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talesofafangirlwithadvr · 4 years ago

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SEPTEMBER PICKS

I don’t know about you, but this felt like a long month. I just looked back on my August post and that felt like another life. Putting together this list I couldn’t believe how much I was able to watch with the start of the semester. There was a lot of great ones, so let’s get to it!

Our usual spoiler warning....

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The Umbrella Academy

Umbrella Academy was a show that I started at the end of August. Many people I know were shocked I had never watched it and honestly I don’t know what took me so long. It was great and made even better by the second season getting released this summer. Now I had even more episodes to watch.

I love how chaotic the Hargreeves are. The things that happen to them would only happen to them (if you know what I mean). I also love how they always put family first. Despite everything that’s happened to them. They might all be a mess (and honestly who isn’t), but deep down they love each other. For the first season I thought it was great how they formatted the plot. These characters were new to us and they didn’t give us all the backstory. (When you think about it we still don’t know how Ben died.) It made me continue tuning in and figure it all out. I always sensed Vanya had powers and I know it’s shocking that I wasn’t spoiled coming into the show so late. I liked the irony of the family essentially creating the apocalypse themselves by locking Vanya up. Leonard aka Harold always felt shifty to me. I also liked the way they set up his story. Five and Klaus are definitely my favorites of the siblings. I love how Five is such an old man in a young kid’s body. The way they show his teleportation is really cool. The early scene in Run boy run, episode 2, is definitely one of my favorites from the whole show. The images paired with the song are chilling. Really nice job there. I love how Klaus’ power has been explored. We see more of it in season 2 and it’s something I wasn’t expecting. I love his and Ben’s relationship and I easily fell into the Klaus/Dave ship. We only got a slice of their backstory and I was already too invested. Season 2 took me a little bit to get into with the new setting, but after about two episodes I did. I really liked the plot and found it funny that there was yet another apocalypse. With that cliffhanger, I can’t wait to see where season three is headed.

Derry Girls Re-watch

2020 felt like a good time to re-visit my girls in Derry. I wanted something familiar and funny and this was perfect. I just love this show. It makes me so happy after watching it. I’m so thrilled that we’ll eventually get a third season (even if it will be the last). This watch through I am noticing how many songs are in each episode. (Might help I’ve been watching it with subtitles.) There are so many bops. Sister Michael is always my spirit animal. She is hilarious! I also feel Gerry gets funnier as the season goes on. When he’s making the sandwiches at the funeral I crack up EVERY.TIME. I also love the seriousness of the show too. There are SO MANY great parallels. In the season one finale when the historical bomb goes off and the girls are shown at school unaware and just dancing with Orla it is so pure. Then we see Da put his hand on Gerry’s shoulder. Wow. It shows how the generations were affected. I will suggest this show to everyone no matter what they like to watch. IT IS THAT GOOD! So, why aren’t you watching it? (Or Re-watching?)

Violetta Season 3

We can all rejoice! The third and finale season of Disney’s Violetta was released onto Disney Plus mid month. As someone who recently finished the second season, it was no surprise that I was ecstatic and wanted to watch it ASAP. This season is hands down the fastest one I have gotten invested into. Usually it takes me a bit to get into the new plot and characters. Because I’ve gotten so attached, I’m worried that means it will go downhill. I’ve heard mixed things about season 3. But let’s focus on the positives! There is so much music so far (both old and new songs). I am loving a lot of the new songs: En Gira and Armor En El Aire. I like how they started on tour and how they included actual footage from the real tour. Now they are in their last year in the studio (so I guess Seniors?). Lots of changes are already occurring including people leaving the Studio. Some are headed to Gregorio’s Art Rebel. I have to say that Gregorio has grown on me so much and now he is one of my favorite characters. I love his relationship with Diego and every time they call each other Papa and son. OMG it’s fantastic! So great to see them happy. This season we have a new teacher, Milton and I honestly can’t figure out what his deal is. Why is he so mean? I’m in episode 18 now and I am happy Leon and Vilu are still going strong. Obviously, they’re going to have issues (and they’ve already had minor ones), but it’s good to still see them in love. (It is adorable how they call each other Amor.) I also like that their “love triangles” seem to be misunderstandings right now. I’m in the VERY early stages of Fran and Diego and honestly I am so in love with them already. I’m going to fall hard for this ship. I know it. I am so tempted to continue watching spoilers, but I feel they’re not true spoilers if I can only find them in Spanish with no subtitles. ;)

Sunshine on Leith

My journey through watching George Mackay films continued with Sunshine on Leith. This was a great choice and I highly recommend. The main difficulty is how to access it. I couldn’t find it fully anywhere online or through a streaming service, so I wound up purchasing it through Amazon and getting it as a UK DVD. This means you need a Multi-region DVD player to watch it. (I know. It’s weird that not all DVDs are the same.) Of course, I have one of these. I am a TV/Movie junky and love a lot of British programs that are unavailable to purchase in the US. I got it a few years ago also on Amazon and it was pretty cheap. I haven’t had any issues with it, so I highly recommend.

The movie musical includes songs from the Proclaimers and takes place in Edinburgh. As someone who got to visit Edinburgh it was so cool to see the characters in places I’ve actually been. Before watching the film, the only Proclaimers song I knew was (of course) 500 miles. While watching I realized I actually new more and those I didn’t know I really liked. So, now I have a new playlist on my phone. Some are the original songs and others are from the movie (because I prefer their voices on some). What was cool to see was how not all the actors had the strongest voices, but could sing really well. I’m not sure if this was a purposeful choice or not. (I’d have to look more into it.) At times the plot felt a little rushed. Overall it was a fairly short musical, so that was probably why. Characters seemed to know each other really well really fast. So, if a lot of time would have passed I didn’t notice it. I can’t wait to re-watch the film. George Mackay in the cast brought me to watch it, but I stayed for a great story. (And of course I fell more in love with my crush on Mackay...No shock there :)

I Am Not Okay With This

Netflix’s I Am Not Okay With This had been in my queue since the beginning of this year, but I didn’t get the chance to watch it till now....when I heard it got cancelled. [Netflix hit us with this news about a month back when they released that shows that were originally picked up were now getting dropped for a second season. I Am Not Okay With This and The Society were on the chopping block.] To make the comment everyone else already has, I am Not Okay With This.

Despite knowing the show got cancelled, I still wanted to watch it. As I was watching Derry Girls, I wanted another show that was contemporary. I was very surprised to see how few episodes there were as well as how short they each were. It was a very quick watch because of this. While I expected this show to be contemporary with a touch of the supernatural, as Syd has powers, I was not expecting it to be so much more! This show blends so many genres and it does it so well. I honestly don’t know if I’ve seen it done before...at all. Which makes it hard to compare to some others. It feels like an Indy/Contemporary Coming of Age with both supernatural and thriller vibes. It even touches into horror-ish towards the end of the season. If only there was another season to see where it would go. And that ENDING! Is it bad I laughed? I think I did because I was not expecting it to go down like that AT ALL. Syd was a very dynamic main character and I really like how they had her explore who she truly is. Her and Stan’s friendship is one that I strive for. (Speaking of, where can I get a Stanley Barber? I need one in my life.)If you’re willing to be upset that the show got cancelled and there is no second season in the works, then I definitely suggest you just out I Am Not Okay With This.

Enola Holmes

Man, I feel like I’m giving a lot of support to Netflix this month, but there was a lot coming out/ a lot in my queue so it makes sense. Overall, I would give Enola a 7/10. I had a lot of hype for this one (as it was one of my highly anticipated watches for September), which I think hurt my overall reaction. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t entertaining and enjoyable. I loved the female empowerment message as it was very strong. Millie Bobby Brown was fantastic and so charismatic as Enola. I loved the feature of her talking to us as well as giving some really great facial expressions. I am a sucker for a retelling (of any kind, but especially Sherlock Holmes), so I loved the concept and how they included a younger sister to the Holmes family. I know there has been some conversation about how Sherlock was portrayed and that’s not really Sherlock, but I had no problem with this (and I’m not just saying that because he was played by the dashing Henry Cavill). Honestly, Mycroft’s character bothered me more. I get that there had to be a “villainous” character (well other than the one in the mystery), but he felt a little too over the top. The movie felt a little too long at times and I still don’t like the reason for why her mother left and the conclusion to that plot. It did set it up as if there could be a sequel and I would definitely watch it.

I would also like to add that I cannot get enough of the cast. Thanks to the YouTube interviews Netflix keeps uploading, I am falling more and more in love with this trio. They just seem like so much fun and I would love to be a part of this cast. They feel like siblings!

Harriet

Another one in my watch-list for September can be checked off! Harriet has been a film that I have been wanting to watch since it came to theaters last year, but I felt like it came and went pretty fast. Luckily HBO just released it in the past month or so, which made me to tape it. I am so happy I did.

WOW! Why didn’t I know about these facts about Harriet Tubman sooner? Why aren’t we taught these parts of history in school? I already knew she was amazing, and this just put her over the top. She did SO MUCH! It’s super impressive that she was a part of the Civil War and fought. Not only was this something difficult to do as a Black person, but also as a woman. I didn’t know about her visions, so that was something I Googled right when the film was finished. She never lost a freed slave in their journey to freedom. The list goes on and on how amazing Harriet Tubman was. This film showcases that so well and Cynthia Erivo is amazing as Harriet. (I have to start finding synonyms for ‘amazing’.) Her voice...WOW! Before watching the film, I have loved listening to “Stand Up,” but now afterwards it takes on a whole new meaning. Especially when you understand the direct quote from Harriet Tubman: “I go to prepare a place for you.” CHILLS! This film was nominated for multiple Academy Awards and it should have gotten one. WATCH HARRIET!

The Crimson Field

I’ve noticed that most of the programs I watch through Amazon Prime Video are mainly period dramas. So it was no shock that I would tune into The Crimson Field, a 7 episode series following the nurses and surgeons in France during WWI. As someone who is often more drawn to WWII, I am finding myself interested to watch more things involving the first World War (ie: 1917 and Tolkien). And this show was just what I needed. The pressure was on to watch it though, as it was only available through Prime Video till September 30th. Luckily with only 7 episodes this was an easy feat to accomplish, plus the first couple I marathoned because it was so good. As with any show it took a little bit to understand the setting and the cast, but I feel like I got to know them rather quickly, which made me invested to know what would happen next. I did find it strange that Prime Video only had access to the show for a month as it originally aired on BBC one and then PBS in 2015. The streaming service has programs older than that readily available to watch any time.

The beginning of the series was definitely stronger in my opinion. I like how they gave breadcrumbs into people’s backstories, such as the main character Kitty. There was a lot of mystery there when we first learned she had a kid and then of her scandalous marriage. There are still a few things that I don’t 100% understand, but that might be because they thought they were getting a season 2 (but they did not). And with the way they ended the show it definitely had the feel. I enjoyed Kitty and Tom’s romance, but more at the beginning than at the end. With Tom’s character, I feel like they set him up as the super nice guy while Miles was the player, but then as the show progressed they decided Tom should have more Mr. Darcy traits and I just thought that was out of his character. Either way, I did still like him (and Miles) and could listen to Richard Rankin’s Scottish accent ALL DAY! It wasn’t until I looked up his IMDB that I made the connection that he is on Outlander now. Can you see the resemblance to him now?

Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Candace Against the Universe

And don’t we all just feel against the universe sometimes?

I know my range for this month is all over the place, so is it that shocking that I would add a cartoon to the mix. Definitely not...especially because it’s Phineas and Ferb. One of my favorite Disney Channel shows. Watching this film feels like FOREVER ago because it was so early in the month. I’ve only watched it the one time (because I don’t think it needs a second watch...I guess that tells you something), so let’s see how much I remember...

It’s been a while since we’ve had a new installment of Phineas and Ferb grace our screens and it was great to see the citizens of Danville once again. In a way, it felt like no time had passed. (And for them I guess it hadn’t because it always seems like the same summer.) It just felt like the moment for Phineas and Ferb. While I was really happy to see our beloved characters again, the plot of this film felt familiar. Very Queen of Mars. Now thinking back, it’s hard for me to relay what happens and I think that’s a good way to describe this movie. It was very familiar, and I wish they would have done more with it. I can’t even remember any of the songs (and that’s often my favorite part). Of course, it had all the classics antics and jokes. I love how Perry was helping out the kids and had to be very secretive about it. I always love a good Candace and Venessa team up. Dr. Doof was hilarious as usual and his pairing with the kids (specifically Isabella) was a great time. My favorite part was when they got meta and did the reverse engineering of their animation and then we saw the creators in front of the story boards. That was really cool and unexpected. Overall, it felt like Phineas and Ferb and made life in quarantine a little bit easier.

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Well! That’s a wrap. These were some of my favorite picks to talk about (even if it took me longer than usual). I hope you watched some great stuff last month and continue to find new picks for October!

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softgrungeprophet · 5 years ago

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have now read (almost) all of wyatt wingfoot’s actual comic appearances, can say with great confidence: a lot of them are pretty bad

only one was so bad i stopped reading after like, one issue (that was earth X, an alternate timeline) though to be fair i also have not even bothered to read the most recent issue of slott’s run because that’s also bad, but i know generally what happens and my verdict is: it sucks

anyway my personally most-enjoyed wyatt appearances in chronological order:

-OG meet-cute in 1966 aka Fantastic Four #50 thru #61 which includes their first meeting, and wyatt’s adventure with johnny in africa... this is also the first appearance of black panther i think. it’s definitely dated but surprisingly tame compared to the 70s-80s comics and there are some real good moments... wyatt is immediately ready to throw the fuck down for johnny and he is tall and handsome.

Prefacing this with: I’m white, but I wanna point out some shit before I actually continue the list.

Here i have to note that anything from 1970-2000 has a 50/50 chance of coloring wyatt real badly, even in the digital recolors, with only a few exceptions. The worst offender is in the early 90s in Sensational She-Hulk but that is NOT on my list because it’s bad. Most of the comics on this list, especially as we get into later and better-done comics, do not have red skin because there seems to be a correlation between bad art and bad story, but there are a few sprinkled in here with questionable pink-to-red coloring choices, particularly around the issue 200-somethings of Fantastic Four, and in general around the 70s and 80s.

I also wanna add here that around 1973, after stan lee had stopped writing fantastic four, after repeated statements to do with wyatt’s Comanche heritage (aka a real tribe in OK), gerry conway introduced “Keewazi,” a completely fake made-up tribe which then completely supplanted all but a few mentions of wyatt being Comanche (that being like, a brief comment implying his dead ancestors were comanche but that he is “keewazi”) with only one exception for an errant “Konohoti” (also made-up and in a bad comic that i won’t be recommending anyway) Said conway comic is not on my recommended list, either, but it has a notable line in which wyatt says he feels like he’s known johnny since before he ever met him, which i think about constantly...

Also, (and this is from me googling things to get better understandings of IRL stuff, as i read my way through f4 comics, so it’s by no means an expert’s words and i am still just a white person trying to get context) there are many mentions of Wyatt being on the reservation, of his family living on the reservation, teaching on the reservation, the tribe’s land being taken by oil companies, etc. but Oklahoma does not have reservations the way other states do and has not for decades. It also sounds like Wyatt becoming chief based only on being the previous chief’s grandson is pretty unlikely, but that’s a thing in the comics too.

There are a lot of inaccuracies and stereotypes in almost all of Wyatt’s appearances that are pretty blatant even to white-ass people like me, but some are better about this than others, for sure. So, keep that in mind even with the ones I list as enjoyable.

OKAY

the rest of the list

i’m just kinda doing a semi chrono order rather than “best to worst” order

-there’s SOME stuff from Fantastic Four #269 thru #280 that i liked but i really could not tell you specific issues and the way wyatt and jen meet is really not well done. i remember kinda liking the arc about central city being transported to the future, in which wyatt has a pretty brief appearance... but overall I just really don’t like John Byrne’s writing so ehh can’t really recommend but some of it’s like, fine

-Marvel Fanfare (1982) #37 [B Story] is pretty cute and brief. involves a double date between reed/sue and jen/wyatt with johnny as the fifth wheel, and also time travel. and arm wrestling. It’s not heavy on Wyatt but it’s cute in general.

-Marvel Graphic Novel #18 (the Sensational She-Hulk) is like............. i’m VERY torn on this. i think overall it has a lot of fun elements but as always with john byrne there’s plenty of bad mixed in, both in terms of sexualizing shulkie, byrne thinking he’s funnier than he actually is, and a bad scene w/ wyatt but it has some really cute moments too. it’s a real mixed bag, man. the infamous “she-hulk carries wyatt under her arm” scene is from this one... long and short is “shield captures she-hulk and wyatt, and they bust out.” Less racist than wyatt’s appearances in the following sensational she-hulk run john byrne did after this, which is NOT SAYING A LOT because wyatt’s appearances in that comic run were pretty fucking offensive. if you like jenwyatt i guess read this, like, it’s fine, but... eh...

-She-Hulk: Ceremony (only 2 jumbo issues long) is another one I’m veeeerrryyyy torn on but RIGHT off the bat i will say it is worth more than the weight of all john byrne’s wyatt scenes combined. The pacing is kind of really weird, it’s got a lot of odd mystical native stereotypes in it... but it’s got really nice art though and mcduffie gives wyatt i think some of the most depth/nuance of any of these comics... he and jen are both equally important and treated as complex characters from the very first page to the very last... it’s one of those comics where i can’t say, “read it despite its flaws” because I just... don’t know. and it’s a comic which has had almost no impact on the works that followed, but at the same time it does have some really nice stuff for both jen and wyatt’s characters. this is the one where wyatt and jen almost get married and wyatt almost goes to law school. anyway I personally really liked it despite its flaws and it seems more researched than some other things but it’s definitely still lacking in some of its approach to indigenous stuff. dwayne mcduffie being black i think does give it a little something that it would otherwise lack, if it had been written by a white dude like all the other things.

-Marvel Graphic Novel #62 (Ka-zar: Guns of the Savage Land) based on the synopsis I read, I expected this to be bad but it was actually alright? I liked the art, wyatt’s handsome... BUT there’s a lot of weird condescending paternalism to it, wrt the indigenous groups and how they’re depicted, and i think that’s a pretty big, glaring flaw along with some of the usual caveats that come with anything relating to the savage land (including, you know, the name itself), but the rest of it is not half bad. ka-zar’s a jackass though. it’s one of the MANY stories wyatt appears in which feature an oil company as the bad guys (Roxxon in this case) but it’s one of the only ones that’s actually halfway decent.

-Marvel Super-Heroes vol 2 #5 (Treasure) short and sweet, features a sea monster, jen and wyatt on a little getaway together, and wyatt wearing heart-patterned swim trunks. almost forgot this one cause it’s easy to miss, but it’s really cute.

-Fantastic Four #394 was okay if i recall. this is when wyatt, johnny, jen, and some others go out to an archaeology dig and lyja stalks johnny. johnny telling wyatt he ought to bottle his charm and sell it... is good. everything with lyja... less good. jen, wyatt and johnny palling around... great. everything with lyja.... not great. a real mixed bag for me.

-Strange Tales vol 3 #1 i did not hate. if i remember correctly it has the same artist as guns of the savage land. it’s about the power of storytelling. i enjoyed this in particular because it shows wyatt’s grandfather as like... a human with interests beyond just being a Wise Old Man--he reads monster magazines! i liked that a lot. it’s still kinda... iffy in spots, especially with doctor strange involved, but it was still fun and i like when wyatt and his family get treated like human beings.

-Fantastic Force was actually pretty fun, I think. Wyatt is only in issues #12-16 so that’s all I bothered to read but it has this very amusing moment of wyatt saying how it’s unfortunate his and jen’s relationship wasn’t meant to work out but he treasures her friendship... while holding her hand after a date. starting on issue 12 there was some context missing but i didn’t really... care.... my reading style is plowing through random issues without ever reading the context and then going: idk what’s going on

-Fantastic Four vol 2 Listen. I know this comic is not “good” but I liked it and that’s what matters here. This is Franklin’s pocket dimension of the heroes reborn alternate universe... it’s definitely flawed, and i think it tries to cram a lot in for the sake of including classic characters, but i honestly really enjoyed it a lot and wyatt is not insignificant, though he’s not like, majorly important either. reading order gets a little fucking weird around issue 12 at which point you gotta also read issue 12 of the heroes reborn versions of avengers, iron man, and captain america. there are reading guides though, thank god. it’s fun, it’s a different take on the four that nonetheless has lots of small nods to the classic comics... a lot of people think it’s bad and like. i get why. but i think it was enjoyable and engaging minus the parts where i was forced to read avengers comics. wyatt’s actually only in issues 4-6 but i wound up starting from the beginning and reading the whole thing except the final issue cause that continued some new plot i didn’t care about from some other comic--it really breaks up in the end there lmao.... Relatedly, i don’t think heroes reborn: ashema is much worth the read; it’s like, fine, but wyatt’s five second appearance is kind of random and features tomazooma which means i immediately dislike it. like CONCEPTUALLY, wyatt piloting a mech is great. but... not that mech.

-Fantastic Four: The End. this comic... is... weird? it’s fine? i don’t know, i don’t think i’d go out of my way to recommend it but at the same time i didn’t hate it? so i’ll include it here. it’s an alternate future featuring some wild robo doom as the villain. wyatt runs an asteroid mining company for some reason. peter has a goatee. ben has like three kids with alicia. johnny rides the silver surfer’s board. it was... definitely interesting. and one of the comics in which sue has short hair, which is always a bonus for me.

-She-Hulks: (yes, with the plural) It’s a mini. I REALLY liked this. wyatt’s in like, two issues but I genuinely recommend the whole thing (it’s only 4 issues total) I really liked this comic, I thought it was a lot of fun and wyatt and jen’s interactions were really sweet. My biggest crits are that the author falls into the same “failing to write teenage girls” pitfalls as many, many marvel writers, and that stegman draws wyatt literally an entire foot too short. but i prefer this old stegman art vastly to his grungy current art. INTERESTING NOTE HERE is that wyatt’s appearances in this comic were published riiight around the same time johnny straight-up died in hickman’s fantastic four run, which is honestly fascinating to contemplate and also extra heartbreaking that i never got to see how wyatt found out considering he was almost definitely in the city when it happened. anyway. good, bittersweet as all hell on the she-hulk front, really enjoyable for me. i did not bother to read any of the hulk comics preceding it for context and i don’t think you need to, to understand it.

-Captain America Corps --This comic is.... something. wyatt is only in the last two issues in a minor role but the whole series is again only 5 issues and I honestly really enjoyed it? Though I think it tripped over itself in a few places. It involves time travel, captain america, an alternate 21st century which would be heavy-handed if it weren’t for trump. I think it gets its message a little tangled up in parts, especially near the end with the femazon whatever bullshit (so close to talking about white women’s privileges), but overall it was a fun little AU mini-series, with some flaws. it also implies that wyatt goes on to become the president which is the funniest thing i’ve ever read. he would hate that so much, man

-FF vol 2. not fantastic four. FF. just the initials. WITH A CAVEAT. Okay. Wyatt is in issues #3-4, 8, and 16. This one is a tough one, though. This series. I like the art mostly. I like Wyatt’s scenes (tho i will pick a bone with mr fraction about wyatt’s supposed inability to pronounce french or know what to order at a french restaurant when he is multilingual and has gone to several french restaurants before) ANYWAY. Wyatt is really great in these appearances I think, charming, handsome, etc. The issues focusing on the kids, on interpersonal relationships, etc... i really like. But the rest. I do not like at all. The entire doom plot, I hated. Issue 16? Skip to the barbecue on the moon. I mean it. The bulk of issue 16 is a vastly uncomfortable, drawn-out fight scene between ant-man and doctor doom that just made me feel gross to read and just happens to be one of the only comics Victor has ever spoken Romani. So that’s... not great. The plot as a whole--I did not like it, especially not the stuff written by Allred, and I cannot recommend it unless you fucking hate doctor doom and want to watch him get beaten up for like literally 10 pages. That being said... again, the stuff with the kids? with bentley, and the moloids, and tong coming out, and the stuff with she-hulk and wyatt? I really really liked, and I thought was really sweet and fun. Oh also Wyatt looking at old man johnny and just knowing it’s him? chef kiss. So. definitely just. skip around. It’s a REAL mixed bag but there is some good stuff in there amidst the like...burnt peanuts.

-She-Hulk volume 3: wyatt is only in #5-6 and #12, really, with brief shots of his photo in some earlier issues BUT. I read the whole thing. It’s 12 issues total, and I really enjoyed it. The plot you think gets dropped does not get dropped, wyatt punches some demons in the face in the background, patsy is there... I really liked it. The art is a bit all over the place, and is not for everyone--it features Javier Pulido’s work for the majority, and I honestly... really like his work for its style and expressiveness but it REALLY is not for everyone, visually. Obviously Kevin Wada’s covers are gorgeous. The other artist who I forget the name of draws wyatt like... nigh unrecognizably, it’s really weird, and I don’t like his work as much but he does have some good spreads here and there. Colors are fantastic throughout. Again, really liked it. A little iffy on the secretary with the monkey.

-Fantastic Four vol 5 #11-12. These are the issues in which Wyatt gets shot by “hawkeye” and he and spidey hold an intervention for Johnny. I actually started with issue... 9 I think to just read the whole story, and I did enjoy that, though I will pick a fight over the idea that wyatt is a womanizer and would just toy with sharon who prior to this there was never any evidence they were romantically involved ANYWAY. I liked it. I felt feelings about Wyatt and Johnny, as well as the rest of the family. It switches to legacy numbering at one point and goes into:

-Fantastic Four #643-645 which is the rest of the story. I THINK 9-12 + 642-645 is everything.... Either way, I liked it a lot despite the fact that I’m really not a fan of Jesus Aburtov’s color work. Features the Heroes Reborn versions of the Avengers but like, empty, which was a fun nod.

-Hulk vol 4 #11 okay. wyatt’s not actually in this aside from jen reminiscing about her love life and showing like, two flashback panels of him. but. i really liked it a lot and i read the whole run based on the One (1) issue containing those panels. mariko tamaki has a great sense of humor and i found her fourth wall breaking to be actually funny sometimes instead of, like byrne’s, nigh intolerable. she also does some really solid character work for jen (which was later, of course, mangled by the avengers writers 🙄) the following she hulk series is a little less solid but i can imagine it was rushed because of the avengers comic, so, really, i’ll just blame everything on the avengers.

don’t read dan slott’s f4. i’ve read bad comics. i’ve read bad f4 comics. i’ve read bad wyatts. his run pings all of these. how do you write wyatt wingfoot out of character?! ask dan slott. oh, except #5′s bachelor party issue which I do think is fun and has wyatt in the background in a snazzy red tuxedo. #5 is actually my favorite issue of the whole run, which, to be fair, is not saying much. the first like, 2 issues and then issue 5 are really the most solid in there, and it just goes downhill from there.

cool.

anyway.

those are the comics featuring wyatt that i’ve enjoyed the most and coincidentally also the fantastic four and she-hulk comics i’ve read that i’ve enjoyed the most because the venn diagram of “fantastic four comics i have read” and “comics including wyatt wingfoot in some capacity” is a circle.

#nadia reads comics #this post is a bit of a long one but if you are curious...#comics #wyatt wingfoot

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soveryanon · 6 years ago

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Reviewing time for MAG132 /o/

- I can believe that we finally got the explanation of Daisy’s comments about her dreams and about Jon showing off a new shirt, but I can’t believe that it was something so logical RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSES ALL ALONG, arceusdamnit………………… I had wondered for so long! Was it that Daisy was developing dark vision? Was it that Daisy was able to smell blood from somewhere (Jon) and assumed it was because of the shirt? Was it Daisy’s attempt at small talk? But damnit! Damnit!!

(MAG132) DAISY: Didn’t think it was real. Not really… Just my mind putting you there, because I h–hated you but… no. One night, you turn up in a new shirt. Didn’t fit you. Not your style. I didn’t think much of it, it was just a d–, a dream. Then you come back from the States and… guess what you’re wearing. ARCHIVIST: Oh… DAISY: Realised what was happening then.

(MAG112) BASIRA: I’m sorry, I just… I worry. DAISY: Worry about yourself. I’m fine. BASIRA: Are you sure? ‘Cause you look… [PAUSE] Are you sleeping? DAISY: Yeah. [PAUSE] Do you still have the dreams? BASIRA: Um, no? Not really. Not since we joined up here, I don’t think. You? DAISY: Yeah. BASIRA: They’re getting worse? DAISY: No, not, it’s just– … Doesn’t matter.

^That scene took place after she had gone to get Jon at the airport, come to get Basira because Jon wanted to talk to everyone (but Basira wasn’t done with her recording), and come back a second time to announce that Jon had left. So… Jon was probably wearing that shirt when she picked him up, hence her question to Basira about the dreams and the fact she interrupted herself – since Basira wasn’t having hers anymore, she couldn’t confirm or infirm?

(MAG114) DAISY: How long have you had that shirt? BASIRA: Um… ARCHIVIST: What? DAISY: That shirt. You get it in China? ARCHIVIST: Uh, A–America, I–I had to… borrow it, there was… there was blood. DAISY: Sure. BASIRA: Why? DAISY: Hmm.

… and as much as MAG112 and (at least the beginning of) MAG113 explicitly take place in a very short timeframe (Daisy explaining that the group is going to Gertrude’s storage unit / the group being in Gertrude’s storage unit), MAG114 is veryyyy unlikely to have taken place during the same day (since Jon had had the time to notice evidence of Tim’s comings-and-goings in the Archives from one day to another) and… Jon was wearing the shirt in MAG114. Likely “again”. Meaning: either he hadn’t changed since he came back from America (but other characters would have commented on that, I think), either he… consciously chose to wear a shirt that didn’t fit him, that wasn’t his style, multiple times afterwards, when he had choices about what to wear. Jon. J o n. (Given that Jon mentioned blood on his other clothes, that means that YEP, it probably was Max Mustermann’s blood, meaning it was when he was with Trevor&Julia. I don’t know which option is funnier: that he borrowed it from Julia, or from Trevor. Both are Excellent. Also, it’s not “borrow” if you’re not planning to give it back so were/are you planning to give it back, Jon. (He thought that Julia&Trevor were going to kill him if they noticed that he had removed Gerry’s page from the book before he managed to fly the heck out of America, and Jonathan “God, do I– Do I miss being chased?” Sims was planning to GIVE THE SHIRT BACK ANYWAY……))

- A bit like the end of MAG078, Jon displayed… various uses of the tapes? I always found interesting how tapes and tapes recorders have slowly and gradually been used in more elaborated settings, recordings getting concatenated or framing another one; here, we got a varied display of that:

(MAG132) [CLICK–] ARCHIVIST: [BREATHES] [WHISPERS:] … Alright. [TURNS ON ANOTHER TAPE PLAYER] DAISY’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG061: “It was a coffin. An old wooden coffin. Rough, unvarnished. I could see splinters where the nails had been hammered in badly. Wrapped all around it was a thick metal chain, ending in a heavy padlock. That weird moaning was coming from inside it. It was the only sound that cut through pounding rain.” [STOPS TAPE, EJECTS IT AND BOXES IT] [LOADS A SECOND TAPE] [CLICKS ON] ARCHIVIST: [INHALES] Hello, Melanie. […] I have her voice. I think that should be enough to find her, and I’m leaving my– … I’ll leave it with the tape. […] I’m not risking anyone else. And I know– … I–I think… I can get her out. [CLICK OFF THE SECOND TAPE RECORDER.] Right. You’re coming with me! [SHORT CHUCKLE] Let’s do this one properly.

Jon had his usual tape recorder (acknowledged, though he might not have been the one to activate it), and he used another one to replay Daisy’s statement from MAG061 describing the coffin, ejected it to keep it with him; then put in another tape to record himself in order to give a message to Melanie (and potentially Basira) to leave that tape behind him with his rib; and he took Daisy’s tape and his first tape recorder with him into the coffin.

- Which raises the obvious question: did Jon’s rib (MAG131: “Something I won’t miss.” J O N…) work as an anchor? He was feeling the rib less and less as he walked deeper in, he explicitly said that he was leaving it ~with a tape~, and the tape recorders were acting out at the end:

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: […] and I’m leaving my– … I’ll leave it with the tape. I should be able to find my way back to it… I think. […] I won’t… die of anything… down here… Not ever. Not if I… can’t find my way out. When I first came down, I could feel it, the, the part of myself I left outside, but… but it’s been getting… fainter, and now… I’m trying not to think about it. Don’t… don’t want to stretch my mind to try and see… in case it’s not there at all. I can’t afford to think about it. Not now. […] ARCHIVIST: It’s fine, I just… I just need to… to find it. DAISY: What? ARCHIVIST: Come on… Come on, where I… DAISY: Jon? ARCHIVIST: … Come on… [STATIC] [SHAKY BREATHING] […] [CLICK–] [STATIC RISING] ARCHIVIST: D–Daisy… DAISY: Uh, I’m, I’m here. ARCHIVIST: I can… I–It… it’s closer. DAISY: What is? ARCHIVIST: M–my, my… my anchor? My… A–a rib, I can f–, I can fee– … I know the way! [DIGGING SOUNDS] DAISY: Wh–what? H–how– ARCHIVIST: I don’t… It’s like… My mindlink is… it’s stronger…

So what was his anchor in the end? Was it still the rib, but the tape recorders made the connection stronger and acted a bit like a sonar or an amplifier? Was it the concept of statements? Recordings Jon did himself? Tape recorders in themselves? And who willed them there: was it Beholding’s doing (not wanting to lose its current Archivist forever now that he had Experienced The Buried like a good boy)? Was it Basira’s doing? (But she wasn’t in the office when Jon came out and was already screaming at him, so I got the impression that she might have just come back and Melanie had told her about Jon’s decision and/or had made her listen to Jon’s tape?) Was it Peter’s, Martin’s, someone else? Since it had sent MAG130’s tape for Jon: was it The Web’s?

(On this, personal mental picture/synaesthesia time, and I could be off, right? But when we have statements framing other statements, or voices from different statements overlapping… I can’t help but represent it to myself as a “web of voice(s)”? A transposition in audio format of what would visually be a cobweb, with threads stretching, reaching, intertwining to form a net?)

I have no idea what happened at the end, with all the recorders welcoming Jon back: it was a “WHAT” moment and, at the same time, almost felt like a logical escalation after what Jon did at the beginning of the episode. I’m 99% sure that I hear this sentence in the brouhaha:

(MAG071) KAROLINA GÓRKA: I kept my eyes shut and tried to relax, as the sound of twisting metal filled my ears.

(I’m way less confident about it, but I thiiink I might have recognized Jon’s and Gertrude’s voices in the mix?)

So: were they random tapes? Were they statements related to The Buried? Were they live-statements? … is there a chance that Jon could get a hold of the tapes he (afawk for now) still hasn’t accessed, from when he was out for The Unknowing/in his coma – MAG118, MAG120, MAG121? It could be a good time for MAG120’s since… since Jon finally acknowledged to someone that he is aware of his dreams, aware that he has been watching people who gave their statements to him in them. MAG120 wouldn’t add a lot except learning that Elias knows about them. And… it also contains the Martin-Peter exchange, though I wonder whether Peter actually gets recorded on tape? Jon, who listens “to all the tapes”, never commented about Peter’s visits to the Institute in MAG100 and MAG108. I wonder if Peter might be able to escape the recordings (and unless we hear him “live”… yeah, no, someone listening to a tape afterwards would only hear static and a blank void when he supposedly talks.)

- Congraaaatulaaaationnnns on getting your Buried scar, Jon!!

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: Feels like every inch costs me another scrape, or bruise. I’d hoped I was beyond that, but apparently not. [STRAINED WHIMPERS]

Looks like he can only get injuries from Spooks, and not “standard” ones (or just not injure himself)? … though now, I wonder if I wasn’t wrong to focus on the actual scars/injuries (they’re so shiny! they’re leaving souvenirs on Jon’s body!) when they might actually be… just collateral damage, and not the point. I hate how I always end up having to refer to Elias, but:

(MAG092) ELIAS: It is your job to chronicle these things, to experience them, whether first-hand or through the eyes of others. To simply be told, well…

Experiencing and getting injured seem to often go hand-in-hand in Jon’s case but, with the coffin expedition, the moment where Jon… learned something wasn’t actually through the scars, at all. It was when he understood what it meant to be inside the coffin, what it meant to be trapped by The Buried:

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: … Come on… [STATIC] [SHAKY BREATHING] DAISY: Jon? ARCHIVIST: I know… DAISY: Th–the way out? ARCHIVIST: No… I know where we are! There isn’t no out, not here. This is… this is forever deep below creation. Where the weight of existence bears down… This is The Buried, and we are alive… There isn’t even an up. … Oh god… What have I done! What have I done…

There was this moment of sudden understanding where he sounded… distant and lost in himself? A bit more than during regular drop-of-water-sipping-through-the-door, I felt. It put me in mind of his sudden moment of Understanding Nikola’s true nature in MAG119:

(MAG119) ARCHIVIST: … I see you. NIKOLA: Do you, now? ARCHIVIST: Yes… Yes, I s… I see the sad clown, b–bitter and hateful. I see him finding his way into a ci–circus where nobody knew him. I see him torn apart, becoming the mask, remade by a… a cruel ringmaster. Sometimes a doll, sometimes a mannequin, always hiding in somebody else’s skin. Somebody else’s name. NIKOLA: Not always, and it’s far too late for any of that. Nothing you see can help you.

And before Breekon, Jon had never received the statement of a Stranger-related avatar, and he had never received one from a Buried avatar either (though Karolina Górka… might have been a weird case). So, tl;dr maybe the scars weren’t the point all along, but it was really… the Experience of the Fear through an avatar giving him their own perception of their relationship to their god, or Jon himself having to understand the true nature of a Fear. Cataloguing it, as Jane had denounced:

(MAG032, Jane Prentiss) “There is no right word because for all your Institute and ignorance may laud the power of the word, it cannot even stretch to fully capture what I feel in my bones. What possible recourse could there be for me in your books and files and libraries except more useless ink and dying letters? 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.”

So, actualizing the list… Jon is still missing The Lonely (sob) and The Dark – and didn’t get a statement from a Web avatar either, though he… experienced that one a bit when he was a kid and is currently experiencing it with The Web pulling strings (MAG121, Oliver Banks: “But… you know better than anyone how the spiders can get into your head.”)

… ;; I wonder, when The Web will reveal itself… how many of Jon’s actions/~decisions~ will turn out to have been nudges and threads pulled to get him where The Web needed him to be? Because… Jon had sounded very uncomfortable and vulnerable when he brushed over the notion (MAG123: “Perhaps a coincidence, just… people… shopping their traumatic event around… but I have to wonder… how much their actions were their own.”); how deeply would you fear that every new action is actually due to someone puppeteering you, if you learned that so many of the previous ones had not been of your own independent volition…?

(Gratuitous tangent, since Jon ~completing the set of Fears~ is also… a reminder that we’re assuming that the repartition into Fourteen Fear is carved into stone, when it isn’t? (Well. It is. In the tunnels. But that’s not the point.) It’s an arbitrary division suggested by Smirke; it could be changed objectively, since in the same way that The Flesh emerged recently, there might be a New Emergence which Adelard Dekker was investigating as reported in MAG113, but in the first place… we know that the division is arbitrary and that lines can get blurry here and there? Meaning, the number of injuries/experiences that Jon is getting doesn’t have to be… completing the list of Fourteen to be valid, since there is an infinity of shades in the first place? Though curiously, we’ve seen Avatars mostly following this division; sometimes collaborating, sometimes rejecting, but mostly having their own things, their own rituals, etc., as if the division was… objectively accurate. But then: the Avatars we met are humans who got powers. They probably decided where they belong on the spectrum? I do wonder if Smirke’s division mightn’t have been a way to ensure that the Fears would be competing against each other for a long while, kind of creating an “us vs. them” dynamic in order to prevent big collaborations. There are a few canonical opposites (Gerry mentioned the Vast vs. Buried, Elias presented The Stranger as antithetical to The Eye), but I once again wonder about the diagram and whether Jon getting injuries/experiences from here and there really is filling in a stamps collection with clear spots for each, or just… well. The more diversity, the more experiences, the better?)

- I feel incredibly stupid: I had not realized that ~that song~ in the background was… The Coffin’s Song. We could hear it distinctly in MAG101 (when Jon was held captive) and I had assumed it was a Stranger thing (generic spooky atmosphere in the Wax Museum). Nop! It was indeed the coffin’s song mentioned since MAG002, answering to the rain!

… Which means it was raining outside of the Institute in this episode? So if Basira is coming back just now, she’s probably drenched, and Daisy and Jon are coming out covered in dust and mud and dirt, and who will clean the Archives now, you hooligans!!

- I’M ALSO SO MAD… The fact that The Hunt couldn’t reach Daisy inside of the coffin should have been expected!!! I was fearing so much that she had gone worse, even more feral than how we had left her in MAG119, but!!

(MAG128, Breekon) “And so we took the casket, a hungry thing of the Earth, a crushing, choking tomb that will not let you die because it is too much what it is for Death to find you there, within its mocking shape – buried alive. […] No face to Change in the cold, dark earth, and no Eye to fool, where it is now.”

No End (which Jon also confirmed in MAG132: “I am… very thirsty. But I know I won’t die of it. I won’t… die of anything… down here… Not ever. Not if I… can’t find my way out.”), no Stranger, no Eye; the other powers can’t reach anyone inside! And *buries face into hand* I LOVE DAISY… I LOVE DAISY SO MUCH, GDI

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: Sorry. Obviously. No, I just meant… Y–you sound… okay. DAISY: … Do I? ARCHIVIST: I thought you might have… been… taken over. By The Hunt. DAISY: What? ARCHIVIST: Th–the Hunt. You’re a Hunter. DAISY: Yeah… Uh, guess I was, but… not here… ARCHIVIST: No? DAISY: No. I, I can’t… feel my… blood. I could always feel it, but it can’t… can’t reach me, here… […] I don’t know what I’ll be ou–outside. The… The Hunt, it c–, it can’t reach me here. I’m sc–scared, but… Mm–mm… But I… I feel more, feel more m–me than I have for years. Maybe all my life… The, The Hunt was me, b–but I don’t, I don’t think I liked it. I think it just made me… need… it… I hurt… a l–lot of people… and some who… who I shouldn’t have. Did you ever hear the, the story Elias told me? About what I did. How I am… He, he didn’t get a detail wrong. The Hunt… Hunger was in me all my life. Telling me who to chase, how to hurt them. I never needed to think… who I was outside of that. But down here, where I… I can’t hear the… blood anymore, I d–, I don’t… I don’t know who I am without, without the chase… I just know… that I… I don’t like who I was back outside. I don’t want to be her again. I want… to be… better…

Fay Roberts was f a n t a s t i c, they brought me heartbreak and love at each sentence with that… rawness? Openness? Vulnerability without falling into sheer despair? Once again, I’m ;; having so many feelings over the way The Magnus Archives manages to remind you that yes, x and y characters are their own persons, with their own stories, their own agendas, their own struggles, their own points of views, their own fears. For a while, the discordance between cordial, expected reactions and Daisy being so straightforward in her violence was funny, but I hoped that we could get her own words at some point, and we did, and we got so much more than that!! It was so intense? I really wasn’t expecting to hear so much self-awareness from Daisy? To hear what might be one of the Messages of the series coming from her mouth – “I want to be better”: WHO, amongst our characters, had specifically enunciated something so simple yet so powerful? And it’s DAISY who diiiiiid T_____T

I was horrified that she was stuck in the coffin, and she indeed had a terrible time inside of it, and at the same time… it allowed her to find herself again, outside of the spooky influences? It forced her to take a step back and think about who she was? She said that The Hunt had been most of her life – is that how she survived Calvin Benchley’s attack, back when she was a kid? I love that, in the same way that Melanie told Jon that the bullet had stayed in her leg because she wanted it, it sounds a bit like… Daisy staying trapped in the coffin was a bit of her own doing, too, since she was fearing who she would be outside of it? Who she could become again, while she finally had clarity inside the coffin? And it seems like finding the way out was totally on Jon, but I get the feeling that his telling her that she could still make a choice… mattered a bit, and allowed her to indeed follow him?

I’m curious about how Daisy will handle being back on the surface and possibly hearing the call of The Hunt again. I do hope that, yes, even if she struggles, she’ll be able to make something out of the experience… Basira had hinted that there was more to Daisy than the impression people got from her:

(MAG106) BASIRA: I always used to put on podcasts when I was driving around. You know, when I wasn’t on duty. I mean, when Daisy didn’t need the radio. MELANIE: I literally cannot picture Daisy listening to the radio. BASIRA: The Archers. MELANIE: No?! BASIRA: Hand of God. MELANIE: I, I actually do not believe you. BASIRA: She never missed an episode.

And I’m curious about this Daisy, too! The “Daisy” who chose this nickname because she was told that her scar looked like one and “because it sounds so gentle”, the Daisy who listened to the radio and appealed to Basira, the Daisy who thought that she was deserving of this hell after what she had done, the Daisy who stuttered to Jon, over and over again when they were getting crushed, that she was “sorry”…

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: And if we get out… DAISY: But we can’t “get out”. ARCHIVIST: [CRIES OF PAIN] DAISY: [CRIES OF PAIN] I’m, I’m sorry… I’m sorry Jon… I’m sorry… [CLICK.]

;____; I’m not even able to tell why she was apologizing there? For confessing that she had wanted to kill Jon after The Unknowing? Because she felt responsible that Jon had gone into the coffin to retrieve her, and was now stuck with her and discovering this perpetual torture too? ;___; Daisy…

- “I thought, thought I’d… I’d ne–never see the s-sky again, never… never s–see Basira…” Hi, hello, I just got brutally murdered by a pipe of Daisy->Basira feelings all over again.

(BASIRA IS HER SKY!!! In the domain of The Buried, Basira was her sky!)

- Relatedly: gODS the voicework this episode!! The stuttering, the words getting stuck in Jon’s and Daisy’s throats, having trouble making their way out!! The pain they seemed to cause? It was so good!!!

- And count on Jon to accidentally lighten up the mood with self-aware comments/mood whiplash/jokes in the wrong situation:

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: […] But I know what I’m doing; this time, I do. Huh, I hope. […] I should be able to find my way back to it… I think. Wish me luck…! … Although I suppose if you’re hearing this, then I… I didn’t have any. I don’t know. […] ARCHIVIST: Are you… Are you okay? DAISY: No. ARCHIVIST: Sorry. Obviously. No, I just meant… Y–you sound… okay. […] DAISY: […] Where are we? ARCHIVIST: The coffin. We’re in the coffin. I–It leads to… Well, it’s got a lot of names. Choke. The Buried. Too-close-I-cannot-breathe. DAISY: [CHUCKLES] Yeah, yeah… sounds, sounds right. […] ARCHIVIST: Come on. Let’s get you out of here. DAISY: Can’t… can’t move… Even if I, if I could… there is no… way out… ARCHIVIST: It’s okay… I’ve… I’ve got a plan. DAISY: I–is this like all your other plans? […] ARCHIVIST: Okay, hum… What do you want to talk about? DAISY: Don’t, I–I don’t care, I… I… I just, I just want someone to hear me. ARCHIVIST: I’m not going anywhere! DAISY: [NERVOUS BROKEN CHUCKLE]

He even managed to make Daisy chuckle multiple times!! I was so fond of their weird little friendship in MAG096 (Daisy snorting when the “Archivist who can’t read” got roasted; Jon singsonging his “Whatever you say~” at the end), I’m so glad to find this aspect of their dynamic already back!!

- Jon sounded… a bit sad? To learn that Daisy still planned to kill him?

(MAG132) DAISY: … I was gonna kill you. You know that, right? ARCHIVIST: [CHUCKLE] I mean, I definitely got that impression when you… dragged me into the woods for an execution. DAISY: N–no, no. No. After the mission. I was planning to kill you. ARCHIVIST: I… I did not know that.

Jon probably thought that they were already past that, uh. (He thought he was on good terms with Daisy by that point or, at the very least, that they were on the same side? I think he really regarded her as part of his team even though she didn’t have the “assistant” status? So yeah, must hurt a bit to learn that, no, she was planning to get rid of him right after The Unknowing ;;)

- Alright: there have not been a lot of talks involving Jon in which I found that a balanced, mutually beneficial exchange was happening, and that weren’t about tearing each other to pieces? It’s the case with most of his exchanges with Georgie, and there was a bit of that with Gerry; but otherwise… it often feels like the discussion tips in one direction, either Jon opening up and the other not managing to share something of themselves, either the other person opening up and Jon having to shut up (Melanie in MAG131, Basira’s overall stance).

There was something really significant in the fact that Daisy wanted to talk and even agreed and welcomed Jon’s compulsion, when… it had previously squicked her so, so much and been lived as an extortion:

(MAG061) ARCHIVIST: If you don’t mind me asking, how long have you been sectioned…? DAISY: I do mind. … Fourteen years. […] ARCHIVIST: Right! Thank you! Are you quite alright? DAISY: No. I never told that story to anyone except my old Sergeant. ARCHIVIST: I’m not sure I, uh… DAISY: I should go.

(MAG091) BASIRA: Just let him go. DAISY: You don’t know what he is. You don’t know what it’s like to have your secrets pulled out like teeth, just because he asked?

(MAG132) DAISY: Jon…? ARCHIVIST: Still here. DAISY: Good, I… Good. I, I, I, I–I want to talk. ARCHIVIST: Okay, hum… What do you want to talk about? DAISY: Don’t, I–I don’t care, I… I… I just, I just want someone to hear me. […] I–I want to, but it’s… difficult. ARCHIVIST: Would it help if I… ask? DAISY: … Y–yeah, yes, alright. Do your… thing. ARCHIVIST: Right, hum… [CLEARS THROAT] Uh… [STATIC:] H–how are you feeling? DAISY: Uh… Scared. I–I’m, I’m, I’m scared. I’ve been scared the whole time here.

Jon getting good at consent when it’s about compelling people he treasures é_è (… He did not treasure Jared very much, though.)

The simple fact that Jon was so adamant about getting Daisy back, and the fact that Daisy highlighted so much that thanks to him… she wasn’t alone anymore!!

(MAG132) DAISY: [LABOURED] Just… alone, I, I think… I think… I hear this, sometimes, s–singing, when it’s, uh, when it’s wet, or, or scratching, trying to get out… but I don’t… I don’t th… don’t think there is anyone… there; it’s… it’s just, just me… ‘till now. […] ARCHIVIST: Come on. Let’s get you out of here. DAISY: Can’t… can’t move… Even if I, if I could… there is no… way out… ARCHIVIST: It’s okay… I’ve… I’ve got a plan. […] ARCHIVIST: No… I know where we are! There isn’t no out, not here. This is… this is forever deep below creation. Where the weight of existence bears down… This is The Buried, and we are alive… There isn’t even an up. … Oh god… What have I done! What have I done… DAISY: N–not alone, though… ARCHIVIST: [SOFT] No… No, not alone. […] ARCHIVIST: I don’t… It’s like… My mindlink is… it’s stronger… [PANTS AND STRUGGLING NOISES] DAISY: Slow down! I–I can’t… ARCHIVIST: Don’t let go! Come on, we’re close. This way. Here. Here! Come on, push!

(Yes, hello, guess who got GIGANTIC platonic Orpheus and Eurydice vibes in this episode!!)

- I feel that there was something extremely precious, precisely because both Jon and Daisy gave something to the other? It wasn’t only about hearing Daisy, it was about… helping her, emotionally, by sharing his experience and his own struggle, and explaining right away where he stood. Jon didn’t hide from her? She uncovered herself, and he showed his weakness in return, and it was just so satisfying and soft?

(MAG132) DAISY: […] L–leaves you terrified for when it s–starts a–again and, wh–when it does, you, you’re s–scared that it’ll… n–never–never stop… I thought, thought I’d… I’d ne–never see the s-sky again, never… never s–see Basira… B–but, but now… You, you’ve got out o–of o–other s–stuff like this, maybe… maybe you’ll get out of this and, and take me wi–with you… […] Y–you know what I thought wh–when I woke up here? I thought this was hell; I wa–, I was dead, and within hell. And I… eh, I–I knew I deserved it… I don’t want t–to be a s–sadistic predator again… I–I don’t want to… hobble around, like some pathetic, wounded prey either… I don’t know which would be worse. And I’m sc–scared, now, that I’ll never get the choice… ARCHIVIST: One thing I’ve learned, Daisy, is that we all get a choice. Even if it doesn’t feel like one. […] Daisy… you should know I’m… If I wasn’t human before, I’m, uh… I’m even less now. DAISY: Yeah. Well. At the moment, I don’t care…

Re: the mention of choices… So, are we meant to deduce that Jon was indeed conscious (and remembers) Oliver’s words from MAG121?

(MAG121) OLIVER: […] The thing is, Jon, right now, you have a choice. You’ve put it off for a long time; but it’s trapping you here. You’re not quite human enough to die, but – still too human to survive. You’re… balanced on an edge where The End can’t touch you – but you can’t escape him. I made a choice. We all made choices; now you have to– […] Make your choice, Jon.

I wonder if we’ll get Jon’s retelling of how he lived MAG121, how he came back from his coma. I like that, however, he is aware that he had limited options due to circumstances and that it… doesn’t really feel like an empowering choice when you’re forced to pick between two unsatisfactory options, neither of which you really want? But at the same time, I HATE THAT, ONCE AGAIN:

(MAG092) ARCHIVIST: I never chose this! ELIAS: You never wanted this, no. But I’m afraid you absolutely did choose it. In a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, you pressed on. You sought knowledge relentlessly, and you always chose to see. Our world is made of choices, Jon, and very rarely do we truly know what any of them mean, but we make them nonetheless.

… we’re falling back into “Elias might have been right about this” territory :||||||| (… he had also told Daisy that Calvin Benchley was “the first human being” she had murdered – although we knew he had probably been deeply messed up by a power, probably The Slaughter? And Daisy explicitly said that she felt that Elias had been right about her. He had also told Jon to not dwell too much on a distinction between human/“monsters”… And he’s being proven right lately, with Helen and Melanie and now Daisy herself… So gODSDAMNIT, stop that trend of Elias being apparently right-except-it-might-not-be-exactly-what-he-meant/him-still-being-wrong-about-the-consequences, it causes me pain.)

- ;; I wonder if Jon will have another discussion with Georgie soon-ish, because… it feels like he’s learning a lot, and forced to acknowledge and to accept that a lot of his original distinctions and categorizations weren’t really standing, in the end. Jon won’t do what Georgie was encouraging him to do (to stop getting involved, to… go back to normalcy? Like she did?), but I think they could still have a satisfying discussion about… their own choices in the matter. The thing with Jon, when he was living with her, was that he was afraid of turning into a “monster”, feeling dispossessed, and constantly thrown under a bus, and trapped in schemes and organizations he couldn’t really understand. He’s been more in control during season 4 and seems… to have found a drive, somehow? To know, a bit more often (even if it’s punctual) where he wants to head and what he has to do to accomplish it. I don’t know, but I feel like it could be very interesting to have Georgie and Jon interact again now that Jon knows a bit more where he stands?

- This was the first time that Jon acknowledged to someone, although implicitly, that he’s aware of what happens with his dreams é_è

(MAG132) DAISY: I realized you were in my dreams. Reliving t… this. The coffin. You were there. ARCHIVIST: … Yes. DAISY: Didn’t think it was real. Not really… Just my mind putting you there, because I h–hated you but… no. One night, you turn up in a new shirt. Didn’t fit you. Not your style. I didn’t think much of it, it was just a d–, a dream. Then you come back from the States and… guess what you’re wearing. ARCHIVIST: Oh… DAISY: Realised what was happening then. Realised you weren’t human. Needed to die, as soon as it was safe. Never mind Elias and his… insurance. ARCHIVIST: And now? DAISY: Don’t know. I miss dreaming. Y–you don’t sleep… down here.

;__; So Jon had indeed understood what the deal was with that (MAG113: “I’m not too concerned, to be honest, my dreams are, uh... well, let’s just say I don’t think they’re going be letting anyone else in any time soon.”)… and still agreed to take Jared’s statement. Kinda hoping for Jon that Jared will either die soon-ish, or that he will push Jon away from his dreams like Jude did (MAG120, Elias: “he even longs for the terrible dream of the melted woman, who would see everything desolated without rhyme or reason. But she was beyond his reach the moment she knew he was there.”) I wonder what allowed Jude to do this, by the way? Julia and Trevor were also distant from Jon (they couldn’t pick up his scent), but Daisy hadn’t been able to do that to Jon, since she was still stuck with the dreams? Could she be able to do that, if she learned it was a possibility? Or is it a Desolation thing, or something you’re only able to do when quite powerful yourself?

- Re: Daisy’s “Elias and his… insurance.” comment: I wonder what she was referring to? Was it about the evidence he had against her?

(MAG082) ELIAS: A genuine threat, I’m sure, but right now what you’re really trying to figure out is, if I have any evidence that could make it back your people.

(MAG092) ELIAS: Allow me. She rightly suspected that I held evidence of various murders she had committed, and that I sent this to her superiors. DAISY: … ELIAS: She’s quite the killer, your partner. All in the public good, of course. And she was correct, I spent some time acquiring that evidence. Or creating it. And while your superiors don’t much care about the killings, the fact there is proof... They’re not happy. And they want you brought in.

(Meaning that if she had killed Jon, Elias would probably have thrown her under a bus/at the nearest police officers… Elias had already leaked his “evidence” to the police so there were already people searching for her. Then again, Elias would have been able to tip them whenever to tell them where she was ;;) Oorrrrrrrrrrr… was it… about Basira…………………..

(MAG092) DAISY: What do you want? ELIAS: Collateral. [PAPER IS PUSHED ACROSS THE DESK] DAISY: That… What? ELIAS: A contract of employment. For Basira.

Meaning that at this point, Daisy was ready to kill Jon right after The Unknowing, even if it meant putting Basira in more danger: true, according to what Elias told them, it’s only if he dies that the assistants(+Jon?) die, but ahahaha, if she had killed Jon, we can’t really expect that Basira’s situation would have improved, uh… (……. Terriblest thing that Elias could have then done to Daisy would have been to appoint Basira as next Archivist, probably, in fact.)

Anyway, if Basira finally tells Jon & the others that Elias had requested her presence (MAG127), that she talked to him, and what he said… I would really like for Daisy to now be The One in charge of the prison visits and dealing with Bouchard’s bullshit? Sadly, Daisy’s relationship with the police hierarchy fell out due to Elias sending the tapes and, if they learn that she’s actually still alive, they would want to remedy to that.

(But picture this: 40-ish episodes after Elias got Daisy & Basira stuck with the Institute, and taunted Daisy over the prospect of either killing him either getting him sent to jail… Daisy, visiting Elias who is finally in prison. P L E A S U R E D I N H A L A T I O N.)

- *cries* And Jon tried anyway…

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: I… heard someone. He was begging for me to save him. Said he couldn’t breathe. … I can barely breathe. I couldn’t find him. But I am… n–not here for him. I don’t even know him. I can’t… I can’t see… anything here… for all this… this place closes around me, I… I feel adrift. Like nothing can get through the dirt, and the muck, and– … I still have Daisy’s tape… And I still think I’m going the right way. When I move at all.

;; Yeah, reminder that there are… other people trapped there. I wonder if it could have been specifically Isaac Masters, Daisy’s colleague who had disappeared (MAG061)? But the coffin probably took many people (it had taken “John” in MAG002)… I wonder what the group will do with it, now? I doubt that Jon will try to go inside again to save the other people trapped in there but ;; Urrkkk, it hurts a bit to think that yes, there are still random victims just… there…

- Jon has been… so SOFT in season 4… So many “Sorry”s, so many moments when he explains himself? I’m remembering the end of season 2, when he had just understood about the Not!Them taking Sasha’s place, and had decided to try to get rid of it, and had… steered Martin and Tim out of its way? He had apologized but he had not explained nor left a trace of what he was doing. But now, he left a tape behind for Melanie and Basira, explaining his intentions and his reasonings:

(MAG078) ARCHIVIST: Yes… Yes, and I’m… I’m sorry. About everything. MARTIN: J–Jon… look, are you– TIM: Ok. Right you are, Jon. We’ll be going.

(MAG079) ARCHIVIST: [WHISPERING] I’m sorry. Martin, Tim… Sasha. I’m so sorry. I should have… I didn’t… I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry. NOT!SASHA: I wonder, if I wear you, will I really become the Archivist? Rob The Eye of its pupil? Probably not. Better to just kill you, I think. Yes… I think that would be best. ARCHIVIST: [WHISPERING] Please forgive me. If you’re still alive… if–if you hear this. Get as far away from the Magnus Institute–

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: [CLICK] [INHALES] Hello, Melanie. I… know I said we’d wait until Basira was back. B–but I–I don’t… I–I’m sorry. I, I–I know she won’t– She’d want to do it a different way. But I know what I’m doing; this time, I do. […] Wish me luck…! … Although I suppose if you’re hearing this, then I… I didn’t have any. I don’t know. I’m… I’m scared. [SHORT CHUCKLE] When does the fear go away…? A–anyway, I–I’m sorry. You too, Basira, if you’re hearing this. I know you’d… stop me. You’d be right to, but… But if this goes wrong, all you lose is– … I’m not risking anyone else. And I know– … I–I think… I can get her out.

(No mention of Martin nor Georgie in this one ;; Once again, Jon has trouble staying aware of more than his immediate surroundings, and is not really thinking about the consequences or people that could be impacted when they’re not right under his nose, uh.)

And yes, Jon is going back to this old habit of his that he was fighting so far (-> going behind people’s backs when he felt that someone had to take on a burden)… But the reasons he’s doing this are very sad and beautiful at the same time? He is being absolutely self-deprecative? It’s because he doesn’t feel like he’s as valuable as them? And despite the fact that it costs him so much, that he’s still afraid? I had been wondering, when Jon woke up from his coma, what would change with him – would his fear get cauterized? Would he be more casual about the concept of hurting people to feed his god? But no, indeed: so far, it’s really… Jon evolving and becoming more and more open about his feelings, and what and whom he cares for, and getting actively protective of them even if it means getting harmed himself. And that “I’m not risking anyone else” once again reminded me of:

(MAG118) TIM: No! You knew I might not be coming back! ARCHIVIST: I knew none of us might be coming back, and I’m not gonna let anyone get killed for nothing! TIM: Oh, except for those people in there! ARCHIVIST: They’re already dead! TIM: Not all of them! ARCHIVIST: I am not losing you as well!!

(T____T)

Jon lost Sasha and Tim already, of course he wouldn’t want someone else to put themselves in danger, even if it’s to rescue Daisy…

And meanwhile: we know that Martin is… doing the same thing to protect the others. And meanwhile: Basira might have been doing the same thing in her own way. They’ll really need to get all together in a room and to talk out their respective self-sacrificing decisions at some point, huh…

(- I’m a simple person and since Jon is being a softie, I want: * Daisy and Jon just spending time together (whenever Daisy is not glued to Basira), OKAY. * Daisy deciding that alright, you think Blackwood is involved in something dangerous and you would like him back? Okay, let’s go. I always dreamed to destroy Elias’s office a bit, should get a reaction out of that Lukas guy. * GET MARTIN BACK AND HAVE THAT VERY QUEER SLUMBER PARTY IN THE TUNNELS GDI!!! THERE ARE SIX OF THEM WITH HELEN – JONNY AND ALEX, DON’T YOU WANT TO MAKE A WHOLE EPISODE OF THEM PLAYING GAMES TOGETHER?? * Dunno how to justify this in this post but my pretext is “Jon is being so good at communication/giving Daisy what she needed at the point she was” and so: alright, you know what Martin needs, Jon? A present of a fancy blank notebook, to go back to his poetry, because encouraging is caring (and notebooks are love) :||||)

- efzjdisncefd Basira just got the Best Entrance Ever, I don’t know which one was the winner until now but she supplanted it right away:

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: Tape recorders. Must, must be… dozens of them…? [JON’S OFFICE DOOR OPENS] BASIRA: Jon, you stupid idiot! What did you think?! DAISY: … Hi. BASIRA: [FAINT]… Oh my god… [CLICK.]

Barging into Jon’s office, not even looking at who is there, screaming at Jon right away. Glorious.

Did she know he had just come out (/done something to ensure he’d come out), or was it a coincidence and she would have been screaming at an empty office if Jon hadn’t come out just now? The timing was a bit too perfect, so I’d be leaning on “Basira did something”, but… were the tape recorders going wild only located into Jon’s office, or were they having a fit in the entire Archives / in every part of the Institute, actually? (Because mm, we know there was an incident involving a leak of statements in 1999 and right, we never learned more about that… I’ve been assuming that it was Gertrude’s doing, to mess with Freshly Appointed Head Director Elias, but we still don’t know if there is a Story behind it.)

;; There is still the question of what Basira was doing, and what Elias’s suggestion from MAG127 was. Did he tell Basira to leave Jon to his own devices and that he would find something? (I doubt the series would go that way since it would nnnnot be flattering for Basira… but then it could also make her even more prone to close off her own agenda and to Do Her Things without sharing.) Did she go to find someone or something that would pull people out of the coffin? Jon couldn’t feel his anchor anymore, then felt it again, so something happened; the question is mostly… who did it.

The Eye shouldn’t have access to the inside of the coffin, so even if Elias knew that Breekon was about to deliver it… I wonder if he could have guessed Daisy’s current state? Because uh. Regarding The Archives’ Defender: Melanie is not an option anymore since she’s not Slaughter-fuelled. Daisy explicitly told Jon that she was wary of The Hunt, didn’t like who she used to be when under its influence, and will probably consciously try to slow down on the violence – she could still help in defending the Archives a bit, but… she probably won’t be as effective against Spooks as before if the the point is to avoid losing herself again. Which means that they indeed got her back but that she probably won’t be a viable option anymore as a ~defender~. Which means they’re back at the same point.

(EXCEPT THERE IS HELEN!! And I insist, reliability aside, sounds like the best Protecting option. But well. Reliability aside.)

So. What did Basira do, where did she go, what did she bring back with her? Mike-if-turns-out-he-wasn’t-dead would be the right time, since Daisy had been the one to ensure that he (or his corpse) would eat dirt; Trevor&Julia would be hilarious and fitting thematically (relationship to The Hunt + Jon’s shirt was presumably “borrowed” from them); Jude would be another case of Jon’s Life Being Like This; someone who’d turn out to be Actually The Real Peter Lukas oh-shit-what-is-the-thing-running-the-Institute-then would be hilarious for the ensuing panic (I’m still ??? that Elias never ever acknowledged that Peter Lukas… exists…? is running his Institute…? it still feels so fishy?); but at the same time, they all feel a bit like… done deals? People we’ve already explored a bit through meeting them and getting their statements, and are now finished with?

Amongst the characters introduced and recurring across statements but never met, we have Mikaele Salesa (has he died, is he hiding from officials because of tax fraud?); Adelard Dekker (… if he isn’t dead already); Annabelle Cane (but The Web, accepting to be straightforward instead of sneaky and cryptic? In MY Magnus Institute? Ha!). Cosmic Irony would dictate Simon Fairchild since Jon explicitly expressed reluctance to meet him, and now I’m hit with the mental picture of Simon peacefully giving his statement to Jon while sipping tea before going to yeet himself in the coffin because he was trying to find a way to Make His Grand Exit after a long and fulfilling life of wrecking other lives, right in front of Jon; you’re welcome.

One question is whether or not there were two agendas at work for Jon’s next move? On the one hand, Elias tipped Basira towards… something that we don’t know about yet. On the other hand, The Web seemed supportive of leading Jon a bit and, unless Jon tragically misunderstood its message (but then, The Web would have intervened again?), the point in MAG130’s tape was indeed to make Jon focus on The Flesh, its avatars, the idea of his own body as an anchor for him to get inside the coffin and get Daisy back. AND ON THAT NOTE, I’m now entertaining the notion that Breekon might have been sent by The Web itself, since the way he described why he came was… a bit reminiscent of your typical person doing something/going somewhere because of the Spider (and specifically sounds a lot like Oliver’s self-introduction)?

(MAG128) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [STATIC:] Why are you here? BREEKON: Dunno. ‘t’s not right… on my own… not right… No point in doing it on my own. Don’t know what happens now… Thought I might kill you. Missed my chance. Thought I might just… deliver something. So here’s a coffin. [RATTLING SOUND] In case you want… to join your friend.

[…] (STATEMENT) “I am without him, now. I. am. I can feel myself fading. Weak. No reason to move. Nothing to deliver. But I am no longer tied to the casket; so you can have it.”

Not being able to give a clear reason, then rationalizing about it while doing it anyway? So I guess The Web could also have put the coffin in Jon’s path, since it wasn’t against (/was actively supportive of) the idea of him getting Daisy back? Or, at least, of Jon going down into the coffin and experiencing The Buried, but being able to get back out. I don’t know! Basira, what were you doing and how much will everyone regret that you had a talk with Elias ;;

- We heard that Basira wasn’t… pleased about Jon doing his Things behind her back (“Jon, you stupid idiot!”: Jon can’t only be an “idiot”, can’t only be “stupid”, he has to be a “stupid idiot”), but objectively:

(MAG128) BASIRA: I’ll try and be back in a week or two. Don’t think about me. ARCHIVIST: Right. BASIRA: And don’t open the coffin.

From 3rd March (MAG128) to 24th March 2018 (MAG132 – though unclear whether it’s the date he went inside the coffin or came out of it, or if it’s on the same day anyway), it’s been three weeks of Basira being gone and not giving any news. She didn’t promise to come back soon, but still – that was… way more than what she had told Jon to expect, and he held on during that time. And he did respect the other half of what she had asked of him (to not Know about what she was doing). So overall: she will probably be mad, and will have reasons to be since Jon went back to doing things on his own while deliberately going against other people’s wishes (doubly: both hers, and Melanie’s, who had been a bit more aware of Jon’s plan, and whom Jon had told that he would wait for Basira), but there were also… circumstances.

(Since Basira has been gone for three weeks: I wonder if she got sick, too? We don’t know how long Tim’s trip to Malaysia lasted before he had to come back to the Institute, so… How did Basira feel during this time? Did she bring statements or research along to tide herself over? Or was Tim’s case a bit special, and was Elias responsible for Tim feeling like a wreck because he wanted Tim back for Jon’s return?)

- I DON’T KNOW HOW BASIRA WILL REACT TO DAISY’S RETURN, GDI!!! Jon was expecting Basira to not hold too much of a grudge if he managed to bring Daisy back, and he did! But I’m… not sure it will work to pacify Basira? ;; Because technically, it adds another piece on the chessboard, and we don’t really know what to expect of Daisy out of the coffin, nor if she’ll manage to be stable for long… And that means having to make sure that the police doesn’t pay attention to the Institute (while Elias, who was keeping them mostly at bay, is gone), since they were after Daisy…

But at the same time, maybe it could lead to finally getting a Team Archive back to try and all survive together…? ;;

- Relatedly: whether or not Basira is ready to work with Jon again, since Daisy is back… What will be the next focus? (Sometimes, I feel like Jon is acting a bit like in a Dating Game without romance: took the Melanie route, unlocked the Less Dramatic ending; took the Daisy route, unlocked the Happy Ending somehow?!; maybe needed to clear out Daisy’s path in order to unlock Basira’s own route… and then, there is Martin. Hidden route, True Ending?? Jon said “I am very thirsty” and like, yeah, we know, we heard you going after Martin, Jon. Where is Martin.)

There will be the… well, whatever the HECK happened with the tape recorders at the end of MAG132, and Daisy will probably need some rest, and we’ll need a debriefing/argument with Basira. But then, what’s next, what will the next goal consist of? There are still a bunch of Mysteries that should become relevant again at some point soon (what is Agnes’s story? What is Hill Top Road’s deal? What happened to Adelard Dekker? How can they proceed to ensure The Watcher’s Crown doesn’t happen? What are The Web’s intentions and how much is Jon tied to that? What is the New Emergence?); we could get some answers if Jon continues to read statements about rituals that Gertrude had stopped, or if he keeps getting information through His Inner Door, though. We might be a bit done with Buried and Flesh statements for some time, since both were a bit more represented in season 4 so far and they have now served their purpose.

- Okay, so, Patreon experience: here is what we initially got when the episode was posted:

… and yes, it was 6 seconds of David7 crashing on the floor and complaining that he was covered in goo. Picture this: you’ve been tensing up for the last hour on your commute back from work with nothing to distract you, you’re fidgeting for the new episode, knowing thanks to the title listed on Monday that It Is Coming, We Should Be Going Inside The Coffin, How Awful Will It Turn Out… and you’re welcomed by David7 observing that he’s covered in goo. I personally lost it, hurt myself in my confusion (I still had some mascara on, it doesn’t do great with hilarity tears.) So yeah. Now, we Know that apparently, David7 is their placeholder for new posts! =D

(The case file was incomplete, too, so! Extra dread! How much time passed while Jon was in the coffin?! Didn’t even have the satisfaction to think that the end of 2018 and the Institute’s 200th anniversary had passed! But that was corrected too, and it’s… probably fine. Unless March 24th is only the date Jon entered the coffin, not when he got out.)

MAG133’s title is… ominous and uuuuuuuh, hard to draw any prediction from apart from “… I don’t like this”. Not-risky bet would be The End? Would probably be awful if it happens to be a Corruption one? ………… As for second meaning: I just really hope it’s not Peter&Martin again ;;

#the magnus archives #mag132 #tma liveblog #tma spoilers/#long post/#tma season 4

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amandajoyce118 · 6 years ago

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Cloak and Dagger Episodes 1-4 Easter Eggs and References

Okay, I promised Easter eggs and references for the episodes, so here they are. I pitched a few Cloak and Dagger related articles for Screen Rant, but the show hasn’t been garnering enough attention for the site to cover it. Moral of this story: if you want to see content about shows you like, and you want writers to get paid for covering shows you like, you have to actually read about the shows you like.

Easter eggs will go up after the new episodes on Thursdays nights. And, obviously, spoilers for the episodes follow.

Series Premiere “First Light” and “Suicide Sprints”

The Marvel Flip

The Marvel Flip that plays comic book art at the opening of every MCU project is pretty standard. Most of the same “whoosh,” “Fooom,” and outlines are used in all of them. But there’s usually a change depending on the project. The flip for Cloak and Dagger has Daggers light knives appear for a split second. I’m sure there’s something related to Cloak as well.

Ballet

Ballet was a big part of Tandy’s life as a little girl in the comics too. In fact, her original white leotard costume was inspired by ones worn during rehearsals. I love that it’s still so much a part of her that she wears ballet slippers as a teenager too.

Mom’s Back Problem

Mom’s drug use is not a result of the things that happen to her and Tandy after Dad dies. Her “back problem” is code for her taking lots of pain pills. Tandy’s mom was already in trouble long before they lost their money and security.

On The Bridge

Tandy’s dad on the phone discussing complete structural collapse and energy dispersion with someone we don’t know? That’s, uh, not so subtle foreshadowing of the “oil rig” that explodes moments later. I’d bet money that the structural issues aren’t a result of them drilling for oil though.

Tandy’s dad being the guy warning the higher-ups, and not being listened to, is also a nod to the levees breaking when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the BP rig in the gulf having structural issues that no one ever took care of. The show is shot in New Orleans, and there are a lot of nods to the history throughout the series.

Billy

In the comics, Billy isn’t Ty’s brother. Instead, he’s Ty’s best friend, whom he also witnesses get shot. The effect on Ty is pretty much the same. (He does have a sister in one of the series, but she’s never given a name or anything.)

Roxxon

It’s no coincidence that the truck that runs Tandy and her father off the road belongs to Roxxon. Or that the oil rig belongs to Roxxon, as we find out later. Both Tandy’s father and Ty’s mother work for the company. It’s also pretty evident that whatever was in the truck is what gave Tandy and Ty their abilities as that’s the first manifestation of their powers (right after the shockwave through the water). That’s not how they get them in the comics - instead they’re kidnapped and experimented on. This is better. It would be interesting to see if there’s anyone else in the area that also ended up with abilities. Just saying.

Number 11

Ty’s jersey is #11. That might be a coincidence, but I thought it was cute because, while they were introduced in Spider-Man books and got a four issue mini series after, their first “real” series only lasted 11 issues. After that, they and Doctor Strange were given short stories in a revival of Strange Tales.

St. Sebastian’s

Not a Marvel reference, but I like that the school is named for Saint Sebastian, who had to be killed multiple times because people kept saving him. He supposedly offers protections against plagues and he’s the patron saint of athletes, which fits for a school where basketball is hugely important.

Glowsticks

The club where Tandy finds her rich kid victims? It has glowsticks that look a lot like her light daggers.

Tandy using the knife as a screwdriver later also reminded me that she’s the one with “daggers.”

The Crick-Hits

This band appears on Tandy’s shirt when she goes to the party in the woods and meets Tyrone. They’re an obscure band in Marvel Comics that were meant to be a nod to the Beatles. (I’ll admit that I never would have spotted this if the showrunner hadn’t talked about it in an interview. Apparently, the band will have more nods on the show too.)

Tandy’s Name

There really was a computer named Tandy. In fact, there was a whole company of them. Tandy Corporation started out as a leather company in Texas before diversifying. They owned the now defunct RadioShack.

Tandy the Pickpocket

Her being good with her hands reminds me of the early Skye days on Agents of SHIELD. Skye distracting Mike Peterson with a three card monte of sugar packets while she swipes his ID, anyone?

But really, this moment plays to the role reversal in the show. Tandy picks Ty’s pocket at the party, but in the comics, after they’ve both already run away from home, it’s Ty who thinks about stealing Tandy’s purse when they first cross paths. Ultimately, he decides not to, someone else does, and he ends up getting her purse back for her. The show does a nice twist on their first meeting.

In the comics, Tandy runs away from her privileged life because her mom doesn’t have time for her (among other things) and ends up an addict. Ty runs away from home because the police think he robbed a store, when really, he saw his friend get shot. Ty doesn’t come from a wealthy background in the comics like he does in the show, and it’s a nice change.

The Black Sheet

Ty finds himself teleporting in only a black sheet. Looks kind of like a cloak, no? I mean, I figure this one’s obvious, but I thought it was a nice touch. (Sidenote for those wondering about his powers: in the comics, he actually accesses his power through the Dark Dimension, which is wear Darkforce comes from. We’ve already seen Darkforce AKA Zero Matter in action on Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter. The latter, conveniently, was wear a subsidiary of Roxxon tried to experiment with it and opened a doorway to another dimension. Who’s sensing a connection?)

“I’m afraid even if you do everything perfectly, I’m going to lose you.”

Valid concern for a woman with a black teenage son in America. It had to be said.

Tandy And The Hoodie

In case it’s not clear, Tandy is more sentimental than she lets on. Her favorite hoodie is the one Ty took from his brother and rescued her in. She kept it just like she kept her old ballet bag. Aw.

Emma Lahana

In case anyone is wondering, that detective used to be a Power Ranger. She was the Yellow Ranger in Power Rangers: Dino Thunder. You’re welcome.

The detective, who doesn’t get a lot of lines until the next couple episodes, is named Brigid O’Reilly. In the comics, she’s also a cop that initially goes after Cloak and Dagger, but she also becomes a vigilante herself. Her name is Mayhem.

The Tarp

I love that once he teleports with it, Tyrone decides to test to see if he can use it again. It really looks like a cloak when he wraps himself in it. I also like that he tries it again a few times with other black tarps/fabrics. He’s learning.

Father Delgado

The priest that Tyrone spends so much time with also gave Cloak and Dagger a hand in the comics. He gave them a place to stay when they had nowhere else to go. He also defended them when police came looking for him. Father Delgado traditionally has a church in Hell’s Kitchen in the comics and he’s also hosted the New Mutants and Spider-Man. As the story goes on though, he becomes convinced that Cloak s a demon and that he has to save Dagger from him. He also actually becomes possessed by a demon and tries to kill Dagger, soooo… he should be fun.

“The cumberbatch too.”

It’s okay that he didn’t know it was called a cummerbund. It’s funnier because Cumberbatch is the actor playing Doctor Strange. Whom Cloak and Dagger shared issues of Strange Tales with. It’s fitting. And purposeful. The showrunner confirmed it on twitter.

“We fail. You still profit. Ain’t that America?”

Social commentary at its finest. And true. Which is a little depressing.

Pill Bottles and Gravestones

The showrunner said that pill bottles and gravestones might include names that are Easter eggs, but I didn’t get a good look at any of them, so help a girl out if you did!

S1E03 “Stained Glass”

Tyrone Thinks He’s Cursed

In the comics, there were a lot of people who thought he was cursed. As it turned out, there was a demon in the Dark Dimension that he was connected to. It was that demon that actually “fed” on energy and light, and was part of the reason Tyrone loved being around Tandy when using their abilities.

Damballah Voodoo Tours

Voodoo Tours (and other tours involving historic sites) are a real thing in New Orleans. Damballah though is a being that appears in Marvel comics. Sometimes portrayed as a god, sometimes as a demon, Damballah looks like a snake. He’s appeared in a few obscure issues and was banished by Scarlet Witch.

For anyone who wants even more trivia, Gerry Conway is credited with creating Damballah. Conway also created Punisher, Vrellnexians (you know, the roaches in space on Agents of SHIELD), and made the decision to kill off Gwen Stacy.

The Dolls On The Mantle

During the show livetweet, it was mentioned that fans should pay attention to the detail in the dolls on the mantle. All I’ve got is that they all appear in pairs. Tyrone has been added to the mantle, but Tandy hasn’t yet.

“You have to try something else.”

Look, there is sooooo much symbolism going on in their visions, and I think you can dissect them a million different ways to interpret them the way you see fit. Some of my personal favorites though are Tyrone appearing with what looks like old school plantation wear and dining spread in the middle of the bayou in Tandy’s vision, only to repeatedly end up in modern street clothes when he’s targeted by the cops, while Tandy giving up her dagger for him and adding it to the table gives him a new path. I also love that Tyrone’s vision of Tandy shows that she knows that the more she struggles, the more she gets caught in metaphorical quicksand, and it’s not until he uses his own power on her that she attempts to try something else. Tyrone has the pressure of so many people investing in his future. Tandy has the guilt of bringing Liam into her life. Etc. Etc.

They balance each other out, which isn’t a coincidence, of course. But man, their visions are good.

S1E04 “Call/Response”

“He chased your cop away yesterday.”

I’m throwing this line in here because it shows how condensed the timeline for this series is so far. Episode four is the next day from episode three. (Apparently Tandy heals really quickly since the gash on her head is gone.) The first three hours take place relatively quickly as well. Only a few days have passed in the lives of Tandy and Tyrone and yet everything has changed for them.

Their Powers

Okay, so this episode gives you a better idea of what their actual abilities are.

Tandy is the literal embodiment of hope and light. Yeah, she can grab light daggers out of nothing, but her actual power in the comics is the manipulation of Lightforce (oh, hey, the opposite of Tyrone’s Darkforce, right?). With her ability in the comics, she can create daggers from light, but she also stores that energy inside of herself. It builds up over time, and if she doesn’t use it every so often, it discharges on its own and she has no control over it. Her daggers can be used to drain someone’s energy in the comics and also to manipulate their “life force” to a new direction, giving them a glimpse at what their life would be like if they made a different choice. Tandy being able to see people’s hopes when she touches them is the show’s take on that.

Tyrone’s ability to get into people’s nightmares is an example of him being the opposite of Tandy, of course. In the comics, he doesn’t have that ability, but I think it’s a nice touch for the show. Instead, he can channel Darkforce and absorb people’s energy with it. He can become intangible using it, and he can access the Dark Dimension to teleport, of course. Something we haven’t seen on the show yet is that he can also teleport other people through the Dark Dimension, but because it’s so dangerous, Tandy is usually the only one to accompany him. Her Lightforce offers her a measure of protection. Tyrone making the comment that his ability seems to bring him to Tandy is likely a nod to his Darkforce being drawn to her in the comics. The demon that controls the Dark Dimension likes to absorb her Lightforce.

“Character is what you do when no one else is watching.”

I can’t decide if Tandy’s dad was paraphrasing writer C.S. Lewis or UCLA basketball coach John Wooden here, who both said a variation of this. Probably the latter is what the show’s writers were going for since Tyrone plays basketball.

Stashing the Bike

On twitter, the showrunner mentioned that the debris where Tyrone tosses his bike holds some clues, but honestly, I didn’t notice anything that stood out. I figured I’d note it in case anyone else did.

Mardis Gras Indians

This group is the real deal. Essentially a secret society that’s not so secret in New Orleans, the group is made up of Black Americans who partake in the carnival. Their parade during Mardis Gras is one of the biggest. You want to learn more about the history of the group, this is a pretty good start.

“Shit goes boom.”

This made me laugh a little bit because Olivia Holt used to be on a Disney show called Kickin’ It where her character used the phrase “boom goes the dynamite” all the time. The girl likes a good use of the word “boom.”

Founded 1982

This phrase appears on one of the flags in the Red Hawk’s place. When did Cloak and Dagger make their comic book debut? You guessed it, 1982.

Cloak

While it’s sad (and also sweet) that Tyrone picks Billy’s cloak from the room of failures, I love that it looks like his comic book cloak come to life. Where the beadwork is references where most artists use different shading to show changes in light and it’s just perfect.

I also love his dad’s speech about the costumes giving them strength. That’s why superheroes wear what they do.

Tandy Likes Tyrone’s Eyes

I just think it’s cute that she already told him she liked the way his jacket hangs on his shoulders in an earlier episode and now she likes his eyes. She’s not shy. She’s honest. It’s nice. In fact, all of the women in this show are, and it’s a nice change from the usual idea of women on TV that have to be cryptic with the men around them.

Greg’s Death

We see Greg killed by the water delivery person, but the cards for the episode outline shared on twitter say that the “unseen assailant” was going to be his wife. I’m curious if his estranged wife will still play a part in the episodes ahead or not.

Check Your Privilege

Has another Marvel series ever been so timely? Tandy denied action because she’s a woman doing what she has to do to get by. Tyrone targeted by literally everyone because of the color of his skin. Both of them trying to atone for the things they think are their fault, but going about it in very different ways. So. Good.

#cloak and dagger #cloak and dagger easter eggs #cloak and dagger spoilers #cloak and dagger season 1 #mcu #i wrote a thing

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trumpetnista · 7 years ago

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CMW2/Trumpetnista: Safe (7/?)

Summary from FFN: NOW A WIP: She was Olivia Pope, not Alex Jones, not Julia Baker, and she was a mess;In this AU of 4x16, instead of Alex seducing Russell to feel alive again, Olivia decides on a better course of action, a course of action that starts with a phone call to Fitz;HEAVY SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4 WITHIN;Rated for language, imagery, and later Olitz lovemaking;4th in my 2016 SSS Project

Teaser from Chapter 7: "Look, I know that I shouldn't have broken in but I've been worried about you. You won't take my calls. You won't answer my texts and when I tried to come see you at your office, I couldn't even get past the front door before Michael..."

"His name is Marcus."

"...stopped me. What did you tell him about me? What did you say to all of them?"

"Nothing other than if you came in, I didn't want to see you."

"Why?"

"Why do you think?"

"...you and Fitz aren't going to last forever. You never do."

"Fitz has nothing to do with this. It's about you and the fact that you're not a good influence in my life. You're dangerous. You're unstable. You're B613. You're Rowan's puppet, his loyal little lapdog that he can order around at whim. You may think that you're free now, that he's forgotten all about you and maybe he has but I haven't. I know who you really are, Jake. I've seen who you really are and you are not someone that I want around me as a friend or as a lover, anymore. Now, I've got 5 more bullets and the next one is going in your head if you don't leave."

"You would kill me right now?"

"...not that head, Jake."

Disclaimer for the full story: “Honestly, it’s not mine!”

"Fitz, what's going on? Why are you whispering?"

"I'm hiding in the Residence from Mellie. She thinks I'm still in the Oval."

"Are you seriously hiding from your wife?"

"Olivia, she is drunk off moonshine, eating fried shrimp, and she's singing showtunes...butchering showtunes and... the last time she drank like this, she actually asked me to have sex with her on the dining room table and I just... yes, I'm seriously hiding from my wife. I'm scared and hiding and I'm waiting for her to pass out."

"You poor, poor soul...should I send some earplugs? Gettysburger? An Exorcism kit?"

"...you're not funny."

"I'm funnier than you."

Fitz's laughter was warm in her ear and she sighed, walking towards her office windows. She could see the White House in the distance, brightly lit and beautiful. Fitz had once referred to it as the Crown Jewel of the American Prison System and that label had merit. Yes, the White House was beautiful. Yes, being the President of the United States was a great honor, the pinnacle of Power but it changed everything.

There was no true privacy. Everywhere a President went, there were Agents, staff, members of the Press around. There was always a bubble. A President couldn't just go grocery shopping or just go and get a new phone without a big to-do. There were always schemers around, people who would stab you in the back just to get a slightly bigger piece of the pie. Every person had to be vetted. No one, not even family could be trusted.

It was one of the most noble and truly one of the loneliest Jobs in the world.

And if it wasn't the President themselves being targeted, it was their loved ones.

Gerry Grant had been murdered by Rowan because of his connection to Fitz, his connection to her. Karen Grant had been recorded and blackmailed while under the influence, while having sex because she was the President's daughter. The conspiracy to kidnap her had been in the name of the Presidency. Andrew Nichols and Elizabeth North had wanted the Power by any means necessary. Rowan had wanted Power and revenge for a perceived unreasonable slight against him. Fitz hadn't done anything wrong. Gerry hadn't done anything wrong. Karen hadn't done anything wrong and Olivia was growing to accept that she hadn't done anything wrong, either. She hadn't been the one to murder Gerry Grant, to put the sick idea into Rowan's mind. She hadn't asked to be kidnapped. She didn't deserve to be kidnapped, despite all the things she had done.

It wasn't her fault.

Not every bad thing that happened was her fault.

It was not her fault and it certainly wasn't Fitz's fault, despite what she had screamed to the contrary.

To monsters like Rowan, it wasn't about people, not as more than pieces on their chess boards.

It was all about hoarding & abusing Power. It was all about creating Legacies that they could leech off of. It was all about soothing their malignant egos, regardless of who or what was destroyed...

"If it helps, she didn't really lose by a large margin. She had good numbers. She could try again in a few years, maybe even sooner. Seats open up all of the time and once you're out of Office..."

"You know she doesn't care about any of that."

"What? Facts?"

"You might be hearing from her soon, Livvie. She made it pretty clear who she blames for this."

"You, me, Cyrus, God, Satan, the weather, the Patriarchy, a random passerby who just couldn't get to the Voter's Booth and secure her rightful place in history..."

Fitz snickered and she continued unrepentantly, "She can blame me and the World all she wants. I don't care. I told her that I wasn't going to help her. I told her that my helping her would be seen as nothing more than nepotism and that she needed to wait, build up her own political capital, and come up with a more approachable image. She didn't want to. She didn't want to put the work in. She wanted to cut corners. She wanted everyone to do the heavy lifting for her and give her cue cards so she could reap the benefits, just like before. I was right to say no and she was right to lose."

"Consider it Handled."

"Exactly."

"Are you still at the office?"

"Not for much longer. I wanted to help with the paperwork. You know how it is. Get rid of one stack..."

"...and three more appear. How is Quinn working out as Second in Command?"

"It's good. It's really good, Fitz...I'm glad that she stayed. She had every right to leave."

"OPA is her home. You and your Gladiators are home for her."

Olivia nodded and sighed again, looking wistfully at 1600 Penn...

"I wish I was there with you or that you were here with me."

"You really don't want to be here right now, Liv. She's gone from showtunes to Dolly Parton. Poor Jolene..."

She laughed and replied, "That's not what I meant and you know it, Mister."

"...I know. It'll happen, Livvie. We'll make it happen."

"I hope so. Well, tomorrow night, if you're still alive, I'd love to hear from you. Just don't make 23 people have to stay, okay?"

"All right. Bye, Liv."

"...bye."

It was still a bit of a novelty to be leaving OPA at a reasonable hour. By the time she got to her apartment, it would be a little past 8PM instead of midnight or in the pre-dawn hours. She would be able to watch live TV if she wanted to. She could watch actual, non DVR'd TV shows instead of the news, infomercials, or porn. She wouldn't feel strange about cooking or ordering in at an odd hour. She would be able to go to her apartment and actually relax.

She had taken some of the weight of the world off of her shoulders. Olivia was still The Fixer, the go-to for help when it hit the fan, but it wasn't all on her. It had never been all on her but she was accepting help now, allowing herself to trust and delegate...

…but never drop her guard.

Exiting the elevator, Olivia could see that her apartment door was slightly ajar. It wasn't supposed to be ajar. She had locked it before she left and she wasn't expecting company. Huck was at his Veteran's Group therapy session with Quinn supporting him. Marcus was meeting with some representatives from Jack and Jill, trying to get their support behind adding classes to teach inner city youth about their Rights. Abby was at the White House. She had texted her earlier about Cyrus' latest antics and the ongoing battle for the Brandon Bill. She had just talked to Fitz and as much as she wished that he was inside her place right now, he wasn't. He was hiding from Mellie in what sounded to be a walk-in closet, possibly a bathroom like last time.

That didn't leave many options left for who could be inside.

The options she had to choose from were all bad.

Slowly, she set her bag down and pulled out her Colt .45, fighting through the icy fear that was creeping down her spine. Whoever was in her place had to go. Whether they would run for it or she would have to put a bullet in them before calling the police remained to be seen. She was licensed to carry and even though there were no signs of a robbery in progress, it wouldn't take much to...

Shaking her head, she made sure the gun was loaded before sliding out of her heels. If she had to run or hide, she didn't want anything slowing her down. Seeing movement, she pushed the door open and raised the gun. As soon as the person turned around, she undid the safety, the icy fear replaced with hot rage.

"Get the hell out!"

"Liv..."

"Get out of my apartment, Jake. Now."

"You won't shoot..."

A vase behind him shattered and she quickly loaded another bullet, thankful for the silencer.

"You broke in here after I told you to leave me alone. I can and will shoot you. Get out."

"I'm not the enemy here, Olivia! I brought you some dinner and..."

"I'm not hungry. Take the food and go. This is the last time I'm going to say it."

"Look, I know that I shouldn't have broken in but I've been worried about you. You won't take my calls. You won't answer my texts and when I tried to come see you at your office, I couldn't even get past the front door before Michael..."

"His name is Marcus."

"...stopped me. What did you tell him about me? What did you say to all of them?"

"Nothing other than if you came in, I didn't want to see you."

"Why?"

"Why do you think?"

"...you and Fitz aren't going to last forever. You never do."

"You would kill me right now?"

"...not that head, Jake."

"Olivia..."

"Leave and if I find any cameras in here or any of my things tampered with..."

"You're paranoid. You need to get some help."

"I am getting help. You just can't benefit from it. Leave!"

Jake flinched as a pillow exploded in feathers behind him and headed for the door, deliberately leaving the food on the counter. Although he was acting like he had made her a 5 course meal, it was Gettysburger and imported beer. The Gettysburger she didn't really mind but she hated beer. He knew that! He also knew that breaking in would make her uncomfortable, possibly trigger a full on panic attack but he didn't care. He was feeling scorned, feeling childish so he had pushed as many buttons as he could to get her attention.

He had gotten her attention but Olivia was certain that Jake had imagined a far different outcome.

He only cared about her when she was saving his fat from the fire or fucking him to forget.

Unless she was doing that, she was nothing to him, regardless of what he said.

His actions were his Truth.

Had he always been this immature?

As soon as he was in the vestibule, she slammed the door in his face and listened closely. He could decide to wait her out. He could decide to come back later, while she was sleeping and...

"Damn it!"

From the sound of it, Jake had punched the doors of the elevator as they closed and she was relieved that the fist hadn't touched her. Jake had pushed and choked her before. He had concussed her and pushed her into a puddle of glass shard filled water. He had pinned her to the wall by her throat in broad daylight. Punching her would be the next logical step in abusing her.

Some of their conversations involved manipulation on both of their ends. Nowadays, they ended with him yelling at her, judging her like the hypocrite he was or trying to derail her healing. Jake was dangerous. On more than one occasion, he had proven to be dangerous, lacking in humanity. Essentially, Jake Ballard (or whatever his real name was) was nothing more than a broken, rabid beast in human skin.

The fact that she had known all of that and yet still allowed him to touch her, be inside of her, and to be around her family & friends was even more proof of how disturbed she had become. How much farther would she have fallen had she not reached out to Fitz that night? If she had gone through with being Alex Jones, how much worse off would she be?

She didn't want to think about it.

She didn't want to think about hating herself and those around her that much.

Opening the door, she grabbed her bag and quickly went back inside, turning all of her locks. Jake had broken in. Only she and Huck had the keys. Huck wouldn't turn his over to Jake without her express say-so, a say-so that he'd never get again. As a matter of fact, she was tempted to call Huck and tell him what happened but that idea was quickly shelved. Part of delegating was allowing her people to have lives outside of the job. Yes, there was a rule that everyone had to be reachable and that after a certain amount of time, there was to be a search party formed.

What happened to Harrison, what Rowan had done to Harrison had been unavoidable but if she had followed the rule, if she had been thinking about more than herself, then Harrison's body would've been found sooner. However, it was no longer all about Fixing for herself or her People. And Huck was doing something at the moment to help himself get better. Olivia was not going to hinder that. That wouldn't be fair.

Still, something decisive had to be done about Jake Ballard.

It could wait until the morning.

For now, she had trash to throw out and a mess to clean up.

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soveryanon · 5 years ago

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Reviewing time for MAG153! … Abridged version because I messed up my planning orz

- And we finally got an actual Corruption statement this season!! You made it into season 4, babe!!

I like how its Crawling Moment Of Awesomeness came little by little:

(MAG140) BASIRA: Er… Jon. What’s this. [DRY SOUND] ARCHIVIST: Mm? … Oh. That’s… [SILENCE] That, uh, that’s… my rib? BASIRA: … Right. [PUTS IT DOWN] ARCHIVIST: Yup… BASIRA: And… the jar of ashes. ARCHIVIST: Not– Not mine; I–I mean, it belongs to me, I–I guess, but it’s not… Er, stationery is in the other drawer?

(MAG145) ARTHUR: [SNORT] Slumlording over a nest. GERTRUDE: Oh. A nest of… what? ARTHUR: Found a mass of the Crawling Rot growing, a while back. Managed to get a hold of the property before it became too big. Gotta wait ‘til it blossoms before we can properly burn it.

(MAG152) HELEN: Hello, Jon. Been a while since you’ve been down here. ARCHIVIST: [ANGRY EXHALE] I didn’t come here to see you. HELEN: Oh, come now. I’m sure I’m more interesting company than the late Jane Prentiss. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … It’s all that left of her now. Apart from a… jar of ashes in my desk. Just a circle of rotten stone on an otherwise… unremarkable wall.

(MAG153) ARCHIVIST: This, well… The Corruption at work, if I had to guess, though with unsettling echoes of a… “Fleshliness”.

Jane, The Hive, Jane&The Hive, and now The Corruption for itself.

It’s… an obvious things given Smirke’s name for it (well, at least Gerry’s), but one of the things I find very interesting with Corruption is how it… does that. Rather than insects for themselves, it “corrupts” something, quite often perceived as “pure” and/or “absolute”: Jane craving for “something beyond [her]self” (MAG032), the malarial research turning horribly badly (MAG045), Private Amherst giving his bed to the injured soldiers who needed it more than him (MAG068), little Gordon helping the old Maggie (MAG084), Lester Chang’s not-that-healthy new relationship with his father-in-law and his subsequent obsession for cleanliness (MAG093), Benoît Maçon’s desperation for love (MAG102), Jon’s third victim from season 4 (MAG146: “A man rejected by all who knew him, searching ever-darker places for love. When he told me his story, he started… weeping maggots.”), The Divine Chain cult turning the notion of selfless love into a requirement (MAG153)… which tied in with everything turning Wrong when the dog “Agapē” joined it and that so-called ~pure~ love just opened the door for… spooks.

- But also:

(MAG153, Barbara Mullen-Jones) “I hit my “lowest point” when I turned 41. That’s when my life came crashing down; at least on the inside. From the outside, I’m sure everything looked… pretty much okay. I was getting gigs, I had a job, I had plenty of friends and a supportive family… But that was when I started to properly look at my life, and I… really didn’t like what was looking back…! I was a stand-up comedian, you see, and a really good one. That’s not boasting, that’s just the truth. And I’d always assumed that that was enough to eventually have real success. And for the first… ten years, it seemed like I was right. I worked my way up, performed for basically nothing basically every night, and got to be pretty successful.

… And I stayed that way for the next ten years. [SIGH]

Trouble is, do you know how much a “pretty successful comedian” makes? Let’s just say I had a full-time office job and was still barely making rent. But between working full-time and gigging full-time, I just kept putting off everything else in my life. Always so sure the big time was just around the corner. “This is the TV spot that gets me noticed.” “This is the sell-out fringe show that makes me mainstream.” “This is the deal that actually goes somewhere.”

I made it through turning 40 with my self-image intact, but for some reason, at 41 I just… cracked. I realised I had spent most of my life with nothing to show for it but a few awards no one cares about, a string of… awful comedian exes who broke up with me for being funnier than them… and a dreadful office job [SIGH] I was going to be working until I died, because I’d never bothered to build a stable career. I was never going to own a home; never going to have kids; never going to have the life I’d spent my entire youth sacrificing for.”

… Yes, I know I just quoted the whole beginning of the statement but: a lot of the RQ crew and their friends are comedians, sooo, uhhh. RQ folks, are you okay.

- Abridged version as promised, but things I liked: how you could understand why the statement-giver got wrapped up in the cult, but also how… she didn’t really belong there indeed, because she was mostly focusing on the form of it (the kind words, the contact, the work in itself, the wine production), like she was attracted to the gratuitous symbolisms around the meditation course, but not truly receptive to… the meat of things, what was behind the shape of it, what was at the core?

How she was, at the end, extremely petty about the cult’s failure (“There’s a part of me that’s glad. A sick little part that’s happy that whatever “love” was there, whatever I couldn’t be a part of, is gone from the world. And no one else gets it either.”).

How, oops, a fair amount of officers in the American police may have signed their local equivalent of a Section 31 form… or else, Gertrude or Adelard had been around, because explosives (“The compound was destroyed in an “accidental generator explosion”, and everything was gone.”)

How, once again, we got a statement with an exterior shape reminescent of different Fears (Jon pointing it out at the end, a “fleshliness”), like a few other recent ones? Though this one was a bit spelled out for us. (“And when you’re at that point, it’s astounding what can crawl into your heart – and start to fester there. […] Or if they… came about after things started to change. Started to go rotten.”)

How the statement was about leaving everything to settle in America… while later in the episode, Julia&Trevor revealed that they had come back from it to England.

How the simple representation of the world encouraged by the cult found a kind of echo with Julia&Trevor, simplistically separating people between monsters (preys) and the rest?

- … So, once again: why is Jon reading these specific statements, since he came back from Ny-Ålesund?

* MAG146, “Threshold”: Jon did mention that he had been pulled towards that one when he began to focus on Hill Top Road (“I spent so long looking for it, back when I found his father’s, and… no luck. But now, I decide to start looking properly into Hill Top Road, and all of a sudden… I’m drawn to rearrange a filing cabinet – and what do I find behind it?”)

* MAG147, “Weaver”: left by Annabelle to Fuck Him Up.

* MAG148, “Extended Surveillance”: Beholding, someone getting taken over by Beholding and obsessing over his friend.

* MAG150, “Cul-de-Sac”: Hey, The Power Of MLM Love Can Save Someone From The Lonely Zone If You Reach For Them xoxoxo.

* MAG152, “A Gravedigger’s Envy”: Someone falling deeper and deeper (ha) into their shiny new patron and Enjoying What They’re Doing.

* MAG153, “Love Bombing”: how someone got indoctrinated into a cult, and dodged a bullet by being dismissed from it because they didn’t believe/Feel It enough.

Has it been Annabelle still messing with him? Beholding? A reflection of Jon’s own preoccupations, that’s been leading him towards the few last ones?

- Aka: was that once again Annabelle cackling in Jon’s face because WOW, these first few lines sure felt like someone cackling in Jon’s face:

(MAG153, Barbara Mullen-Jones) “Everyone thinks they’re too smart to get involved in a cult. I’m sure you do. You think, that at the first mention of “aliens”, or the end of the world, or the lost book of the Bible, where Jesus buried his Holy Staff in the foothills of the Himalayas… you’d go running. Trouble is, that misunderstands how it works. I mean, when I was with The Divine Chain, some of the smartest people there were also the most committed. Intelligence doesn’t make you less prone to taking on bad ideas, it just makes you better at defending them…! To other people, and to yourself. Smart people can believe some truly ridiculous things, and then deploy all the reason and logic at their disposal to justify them. Because belief doesn’t begin in your mind – it begins in your feelings.”

… So once again, Jon’s reaction is a priceless “jON???” moment because:

(MAG153) ARCHIVIST: Statement ends. [SIGH] … I swear. I almost find the cult dedicated to the Dark Powers of Fear easier to understand than the more mundane sort. At least they have some consistency.

“What’s going on?” / Jon: *clicks “I’m in this statement and I don’t like it.”*

Oh My Gods, Jon… you read so many statements… they work/proceed exactly the same… getting you when you’re vulnerable… filling in what you’re craving and lacking, with the mix of “making you think you were shaped for them” and “shaping you for them” in turn…

(At least, he wasn’t in denial over the fact that the Dread Powers are “cults”. That would have been harder for him to do, anyway; and he didn’t deny it in the past when Georgie (MAG083, “Look me in the eyes and tell me that it’s not part of the cult or whatever the hell it was that left you homeless.”) and Jude (MAG089, “I don’t suppose I could talk to anyone else in your, um…” “It’s fine, you can call it a cult.”) both used the term. Still. Jon, there is no comfort/pride/excuse to get by trying to claim that the Fears Gods you’ve been involved with are more effective than your ~regular~ cults.)

- … How did Julia&Trevor manage to leave America? Last time we had heard of them, they were stuck:

(MAG109) ARCHIVIST: And… [SIGH] why America? JULIA: [FAINT GROAN] TREVOR: [CHUCKLE] Heard tell there were a wolfman…! JULIA: [LAUGH] TREVOR: Old Dave, he’s down in Plymouth, swore blind his brother had seen one on the Pacific Crest trail– JULIA: I told Trevor he was a liar, but here we are anyway. Have been for a couple of years…! TREVOR: Hey, now – no wolfman, sure, but there’ve been plenty out here that would needs killing! JULIA: [LONG-SUFFERING SIGH] True enough. Plus, it’s hard to leave. We’re not exactly here legally and trying to get a flight home would get us noticed by authorities we’d rather avoid. TREVOR: I keep telling her we could hop a boat! JULIA: And I tell him I’d rather stay hunting here than trap myself on a boat for two weeks!

(Julia has Bad History with water.)

- I wasn’t incredibly clear on the post-statement scenography – I assumed there had been a gunshot at first (but it wasn’t tagged in the content warnings, although it had consistently been in previous episodes), so was that loud bang… Jon’s door? Or the trapdoor? being violently banged open?

(There was the chair scraping on the floor when Julia was ordering Jon to stay sitting, so for that, I pictured her hands on his shoulder and at some point, them pinning his arms in his back and slamming his head on the table.)

- Loving how Julia’s perception of Jon doesn’t change:

(MAG107) JULIA: We can chat in the car! I’m sure you’ve got a ton of librarian stories, the miles will just fly by.

(MAG153) JULIA: Sure. Or: I slit your little bookworm’s throat…!

Jon Is Just A Nerd, uh.

- I really love how Jon “Can’t Shut His Mouth” Sims and Julia “Sims, Shut The Fuck Up” Montauk’s dialogue:

(MAG153) ARCHIVIST: [VENOMOUS] Gerry wasn’t “yours”. You had no right– [SLAMMING SOUND] TREVOR: Oh, you hear that, Julia? “Gerry”. JULIA: Sounds like it got pretty chummy…! Where is he? […] JULIA: Sure. Or: I slit your little bookworm’s throat…! DAISY: Do it. That give me a chance to finish off your dad. TREVOR: I’m not her father…! ARCHIVIST: Not by blood, maybe…! JULIA: Shut. it. ARCHIVIST: [GROAN OF PAIN]

… was basically an exchange of “YOU’RE JUST A USELESS BI” “OH YEAH? AND YOU HAVE DADDY ISSUES.”

Jon. Jon, please.

(Guuuh over Julia’s “You always do what evil books tell you to, do you?” because… she can’t know, but to say that to someone who had almost been taken by Mr Spider because following the book’s thread? Aouch.)

- And my heart BREAKS over the fact that Julia&Trevor are reproaching him… what was the Most Obviously Anti-Beholding thing Jon has ever done, back in season 3 – fulfilling the promise he had made to Gerry, and freeing/actually killing him, even if it caused himself pain in the process. But for Julia&Trevor, it’s precisely what made him an enemy just like any other monster.

(MAG153) ARCHIVST: He asked me to. JULIA: Oh, really? You always do what evil books tell you to, do you? TREVOR: Gotta say, I’m disappointed. Genuinely thought you were different. But you’re just another monster. Not even worth the chase…! JULIA: You want the honours, old man. TREVOR: Don’t mind if I do~!

Aouch. (I wonder what part of it was rightful anger at being deprived of their “monster manual”, and how much was actually a pretext to kill someone they had so far deemed as vaguely spooky, though? Interestingly, they didn’t mention that they felt like Jon had gotten worse or anything. According to their words, they only wanted to kill Jon because they felt that he had betrayed them and that siding with Gerry meant that he was “another monster”.)

- And bringing back the mention of Gerry and the book… also puts Eric Delano back to mind. Gerry only knew that his mother had used his father as training material with the book, but he didn’t find him inside. We know that Mary gave Gertrude a page, implying that it was Eric’s (“what’s left of him”), but Jon didn’t find it in Gertrude’s secret stash either:

(MAG111) GERARD: I never knew my dad. Not really. He worked in the Archives like you, but quit once I was born. I think he wanted to help raise me. But mum didn’t need the help, and after me she wasn’t able to have kids again, so she killed him in his sleep to practice her bookbinding. I guess she failed. I always thought he was in here, but when I eventually got hold of it, there wasn’t a page in there.

(MAG062) MARY: The End, of course. I could never truly serve it; I just don’t find death that interesting. I’ve always found a singular devotion far too restrictive. Just ask Eric… or what’s left of him. […] GERTRUDE: And do you have any proof of this? Your… “magic book”. MARY: Yeah. [PAPER RUSTLING] You can keep this page. I made sure it was in English. GERTRUDE: Go– Who… who is it? MARY: A surprise, dear. Just make sure you’re alone when you read it. [CHAIR SCRAPING] Goodbye, Gertrude. Wish me luck. [DOOR OPENING] [DOOR CLOSING] GERTRUDE: Well. I–I don’t… really know what to add to that. If what she says is true, I should think carefully before reading this page aloud. I should probably destroy it. [GRUNT] I do rather hate the smell of burning skin. Anyway… that’s a decision for another day. [CHAIR SCRAPING] [FLOORBOARD OPENING] [FLOORBOARD CLOSING] […] ARCHIVIST: […] But in spite of all that, I’m… strangely excited. Because what sticks out to me more than anything else in that tape… is the very distinctive floorboard, at the end. [CLOTHES RUFFLING] One that hasn’t changed in the eight years since this statement was given. There’s never been any reason to look closely at a random section of floor. This bit wasn’t even breached by any of the worms. [FLOORBOARD OPENS] Because it had Gertrude’s hidden compartment beneath it. Hmm. No… strange skin page. But there is a laptop. And a key. I wonder what it opens. End supplement. [CLICK.]

So… the question is still up – did Gertrude burn the page in the end? We know that she had burned a few things down in the tunnels, including at least one Leitner. Did she keep the page and is it stored somewhere? And if so… why would have she kept it? Eric was likely one of her assistants before Gerry was born, and Gertrude sounded… rather fond of him:

(MAG085) ARCHIVIST: Date of original statement unclear, though paper quality likely puts it at between twenty and thirty years ago. […] There are some… short pieces of correspondence in the file, addressed to Gertrude, from someone called, er, Eric Delano, confirming that while he typed out this statement, he has no memory of doing so, and requesting some sick leave to address… persistent migraines he has developed.

(MAG137) GERTRUDE: […] And I will admit I’ve grown… fond of the boy. I wonder, if I told him about Eric – whether he’d follow in his father’s footsteps. Still, that’s not like it kept Eric safe in The End.

A few things: Gerry did point out to Jon that he was surprised that Gertrude had apparently managed to get Mary to teach her how to book-bind (MAG111: “I just had to make sure I took the book while my mum was fading, and brought it to her, and then she would free me. I didn’t really believe her, I don’t think, but I did it anyway. When she returned the book to me a week later, her pages burned and mangled, I think I actually cried with relief. I never even considered that my mum might have taught Gertrude how to make pages for it before she was destroyed.”). Could Gertrude have learned it through Eric instead of Mary? Gerry also mentioned that, beyond the fact that Gertrude had chosen to imprison him within the book, he didn’t understand why she had left him behind (MAG111: “I think… I think I finally understand why she brought me back. I just don’t understand why she left me behind.”) – and, indeed, why…? Was it because she had been too freaked out by her arrest (although the book… stayed behind, unclaimed, and she could have got her hands back on it legally)? Was it because Gertrude wanted to leave behind a few hints about her actions, in case she got killed before achieving her goals? Was it because she wanted to retrieve it later, when things would be safer…? (That’d be extremely sentimental coming from her, but if she had kept Eric’s page… could it be that she had planned for Gerry and Eric to meet somehow at some point? If so: AOUCH, because Jon gave Gerry what he wanted, what he asked for… but if Jon were to discover that Eric’s page was still intact and that Gerry could have met his father at last? That… would hurt, uh.)

- Julia&Trevor being back in the game means that they… potentially share a connection with everyone in Team Archives, one way or another:

* Jon was Hunted by Julia, kidnapped/“bodyguarded” by her (MAG107), took Julia&Trevor’s statement about how they met (MAG109), stole Gerry’s page from them (MAG111) before burning it (MAG117). They were already on the fence about Jon’s status as a potential prey back then, but they had at least some interests in common with him (the world not ending, perceiving Max Mustermann as an enemy); right now, Julia&Trevor are clearly labelling Jon as a target and as an overall “monster” – plus, they have the grudge about the page and… there is the fact that Jon’s dreams contained them:

(MAG153) JULIA: [LAUGHS] You’ve got something of ours. TREVOR: “Someone”. JULIA: Took him right from under our noses…! TREVOR: In our own house. JULIA: I call that rude, don’t you? ARCHIVIST: [VENOMOUS] Gerry wasn’t “yours”. You had no right– [SLAMMING SOUND] TREVOR: Oh, you hear that, Julia? “Gerry”. […] Not gonna ask you again, son. ARCHIVIST: I burned the page. Released him. [SILENCE] TREVOR: Aren’t that right noble of you. JULIA: Proper humanitarian. TREVOR: So. [INHALE] Let me get this straight! We take ye in; protect ye from the thing that’s huntin’ ye… JULIA: Spared your life! Even though you’re no better. TREVOR: Help you; give you access to one of our most valuable resources; and you steal it from us, piss off back to England, and then… burn it?! [SHUFFLING] That’s just inconsiderate.

(MAG120) ELIAS: The dark building is newer, but he knows it well; knows the two lost souls who creep through it with an alert hunger on their faces. He recognizes that look from the other Hunter whose dreams he's watched for so long. They stalk the darkness itself, and hope to catch and kill it before it can do the same to them. They see him watching, but they cannot catch his scent.

… Even for Jon’s standards, that’s a lot. Usually, people wanted him dead because of the “Archivist” title and/or because he was marked by The Eye (Jane Prentiss, the Not!Them, Nikola, Michael-The-Distortion in MAG101…), not for… personal reasons, for things Jon himself had done. (… The only exception had been, interestingly… Daisy. Daisy who wanted to rip him apart because he had forced her to give him her statement, and because she kept seeing him in her dreams.)

(* Obviously Peter, and potentially Martin, because:

(MAG153) TREVOR: [SHAKING SIGH] … Come on, Julia. JULIA: What?! TREVOR: There’s no rush. [CHORTLING] We’ve got all the time in the world. Besides… this place is just full of monsters. She can’t guard ’em all.

There Are Other “Monsters” Here.

Would they sense the spooks from Martin, nowadays…?)

* Daisy used to be a Hunter like them, but has decided to stop serving. Trevor used to perceive The Hunt as an “addiction”, occasionally managed to make himself quit it, but when Jon met him in June 2017, Trevor had returned to The Hunt and already decided that he was getting a fair deal out of it, all things considered:

(MAG056, Trevor Herbert) “In the early 80s, I was deep in the grip of my twin addictions. As I mentioned, after a while, The Hunt became an addiction of its own. Of the two, I’ve always found heroin the easier one to quit. […] But The Hunt… the hunt is a purpose. It’s not just a way to get through the day, it’s a reason for there to be a day at all. […] Ah, it’s a shame I’m on the way out. I will miss The Hunt.”

(MAG109) ARCHIVIST: I–I mean, yes… But the situation has changed quite a bit. Last I heard, you were dying of lung cancer…! TREVOR: I was. ARCHIVIST: And now…? TREVOR: I’m not. [CHUCKLE] ARCHIVIST: And, and that doesn’t strike you as… odd. TREVOR: Not much I see these days isn’t “odd”, somehow or other. Not gonna turn my nose up at that one bit that worked out well for me. I hunt monsters; my lungs don’t kill me. [HUFF] Seems like a fair trade. No big job, today.

Daisy antagonised them both, Julia & Daisy are quite obviously ready and willing to jump at each other’s throat again… Which is a bad sign for Daisy, since they’re bringing back her murderous thoughts.

(On the one hand, their antagonism could push Daisy back into The Hunt’s waiting arms. On the other hand… it could go another way – though that would feel very hopeful: now that Trevor has been acknowledged as being a father figure for Julia… could it lead to Trevor pushing Julia out of The Hunt, because he would care more about her well-being than about hunting with her and he knows what a life of Hunt does to you?)

* BASIRA WAS WITH THE SECTION’D OFFICERS WHO RAIDED RAYNER’S LAST BODY-THEFT ATTEMPT, AND SHE WITNESSED HIS DEATH.

Especially since Basira&Jon have just come out of a mini-Dark arc… it feels especially relevant? Julia lost both her mother and her father to the People’s Church of the Divine Host, because of Rayner, and she had herself been scared of The Dark for long:

(MAG109) JULIA: There was another reason that I chose to work nights. If you read my statement, then I’m sure it will come as no surprise that for most of my life, I’ve had a pretty significant fear of the dark. I used to lie awake at night; listening, straining my ears for the noise of movement or that… dreadful growl coming out of the dark. It was one of my better counsellors that suggested I try working nights as a way to address it. And it worked! For the most part.

Amongst other things, we recently had confirmation of what had happened to Julia’s mom through Manuela’s statement:

(MAG143) MANUELA: You were not the first to try and stop us, you know. Not even within living memory. I was but newly joined when [Lynette] fled the Church, and Maxwell had her silenced. But I remember her brute of a husband. He fed the beast for us, you know, when first he believed [Lynette] might still be saved. Then, later, we faithful served as his fuel to banish it. But, not for long. That’s the thing about Darkness, isn’t it? You try your hardest to eradicate, flood your surroundings with light, but it’s always there at the edges – waiting for the glow to weaken, to return and cover you forever. Robert Montauk discovered that the hard way.

(And in return: Manuela mentioned that Darvish had “crossed a Montauk, which has… traditionally gone poorly for us.”, which was an allusion to Julia and was covered by the story she told Jon in MAG109.)

Why Robert Montauk did what he did and what happened to her mother could still be elements that Julia would be interested to know. (Or… not anymore, because she tried to leave that life behind her, but… still, I have trouble picturing that it would be a coincidence that she would be back right after Jon&Basira heard that story.)

* … I’m especially worried about Melanie, since her “connection” to Trevor&Julia is that… they burned down the Ivy Meadows care home, including what was left of Melanie’s father:

(MAG036, Nicole Baxter) “I turned and began to sprint back towards my car. I had to get away, to get out. Then, without warning, I felt something heavy hit me in the side and I lost my footing, falling to the ground. I looked up to see an old man pinning me to the ground, his long, white beard matted and filthy. I screamed and tried to escape, but his age seemed to have done nothing to diminish his strength, and he kept his grip easily. Then he spoke in a thick Mancunian accent and told me to keep my voice down. I noticed that his skin was unblemished pink, and behind him stood a young woman, tall and lean with close-cropped hair and a deep scar over her right eye. She carried a large canvas bag, and was shaking her head, telling the old man to leave me alone. After a few suspicious glances, he got up. I could swear I recognised him from somewhere, but when I asked the two of them who they were, they just shook their heads and told me to leave. I asked them what was going on, and the old man looked at his companion, as if asking permission, said something about knowledge being a good defence here. She shook her head and said that leaving quickly was a better one. I didn’t need to be told a third time. I got in my car, and I left them to their work. I didn’t turn around even when I saw the smoke start to rise behind me.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: The Ivy Meadows Care Home in Woodley was officially decommissioned in July 2011, a month before the first of these alleged calls came in. It burned down on the 4th of September that same year after a leaking gas main caught fire.

(MAG106) ELIAS: Your father was your last real anchor, wasn’t he? [STATIC RISES.] MELANIE: That’s none of your business. ELIAS: Perhaps. Five years is plenty of time to grieve. It’s a real tragedy, isn’t it – dementia? Oh, especially so early. But he always remembered you, didn’t he? “Little moth”. MELANIE: Shut. up. ELIAS: At least, you got him into a decent care home. Hard to afford on an irregular income like yours, but… your mother’s life-insurance helped plenty. And Ivy Meadows wasn’t as expensive as some of them! It’s a shame, about the fire. But I’d have thought it would offer something of a relief. MELANIE: Wh–what are you talking about…? ELIAS: Oh. Of course. They told you he died in his sleep, didn’t they? Smoke inhalation. A real tragedy, but at least he didn’t suffer. MELANIE: I… ELIAS: Do you want to know what really killed him? [STATIC RISES] MELANIE: [SHOCKED INHALE] [RAGGED BREATHING] [TAPE RECORDER HISSING] ELIAS: Awful, isn’t it? He really suffered. Not… really your fault, just bad luck. MELANIE: [RAGGED BREATHING TURNING INTO SOBS] ELIAS: That doesn’t comfort you, does it?

And I have no idea how Melanie will take that news. Able to remain stable and/or to decide that it may have been a mercy-kill? Refusing to feel any gratitude-adjacent feeling towards then, since they did it as Hunters (so, not to save innocents or to put the residents out of their suffering… but because there were monsters to kill)? Anger and resentment at what they did? (Would Melanie team up with them if it’s about tracking down Amherst…?)

- … So, Julia and Trevor just Got Inside Of The Institute Like That, and violence’d Jon, and would have gone for the kill if Daisy hadn’t stepped in:

(MAG153) TREVOR: Gotta say, I’m disappointed. Genuinely thought you were different. But you’re just another monster. Not even worth the chase…! JULIA: You want the honours, old man. TREVOR: Don’t mind if I do~! JULIA: [CHUCKLES] TREVOR: [CHUCKLES] DAISY: [FAR] Get away from him.

……………….. So, once again: pETER.

(S4 trailer) MARTIN: … Yeah. Yeah, I know. [PAUSE] I’m, er… I’m actually with him now. [SNIFFING] You were right. [PAUSE] … yeah. Yeah, I know. [LONG INHALE] I… [EXHALE] … Will they be safe? [PAUSE] … Okay… [INHALE] Okay! I’ll do it. Yeah. Sure thing.

(MAG126) PETER: Martin, this is what we agreed. After The Flesh attacked, you came to me. MARTIN: [SIGH] PETER: And I’ve held up my end of the bargain, despite your continued hesitation. Your friends have been largely untroubled by the many – many – enemies that they have made. MARTIN: What about the delivery guy? Breekon. And the coffin? PETER: Was that its name? To be honest with you, I thought it was dead. MARTIN: You thought wrong. PETER: True enough. And as soon as I learned it was here, I moved to intervene, but, well. It turns out I wasn’t really needed. And as far as the coffin goes, there’s not much I can do about a bull-headed Archivist– MARTIN: [EXPLOSIVE EXHALE] PETER: –who seems hellbent on self-destruction. My powers only extend so far. […] As I said, one of the last shreds of the Circus delivered a gateway into Too-Close-I-Cannot-Breathe. I went to help, but was too late. Then, your detective friend– MARTIN: No, she’s not a dete– PETER: –went on one of Elias’s wild-goose chases, then Jon wilfully hurled himself into the coffin. I did not intervene, because thankfully, I did not agree to protect your friends from their own idiocy.

(MAG142) MARTIN: … Anyway. So, what’s this field trip they’re on? DAISY: They, uh… they didn’t tell you? MARTIN: [DRY CHUCKLE] No, I… What. … [QUICKLY] Daisy, where have they gone? DAISY: You know that town in Norway? MARTIN: What? I… Wai– Wh–what?! You don’t mean Ny-Ålesund? DAISY: Yyyeah. They reckon there’s a ritual they need to, you know… MARTIN: Yeah, but Peter didn’t even men–…! [OPENS DRAWERS, SHUFFLES THROUGH THINGS] I don’t believe this! DAISY: Sorry. Shouldn’t have said anything. MARTIN: No, no, it’s… thank you, I just… [CLOSES DRAWER] For God’s sake, can he not stay safe for like, for like ten minutes?!

(MAG151) MARTIN: How honest has he been with me? SIMON: About which part? MARTIN: Protecting the others. SIMON: I think he tried. I suspect he may have slightly exaggerated his abilities when you first made the deal, but he certainly expended a reasonable amount of influence and resources to follow through. MARTIN: But… [EXPLOSIVE SIGH] But that was never the endgame, was it? He just wanted me on side long enough to rope me into his… his plans for The Extinction.

1°) I doubt that we’ll get to hear Martin learning about Julia&Trevor’s irruption in the Archives on tape, but PLEASE, I WANT TO HEAR HIS SHRIEKS WHEN HE DOES…

2°) We’re more likely to hear him explode in Peter’s face about it, though.

3°) That is, if Peter doesn’t flee into The Lonely forever to escape Martin’s wrath. Jokes aside: I don’t think that Martin will be surprised, at this point, because Simon has now confirmed to him that… Peter isn’t as strong/useful as a defender as he claimed. And this probably won’t be a game-changer for Martin… unless it pushes him to press Peter to unfold The Plan already, at last, because the longer they wait, the longer Jon and the others are kept vulnerable.

(… Though: they should still be defenceless, whether Martin&Peter’s plan(s) succeed or not? Peter promised their safety, however… was he referring to extending his own protection to them (because we now have confirmation that that deal was mostly a scam), or because Martin would become something else and/or trigger something that could keep them safe in the long run…?)

- … Meanwhile, Elias had suggested another “defender” to Basira:

(MAG127) BASIRA: … So why am I here? What do you want that’s so important you needed to tell me to my face? ELIAS: I believe you’ve recently lost Melanie. BASIRA: … We saved Melanie. ELIAS: As a person, yes, but as a defender… I would have thought you would want all the help you could get, or… have you forgotten what happened last time you lay your guard down? BASIRA: … We’ll work it out. ELIAS: Possibly. Then again: you are beset by enemies on all sides, Basira. And unless you expect Jon to record them into submission, it would seem you’re in rather dire need of another option. BASIRA: … And you just happen to have one. ELIAS: I might have an idea, yes. BASIRA: And what does it cost? ELIAS: Just some of your time, Basira. Just your time.

(MAG135) BASIRA: Like hell you don’t! Every lead, a dead end. Every contact, vanished or dead. I’ve spent three weeks bouncing all over the globe on your bad intel, because you said there was a way to bring Daisy back. ELIAS: There was. It required you to be absent. BASIRA: [EXPLOSIVE EXHALE] You wanted him to go in there. ELIAS: And you would never have allowed it, had you been present. BASIRA: Why? ELIAS: Would you simply believe I wanted you and Daisy reunited? BASIRA: No.

… and did he mean Jon (who would have developed his powers further), or Daisy, in the end? Directly post-coffin, Basira had been absolutely disappointed in Daisy’s state:

(MAG133) BASIRA: Yeah, I just… I didn’t realise she’d change into someone who… can’t look after herself. ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] BASIRA: Even without the muscle atrophy. ARCHIVIST: You were hoping for a defender. BASIRA: I was hoping for someone I can trust to share the load. Because right now, it’s all on me. ARCHIVIST: [SLOC EXHALES] It doesn’t have to be. BASIRA: Hm. ARCHIVIST: You’re not happy she is back. BASIRA: I didn’t say that, Jon. I would never abandon Daisy and, having her back is… [SIGH] But right now, she’s dead weight. And I need to be able to travel light.

But Daisy is proving that she’s still… kicking a bit, indeed. Or at least enough to chase away Julia&Trevor despite her, uh, current state:

(MAG153) DAISY: [FAR] Get away from him. JULIA: Oh… TREVOR: What’s this…? You got yourself a watchdog? JULIA: Well, more of a lapdog…! Scrawny, isn’t she? DAISY: [MENACINGLY] I said get back…! TREVOR: Malnourished, I’d say. How long since you last tasted blood? DAISY: [SHARP BREATHING] JULIA: You think you can take us both~? DAISY: … I’d enjoy it. Start with the old bastard – he’s slower, doesn’t guard his neck. And you worry about him too much, don’t you? I go for him, you get sloppy, predictable. […] TREVOR: [SHAKING SIGH] … Come on, Julia. JULIA: What?! TREVOR: There’s no rush. [CHORTLING] We’ve got all the time in the world. Besides… this place is just full of monsters. She can’t guard ’em all. JULIA: [PANTING] … Fine. DAISY: [GROWLS] [DOOR SLAMMED CLOSE]

I’m not absolutely sure whether the final growl was hers or Trevor’s and/or Julia’s, but, in any case, GODS, I love how Daisy has turned fiercely protective of her idiot Archivist.

- And at the same time, I’m heartbroken over Daisy but IN A GOOD WAY because I… was really fearing that she might have gone back to hunting behind the tapes’ back. But no. It’s… “just” that not Hunting is slowly killing her:

(MAG153) ARCHIVIST: Are you alright? DAISY: [BREATHLESS] Don’t touch me. ARCHIVIST: Christ, he was right, I, I didn’t… When did you get so thin? DAISY: I’m not, it’s fine. ARCHIVIST: … It’s The Hunt, isn’t it? Without it– DAISY: I’m fine. Just haven’t been hungry. I’m strong enough. ARCHIVIST: Clearly. DAISY: They’re not gone yet. We could still get them. [CLOTHES SHUFFLING] ARCHIVIST: Daisy, no. It’s like you say. “Don’t listen to the blood.” DAISY: [SLOWER BREATHES] … “Listen to the quiet”…

… And I wasn’t expecting Jon to spontaneously remind her not to Chase. To respect what Daisy had been fighting for, although he tried to argue with her overall decision shortly after. Gods, so with Melanie going on an Eye-strike, Jon not taking live-statements anymore, and Daisy being slowly killed by (the lack of) The Hunt… current Team Archives is slowly crumbling, and how long can it truly last…? Unless they find a way to temper the effects, or get better after a very bad period…?

- Also, no wonder Melanie and Daisy were getting closer, aaaah!! Same mindset of choosing death over feeding/getting fed by a Dread Power… with some nuances between the two: I’d say that Melanie’s stance feels more… ethical, after all (she didn’t want to contribute to The Fears’ system), while Daisy’s is really about doing things on her terms and not letting anything control her anymore? Although, as she pointed out, she is aware of the fact that she herself used to be involved in a (non-spooky, still very harmful) system and to be protected by it:

(MAG153) ARCHIVIST: Even so, if it’s having this much of an effect on you– DAISY: I’m not going back. I can’t let it in again. ARCHIVIST: But it– … What if it kills you? DAISY: [CHORTLE] Always said I was dedicated to justice…! ARCHIVIST: Daisy! It’s not… You can’t think like that. DAISY: Jon. Do you have any idea how much damage you can do if you’re a police officer who wants to hurt people? How much the system will protect you? [SHARP INHALE FROM JON] I managed to keep most of it from Basira, but…

(Well, despite Daisy’s attempts to hide it from her, Basira did know at the very least about Daisy illegally killing “monsters”. Basira wasn’t Perfectly Pure And Innocent when it came to condoning it, either.)

- I’m love Daisy, I love how frank she is about what she did, the fact that it was her… and also, that she decided she wouldn’t condone those things anymore ;;

(MAG142) MARTIN: It’s alright. Wasn’t you. [INHALE] Not really. DAISY: No, it was. I hate… a lot of what I did back then; doesn’t mean I’m not… responsible for it, doesn’t mean it… wasn’t me.

(MAG153) ARCHIVIST: That wasn’t you, that was The Hunt! DAISY: … [SIGH] We were the same. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … You’d never known anything different. [SILENCE] DAISY: Because I never wanted to.

… And she’s also, implicitly, throwing what Jon Taught Her at his face:

(MAG121) OLIVER: I made a choice. We all made choices. Now, you have to– […] Make your choice, Jon.

(MAG132) DAISY: I hurt… a l–lot of people… and some who… who I shouldn’t have. Did you ever hear the, the story Elias told me? About what I did. How I am… He, he didn’t get a detail wrong. The Hunt… Hunger was in me all my life. Telling me who to chase, how to hurt them. I never needed to think… who I was outside of that. But down here, where I… I can’t hear the… blood anymore, I d–, I don’t… I don’t know who I am without, without the chase… I just know… that I… I don’t like who I was back outside. I don’t want to be her again. I want… to be… better… [PANTS] Y–you know what I thought wh–when I woke up here? I thought this was hell; I wa–, I was dead, and within hell. And I… eh, I–I knew I deserved it… I don’t want t–to be a s–sadistic predator again… I–I don’t want to… hobble around, like some pathetic, wounded prey either… I don’t know which would be worse. And I’m sc–scared, now, that I’ll never get the choice… ARCHIVIST: One thing I’ve learned, Daisy, is that we all get a choice. Even if it doesn’t feel like one.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: My– [PAUSE] [INHALE] [SIGH] My memories of the coma are not clear. But I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die. But ever since then, I… I don’t know if I made the right decision; I–I’m stronger now, tougher, I can… … If I do die, now, or get sealed away somewhere forever… I don’t know if that’s a bad thing.

(MAG153) DAISY: All that time trapped was good for one thing: thinking. And I did a lot of it. I’ve made my choice. ARCHIVIST: Okay…! So what do we do when they come back? DAISY: I don’t know.

(Jon… you threw out so many encouraging words but still didn’t follow through on them yourself, uh? Because meanwhile, he had already attacked two people, and was trying to convince himself that he was being manipulated/pushed into doing it without having a say in it…)

And Jon Trying To Argue Hurt A Lot, because it’s very obvious that he’s projecting / seeing himself in her? He was eight when he encountered Mr. Spider’s book. Daisy was eleven when she met something (Slaughter woman?) who turned Calvin Benchley against her; indeed, she’s “never known anything else”, and it shaped her as a person (she became “Daisy” because of the scar the experience left her with). So, if Daisy, who has taken a stance (to stop being a Hunter and hurt people), were to decide that in the end, it’s too painful, it’s not worth it… maybe Jon thinks that he wouldn’t feel too bad about doing the same?

But no, Daisy is still saying that it’s not worth going back to her patron and hurting people, stripping Jon of that excuse and possibility right away. I still have no idea whether Jon will take inspiration from Melanie&Daisy, but… whatever he chooses in the end, we’ve had prime demonstrations that it’d indeed be his own choice – not the Web manipulating him, not Beholding replacing by something else, not the “ineluctability” of becoming a careless or ruthless monster, just his own personal decision to hurt rather than be hurt.

So; I still have no idea, I still feel like only Martin is the only one who can make things go forwards at the moment, but also, lots of plot threads are accumulating to just… explode at the same time and make a carnage.

MAG153’s title is Magnificent in its simplicity and… evocations. So. Could be a Slaughter thing, with a mix of Team Archives (/Daisy) getting wasted, but obviously, it puts Mary Keay and The End to mind. Though I don’t know what else we could get about Mary? Jon hasn’t said anything about running out of the stash of Gertrude’s tapes from Elias’s office, so it… could be one of them again (last one was MAG145, Gertrude&Arthur) – Gertrude talking with Ended!Mary after having invoked her page? Something from Eric Delano (in written form, or a recording with Gertrude while he was alive or dead) about his ~lovely wife~?

#X_X #2 #3 #4 #5 #the magnus archives #mag153 #tma liveblog #tma season 4 #long post/

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