#before anyone asks where is sasha where is basira etc etc

[runefells]

The Catnus Archives

[i-am-not-a-who-i-am-a-what]

there was a moment from yesterday’s episode that set off so many alarm bells in my head and i haven’t seen anyone talking about it yet so i’m going to get my thoughts out there. i’m putting the majority of this post under a readmore bc it got very long thanks to all the transcript quotes i pulled but i really want to know what everyone else thinks about the Implications™

BASIRA

Okay. So… what do we know about Hill Top Road?

ARCHIVIST

Not much.

BASIRA

Another blind spot?

ARCHIVIST

No, it’s – I could look at it, but it… it was… it was like a… a hole. You know that feeling you get when you look down from a, a great height, like you’re being pulled into the abyss?

BASIRA

Kind of?

ARCHIVIST

[Getting lost in thought] Well it was… was like that. Normally I can see it, see the… webs, and feel the power of The Spider emanating from it, but… as I would look… it’s like my mind…. follows the paths of The Web,

[STATIC RISES]

the strands going down and… out… [Catching self] It’s quite disorientating.

[STATIC FADES]

my first thought after hearing this exchange was “huh, that sounds eerily similar to the description of the table the not-them was trapped in.” here it is from mag 3 - across the street:

I’d become enraptured by the table on which he’d placed my tea. It was an ornate wooden thing, with a snaking pattern of lines weaving their way around towards the centre. The pattern was hypnotic and shifted as I watched it, like an optical illusion. I found my eyes following the lines towards the middle of the table, where there was nothing but a small square hole.

my first instinct was that this was some foreshadowing for jon meeting some kind of horrible fate, because well... remember what happened the last time someone got mesmerized by the table?

SASHA

Oh, hey. I’ve found… I’ve found that table you were talking about. Don’t really see what all the fuss is about. Just a… basic… optical illusion. Nothing special… just… just a… wait…

[Hushed and panicked] Jon! Jon, I think there’s someone here. Hello? I see you. Show yourself!

but then i started thinking more about why the table specifically would be referenced, and i remembered the earliest we see it used as artifact of the web, and where: with raymond fielding in hill top road in mag 59 - recluse:

On Sunday evenings, however, we’d all gather for the evening meal, and before we sat down to eat, he would remove the bright white tablecloth that covered it, and we’d gather around the dark wood. I remember it was carved in all sorts of strange swirling designs and patterns. It felt like if you picked a line, any line, you could follow it through to the center, to some deep truth, if only your eye could keep track of the strands that had caught it.

it was while i was checking the transcripts to find the above quote that i also remembered the hole in center of the table that the web pattern leads towards wasn’t always empty - it used to contain a box, and that box contained an apple.

again from again from mag 59:

The center of the table looked, at first, like it was simply part of the wooden top, but if you looked closely, as I did so often, you could see an outline marking the very middle as a small, square box, carved with patterns just like the ones that laced their way over the rest of the table. I don’t remember how long we sat around the table those evenings, nor do I have any memory of what we might have eaten.

...

I reached over and pulled the wooden square from the center of the table. On its own, it appeared to be a small wooden box, and the lid opened smoothly, as my hands moved in a practiced motion. Inside was an apple, green and fresh and still wet with morning dew.

I knew I was going to eat it. I could feel tears desperately trying to push themselves out of my eyes, but I instead decided not to cry. I placed the box down on the table, reached over, and picked up the apple.

the box from the center of the table makes its first appearance in the very first hill top road statement, mag 8 - burned out, where we learn that apparently the apple was full of spiders. 

considering the web’s predilection for filling it’s victim’s bodies with spiders (carlos vittery, annabell cane, the spider husks trevor encountered, the victim of the chelicerae website, the old woman in annabell’s statement, francis, etc.) i think this goes a ways to explain what happened to raymond’s other victims, and what would have happened to mag 59′s statement giver if he’d bitten into the apple:

They lay still now, wrapped in their sticky cocoons. Their bodies seemed warped and bloated in a way I didn’t recognize. But that’s only because at that point in my life, I had never before seen a spider egg sac.

more importantly though, we also learn that the box was buried under the burnt up tree in hill top road’s garden, the one whose uprooting was implied to be linked to agnes’s death: 

STATEMENT

At that moment I made my decision. It was easy, like destroying this tree was the only thing to do, the only path to follow ... When the tree lay on its side, uprooted and powerless, I gazed into the hole where it had sat and noticed something lying there in the dirt.

Climbing down, I retrieved what turned out to be a small wooden box, about six inches square, with an intricate pattern carved along the outside. Engraved lines covered it, warping and weaving together, making it hard to look away.

...

ARCHIVIST

Except… We cannot prove any connection, but Martin unearthed a report on an Agnes Montague, who was found dead in her Sheffield flat on the evening of November 23rd 2006, the same day Mr. Lensik claims to have uprooted the tree.

and keep in mind that the only reason the statement giver in mag 59 didn’t eat the apple, didn’t succumb to the web... was agnes’s kiss:

As the man in the suit told me to follow him in a clipped BBC accent, Agnes walked over, and gestured for me to lean down and listen to her. I did so, but instead of a conspiratorial whisper, she just gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, then ran off down the hall.

...

All at once, my cheek erupted in pain. It was like someone had pressed a hot branding iron into my face, and I could swear that I heard the flesh sizzle as I let out a scream and fell to my knees. I raised my hands to my face and realized in that moment two very important things. The first is that my face seemed to be untouched; I could feel no injury or burn. The second was that raising my hand had been a truly voluntary act. I had willed it myself, and whatever power had been gripping me, tugging me into its web, I was free of it.

at this point you’re probably wondering why i think all this is relevant in terms of what might happen with hill top road, and i have two potential ideas: 

my first idea has to do with the theory that agnes is lingering on as a ghost. this theory isn’t mine, i first encountered it shortly after mag 167 - curiosity aired through this post’s attempt to fix what bits of the timeline were thrown out of wack by the new info. if anyone has any other posts or general thoughts about this theory feel free to share them, i’d love to read them!

this theory is relevant to my speculation that agnes might finally make an appearance because she might have been the ghost seen by one of the statement givers in mag 100 - i guess you had to be there:

MARTIN

Right. Right.

[THROAT CLEARING]

Statement of Lynne Hammond, er, recorded 2nd of May 2017, regarding…

Uh, what, what’s this one about?

LYNNE

I saw a ghost.

MARTIN

O-kay.. Regarding a… a ghost. Statement begins.

who appeared as one of the cultists in mag 190 - scavengers: 

MARTIN

[Puzzled] Celia?

CELIA

Probably. The, um… place I was trapped in, they took my name. I never got it back. But I like Celia, so… yeah! Celia it is.

MARTIN

Uh… H-Hello… Celia.

and was recognized and directly confirmed to be the same person by martin in mag 191 - what we lose:

MARTIN

…

Hey, I meant to ask. Do you recognise that woman, Celia?

ARCHIVIST

Um… no, I, I don’t think so. Why?

MARTIN

I’d swear she gave a statement once.

having her only pop up in mag 190 would have just been a fun easter egg, but having martin directly call out her presence the next episode sounds to me like jonny telling the audience to pay attention, to remember that her statement had to do with the ghost of a young woman on fire who might have been agnes. 

my second idea involves web lighter.

over various statements throughout the previous four seasons we’ve been shown that the web and the desolation have been at war, and hill top road has been their battlefield. the best examples of this come from mag 139 - chosen and mag 149 - infectious doubts respectively. 

on the one hand we have agnes being planted in hill top road by the cult of the lightless flame in an effort to both control her powers and derail the web’s plans, which seems to begin the conflict:

The compromise we came to was Hill Top Road. We knew it was a stronghold of the Web, full of other children Agnes’ age. We would supervise from a distance, but were confident she would be in no danger. The Mother of Puppets has always suffered at our hand; all the manipulation and subtle venom in the world means nothing against a pure and unrestrained force of destruction and ruin.

and on the other we have the web binding gertrude to agnes, thus thwarting the desolation’s ritual, which also involved hill top road:

ARTHUR

Alright. Agnes. How’d you do it? Never did understand it, not really.

GERTRUDE

Ah. That’s a fair enough question. It was the Web. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, and I would call it an accident, but it never is, with them. It’s only after the fact that you can see all the subtle manipulations

... 

So, I began researching what I thought was a counter-ritual of sorts. Like I said, I was young, naive. I somehow found just the right books, made just the right connections, and even got what I thought was a piece of blind good luck when I found a tin box in the ashes of Hill Top Road, containing some perfectly preserved cuttings of her hair.

wouldn’t it seem symbolic, fitting with the dream logic we’ve been working with all season (and that the fears have always tended to work with), if what ended the metaphysical war was an artifact touched by both the web and the desolation? 

say perhaps... a device that creates fire while being marked by a symbol of the spider? one that just so happened to be delivered to the institute at the same time as a certain table?

TIM

Er, what is it?

ARCHIVIST

A lighter. An old Zippo.

TIM

You smoke?

ARCHIVIST

No. And I don’t allow ignition sources in my archive!

TIM

Okay. Is there anything unusual about it?

ARCHIVIST

Not really. Just a sort of spider web design on the front. Doesn’t mean anything to me. You?

TIM

Ah no. No.

ARCHIVIST

Well… show it to the others, see what they think. You said there was something else as well?

TIM

Oh, ah yes, yeah, it was sent straight to the Artefact Storage, a table of some sort. Ah, looks old. Quite pretty, though. Fascinating design on it.

all signs point to the best hope of escaping whatever plans the web has for jon lying with the desolation, or at least with fire, and who should be waiting in hill top road than someone who’s been known to burn statements in the past... and someone who, as of mag 162 - a cozy cabin, was the last person to mention the lighter: 

MARTIN

So, should we destroy it? Before we go?

[THE CABIN CREAKS VERY LOUDLY.]

ARCHIVIST

I honestly don’t know if we can.

[HE SIGHS.]

MARTIN

Mm.

ARCHIVIST

Besides, there’s – far worse out there. Better to try and avoid it, I think.

MARTIN

We’re not even gonna try? Look, we’ve got your lighter; maybe if we just –

i haven’t even begun to touch on the multiple instances of spiral marked individuals interacting with hill top road, or the potential role of the rift leading from the world without the institute to the reality with the institute from mag 114 - cracked foundations, or the foreshadowing we’ve gotten throughout this season that the archive might be destroyed by fire and how it’s looking more and more like that means jon might die, or the significance of the tapes and what power might be behind them...

but it’s nearing five in the morning where i am and i’ve been working on this frankly gargantuan post since about midnight, so i’m going to let more meta-inclined minds take it from here. tell me what you think! where do you agree with me, where do you think i’ve gone astray? hell, tell me if you think i’m just spinning my wheels, this is the first real theory post i’ve ever made so i might be completely off base, at least i tried lol.

tl;dr: 

the call back to the imagery surrounding the web table and its long history with hill top road and the desolation is leading me to believe that whatever plans the web has in hill top road for jon, fire is going to have a significant role in whether or not the web gets what it wants; either agnes herself might finally make an appearance or the web lighter might finally come into play.

[fucktobycarlisle]

I haven’t listened past 162 yet but I wanted to ramble about like. My irritation at people calling Jon stupid? Like I understand where it’s coming from but it’s not,, accurate if you ask me.

We as really viewer have insight, information, resources, etc that he does not. We have the pleasure of being able to think about the threats without being effected by them, without our friends being effected by them. Yes, Jon threw himself into danger, but when he did, do you really think he had any other choice? When he shook jude’s hand, I believe he knew damn well what she would do. I think he just figured it was a burned hand, or not getting away at all.

When he went after daisy in the buried, yes it was reckless and yes it was dangerous, but at that point tim was dead, Sasha was dead, Basira was distant and aggressive (understandably so, I don’t blame her for it), Melanie was furious with him (again understandable), Georgie wanted nothing to do with him (same as before, understandable), and Martin was deep in the lonely, etc etc. he’d (in his eyes) lost all of his original assistants, he couldn’t bare to loose anyone else.

This is pretty similar with all his “stupid moves”, they were done out of fear and desperation, and being backed in a corner with nothing else to do. He’s not stupid, he’s scared, traumatized, confused. I honestly can’t say I’d do any better given his circumstances yknow?

[daturanerium]

finished season two of the magnus archives! here is my s2 livetweet thread and here are my reflections/predictions from season one. 

jon:

you are so fucking stupid. so incomprehensibly dumb. it is absolutely incredible how you lack any brain cells at all.

if jon was a dnd character he’d have a plus three to intelligence and a negative two to wisdom. i’m right.

[jon voice] people care about me? Must Be A Manipulation Tactic!

[jon voice, continued] literally everyone except for me is a) a murderer, b) using me, or c) hiding something. i, however, am totally fine and also sane and if you imply otherwise you are definitely Hiding Something and i need to stalk you.

seriously it’s a goddamn miracle he wasn’t fired or didn’t just like....explode on the spot

that awkward moment when you befriend a cop and get tapes that may lead to your successor’s cold murder case being solved but in the process you learn that you and your place of employment are actually owned by The Great, All-Powerful [REDACTED] 

it’s so interesting listening to a man’s mental health and sanity decline in real time!

martin: do u want some tea? jon: you’re going to kill me huh?

[jon voice] it is a good idea for me to enter these dangerous tunnels alone on multiple occasions. i am fine. 

his fatal flaw is still pursuit of knowledge. love that for him. 

baby please you work for an entity that probably literally thrives off knowledge.......please grow some brain cells in season three before you literally die doing something stupid

i literally can’t say anything more about s2 jon that isn’t me just repeating “stupid dumb paranoid baby” over and over again

martin:

martin [shaking hands emoji] me playing the mediator as our family loses their minds around us

martin blackwell recieves everything he has ever wanted and needed challenge!!!

baby i love you

HE CARES SO MUCH AND NOBODY CARES ABOUT HIM.......

martin’s job this season is literally the concerned husband but we’re not ready to talk about that yet

my dude really stepped up at the end! he was gonna fight michael in hand to hand combat for jon and sasha and i’m so proud of him!

martin went from baby to hold my flower

martin saw some shit in season one and now he’s a badass

his poetry.....i cried i literally love him so much

when he was talking to tim in the tunnels and he just breaks. and yells. and says he wants to get out of here and save jon and help sasha and be happy and you know what if everything DID turn out in the end that would be kind of nice actually!!!!

we didn’t see much of him this season but from what we did, especially at the end......the character development.......he’s so much braver now, so much more ready to confront the horrors of the world around him. martin is one of those special people that runs on love and uses love as a driving force to fight for the things he needs. 

i hope someday martin gets to sit down in a nice little cottage in the middle of nowhere with someone who loves him and just. relax. it’s what he deserves.

tim

you are the only bitch in this house i ever respected

literally just trying his best

so incredibly valid

GIVE HIM A BREAK

as someone who is the least confrontational person on the planet i really respect and admire tim calling jon out on his bullshit

that scene was so cathartic.....god.....

@ THE ELDRICH BEING RUNNING THE ARCHIVES CAN YOU PLEASE LET HIM GO HE JUST WANTS TO LEAVE

tim at the beginning of s2: hey jon you okay? you’re acting weird and it’s kind of freaking us out tim at the end of s2: fuck archivist lives and jon in particular,

and you know what? he’s right

i hope tim gets to go home. it won’t happen but i can dream.

are we just gonna brush over that part in the finale where michael just???? bamfed them to another dimension or something????? because neither tim nor martin seemed the least bit phased

honestly tim/jon has rights. i enjoy it.

he’s just so angry and hurt and done. he’s reached his limit. goodbye

get tim out of the archives s3!!! do it!!!

gertrude

wow i love you

every time i hear gertrude’s voice i just go [one thousand teary-eyes emojis]

there’s a lot we don’t know and there’s a lot that she knows. i wish we could like. raise her from the dead or something. altho honestly with a horror podcast who the hell knows

jon listening to/hyperfixating on gertrude is just a fancy way of him claiming her as his new mother figure

GOD I LOVE HER I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT HER CAN WE GET A SPINOFF PLEASE

basira and daisy

the only cops with rights

that part where tim thought basira was jon’s girlfriend and they both dissolved into gay panic.....priceless

daisy step on me challenge. i’ve met her twice and i love her.

honestly basira is such a badass. stealing from the cops while being a cop? that takes guts and i really respect her lack of respect toward cops while being one

not to mention that entire business with that sentient cult darkness shit. she killed it in there (no pun intended). give her like a purple heart or something idk how cops work

daisy.....please tell me your secrets. what have you seen. what do you know.

melanie

please work for the archives i am BEGGING you

my ghost hunter girlfriend

i love her and jon’s relationship. just pure loathing. tension between the hunter and the archivist. i live for that shit.

but under that it’s like Oh Shit I Actually Care A Lot???? like their loathing comes from their businesses being judgemental enemies, but personally they actually have a lot in common and care for each others’ wellbeing.

i really hope melanie sticks around so we can learn more about her and see her friendship with jon grow into....an actual friendship

shes also a total badass and both her research and deducing skills are so good. she’s just a great archive candidate overall.

michael

[REDACTED]

what the fuck are you

what the fuck do you want

why do i like you so much.

okay there’s a lot more going on here but i’m putting my predictions under the cut!

okay lets check out my predictions from last time.

okay this one was partially right! “entities” rule the world apparently, and the archive is run by one of them. sort of got that!

.....yeah that didn’t happen.

hell yeah! i’m proud of myself for this one, even though the time loop part wasn’t true. i thought “time loop” because her voice started echoing when she hit the table, but turns out that was just her crazy long copy taking over. oh well!

nope. gertrude was killed by elias, apparently. fucker.

WELL.........

okay. this one is complicated because i was sort of correct but there’s still a lot of information i don’t know. gonna give myself half credit for this one i think.

REMEMBER IN THE FINALE WHEN MARTIN THOUGHT HE SAW SASHA AND TIM HAD TO STOP HIM FROM RUNNING IN TO SAVE HER? YEAH.

okay, season three predictions. let's go.

(disclaimer: while i haven’t been actively looking up spoilers or engaging in the tma tag, i also haven’t muted the tag or anything associated with it. i have ideas of what’s to come but they’re vague and mostly come from fanart on my dash/timeline).

jon just gives up. he’s having to much of a crisis to do anything other than his job.

jonmartin endgame still

michael becomes a sort of??? constant presence??? at the archive. everyone just kind of accepts it.

the books and the entities make a lot more things make sense. that’s really vague i know but like. 

predictions for the entities:

fire/destruction 

knowledge (jon stans rise up)

empty/alone (these stories always get to me the most. the ones where you’re endlessly falling or trapped in a cave or can’t sleep or stuck in space. shit scares me more than anything else)

chaos (i think michael is with this one. the doors also fit into this category, and maybe that shipping company)

death/id (brings out the bareness of human instinct. the meat, the bloodlust, and the death. maybe even the bugs go here, but they’re confusing. i don’t know where they fit.)

each entity represents a deep-set human fear. they were created to either teach us lessons or keep us in line.

sometimes they have devoted followers. sometimes they have disciples or avatars. you can lose yourself to them if you aren’t careful. jane was probably an avatar, that girl with the heat powers on hilltop road was an avatar, that guy with the lightning powers was an avatar, etc.

the books can teach you how to connect with the entities, but you have to be actually insane to try it. (if you aren’t already, you certainly will by the time you finish the reading/ritual. if you even survive)

anyway back to actual plot.

jon learns more from gertrude’s tapes about elias and the archives. maybe even the entities. he doesn’t want to know, but as we’ve learned, he Just Can’t Not Know. 

jon finally grows a brain cell and lets people (martin) take care of him. a little.

tim is just there. he hates it but he can’t leave. (someone please get him out this is so sad)

melanie and basira join up with the archive, but for different reasons. melanie because jon asks her to, basira because despite her best interest she couldn’t stay away.

at the end of the season we’ll either meet a powerful avatar person of one of the entities themselves. that will be.....interesting. 

elias gets hit by a bus. won’t happen but i can dream.

what ever happened to that one man from season one who had the dreams about death? i loved his statement. is there anyone out there like him? will jon receive a message like gertrude did?

WHAT IS THE LIGHTER FOR. i completely forgot about it until i looked at my last predictions and saw it mentioned.

martin is more active in tapes (again unlikely but i can dream. i love him)

that’s about all i got! i’m going to post this and immediately start season three. wish me luck :)

[soveryanon]

Review for MAG123 (rambling/pondering/speculating/ etc. /o/)

-  That’s it, time is catching up and we’re fully reaching Jon’s era as the Head Archivist: the statement was given on August 1st 2015, explicitly after the end of Gertrude’s reign, and the consequences culminated… when Jon was already firmly rooted in the position:

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: […] I did do some light searching myself on Gregory Cox. … Vanished, unsurprisingly. Sometime in late July 2016, which is… [CHUCKLE] Two years ago. […] It looks like the statement came in just after Gertrude disappeared. […] I may be the first person to actually read it, so… sorry Angie, I suppose.

I always felt strongly for people coming to the Institute as a last resort – not because they wanted to share a story, but because they needed help and that nobody was able or knowledgeable enough to believe them. They don’t appear often (and none has topped the heartbreak of MAG037′s Jason North for me… yet) but they still pop up from time to time, and this one was almost in that category, which served as a reminder that from then on, people’s calls for help will technically be… Jon’s responsibility, too, unless he follows the Institute/Elias’s guidelines (MAG017: “record and study, not interfere or contain” / MAG092: “Jonah Magnus did leave him in that place, Jon. […] it was because he was curious. Because he had to know, to watch and see it all. That’s what this place is, Jon, never forget it.”) and declines to get involved. Jude Perry had also snarled about it, so it doesn’t sound like it’s an Institute thing, even less an Archivist, to intervene in anything (aside from stopping other rituals). Despite that, Jon still felt like he had to apologize to Angie – a bit light-heartedly… but he still did, as if he had indeed let down someone who was expecting assistance in her situation. Which… is not even something that Jon used to do in season 1. That’s pretty good?? I had feared that there would be something about his guilt getting cauterized, but no, it’s still sweetbean!Jon-trying-harder from the end of season 3???

(MAG123) BASIRA: Well, just back off. You haven’t been here. ARCHIVIST: O… Okay. You’re right. I haven’t. So explain it to me. […] BASIRA: That isn’t funny, Jon. ARCHIVIST: I know it’s not–! … Sorry. It’s just… it’s a lot.

He’s putting efforts in when interacting!! Relenting!! Taking a step back and calming himself down instead of taking offence right away!! Same strategy as with Tim in MAG114: developing what he’s thinking and avoiding to ask direct questions!! Jon!!!

- … so what the heck HAPPENED for Jon to apparently forget a chunk of memories, starting with the end of The Unknowing (and until – and including – when he apparently ~made his choice~ after Oliver’s statement). Jon might still be lying through his teeth when recording but… it sounds like he indeed doesn’t remember anything and still thinks he’s coming out of a normal (if long) coma (without any actual damage, since he’s back in office two days after waking up (the medical staff wanted to kick him out fast, didn’t they.), but still):

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: [HEAVY SIGHS] Where did the– [PAPERS RUFFLING, THEN MUTTERING] Coma, great! Let’s rearrange his office. Sleeping people don’t need… pens. […] MELANIE: Tim is dead. Daisy is dead. And you, what? You’re just fine? ARCHIVIST: No, I’ve been in hospital for six months! […] ARCHIVIST: [CHUCKLE] Two years ago. … That doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t feel like… … There’s just this… great… gap of time, where I wasn’t. […] [SIGHS] Two days out of a coma, and I’m already tired.

Is it Jon blocking out the memories because he can’t handle them? Beholding censoring them? The Spiders? Something else? (Also, has Jon had the time to visit his flat? Does he still have his flat? Does he still legally exist? I suppose that Tim’s body was Section 31’d, not sure that Jon was even reported as having been at the Wax Museum, the Institute could have transferred him without any proof… but aaaah, what is Jon’s current legal status.) I’m not sure whether the others never telling him outright that hi!! Jon!! only your brain has been functioning for the past six months, what the heck!! is a case of miscommunication (they tend to do that a lot ;;) or… something spooky preventing them from telling him, without them realizing it. Who will drop the news to Jon? Or will Jon remember it/pick up on the hints beforehand? Except his introduction with “the Archivist” and his feeling of being “more real” (MAG122), there has been no indication whatsoever that… he’s actively aware of something being Different. And I don’t feel like he’s acting differently from the end of season 3 either? He still sounds like he’s Trying a lot, aware that he could make the situation worse by reacting badly? Even powers-wise: he hasn’t compulsed anyone since he woke up (unless the tape recorder doesn’t react to it anymore). And if he doesn’t remember anything of The Unknowing past Gertrude’s appearance, he probably doesn’t remember about the shiny new power of… apparently being able to See/unravel someone’s backstory…

(- But there’s no way that he hasn't in fact become a full Beholding avatar, since he now makes awful Eye puns. “I mean, I know me and Melanie have not always seen eye to eye before” jON UHJBIUBHJHJBNUIHJN NO, DON’T–)

- … yeaaaaAAAAAAaaah, I’m definitely dreading Elias&Jon’s next conversation, whenever it finally happens: I’m fearing more and more that Jon or someone will be reduced to asking for Elias’s help since… nothing is good right now, and how are they supposed to get rid of Peter? How are they supposed to stop becoming a target for other entities? (I’m still wondering if Jon’s clock in his hospital room was Elias’s, and maybe acted as a protection? It’s curious that Jon wasn’t attacked when at his most vulnerable (even half-dead, there could have been ways to ensure he would get a bit deader.), while other avatars, such as Nikola or “Michael”, had been able to track him down before. Then again, the spiders apparently sent Oliver to him, so maybe they’d actually been protecting him, too?) But whether it’s a visit-of-shame to Elias in prison, or Elias coming back by himself at some point… I’m D: that if Jon still doesn’t remember, Elias… might know about it already anyway… He seems aware of which statements Jon reads, according to MAG102, so even assuming he would not know or have witnessed the moment of ~choosing~ firsthand from Jon’s dreams (since he demonstrated that he could see them in MAG120), he… probably has already noticed the switch to “the Archivist” in Jon’s introductions. (And no mention of Jon getting his hands on MAG120′s tape so far, but that one surely won’t be pleasant either.)

- Jon explicitly said that it’s been “Two days” since he woke up, which means that heeee recorded two statements in two days (and received Oliver’s), which is… a lot, but not unheard of (he got three VERY intense weeks from MAG071 to MAG081, and five awful days from MAG089 to MAG094). But!! Interestingly, he ended up audibly drained after this one. I thought he was mostly emotionally drained, but he did explicitly mention getting tired (“Two days out of a coma, and I’m already tired. … End recording. [CLICK.]”) and his voice was getting slower and he sounded like he had trouble focusing. Which means that statements might still be taking their toll on him?

- Belated realisation, thanks to Melanie’s comment that… Well, I had assumed that Basira behaving so warily and firmly around Jon in MAG122 was because she suspected he might have fallen deeper into Beholding, hence the fact that he surprisingly managed to survive? But it’s because Elias’s statement in MAG120, and Oliver’s in MAG121, that we listeners knew that something was in the works in that regard. Other characters… had reason to suspect other things:

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: Me–Melanie, it’s me– MELANIE: No. No. […] How did you make it out, then, mm? […] Tim is dead. Daisy is dead. And you, what? You’re just fine? ARCHIVIST: No, I’ve been in hospital for six months! MELANIE: Something has been in hospital. Something that’s got your face like– I warned Basira, I said not to let you back in here, but she just doesn’t listen!

… with him back as basically a corpse with an active brain, did they initially think that he was one of the Stranger’s creatures that had managed to take his skin? Melanie’s description sounds exactly like… something resulting from an encounter with the Anglerfish… (AND AOUCH AOUCH AOUCH when thinking about Sasha ;; The Not!Them acted differently with her, overwriting her existence in the mind of others, but still… Melanie had been the only one to be able to tell that “Sasha” didn’t look like the Sasha she had met, and had to deal with people not believing her about the differences, back then… And unlike Jon, she actually liked Sasha, from their single encounter… even without taking her Possible Current Slaughter-Induced Condition into account, that would be enough to not want to go through that experience again…).

- ALL THE KUDOS TO LYDIA FOR HER PERFORMANCE THIS EPISODE HOLY HECK… The frenzy and irrationality and rejection was just WOW… And ;; Elias had pretty much stated that she would see Martin ensuring his arrest instead of letting her kill him as a form of betrayal (MAG120: “You didn't tell her. [CHUCKLES] Worried she might create too much of a scene. I understand. I just hope she… doesn’t hold it against you.”), and she hasn't even mentioned Martin in this one but… was not tender about Basira, worse towards Jon:

(MAG123) MELANIE: […] I warned Basira, I said not to let you back in here, but she just doesn’t listen! [STOMPING? AND FURIOUS STRANGLED NOISES] […] You don’t know me. And I don’t know… you, so stay the hell away from me, or I swear– ARCHIVIST: Okay– MELANIE: –I will…

It seems like the influence of the bullet (?) tends to make her see anyone as a potential enemy? ;; According to Elias, she mostly couldn’t stand the feeling of being trapped by the Institute (MAG102: “Even more than the others, she has a visceral hatred of being trapped. Regardless of how much freedom I afford her.” / MAG106: “A rationalization, of course. A lie, about your own selfishness, that you would rather be dead than trapped without the self-determination you prize so highly.”) and it seems to be confirmed that her biggest problem is with the concept of the Institute:

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: Basira said Elias was gone! MELANIE: Oh gone, right, yes yes, he is… he’s gone. Like that makes any difference. ARCHIVIST: I don’t understand. MELANIE: No? You don’t, do you? He’s still alive. You are still alive. So THIS PLACE is still–! [HEAVY STRANGLED BREATHING]

;; She had told Jon that she saw him as responsible when he had talked her into not killing Elias (right now) in MAG102 (“We’ll try it your way. But whatever your way actually is, you’d better figure it out fast. Because it is your fault that I’m here. Fix it, or get out of the way!”), and Elias’s arrest… indeed has fixed nothing. More dead people on the borders; a worst replacement; and attacks on the Institute itself. There is a part of irrationality in her reasoning (Jon wasn’t even there when she accepted the job, and he had done nothing to make her feel at ease in the Institute?) but also enough arguments that hit the mark so efficiently, holy heck. Her words were a riot, fifty shades of HURT and stabbing hearts here and there. She managed to render Jon speechless, for Arceus’s sake!!!

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: Melanie, Melanie: it’s… it’s me. MELANIE: Oh! Okay, so what, “Hi Jon, how are you, get anyone killed lately?” ARCHIVIST: … I… MELANIE: Wipe that look off your face. Like you’re not the reason all of this is happening. Like you’re any better than– ARCHIVIST: [MESSY STUTTERING] MELANIE: –than him!

AOUCH AOUCH AOUCH for the fact that she’s putting Elias and Jon in the same bag!!! D: (And for telling Jon that… the assistants are dying because of him. That it’s a thing that's happening because of him. Tim’s death wasn’t Jon’s fault, he didn’t lie to Tim, but he still used him to stop The Unknowing, just like Tim wanted… from an exterior point of view, it would sound just like Gertrude already. If Jon was remembering any of it in the first place. Right now, for all anyone knows, it’s “Jon came back while Daisy and Tim didn’t”, and Sasha died during the Prentiss attack while Jon didn’t, and it feels like a long string of having assistants dying around/for Jon… until the next ones ;;)

- The use of “we” to talk about Beholding stuff was a bit worrisome:

(MAG123) BASIRA: [SIGHS] Alright. Best I can understand it, Beholding, or The Eye or… whatever you want to call it, we’re one of the only powers that hasn’t actually taken a shot at our ritual. Yet. And everything out there knows it. ARCHIVIST: … No, I mean, we… we can’t be the only ones, surely? BASIRA: I don’t know. Probably not. But we made a big noise with The Unknowing and… other stuff, and… now they’ve taken notice.

… but at the same time, maybe a matter of pragmatism from Basira? Kind of “us against them” talk from an ex-police officer? They’re de facto a “we” since they’re all tied (/trapped) with the Institute right now, and they have more or less the same goal of surviving. (Still, all these “we” to talk about themselves as The Beholding’s ilk hurt ;;)

1°) Basira sounded very cold and not absolutely invested in helping Martin nor preventing Melanie from falling deeper in, but that’s how she was operating before, too, and it’s not far-off from how she used to behave overall with the Institute (the only thing she adamantly wanted to do was to do something against Elias because of what he had done to Melanie after MAG106 and, even then, she didn’t act on her own but invited the others to do something about it). She’s grown colder in these six months, sounds even less ready to help than before, but at the same time… is apparently not serving? It doesn’t sound like they kept recording statements while Jon was away, and Basira was pretty dismissive/downright insulting towards the concept of Beholding when referring to it? And she insisted on leaving as soon as Jon was going to read a statement both in MAG122 and MAG123, while it used to not bother her with Martin? At least, Basira has turned against the tape recorders (“And we’ve got an audience. Perfect. I thought you said you decided to throw them all out.” “Yup. And I did. And here’s another one.”) which… is probably a good thing (or she’ll pay for it later ;;). Will Jon will be back to being the only one to record statements for a while?

2°) Squinting at the “The Unknowing and… other stuff”: is it about Gertrude interrupting the other rituals before, or did the assistants… do some other things while Jon was away? (Was there another leak of statements to the public?)

3°) Aouch aouch that of course, them preventing the other rituals from succeeding would be perceived as a matter of ensuring that their ritual would win the game… and not just plainly preventing the world from being transformed into a “factory farm” for any of them. Last time, The Stranger’s attempt had been countered by avatars from The Slaughter, and we know that The Tundra had brought Gertrude and Michael Shelley to the place where The Spiral’s ritual would happen (+ The Dark might have made a move against the old Archives in Alexandria in the 4th century, according to MAG053): it’s not only an Archivist thing to meddle with others’ rituals, people serving the powers do it all the time… but the Magnus Institute has probably been a bit too good at it to go unnoticed. Of course it would be their turn to be perceived as The Enemy…

4°) It doesn’t look like there could be many options to get out of this, uh ;; Either they stay on standby in the Institute forever (/until another power manages to wipe them out); either they launch the ceremony to get a chance of survival, or out of loyalty (ahaha.); either they find a way to kill their ceremony in the egg; either they find alternative ways. Will Jon try to make an alliance with other avatars? I’m… not sure that the archive team going vocal about not wanting to launch theirs would result in anything good: sounds a bit too much like blasphemy for it to be well-perceived by others? Is it even possible to turn against your own god without dying pretty quickly, even if Jon keeps on with the regular feeding-what-feeds-you thing through the written statements and his own fears (and avoiding the live-statements)? There have been a suspicious amount of deaths by heart diseases/cancers amongst people who were not serving while theoretically being tied to an entity (Evan Lukas, Gerry…), I’m not sure those were… natural.

- … sudden realization that maayyyybe The Lonely doesn’t have a ritual? Gerry was a bit ambiguous about it but at the same time literally said that not all of them had one:

(MAG111) ARCHIVIST: […] Tell me about the rituals. GERARD: Well, they all have one. Most of them, anyway. Takes centuries to build up to a level of power where they can try it, and if they fail, it’s back to square one. ARCHIVIST: Okay, but what do the rituals do? GERARD: They… kind of “shift” the world, just enough for the Power to come through. Merge with reality. Some say, or well, they guess, that it could bring other entities through with them. I mean, I doubt The Buried would be bringing through The Vast, but you know.

Could this be why The Lonely is collaborating with many other powers’ projects and throwing money around despite its, uh, whole… concept… of isolation…? (The ties with the Institute dating from its foundation, given that Mordechai Lukas was already on friendly terms with Jonah Magnus, that the Lukas family are currently patronaging it, and that Peter even helped Gertrude when she went to stop The Spiral; the Lukas also co-financed the Daedalus project with people from The Dark and The Vast…) Does it need to leech on others in order to have a chance to sneak in?

- I’ve literally spent a whole weekend with someone who would occasionally suddenly snortgiggle before muttering “Coma? great! Let’s rearrange his office.” out of the blue so: same, I’m still laughing hard at the return of rambling grandpa!Jon, I’M JUST LOVE HIM…

(MAG123) [CLICK–] ARCHIVIST: [HEAVY SIGHS] Where did the– [PAPERS RUFFLING, THEN MUTTERING] Coma, great! Let’s rearrange his office. Sleeping people don’t need… pens. [DISGUSTING MOIST SOUND] Ewagh? Oh, wha–

and I effing love the writing because it was an incredibly funny line (Jon is SO funny when he complains and takes mundane little things personally), it was also a very functional one (informing us right away that he’s back in his office, and that people apparently got access to it/moved things around when he wasn’t there, possibly that The Flesh attack reached all the way into there?, and that it’s another detail in the stack of alien things making him disorientated) aaaand it made the verbal roughness, the bittersweetness and the heartbreak even more violent afterwards. We began the episode laughing about Jon, we end it feeling awfully sad, thanks Darkrai. (I was wondering what was the disgusting thing that Jon had found/perhaps tried to eat or drink? Apparently, Word Of God confirmed on Discord that it was something disgusting under his desk. So, I’m guessing it was something from The Flesh’s attack. Still: laughing HARD at Jon just being earnest in his disgust =D)

- I’m not even mad at Jon for cracking up about Peter Lukas because seriously:

(MAG123) BASIRA: He’s been… restructuring. Separating out the departments a bit. Not a surprise, I guess, with his pedigree. ARCHIVIST: But i–if you’ve never… seen him, I mean… BASIRA: Rumour is, a couple of researchers up on the third floor decided to ignore some of his new directives, and… wwwsssshhhh. ARCHIVIST: … Sorry, what’s “wwwshhhh”? BASIRA: Wsssshhhhh. Gone. ARCHIVIST: … oh.

Oh My Gods, Peter. (He had mentioned that Elias was “very protective of his people” and given that Elias had allowed Martin to be besieged by worms for two weeks, Sasha to get killed by an agent from The Stranger, Tim&Jon to get worm’d, and that he traumatized Martin&Melanie himself… yeah, it was already a huge red flag for Peter’s own standards. And the Institute’s people are not even Peter’s people.) I kinda hope that the researchers are still alive, “just” isolated, though, because I’m not too fond of NPC dying around the corners when they were only doing their job and are not given any attention outside of “they dead” for nervous laughter :w But I’m also cracking up a lot jknrhdfjnrf Peter, that was so gratuitously extra fezhjdcfdnk… … I wonder how Rosie is doing.

- But, more seriously, WOW about how Peter is… already unsettling precisely because characters can’t reach him while he has an effect on them anyway. And he’s unsettling to listeners too, in the way he totally avoids categorizations so far! We don’t know what his intentions are, we don’t know why he’s set his eyes on Martin (sheer dumb bad luck because Martin was in the office the first time? Martin being a prey of choice for The Lonely partially because of sad one-sided gay crush, lack of relationships and no family? Elias sending him after Martin because less valuable, or precisely because he was reading statements? Martin having ties to the Lukas?), we don’t even know why he was specifically chosen by Elias as a replacement (Is it to prepare The Watcher’s Crown? It is to buy some time by having the assistants focusing on a shared enemy instead of teaming up against The Beholding? Is it because Peter was still the lesser evil for the Institute? Is it because the Lukas would have taken over anyway and Elias tried to damage-control the transition? Is it because Peter is supposed to keep an eye on Jon and nobody else?) ;; Even if he’s not intrinsically tied to Martin, I’m worried that there could be rumours in the Institute about how Martin could actually be the one pretending to be Peter…

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: [LONG EXHALES] Yes. Well, I’m sure there are better ways to deal with it than getting cosy with Elias’s successor. Who I’ve yet to meet, by the way. BASIRA: [CHUCKLES] Yeah, join the club. ARCHIVIST: Sorry, you haven’t– BASIRA: Nop. Never seen him. As far as I can tell, Martin’s the only one who has. ARCHIVIST: … right. A–and you’re sure he’s… real? BASIRA: We get emails from him. Memos. ARCHIVIST: [HUMOROUS EXHALES]

…………….. the fact that Basira and Melanie have never met him is extra-weird, though, since he had asked Martin to bring them to him at the end of MAG120:

(MAG120) PETER: Oh, what’s that look for? You won! I am sorry if it doesn’t look quite like you hoped, but… here we are. MARTIN: I suppose so. So what now? PETER: Well, if you could send Melanie and Basira up to see me, I’d like to introduce myself.

Did Melanie&Basira come to the office and not realize that he was there (not seeing him while he was seeing them)? Or did they meet him and… immediately forget the encounter, somehow? It’s also strange, actually, that Elias never ever mentioned that he had chosen Peter as an interim director (even when he was escorted by the police officer, he didn’t taunt Martin about it), or even that he had been talking with Peter. We only have Peter’s word that he did…

- … is it a Lonely thing specifically, or is there something deeper about how some avatars (such as Agnes?) sound… more tied to a power than regular ones? This is the second time that a sentence referred Peter as an incarnation of The Lonely itself, and Martin had strongly reacted to it the first time (which… raised suspicions):

(MAG108) PETER: Ah, I see. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. It’s one of Elias’s little jokes. MARTIN: I don– What? PETER: Did he suggest you record a statement today? One that mentioned me? MARTIN: … yeah? Sssort of? I mean… not you specifically, but…

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: […] Haven’t seen Martin about yet? BASIRA: Yeah, he comes and goes. He’s busy. Well, he seems it. ARCHIVIST: Working for Peter Lukas. […] Martin is working very closely with The Lonely, who is, predictably enough, isolating him […].

I don’t really remember other cases in which a Fear and an agent of it were equated so directly? Is there something deeper in here? *squints*

- I wonder if Jon will meet him soon, or if Peter will avoid him too, or if Jon will try to force his way to him. Technically, communicating through emails and memos is the best way for anyone to avoid Jon’s compulsion, so… he could still elude Jon. (I would have found it extra-funnier if he had met everyone but prevented Jon specifically from meeting him, what with Jon getting so frustrated about Elias telling him to back off when the Lukas were involved in past statements, but it seems like nop, it’s everyone-except-Martin! … Martin T___T). … if it were season2!Jon, he would probably have tried to break into Elias’s office anyway, to force a meeting and/or to try to get the rest of the files that Elias had taken from Gertrude (he had stolen the key for the tunnels from Elias’s desk before MAG041, after all) but 1°) not sure that Elias’s office is still accessible, 2°) not sure that Jon would find anything (never mind anyone) inside, 3°) Peter could make sure that Jon would grow to regret it, given how things have been going so far. (*whispers* I have no idea what Jon’s plans are since he’s been baaaaack, aarrrrg!!!)

- One of the constant things for the past two episodes has been about Jon losing small anchors, small familiar details: Georgie having enough and leaving; Basira being cautious and wary, then cutting and dry (“Ah… what do I do if… Melanie comes back…?” “I don’t know. Play dead.” was just outright MEAN, holy heck…); Melanie being hostile and threatening; Martin being… absent and working for someone else. Tim and Daisy are dead. Elias is gone and that good news is tempered with the fact that he got replaced by Peter Lukas, messing up the Institute. Jon’s clothes have been thrown away (uh.), his request of tea was cut short (while until now it was usually offered to him); his office was meddled with. It indeed feels like waking up in another world, with his footing thrown off balance, since he is aware now of what had been lost (and that it also covers missed opportunities: “I wish I could talk it through with Martin. … Or Tim. Or Sasha. But we never really did that, did we…?”).

… I wonder how Jon will behave, next time he’ll see “Helen”. Six months have passed, there is no guarantee that she will still be as unsettled as she was in MAG115, but maybe Jon could understand that situation a bit deeper, now.

- The only “stable” thing has been the tape recorder popping up again, now fully acknowledged as being totally autonomous and… choosing to be there and record whether they agree to it or not.

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: […] Aaand we’ve got an audience. Perfect. I thought you said you decided to throw them all out. BASIRA: Yup. And I did. And here’s another one. ARCHIVIST: Maybe it’s hungry. BASIRA: Seriously? ARCHIVIST: I mean, I did have a statement I was planning to record. BASIRA: Great. Perfect. You can get on with that, and I’ll just leave, then. [CHAIR SCRAPING]

Laughing for a long while at the fact that they now sound like demanding babies that will ruin your life if you decide to not cater to their needs right away. ;; I’m sobbing a bit at the mix of… annoyance turning into “trust”, with Jon ending the follow-up with his own feelings about what has been lost. It’s nothing new, but, I don’t know. It always feels more intimate when Jon acknowledges the tape recorders as sentient or actively listening? He hadn’t done it much, so far (unlike Martin), mostly in indirect ways.

- Jon is still a sweet bean… but I didn’t feel like he was as disgusted/scared of spiders as usual…? Is it a matter of knowing a bit more about them, or has he lost some of his fears by turning full Archivist? He used to react very strongly when it came to spiders:

(MAG056) ARCHIVIST: […] As for the spider person, the only… proof of its existence seems to be that I am far too unlucky for it to simply be an old tramp’s hallucination. I need to have some words with Martin.

(MAG059) ARCHIVIST: […] I have done my best to prevent Martin reading this statement in too much detail. I have no interest in having another argument about spiders. In fact, after reading this statement, I have no interest in thinking about spiders any more than is professionally required.

(MAG068) ARCHIVIST: I’m in the tunnels. I was exploring and I got lost. I haven’t gone down any of the stairs and I– I think I’m still under the Institute. There were a couple of spiders, so I changed routes and found, I think it’s a gas main.

(MAG069) ARCHIVIST: Statement ends. More spiders. […]

But true that there hadn’t been any Web-related statement afterwards in season 3 (or not… explicitly), except for his own, the failed attempt in MAG100, and the one Martin read in MAG110 and explicitly mentioned that Jon hadn’t worked on it (“I mean, I think it sounds like a Jurgen Leitner book. About spiders. Hum. Good that Jon didn’t have to read this one, anyway, I know he’s not a fan – although this one wasn’t too bad, actually.”) Maybe the fact that Jon gave his own statement about Mr. Spider, and learned more about the entities and a bit about The Web, removed some of the horror? It’s an aspect of the Beholding that Jane Prentiss had denounced (MAG032: “I see now why the hive hates you. You can see it and log it and note its every detail but you can never understand it. You rob it of its fear even though your weak words have no right to do so.”); but at the same time, we know that Jon used to feel the fears of the statements he was reading, and he was terrified during his dreams when Elias described them in MAG120… (;; Given how turning into an avatar seems to steal from you, I’m a bit paranoid about everything and wondering if anything that feels different in Jon is related to thiiiis…)

- It isn’t established, either, whether he had planned to record this statement right now, or if he wanted to research it a bit more (“I mean, I did have a statement I was planning to record”) and ended up recording now since the tape recorder looked like it wanted to be fed! I’m curious about why it ended up being this statement in particular since… spiders. Was Jon drawn to this one by them? Has he started to investigate spiders-related ones because he’s suspecting that they’re actually more important and dangerous than what he thought before?

- Since Jon said “I have no theories on it, no… no sudden insights” -> I wonder if “Insight” is referring to what happened with him suddenly knowing that Gerry had travelled with Gertrude (MAG099/MAG102)? It sounds like the right word to cover the phenomenon, indeed.

- The statement was tied to so many incidents happening in the Archives that it… raised questions as to whether or not these events were connected. Gregory Cox was contacted to begin his work on the website shortly before Gertrude’s death; the statement was given to the Institute after Gertrude’s death (1st August 2015) and either when Jon had just been appointed as new Head Archivist, either shortly before; Gregory Cox himself disappeared in late July 2016, which was around Prentiss’s attack on the Institute (Jon took the statements from the staff post-attack on July 29th 2016). Jon got suspicious, at the very least, but it was also… a series of reminders of what had happened to Jon in the Archives since he began with the job, what was lost, and the gap between what truly happened and Jon’s awareness of it?

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: […] Sometime in late July 2016, which is… [CHUCKLE] Two years ago. … That doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t feel like… … There’s just this… great… gap of time, where I wasn’t. […] [SIGHS] I wish I could talk it through with Martin. … Or Tim. [SHORT SAD CHUCKLE] Or Sasha. But we never really did that, did we…? … Everything’s changed. … [SIGHS] Two days out of a coma, and I’m already tired. … End recording.

The Prentiss attack was also when Sasha got killed; she’s been dead for one year and a half, at present time. And yet, it took Jon six months to realize it, and he spent another six months in a “coma” afterwards – he was only aware of it for a third of that time (from February to August 2017). Tim has been dead for six months too, and yet for only two days for Jon. No wonder the timeline feels so messed up to him…

- Following up on dates: taking a step back to think about the passage of time also helps to contextualize a bit where characters are standing. It… might have influenced Basira and sheds some light on the fact that she sounds so firm (almost ruthless) to Jon right now. She had met him a few times before, but she joined the Institute (/was coerced into signing a contract) on April 28th 2017; Jon was barely present afterwards, keeping some distance with the assistants (as Martin mentioned in MAG098), then getting kidnapped for a month, then being sent to China and America, before they went to stop The Unknowing on August 6th. That’s barely three months and a half, during most of which Jon wasn’t physically there nor trying to be emotionally present with the assistants, versus more than six months with Melanie and (a bit of) Martin, trying to keep things afloat in a place she never chose to be, and which she joined only to save Daisy and/or herself and the other archival staff under Elias’s threats… when Daisy is now “dead”. I don’t think that Basira regrets stopping Daisy when she was on the verge of killing Jon, back in MAG091, but I cannot help but think that she at least wondered how things would have unraveled, afterwards, if she had allowed it? Maybe The Unknowing would have happened, but maybe other people would have stopped it. There is, at least, something very heart-wrenching in the fact that Basira had agreed to become a prisoner and coercing material to save someone from the Hunters of Section 31, when that person is currently officially dead, and that Basira is still trapped and that she was the one who had to be “keeping things together” (s4 trailer) in that place. I mean! She was planning to get in control of her own agency by the end of season 3:

(MAG117) BASIRA: I don’t want to be here. But by the end, I didn’t want to be police either, so… guess I don’t really know what I do want, which… maybe that’s just as well. My options… they’ve gotten a lot narrower over the last year. I don’t know. I feel kind of bad. Everyone seems to be having a much worse time of it than me, and I was meant to be the hostage. It’s amazing, how much you can ignore when you keep your head in a book. Mf! My dad would hate me talking like this. He couldn’t stand people who just passively moaned about their problems. He always said: “If you don’t like something, you accept it and you adapt; or your fight and you change it. Whining doesn’t help.” I’ve always tried to live like that, but I think sometimes… you feel like you’re adapting, but… it’s just denial. But not anymore. I’m going to fight and change it. I just hope I’m not heading into the wrong battle.

… but it was also when she was presenting Daisy as her own anchor (“she’s solid. She’s a fixed point. And if she’s there, I know exactly where I stand, exactly what I’m doing relative to her.”), and now she’s lost her. There would be enough to get very resentful and bitter about the Institute and the fact that she has to be the one in charge of everything, and that she doesn’t see Jon as a reliable person. Quite clearly, she doesn’t see him as a leader right now – and indeed, Jon… never was one.

- ;; for Basira being defensive of Melanie, despite it all!!!

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: You were attacked. … When? BASIRA: About two months ago. It was… it was The Flesh. ARCHIVIST: [MUTTERING] Oh god. BASIRA: Yeah, it was bad. We took them all out. Melanie did most of them. She was… she got a knife from somewhere and– ARCHIVIST: Basira, I… I don’t know if that’s a good sign…? BASIRA: … She saved my life, Jon. She saved all of us. I won’t forget that.

Jon is probably right on that one (the more Melanie gives in to The Slaughter, the worst it will get, probably); on the other hand, yeah, Basira indeed can’t really blame Melanie’s murderous urges if it actually protects them when nothing else does. She was also oddly defensive of Martin, after throwing some shade at him during season 3?

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: [SIGHS] Fine… Fine. Haven’t seen Martin about yet? BASIRA: Yeah, he comes and goes. He’s busy. Well, he seems it. ARCHIVIST: Working for Peter Lukas. BASIRA: Don’t be too hard on him, Jon. Your, er… “situation”, it hit him. Hard.

;; Not one to kick the puppy when he’s (too) down, is she.

- … I wondered if Martin’s visit to Jon from the trailer was after The Flesh attack. He had claimed that he had decided to be more active, in MAG117, which resulted in him confronting Elias in MAG118 and the arrest in MAG120… but now, we know that it made their whole situation even more unstable and threatening, since Peter didn’t even protect them against The Flesh? So Martin probably felt responsible for that failure? ;; He was the one who ultimately threw Elias out of the picture and that backfired badly… In the trailer, he asked if the others would be “safe”, apologized and said goodbye to Jon, so it did sound extremely bad already, but if it happened after The Flesh attacked and he only got saved thanks to Melanie going on a rampage… no wonder that he went for something that already sounds an awful lot like self-sacrificing, in turn… (No clue about the details of what he’s doing ;; Does he specifically have to avoid the others as part of the deal? Did he trade his cooperation for a bit more protection for the others? … Is he actually helping in preparing The Watcher’s Crown, whether he knows about it or not? Or something specifically tied to The Lonely?)

- IT BREAKS MY HEART that Jon apparently still doesn’t get Martin and… is kind of assuming the worst from him? His wording was almost insulting:

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: [LONG EXHALES] Yes. Well, I’m sure there are better ways to deal with it than getting cosy with Elias’s successor. […] Martin is working very closely with The Lonely, who is, predictably enough, isolating him […].

On the one hand, Jon already picked up that Martin being inaccessible is not natural. On the other hand, “cosy with Elias’s successor”?? He… didn’t raise the possibility that Martin had been coerced, or had no other choice since the assistants had to find ways to survive while Jon was simply not there?? It… could be, once again, Jon Biting Because Hurt – hurt that Martin, who was supposed to be a fixed point, is not there, and the bitterness turning into resentment. He was pretty insidiously vicious to Basira after Georgie’s departure in MAG122 (“… What about you? Disappointed to see me alive? … Basira?”), and it’s a usual Jon thing, so… But I’m really worried that the next time Jon and Martin finally see each other, it… will probably turn out to be a disaster. If Martin apologized to Jon in the trailer, it means he’s already doing something to feel ashamed of, and probably won’t want to have Jon anywhere close to it, or Jon misunderstanding what he’s aiming for. Or he could have changed, too, in these six months (;; when we left him in MAG120, he was very adamant about calling Peter ~Mr. Lukas~ to keep some distance between them, I really hope it hasn’t switched to “Peter” in the meantime. In a way, it would be more terrifying to picture Martin as not frightened of him anymore…?). And Jon sounds more peeved than worried about what Martin is doing, which makes me fear that he won’t be as patient with him as he was with Basira in this episode. There are so many ways it could go just awfully that… I don’t think that they will be ~nice~ to each other. (Hey!! Speaking of Hurting and How Things Could Get (More) Awful: it’s not like Idiot Jon could spit out that he heard about the crush in a moment where he would be blaming Martin for being fickle and switching loyalty so easily, is it!!)

- There is a question raised about who filed the statement, since it was given after Gertrude’s death:

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: […] No notes or follow-up here that I can see, just… [SIGHS] It looks like the statement came in just after Gertrude disappeared. Another gap. And whoever took it didn’t do any follow-up, just… filed it away. I may be the first person to actually read it, so…

It could have been Jon who filed it, while mindcontrolled? Or one of the assistants? Or a random staff member? But someone filed it after Gertrude’s death, and without following the usual procedure, so… there might be something.

- Ssssooo Annabelle (assuming it’s her but. That description. This “network of pale stitches that stretched over one side of her head” wasn’t made of surgical stitches, uh) has been doing her own stuff for the past seven years… lo… vely… *cries*

1°) Spiders seem to be adamantly polite. Mr. Spider had “IT IS POLITE TO KNOCK” (MAG080), Annabelle wanted to have “Come in!” where the ~threads~ (YUGHJBNYUGHB I HATE) would be posted (MAG123). THAT’S SO NICE FROM THE ENTITY THAT MINDCONTROLS PEOPLE…

2°) Thank you Nelja for picking up that the website’s name was “Chelicerae”, I wouldn’t have made the word out on my own, and I’m half admirative, half horrified that you immediately understood what it was. *screams*. (Either spiders are super-smooth, operating from the shadows, hiding their very existence, either they don’t give a funk and are just the unsubtlest things that ever unsubtled. Very urban/school-legend like, though, I got Jigoku shōjo and Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni vibes from the concept of the thing!)

3°) ;; The website was created and running during Gertrude’s last moments as the Archivist… and shortly before Jon took over, and we know that a few people from the website went to the Institute. So it feels like the spiders might have been using the opportunity given by the transition to sneak into it…?

- Ooooooookay, but anyway. The concept of the website sounded like a mirror of the Institute, inviting you to tell a “horrible event that had happened to you or to someone that you loved”, though, unlike the Institute, baiting people with a reward (getting someone killed), and with a bit more ruthless selection process than the Institute’s, where… fake made-up statements are just taken and won’t cause you any harm (the only risk being that your story will be put in the “Discredited” section in the Archives and receiving Jon’s glares). The “Chelicerae” on the other hand wins in both cases: if you give a fake story, you’ll apparently be the one getting consumed (“I’m sorry I lied”); if you give an actual one, the person you hate will get killed by them… annnnd as Jon put into perspective:

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: […] There’s a small supplemental document with it, though, that is a… bit alarming. I–it’s apparently a list of people whose names appear in the various pieces of text Mr Cox was pasting into the code. It’s unclear if they were meant to be… users or victims, but I cannot help but note that there seem to be the names of several statement-givers who found their way to the Institute, including noted arachnophobe Carlos Vittery. Perhaps a coincidence, just… people… shopping their traumatic event around… but I have to wonder… how much their actions were their own.

… some of the people with actual stories were sent to the Institute. The whole basis of the website sounds like ~a spider catching flies in its web~, it sounded like the point of it: getting stories? Was it The Web gifting the statements to the Institute/Archives, or was it way to make its way inside of it? In any case, yIIIIIPS… (I love/hate how there were so many concerning things in this episode and then… the confirmation that The Web has been doing a lot from the shadows for a while, while we discover it has been more active than what we could fear…)

- I’m so mad about the pun for this episode (“Web development”) rizefjkdsnfd and… given the weird parallelism between Annabelle’s website and the work at the Institute (and the fact that The Web most likely sent people to give their statements to the Magnus Institute), I can’t help but think back to MAG065… and… I’m going… to be… very mad… if the trick… was that… the “power” at work in that one… was actually a Web+Beholding collaboration of some sort … because. The title. Was “Binary”.

(Which worked because Internet + Tim&Jon arguing at the end, and Jon making the distinction between the Institute’s agents/victims… but if!! the thing!! in the statement!! was that it was actually about two powers willingly trying to work together… I had personally suspected either Beholding, either The Web, either The Spiral for that one, but given that you can also summarize it as “someone was forced to watch a terrifying video, which would pursue her until she agreed to watch it through to the end”… there is the trapping and the seeing something that you would rather avoid but that you have to watch even if it makes you suffer. And we have known for a while that spiders were spreading in the tunnels below the Archives, and the whole thing about the Assistants being trapped by the Institute has always felt more like a Web thing than a Beholding one to me… So… *squints*. Is the Web trying to force its way into the Institute and/or to parasite its ritual and/or to prevent it, or is it an actual willing and mutual collaboration?)

As usual: what does Elias know about it? He said he hadn’t bothered with Tim’s backstory but surely he would have known about Jon’s and his encounter with The Web as a child, before hiring him, he wouldn’t be this dumb? (… I’m honestly not sure. It was already super dumb and lazy to not bother with Tim’s when, come on, there were only three assistants initially, you… could have… bothered…) And even if he hadn’t known before offering the position to Jon, he would have known after MAG081 and Jon giving his own statement…? And he didn’t especially change his stance on Jon afterwards, it didn’t seem to bother him that Jon had been marked by The Web. So what the heeeeeck Elias, did you plan something in that regard or were you completely fooled too… He had insisted a lot on his free will (“it’s also very important to me, in a personal capacity, that you understand I’m answering you of my own free will. […] There’s so much of this place, of ourselves, twisted by forces far beyond us. I just wanted you to know– […] It’s very important to me you understand that no action I have taken has been controlled. I have done everything because I wished to.”) and told Jon “And your will is still your own, mostly.” back in MAG092 (that “MOSTLY” was… uh.)… which sounds more and more concerning know that we have confirmation that The Web has been lurking and scheming… What do you know about it, you terrible garbage man, you……………………

(I love how there are so many reasons to get anxious about everything??? Spiders, Lonely, Watcher’s Crown incoming, Martin doing… stuff, Melanie getting worse and worse, Jon’s whole status / what happened for him to be able to wake up?? So many elements laid around for things to get terrible pretty quickly??? Aaarrrgggg.)