#elias *signing the paper approving of gertrude's additional expenses for plastic explosives

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG134 /o/

- WOW is season 4, so far, the “Learning About Rituals” season. More about Fears politics, yes!! And new names! “Mother-of-Puppets” is such a wonderful name, and I love that it tends to be described as a “she” by people who know a bit about it (Oliver had referred to her in the feminine form too). Jon uses “it”, uses “the Spider”, but in his mind, it’s probably more… masculine?, given how he (almost) met “Mr. Spider” as a kid…

(MAG134) PETER: There are two Powers that, to my knowledge, have never attempted to fully manifest, never had followers set them up for a ritual: Mother-of-Puppets, and Terminus. The Web, and The End. The Web, I’ve never really been sure about: if I were to guess, I would say it actually prefers the world as is, playing everyone against each other, and so on. The End, on the other hand… The End doesn’t really need one: it knows that it gets everything eventually, so why bother. The End manifesting would not be a new world of terror; it would be a lifeless world. Devoid of everything. MARTIN: … Including fear. PETER: Exactly. It has no reason to truly attempt to enter our world, it’s… passive. But The Extinction… The Extinction is… different. It’s active. It will seek to create a lifeless world, in a way that none of the other Powers ever would. Some interpretations suggest it might replace us with something new, that can then fear annihilation in turn. But I and those like me would rather that did not happen.

It makes so much sense for The End!! I’m… however a bit surprised about The Web, though that tracks; but Peter’s overall tone was… way less confident on that one, and I can’t help but wonder, too. Why would The Web not attempt its own ritual? Because it requires a bit of free will to play with, and the success of a Web ritual would mean annihilating any?

I had already got the impression that what Raymond Fielding did at Hill Top Road (MAG059) was a draft or an experiment, in a small microcosm, of what a world under The Web could be like; but now, even more, if The Extinction is confirmed… I wonder if the Fifteenth couldn’t be a deal-breaker, for The Web: if this couldn’t push it to change its mind and decide to set up its own ritual after all, to pick controlling everything over letting everything get destroyed?

- And once again, I’m reminded of how close The Web and Beholding seem to be:

(MAG134) PETER: What does puzzle me, though, and I mean that genuinely, is… why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin, while Jon was in there. [PAUSE] It’s a question, Martin, it’s– it’s not an accusation. MARTIN: I don’t know. And I just… felt like it might help. He’s always recording, I thought… it–it might help him… find his way out. PETER: Interesting. Were you compelled? MARTIN: [SULLEN] … I don’t know. … M–maybe? I–I, I definitely wanted to do it… PETER: But? MARTIN: I’m… I’m not sure where the idea came from. PETER: You should watch out for that. Could be something dangerous. MARTIN: Sure.

It’s something I had wondered about Jon too: of what he does and thinks, what is coming from his “Insights”, and what is… the Web pulling strings? So far, I got the feeling that Insights give you a certainty: this is a Truth, a knowledge, there is no room for doubt about that piece of information. The Web… pulls you in a direction/makes you do something, and leaves you room to rationalise your actions yourself. What Martin described sounds a lot like how Trevor had described the Web’s effects on him:

(MAG056, Trevor Herbert) “she locked eyes with me. The weirdest sensation began to flow through me; I wanted to leave. It wasn’t like with a vampire, where I would feel like I’d been spoken to. This was just a sudden awareness of my own desire. I’d been sober for three years at that point, but I felt like I desperately wanted to get high, and I knew that the best place to get some was out in the night. Looking back, I think it might have been my own mind rationalising the way I felt my will being tugged out of the room, but it was still very powerful. If I hadn’t had a lifetime’s experience of identifying and fighting off the effect of the vampire’s gaze, I probably would have done it, too.”

Martin did something, didn’t know why, tried to find explanations as to why he did it but explicitly said he wasn’t sure about it. If it was Beholding, I feel like he would have been certain that his actions could have the result they did. The fact that Peter was suspicious of it, and not… directly associating it with one of Beholding’s powers (and given how he told Martin that he needed someone from The Beholding: it would have been a good, natural thing!), seems to confirm that no, it’s not Beholding, it’s something else.

And if it’s indeed The Web, it means:

* that The Web is still around, and still… “doting” on Jon a bit (or at least making sure he’s still in the game). The Web likes/needs/gets its kick with Jon – it had already sent Oliver to wake him up, it made sure that Jon wouldn’t stay stuck forever in the coffin… although it had helped him to go inside. I doubt that it just ~likes~ Jon and wants to cater to him, it’s probably more… curious? about his courses of actions (since it helped him to get Daisy back and ensured his return), but at the very least, it factored Jon in.

* that The Web is able to influence Martin, even with Peter being around. We could still get Web!Martin, people!! Maybe. (Please?) (Especially given that!! If The Web and The End ~don’t have a ritual~: Jon is close to Georgie, and met her after she had been marked. And Martin has always liked spiders, since he was introduced…)

* -> The Web is also getting the information about the new Fear. If it’s real, if Adelard is not mistaken: then The Web is the strongest candidate to want to stop it, is getting all the information… and hasn’t explicitly warned Jon about it, but has nonetheless given him information about how Gertrude stopped rituals (sending him her tape about The Flesh). Slowly training Jon in that regard, maybe?

- … Given how Peter thought that The Extinction could have once been part of The End before it took its independence… I wonder if this could be the case for The Eye or The Web, too, or if they might be currently merging? Mostly because of new technologies and means of communication, because our societies tend to associate control and knowledge – through surveillance?

There is the matter of how The Web and The Beholding both give information – as mentioned above, they’re pretty close. Both have pushed Jon to learn more about the rituals and, if Jon indeed belongs to Beholding, he also has a strong connection to The Web due to his childhood encounter. Peter specifically asked Martin if he had been “compelled” – and until now, the words “compel” and “compulsion” were… Archivist things, the way he forces people to answer his questions. The spiders have been invading the Institute for a long while; Elias has never done nor mentioned anything about their presence nor about Jon’s backstory (but did tell Jon: “And your will is still your own, mostly.” That “mostly” sounded very…) (SomethingsomethingTaperecordersandtheWeb, too, but that’s for another post that I swear I’ll try to finish before it’s completely debunked... as I have been telling myself for the last three months.)

… Interestingly: Peter does not sound comfortable with it, doesn’t sound like he regards it as a potential ally (“something dangerous”). If it’s indeed The Web: does Peter fear to be manipulated himself? Does he dislike The Web due to personal reasons – did Gertrude use it against The Lonely?

Then, it’s possible that The Lonely and The Web are naturally antagonistic (like The Vast and The Buried), or at least a bit opposite on the spectrum of colours-that-hate-me? We know that The Web and The Desolation were mostly enemies through Raymond Fielding and Agnes Montague, though it could have been a personal conflict rather than a visceral feud, but then… Since The Web, by essence, relies on connections and different instances (puppeteer/puppet(s)) while The Lonely is, er, a bit more individualistic and about cutting someone’s ties with everything else, I could see them pretty much opposite, even passively? If Gertrude didn’t use explosives against the Lukases’ ritual, I wonder if she used something having to do with The Web to neutralize it…

- There is some extra hilarity around the concept of The Web snatching Martin right under Peter’s nose and getting him as her avatar while Peter was pushing for Martin to join the Lonely, because… remember the circumstances of Peter’s first appearance? He had (presumably) fed Brian Finlinson to The Lonely in MAG100. Brian who was… precisely pursued by Spiders. So, Peter had whooshed Brian while The Web had laid a claim on him.

The Web in season 4: Forgive and forget? AHAHAHAH NO, RESENT AND REMEMBER, FUCKER.

- I love how we invariably go back to “gERTRUDE–” when we learn new things about what she did. Adding to the long list of rituals she took care of, she derailed or at least made sure that The Lonely lost its chance in this round:

(MAG134) PETER: Martin… it’s going to be decades, if not centuries, before I get another chance to bring Forsaken into this world. Your last Archivist saw to that. Honestly, if Elias hadn’t killed that woman, I’d have been very tempted. I warned him she was a danger– MARTIN: Peter! PETER: –but he’s always– MARTIN: Peter.

What have you done this time, and when will we learn about that one, and how: through a statement from Peter himself? Through Jon finding a statement left by a witness, in the Archives? Is it why Peter is so cheery nowadays while he used to be described as stern and austere, did the derailing of the Lukases’ ritual somehow make them more emotional and human?

I’m also AWWWW. that the Lukases have a pet-name for their god, “Forsaken”. The word was dropped in a few statements regarding their… activities:

(MAG013, Naomi Herne) “It made me feel utterly forsaken. I started to run, following as much of the road as I could see in the hopes of getting to the other side, but there seemed to be no end to it.”

(MAG057, Carter Chilcott) “I had plenty of food and water, so starvation wasn’t a danger; but sometime in the first week, the clock stopped working. With no timepiece and… nothing left outside of the sun or moon, keeping any sort of time at all became utterly impossible. If I had to guess how long I spent in that strange exile, I would say between three or six months, but that is based solely on my eating and sleeping patterns, which were largely filled by despair and that quiet, aching terror of being utterly forsaken.”

I wonder if one of the Lonely statements we got already contains a hint as to what happened… Did Gertrude do something to Peter’s boat when he was bringing her back from the Great Twisting attempt in Sannikov Land? (We’re not sure about the exact date, it was sometime between October 2009 (MAG126’s statement) and 2011, since Leitner told Jon in MAG080, in February 2017, that he had met Gertrude six years ago, when she had lost her last assistant.) Or did it have to do with Sean Kelly (MAG033), when he disappeared in Autumn 2010? Could it have been through Evan – Gertrude finding a runaway Lukas and convincing him to turn against his family because it would protect Naomi? She was still alive when Evan Lukas died, since Naomi’s statement took place in January 2016 and she mentioned that Evan had died one year prior, while Gertrude herself died in March or May 2015. (Though Gerry and Jon’s discussion about the Lukases implied that they had taken care of killing him, or at least that seems to be Jon’s theory…)

At least, Gertrude hasn’t apparently exploded Peter’s boat, since Jon mentioned that it was still active back in MAG033. So maybe no plastic explosive this time, unless she bombed another of their place of power which wasn’t their house or the boat. Still: Gertrude, what did you do.

- Well, no: the big Mystery, regarding Gertrude derailing The Lonely’s ritual is… not so much that she did, because el-o-el Gertrude., but… how come the Lukases are still financing the Institute? How did you manage to pull that one off, Elias?!

I’m legitimately baffled that Peter seems to imply that maybe Elias would have moved a finger to stop Gertrude if he had understood how much of a threat she was, because… as much as Elias is “not exactly big on action” (Mary Keay’s words), I really doubt this one had to do with ignorance or an ~accidental~ lack of oversight. Elias didn’t have any reason to stop Gertrude when she was eliminating the concurrence? Somehow, however, he indeed managed to do something particularly impressive, in the fact that… nobody seems to be holding a grudge against him? Jude Perry clearly cheered at Gertrude’s death, yet hadn’t apparently tried to burn down the Institute or anything, and even considered that she owed Elias one for killing Gertrude, ergo she didn’t Take Care Of Jon although he pissed her off. Did Elias himself leak the rumours that he was behind Gertrude’s death, in order to get some sympathy/tolerance from the other avatars?

But the Lukases, really? How did Elias manage to get them to give money to the Institute even though an avatar (unwillingly) affiliated to Beholding had made sure that their ritual wouldn’t succeed during this round of the game? Is it because the ties between Mordechai Lukas and Jonah Magnus, and the founding of the Institute, are too deep overall and that managing to neutralise even your technical allies is regarded as fair game? Is it because there is a deep, visceral arrangement between the Institute and the Lukases (maybe having to do with Barnabas Bennett’s bones)? Did the Lukases only begin to give money because Elias had gotten rid of Gertrude?

It also shed another light on the fact that Elias… wasn’t really keen on allowing Jon anywhere near the Lukases, back in season one:

(MAG017) ELIAS: Do you have a moment? ARCHIVIST: Not really, I’m sort of in the middle of something. ELIAS: I understand, it’s just that Miss Herne has lodged a complaint. ARCHIVIST: A complaint? I could just as easily complain about her wasting my time! ELIAS: That’s not how it works, Jonathan. […] Regardless, I would prefer that you not antagonise anyone connected to the Lukas family. They are patrons of the Institute, after all. ARCHIVIST: Fine, fine, I’ll be more lovely. Now, can I get back to work?

(MAG033) ARCHIVIST: […] In addition to such business ventures, the Lukas family also provides funding to several academic and research organisations, including the Magnus Institute. Much as I want to dig further into this, especially given certain parallels with case 0161301, Elias gets very twitchy when we look into anything that might conceivably have funding repercussions.

(I’m still UGHBVGHBHJ that someone sternly called Jon “Jonathan” at some point, and that that someone was Elias. Jon, you know you effed up when… =D) Could have indeed been “JonATHAN, I need that mONEY, just SHUT THE HELL UP when it comes to them”, but also… something about making sure that some Lukases wouldn’t try to get rid of Jon as retribution, since they hadn’t been able to get back at Gertrude, when Jon was still a baby Archivist in the making and unable to defend himself against Spooks? And is it because Elias hadn’t done anything to stop Gertrude that Peter mentioned that he found Elias to be “protective” of his people, when he first appeared?

(MAG100) PETER: […] Now. Am I to understand: you don’t work here? BRIAN: No… I was just, um… making a s–statement, or, or whatever. Um… PETER: That’s probably for the best. Elias can be quite… “protective” of his people. Never really understood why.

That, or the Lukases had put a Restraining Order on all Archivists From The Magnus Institute at this point.

- It’s something I still wonder about, from time to time: the relationship between Elias and Gertrude. Elias clearly knew a lot more than what he let on, although he admitted that Gertrude “got very good at hiding things” from him (MAG102). It’s also related to what/who Elias is exactly (a thing that body-hops, or has been around for centuries/the creation of the Institute or even before? The actual Elias Bouchard, known pothead with terrible grades, who came to the Institute in 1991 and maybe got a revelation or something there?): did Gertrude and Elias’s relationship change over time? Was Elias still New at the job when Gertrude was operating, and genuinely didn’t understand that she had wrapped him around her little finger until very late? Was it mutual manipulation? Was Elias especially lenient since she was doing the dirty work, while he pretended not to know anything about it? Were they actually… actively collaborating, since Gertrude was apparently keeping her collaborators in the dark from each other – Gerry didn’t know that Leitner was hiding in the tunnels, Leitner didn’t know that she had been travelling with Gerry to stop the Unknowing, neither ever mentioned Adelard and Adelard hasn’t mentioned them either, and we still don’t know whether she indeed burned “Eric’s” page (likely Eric Delano, one of her assistants, and strongly suspected to be Gerry’s father – but since it wasn’t Made Official and Jonny pointedly eluded the question in the season 3 Q&A, I’m suspecting that the page might still be somewhere and that Gertrude might have given him sensible information that she wanted to hide, as another trump card in case… something happened to her). We know that Gertrude’s spending was approved by the Institute, including her travelling expenses (which baffled Jon a lot), and given how Elias overlooked Jon’s journey starting MAG103… it appears that Gertrude and Elias at least had a neutral ground on some matters.

I still hope that there is a tape, somewhere, of their last conversation… (We did get Leitner’s murder live, so hey, we COULD get a tape recording Gertrude’s murder, too. Equality.)

- I already made the compilation here but still: it remains so far HYSTERICAL to me that Peter just can’t shut up about Elias, while Elias… has never ever mentioned Peter. Ever. Do they even truly know each other? Who knows. (Does Elias know. Have they been sharing a flat for the past twenty years without Elias even knowing.)

- I was a bit curious about the fact that… most avatars tend to pun so much about their Patron, but Peter doesn’t really use idioms about being alone or lonely? (I had wondered at some point if “The Lonely” wasn’t actually a misconception and their god/Fear actually had more to do with time, since Peter throws references about time pretty often.)

… And maybe it’s in fact that……………. (it’s atrocious and I hate him)………. the equivalent of Lonely puns is when Peter uses “I” when you would expect him to use “we”.

(MAG108) PETER: Ah, I see. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. It’s one of Elias’s little jokes. MARTIN: I don– What? PETER: Did he suggest you record a statement today? One that mentioned me?

(MAG134) PETER: Martin… it’s going to be decades, if not centuries, before I get another chance to bring Forsaken into this world. […] The point is that, yes, obviously, if I last that long, I’m going to try again.

That. Would be fitting for a servant of loneliness (turning a matter of community/shared work into something individualistic) and I h a t e it…

Though apparently, Beholding is sneaking his way into Peter’s speech pattern too~ It was already there when he was appearing in season 3 (MAG108: “Be seeing you, as it were.” / MAG120: “Look, don’t let Elias get to you.”, “Oh, what’s that look for? You won! I am sorry if it doesn’t look quite like you hoped, but… here we are.”, “Oh, and Elias said you’d probably be keeping a close eye on the Archivist’s condition”, “And don’t look so down!”), but it keeps going:

(MAG134) PETER: […] I’ll see what else I can find to help with your reservations […]. I’m only one person, and I can’t keep an eye on everything.

And that last one was Typical Jon Speech (Jon uses “keep[ing] an eye on” a lot) so =D Peter, Beholding is getting to you, whether you want it or not.

- Another Peter thing is that he tends to use Biblical references, quite often compared to other characters:

(MAG108) PETER: Elias Bouchard, getting his hands dirty. Well-well. Must be the End Times.

(MAG134) PETER: […] he’s in there three days, and then what do you know! He manages to pull himself out of the coffin, like a grubby Jesus. And he even brings a Penitent Thief along, in the form of your pet murderer!

It was a bit blatant with Mordechai Lukas (very Jewish name, and Barnabas’s mention that a judge would never choose his side… felt like clear-cut antisemitism), and religious names were present in MAG033 (Tadeas Dahl’s name, the first mate of The Tundra, is close to “Thaddaeus”, one of the Apostles, “Peter” himself being another one; Jon also mentioned that the boat company was mainly owned by Nathaniel Lukas, “Nathaniel” being sometimes fused with Bartholomew), though Evan and Conrad (Konrad?) are a bit out of the loop. Evan had told Naomi that his family was “very religious, and he never had been”, which sounded like an Accurate Way to describe your family when they’re devoted to a God Of Loneliness, but it looks like they’re still raised digging a bit in the Old/New Testament? Or is it just a Peter thing? At the very least, the way he uses the similes as a frame of reference is quite noticeable.

(Not the first time that we’re meeting avatars with a very personal take on pre-established religion or mythology! Tom Haan from The Flesh was also invested, and The People’s Church of the Divine Host was created by “defrocked Pentecostal minister” Maxwell Rayner.)

- Holy Mew, is Peter hilarious even (especially) when he’s terrifying. There is something so fascinating in Alasdair Stuart’s delivery, and I’m not sure I’m able to pinpoint it exactly, but it’s mostly… the overall bouncy rhythm of his tone, combined with the fragmented syntax? Peter doesn’t pause when you’d expect him to, so there is always an element of sudden, unexpected anomaly? when you follow what he is saying. And that’s even without the CONTENT of what he’s saying, he’s so… savage… and gratuitously shittalking… everyone… while at the same time… being a facsimile of a Good Person Caring About Your Consent And Personal Investment…

(MAG134) PETER: … Look. I’m not gonna pressure you into doing anything you don’t want to. It won’t even work unless you’re willing to commit. In any case, I have plenty of preparations to work on myself, before it’s ready. I’ll see what else I can find to help with your reservations in the meantime, mmkay? Just… don’t hesitate too long. We are on a deadline, after all.

Peter “mmkay?” Lukas. (Was it a nod to Martin’s “Mm–okay.” from earlier in the conversation? Because then, Peter plz, you have the same nasty habits of stealing cutesy wording from people around you as Elias, who had stolen Melanie’s “Knock knock?” from MAG098 in MAG104.)

Fear Gods care about your consent, your choices and you willingness to give yourself to it uwu AND I LOVE THAT PETER’S MAIN ARGUMENT AS TO WHY HE IS ~TRUSTWORTHY~ ON THE MATTER OF THE NEW FEAR IS:

(MAG134) PETER: Martin… it’s going to be decades, if not centuries, before I get another chance to bring Forsaken into this world. Your last Archivist saw to that. Honestly, if Elias hadn’t killed that woman, I’d have been very tempted. I warned him she was a danger– MARTIN: Peter! PETER: –but he’s always– MARTIN: Peter. PETER: … Anyway. The point is that, yes, obviously, if I last that long, I’m going to try again. But I’m… rather keen for the world not to end, in the meantime?

Basically: “yES, Martin, I tried to turn the world into a factory farm for my Fear God, and you BET ELIAS’S ASS THAT I WILL DO IT AGAIN if given the chance – so help me get a chance at it?”, with bonus “I’d have murdered that 70-something year old woman, trust me.” Also:

(MAG134) MARTIN: So… so what, you’re afraid of the competition? PETER: Not at all. Honestly, that’s the sort of thing I normally relish; I’ve always been a little bit of a gambler, and the higher the stakes, the better.

yEAH HUM H U M I’m glad that it was confirmed that Peter Is A Gambler, because it was something we could see in Vincent Yang’s story but uuuuh, Peter… Peter… there was something else we could also make of your gambling habits in that anecdote:

(MAG066, Vincent Yang) “I blinked hard as I started to make out two figures above me. One was Salesa, staring at me with an expression of curiosity. The other I didn’t know, though I vaguely recognized him as one of the captains that made port here occasionally – captain Larell, maybe, or Lukas? I don’t really remember. He looked at me, then over to Salesa, shrugged, and handed him a twenty-pound note, before turning around and walking out of the shipping container – which I saw I was once again inside.”

… you apparently bet that the guy would be dead, ie: you tend to gamble on the Worst Outcome and/or you tend to lose. That’s not especially reassuring given what you’re fearing yourself.

(Assuming Elias and Peter indeed know each other and are on relatively good terms: did they have bets on Jon’s overall decisions? Does Peter sometimes visit Elias in prison, did they bet on how many days it would take for him to descend into the coffin? Which one of the assistants would die first? Which Fear would leave a scar on Jon next? Which ritual Gertrude would derail next?)

Peter is terrible and yet, terribly honest about it? I mean, there is obviously a catch, there are obviously things he’s not telling, and you don’t want to trust him, but the comparison with Elias is just jarring. Elias wasn’t especially subtle but he still hid who he was for 80 episodes – we only discovered that he was a Spook himself through Leitner, and Elias would have probably kept up the charade even longer without his intervention. He only admitted to everything when Jon came to confront him with witnesses in MAG092, laying on the table the overall current threat and then… Elias “I should have thought preventing the horrific transformation of our world is not solely my concern!” (MAG102) Bouchard never bothered to mention anything about setting up The Watcher’s Crown, although Gerry mentioned in MAG111 that it would be coming soon-ish, and Peter mentioned that Elias had intended to launch “his ritual” before it wasn’t “an option anymore” back in MAG126. (To Elias’s credits: Beholding’s ritual probably doesn’t count as “horrific transformation” in ~his eyes~.)

There could still be a twist about whether Elias really wants to set up The Rite of the Watcher’s Crown (he… hasn’t been extremely good at making the Archive staff want to help? Honestly, before MAG120, I still wasn’t absolutely sure that Elias was into Beholding in the first place) but. Still. He kept veryyyy quiet about it, while Peter has just casually dropped on the table that yes, obviously, he would have liked to “bring Forsaken into this world” and would like to try again, thank you very much. Peter acts all friendly and faux-caring, hand on his heart and all, while being casually awful, but at least, he doesn’t keep quiet about being awful? He is his own shade of terribleness <33

- Peter’s affableness cracks me up so much (and is genuinely terrifying at the same time! But well: we already know he’s bad news, we already know his family is dedicated to a god of Loneliness, we already know he sacrifices people on his boat, we already know he’s a Spook; it’s the fact that he behaves like a genial uncle which is… hilarious):

(MAG120) PETER: Please, call me Peter. MARTIN: N–no. No, I think I’m okay. PETER: As you like. Look, don’t let Elias get to you. You did very well.

(MAG120) PETER: […] Oh! And if you want to talk to a counsellor, the Institute will of course cover any cost. MARTIN: Hum… thanks? PETER: Don’t mention it. I know how it can be with a new boss. I’d like to help you ease into it.

(MAG120) PETER: Marvellous. And don’t look so down! I know, change can be scary, but eventually it happens just the same. I think we’re going to great things, Martin. Great. Things.

(MAG126) PETER: You talked to him. And that’s understandable, Martin, of course it is! Please don’t think I’m upset, it’s just… not ideal. Shows how much work we still have ahead of us.

(MAG134) PETER: […] I’ll see what else I can find to help with your reservations in the meantime, mmkay?

(MAG134) PETER: What does puzzle me, though, and I mean that genuinely, is… why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin, while Jon was in there. [PAUSE] It’s a question, Martin, it’s– it’s not an accusation.

I can’t believe the Fifteenth Fear wasn’t “Boss who sounds like he just came out of managerial school and learnt How To Try To Pretend To Be Your Friend”. (That “mmkay?” pETER…)

(- THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MENTIONING YOU HAVE A ~FAMILY THING~, TO MARTIN, WHO, AS FAR AS WE KNOW, DOESN’T HAVE ANY FAMILY LEFT AFTER HIS MOTHER D I E D A FEW MONTHS AGO, TWO MONTHS AFTER HE LEARNED THAT SHE HATED HIS GUTS BECAUSE HE LOOKED LIKE THE FATHER WHO HAD ABANDONED THEM WHEN HE WAS A KID… rude, Peter, rude, but then, I guess it was also The Point: even the avatar of loneliness has a family, who sometimes organises gathering. Martin… doesn’t. And isn’t even supposed to talk to his friends and his crush right now.) (Spiders, keep him company? ;w;)

- I have absolutely no idea what Peter’s plan is about and why he needs Lonely + Beholding powers to oppose The Extinction. At least officially, he’s not trying to bring out The Lonely’s ritual since Gertrude ensured that their recent attempt had gone very wrong. If it was about casting it to the Shadow Realm/The Lonely, I understand, but why Beholding…? Is it about neutralizing a fear through categorising it, as Jane Prentiss had mentioned…?

- I LOVE that Peter is so… uncaring and unimpressed with Jon overall.

(MAG134) PETER: 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. […] Because, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what’s been going on with him, these past couple of weeks. […] 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. MARTIN: [HUFF] PETER: Though actually, he gave it more consideration that I thought he would. MARTIN: He’s not a moron. PETER: … If you say so! Regardless, he’s in there three days, and then what do you know! He manages to pull himself out of the coffin, like a grubby Jesus. […] Now, from my point of view, so far, none of this has been any of my business. We have bigger concerns than this little soap opera you call an Archive.

It would make sense that an avatar of Loneliness is especially bored/unimpressed with someone who is doing things out of CONCERN, for people he LIKES and wants to PROTECT because he CARES… but then, Martin is also doing this, and Peter is not ridiculising him (too much) for it. So why the disdain for Jon. Is it because Elias gushed about Jon too much.

- S O B ABOUT THE WAY MARTIN STARTED HIS INTRODUCTION OF THE STATEMENT… because it was textbook “Jon at the beginning of season 3” ;;

(MAG081)  [CLICK–] ARCHIVIST: Statement of Jonathan Sims, Head Arch– [SIGH] Former Head Archivist at the Magnus Institute, London, regarding a childhood encounter with a book formerly possessed by Jurgen Leitner.

(MAG134) [CLICK–] MARTIN: [INHALE] … Right. Martin Blackwood, Archi– [SIGH] … Assistant to Peter Lukas, Head of the Magnus Institute, recording statement number 0060122.

Martin’s own title for his introduction was “archival assistant”, they both got stuck on the “arch–”… :: Another similarity between Jon and Martin: they can’t pronounce French to save their lives. (mtb.)

- Surprisingly, there was no sound of a ticking clock in the background… So did the episode take place somewhere else than in Elias’s office, this time around? Or has the clock… stopped…?

(I’m obsessing a bit with the clock but it has been there in the background to mean that things were taking place in Elias’s office before. So I can’t help but get plagued by an ominous feeling every time we hear it… but also, here, that we didn’t hear it, when the previous Martin-Peter exchange had it in the background. As if, I don’t know: time stopped and something is in suspension, something that should have happened didn’t, or what small Beholding protection was left around Martin has been stripped down. I don’t know.)

- It could come in handy at some point, since Peter is… not extremely reliable in that aspect, but amongst the things we never really explored, there were the matter of Gertrude and Jon(!)’s “protections”:

(MAG078) MICHAEL: Even with all the protections you have on, I doubt you can survive them now.

(MAG079) MICHAEL: I think I might also kill you. It would be easier than killing the Archivist; none of you are protected down here.

(MAG080) LEITNER: Hardly a book. Barely twelve pages. It is entitled A Disappearance. […] I have found, however, that reading only one or two words is sufficient to hide me from the prying eyes of your master. It allowed me to talk with Gertrude in relative safety […]. […] LEITNER: How did you know I was here? ELIAS: I didn’t. You’re very well hidden. But Jon is not, and he failed to take the same precautions I’m sure you took for granted with Gertrude. I knew he was talking to someone.

(MAG101) ARCHIVIST: But you… you never tried to take revenge on Gertrude? MICHAEL: She knew how to protect herself. She knew what she was creating.

(MAG102) ELIAS: She was… She got very good at hiding things from me.

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “I assume whatever ‘surveillance’ meant you needed me to move it, is only keeping track of you, but let me know if there’s anything I need to be on the lookout for.”

(=> Gertrude knew that she was under “surveillance” back in 2012, and she probably meant Elias with that, and yet, managed to escape him more than he’s comfortable with. So it IS possible.)

So: 1°) there are ways to escape Elias’s prying eyes without relying on the tunnels or the A Disappearance book (was it why Gertrude apparently had something against all representations of eyes? She was cutting eyes from her books and Melanie had found eyeless dolls in the hangar), 2°) Jon also had protections on somehow by the end of season 2, without even knowing it, and we never really learn what it was and who was responsible for them (I mean… it didn’t help him when they were attacked by Prentiss? Would have Beholding lifted a finger (... batted an eyelash from its lidless eye.) to save its own Archivist?)

- There is something about the fact that everyone has begun to call Basira “detective”:

(MAG122) BASIRA: Alright. And you don’t know why this guy would have left a tape recorder? GEORGIE: You’re the detective. BASIRA: And you’re sure it was him who left it?

(MAG127) ELIAS: … Good evening. Detective. BASIRA: I’m not a detective. ELIAS: Of course.

(MAG134) PETER: […] 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

But I don’t know if it’s like, a new running gag or something more. On the one hand, even the “… and Daisy” joke turned out to have Something More behind it (when Elias added “and Daisy, I suppose” amongst the Archives’ losses in MAG120, he probably already knew that she wasn’t actually dead). On the other hand, it could also be due to… Georgie’s initial misconception, and Elias and Peter having a very twisted sense of humour: Georgie called Basira “detective” because she assumed she was one and/or because Melanie had snarked about it to her because Basira now “deals in intel” => Elias Saw the whole conversation and reused it => Peter followed Basira when she went to see Elias, and picked up on it too.

Jared had also identified Basira as police, though, and it’s… really strange that Basira, who resigned back in season 2 (more than one year ago!), who wasn’t taken by The Hunt like Daisy, is nowadays perceived as police more than she was before. Coule she be collaborating a bit with Section 31’d officers…? I’m not totally buying the speculation about “detective” being a Beholding title, though I gueeeeess it has that observing/following/trying to uncover the truth dimension to it…

To quote Basira herself: “I don’t know.”

- There were things that I found especially clever in the way information about the new Fear was delivered to us:

* It was the content of a letter addressed to someone who wasn’t the current reader (Gertrude vs. Martin); the letter was reporting the story of someone (Bernadette) who had studied the life of a Millerite. Different narrators, from different times (Martin reading the letter in 2018 / Adelard writing the letter in 2006 / Bernadette living that experience at least a few months prior / the life and disappearance of Garland Hillier from 1844 to 1867), which… could explain, already, if Adelard misunderstood something.

* The Fifteenth Fear is France, and tbh, yes.

* The way Adelard predicted and quickly addressed Gertrude’s objections and pointed out the motifs that we could be tempted to associate to another fear (Spiral, Lonely, End) but also highlighted that their effects were different. Also, in this context: if it had been something due to The Lonely… Peter likely should have been able to tell given the description. He didn’t. So it indeed wasn’t The Lonely (unless he’s misleading us hard).

* The fact that Adelard didn’t even see the Inheritors himself, that they were only described as “There is nothing done in the history of humanity that deserves the things that come after us.” (FROM SOMEONE WELL-VERSED IN HISTORY…), complete with static, was especially chilling? How bad can they be, to reach this extent – especially when Adelard highlighted immediately afterwards the many ways humans could so easily manage to destroy the world and themselves…?

* The whole description of the wrongness of the flat, of the whole not!Paris, was chilling. The stillness and eeriness reminded me of the remains of Pompeii, the cocoons of the bodies that were found?

* And yet, though removed in time, the thing is coming closer and closer:

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “I have my suspicions she may find herself disappearing. She has that… quality about her, I’m sure you know what I mean, o–of an unfinished meal. And I can only hope that when the second course starts, she can remember her way back to Garland Hillier’s apartment once more. But of course, the evidence suggests that, in the end, even he wasn’t able to.”

Adelard assumed that Garland Hillier had disappeared because of the new Fear. Bernadette mentioned that she was supposed to meet with a “Monsieur Pinard” and since we didn’t hear about him… we could guess that he was a victim. Adelard was pretty confident that Bernadette, who had escaped once, was still a target and would be snatched soon (and WOW does “the quality of an unfinished meal” feel… like the accurate way to describe a few statement-givers that we’ve met or heard from), and… we still don’t know what happened to Adelard. In the end, because he was researching them, was he consumed by the Inheritors, too…?

(I’m still suspecting that Peter could be linked to the fact that he doesn’t seem to be around anymore: how come Peter knows that Adelard was researching that new Fear? And Adelard had been the only one to use “Terminus” to refer to The End (MAG113), until Peter in this episode…)

- The way Adelard talked about powers:

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “I have never envied you your position, Gertrude. I have never coveted your gifts, as I know the terrible costs that come with them. But honestly, trying to get a description of these… things, these ‘Inheritors’ from Bernadette Delcour, made me wish I could just pull the image from her lips, like you would have been able to.”

… Sounds like he indeed didn’t have any of his own and/or is a “neutral” who miiight actually be a bit more aligned than he thinks? He mentioned that unlike Hunters, he wouldn’t be able to kill a powerful avatar (MAG113) and we only know that he was able to use the table against the Not!Them to bind it (MAG078), though he was really wary of the table itself. We know that there is still that Mystery Statement of 1991 somewhere (it could be how he came in contact with Gertrude for the first time?) and we’ll have to learn at some point what happened to him (;; posthumous letter left before he was snatched by The Extinction or something else? … or he became an avatar of The Extinction himself and screamscreamscream) so… we’ll definitely hear yet more about him. But I wanna know, gdi!! >w<

- So. The Extinction it is (complete with a few alternative names: “This is a fear of extinction. Of change […] of catastrophic change. A change in our world that will wipe out what it means to be “us”, and leave something else in its place. The Extinction. The Terrible Change. The-Future-Without-Us.”), unless Adelard misunderstood something at its chore and other characters will be able to correct it. His reasoning makes sense, though, and is very evocative of real-life and modern-era concerns?

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “Mankind will warp the world so much it kills us all, and leaves only a thousand years of plastic behind. Technology will strip us of what it means to be human, and leave us something alien, and cold. We will press a button, that in a moment, will destroy everything we have ever been. Animals are witnessing the end of their entire species within a single generation. These are new fears, Gertrude, and a new Power is rising to consume them.”

And… given that MAG134’s letter (“dated 22nd of January, 2006”) was apparently anterior to MAG113 (“Statement undated, likely circa 2012” – well, assuming that Jon is reliable in dating papers since… if he had a degree in that, we would know.), and that Adelard had noted in MAG113 that Gertrude was “dismissive of the possibility”… it really sounds like there was something to do with the phenomenon of the old generation not being very anchored in the world’s current concerns? Gertrude was amazingly good at handling the Fears, she had fifty years of experience with them and… it would be understandable that, at the same time, she would have overlooked the possibility of a new one, feeling that this wasn’t anything new, that it could be categorised in the pre-existing ones.

If Adelard nailed it and if this Fifteenth power indeed exists… it means that we’ll need a new system to “balance” things out, after Smirke – or maybe it’s precisely because Smirke categorised them so much that what was left at the borders managed to get so powerful? If there is the need of a new Architecture, I’m half squinting at the fact that the Chinese word chosen to refer to Jon in MAG105 could be translated as “architect”, but… I’m still thinking that Basira could end up creating a new equilibrium, since, contrary to Jon, she was immediately good at drawing connections, at understanding how things could work out (e.g. what she noticed about The Dark in MAG108, and how quickly she assimilated the categorisation between the Fears and a bit of their inner politics).

- wOOPSIE does the scale of The Extinction sound like… another category on its own. While The End sounds more like a personal fear, this one is more about a whole community?

I’m still unsure how to categorise MAG065 – “Binary” and MAG122 – “Zombie”; I don’t really feel like either matched this one? I change my mind every time I listen to “Binary” and this time around, I was stricken by simply… how much Spiral it sounded? (Fear of losing one's mind, an incompatibility between two manners of being, Sergei’s reactions which sounded a lot like what Tim had described while in Michael’s corridor.) I really don’t see it as part of The Extinction (or at least not in the way Adelard described it): Sergei had a personal fear of death and ended up experiencing Worse while trying to escape it (which sounded textbook The End), not so much about the fear of being erased and replaced or about a consciousness of the world as you knew it getting destroyed and destroying you at the same time…? Meanwhile, “Zombie” had the replacement motive, but not the narrator’s fear of getting replaced or erased – mostly the idea that everyone else was a fake?

I’m still not sure about these ones and how to look at them, and I feel like it will be the case even when season 5 is over, godsdamnit x””) Everyone has a few of Those Statements that they have trouble categorising, mm? (I know that a lot of people is having a hard time with MAG114’s, which I read as textbook Spiral? But then, I’m at a loss with MAG065 and MAG122, and I guess it’s a good thing, technically, that everyone is at a loss about different ones…)

- However, the way Adelard described The Extinction REALLY put me in mind of… the Not!Them.

Not!Sasha was clear on the fact that it was part of The Stranger, and indeed, its effects (and what feeds it) has to do with the familiar made unfamiliar (MA080: “Once upon a time there was a monster, but no one realised. Sometimes someone did! And then they were scared, so that was good.”). But… when someone is eaten/destroyed/consumed by the Not!Them, does it actually feed The Extinction? Knowing that you will disappear, that your whole existence will be erased and rewritten?

Adelard had tracked the Not!Them for years: did he begin to consider the possibility of a new Fear because of it? Could it be possible that his views of the Not!Them blinded him a bit in the way he tried to define The Extinction…?

- I’m really curious and at the same time NOT to picture what an avatar of The Extinction would be like, if it gets any. (But my brain provides: alt-right politician in nice proper suit, complete with stiff frozen smile.)

- IT MAKES SENSE but in the meantime, I’m still going to laugh (and cry) so much over the fact that… when the series began, Jon’s main concern was to clean and order a dusty shady archive? And now, their main goal has evolved to: they’ll have to fight against the embodiment of the Fear of climate change or nuclear disaster. … Well, Jon had already highlighted how the situation had escalated, back with Georgie in MAG093 and then in MAG117:

(MAG093) GEORGIE: Jonathan Sims, are you trying to save the world? ARCHIVIST: I… Yeah. I… I guess I am.

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: [….] So, I–I guess, sometime in the next few days, I go on a, eh, commando mission to blow up a wax museum. It’s not exactly what I was expecting. F–from an archiving job.

(bABE…) It… does put in perspective why Peter is so dismissive of the Archives’ problems:

(MAG134) PETER: Now, from my point of view, so far, none of this has been any of my business. We have bigger concerns than this little soap opera you call an Archive.

I mean. He has a point, but at the same time, shut up Peter, let us live :w Do we talk about your blatant tsundere crush on Elias, or on your own sense of Drama with your precisely timed entrances? (YES WE DO.)

But. Yep. Oops. If the new Fear is cataclysmic enough to basically erase everything else and play it solo, no wonder Peter is going :/ about Jon’s philosophical dilemma about feeling alone, changing, what is it that make you “human” or a “monster”, etc. (At the same time: shut up, Peter, don’t act as if you’re not responsible for the loneliness.)

… I wonder if we’re heading towards a “lesser of two evils” deal and this could be the way to get Jon to… willingly try to participate in the Watcher’s Crown…? (I gueesssss that there is still a possibility that the Archives team would manage to completely neutralise it before it becomes an actual threat, but given that we barely know anything about it and that Elias has kept real quiet about it, I feel like it’s meant to become an actual, real Thing at some point? Given that one of the main themes in season 4 so far, thanks to Melanie, Daisy, Helen, Oliver, Jared and Jon himself, has been around the matter of choices in relation to the Entities, and the idea that although they can influence you, you can also choose what to do with these powers, and the actions you take are your own… it would feel like a step back to have Jon utterly manipulated into being a participant, unaware that he is contributing to this one in the end? So if it’s about choice and taking a dubious option out of despair…)

- I Do Not Like This Mention Of Yet Another Door For Very Personal Reasons:

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “It talked of Garland Hillier’s “new revelation”, about the absolute change of the world in terms that seemed at first elegiac, but later seemed… almost panicked, with the final entry simply repeating the words [STATIC:] ‘La porte est la porte.’ ‘The door is the door.’ […] The door had been damaged by the builders who uncovered the place, and there were several distinct gaps in the wood. But as she walked back out, the door appeared to be whole. She ignored it, and left anyways, trying to reason it all as a strange quirk of memory. Just one of those things. […] She was more precise on her escape. Remembering Hillier’s words about the door, she had just enough time to retreat back to the apartment and barricade herself inside. Then, she waited until the entrance changed again, and she could emerge back into the world she remembered. At least, that’s my interpretation of events. […] I may try to interview her again later, though I have my suspicions she may find herself disappearing. She has that… quality about her, I’m sure you know what I mean, o–of an unfinished meal. And I can only hope that when the second course starts, she can remember her way back to Garland Hillier’s apartment once more. But of course, the evidence suggests that, in the end, even he wasn’t able to.

… because who has been strongly associated with “doors”?

(MAG080) ARCHIVIST: […] The door opened, and inside was dark. Against that darkness I could see the thin grey strands wrapped around the limbs of my former bully. And then, from inside, stretched two impossibly long limbs, bony and covered in coarse, black hair. For a second, there was almost the start of a scream, but the legs wrapped around him too quickly, and he disappeared into the doorway and out of sight. It slammed behind him, and he was gone, taking the book with him.

(MAG047) MICHAEL: In any case, it doesn’t matter. The Wanderer had a brief respite, but it’s over now. ARCHIVIST: Well, you’re too late. She– She’s gone! MICHAEL: [DISTORTED LAUGH] Yes… Ah… Did you notice which door she left through? ARCHIVIST: Yes… It w– MICHAEL: [CHUCKLES] ARCHIVIST: … wait! No, there was– MICHAEL: There has never been a door there, Archivist, your mind plays tricks on you.

(MAG078) MICHAEL: You – Need – A door. ARCHIVIST: NO. No, I–I just… I need…

(MAG101) MICHAEL: Good. Right this way. [A DOOR CREAKS] Open it. Open it and this will all be over. […] HELEN: The door is open if you’re ready? ARCHIVIST: No, not, not really, but…

(MAG120) ELIAS: […] There is a door in front of him. A yellow door. He knows the dream it used to lead to; he knows it well. But that’s not where it leads anymore. He does not know what is behind it anymore, and he is deathly afraid of finding out. The Archivist turns away.

(MAG127) ARCHIVIST: [SIGHS] It’s… hard. It’s like there’s a–a–a door, in my mind. And behind it, is… i–is the entire ocean. Before, I didn’t notice it, but now, I know it’s there, and I can’t forget it, and I can feel the pressure of the water on it. I, I, I can keep it closed… but sometimes, when I’m around p–people, or–or places, or… ideas, a drop or two will push through the cracks, at the edges of the door. And I’ll… know something. BASIRA: … What happens, if you open the door? [PAUSE] ARCHIVIST: I drown.

(MAG131) ARCHIVIST: I, er… I don’t want to open it! I’m not going to. MELANIE: [SIGH] [KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK] She’s been helping us. ARCHIVIST: It has never helped anyone. Not without a cost. […] Right. [INHALE] [OPENS THE DOOR]

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: [STATIC RISING.] No need for that. I’m willing. [STATIC DECREASES.] [REMOVES THE COFFIN’S PADLOCK] … Right. [CHAIN FALLING ON THE GROUND] [COFFIN OPENING] [CREAKING SOUND]

Mr Spider’s door, which Jon almost knocked on, that swallowed the bully instead of him when he was eight. Michael’s door, which took Helen right in front of him, which Jon had to open to escape the Not!Them, which should have killed Jon another time before Helen replaced Michael and opened another door for Jon – Helen’s own door, that Jon rejected and feared to open in his nightmares, before he agreed to enter the corridors once more in order to meet Jared. The metaphorical door in Jon’s mind, holding back the ocean of knowledge that could drown him. Even: the trapdoor leading back to the Archives, when Tim and Jon went face to holes with Jane Prentiss (MAG039); the door that Jon closed on Leitner alive and reopened on Leitner’s body (MAG080); the door (or trapdoor?) which was the only thing between the group and the Unknowing while Daisy was planting bombs (MAG118); the coffin’s lid, which he opened to join Daisy; the door to Jon’s office, on which nobody ever knocks when they want to find him inside… Jon keeps being surrounded by doorways and thresholds that he has to cross, whose crossings mean a change – whether he loses something or manages to get it back.

I’m… worried about this new door, honestly.

(Because it feels so, so easy and gut-wrenching to picture either Jon or Martin desperately trying to open it while the other is – willingly – staying on the wrong side to try to contain or neutralise these Inheritors…?) (*“Sakura Nagashi” playing in the background.*)

- CHEER UP, BIGGEST TWIST: MARTIN WAS ALMOST JON’S ANCHOR /o/ Looks like he was mostly used as a puppet when it came to saving Jon, but still! (Although yeah, hum, who else could have come to put the tape recorders around the coffin except him? Basira was away. Melanie… probably wouldn’t have been able to WANT to save Jon like Martin did, allowing The Web to pull him towards that action – if it is indeed The Web.) Mayyyyybe Jon was wrong about how he summarised ~Her~, because hum:

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: Statement ends. The Web does seem to have a preference for those who prefer not to assert themselves.

… it really doesn’t sound like that applies to Martin? (It wouldn’t be surprising at aaaaaall that Jon has trouble understanding how The Web works, even more given that he’s “a tiny bit” influenced by it too.)

- I am SO GLAD about… everything about Martin. I am so glad that, although he was reluctant to call that Lonely guy “Peter” at the end of season 3 and is now calling him that way? He’s using that right, that Peter gave him and insisted on giving him, to make Peter SHUT THE FUCK UP and it’s glorious:

(MAG126) PETER: I’m just saying, that we’d all be better off if your Archivist actually knew how to archive. MARTIN: Peter. PETER: … Yes. Well.

(MAG134) PETER: […] Honestly, if Elias hadn’t killed that woman, I’d have been very tempted. I warned him she was a danger– MARTIN: Peter! PETER: –but he’s always– MARTIN: Peter. PETER: … Anyway.

I am SO glad that Martin is keeping a firm grip on the bastard, that he’s unfurling his frustration and snarking and snapping SO MUCH and taking none of Peter’s shit:

(MAG134) MARTIN: And you thought that since I’m so lonely already, I’d be ideal. PETER: Yes! MARTIN: You see, the thing is, Peter, I’m still not all that keen on being part of any ritual you set up. You know, in fact, if I were to be blunt, I’d say that would be suicidally stupid.

(MAG134) PETER: Because, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what’s been going on with him, these past couple of weeks. MARTIN: Oh – oh, yeah, sure. […] What, turning invisible and eavesdropping? PETER: If you like. But… I’m only one person, and I can’t keep an eye on everything. MARTIN: Or… anything, apparently!

mARTIN BLACKWOOD, PEOPLE. (Also, I’m still rolling on the floor that Peter very honestly admitted that he picked Martin because he Smelt Like Loneliness. Peter, you vulture.)

Martin also learnt to Master the unimpressed exhalations and the silences:

(MAG134) PETER: […] 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. MARTIN: Mm-mm. PETER: … Look. I’m not gonna pressure you into doing anything you don’t want to.

Which reminds me of MELANIE in front of Elias in MAG106 (before, erh, everything went awful.) so clearly, Martin has been upgrading himself. He had always been snappy but he’s getting so amazing at it lately and I… want… Jon… to see that… so much…

(On the one hand, it would probably be a recipe for disaster and arguments. On the other hand, if Georgie is any indication: Jon tends to love A Whole Lot people who don’t take any shit from him and/or could just plainly wreck him (Daisy.) so… I’m just picturing Martin snapping and snapping out of reflex, after months of intermittent cohabitation with Peter, and Jon’s stupid heart jumping to “… dOKI?!”.)

- … Okay, at the same time, panic aboard because Gerry did mention to Jon that the Lukases are good at grooming, and it’s clear that Peter is currently changing strategy:

(MAG126) PETER: You talked to him. MARTIN: I… I, I tried not to, I–I, I didn’t mean to… PETER: You talked to him. And that’s understandable, Martin, of course it is! Please don’t think I’m upset, it’s just… not ideal. Shows how much work we still have ahead of us.

(MAG134) PETER: … Anyway. Point is, I’m not your captor or your torturer. I’m not gonna tell you to stop talking to him, or even saving him if it comes to it. If that’s not a decision you’re willing to make yourself, me scolding you isn’t going to help.

Is this reverse-psychology from Peter? (=> If he sounds less scolding, then Martin will find the idea of talking to Jon less appealing.) Is it a test?

Because overall… it sounds like Peter’s arguments for Martin to not share his information with Jon are crumbling a bit? We got confirmation that Martin tied himself to Peter after The Flesh attack (so it really wasn’t about Jon!!!! It was about protecting the others because Jon… was in no state to!!!!!!!!!), but then:

(MAG134) 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.

Peter is good at ~explaining~ why he didn’t do anything with the threats that we witnessed (Breekon breaking in and delivering the coffin, Jon going inside of the coffin and getting stuck there) but… there is no description of the other threats/enemies that Peter supposedly handled. Do they even exist? And, well. Peter only mentions the “big picture” but:

(MAG126) PETER: [LAUGHS] Because, behind all his bluster, Elias’s just like all the rest. He’s so preoccupied playing the game he doesn’t pay attention to the big picture. He managed to convince himself that he could get his ritual off first, which would have made all of this a… bit moot, but that’s not really an option anymore.

(MAG134) PETER: You know what the stakes are now, and I just have to hope you’re with me on this, focusing on the big picture. MARTIN: … Yeah.

… why, then, is he trying to stop the Fifteenth on his own if it’s so dangerous? Of all entities, The Web and The End should be very keen to help (plus, all the ones who lost their chance at their ritual in the current cycle)? And Jon just proved that he is willing to risk his life himself, and Peter has demonstrated that he wouldn’t be lifting a finger to prevent him from doing it… on his own. And Peter, who had accepted Martin’s “advice” in MAG108:

(MAG108) PETER: So your advice would be “less murder”? MARTIN: I… I s–suppose…? PETER: No, no, it’t, it’s a good observation! I thank you for it. MARTIN: You’re… welcome…

… was confirmed (in MAG127) to have wooshed two researchers when Jon was in a coma, and casually mentioned murder intents towards Gertrude. It doesn’t really sound like he’s holding his end of the bargain, does it…?

- Another twist is that, actually, Martin is keeping track of what is happening in the Archives? Which is not what he told Jon in MAG129:

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: If–if you do need to talk, I– MARTIN: I can’t. ARCHIVIST: No. No, o–of course. [INHALE] Listen, Martin, you should know– MARTIN: Jon– ARCHIVIST: –Daisy might be alive, Basira is– MARTIN: Stop. Stop, please, I–I shouldn’t know any of this, I… [PACKING UP] I–I–I really need to go, I–I’m… ARCHIVIST: Right. … right.

Was it just because it mattered that Jon was telling him it? Or did Peter inform Martin of Breekon’s presence himself? Or did Martin’s deal with Peter change a bit because Martin coldly asked Peter why there was suddenly a big coffin in Jon’s office.

- … I find it especially interesting that in the summary of the Archives situation during season 4:

(MAG134) 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 hell-bent 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. […] Regardless, he’s in there three days, and then what do you know! He manages to pull himself out of the coffin, like a grubby Jesus. And he even brings a Penitent Thief along, in the form of your pet murderer!

… Peter didn’t mention anything about Jon removing Melanie’s bullet (and getting stabbed in the shoulder), nor about Helen’s door and her corridors containing Jared. Both took place in the tunnels so, maybe, in the same way as Elias, Peter had trouble using his powers inside of them, and/or knows that he wouldn’t be quite as invisible down there?

I’m really really intrigued about the fact that Helen wasn’t mentioned: is it because Elias and Peter don’t factor her in, since the Distortion is mostly an ~irritant~ and not expected to be helpful? Or are they completely unaware of her presence? It’s unclear whether Martin was aware that Helen was the one who had saved them from Jared, but if he is… same as with Basira who hid it from Elias: he might be hiding it from Peter. Martin didn’t have a great time with The Distortion, but at the same time… Tim and Martin had seen “a woman” wandering in the corridors, when they were trapped inside of them at the end of season 2, and Martin had felt guilty over the fact that they hadn’t saved her:

(MAG080) TIM: […] … Any sign of the woman…? MARTIN: I don’t think so. [PAUSE] We should have helped her. TIM: No. MARTIN: But we could have tried! TIM: How? MARTIN: …

So: can’t be sure on that point yet, there are too many “if”s to be certain (maybe Martin totally missed the fact that Helen had saved them because he was running away and then went to Peter and began to cut ties with Basira&Melanie; maybe Martin knows she’s downstairs and discussed it with Peter but Peter is overlooking her) but… it’s possible that Martin is currently being way more cunning than he lets on. We know he can use his own weaknesses for deception – he demonstrated it in MAG116 – so… Maybe. Maybe he’s a bit less desperate than he pretends to be; maybe it has always been a matter of exerting some control over Peter, of investigating what Peter wanted from him (and now getting all the information he can manage about the Fears’ politics and the Fifteenth), biding his time to get rid of him…? (I don’t want to hope too much, but at the same time… Martin is firm as steel, right now. Even in the trailer, when he almost broke down, he got back on his feet and became firmer after the call. On the one hand, he had all the reasons in the world to be at his most vulnerable, with his mother dying, The Flesh attacking and him proving once again that he couldn’t help, and Jon not waking up, and I’d be perfectly content picturing that he was genuinely desperate and afraid and didn’t have hidden motives when he negotiated Peter’s ~protection~. On the other hand, it’s a constant thing in the series that people and listeners both underestimate Martin Blackwood.)

- I was suspecting that Peter could turn invisible/not be felt while in the same room as others (since he had implied he’d witnessed Elias’s arrest in MAG120), it’s more or less confirmed… though it could be something else entirely given Peter’s answer:

(MAG134) PETER: Martin… My patron, hopefully our patron someday, doesn’t give me any sort of special insights. I’m not quite the accomplished voyeur that Elias was. I have to keep tabs on things the old-fashioned way. MARTIN: What, turning invisible and eavesdropping? PETER: If you like. But… I’m only one person, and I can’t keep an eye on everything.

So that’s probably also why Martin was so stiff with Jon in MAG124 and MAG129: if he knew that Peter could be there and see everything, he had to try his best to be blameless, even before considering the whole “not telling Jon anything for Jon’s own good” shtick. I had noticed that it felt like Basira and Martin were acting as if they were constantly under surveillance (even worse than during Elias’s time!) so given that it seems to be the case… I wonder if Basira is suspecting that, indeed, Peter is sometimes there but you just can’t feel him. Hence her being so careful about what she says, and refusing to say anything meaningful overall.

(If Daisy’s Hunter instincts come back… maybe she will be able to feel him?)

- … And if Peter needs to be there to keep tabs on people… UHUH, is it meaningful that he repeated twice that he was just leaving?

(MAG134) PETER: Right! Then, if you’ll excuse me, I have a family thing to get to. MARTIN: Are we going to talk about Jon? PETER: … Do we need to? […] Okay! Now, I really am running late, so if you don’t mind? [CLICK.]

I don’t want to hope too much about it but: if Martin were to try to make a move to share information or use a back-up plan or something (leaving the tape of his recording somewhere for Jon to find it? Or Adelard’s letter? Or sending something to warn how Peter might be able to spy on the Archives team? Or going to see Jon directly?), this could be the perfect opportunity since… Peter won’t be there to see it. Not banking on it, but. Given that Peter wasn’t especially convincing as a protector and that Jon has demonstrated that he would find danger by himself if left on his own, and that Martin now knows that Adelard Dekker was indeed tracking a Fifteenth power… there have now been enough deal-breaking events and information to want to change strategy; it wouldn’t come out of the blue if it happened soon?

Title for MAG135 is out and HHHHHHHHHHHHH. It. sounds too easy to speculate “The Dark” here but at the same time… AT THE SAME TIME, IT SOUNDS LIKE THE PERFECT TITLE FOR MANUELA DOMINGUEZ’S STATEMENT??? THE LAST OF THE DAEDALUS SPACE STATION STORIES??? *o* (I… really don’t see how Jonny could find a more perfect title for this one, so? Plus, we haven’t had a Dark statement since season 4 began, so.) If it’s the case, then: the title already contains two meanings; if there is a third one, could be by taking it like… Heavy Unpleasant Discussion before or after the statement (Jon-Basira? … Basira-Elias…………..? We’re definitely due for a debriefing about what Elias sent her to, if his main goal was just for her to leave Jon alone, or if indeed he had her search for something tangible and where and what…)

(Other ~highlight~ of the week: we’re getting Martin’s eighth poem on Patreon on Friday, complete with Discord event dedicated to Martin’s poetry run by Anil, BLESS HIM………………) (/ Curse you all, I’m not in Belgium, I can’t follow the AMA through Aza’s account this time around so that means having to get a discord I guess ;;)