyes sharp and deep and intelligent, salt-and-pepper hair that Martin would have tangled his fingers in gladly.

Except, of course, that Jon was also a prick who didn’t like Martin one bit and made that very clear. He’d put down on record that he thought Martin would “contribute nothing but delays.” Martin was not such a sucker for punishment that he would put up with someone who hated him just for a pretty face. The tiny potential blossom of a crush had been, well, crushed five seconds after it had poked its head above ground, by Jon’s declaration that he could dismiss Martin if he didn’t resolve the “dog situation” immediately.

Martin counted his lucky stars every day that Jon had not, in fact, dismissed him, despite having had to deal with a doggy mess. The luck was really in having Tim around, Martin figured; Jon actually seemed fond of Tim, and the other man had managed to smooth the entire situation over.

Martin had fallen asleep last night thinking about the new look Jon had given him yesterday: concerned. Truly, genuinely concerned, which had rather taken Martin aback. He’d been certain Jon wouldn’t believe him, would scoff and roll his eyes at the entire statement, and instead he’d just looked… concerned. 

And then Jon had offered Martin the cot that he’d woken up in this morning.

It wasn’t the look of concern that had Martin non-verbal, though; of that he was certain. It was the stress of the last two weeks, and dumping out the statement yesterday, and all the whirl of figuring out how to live in the Archives. Jon’s insistence on going with him to pick up basics with a toothbrush at the convenience store, and then coming back to be sure he was okay. Jon finding clean sheets and discussing how he’d do his laundry. Jon had expensed clothing bought online to the Institute, including next-day shipping, because he’d “lost access to his flat and thus his wardrobe in the line of duty.” It had all been bewildering and overwhelming and it was no real surprise that Martin was in the state he found himself when he woke.

Martin had known as soon as he’d opened his eyes. It was just there, the feeling of nope can’t talk today. He’d pulled on his binder and the same clothing he’d worn the day before and then fumbled around for his phone. Which… he didn’t have. The damn worm-hive-lady had stolen it from him. Well, shit.

He managed to avoid having to figure out how to talk while he went out to get breakfast, just pointing at a scone in the display and smiling at the guy behind the counter as if he wasn’t secretly irritated by the price of everything in Chelsea. By the time Martin got back, Jon was already in his office, so thank God he’d avoided that awkward interaction. He went to make himself tea, and had his breakfast in the breakroom, and brushed his teeth, and then went to get started on…

Wait. He didn’t even know what they were working on right now.

Well, he wasn’t going to bother Jon about it; however nice he’d been last night it surely must have worn off by now, and Martin had no interest in summoning one of his boss’ looks this early in the morning. Normally he’d still be on his commute at this hour.

After a moment’s thought, he went to go see what they’d recorded in his absence, and soon had a stack of statements on his desk. They’d gotten through five statements in the two weeks he’d been gone. Maybe Jon was right. Maybe Martin did contribute “nothing but delays.”

Pushing the thought aside, Martin focused on listening to the tapes, and was just finishing up listening to the second half of Father Edwin Burroughs’ statement when Tim came into the shared office the assistants used.

“Hey, you’re in early. You get the email?”

Martin raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

Tim snorted. “Jon claims he’s got something to warn us about, something that ‘won’t parse properly through digital means.’” He rolled his eyes. “Which is Jon-speak for ‘it’s a weird thing and I don’t want to admit it’s a weird thing because I have to keep my skeptic hat on to preserve my self-image.”

Martin chuckled in solidarity, then gestured toward the door to Jon’s office, to indicate that’s where their boss was.

“Not coming?” Tim asked, his own eyebrow raised. When Martin shrugged, he said, “Well, I guess if you didn’t get the email…” Tim also shrugged, then said, “Guess I’d better get it over with. Wish me luck!”

Martin gave him a thumbs up.

When Sasha came in, Martin silently directed her to Jon’s office as well, then heaved a sigh of relief. He hadn’t had to explain being non-verbal at all yet, and it was already nine o’clock. Maybe if he was lucky, Jon would warn them off talking to him and he’d manage to make it the entire day without having to explain the whole “non-verbal” business to anyone he saw on a regular basis.

Alas, it was barely thirty minutes later that Tim and Sasha returned to talk to him, both wearing expressions of mingled concern and guilt. When they spoke it was a flood of the usual, expected platitudes:

“We’re so sorry!”

“We didn’t know!”

“Are you okay??”

And such like.

Martin shrugged and nodded and shook his head in all the right places, and evidently Jon had played them the tape of his statement so he didn’t have to explain it all again (thank God), and he thought maybe, maybe he could even figure out what statement they were working on right now if he just listened to their chatter after they were done with the niceties, but then…

Well. Then Timothy Stoker happened.

Which is to say, Tim actually looked at Martin, and said, “You’re being awfully quiet. You sure you’re okay?”

And then he and Sasha just… sat there, looking at him expectantly.

Martin sighed and reached for a piece of scrap paper and wrote, I’m autistic and sometimes I go non-verbal. Today’s one of those days, but I don’t have my phone anymore, so no communication app.

As he held up the paper so the others could read the words, Martin braced himself for the ensuing reactions. Pity, probably, like those in the Institute library, and he couldn’t even call in sick to avoid it; he’d rather have scorn and derision. At least those reactions were honest.

What he got from them was not pity, however, nor even scorn.

Sasha hummed. “Autism explains a lot, actually. Don’t worry, it’s not a problem.”

Tim grinned and clapped Martin on the shoulder. “Yeah, why didn’t you just say so? It’s fine, you’ve been through an ordeal. And so you know--you’re hardly the only neurodivergent in the Archives.”

Martin blinked at Tim, then wrote: Wait, what? Who…?

“Would you believe me if I said all of us?” Tim said with a grin. “I have ADD, Jon’s… well… he’s Jon, and as for Sasha…”

Sasha sighed in fond exasperation and cut in, “Tim…”

“I contend that you cannot be neurotypical, Ms. James. You fit in too well around here.”

“I am not admitting to anything on Institute property,” Sasha said with aplomb. “And you shouldn't have either, but here we are.” She looked at Martin. “If HR finds out and they give you any trouble, let us know and we’ll figure out what to do.”

Tim, in the meanwhile, pulled out his phone. “Here, go ahead and use mine for now, until your replacement gets here or whatever. What’s the app so I can install it for you?”

Martin’s jaw had dropped open. Tim having ADD made sense; what did he mean about Jon, though? And Sasha? And what did Sasha mean about HR? And… and why were they being so… nice? So… understanding? It wasn’t an act, or at least he didn’t think it was. They seemed… genuinely fine with it. Accepting, even.

It was the strangest thing Martin had experienced in a while, and that was including the worm-riddled woman who’d stood outside his door for two straight weeks.

From there the day just… went on as normal. Tim installed the app on the phone, Martin’s robot phone lady spoke for him, the three of them did their work, and everything was fine.

Until, of course, the nature of their work reared its ugly head. They were discussing the statement of Leanne Denikin, case #0051701, which they had yet to attach a pithy name to; hence the discussion. It had long since become standard practice to attach a name to the “weirder” statements, to make them easier to discuss. (Jon insisted on using the case numbers on tape still, which was annoying, given that was the only place he did that.)

Martin was reading through the statement, and he typed into Tim’s phone: What do you think of this bit? “Be still, for there is strange music.”

What came out of the phone’s speakers, however, was garbled static followed by high-pitched screeching that startled Martin so much he actually dropped the phone.

Jon was walking in just as this happened; he stopped in the doorway, blinking. “What on Earth was that?”

“Martin’s robot lady gave Tim’s phone an aneurysm, I think,” Sasha said, eyeing Martin as well.

Martin scrabbled on the floor for the phone, pulled up the app (which had crashed), and typed, I don’t know what happened!! I was just typing in something from one of the statements!

Jon frowned at him sharply. “What are you doing with Tim’s phone? Are you quite well?”

“No, Martin is not ‘quite well,’” Tim said. “Non-verbal for the day.”

Then Jon did something that stunned Martin: Jon signed at him, specifically, “Do you know sign language?” He spoke aloud as he said this, too, but also raised his eyebrows and gave a quizzical tilt to his head to convey that he was asking a question.

Martin blinked rapidly, then signed back: “Yes, actually. But Tim and Sasha don’t.”

Jon nodded, then said aloud, along with signing, “Why are you non-verbal, exactly?”

“I have autism,” Martin signed. “Sometimes talking is overwhelming and sometimes, especially in stressful situations, I can’t talk at all. Woke up that way today. It should be gone by tomorrow morning.” Why was he explaining so much more to Jon than he had to the others? Maybe just because Jon knew sign, and thus could communicate in a language Martin found much easier than even the typing.

Jon frowned thoughtfully, then nodded again. Then, still speaking and signing both, “What were you typing into your phone?”

“Be still, for there is strange music. From the statement.” Martin gestured to the statement on his desk.

Jon’s frown deepened and he repeated the words. “‘Be still, for there is strange music….’” His expression went slack for a moment, and then he shook himself. “Right. Well. Just… just… I’ll be right back.” Then he abruptly turned and left the room.

Tim and Sasha exchanged bewildered looks. Then Sasha asked, “Do you know what that was all about?”

“I forgot Jon knows BSL,” Tim replied thoughtfully. “Hard of hearing on one side. Not that he’d have agreed to interpret all day or anything.”

Martin shrugged. It’s alright, he typed. This works just fine.

“Well, no, obviously not for some things.” Jon had reappeared as suddenly as he’d disappeared, holding a small brown notebook the size of Martin’s hand. “Here,” he said, thrusting the notebook at Martin. “This will work better, for communicating about the statements. You needn’t use it with me, of course, unless signing is also taxing.”

Martin stared up at Jon. There was an entirely new look on his boss’ face. Not any level of scorn or sneer, nor even concern. He was… nervous. Fidgety. Like he was offering a gift that he was afraid might be rejected.

Something went flip in Martin’s stomach and it was like the entire world turned upside down. Suddenly, in light of Jon’s actions in the last 24 hours, he saw the way his boss had acted toward him the last six months for what it was: a defense mechanism. Armor pulled up around someone fragile and soft and sweet, someone so terrified of rejection that he went about making sure it happened preemptively so he wouldn’t be hurt.

Martin had a sudden, fierce desire to hug Jon and tell him everything would be okay. It was so bewildering a sensation--he didn’t even like the man! At all!--that he just took the notebook with a nod and a signed “Thank you,” eyes still very wide.

Jon nodded in return. “You’re welcome.” He let out a breath, and seemed to relax a little. “Well. Then. I think we’ve found the name for this one, given the way Tim’s phone reacted to those words. ‘Strange Music’ it is.” He straightened himself. “Tim, you said something about the organ reminding you of articles you’ve read…?”

Tim nodded, expression suddenly serious. “Yeah. I’ll see if I can find them for you.”

“Right. Well, then, Sasha, if I could ask you to look through the Archive like we talked about? I’m certain we’ve had a statement from Jane Prentiss.” Jon then turned to Martin. “And if you wouldn’t mind helping me with ‘Schwarzwald?’ You used to work in the library, right?”

Martin was still staring at Jon in confusion, but nodded.

Jon actually smiled at him. Faintly. “Well, then, I’m certain you must know where to find the German history reference books, if you could go grab whatever they’ll let you bring down?”

The strangest thing about it was, Jon seemed sincere. Like he actually believed Martin did, indeed, know the library well enough to just… go up there and find the German history reference books. The faint, confident-in-his-assistant smile was a new look, at least directed at Martin; he’d seen Jon look at Tim and Sasha that way many times before.

Martin’s stomach was doing cartwheels. There were butterflies taking up residence in his intestines. His heart was pounding. How had he never noticed how nice Jon’s smile was? Soft and small, like he was afraid to let it actually take up residence on his face for too long.

Oh, God, oh, no. Martin could not fancy his boss. Jon hated him. Or, well, no, evidence suggested that perhaps Jon did not hate him, but Jon most certainly did not fancy him. This crush had to disappear, just as fast as it had come. This would not do.

He was going to be writing poetry again tonight, wasn’t he? Crap.

“Martin?” Jon’s tone was concerned rather than sharp, and the way Jon said his name made Martin want to sink into the floor.

Instead, he scribbled furiously in the notebook and held it up so all three of the others could see: Yeah, sorry, was just thinking about where that’d be. I’ll bring them down as soon as I find them.

Jon practically beamed at Martin’s use of the notebook and he nodded briskly. “Right! I’ll be in my office when you have the books, then.” He started to turn away.

Martin’s heart went pound pound pound because oh wow Jon was really cute when he let that smile take up more of his face. Throwing caution to the wind, he made a noise to get the other man’s attention.

Jon turned around, quirking a brow. “Yes, Martin?”

Martin signed, “Tea?” He, too, raised his eyebrows and tilted his head to indicate the question.

Jon nodded. “Tea would be lovely, yes.” He smiled at Martin for a brief moment, and then suddenly looked flustered. He glared at them all. “Anyway,” he snapped in his ‘boss’ voice, the impact of which was ruined by the flush rising in his cheeks, “there’s still work to be done. So let’s… do it.” And with that, he turned on his heel and left the office.

Had Jon blushed because Martin had offered him tea? Did Jon like his tea that much? Was Martin imagining things? He had to be imagining things. He put his head down on the desk and wrapped his arms over it so he could grab at handfuls of hair. What was happening to him?

Sasha tried to make her voice serious, but couldn't quite manage it past quite clearly holding back giggles. “Mourn for poor Martin, working alone with Jon.” She looked at Tim. “We should call HR preemptively, it’ll be a bloodbath.”

“Nah, I think Jon’s softening on our boy,” Tim said with a laugh. He reached over to ruffle Martin’s hair with one hand while he took his phone back with the other. “Don’t worry, Marto. I told you he’d come around one day.”

Martin looked up at Tim with a stricken, betrayed expression. In the notebook: Is this how you comfort me in my hour of need??

Sasha shook her head. “For once, Tim’s being serious. You weren’t in the room when Jon explained things to us. He’s worried about you, he doesn’t want you to have to leave the Institute alone, he doesn’t want you to have to look for the Prentiss statement in case it’s ‘too traumatic’ for you to run across on your own. He actually asked us if we thought we should avoid any mention of Prentiss altogether in your presence.”

“I told him no,” Tim said. “I hope that was okay. You seem like you’d rather deal with trauma by facing it and figuring it out, rather than avoiding it entirely.”

Matin gaped at them. Really? he wrote. Jon’s… worried about me? Really? As if he hadn’t seen the evidence just now that Jon was, indeed… softening.

Tim gave Martin a very serious look. “I’ve told you before… I’ve known Jon, well, not as long as I’ve known Sasha, but for a long while now. He’s prickly and thorny, even to people he cares about, but that’s a front and I’ve said so. You just didn’t believe me.”

“In Martin’s defense,” Sasha put in, “Jon’s been awfully ‘prickly and thorny’ to him specifically.”

Tim put up a hand. “Oh, I agree. I have had words with our dear boss about the way he treats Martin, largely because I’m one of the few people he might actually listen to.” He looked at Martin. “I don’t want to take the credit, because it’s really been a remarkably fast turnaround, but I’d like to think I helped, a little.”

Martin frowned thoughtfully. Thank you, he wrote. If Jon’s at ‘I can stand Martin’ instead of ‘Martin is the source of all bad that happens in the Archives’ work might be… better than tolerable, for once.

“That’s the spirit!” Tim said with a grin. “Now, then, Jon did say to get back to work…”

Jon gave Martin another of those soft smiles when Martin brought in the tea, a smile which widened on seeing the stack of books he carried in right after. That afternoon, spent sitting and going through books and discussing the Schwarzwald statement, was the first of many they’d spend together, reading and talking and comparing notes.

Martin was feeling verbal again the next morning, but he kept the notebook. If nothing else, it was a good place to jot down poetry. And it came in handy when he found himself unable to speak the morning after Jane Prentiss’ attack on the Archives.

And the morning after Jon confronted him about his CV.

And the morning after Jon disappeared, leaving Jurgen Leitner’s body at his desk. (Martin blamed that on the corridors more than the body, really.)

Funnily enough, he didn’t need it the morning after the Unknowing. But he kept it with him that day all the same, the first gift Jon had ever given him, and one of the few things he had left of him with Jon in a coma.

--------------------------------------------

When they reached Daisy’s safehouse in Scotland, Martin had hoped he’d somehow manage to dodge the threat of going non-verbal. He’d been the one to drive the car, over Jon’s protests; it was something to focus on, to keep him remembering he was alive and real. He’d clutched the wheel and driven north north north with Jon giving directions in the passenger seat.

Martin had finally figured out that it was the chance to stop and think about trauma that led to his being non-verbal, which was why it was almost always a thing that hit in the morning. Adrenaline would keep him running after a stressful event, and then he’d carry himself through the rest of the day trying to clean up whatever mess had been caused. But sleep was enough for his body and brain to both tell him to stop, to process, to deal with whatever he’d run into.

It was possible, in hindsight, that he’d gone non-verbal more than once since the Unknowing and just hadn’t noticed because he’d been barely interacting with anyone. He’d certainly had a bad bout the morning after his mother’s funeral, dealing with so much misgendering and fake smiles. And there had been more than enough trauma to try to process in the past year, so it must have happened before.

He’d just really, really hoped it wouldn’t now, because he didn’t want to put Jon through that. (Why he thought he was putting Jon through anything he didn’t really want to examine. It made him feel Lonely, and that was bad.)

At any rate, the realization of why he went non-verbal had led to him keeping busy in order to hold it off, in order to hold himself together. So he drove, and he puttered about the cabin poking into cupboards, and he talked to Jon, and he talked to the shop lady in the village, and he brought back food and made dinner with Jon, and everything was good and fine.

And then he woke up the next morning, in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room, and he could not speak.

There was the smell of bacon and eggs and pancakes cooking, and Martin made his bleary way out into the main room of the cabin and peered at Jon, already up and dressed and cooking.

His boyfriend turned to look at him and smiled, one of those soft smiles Martin had come to love so much. “Sleep well?”

"Not really,” Martin signed. “I mean…” He gestured at his throat.

Jon nodded. “I figured you might feel that way this morning. I, uhh… hold on a moment, I need to….” He grabbed the pan of bacon and moved it off the heat, pulled a pancake off the griddle and deposited it on a plate, then turned off the stove and went to poke around in one of the bags.

Martin chuckled fondly. “What’re you looking for?”

Jon was still digging through his bag. “When I was grabbing essentials at the store, back in London, I was thinking, you’ve been through a lot, and the notebook I gave you before must be full if you even have it anymore. I know you were writing poetry in it, and… oh, here we go.”

Jon came up with another small notebook. This one was not plain and brown, the way the first one he’d gifted Martin all those years ago had been. This one was black, and had silvery stars on its cover that, as Jon held out the book and thus tilted it through the light, shimmered into rainbows.

“Just in case, you know, the shop lady doesn’t know BSL.”

Martin blinked at the notebook.

“It, uhh… I know it’s not your usual style,” Jon said, his voice suddenly nervous. He was looking down at the notebook as he spoke, instead of at Martin. “Not… retro. But… I saw it and I thought of you.” He paused. “That tape, where you were talking to Simon Fairchild. He talked about the ‘cosmic scale,’ and how we’ve never even been alive on that time frame, and you said… what was it? You said, ‘I think our experience of the universe has value. Even if it disappears forever.’ And I just… that was… maybe the most… it was very… you. And there were other options, flowers or cursive writing, o-or… I don’t know, they all seemed so obvious, but this…”

Jon swallowed, and finally looked up at Martin. “I thought, after the Lonely, you might like a reminder that, you have value. That… that to me, you shine as bright as any star.” And then he flushed, and Martin knew it was for him, just as he now knew the flushes about tea all those years ago had also been for him.

Martin was gaping. Oh. Oh. Jon… loved him. Which he’d known, intellectually, but the emotional knowledge of it hit him suddenly, took his breath away. He knew it, all at once, in that “oh we could spend the rest of our lives together” way he’d never really thought he’d ever feel.

Jon had clearly misinterpreted the expression; he started stammering, “I-if… it it’s bad, I can… well, no, I can’t take it back, stupid, I should’ve just grabbed the one that had--”

Martin cut him off by reaching out to take the notebook from Jon and reached out with his other hand to cup the shorter man’s cheek. He smiled, and because he’d realized long ago how well Jon responded to physical touch, he leaned in to plant a soft kiss on his boyfriend’s forehead.

Then he pulled back to put the notebook aside on the counter and signed, “It’s perfect. Thank you.” A pause, and then, “I love you.”

Jon smiled, both speaking and signing, “I love you, too.”

And for once in his life, Martin knew that to be true, and trusted that knowledge. He was loved. He had been loved, and he would be loved for the rest of his life, whatever state his voice was in.

[dannimatic2]

The Tapes Are Web And I’m Right: A long, rambling, semi-comprehensive list of reasons why the web controls the tapes and also jon, written as of MAG 194:

1. It's practically all but confirmed that they aren't linked to the Beholding (they appear in the Eye's blindspots like the tunnels and Upton House) and I genuinely just can’t imagine how they'd pull off the "the tapes were actually us, the audience, all along" theory in canon aside from subtext and meta implications, so that crosses the two off as mostly implausible in my mind.

2. How could Annabelle have known exactly when Martin and Jon split up so that she could snatch Martin up the next moment and take him to Hilltop Road, unless she heard the tape of their argument? How could she have known so much about them to be able to use their doubts & insecurities to manipulate them? (Are you truly in control of the choices you make? Does he even need you at all?) She's not semi-omniscient like Jonah, so where does she get all her information from? How does she know so much? 

3. There are countless hints linking the tapes back to the Web, including but not limited to:

-MAG 134: It was revealed that Martin piled the tapes on top of the coffin while Jon was still in the Buried to help him find his way out, but he didn’t know where the idea came from, and it’s very likely that the web placed the idea in his mind. 

-MAG 147: Annabelle was in possession of the Anglerfish tape, the very first statement Jon ever recorded, and placed it atop her own statement at hilltop road. I can’t think of a single reason for it to be there besides as a hint to the audience of the Web’s subtle involvement with the plot since the very beginning, and the convenient placement of the tape on top of Annabelle’s statement is just screaming that the two are somehow linked.

-MAG 157: Annabelle was the most plausible option as to who left the tape on Jon's desk that led him to try to find the panopticon & save Martin, consequently getting the Lonely mark and ending the world.

-MAG 163: At the end of the episode, a tape manifests in Martin’s bag. He asks it what it's doing there, and at that very same instant, the phone rings. It’s later revealed that it was Annabelle on the other line.

From these examples alone, I’m almost entirely convinced that the Web is behind the tapes. One thing that still doesn’t make sense, though, is the 6 month gap of time while Jon was in a coma. Why would the Web choose not to manifest any tapes during the Flesh invasion, or during Martin’s turn to the Lonely? Maybe it simply wasn’t important to the completion of the world-ending ritual: Jon was comatose, so logically the ritual couldn’t be furthered until he woke up, and the Web had no reason to spy on Melanie as she furiously stabbed a many-limbed eldritch monstrosity triple her size (although I, personally, would’ve paid to hear that go down).

But another explanation may be that Jon himself, being The Archive, is a vessel for Annabelle Cane’s master plan. If we take into account the hints littered throughout the series that the apocalypse was mainly orchestrated and carried out not by Jonah but by Annabelle—the worms being let into the archive when Jon tried to kill a spider, Oliver Banks being compelled by Annabelle to give his statement to Jon (“you know better than anyone how the spiders can get into your head. Easier to just do what she asks”), the Web compelling Martin to lure Jon out of the Buried by piling tapes on top of the coffin, etc—His entire purpose as Archivist could possibly be better attributed to the Web, not the Eye. We already know that the entities are so fundamentally connected to each other that not one single fear can be brought into the world without bringing along the rest, and many, if not all of them, overlap to some degree. And the Web’s whole thing is manipulation! If the Desolation ritual involves a messiah born in flame, and the Flesh ritual is literally just a bunch of people throwing meat into a gigantic hole, then it would make a lot of thematic sense for the Web, instead of orchestrating a ritual of its own (which we all know wouldn’t work in the first place), to succeed through the manipulation of another entity’s ritual, silently pulling the strings so that another entity, such as the Eye, is unwittingly helping the Web fulfill its plans the entire time. This theory works in the case of past archivists as well: Gertrude used the Web to bind herself to Agnes Montague in an attempt to thwart the Desolation’s ritual, not to mention that she was established to be extremely cunning and manipulative by nature, characteristics more in line with avatars of the Web than the Eye. And it was the Web that brought Jon to the institute, that led him to get marked by all fourteen fears and, ultimately, to end the world. 

This could tie the “the tapes are a manifestation of Jon's powers" and "the tapes are the Web” theories into one, explaining why the tapes didn’t manifest during the six months that Jon was comatose, while also falling in line with the evidence that the Web is in control of, or at the very least has unlimited access to the tapes. This would also explain why the tapes only started manifesting around season 2: it was the first point in the series where Jon began fully taking on his role as Archivist and became able to compel people to give him information, the first instance of such being in MAG 61. Not to mention that this ability itself could easily be an extension of both the Web and the Eye: the Eye part being that it's a way to get information from people, and the Web part being the manipulation of one’s free will to do so. Note how Jon compels Floyd Matharu in MAG 141:

ARCHIVIST

[Soothingly] You can go.

FLOYD

Erm… I, I don’t…

ARCHIVIST

Thank you Floyd. You’ve been… very helpful.

FLOYD

C—

ARCHIVIST

It’s alright, Floyd. You just… need a break.

FLOYD

Yeah… Sure.

[RINGING FOOTSTEPS DEPART]

He doesn’t ask Floyd a question. He’s not trying to get any more information out of him. He’s doing what I can only describe as mind controlling him. He plants an idea in his mind that makes him walk off in a daze. It’s unlike anything he had used his powers for before. It reminds me of MAG 59, where Ronald Sinclair made his way down to the basement of Hilltop Road, and every subsequent movement—removing the box from the table, taking out the apple, lifting it up to bite into it—was made not only against his will, but performed with the calmest expression on his face while in his mind he desperately fought against it. It reminds me of MAG 81, where the book lures Jon out of his house, walks him all the way down to Mr. Spider’s doorstep, and balls his hand into a fist to knock on the door.

His being the Archivist could also be why the Web gave Jon the lighter in the first place: maybe he’s the only one who can use it to fulfill their grand plan, whatever that may end up being in the end. Maybe he was meant to from the start.

And for my final and most damning piece of evidence, feast your eyes on THIS:

Thank you for your time.

[ultrahpfan5blog]

Rewatching JJ Abrams Star Trek trilogy

First some context. I am not a hardcore Trekkie. I have seen some of the older Star Trek shows but I have genuinely never followed Star Trek until the first movie of the trilogy came out, which led me to Star Trek: Discovery and Picard that I do follow.

That may give you a context to why I unabashedly love this trilogy. I think its genuinely one of the more consistently entertaining trilogies in the new millennium. While I obviously don’t put it on the same pedestal as TDK trilogy or LOTR trilogy, its just a genuinely fun, fast paced, and well cast trilogy. 

Star Trek (2009) is just a genuine blast. I think the movie is near perfectly paced because it starts with a bang and never lets up. It also does a pretty good job of setting up Kirk and Spock as the two leads and then gradually assembles the supporting cast over the course of the movie. I think the pace is key to this film’s enjoyment. Its not a particularly deep movie and doesn’t have a ton of big character moments, but the humor and action in the film genuinely work. The cast works big time. Certainly Pine was instantly appealing. I had seen in him in maybe a couple of rom coms prior to this but he was an instant hit for me here. Lot of natural charisma and comic timing. Quinto is also excellent in this movie as Spock and he has a very tricky tightrope to balance to show emotion without showing too much emotion. Karl Urban as McCoy is hilarious and an instant scene stealer. The rest of the cast including Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, Jon Cho, and Anton Yelchin are all instantly appealing though the film is firmly focused on Kirk and Spock so these characters don’t get a whole lot of depth. I will say that Bana as Nero was probably the weakest of the villains in this trilogy, but that has a lot to do with the film being very focused on introduction to the heroes. Bruce Greenwood as Pike was a very welcoming steady presence. Nimoy as Spock Prime is a delight. Even with my sparse background of Star Trek before this movie, it was lovely to see him and he certainly has a few good scenes with Pine, Pegg, and Quinto. All in all a really strong starter to this series. An 8/10.

Star Trek Into Darkness is understandably the most controversial of the series. I had not seen Wrath of Khan when I first saw this movie. Its kind of a tricky thing this film does. Its both trying to be and not trying to be Wrath of Khan at the same time and the comparisons were inevitable. However, irrespective of comparisons, I still really like the film. The pace of this film is not nearly as smooth but the film has a lot more character moments and the ensemble gets more opportunities to step up. Now, I get that have Benedict Cumberbatch playing a character called Khan Noonien Singh might raise a few eyebrows, but he elevates this film so much. This was at the height of Sherlock popularity, when the the first two beloved seasons had released and everyone was going crazy over him, for good reason, and in all honesty he is worth every penny in the movie, chewing scenery with great gusto. Its a pity that advertising spoilt almost every scene he was in, but all his scenes are terrific. Chris Pine also showed much greater depth in his performance, delivering big time on a lot of dramatic moments while continuing to have impeccable comic timing when required. Quinto has comparatively less to do here than in the first film but he steps up during the climax. Zoe Saldana, Jon Cho, and Simon Pegg definitely get more scope here to deliver. All the other returning cast, like Karl Urban and Bruce Greenwood continued to be excellent. Alice Eve and Peter Weller are pretty good as Carol and Admiral Marcus. The action in the film is still pretty entertaining. The dramatic moments in the films work and the film does a nice job of showing the new dynamic between Kirk and Spock. The Spock and Uhura romance also ended up being a lot more enjoyable than I thought it would be. Some of the Wrath of Khan references are a little clumsy and there a few points in the movie where the film drags a little, and certainly the superblood being a cure for death was kind of silly and should have been a much bigger deal, but overall, I still found the film enormously entertaining. An 8/10

Star Trek Beyond is maybe the most Trekkie of the films. I mean, I haven’t even watched a whole lot of the original show and even I have seen episodes where the crew has similar adventures. The strength of this film really lies in the character dynamics. The film splits up the enterprise crew into a few different groups, with Uhura and Sulu together, Kirk and Chekhov together, McCoy and Spock together, and Scotty with newcomer Jaylah. All of these duos work well together. The film is again well paced so its never boring and certainly it has the most entertaining action sequence of the series in the Sabotage sequence. That was silly but damn entertaining. The film also does well to take a breath and give the characters a moment of two to shine. Certainly the scenes between Quinto and Urban are excellent with Urban probably getting the most scope he has gotten in the series. There is also a wonderful moment with him and Pine towards the beginning of the film which really brings home the friendship between them. Pine again is fantastic. Delivering a more weary and weathered performance. I like that the film doesn’t hesitate in bruising him up. He ends the film with a big bruise over his eye. That’s actually one of the things that I love about Kirk’s character over the series. He is not portrayed as this invulnerable action hero. In fact, he gets his ass handed to him constantly throughout the series and symbolically it works that he wins his first fight during the climax of this movie. I liked the mentor/mentee dynamic with Yelchin’s Chekhov. Simon Pegg in this film is a delight. I really enjoy that he fully embraces the character’s scottishness. Jaylah is also a pretty badass character and Sofia Boutella does a really good job emoting through that makeup. Chu, Saldana, Quinto, and yelchin are all first rate. Idris Elba is excellent as Krall. The one things I would hold against the movie is it makes its twist reveal a bit too late to have impact. The film didn’t really need this to be a twist reveal. I think they missed an opportunity to make the villain a lot more heartbreaking. As it stands, it works well enough, but it could have been the best villain is they had given the character reveal earlier and then given the motivations more depth. I also think the tribute to Nemoy after his passing was handled in a lovely manner in film. They handled it in a way where it added something to the character of Spock and the decisions he makes. While the film’s plot is nothing new, it does its characters well enough and the pace and the action continues to be a ton of fun. An 8/10

I do think fans are a bit to harsh on this series at times. I know knocking on J.J. Abrams is common for fans of series which have the words “Star” in it. I certainly think this series kept the brand of Star Trek alive for new fans. I certainly would not have gone on to see Discovery and Picard if I hadn’t seen these movies. So I do think the movies deserve that credit, regardless of what you feel about the quality. I think Justin Lin took on the directing role for Beyond very smoothly and its a shame we won’t get more from this series because this cast was very appealing. But in a way the series ending as a trilogy seems appropriate. I feel the trilogy did end up having a very full character arc for Kirk, who went from cocksure and overconfident Captain in 2009, to a humbling and learning self sacrifice in Into Darkness, to becoming a senior mentor figure in Beyond. Its a damn good character arc in my opinion. Also, it would have sucked to continue the series without Yelchin, who was kind of the baby of this group. So in a way its poetic for this series to end with the whole core group still in tact.

[creek-cryptid-deluxe]

per request (from a single person, that’s all it takes), my thoughts and feelings about...

the movie adaptation of Queen of the Damned! (buckle up motherfuckers because this is going to be a long thing)

Ok, so it’s pretty much universally known that the movie is... trash, despite the soundtrack being absolutely baller. Let’s examine why this movie is trash, shall we?

So, my first point of contention is that it was meant to combine 2 books. As I’m sure everyone knows, this movie and Interview with the Vampire are based on books from The Vampire Chronicles series by Anne Rice (which she’s still milking by putting out books nobody is asking for. Anne, girl. Stop. Please. You’ve killed it. It’s dead. Move on.) The book series goes Interview with the Vampire (Louis talking to a journalist or author, about his life and afterlife as lived by him), The Vampire Lestat (which is penned by the monster himself about his life and journey into immortality up into his rise to fame with his band, and the awakening of Akasha), Queen of the Damned (which is basically the concert and the aftermath), then is Tale of the Body Thief but after reading it once, I never went beyond Queen of the Damned ever again and that was when I was like 17. 

Now the movie Queen of the Damned was meant to combine the second and third books, thereby skipping out on a TON of important information and background regarding Lestat’s motivations and behaviors. (Plus The Vampire Lestat is my favorite of the series. It’s a good fucking book, ok?)  So in the movie, we see Akasha being awakened and ripping out her king’s throat with ZERO CONTEXT! Ok, not zero context, but absolutely not enough context to paint a full picture of wtf is going on. Same with his motivation behind joining the band or explaination of his attitude in Interview. (BTW at the end of Interview, he ISNT the one who turns Daniel, the author, into a vampire. It’s Armand.)

So yeah, lots of missing info that I feel is pretty necessary for the narrative to make sense. And I don’t mean that in the usual “omg they left this bit from the book out of the movie!!!” way. I mean it in a significant information for the storyline was just GONE causing the story to make significantly less sense.

Now let’s chat about that casting, boi! 

I think we can all agree that the entire thing was acted pretty terribly, yeah? 

great. so looking beyond that...

Let’s start with my main issue and that’s Lestat. So his casting in Interview wasn’t physically ideal, however Cruise did manage to capture the personality Lestat had for that novel. While Louis is ‘a whiner’ as a friend put it, because he can’t shed that humanity and the morals and softness of heart that comes with that, Lestat is much the opposite. In Interview, he has completely embraced the decadent, indulgent, ruthlessness of an immortal who has been around and seen some shit. You learn more about why in the second novel. Really, he sort of knew how to play the game from the start. Yes he still had a handful of human attachments, like Gabrielle and Nicholas, but he cut ties with pretty much everyone else outside of a proxy lawyer of sorts to manage his shit and be a point of contact almost immediately. Yeah, occasionally he displays a softness, some humanity, but it always fucks him over, so by the time he meets Louis he has learned that it isn’t the way to go. 

Stuart Townsend had potential. Physically, absolutely nails it. Could have easily pulled of the ‘present day’ Lestat of the end of the second/third novel who is basically sick of all the vampire rules about keeping to the shadows and fronts a rock band to give all the other immortals the finger. HOWEVER, he acted it so fucking poorly that it physically hurt. It was like he latched onto the fact that Lestat is indisputably attractive and vampires are generally seen as sensual creatures, then turned that shit up to 1000 and turned it into a caricature. Look at his movement. God the faces he pulls. Christ on a cracker. 

Then there’s the ‘singing’. So when an actor lip syncs in a movie, unless the voice of the actual vocalist is super distinctive and recognizable (looking at you Jon Davis. Also on that subject, Jon get your shit together. fucksake. clean it up bro. you didn’t invent dubstep, come off it already. nobody buys it and you’ve become a joke.), you shouldn’t be able to tell that the actor isn’t the one singing. In this movie, there is an OBVIOUS disconnect between the song/voice and the actor. His body language and facial expression NEVER ONCE align with the fucking vocals that we are meant to believe are coming from him. Genuinely, and I say this in all seriousness, the worst lip sync I’ve seen on RuPaul’s Drag Race was a fucking tour de force compared to what Townsend gave us in this abomination. How was there not a point during the shoot where someone stepped in and said, “You know, maybe we should get him some lessons and practice doing a proper lip sync...” HOW DID THAT SLIP THROUGH THE CRACKS Y’ALL??? Him singing is a (if not THE) main plot point!!!! Fuck!

Casting for everyone else? Ok. Not well acted but nothing was so... whatevs? But on the subject of casting, in Interview, as much as he looked like walking sex as vampire Antonio Banderas was, he didn’t fit the description of Armand in any of those first 3 books. When Lastat first meets him (long before Louis was a thing), he’s described in such a way that it seems he was turned as a young man, not an adult. He was described as looking beautiful and innocent (I think the phrase ‘cherub like face’ was used?) which are not words I would attribute to Mr. Banderas. (No offence to the man, because again... absolute walking sex with pointy teeth in that movie.)

Another thing that really bugs me is the secondary plot with Jessie and the talamasca was, again, missing almost all relevant information! like... honestly if they were going to do it the way they did, they should have just left it the fuck out. you don’t get any sort of information about who the vampires in the house are and how they relate to Jessie, aside from some vague b.s. Jessie was already a vampire at the damned concert, having been turned by one of the vampires associated with the vampire lady she was descended from who turned to marble at the end, becoming the new Akasha basically. They didn’t explain anything about elders or ancients and the entire power structure/hierarcy within the vampires. 

they just took those 2 books, smashed them together haphazardly, left out FUCK TONS of pretty relevant information, then went “oh here’s a dope soundtrack. hope that is enough to carry this dumpster fire of an abomination that has stuff happen but doesn’t explain shit!!! Enjoy kids!”

UGH. 

ok i’m done. but angry. so i’m going to go paint or hassle J into bringing me a dremel to sand his fucking dragon sculpture. thank you for coming to this episode of Dr. M Rants. 

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 126 - Sculptor's Tool

Then Rosa made an off-colour joke about life drawing and getting – hands-on, and I forgot about it, but I still ended up going to the class. - Statement of Debra Madaki

I kinda like Rosa. I know nothing about Rosa, except she makes low-brow puns, but I kinda like Rosa.

Now, I’m not one to judge on appearances; I was the one who insisted Desmond still come to church after his operation

So, the statement giver is clearly one of those people who don't notice that they come across as giant fuck-off arseholes specifically when they explain how they're totally not giant fuck-off arseholes. Why, dearest Debra, the FUCK, are you acting like - erm - gracefully "allowing" someone to remain in the community even though they have - gasp - unseemly surgical scars shows how UNjudgmental you are.

It sort of – almost started out like a fish. But it just kept going and going, looping back and into itself, as if it was swimming through its own body. After a half hour, I had almost completely forgotten my own work, instead just staring at this serpentine structure that the dreadful man was building.

This may be the description in MAG that comes closest to making me feel how mesmerising the Spiral can be. Yeah, I'd be staring and forgetting my own work, too!

I know, it was an amateur class, and he was under no obligation to do exactly the work as instructed, but Ray was very clear with the rest of us that we were doing things in a specific order for a reason, and it was just a bit frustrating to see him nodding along to that awful man flagrantly disregarding what we were meant to be doing.

Okay, it's a bad sign when you're in a room with a being who literally feeds off people's fears and you come across as the worse person. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS, DEBRA!

It made a noise that sounded like a scream heard through water and stretched out towards my mouth, which I’ll admit was hanging open in horror. If I hadn’t screamed and fallen backwards, I am sure the thing would have dived down my throat.

Oh yikes. There are some things you really don't want to accidentally swallow. Flies. Spiders. Creations of pure terror.

I was obviously taken aback at what had to be a really significant scheduling issue, but having a quick check of the timetable of classes, it looked very much like sculpting had always been on a Thursday, which didn’t make much sense to me, standing there in my dancing shoes and feeling like a fool.

Okay, I know this is a silly thing to focus on, but I feel that being told "No, you're wrong about your schedule, this has always been this way" would be genuinely fucking unsettling, especially when you're a very well-organised person, like Debra seems to be, and definitely wouldn't just randomly forget what day of the week a class was on. Like, I think I may have genuinely had nightmares with similar themes.

There was no sign of Mary. They still haven’t found her.

This is one of those "few words to reveal a deeper, surprising horror" moments that I love so much.

He coughed gently, and, well, I suppose it would have been rude not to look.

This is a very relatable thought process! So is Debra's later thing about "I would've run but that seemed rude." The number of times I've stayed in uncomfortable and occasionally genuinely frightening situations because I didn't want to come across as rude...

A door. “Perfect!” Gabriel told me. “It looks just like him!” I asked him if it was supposed to be a face and he told me yes. It was a good friend of his. I asked him who and he said they didn’t have a name. I told him everyone has a name, and he said his friend wasn’t like us, that having a name would only confuse them.

Okay, I'm aware we're talking about horrors beyond human comprehension here, but ... the Distortion has a friend! And that friend makes art for them! How sweet!

I got a letter, a week ago. It was from Gabriel. It said that he had found a new job, and he’d love it if I came up to assist him again. He’s working in a place called Sannikov Land. I looked it up. It doesn’t exist. And it sounds cold. I don’t think I should go. I’m not going to go.

Okay, I know it's revealed that in the end she DIDN'T go to Sannikov Land but my first reaction to this was definitely "Oh, she is SO going to go".

A Great Twisting, that Gertrude stopped at the cost of a single life. Hm... I thought moving away from my humanity would have made that seem more acceptable. That sort of sacrifice… But it just makes me sad. I remembered Gertrude’s notebook. We found it alongside the plastic explosives, but it rather got lost amongst the business of… saving the world at the cost of two lives - Jon

... damn. Jon seriously needs a hug. He's genuinely TRYING to be a good person, he's just not getting a lot of choice in the matter.

I don’t know, however, whether that was because she decided not to… or because shortly after this statement was given, they found the body of one Mary Randall in her basement, and she has spent the last nine years in Eastwood Park prison, where she remains to this day.

Now this was a genuinely surprising twist! Gave me shivers.

Martin: Really? I mean, it’s just admin. I-it’s not exactly thrilling listening.

I kind of love that Martin actually talks to the tape recorders as if they were human beings. It's cute. I mean, it's also a sign he really needs someone to fucking talk to because he is incredibly isolated thanks to Peter Fucking Lukas but hey, it's still kinda cute.

Martin: When all this is over, I’m telling him everything, with or without your permission. Peter Lukas: Martin, when it’s over, you won’t want to.

God, I want to punch Peter Lukas in his smug, condescending face so badly sometimes.

My impression of this episode

This isn't one of those episodes that stuck with me after listening, but the statement actually is delightfully unsettling and really well-written. It's actually one of the better statements for presenting the Spiral in its full glory, I think. And then that's immediately followed by a strong segment of Jon brooding subtly about morality and an even stronger segment of Peter and Martin being a) cryptic and b) infuriating that just left me going "I WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON. ALSO I WANT TO KICK PETER LUKAS'S ASS." I'm ... rather protective of Martin.

[catgirlthecrazy]

Imposter Syndrome

Fanfic partially inspired by episode 161, and also these excellent bits of Archivist Sasha AU/Not!Jon related fanart by @skyberia

AO3

Summary: Martin doesn't have much left of the real Jonathan Sims. He doesn't even have a face. Not a real one. Just a recording on a tape recorder.

************************

"Come on…" Martin strains against the super glue cap. "Come on." The damn thing won't move. Frustrated, knowing it's a dumb idea but with no better ones to hand, Martin grips the cap between his teeth and twists.

"What are you doing?"

Martin yelps and fumbles the glue bottle. He frantically grabs for it, but his flailing arms just knock the tape recorder off the table and send it clattering onto the floor. He scrambles to pick it up. Please don't be broken, please don't be broken. There doesn't seem to be any damage. No new damage, anyway.

(He fails to notice that the record button was pressed on by the fall)

Jonathan Sims, Martin's fellow archival assistant and target of an extremely inconvenient crush, raises an eyebrow at him. "Um, sorry, I didn't see you there. You startled me." Curse Jon and his inconvenient good looks. He'd always had a weakness for dark hair and hawklike features.

Jon grunts. "I suppose that's to be expected, given the circumstances." He glances around the storage room. "No worms?"

"What? No, not in here, anyway. I've seen a few around the institute. Been stomping on all of them. Kind of satisfying, really."

Jon grimaces. "Lovely. You never answered my question by the way."

Martin racks his brain, but the last few minutes are a fuzzy, giddy panic to him. "Sorry, which question is that?"

Jon makes an inpatient noise. "What you were doing just now." He motions with his hand.

Martin glances at the tape recorder. "Oh, that. Just trying to fix the tape recorder."

"You? Fix a tape recorder? I thought your degree was in parapsychology."

Guilt gnaws at his insides. Martin does not want Jon thinking too much about his qualifications. "It's nothing complicated! Just one of the buttons broke off. Thought I'd try and glue it back on." He looks at the glue bottle morosely. "Or at least, I was. This seems to be glued shut."

"And you thought you'd pry it off… with your teeth? You do realize that's a good way to end up in A&E with your mouth glued shut." The raised eyebrow is back. He's good at that. Unfairly good at it. It makes Martin's insides leap with excitement. It also makes him want to curl up in a corner and die of embarrassment.

"I know, I know, it was stupid. I'm just frustrated, I guess."

"Understandable, I suppose. Not exactly pleasant accommodations here in storage." Jon pauses. "Are you alright down here? Do you have everything you need?"

"What, me? Oh I'm fine. Totally fine. No need to worry about me." He laughs nervously.

"I believe current circumstances have proven there is plenty of cause to worry." Jon coughs and looks away, his cheeks darkening. Martin has to suppress a lovesick grin. Jon always does this when he crosses his own personal definition of professional boundaries. Which as far as Martin can tell, encompass pretty much anything approaching genuine friendship. Not that Jon is very good at staying inside those boundaries these days. Not since the Prentiss incident.

"Anyway," Jon says, recovering himself. "Do you still have those files on Pinhole Books? Sasha said she'd assigned them to you." He's all business now, as if he hadn't just unbent enough to be outright friendly.

"Those? I think they're somewhere in my desk. Why?"

"Just looking into a few things related to Leitner."

"Alright. I'll try to find them after lunch."

Jon nods, and starts to leave, but hesitates. "You might want to try hot water." He leaves.

Martin heaves a heartfelt sigh. Then he realizes the tape recorder has been recording the whole time.

***

Months later, Jane Prentiss attacks. Jonathan Sims flees into Artifact Storage to hide. Something else comes out.

***

"Here you are Martin."

Martin blinks bleary eyes at the steaming mug that's just been set in front of him. He looks up to see Jon, a kind expression in his eyes. "You made me tea?"

"Of course." Jon smiles down at him. "You do it for me often enough. Seemed only fair."

"Wow, um. Thanks." Martin sips the tea. It's brewed exactly how he likes it: hot and strong with plenty of cream and sugar. "This is… this is really good!"

"Glad to hear it. And how've you been doing? It must be good to have your own place again."

"Not bad. Got a new flat not far from the old one." He'd lost the lease on the old place during his months in the archives. Not that he could have stomached going back there. There might still be worms. "Still unpacking boxes from the old place. At least the neighbors are quiet."

Jon nods. "Say, Tim and I were going to step out a bit early for drinks tonight. You want to come?"

Martin straightens. "Y- yeah, that'd be great." At that point, Sasha pops in with questions about the Herbert Knox file, and the conversation ends. Jon gives him a little wave and wanders back to his desk.

It isn't until later that Martin realizes: the rushing giddiness is gone. He'd had an entire conversation with Jon being nothing but nice to him, and his insides hadn't done one single swoop. He's still plenty fond of the man, but only that. Is his crush evaporating already? That was quick. Martin had expected to be pining after Jon for months yet.

It's probably for the best. Nothing would have come of it, except possibly Martin making a fool of himself. More of a fool of himself. And really, it's remarkable Martin ever had a thing for him to begin with. He doesn't usually go for blond hair.

***

Sasha takes Tim and Martin out to lunch. That's not particularly unusual. Jon is out following up a case, so he can't come, but that's not unheard of either. It isn't until she leads them away from their usual place and towards a park that Martin worries. He's not at all prepared for what she tells them.

"What do you remember about 0070107? Amy Patel's statement?"

Martin and Tim glance at each other. "That's the one where her neighbor was eaten and replaced by an evil drain pipe, right?" Tim said.

"I remember something about… changing photos?" Martin ventures.

Sasha pulls out a tape recorder. She doesn't look at it as she presses play. She doesn't even look at them. She's staring at some indefinite point in space to Martin's left, like it's a window to hell. The recorder plays.

"You're aware it's pronounced Kuh-ly-o-pee, right?" A man's voice, acerbic and dry, that Martin doesn't recognize.

"Really? I've always heard it pronounced ka-lee-o-pee." Sasha's voice.

"I suppose technically there's no correct pronunciation. But the organs are named after the Greek muse Calliope, so…"

Tim frowns. "Isn't that Leanne Denikin's statement? Who's that you're talking to?"

Sasha closes her eyes. "Jonathan Sims. The real one."

***

It takes them a week to find a way to deal with NotJon. During that week, Martin has to pretend that nothing has changed. That he isn't aware that his coworker and one time crush has been replaced by this… thing that calls itself his name. Martin has to smile when he says hello. Thank him when he brings tea. Laugh when he tells a joke. Just like normal.

(Were any of those things normal Jon behavior?)

Sasha's background in artifact storage provides the answer: an old diving bell with a penchant for disappearing people to infinite crushing depths. In his nightmares, Martin can still the the way the thing distorted, when it realized it had been caught. The way its limbs stretched into a grotesque parody of the human form as dark water sucked it in.

And then… things are normal again. There isn't even a police investigation. Jon apparently had no surviving family to raise a fuss about his disappearance. They get drinks, but even that is hard. It's hard to remember which of their fond stories belong to the real Jon, and which to the imposter.

***

One day, Martin finds an unmarked tape in the storage room. Thinking it's an old poetry tape he forgot to label, he pops it in a recorder to play. He could use a pick me up.

It's not poetry. The recording starts with a loud clatter, like the recorder being dropped. Then, Martin's voice. "Um, sorry, I didn't see you there. You startled me ."

"I suppose that's to be expected, given the circumstances ." A man's voice. Acerbic and dry. Martin can't breathe. He remembers this conversation. The voice on the tape is saying all the words that Martin remembers. It's not the same voice.

How long has this tape been sitting here? NotJon had hidden all the tapes containing the real Jon's voice, but apparently he'd missed this one. If Martin had found this earlier, if he'd managed to keep his poetry tapes in some kind of order for once … But Jon had already been dead by the time Martin had first met the imposter. His research on the NotThem made that abundantly clear. They might have caught on sooner. But it wouldn't have saved him.

"You never answered my question by the way."

"Sorry, which question is that?"

God. Had it really been that obvious, how much he'd liked Jon? Martin on the tape sounds like his head has floated off like a child's lost balloon. Jon's annoyance is audible even via tape. He remembers recognizing it as cover for genuine concern. It's so totally unlike the kind, smiling man Martin has known for the past year. How the hell did he never notice the switch?

Maybe he had. Hadn't his crush dissipated around that time? That makes Martin queasy to think about, but he clings to it anyways. That crush might be the truest thing he has left for Jon.

"Are you alright down here? Do you have everything you need?"

Martin blinks away wet, stinging tears. He remembers clear as day the kind and concerned look on Jon's face as he'd said these exact words. Except… those memories were fake. Had the real Jon looked at him like that? What would that even look like? Martin still doesn't know what the real Jon looked like. All he has is Melanie's vague description ("Short. Greying hair. Bit of an arsehole. Definitely not white."). All Martin's photos show only the imposter. He hasn't been able to find any Polaroids. God knows he's tried. He spent a week tracking down old yearbooks and photo albums and anything else he could think of. Plenty of photos of the imposter at varying ages. Nothing else.

Martin tries to construct an image of Jon. Take the few details he does have and paste them over the memories of the imposter. It feels less real than the fake.

Maybe that's the real horror of this monster. When someone you care about dies, you can normally take comfort in your memories of them. The NotThem has stolen that from him. No, worse than stolen. Corrupted. Taken Martin's memories of Jon and plastered them over with a false, smiling face.

All he has now is a tape and a voice.

[aion-rsa]

Superman & Lois Episode 5 Review: The Best of Smallville

https://ift.tt/3d3qbkS

This Superman & Lois review contains spoilers.

Superman and Lois Episode 5

This is the first episode of Superman & Lois that maybe felt like it was spinning its wheels a little. To be fair, this entire season has been unfolding at what can best be described as a deliberate pace. It’s an understandable decision since the entire concept of this show is meant to take fans of the Superman mythos pretty far out of their comfort zones, so there’s still a lot of heavy lifting that has to get done each week, especially as we get used to the Kent family, the Cushings, the history of Smallville, and more.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

That isn’t to say that “The Best of Smallville” is a bad episode, or a boring one, or even a rote one (it’s way too early for this show to have any kind of real episodic “formula,” other than those big reveals that it saves for the final moments each week). If anything, this shakes things up a little by adding flashbacks to Clark’s teenage years at key moments in the episode. And those, just like everything else relating to Clark’s history on this show, are handled with real care and reverence for everything that has come before. But I can’t help but feel that several of the beats we get in this episode, from Jonathan continuing to lose to the troubled home life of the Cushings, is stuff we’ve already been getting in previous episodes, all while the Morgan Edge story continues to just kind of lurk around the outskirts, just like the character himself.

Fortunately, this is Superman & Lois we’re talking about, and this show’s core four (not to mention its terrific supporting characters) make every moment worth watching. I have already written endlessly about how truly endearing Tyler Hoechlin’s Clark Kent is, and I’ll continue to do so. But there’s one thing Hoechlin does with Clark that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen another Superman actor do quite as effectively, and that’s how he makes Clark’s uncoolness not a put-on or an affectation, but as a genuine component of the “real” Clark Kent.

It’s hard to explain, but hang with me for a minute. It’s generally assumed that any time Clark is being “uncool” or overly earnest about something, it’s part of his “disguise.” And with many actors, especially the legendarily perfect Christopher Reeve, that was absolutely the case. The key to a truly great Clark performance always seems to come in the moments when he lets his guard down, and you realize that this is the “real” person, not the “Clark who has to pretend he isn’t Superman” shine through. Hoechlin does this effortlessly, and as dad-cringe as his entire opening enthusiasm about the Smallville Harvest Festival is, it’s real. He doesn’t have to fake this for his family, it’s really who he is. It’s great and I don’t know how many other leading man types who have played this role over the last 20 years or so who could actually pull this off so easily.

Anyway, that was quite a digression. Sorry about that.

I singled out Jonathan’s struggles this episode for some mild criticism above, if only because we’ve been watching this kid’s life unravel pretty much since the first episode. It is, perhaps, a little TOO convenient that he gets dumped by phone the same moment his brother is setting up his first ever date. And maybe this is the kind of thing they could have saved another episode or so instead of letting it come so soon on the heels of his football struggles.

But both of these kids are just so damn good that it’s tough to fault it. Jordan Elsass makes Jonathan perhaps the most likeable character on this show, even when he should be (as Sarah points out) a completely insufferable jerk. I know there’s speculation out there that Jonathan will be driven to villainy by his pretty ordinary teenage struggles, and I just don’t see it happening. These are both good kids, and even when they screw up, it’s pretty clear that their heads are screwed on straight. I’d just like to see Jonathan catch a break soon, though.

Read more

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They’re definitely playing the long game with Jordan, too, and Alex Garfin manages to imbue him with the almost wild-eyed wonder of someone who really just can’t believe his good luck…all without either lording it over or condescending to his suddenly unlucky brother. I’ve always felt that empathy is a secret Kent superpower, and Jordan’s got that by the boatload.

Lois and Chrissy are a surprisingly delightful pairing, and so far this show has managed to resist the rest of the Arrowverse’s tendency to “do a journalism” here, even as we see these two starting to dig a little deeper into whatever Morgan Edge is up to. Still, the fact that Lois literally can’t even write for the Smallville Gazette at the moment isn’t doing my or anyone else’s misgivings that they’re sidelining her any favors. It’s great to see Lois in these other contexts, and Elizabeth Tulloch is nothing short of the best screen Lois this century, but I can’t help but think that there’s something being missed with her story so far. (That being said, her thoroughly annoyed “go faster” to the boys at the Harvest Festival was a terrific, and intimidating fun moment.)

Those flashback sequences, though! Just as I love it that Jon, Jordan, and Sarah are all actually believable as teenagers (coughSmallvillecough), I like that they fully leaned into awkward 15-16 year old beanpole Clark and not some already filled out heartthrob type. Clark leaving home THIS early feels like a slightly new wrinkle for the Superman mythos overall, and I’m especially interested in seeing if we’ll see how some of this developed down the road.

I look forward to seeing Wolé Parks’ Captain Luthor continue to develop, but it would be nice to see if they give him enough screen time soon to give us anything beyond “seething, barely contained rage.” I’m also very curious to see if there’s any nuance they can build into his Lois twist, so that she doesn’t just become another object of fixation for the character. Similarly, it’s time for this story to show us a little more of its hand with the Morgan Edge/X-Kryptonite stuff, because sometimes a slow burn is just a fizzle, y’know?

I appreciate this show’s commitment to its family drama first storytelling, and I get that if we show Superman in action too much it will a) not be as special and b) eat up the FX budget so the moments we DO get won’t look quite as good. But I’d like to see a little more, and I certainly hope that more of Superman’s rogues’ gallery becomes open for business at some point. Yes, I get it, so many of those were utilized on Supergirl already, and I don’t want this show to fall prey to the “villain of the week” tedium that The Flash occasionally slips in to. I’m sure there’s some middle ground that won’t lose what makes this show stand out from its peers.

Metropolis Mailbag

Right out of the gate in this episode we learn that Smallville was established in 1949. It certainly was! While it was clear early in the Superman mythos that he wasn’t from Metropolis, and had grown up on a farm, and Superboy was established as a character in 1945, it wasn’t until 1949 that Clark’s hometown actually got it’s name, in the pages of Superboy #2.

Martha Kent giving Clark the sunstone crystal is a new one. Usually, so much of Clark learning about his heritage is tied exclusively to his father(s). Either the crystal itself calls to him (in which case, it’s Jor-El) or it’s Jonathan telling him the story of how he was found. This is the first time I can think of where it’s Martha really speeding Clark along on his journey to becoming Superman, and it’s about damn time.

On that note, their conversation about Clark being “sent here for a reason” is very much a nod to Glenn Ford’s Pa Kent talking to Jeff East’s young Clark in Superman: The Movie.

I assume he’s leaving here because the sunstone crystal told him to head north so it can build the Fortress of Solitude, but let’s ALSO not forget that Supergirl established early on that Clark was a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the future, so…this might be the time!

Spot anything I missed with these Superman Easter eggs? Let me know in the comments!

The post Superman & Lois Episode 5 Review: The Best of Smallville appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/31b6lyu

[courtedclover-a]

hi hello it’s my turn to announce what happening to this blog when V8 starts airing. it’s getting archived/revamp because i’m not gonna lie i’m 100% walking into V8 believing Clover is getting that Jon Snow treatment. foolish i know, but i bought my clown shoes back in V7 epi 12 so might as well wear it amirite lmfaaooo 

i have a VRV subscription and on here i’m only going to be reacting/voicing opinions on the airing episodes with proper spoiler tags and under read mores. i will not post or reblog any screen shots or images until the volume’s completion. if you need to, block the tags: 

rwby spoilers 

v8 spoilers 

rwby v8 spoilers 

spoilers 

as for the blog come saturday, all threads/inbox meme are getting dropped. what’s being carried to the new blog is ships/bonds, most headcanons, and most verses. that’s it. i’m very sorry to everybody! if you like a thread to continue let me know and i’ll get it out once the new blog is up and running! i will work to not be so overwhelmed and fix my pacing on replies/inbox memes. i was terrible for months and honestly someone should have taken a bat to my head.  

under the readmore is about how i will be writing Clover in the future regardless of what happens in V8, but I just want to let everybody know that: please relax and take a deep breath. shit is hitting the fan so please be nice and please be kind to everyone! especially the writers, voice actors, and animators! 

now everybody and their mother around here knows i’m bat shit crazy for Clover and fg, but genuinely I would never drop RWBY just because my fav stayed dead or a ship wasn’t made canon. if we make it to the end of the volume and Clover still dead, well, i’ll be very very sad, but i’ll keep going as I did before where I rp up until the point he dies in v7 and have a verse where he lives. 

it’s not a deal breaker for me if Clover remains dead. 

BUT you know what would be amazing? he does come back. just know somewhere in the world Kay will be flipping her shit like that kid who found a shiny ponyta (volume warning!) the moment Clover rises up like the great JC 

i’m telling you all right now. when that clover revival episode drops and Clover breathing again PLEASE COME FIND ME AND CALL ME A FCKING AMBULANCE. gonna buy everybody a beer! we poppin the biggest bottles!!! we gonna lose our damn minds! serotonin levels through the roof! 

anyway i’m done clowning myself again lmfaaoo 

i will pin this post come saturday and once V8 starts airing consider this blog frozen. no rping activity at all and you are welcome to unfollow if you like, but most likely the new blog will show up maybe towards the end of the volume or when the volume ends officially, who knows. this is also like a good break for me cause i got some books to read and focus on myself a little bit. 

if you read all of this i’m so sorry for being so damn annoying

i love you all btw ;;u;; <3

[betweenlands]

i know you wanted anonymous opinions but--- the obscure mcyts you've recommended are all great (secret rivals is actually one of my favourite series now-) and so I was wondering,,, do you have any more you'd like to share?

oh boy uhhh. i’m assuming you’ve already watched kakujo bc like [gestures at my blog title] so. let’s see what else. this is rambly so it’s going under a readmore.

unfortunately i don’t have anything in the vein of secret rivals (a damn shame, bc it is SO good) but inro has done a couple other hardcores before, including her betweenlands hardcore, which is how i found her! there’s a bad joke abt one of the btl enemies looking like a certain... let’s say, hunger demon from a closed culture... but other than that it’s generally enjoyable.

obviously i have to rec kakujo but he’s also worked with stumpt on occasion, and apparently stumpt have an extensive long-running lore series of their own! here’s an overview video if you just want to start at their latest plot series (invasion) as of now. i don’t know as much abt stumpt as my partner @bewildercraft does tho.

in terms of “old nostalgia that is only obscure because people don’t remember it” i’m going to assume you’ve already watched redstoner, given that i never shut the fuck up about redstoner, but fun fact: there’s a spiritual sequel! here’s the link to a playlist that my friend aquelon made, which compiles all of Nick and Jon/Jonstoner into one handy playlist. i may have, uh, actually cried at this series before, good luck

if you’re looking for something with absolutely zero plot - like, literally just some guy doing minecraft to have on as background noise - you can’t do much better than toasgaard, who i don’t really talk about a lot on account of he has no character and is just some guy playing minecraft. he’s also an incredible builder, is actually good at mods, and is just... nice to have in the background while i’m playing cookie run. i’m a simple person.

on the absolute inverse end of the spectrum, there’s the abandoned but honestly kind of delightful minecraft roleplay mythoscraft, which i am the only fan of in existence. it’s the pinnacle of obscure minecraft roleplays and i’m still not over the end of season one (season 2 is where it was abandoned partway thru, but i honestly write my own damn canon for s2 at this rate, my city now)

uhhhh okay two more. first one will win me zero clout but i do think people should be watching simplysarc because i just think he’s neat, and also i would like him to be a hermit someday. i recognize that he is a whiteboy but his content style is still genuinely charming and just kind of fun. that’s all

last but not least (i literally saved this for last) is flux buddies! not really obscure by a long shot but the fandom is dead so it might as well be. please watch flux buddies, i care it a lot. here’s a playlist our roommate @autisticlalna made containing a good 101 episodes of flux buddies and related series so you can go through it without having to watch it for like an entire month straight. as a note - this is old yogscast so there is some off-color humor and very rare use of the r slur (they get better), and in addition the very first episode is unfortunately on a shithead’s channel. fuck sj*n. (that said: flux buddies is fucking amazing, i’m still not over 2.0′s finale, also the playlist doesn’t have the final season in it but tbh if you make it through the playlist you can kind of just watch all of flux buddies 4)

uhhhhhhh that’s about it. sorry for being a bastard on main

[norelationtoatticus]

So...........anyone want to read my long, hyper-excited essay on why Sansa and Tyrion belong together, using character wound theory as evidence?

No?

Too bad. Here it is anyway. I have high-key shipped these two for years, alone in the darkness, because everyone thought I was crazy. Well, I don't look so crazy after that hand kiss, now do I?! (To all of you fellow long-time Sanrion shippers out there: I salute you.) Some people are just starting to ship them after that last episode. Some don’t see it at all and think that the idea of them together is off the wall and out of nowhere. I am here as a longtime weird-o cheerleader for these two to offer some perspective. Ship them or don’t, live your life! But they are definitely not coming out of nowhere. And here are 1500 words explaining why!!! 

(lololol...I have a problem, guys.)

Anyway, here's the essay. I’m putting this under a cut because the last couple of paragraphs do contain spoilers for the most recent episode, Season 8 Ep. 3.

First, an intro to character wounds, in case you are not a writer type or have not studied this concept.

When creating a character and setting them on their inner journey, one aspect writers tend to develop is the character's wound. A wound is a dark, sucking abyss in a character's psyche that influences all of their actions and choices. Typically, it comes from some sort of trauma in their past. This wound is all-encompassing. It affects their relationships, their decisions, their journey, as they seek (usually unconsciously) to fill or heal the wound. It's like a black hole around which the character's personality and motives swirl.

The reason why I think Sansa and Tyrion are completely perfect for each other? They have complementary wounds.

Let me explain.

Tyrion's wound is that no one has ever wanted him. I mean that on a multitude of levels. His father and sister detested him, made it quite clear that they did not want him in their family. They spent years telling him that his mother had died rather than have to raise him, which is awful and not true, but of course he has internalized their abuse. Even Jaime, who loves him, sides with Cersei and Tywin when it matters most. He loves Tyrion, but Tyrion is never his first choice. Even though Tyrion is obviously the most clever person in King's Landing, no one wants his advice or council. He's made Hand of the King, but immediately gets demoted as soon as his father comes back. Sexually and romantically, no one has ever wanted him. (In the show, anyway. Remember, he does not know the truth about Tysha in the show.) Even though he is one of the more sexually active characters early on, both he and the narrative make it a point to really hammer home that all of his experience is with prostitutes. He has never had a romantic or sexual relationship with a woman he didn't have to pay. All of this motivates him. This is what ties him to Daenerys, what keeps him loyal to her even when he really doesn't like some of her choices; he stays with her because she chose him. She threatens him, questions him, doesn't listen to him, accuses him of treason, and does a lot of things that Tyrion is not comfortable with. But he stays. Because she chose him. This is his wound. No one has ever wanted him. He has never been anyone's first choice.

Sansa's wound is that she has spent so much of her life as a prisoner, unable to make her own choices. That has been her entire journey. She went from being a prisoner in King's Landing, to a prisoner--albeit one with a bit more agency--with Littlefinger, to being a prisoner in Winterfell. She has been caged, trapped, forced into two marriages, used as a political tool by people like the Lannisters, the Tyrells, and Littlefinger who only see her as a pawn. She has had her bodily autonomy violated in the worst ways. She has been beaten and raped. Everyone took away her right to choose. Every step of the way, Sansa clawed and scraped to be able to make just a few choices of her own, to grab just a bit of her agency back. But for a long time, she was making whatever small, survival-based choices she could within the confines of various cages. Even now, she is bound to serve the choices of people who are more powerful than her--people like Daenerys, but also Jon. She is much freer now, and we have seen her taking up space and making choices for the past two seasons, at least. But she has more to do if she's really going to come into her own and take charge of her role. This is Sansa's wound: her imprisonment, the stripping of her agency, her lack of free will.

See? They're complementary. They're a matched set. And they offer each other a path to healing:

Sansa needs to make her own choices. And Tyrion needs to be chosen. 

What a lovely symmetry. It's like something deep in each of them has been calling out for the other.

There's more, too. 

On their awful, painful wedding night all those years ago, Tyrion was handed all of Sansa's agency. Now, let's be very clear: not raping someone should not be a high bar standard we're celebrating. That's awful. But in the world of GoT, where rape is so common place and lightly-used, I genuinely don't think many men would have done what Tyrion did. And then he did something even better. Sansa had been trapped, imprisoned, for a while by that point. She had no freedom, no choice. Tyrion had all of her free will held tightly in his grasp. He could have done anything to her, and no one would have blinked. But not only did her refuse to do anything against her will, he took it a step further. He handed some of her freedom of choice back to her. He didn't just refuse to abuse her. He actually literally said, "I will not share your bed until you want me to." Until you want me to. He handed a little bit of power back to her in that moment, and he never once tried to take it away again, even when Sansa said, "What if I never want you to?" To be clear, I do not ship them in this time period. Not even close. This marriage was awful, even though they found some kindness in it. Sansa never could have learned to love Tyrion back then. She was a child. They had both been forced into the marriage. And she was so ruthlessly trapped and imprisoned in King's Landing, there was no way she could ever feel anything but fear and hate while she was there. But now? With some years of distance? With some growth for both of them? When they're both free to choose it? I suspect real feelings could grow between them.

Until you want me to... ...What if I never want you to?

You know, she never actually said no, never. Maybe she just need a lot of years and a lot of change...

There's also just the fact that they really complement each other, in terms of personality and what I think they would each want in a partner. Their minds and the way they think are a matched set. They're both very intelligent, ruthless when they need to be, and yet kind and good at their cores. Sansa is one of very few people in the world who can stand up beside Tyrion, match him wit for wit, cover his blind spots, act as a real partner to him. And Tyrion is literally everything Sansa has ever wanted, exactly the kind of man she admired in all the romantic songs: a brave, noble, handsome, heroic lord with a heart of gold. She just had to do some growing before she could see all of that in him, because he’s not exactly conventional.

Anyway, long story short, Sansa and Tyrion are legit perfect for each other. This is why I ship them. This is why you should be shipping them. (Please, good lord, more people ship them. There is not a whole lot of Sansa/Tyrion fic, and I really don't have the time to write it all by myself, guys.)

Do I think they're actually going to get together in the show? Maybe! Maybe not! Who knows! I won't be upset if they're not actually canon. I still love the pair. This show doesn’t do romance super well, and romance is not often a priority, so I am definitely not holding my breath. But I do have a few thoughts.

As to whether or not they're actually going to get together on the show, a few thoughts from the last episode: 

1) The damn world was ending, they were all about to die, this was not an opportune time to be flirting with each other! But did that stop them? No, it did not. 

2) The moment that they shared in the crypts, backs to the wall, side by side, and sure they were about to die, was one of the most intimate moments this show has ever given us. These were two people who deeply understood one another, acknowledging without words that there was a whole world of things left unsaid between them. That hand kiss? So tender. So loving. And yes, of course you could take that scene as platonic. Maybe it was. Quite possible. But, in my defense, I know and follow a whole lot of romance authors. Most of the romance authors I know saw that moment as deeply, wildly romantic, even if they had never shipped this pair before. So there's that, from a bunch of people who write romance for a living.

3) Sansa told Tyrion they would never work because of his loyalty to Daenerys. This felt...um...first of all...like a hell of a conversation to be having while you think the world is ending. I would not be surprised if Sansa was laying some ground work, trying to get ahead of the curve in grabbing Tyrion to her side in case they actually survived. It made me think Sansa has Plans ™ . But also, this one feels obvious, tbh. The show has been building up a conflict and a tension between Tyrion and Daenerys for two seasons now. He has made a lot of bad calls that have her questioning his judgement and loyalty. She has made plenty of her own bad calls that have him questioning whether she is fit to rule.They are ready for a blow out. And if Sansa presents another option? If Sansa is there as someone who wants him, wants to choose him, wants to love him? I suspect Tyrion’s loyalty won't be split for long.

[personalityisnice]

Some Thoughts on Dealing With Intrusive.....Thoughts.

Some thoughts I threw together while I was working on a more in-depth analysis for this episode.

Well, Thomas isn't okay today. Looks like Virgil's not the only one with dark circles under his eyes this episode.

Oh my God, Logan's shriek and Virgil and Patton's reaction to it.

I'd be willing to bet Logan's "What are you talk-what are you talk-what are you talking about" was a take that didn’t go according to plan that they kept. Good call, if so. 

I remember that movie. Mostly for the fact that I was fed up even then with the whole "woman has the gall to spend all her time at work and to not start a family" conceit. And for Jon Heder, whose role in this was his first after Napoleon Dynamite.

Yeah, the sound fading out is a really cool effect. It fits with someone who's gotten no sleep, and captures perfectly that feeling where an intrusive thought sort of...blocks out everything else that's going on around you.

The fingers popping out from behind the tv? Genuinely unsettling. Honest to god though, it took me way too long to realize a new Side had arrived. To be fair, my guess was that Thomas’s intrusive thoughts would be visualized as hallucinations throughout the video for us, the viewers. So I figured that's all the manic looking dude behind the tv was.

First thing I did upon realizing we had a new Side was check his color scheme. So yep, looks like the rainbow theory is all but confirmed. And now I'm going to be thinking of the last dude as Orange Julius until he's shows up and gives us his actual name..

Dude's got a bit of a Snidely whiplash Freddie Mercury thing going on.

Everybody give props to rainbow-sides for semi-predicting this Dark Side.

Damn, I was half-right. I figured we'd get a villain song, but with all three of the Others after they'd all been introduced. But it makes sense that if any of them were going to have one alone, it'd be this guy, seeing as he's Roman's creative counterpart.

Seems I was right about the snake going for back up. Also, yeah I could see already how this episode was going to earn that warning at the beginning of it.

"I'm really stupid right now." I have never related to this man more. And damn I felt bad for him this episode. Dealing with intrusive thoughts and almost no sleep? Someone hug him. Character!Joan, climb out of your coffin, get over there and hug him!

Huh. The creative thoughts Thomas rejected. That's interesting. I doubted that you could make a whole character just out of intrusive thoughts, but those two concepts together work pretty well.

The whole initial argument between Thomas and The Duke feels weirdly meta considering what Joan has said about this episode.

Oooh, I've heard of the white bear experiments. Try it at home! Fun for the kids! Also, I think the fact that the subject of repression keeps being broached could be an interesting sign of where the story is going.

The Others are just Patton's problem children. Prove me wrong.

Can't say I agree with Thomas about creativity. By that logic, no one who ever writes, paints, or sings about anything negative is creative. And we sort of need that stuff, as a society. Given Logan lampshades Thomas's black and white thinking, my guess is that's going to be part of his arc going forward.

The Duke's eyes when he says “Demented” are amazing.

"That....is something Joan would do." I'm cackling.

Yeah, this dude's definitley more than a little reminiscent of our Prince...

There might come a point where the crew delves into it and makes it not funny anymore, but for now I find Logan's repeated dismissal of Thomas' s friends and family strangely hilarious for some reason.

You know, I was already getting sleazy agent vibes from Deceit, but that whole Taylor Swift pitch makes me see it in this guy too. Some one write that AU, please.

Thomas's philosophy about creativity is interesting. But just a little sad. Thomas is focused on making things that'll make other people happy. Making himself happy with his work doesn't seem to even occur to him.

Also, pleasant or not, that first metaphor didn't make any sense.

I'm loving all Virgil's little jabs throughout. Yeah, he knew this guy.

Does the Duke share his curse word with Roman? Now I'm picturing them each wishing each other a Merry Bitchmas.

And we have more of the Others jabbing at Virgil. Looks like that's not just a Deceit thing.

Interesting that Patton (and by extension, Thomas) defines "being a good person" as putting others before himself.

I love how absolutely unimpressed Logan is with The Duke throughout.

Oh my God. Does anybody know who those actors are? Because they deserve some commendation for that, the poor bastards.

The Duke's face when he says "large, sharp knife" is amazing.

"Not acting on every thought that he has isn't faking anything." Yes, thank you Logan.

"Ooh, how fun! You know who could help us with that?" "No! One of you is enough!" Oh my God, yes. I like how Thomas is sleep deprived and out of sorts and still manages a "No, this is all we're doing today, shut that shit down right now, Mister. Or I will turn this car around."

Interesting that Patton is so opposed to lying but has ongoing problems with repression.

Aw, Logan looking out for Thomas and getting the others to listen to him.

Thomas's religious influences were the elephant in the room that I wasn't sure they were going to point out. This is a really intriguing path we're going down, here.

The idea of thought "being a precursor" to action gives a fascinating new perspective on Thomas in general and on the events of S v. S in particular.

Is that why Logan started using "figuritively"? His dealings with the Duke?

Him giving his name away so quickly fits with the character’s impulsive nature. But of course he had to use it to dig at Virgil.

I LIVE for Logan's comments physically affecting Remus.

"S@#%!" Someone give this boy a nap.

Yeah, that screaming....that was definitley just like an intrusive thought.

As soon as they were checking if he was gone I knew exactly what was going to happen. Also, I love how Logan speaks like he's got a lot of experience dealing with this guy.

I also really love the boys see-sawing between genuine horror and just plain old exasperation at Remus's antics. Thomas: *sigh* Shut up.

I relate so much to that moving car thing. For me it's jumping off of high places. I never really thought of that as an intrusive thought, though. More like morbid curiosity. But it's popped up for so many years I'm kind of over it.

How great it is that as Logan describes Remus as a screaming child on a airplane the Side gets more immature and desperate for attention.

Good God I love Logan when he gets all quiet and gentle like this. It's always such a nice surprise considering how brusque he normally is.

Yay, personal growth for Patton.

Virgil's whole speech....! It sort of sounds like Joan speaking to their own intrusive thoughts through him. Which makes the whole thing that much more heartfelt.

Yay, Roman's back. And he's learned some things himself.

I think I'll have more to say about Logan in another post. In the meantime...

God that fun house mirror thing....I need to say more about Roman in another post too. Remus's existence has given us some really interesting insights into Roman.

Listening to the music while Virgil was talking I was actually thinking, "Holy shit, is he going to tell him?" And there we go. It's canon now, and god knows what's going to happen now that Thomas knows. In any case, the Others don’t have that to hang over Virgil’s head anymore.

Whelp, those are my thoughts for now. I have a post I’m cooking up dealing with character analysis in particular and episode analysis in general. Check it out!

[b0x]

i hate that post that's like “we would've gotten a better trilogy if they'd just let rian johnson write all three films than playing hot potato with jj” like i get the point it's trying to make but you're forgetting that rj was fighting tooth and nail for the tlj r*ylo narrative since day 1 so you do realise we would've just gotten the same trilogy as we got now.......

further Thoughts on the trilogy as a whole and a few troc spoilers under the cut

also you KNOW that even if jj COULD have had a hand in saving it... there’s no saving a screenplay written by the guy who did the justice league films

No Comment. No Thoughts. Head Empty. everything post tfa was doomed from the start

have you SEEN the screenwriters for tfa? THAT’S why that one was so good, THAT’S why tfa succeeded as an excellent reboot of a long-dormant franchise. kasdan and arndt and jj should've been on for ALL THREE, and if they couldn’t, then a hiatus was the way to fucking go. rian never should have Touched it, never should have even Looked in its direction.

tfa had the essence of sw BECAUSE the essence of sw wrote it! tlj and tros isn’t sw!!!! 

they rly just tried to make Anakin..... 2! with kylo... but somehow... even Worse. you can’t make an anakin story Without showing kylo’s motives and morals - oh, except, you Did show his motives and morals, and they were in no way redeeming whatsoever! anakin had a whole ARC of complexity that allows for endless discussion on morality and justifiability that led him to earn his redemption. all kylo had was a blood tie to han and leia, which!!!! if anything!!!!!! made his motives and morals WORSE, knowing that he had the most IDEAL most loving and perfect upbringing and he still chose the dark side. that makes any love received from han or leia or luka or even fucking rey completely insignificant because we ALREADY KNOW what it means to him. all of this shit was so worthless!!!!!!!! fuck!

and i have a lot to say about rian johnson because i Cannot for the life of me believe the guy behind BRICK (2005) was taken on for tlj, WHILE TFA WASN’T EVEN FINISHED YET. i really didn’t think this had to be said but that is just NOT how you make a Trilogy. that is how you make Three Separate Films and guess what! that is exactly what we got! and it honestly saddens me to think that the guy behind the beautiful 6 minute music video ‘oh baby’ by lcd sound system, inspired by some of his greatest work in looper (and even brick!), would then take the absolute worst of his worst and apply that to a star wars franchise that desperately needed his best. and there’s something hilarious about that too, that you have this huge sandbox FULL of belief-suspending ridiculousness and STILL somehow make it fail? make it atrocious? that takes skill. it’s like that one post that was like “you have to ACTUALLY put EFFORT into making something this bad” like it’s no longer silly mistakes or lacklustre energy, this was ACTIVE sabotage.

the fact rian Had the Understanding of the core concepts of star wars right in his hands, but somehow completely missed the entire point of them? if you look at the films he screened to his story group during the development of tlj... this handful of culturally and historically significant war films that just seem like he screened for aesthetic and reference purposes only instead of actually exploring and analysing the importance and criticism of the exonerating war propaganda and racist source materials and using these films to inspire the actual groundwork of some of the root themes of current climates and today’s culture in a sw universe... i bet big bucks on the fact that twelve o clock high was only screened to inspire the air battle on crait (red salt planet) and because of ‘VIII Bomber Command’ because ha ha hee hee tlj is episode VIII and hoo hoo hoo *you’ve been gnomed.mp4* 

the general rule is this: when reading ANY report on tlj and tros and something like “the characters came first” is mentioned, just exit out the window, it’s already a botched article/thinkpiece.

i’m also thinking a lot about how arndt translated his first draft for tfa into a script for eight months and said he needed 18 more, which disney and jj said no to, so he left, and IMMEDIATELY after jj kept saying how relieved he was that the release date was delayed and gave him more time that he also needed. like.. you had your lesson then and there. did they learn from it? *disney forcing rian to write tlj at the same time as tfa was still being made* No!

i am ALSO thinking about how they had considered fincher, brad bird, jon favreau, del toro, even getting development suggestions by spielberg.......... and rian johnson is who they called up for tlj.... my head is... empty.

just give the fucking thing to taika waititi he understands the nuances of the socio-political climates of sw’s narratives built around a guise of a fun sci-fi fantasy adventure-drama. he understands. that’s literally the very definition of his style of writing and directing. Makes You Think Why The Mandalorian Is A Hit.... they already gave him 2 mandalorian episodes just give him the whole franchise i cant take it anymore. 

AND NOW THEY’RE GIVING RIAN JOHNSON A WHOLE NEW TRILOGY? RIAN? RIAN JOHNSON? THEY’RE GIVING HIM A WHOLE NEW TRILOGY AFTER WHAT HAPPENED... HERE. SURE.. OKAY . ALRIGHT. IT’S HONESTLY MIND-BLOWING. THE THOUGHT PROCESS THAT GOES INTO CONSECUTIVE DECISIONS SUCH AS THIS. like i would LOVE to see footage of the board meeting for this. no sarcasm i am GENUINELY curious to hear what was said to greenlight this. i have GOT to know what post tros board meetings about this will be like. 

anyway! op of that post! i will be thinking about you when the new rj trilogy drops!

what’s worse about this whole trilogy is that.. they Had it. they had it in the bag with tfa. they HAD the original idea they HAD the power to make a sw trilogy set to current climates JUST LIKE THE PREVIOUS TRILOGIES DID, cos that’s what sw is all about! what it was ALWAYS about! a space opera reflective of current times and climates. but disney turned it into a Keeping Up With The Skywalkers reality tv show that’s nothing more than a sci-fi fantasy light show and vfx flex to keep the brand alive, and personally, i think that’s ultimately one of the reasons it’s so hated and why it failed (of course rampant misogyny/sexism, racism, homophobia under the guise of geek culture within the sw community and in the production itself is a whole other discussion and is another humongous part of why it’s hated and why it failed)

and it’s why hamill had every right to criticise tlj the way he did with rotj, why boyega and isaac and ridley had Every right to their commentary on their distaste of the second and third instalments. how the only reason they’d rescind what they said was due to their contracts. how their silence was necessary to squeeze every last dollar out of consumers because god forbid a potential boycott due to their own star’s “controversial” (Correct) judgements and disapprovals

they really had it in the bag..

a female protagonist who could be a chosen one regardless of her blood and family ties, a protagonist that reflected the importance and validity of found family, and the idea that Anyone can be a “Skywalker”, a symbol of hope and a fighter for justice and goodness and love in the world, especially in the darkest of times... a young woman being just as powerful, as Chosen, as essential as Luke and Anakin were... a narrative that couldve been commentary on the necessity of women needing to do double the work, make double the effort, to earn the same spot of her counterparts. and with the second and third instalments, especially NOW, with the growth and vocalisation of the MeToo movement, the narrative of strength to speak out against abusers, to fight back and to thrive, a symbol of justice, to teach that men such as kylo who refuse consequence, who actively and soberly choose violence and manipulation for the strengthening of the self, who will ignore and deny all opportunities to better the self, to know their guilt, to make up for their actions, are the ones who are irredeemable. that people like him are not owed any time or understanding or belief in, when that belief perpetuates the violent and oppressive nature they are indefinitely attracted to and make themselves defined by.

a black hero raised by violence and refusing to be defined by it and unlocking the force within as a symbol of that strength within over encompassing goodness, to have a hero that breaks that harmful narrative stereotype that black characters have had for decades and still continue to do so, to have a voice and a hero that fights with love and kindness, that is able to find family and support in a place beyond what he believes he is allowed to have, the significance of a hero being deemed a “traitor”, a term that holds weight in the shame of seeking your own independence and identity, versus the cathartic empowerment of thriving in the independence you make for yourself in the end. a black hero that defeats his oppressors, oppressors that belong to a policing fascist regime, a faction that has always from the very beginning been a depiction of nazis, of authoritarian nationalism. 

a canonical gay latino man freedom fighter, being the best in his career as a literal symbol of hope for the resistance, a literal symbol of the climates for lgbt folk in regards to resisting those same fascist nazi regimes, resisting laws against lgbt existence, lgbt employability, lgbt success. a man who grew into a legacy of heroism, surrounded by it, something that could have been powerful poignant commentary on the necessity to sacrifice lives so others like his didn’t have to, the very narrative to fight for a world that the innocents and the ones he loves could have peace in, could have a future in, could Exist in. poe fights in the skies because he knew damn well the effect of believing in someone that is human, like you, instead of a force that is bigger than anything you could ever know or believe in. poe brings humanity and realism to an otherwise fanatical universe of magic and religion and chaos of endless war that means nothing, that is based on nothing. poe is commentary on fighting a fight that you have no choice but to fight, that you are forced to fight from birth just for the very act of Existing. his humanity and realism is a significant grounding necessity for our two protagonist heroes and it is appalling that he’d just be discarded the way he was, shallowly played off as sideline comic relief, much like lgbt narratives and characters are expressed in pretty much ANY media today, so it comes as no surprise. 

the three most vital narratives that should have been told in this trilogy but no of course not (disney voice) gimme my Fackin MANEY. it’s the silence of marginalised voices cleverly disguised under hollow face-value representation.

honestly, even rey being blood-related to palpatine as his granddaughter was such a strong and perfect set-up for The Narrative That Could’ve Been TM, but instead they had palpatine make it a whole weird pseudo-marriage thing that was just so. backwards and unbelievably shocking that it was in a 2019 era star wars film.

wow marriage story and the rise of skywalker really is the same movie huh

yes we wanted a grey jedi protagonist hero that gets tempted by the dark side but this was the absolute worst way that could’ve been explored. like if they were just gonna recycle old characters and old storylines and make them worse they could’ve at least looked at darth maul or asajj ventress and the nightsisters

and NO WONDER oscar looked so DEFEATED every time finnpoe was mentioned cos he fought for that shit tooth and nail and they? ? ? they gave him a funny ha ha hee hee hoo hoo straight flirt scene? ? with like his ex or something, where they imply they get back together? COMPLETELY destroying the ENTIRE narrative of his character that was so lovingly built and developed in the Official Canon Comic Series About Him ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

NO WORDS. there are NO WORDS. head EMPTY. no not even empty there's NO HEAD at all i am BEHEADED

finn had NOTHING in this film. Nothing. how are you gonna make him a joint-protag with rey and give him Nothing? 

anyone with brain cells knows that what finn truly was trying to tell rey the entire film was that he was force sensitive, i will take this to my grave, and that should’ve built up to this grand reveal where they empower each other and take down palpatine and kylo as one, as the joint-protagonists they were Literally Fucking Written And Built Up To Be. they gave EVERY antagonist to REY. what was the POINT. rey had her significant clash with kylo across two films, hell, even in this one (before the Final one), tros was the penultimate film about her family, her bloodline, so her significant final battle should have been with palpatine a la rotj. the person who DESERVED to clash with and take down kylo once and for all was FINN, even a TODDLER would understand WHY. 

but considering everything, i would take the thing finn was trying to tell her the entire film being that he loves her ANY DAY if it meant whatever the fuck we got instead Never Happened.

finn got made general and not only was it a blink-and-you-miss bit but it adds NOTHING, yes it’s something to celebrate and of Course he deserves it, but it holds zero significance to him as a character. like i mentioned earlier, when han was made general, that never defined him. he was still han solo and it took a Dozen other significant scenarios and twists to make him a significant and vital memorable character. han solo isn’t known for “being a general”. he’s known for being han fucking solo, a critical puzzle piece in the taking down of the empire, a scamp-turned-deeply-loyal friend and lover, a man who not only got his own personal storyline concluded to the level it deserved to be (the repercussions of his bounty hunter life, the importance of the falcon, his relationships with lando, luke, and leia, his triumph over his captors even when it was luke and leia who freed him). 

side note, this was maybe the one thing that tfa screwed up, the entire point and development of the original trilogy, it sort of felt a bit moot with how they put a “twist” on han, leia and luke’s relationship, especially when it came to kylo. but i think there are some forgivable aspects to it for the sake of the new trio, and that’s why those executive decisions kind of Worked! this is, of course, for another discussion bc this is about the new trilogy.

leia IS known for being a general because part of her entire storyline revolves around it and the significance of it!!! which is why finn being made general just feels so... i don’t know! just completely disrespectful, to both him as a character, and to generals who are defined by this position (such as, hello!!!!! poe!!! poe fucking dameron!!!! a man raised by the resistance!!! a man who’s entire life and prior legacy was entirely dedicated to the resistance!!!! him being made general MEANT something). it’s like rubbing salt in the wound of the fact that finn has been discarded as the protagonist he was meant to be, the story, development and conclusion he never got, just to slap general on him and call it a day and then write about his actual development in a novel that 3/4ths of the ppl who watch the films will never read. 

and that's just the core story stuff!!! do NOT get me started on the general lore proposed in this shit. i’m talking about the force ghost nonsense and the convenience of some of the timing choices (rewriting the way death works in sw, claiming that rey “didn’t really die/wasn’t really dead” since she didn’t fade which in itself completely destroys the entire plot they were going for with the resurrection scene, the timing of the fades themselves bullshitted for “dramatic cinematic purposes”), the entire palpatine storyline, the bullshit with snoke and the lack of explanation, all these one-off characters that have the lore capacity of an overwatch character when instead they could have developed the ones that already existed and had the opportunity to be fleshed out and CARED about

the FACT that HUX (hux!!!!!!!!!) had a more interesting storyline in all three films with a total screentime of maybe 10 minutes than these one-offs whose only purpose is to stroke the cock of sw nostalgia seekers and lore aficionados. to make these characters so inaccessible that to fully appreciate them, fans have to dive into hundreds of different novels and comics and games and whatnot. like if you make it so that the Only way someone can experience a character’s full essence is by reading their wiki page then you’ve failed in creating them, in writing them, in including them, in using them, in whatever them. you’ve just failed as a creator.

and the ONLY reason hux got a reaction (a barebones reaction but a reaction nonetheless) out of me was because they essentially just turned him into phasma 2 which is SO telling of the climate of this trilogy.

it’s a recycled trilogy. that’s all it is. it’s a recycled series of films where tfa’s originality was completely entirely scrapped and ignored because rian wanted to write his personal fanfiction more than he wanted to continue the story he was given, and did everything he could to insert that whenever he could, and kennedy, of course, let him, because she realised giving herself indulging content other than fifty shades and radfem articles that she could jerk off to was more important than telling a critical story where its wonder and valuable, influential morals could’ve stayed in this generation’s minds for years to come.

if you want to watch tros just watch the prequel trilogy instead you'll get the same story except actually good.

[minikasblog]

GOT S8E5

I’m still raging over how this show has become absolute garbage.

More than anything, what pisses me off is Jaime’s end. We’re talking about 8 seasons of character development! I was for sure expecting Jaime to kill Cersei, i think pretty much 90% of those who are following the show thought that would happen. Some of us even said “god i hope that won’t happen, it’d be so obvious, but my GOD i wish that had happened now instead of this mess. 

Genuinely disregarding 8 seasons of character development, the writers said a big “f*ck” u” to Jaime and said “yeah let him go back to Cersei with his undying love and just try to escape with her, that’s a good plot, makes sense, correlates with the past seasons too, uhuh, sure” And then we’re going to have to have the Euron goddamn Greyjoy (a literal no-one who has only showed up 1 season ago) vs Jaime fight, which was a mess, it was a joke, then he goes on and says he’s the one who killed Jaime Lannister. Nope bud, the goddamn bricks killed him bye.

Cersei’s death was also nothing special. At least let someone kill her dear god! Her dying because of bricks, how tragic, boo-f*cking-hoo. Let Dany kill her, if ya’ll wanted to make her the “Mad Queen” so much, at least go all out, give me some sort of satisfaction at least. But no, she was sitting on her dragon for 5 minutes, then instead of going for Cersei, she just started zigzagging and killing almost everyone she could find.

The Golden Company too, made no damn sense. First you’re telling me Dany “forgot about the golden company” in the previous episode which cost her one of her dragons and almost Drogon too. But now with just one dragon she managed to burn it all to ashes like no big deal. She didn’t even need a special strategy, she just went and burned them and for some reason the golden company was struggling to shoot the dragon.

Let’s not even talk about Jon, i don’t even know what he’s doing at this point. I’m sure he’ll either kill Dany, or Dany will kill him and after that Arya kills Dany because of the ominous speech of hers where she goes “I’m going to kill the queen”. And since Cersei is dead, you guessed it, the queen is Dany, so i’m sure you get where this is going. And this will piss me off even more. Arya has already killed the Night King, if she kills Dany too, i’m just going to lose my shit. I don’t hate her, she’s a decent character, but if you’re going to make Arya do everything groundbreaking in this show, why even bother having other characters literally revived (Aka Jon)?!

I’m going to ignore the Sandor vs. Zombie big brother fight, it was, once again, a mess.

Also what the hell was the point of Bran? I still don’t get it. Please someone tell me why he had to go around the world, become a three-eyed-freak, just to see who are Jon’s parents. We don’t need him for that! We already have Sam and his enormous library and his books. Bran was there to confirm that Jon’s father was a good man, which btw doesn’t matter! It’s been an ongoing phrase in the show that “you’re not like your father/mother, don’t judge a child for what their parents have done in the past”. So confirming that Jon was born out of love doesn’t matter to the plot what-so-ever.

Onto what was good in this episode (not much but still): Songs, CGI, the scenery and such, Arya and Sandor’s heart-to-heart, Tyrion and Jaime’s heart-to-heart, and that’s about it.

One more episode, then it’s over, and i’m erasing this whole season out of my mind, because it’s by far the worst season of GOT and this just shows how the writers don’t give a damn about the plot or the characters anymore.