#even though he’s being puppeted and manipulated I don’t think Gertrude cares about whether anything will be his fault

[sparky-is-spiders]

Alternatively Jon gives their statement to Gertrude when they begin working at the institute. She wouldn’t think much of it except that Elias has taken a personal interest in this random web-marked researcher, and you can never be too careful with the Web. Gertrude would kill him, except that she isn’t sure where Jon fits in his plans (no use getting her hands dirty and risking her own plans just to kill an entirely replaceable rando, especially if said rando can give her insight into Elias’ plans…) and so the old people start fighting over who gets to control Jon. Elias refuses to let him near the Archives, but Jon is curious and Gertrude keeps asking for “the nice young man from research” to help her (note: it takes a while for the Institute research team to connect these dots to Jon, who has never been described as nice or young, and who only sometimes describes themselves as a man (also I think Gertrude pulling her nice old lady act is funny)). She decides the best way to keep an eye on Jon is to gain their trust and respect (they are so obviously dying for an authoritative figure to tell him that they’re doing a good job that she doesn’t think this will be hard). Plus since Elias is trying to worm his way into a romantic relationship with Jon Gertrude figures it might be best to get there first, just in case Elias’ new toy can be used against him (it’ll also give her an excuse to spend more time with Jon in private/without any witnesses if she decides that it’s ultimately time for them to go).

Queue terrible unhealthy Jongertrude, where Gertrude deliberately isolates Jon from everyone (but especially Elias), works to make him dependent on her for validation and affection, and probably also doms him. It’s a lonely, miserable relationship (for Jon) but he had nobody else to turn to and she’s the closest thing he has to someone who might care about his wellbeing (even as he slowly comes to learn and accept that she really, really doesn’t). Possibly she also tricks him into signing an archival assistant contract (which makes Elias FURIOUS, but there’s not much he can do about it once the deed is done).

I think Jon should give his statement to Gertrude as a child and be so haunted by the nightmares it gives him that he seeks refuge in the Lonely. Like obviously he wouldn’t know what he was turning to (not until it was too late) but he should anyway. The awful watching figure he dreams of making him fear being seen, DESPISE being looked at completely, and make an already isolated and lonely child desperate to avoid other people and, well, Lonely. And as he gets older this would probably mix really badly with the gender dysphoria too, as well as worsening his aversion to eye contact.

And I think that’s when he’d notice the faint fog that’s always creeping around the edges of his vision.

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG145 X_X/

- Aaaaaaaaaand I had considered it but disregarded it immediately, and yet: the episode was (more or less) about Agnes again, so soon /o/

- The biggest reveal in this episode, for me, was probably to learn that The Web actually had a deep connection with the Archives (and the previous Archivist) waaaay before Jon was even born. We know that Jon encountered it as a kid, we know that spiders have been… extremely present around the Archives and Jon during his era – but we didn’t have anything about Gertrude yet, except for the fact that she was apparently working together with Adelard Dekker, who had been able to bind the Not!Them to the Hill Top Road table (and the whole ordeal was Web-y, though that could have been all thanks to the table):

(MAG145) ARTHUR: Alright. Agnes: how’d you do it? Never did understand it, not really. GERTRUDE: Ah. That’s a fair enough question. [PAUSE] It was… The Web. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, and I would call it an accident – but it never is, with them. It’s only after the fact that you can see all the subtle manipulations. I was very new to it all, of course. I mean, I was, what? Can’t have been older than… twenty-five. […] Like I said, mm, I was young. Naïve. I somehow found just the right books, made just the right connections, and even got what I thought was a piece of blind good luck, when I found a tin box in the ashes of Hilltop Road, containing some perfectly preserved cuttings of her hair. Of course, what I thought was a “banishment ritual” turned out… not to be. The circle I constructed was more of a… an invitation. It let the Mother of Puppets bind me to Agnes, interweave our existences at some… metaphysical level, as it had with Fielding and the house. … It was the most painful experience of my life.

Gertrude uses the phrase “Mother of Puppets”, too! Eugene and Peter had used it so far, so it sounds like it’s a term favoured by Avatars-in-the-known? Oliver had also referred to it as a “she”.

- We have a description of a young Archivist, in her 20s, getting pushed by The Web in a specific direction, made to unwillingly serve Her interests, even though it deeply hurt said Archivist.

… which. Sounds like what might be happening to Jon right now, except he didn’t (can’t?) make the connection.

- Gertrude’s description of her researches and how they had been manipulated is also very much reminiscent of… what is happening with Jon, especially in season 4, when he’s pushed towards this or that tape or statement, which was once again the case this episode:

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: And here? I reached out, I took another tape, eh!, hoping for a bit of guidance, but… [HUFF] To be honest, this hasn’t helped.

We… still don’t know for sure if it’s The Eye guiding him (/something having to do with the fact that he’s The Archivist and the information and statements are his Archives) or The Web. (How many of the statements Jon read in seasons 1 to 3 were actually “sent” to him by The Web, too?) With how The Web made itself transparent in MAG130 (sending one of Gertrude’s tapes covered in cobwebs) and how this statement explained how The Web proceeds, I’m… beginning to expect Jon to eventually get a (face-to-face) visit from Annabelle Cane or a Web-related person? It sounds like these bits are supposed to introduce Jon to the idea that yes, The Web has Her eyes on him, too, and yes, is monitoring him, and yes, has plans for him.

- … But then: Gertrude experienced The Desolation through her binding to Agnes. And The Web encouraged Jon to find an “anchor” to go inside the coffin, where he experienced The Buried, and potentially got Martin to lead him out. Even back in season 1: it might have been The Web which got Martin to come back to Carlos Vittery’s building a second time (MAG022, Martin: “And then I remembered that I'd seen quite a lot of spider webs in the brief time I was down there, and maybe I should check it out again.” + how he didn’t really think when he crushed the first worm), attracting Jane Prentiss’s attention towards the Archives, and it was a spider which unleashed the attack on the Archives (Jon trying to crush it and discovering the worms behind the wall… when they weren’t completely ready yet). Which means The Web is reaaaaaaaaaally not against having Archivists experiencing the other Fears, and Elias has said that it’s supposed to be the Archivist’s role (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…”).

What is The Web’s stance on The Watcher’s Crown? We know it’s involved in ritual-stopping: Peter highlighted that it prefers the world as is, Gertrude evoked the possibility of The Slaughter’s ritual getting stopped by “spiderwebs”, and there were cobwebs in the wax museum at The Unknowing (+ it sent Jon a tape about how The Flesh had been stopped, and possibly monitored his researches about rituals a bit). From what Peter said, it shouldn’t want a ritual to succeed; yet, if Experiencing The Fears is a must-do for an Archivist… the Web is also contributing to this…?

- And same as Jon, re:Gertrude’s powers!

(MAG145) ARTHUR: Shut it! I don’t have to listen to this! GERTRUDE: Hm! [CHUCKLE] Then, feel free to try and leave. ARTHUR: [BEGINS TO BREATHE HEAVILY] GERTRUDE: Mm! Now. Here’s the problem for you, Arthur. […] “Do I…” what? ARTHUR: Have something for me. So I end up like Eugene. GERTRUDE: [CHUCKLE] Why don’t you try to leave and find out…? ARTHUR: [BREATHING DEEPENING, STRUGGLING] [SILENCE] GERTRUDE: Good~! Now, we can have a proper conversation.

… Arthur needed her permission to leave, but what did she do, at that moment? There wasn’t any static, only a bass sound – was it a plain cosmetic sound-effect, or was Gertrude doing something, perhaps similar to when Jon told Breekon to “stop” back in MAG128? I’m still unsure about the whole thing about “giving orders” and “preventing people from leaving” being a Beholding power since it… feels very active, and it’s about entrapment? And we’ve heard Web-victims mention having no choice but to obey? (Though in The Web’s case, it sounded more subtle and “making you think you’re willing”: Jon and now potentially Gertrude are coercing, violently… although there is the case of regular statements, during which people don’t actually have a choice whether or not to tell their story and aren’t aware of it, except for the woman from MAG142. Even Daisy had rationalised that Jon had probably “caught her in a good mood” in MAG061, before she later realised that she hadn’t been willing.)

… And somethingsomething about how MMMMMMMMMM, there is still the Mystery of why Gertrude recorded the specific statements she did (reading aloud or interviewing) – tape recorders have been explicitly associated with Jon in season 4, and they had been used by Gertrude before, and both of them had been entangled in The Web’s schemes, so MMMMMMM…

- A bit of the conversation between Gertrude and Arthur I’m ? about is that “him upstairs”:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: You’ve never really had to bother with it, have you? You got him upstairs to point the way as often as not, and the rest of the time you’re just figuring out people – or things that used to be people. You never try to talk with that Eye of yours. You never had to second-guess a god.

Was Arthur referring to The Eye or… to Elias? Arthur used “it” to referred to his own god (/“them” for the fears), so the “him” was a bit surprising, and Elias’s office is canonically upstairs compared to the Archives… But at the same time, it would be saying that Elias was giving directions to Gertrude/that they were collaborating at some point, and as much as I had thought about the possibility (Gertrude had also mentioned that she could tell Elias about Mary’s visit, and Mary had bitten back that Elias “wasn’t too big on action”, implying that yeah, Elias&Gertrude… were communicating, at least), that would be Big News in the canon…?

- And Gertrude’s way of not Falling Deep into her patron was apparently because she was a bit of a stoic and not curious enough?

(MAG145) ARTHUR: […] That’s the trouble with overthinking any of this: you ignore your gut. And to my mind, that’s the only part any of Them Beyond… actually care about. They don’t give a toss about your “rules”, or “systems”. They only care about what feels right, what freezes your belly with terror. GERTRUDE: Hm. I rather like to think I’ve managed. ARTHUR: [SCOFF] Yeah. … But you don’t actually care about Them, do you? Not really. You forget, we’ve been watching you a long time, and I know you, Gertrude. You don’t actually care about… the Fears. You’re too practical. All your energy is focused down here, on monsters and… murderers, and all the things doing the dirty work for Them Beyond. You know plenty, sure! But you don’t have that obsession, that stupid urge to try and understand and… classify things that use logic and reality like weapons. GERTRUDE: Hm. Per–perhaps. ARTHUR: [CHUCKLE] Always respected you for that. Takes a strong stomach to not give a shit. GERTRUDE: Eh! You’ll forgive me if I’m not overjoyed at the compliment? ARTHUR: Suit yourself.

1°) And Jon is aaaaall about classifying and understanding, and is currently desperate for Answers at the moment, which. Oops. Very different from Gertrude, indeed. (Who occasionally threw out a few hypotheses here and there, indeed, but was also “practical”.)

2°) And Jon is also Very Afraid overall, even reminded us of that in MAG132 when going in the coffin (“When does the fear go away…?”)

3°) If Gertrude wasn’t letting fear get a hold on her… there is still the matter of Oliver’s dream/prediction, which pictured her as absolutely terrified (MAG011, Oliver: “I saw the face was uncovered. It was your face and the expression upon it was far more fearful than any I had seen in eight years of wandering this twilight city. That was when I awoke.”) – still the good old questions of “what happened around Gertrude’s death”…?

- Hello, it’s Arthur hours, I LOVED HIM… WHAT A TERRIBLE MAN… Voice acting was stellar, so funny, so seething, so… carnivorous? Defeated and yet still harmful, still utterly terrible, although he was able to pinpoint some of his mistakes (notably about how they had raised Agnes and how he was missing her). His rant about theology and Diego, and giving Too Much Information was incredible:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: But I was an idiot. Saw it as… attacking my leadership. Burnt the thing. Diego wasn’t happy. [PAUSE] Well, he’s in charge now! Of all of us that are… left, at least. He can look for the answers in whatever books he likes, no skin off my bones! GERTRUDE: I didn’t actually ask. ARTHUR: [INHALE] Figure if you’re gonna pull this stuff out of me, I, I might as well get some of it off my chest anyway…! Not like I can vent to the others about what a prat Diego is! Got a lot of funny ideas. Still calls The Lightless Flame “Asag”, like he was when he was first researching it. I just want to tell him to get over it – I mean, [FASTER AND FASTER] Asag was traditionally a force of destruction, sure, but as a church, we very much settled on burning in terms of the… face we worship, and some… fish-boiling Sumerian demon doesn’t really match up, does it?! Plus, there’s a lot of disease imagery with Asag that I’ll reckon is… way too close to Filth for my taste, but, but no, he read it in some ~ancient tome~, so that’s that– GERTRUDE: Well, I can’t say I– ARTHUR: –reckons he always knows best, ‘cause he’s read a few books, well. Big. Deal! Way I see it, if a writer can’t even save themselves, they probably don’t have a lot worth knowing! Find me one so-called “expert” on all of this who didn’t end up regretting all of it! […] 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. So until then… just playing landlord. It’s alright, I guess. You’d be surprised the misery and pain you can cause, when you have control over someone’s home….! If you’re careful, if you’re smart, you can burn their life to ashes as thoroughly as any fire, and worse comes to worst, you can still do it the old-fashioned way. Had an elderly tenant last year. Oh, [CHUCKLING] she was in a terrible state. I had her trapped, too poor and immobile to do anything but… sit there. Then, I broke her boiler, so the cold started to get her. Not exactly my usual, but… agony is agony. But then, her son and his wife moved in with her to help her out. Not much I could do against that. So I just waited until all three were home, and set the place ablaze. They went up nicely. Screaming all the way as the flames started to reach them. Doors were locked, and handles too hot, so they didn’t have a hope of escape– GERTRUDE: Yes, that’s quite enough, I think. ARTHUR: Oh, I’m sorry. There I was, thinking you liked the gory details! My mistake. GERTRUDE: I think we’re just about done here.

And OUUUCH, the story about the family was incredibly nasty and… really vicious. Describing the story of how he abused and tortured an old woman right in front of Gertrude? Definitely on purpose to try to get at her.

- Diego was once again associated with books, and mmm, I wonder if we’ll get his statement at some point (though we know that Gerry killed him before beginning to work with Gertrude)? Turned out he had actually tried to use childcare books to raise Agnes, which is… still better than the other cultists:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: You might be right. But Agnes did. That’s the thing about an… “incarnation”, isn’t it? She was a child and… person as much as she was a god. And we messed that right up…! … I still remember when Diego brought us a book on childcare. [CHUCKLING] Roger’s body was still in her room, blackened and smoking from… when he tried to feed her. I thought for a moment he’d brought another one of his damn Leitners, but no! It was just a… regular ol’ book on looking after children…! But I was an idiot. Saw it as… attacking my leadership. Burnt the thing. Diego wasn’t happy.

(I wonder if Arthur didn’t take Leitner as the one writing the books, too? Since his later comment (“Way I see it, if a writer can’t even save themselves, they probably don’t have a lot worth knowing! Find me one so-called “expert” on all of this who didn’t end up regretting all of it!”) was also targeted at Diego. Not sure that Leitner had begun to put his seal on the books in the 60s, though, so maybe Arthur retrospectively associated the books to Leitner although they weren’t bearing his name back then?)

- Eugene had it coming, and WOW did it come for him. Gertrude…

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: Oh! I assume you haven’t checked on… Eugene, then? ARTHUR: … What? GERTRUDE: Eugene. Well, whatever his name was, “Vanderbelt” or some such. You sent him to intimidate me a couple of years ago. You must remember? Of course you know him. Used to live in Beckingham, but moved out to that flat in… Ilford, last year. ARTHUR: Yeah. GERTRUDE: Well! He hasn’t been at your “little meetings” the last two weeks, has he…? I suppose no one’s looked into it yet. Not surprising – he seemed a thoroughly unpleasant little man. ARTHUR: Are you… [CLOTHES SHUFFLING] Di– GERTRUDE: Tell you what. Why don’t you make a few calls? [CLATTERING ON THE TABLE] Check it out, and then we can continue our, er, little “discussion”. Alright~? [CLICK.] [CLICK–] GERTRUDE: Well? [CLATTERING ON THE TABLE] ARTHUR: [INHALE] … How did you do it? GERTRUDE: [SCOFF] You don’t need to know that. What you do need to know is I can do it again, if I need to. To you, or… any of your “lackeys”, if I need to. […] ARTHUR: Eugene. It… hurt him. GERTRUDE: [CHUCKLING] Oh, yes. I’m sure your master was delighted with how… awful his death was.

[…] ARCHIVIST: Apparently, he disappeared in late 2009, leaving behind only one thing: a life-sized statue of himself, crafted from candlewax and sawdust. Missing its head. … I wish I didn’t know how painful it must be, to be alive while your whole being is infused with… agonising grit. But, as I was investigating, it… came to me. Eugene is still alive, frozen in place by the razor-sharp particles that are mixed up into what he chose instead of flesh. I don’t know where Gertrude stored his head. But I do know he desperately wants to scream.

AOUCH. 1°) Sarah-the-Anglerfish had left “sawdust” behind her in MAG096, though grit makes me thing of The Buried… Or it could have been a plain regular thing? 2°) hhhh over the fact that Gertrude, who got told that she had been watched BOTH by Arthur-from-the-Desolation and Manuela-from-the-Dark… was shown to absolutely know about them, too, and to be ready to make her moves when needed. 3°) ………………. Some people have pointed out that hum. Thanks to Patreon bonus content: it’s possible that Eugene’s head is actually in the Institute (and we know where, if it is that). (4°) That “delighted” pun… Gertrude… (And Diego used “burning questions” towards her later! Avatars punning about their patrons and others’.))

- Given how Gertrude handled them and talked about them with such disdain (“And you’re all lazy fools! So used to it being easy, to picking off the vulnerable and the unprepared, you can barely conceive of anyone actively working against you. Of being ready.”), she reaaaally despised them and… was that because of their methods in themselves, the glee they take in destruction? Or because the fact that they were the first she really encountered, in her young years, and that had scarred her deeply? Or because she had a childhood encounter with the Desolation even before that and it was exceptionally personal? Jon had The Web, Michael Shelley had The Spiral, Tim (although he was an adult already) had The Stranger + Melanie had The Slaughter (multiple times), Basira&Daisy got multiple stories… lots of people working in the Archives had encountered the Fears before working for the Institute, so maybe it was the case for Gertrude, too?

- I love how “coffeeshop twit” is Jack Barnabas’s official nickname from everyone.

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “Of course, none of us suspected what was actually going to sink it all. I mean, if you’d told me, I’d have laughed at you. … That stupid coffeeshop twit. I honestly don’t know why Arthur allowed it, or why Jude didn’t step in – she’s usually so jealous!”

(MAG145) ARTHUR: Well, that’s the thing about a fall from grace, innit? Makes you look at things from a… “new angle”. … I miss her. [SCOFF] I’ll tell you that for nothing. Wish I… [PAUSE] I don’t know. I’d actually known her, when she was… alive. Maybe that coffeeshop twit did have a point after all. Could tell you what I saw, at least.

You know that there were sessions of collective ranting about him amongst The Desolation folks, and it stuck.

- Arthur’s personal way of referring to the Fears seem to be “Them Beyond”? He used it twice:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: That’s the trouble with overthinking any of this: you ignore your gut. And to my mind, that’s the only part any of Them Beyond… actually care about. […] All your energy is focused down here, on monsters and… murderers, and all the things doing the dirty work for Them Beyond.

… I found his tirade about the lack of direction and the fact they’re just scrambling around to try to guess their patron’s intent really interesting, but at the same time… presenting their life as So Hard And So Tragic, when they choose to hurt and abuse and torture and kill to feel good and make their patron feel good? Meh. Which is probably why Gertrude, too, was exceptionally unimpressed? Given Oliver’s and Elias’s insistences on choice and free will, I doubt that the bottom line of it is that the Fears change you (“warp you”) into someone else entirely; I think there are still many choices to be made when avataring, and that each victim… is a conscious, deliberate decision?

(… Gertrude’s reaction was also Wow., since, saving the world or not, she herself wasn’t against causing civilian casualties and sacrificing people to achieve her own goals. Maybe that’s the thing with Gertrude, and she thought of herself as the better person since her actions had, in theory, nothing to do with elation, but were about sheer practicality? The way she described the explosion of The Last Feast, however, was… strikingly gleeful. She felt good about hurting avatars and stopping rituals, too.)

- The bits about Agnes were very sad, once again:

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: What was Agnes like? ARTHUR: … What? GERTRUDE: Well, for all The Web bound us together, I never actually met her. What was she like? ARTHUR: I… [PAUSE] I don’t know. Not really. You got as many answers to that as… folks who met her. Never really knew what she felt ‘bout any of it! Not really. Not in her own words. Guess that’s the thing about being the… Chosen One, or… I mean, Agnes was always quiet; but even if you spend all day, every day, throwing out commandments and… laying down parables… At the end of it, you’re always just the… point of someone else’s story. Everyone clamouring to say what you were, what you meant, and… your thoughts on it… all don’t mean nothing.

Agnes is… still a character who was born (/birthed) without a choice. We saw how Gerry had made the most of it, despite his education: he chose to neutralise Leitners, saved civilians here and there even when he was doing it passively. Agnes had never chosen this life, and although Arthur highlighted the fact that there were as many Agnes as people who met her/wanted something from her… I’m really feeling like we’re missing her voice about all of this. She’s a tragic figure, but it would sound a bit off to never have access to her voice, to her thoughts, when all the people describing her so far have been male characters and/or people romantically interested in her (Jack Barnabas, Jude Perry, Eugene, now Arthur).

But, unless she lied, Gertrude never met or discussed with her before she died, so… there probably isn’t any recording of her anywhere. (Unless we could somehow have a tape of Agnes talking with someone else? Ivo Lensik also had visions of a little girl at Hill Top Road before she even died, and we know that the place was messed up: maybe there is still a trace of her left behind, who could speak…?)

(- And YES, OBVIOUSLY, I was “wow.” and welcoming the Agnes/Gertrude as a new Fated By Fears ship. She was calling Gertrude “her anchor”!! They were soulmates!!! The Desolation protected Gertrude to make sure that Agnes wouldn’t suffer from it!! Gertrude was curious about her!!)

(- AND ALSO, YES, OBVIOUSLY, HHHHHHHHHH GERTRUDE HOT WHEN IN CONTROL AND LOOKING DOWN ON AVATARS…)

(- Of course, Arthur’s words about the perception one has of someone… was also very reminiscent of Jon’s whole being…? Though, at the same time, we have a direct access to his voice thanks to the tapes. He can lie, he can dissimulate, he can be a hypocrite… but it will always be a bit more “him” than second-hand accounts.

Presumably.

Because the woman from MAG142 had a very different version of Jon to share, someone we… got a glimpse of in MAG141, but it seems that others Archival characters haven’t noticed a change or that he’s been acting different lately…?)

- !!! So the circle from MAG037 was made by Gertrude, initially to banish Agnes, and in the end a bit modified to alleviate “side-effects”:

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: I really thought you were unique, special, an infernal cult raising their demon Messiah to bring about hell on Earth…! […] I somehow found just the right books, made just the right connections, and even got what I thought was a piece of blind good luck, when I found a tin box in the ashes of Hilltop Road, containing some perfectly preserved cuttings of her hair. Of course, what I thought was a “banishment ritual” turned out… not to be. The circle I constructed was more of a… an invitation. It let the Mother of Puppets bind me to Agnes, interweave our existences at some… metaphysical level, as it had with Fielding and the house. … It was the most painful experience of my life. I mean… I’m sure it’s nothing to you, but I’d never had my lungs try to burn me alive from the inside out before. I survived, though. And you know the rest. I’m not sure exactly how it manifested on your end; you certainly seemed to get the message. I kept the circle over the years, laced it through with signs and symbology of The Desolation to ward off the worst of the side effects and… keep its attentions elsewhere.

And with Jason North’s description in mind:

(MAG037, Jason North) “What was inside each one seemed to vary, some had pine needles and twigs, some were full of dirt, and one or two even held what appeared to be rainwater, though looking closer I could see that it bubbled very gently inside those bottles in an endless simmer. In each I could also see a small photograph, half-buried in dirt or almost boiled clean. They all looked to be the same photograph, though it was hard to tell for sure. An old woman, probably in her fifties or sixties, wearing reading glasses and grey hair curled into a tight bun. She stared out disapprovingly from every bottle. Weirdest of all, on the bottom of each was tied a lock of hair. It was long and grey, in poor condition, and I reckon it must have belonged to the woman in the photograph. It was tied up with the same new string as held the bottles, except for the fact that it was burned, ever so slightly at the ends.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: Mr. North did include with his statement the picture he found in the bottle. It is a photograph of Gertrude Robinson, my predecessor at the Magnus Institute, circa 2002 as best I can tell.

So: 1°) it wasn’t Gertrude’s hair! (And did they grey because Agnes was dead? Or because the hair aged “normally” once removed from her?), 2°) Was Gertrude regularly changing her pictures with updated ones, or were these… updating themselves in the bottles?

- Alright, so, actualising the timeline of events around Agnes and Hill Top Road/Lightless Flame cultists’ involvement with Gertrude:

* Agnes was sent to Hill Top Road to deal with The Web sometime around 1965, when Ronald Sinclair was turning 18 (he said he was born in the late 40s). Agnes was described as “younger than the other kids, maybe ten or eleven years old, and didn’t talk much”. She (playfully) freed Ronald from Raymond Fielding’s influence. (MAG059)

* The house got slowly depopulated until only Agnes and Raymond remained; Raymond disappeared when Agnes “must have been 18 or 19”, Agnes claiming that “he had gone away and that the house was hers”. (Ivo Lensik, MAG008)

* In 1974, a five-year-old boy goes missing in the area. People are suspicious of Agnes, the house burns, Ray’s body is found, missing his right hand, and there is no sign of Agnes. (MAG008)

=> It must be around that time that Gertrude tied her existence to Agnes, as she mentioned “ashes” and her own young age:

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: I was very new to it all, of course. I mean, I was, what? Can’t have been older than… twenty-five. […] I somehow found just the right books, made just the right connections, and even got what I thought was a piece of blind good luck, when I found a tin box in the ashes of Hilltop Road, containing some perfectly preserved cuttings of her hair.

(+ in MAG137, Gertrude pointed out that “The Risen War failed a few years before I was even born.”, and that was one was in late 1942. So all this would put Gertrude’s date of birth at 1949 or after, but not before.)

* Gertrude entwined her and Agnes’s existences – was it related to the fact that Agnes also got tied to Hill Top Road, or was that binding unrelated? On the one hand, Gertrude only mentioned that Agnes was connected to her and compared that binding to Fielding and the house; on the other hand, Eugene insisted that Agnes had been “tied” to Hill Top Road, and Agnes indeed clearly felt something when Ivo Lensik killed the tree that was still there:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “As far as we could tell, she had destroyed the place utterly. And yet, she remained bound to it, tied to it in some vital way. I knew, when Arthur told she had kept Raymond Fielding’s hand, that he was worried.”

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: Of course, what I thought was a “banishment ritual” turned out… not to be. The circle I constructed was more of a… an invitation. It let the Mother of Puppets bind me to Agnes, interweave our existences at some… metaphysical level, as it had with Fielding and the house.

* Agnes began to frequent the Canyon Café in the 90s as, by November 2006, she had been visiting for “a decade and a half” (MAG067). She waited, they all waited.

* In autumn 2006, Jack Barnabas confessed to Agnes and they went on a few dates. (MAG067)

* On November 23rd 2006, Ivo Lensik uprooted the tree at Hill Top Road, freeing spiders from the apple buried under it; Agnes felt it, said that she had to finish something, gathered the members of the cult, and at her request, they hanged her, with Ray’s hand tied to her waist. (MAG067, MAG139)

* On November 30th 2006, Arthur sent Eugene Vanderstock to give his statement to Gertrude, threatening her about the fact they didn’t have any more reason to keep her alive (MAG139: “As for you… Whatever you did, and whatever protection it might have afforded you is severed, with Agnes’s death. Arthur has told us not to harm you yet, but this whole thing has really rather weakened his authority, and many of us are now looking towards Diego for leadership. But we shall see, I suppose.”)

* In January 2009, Gertrude took care of Eugene (MAG145, Gertrude: “Well! He hasn’t been at your “little meetings” the last two weeks, has he…? I suppose no one’s looked into it yet.”)

* On February 2nd 2009, Arthur and Gertrude “discussed”, with Gertrude threatening the rest of the cult with what she had done to Eugene if they were to try and harm her. (MAG145)

* On August 6th 2009, Jason North gave his statement about disturbing a ritual site near Loch Glass in Scotland. (MAG037)

* Eugene was officially declared missing in late 2009 (MAG145, Jon: “I did some more digging into Eugene Vanderstock. I thought he was still alive and… working at the steel plant, but it looks like he’s just listed on one of the old directory pages on their website. […] Apparently, he disappeared in late 2009, leaving behind only one thing: a life-sized statue of himself, crafted from candlewax and sawdust. Missing its head.”)

* Until late February/early March 2014, Jane Prentiss, Arthur’s tenant, got taken over by The Hive. On the day of her hospitalisation, Arthur called Pest Control Service to take care of the “wasps’ nest” (whatever the price would be); Jordan Kennedy went, pumped insecticide into the thing, and witnessed Arthur setting himself (and the whole house) on fire. (MAG032, MAG055)

- So, two main things. First, the… dates, once again. I can believe that Eugene’s disappearance wasn’t discovered by public authority until much later than his actual “death”, no problem. But the dates around Gertrude’s circles are a bit weird, since Jason North had mentioned that his wife had burnt not even a week after he had disrupted the site (and before that, his car had broken, etc.); it… doesn’t sound like he had encountered the circle months or years before he gave his statement and tried to find a way to protect his son Ethan – he immolated himself shortly after giving his statement, he was pressed by time, it was an urgency happening in the Summer 2009. Yet… Gertrude and Arthur had been referring to someone disrupting the site some time before… in February 2009.

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: Mm! Now. Here’s the problem for you, Arthur. The way I see it, you came here believing that whatever defences or… assurances I might have had, died with Agnes, or had broken along with the circle. […] I kept the circle over the years, laced it through with signs and symbology of The Desolation to ward off the worst of the side effects and… keep its attentions elsewhere. ARTHUR: [CHUCKLING] Don’t envy whoever broke it! GERTRUDE: Yes. It went very badly for them, indeed. ARTHUR: So where was it, in the end? I spent years looking for it. GERTRUDE: Hm! Nowhere special. The middle of a forest, in the Scottish highlands. Furthest place I could find, from anything, and anyone.

So…? Had Jason North been cursed for a few months before giving his statement, and Ethan had somehow managed to escape The Desolation curse? Is it Jonny mixing dates again (and MAG037 took place in 2008 instead of 2009 or something)?

Is it that… someone else had disrupted the circle before Jason?

… Or has someone/something been messing with dates in the Archives? We’re getting a lot of cases of Potentially Impossible Timelines in season 4 (Neil Lagorio’s two deaths, Jason North’s; there is the matter of Gertrude’s tape from MAG087, when she was supposed to be dead, etc.); is or was someone/something trying to conceal information this way…?

(- Relistening to Jason’s statement and. Hum. About the circle’s location, he finished with:

(MAG137, Jason North) “I asked about who might have gone to the area, but aside from some middle-aged businessmen on a hiking trip, no-one’s been anywhere near that clearing for years. There is no reason this is happening, but I’m still going to lose everything. I am so scared.”

I’m not banking on it, but. Elias was confirmed to be meant to sound “middle-aged” in the season 3 Q&A. So. Uh. Uh. Were these people, like. Peter and Elias on a hiking trip.)

- Regarding Arthur’s connection to The Hive: I… have much trouble picturing that Gertrude did not use what she had learned in MAG145 to somehow make him regret Everything.

(MAG145) ARTHUR: Not like I can vent to the others about what a prat Diego is! Got a lot of funny ideas. Still calls The Lightless Flame “Asag”, like he was when he was first researching it. I just want to tell him to get over it – I mean, [FASTER AND FASTER] Asag was traditionally a force of destruction, sure, but as a church, we very much settled on burning in terms of the… face we worship, and some… fish-boiling Sumerian demon doesn’t really match up, does it?! Plus, there’s a lot of disease imagery with Asag that I’ll reckon is… way too close to Filth for my taste […]. GERTRUDE: So. Now, Diego has taken over… Where does that leave you? 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. So until then… just playing landlord.

I would be really surprised if no one (Gertrude or someone else) had used the fact that Arthur hated Corruption and wanted to wait a bit before killing one of its monsters because it needed to get big enough (practical reasons or hubris there?). Because there is the Question of why did Arthur set himself ablaze when Jane Prentiss got taken over:

(MAG055) JORDAN: At one point, he shook his head and mumbled something about hoping it wouldn’t get this far, but he didn’t seem to be saying it to me. […] Time seemed to move slowly as he reached for the ashtray on the arm of the chair and picked up a pack of matches. He struck one and without even looking at me, he gently pressed the small flame to the centre of the scar. His flesh caught fire, immediately, the flames spreading across his body like rippling water. The armchair caught, then the floor, and then I was running out of the building before the rolling inferno could come at me as well.

Why couldn’t Arthur just… leave? Unless he was fearing that The Hive would come after him, and he was too weak nowadays to be able to properly face it, and he decided to bow out on his own terms? No idea what Gertrude could have done, though; tossing Jane Prentiss in the direction of that house? Or… maybe binding Arthur to the house itself, as revenge/torture, since she did know the ritual to tie herself to someone and had compared it to the binding linking Fielding to the house…?

- Surprisingly, Arthur didn’t mention that he was there the night Agnes had died:

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “They were all dressed in rough work clothes and wore severe expressions. One of them, a big guy with a shaved head, was holding an unlit lantern, and speaking to the others that I think was Spanish or Portuguese. Another held a bag that seemed to be full of candles, while a third had a clear plastic container filled with hundred of tiny spiders. None of them paid me any attention, and I was rapidly feeling like I was falling into something that I really didn’t want to.”

(MAG067) ARCHIVIST: […] If the bald man with the lantern is as I suspect Diego Molina, it would indicate a link between his notable obsession with burning, and… Agnes, who apparently had not inconsiderable abilities in that area. I can’t help but wonder if Arthur Nolan, The Hive’s landlord, was one of the other members of that little group.

(+ the man holding candles would be Eugene Vanderstock, as he was revealed to have a thing with candles in MAG139.)

… Same as with Eugene: how come Arthur… barely mentioned any spiders around Agnes? Eugene had been able to point out that Hill Top Road had been a “stronghold” of The Web, but Arthur didn’t mention them at all in his conversation with Gertrude (it was Gertrude who connected her actions to The Web, but Arthur made no reference whatsoever to Agnes’s) – and especially not… the spiders he (if it was indeed him) was carrying on the night of Agnes’s death. Did those spiders do the same trick as with Jon through his lighter, making people’s attention slip right over them…?

(Especially given that! Jane herself had mentioned that there were spiders in the house:

(MAG032, Jane Prentiss) “Was it the spiders? There were webs in the corners, around the entryway into the attic. I would watch them scurry and disappear in between the wooden boards. ‘Where are you going, little spiders?’ I would think. ‘What are you seeing in the dark? Is it food? Prey? Predators?’ I wondered if it was the spiders that made the gentle buzzing song. It was not. Webs have a song as well, of course, but it is not the song of The Hive.”

To what extent was Arthur tangled in threads, too…?)

- Arthur confirmed (after Eugene) that Desolation folks had mostly No Idea What They Were Doing. We saw it with The Dark, too (when… they just put Faith in things and hoped it would work out), a bit with The Slaughter (given how things didn’t proceed as they should have) – Arthur did highlight that becoming an avatar meant being burdened with the craving of getting closer to their patron, and Jon, judging from how he echoes some of Arthur’s arguments (about cultists fighting over how to act), couuuuld be implying that it’s the same for him nowadays:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: You never had to second-guess a god. ‘Cause that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? We feel Its joy and Its… anger; It warps us, and changes us, and feeds on us, though not in the ways we expect. The one thing It never does is just… tell us what to do. It seeds us with this… aching, impossible desire to change the world, to bring It to us. Then, It leaves us to guess and bicker and fight over how the hell you can actually do it. … If it’s possible. Sometimes, I think They understand us as… little as we understand Them. We don’t think like They do.

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] The more I listen and learn, the more it seems to me we’re all just… “groping about”. Trying desperately to find out what we’re actually meant to be doing. [PAUSE] These things that… loom so large over our lives trap us, and push us, and… sometimes kill us. But they never actually tell us what we’re supposed to be doing. So we scheme and we plot, lash out at each other without ever really knowing why. … I think Gertrude knew this. Knew to… focus her attention on those parts that could be understood, and… Well. And killed.

1°) … But at the same time, Not All Avatars: Jared Hopworth told us in MAG131 that he was perfectly satisfied with the world as is, and actively refused to participate in his own ritual, with no apparent adverse effects on him. So… it’s possible to go “Nop.” over those.

2°) Again, I don’t think that the main point is that no ritual is achievable: it… would lower the stakes too much? Sarah/the Anglerfish had also told Nikola, in MAG119, that the in-between wasn’t comfortable for all the monsters, and to hurry up with the Dance to complete the ceremony. Some things went wrong here and there, we didn’t get the whole stories… but I still think that it must be possible to carry a ritual until its culmination, and that The Watcher’s Crown is still a very real looming threat…?

3°) And what is Jon’s actual stance about The Watcher’s Crown and being responsible for hurting people nowadaaaaays…?

- It was… a weird thing to experience: Gertrude, practical, cold-blooded, doubtless Gertrude was the one actually… more or less on the side of protecting innocents, here? While Jon did not care at all, even included himself amongst Other Avatars:

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: And you’re all lazy fools! So used to it being easy, to picking off the vulnerable and the unprepared, you can barely conceive of anyone actively working against you. Of being ready. You honestly thought, when she died, I’d just be struck dumb with terror – just waiting for one of you to finally get around to revenge, paralysed with fear, because that’s all you’ve ever known. […] You tell the others. Make sure they know what happened to Eugene. ARTHUR: Sure. Can’t make any promises, though. ‘Specially for Jude. She really hates you. GERTRUDE: Tell her she’s welcome to try. Oh��! And tell them I’m extending my protection to young Mr. Barnabas. They hurt him any more, then what happened to Eugene will seem like a mercy. ARTHUR: … You’re really pushing it. You know that? GERTRUDE: Hm! Feel free to push back. But until then, get out of my Archives.

Gertrude neutralised Eugene, she talked Arthur down, she protected Jack Barnabas (and in the same breath: acknowledged that it had gone badly for the one disrupting her circle, but didn’t sound too heartbroken about it).

Meanwhile, Jon? Still hasn’t shared a word about the new additions to his collection of traumatised victims, and is sighing and complaining about his own whole situation.

- And worse: in this episode Jon actually humanised… avatars, of all people???

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: We’ve been back in London for just over a week, now. I’m… more or less recovered physically. It’s just this nagging sense of unease that won’t leave me. … I was so sure I’d find something up there. But instead, it was just another broken person trying to come to terms with the wreckage of their life.

I’m not sure if by “up there”, he was talking about the Svalbard trip and Manuela, or if it was about the new tape and Arthur, but…??? It definitely doesn’t seem like it’s about Floyd??? And whether it’s Manuela or Arthur, who both confessed to multiple murders and torture and absolutely Do Not Feel Sorry About That Part Of Their Life, how do they deserve to be called a “broken person” – what about the persons they broke, what about the persons YOU are breaking, Jon???

(And there was the whole “we avatars”, including himself in it, at the beginning of his rant, which… sounds very much like Jon feels more connected to Their Tragic Situation than to the people they wreck, which is… ew.)

- Overall: I’m really surprised at how abruptly casually unsympathetic I’ve been finding Jon since MAG141, how I’m absolutely unable to feel sorry for him now? Because, lamenting about his lack of direction, his place, his whole existence was delightful and very sad and tragic, indeed! … until we got the reveal that oh, he himself was currently torturing people and feeding from them.

Jon hasn’t had one word about his victims, since then. No concern, no regret, no preoccupation. And I find it so hard to like him right now? It sounds like a string of me-me-me, which… only works as long as he’s not actively hurting others, or as long as he’s trying to find ways to stop it or to mitigate the damage? And it was the same with his string of lies to Georgie (not acknowledging, until she pressed on, that no, he was in “deep”; pretending that Melanie had “told” him about her therapy when the truth is that he had compelled her, although on accident; saying he had some “close calls” when UUUH… I wouldn’t say Floyd and the woman from MAG142 were “close” calls, at all????):

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: A–all right. [SPLUTTERS] W–why are you, uh… well. Here? I–if it’s not too personal a question. [SILENCE] GEORGIE: … It is a bit. It’s not really my place to discuss it. ARCHIVIST: Oh, uh, therapy! You’re taking her to therapy! GEORGIE: She… told you, then? ARCHIVIST: Uh, yes. Yeah. […] GEORGIE: So… How are you doing? ARCHIVIST: I’m… I’m alright. I’m trying to, uh… rest up a bit. Take it easy. [HUFF] GEORGIE: Really? ‘Cause… I’m pretty sure I heard talking about a screaming headless corpse just now. ARCHIVIST: Oh… Oh. W–were you… listening? GEORGIE: Oh, uh. Didn’t mean to. You know. These… doors are not that thick. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … Fine. I’m deep in it. Had some… “close calls”. [SILENCE] GEORGIE: I’m sorry to hear that. [PAUSE] … You should probably get some therapy too. ARCHIVIST: [HUFF] Would you go with me as well? GEORGIE: … No. ARCHIVIST: Yeah. … No, I thought as much.

And… bitterly highlighting that Georgie wouldn’t Hold His Hand And Lead Him Through Therapy (and a bit implying that he would go if she was helping him, but only then)… felt like a really… bad thing to say? What has he done for Georgie for the past year and a half? She housed him for months! She gave him advice! She watched over him while he was in a coma! I find it astoundingly rude of him to even word the possibility of her helping him to get therapy because… yeah, he clearly was expecting a negative answer, but he put her in a position when she was the one who had to officially shoot him down. I understand the sadness and the bitterness but, honestly, with the knowledge that Jon is actually hurting people to feed on the sideline in order to feel good… it gives me the same vibe as entitled males expecting you to do their emotional labour and to sob over their life, who expect you to Accept Them For Who They Are although they’re doing terrible shit here and there.

(And it was… a typical Jon thing, too, but: he didn’t really ask Georgie how she was doing lately, on her side. And the more I see of them, the more, yeah, I understand perfectly why they might have broken up, or why Georgie just… doesn’t want to take care of him anymore, because she used to, and it’s always a one-sided relationship.)

(And it’s so easy to forget, also, in the way Jon interacts with Georgie… that he pulled her into his nightmare zoo. He might have still been unaware at the time he took her statement, but still: he did that to her, and never acknowledged it to her, although we had confirmation that He Knows about it, and knows what causes the dreams now. How could Georgie trust him, if he doesn’t even acknowledge it nor apologise to her for it…?)

I’m still really hoping that there is a twist, that this is all leading to something (Jon was awful in season 2, too! (Though called out on it, and it was in self-defence, because he thought a murderer was after him) – and the point is, he hurt Tim in the process, and this is why it was important narratively for Tim… to never forgive him), though ;; I’m fearing that it’s just wishful-thinking from me, because I… don’t… like… Jon… at all… at the moment… and am hoping that some bits are fake and/or will get improved… (It feels like… such a step back, with all the character development he had gotten in season 3? And it happened around the time he was getting closer to Daisy, who was helping him lighten up…?)

In that vein, the nagging about Elias could lead to something:

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: Elias always seemed to know what was going on, to have a plan, but… I sometimes wonder how orchestrated some of it really was. … [SIGH]

(Every time Jon lamented about his lack of direction in this season, Elias pointed in a direction: removing Basira to get Jon to go inside of the coffin, sending Jon&Basira to Svalbard after Jon had been unable to See if The Dark was still a threat. So Elias might react to that one jab, and I would like to hope that Jon has picked up on the pattern and is beginning to guess that Elias is Basira’s intel… But at the same time, it’s Jon, he tends to Miss Big Points.)

- Georgie did the “Knock-knock”! ;w; It was something Melanie had done to Elias, and Elias did it to Tim&Martin afterwards… Melanie and Georgie are friends, is that a habit they got from each other?

- Jon dramatically minimised his own current actions to Georgie (pretending, at first, that he was… more in control and taking care, although LOL, it’s been a Power Feast since he woke up – even without taking into consideration the statements he has extorted recently), casually hid the fact that he only knew about Melanie’s therapy because he had compelled her… but Georgie also lied about the fact that she had “accidentally” walked on Jon:

(MAG145) [KNOCK–KNOCK–KNOCK.] [DOOR OPENS.] GEORGIE: Knock–knock! ARCHIVIST: Oh, G… G–Georgie… Wh– GEORGIE: Oh! Uh… ARCHIVIST: What a… You… GEORGIE: Sorry, I thought, em… Is Melanie about? […] ARCHIVIST: I’m… I’m alright. I’m trying to, uh… rest up a bit. Take it easy. [HUFF] GEORGIE: Really? ‘Cause… I’m pretty sure I heard talking about a screaming headless corpse just now. ARCHIVIST: Oh… Oh. W–were you… listening? GEORGIE: Oh, uh. Didn’t mean to. You know. These… doors are not that thick.

So she knew he was inside, and pretended otherwise to get a pretext to talk to him a bit… and yet, we clearly see that the bridge is broken between them at the moment. They’re still curious about the other, there is still something, that would need repair… and I’m not sure it ever will be. (And at the moment, I can definitely understand why it doesn’t work between them: because Jon is craving for a clutch, and doesn’t have… much to give, to people who are not having an Exceptionally Great Time either, and are survivors themselves. It’s one thing for them to offer their help, like Daisy did (and back then, Jon had been able to tell that the Archives team was “traumatised” and that a lot of is was because of him). But they don’t owe Jon anything, especially if he’s not working on improving or healing himself, and it’s really not their fault if Jon is allowing himself to sink at the moment – especially after Daisy had worked on pulling him up.)

- Hey! It’s “sad about Sasha” hours.

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: I did some more digging into Eugene Vanderstock. I thought he was still alive and… working at the steel plant, but it looks like he’s just listed on one of the old directory pages on their website. … I really miss having people who know their way around a computer better than I do…! [PAUSE] A bit more digging found a rather… bizarre case.

Hacker of the group who used to dig things up so easily… ;; (And Tim could flirt his way into info.)

- Melanie is doing Amazing, sweetie ;w;

(MAG145) GEORGIE: Sorry, I thought, em… Is Melanie about? ARCHIVIST: Melanie…? Uh… Yeah, I… saw her a couple of hours ago. Uh, in the other office, I–I can show you…? GEORGIE: Oh, I’m… sure I can find it. Don’t worry yourself. ARCHIVIST: A–all right. [SPLUTTERS] W–why are you, uh… well. Here? I–if it’s not too personal a question. [SILENCE] GEORGIE: … It is a bit. It’s not really my place to discuss it. ARCHIVIST: Oh, uh, therapy! You’re taking her to therapy! GEORGIE: She… told you, then? ARCHIVIST: Uh, yes. Yeah. GEORGIE: … Well, you don’t need to sound quite so psyched about it. She gets… nervous travelling there alone. ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Yes, o–o–of course. I–I forget you two know each other.

On the one hand: yes, that therapist gave me the creeps, the whole tape recorder thing was suspicious as hell, we haven’t heard from Melanie directly since then, she’s been described as “quiet”, the fact that she doesn’t like to go there alone… all are worrisome and screaming “Web!” a bit.

On the other hand: Melanie has been going outside, is calmer, is able to call on a willing friend for help… and it sounds like Actual Therapy Actually Helping Her To Get Some Inner Peace?

So wait&see, but I wouldn’t rule out (entirely) that it might be actual therapy at work, here.

(A detail on the Archives’ landscape, too: there are actually two offices! Jon’s and… another.)

- HMMMM, so: the whole episode contained the fact that The Web manipulated an Archivist, an Archivist who was resisting against their own patron and got tied to another avatar who also might have had Reservations about their own god (so two Fears neutralising each other?); avatars who were roughly the same age; one of them being described as an “anchor” for the other, despite the distance…

… Martin, where are you, and does The Web have plans for you and Jon, too…

MAG146 is out and OUUUUUUUUUUUUUFFFFF, siren alarms, I guess??? Especially when it’s about the potential second meaning (… though, at this point, with Jon-since-MAG141, I’d think we’re way past “that point” from MAG146′s title, and deeper than this).

Interesting concept because it appeared on multiple occasions: it was because of it that Naomi started to see the Lonely field in MAG013, Albrecht had noticed a change around it in MAG023, Jason North’s doom started with it in MAG037, Philip Brown pointed out that The Dark was beginning with it in MAG052, Tim mentioned things changing starting around it in MAG104… And, of course, it screams Jon-Jon-Jon (heck, Elias even described Jon’s behaviour around metaphorical ones in MAG092 in his Speech about how Jon had chosen everything (INFORMED CONSENT SAID HI, BASTARD.)); or The Distortion, since the concept had appeared a lot around it (things changing with it in MAG047; Michael using it to describe his Becoming in MAG101; Helen mentioning it in relation to Jon and his fears in MAG143).

So. Spiral statement? Or something about resistance/tolerance? … Jon visiting Elias in prison? *weeps* (Second meaning potentially ;; if it is about Jon…)

[partyrockin]

So, my English class is going to be studying Hamlet in a couple of weeks, which so happens to be my favourite Shakespearean tragedy. Hence, as expected of Homestuck trash such as myself, I came to contemplate the characteristics of the play’s titular hero, and the similarities he shares with Dave Strider.

And shit, did I find some similarities.

I don’t know if anyone else has done this before, but nevertheless here’s my evaluation of these characters and how their similarities relate to their overarching character plot.

Be warned, this is gonna be quite a long post, so if you’re up with following amateur character analysis then read on.

Character Comparative Analysis - Dave Strider and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Aside from their tendency to speak in exaggerated metaphors and unintentionally spewing Freudian slips left and right at unsuspecting victims, Dave and Hamlet are extremely similar in their struggle with the conflicts that make up their character arcs.

Let’s start off with Dave. 

Dave Strider is an interesting character, to say the very least. A self-proclaimed cool kid who dabbles in the Stygian realm of irony- a liking he adopts from Bro, who has heavily influenced Dave’s mindset for the first thirteen or so years of his life. Initially portrayed as cool and detached, we slowly begin to unravel his intricate façade as the story progresses, only to find the shattered remnants of Dave’s sense of identity and mental stability- having already succumbed to Bro’s destructive influence.

Dave, too, is initially unaware of his guardian’s debilitating impact on his psychological development. However, three years on a dark meteor propelling through the dark expanse of Paradox Space- with nothing better to do- would get even the most attention-deficit of people to start thinking about things.

Not only does Dave come to understand himself more through his contemplation, we do too. Though, we only learn about his character after the meteor journey in the Post-Retcon Timeline; primarily through his conversations with John and Dirk.

Despite this, through his interactions with the aforementioned characters, we begin to discover his internalised character conflict, and later understand the source of this conflict.

With that in mind, we can go and assess the characterisation of Hamlet. A Prince, evidently smart and calculative, who is first presented to the audience in a state of emotional disarray. His father is dead; his uncle Claudius is made King of Denmark and has married Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude. Life sucks for Hamlet, BUT HANG ON A MINUTE CUZ IT’S ABOUT TO SUCK A LOT MORE.

Hamlet comes across the apparition of his late father (who’s also named Hamlet just to be clear), who pleas for his son to kill King Claudius as revenge for his murder. Hamlet is initially weary of the call to action, thinking the ghost to be from the Devil, and spends FOREVER trying to deduce whether his uncle had actually killed the late King Hamlet.

Four hundred year old spoiler ahead: he did.

This leaves Hamlet seated on a ceaseless pendulum that oscillates between action and inaction; Heaven and purgatory; revenge and awaiting Divine retribution. You know, all that fun stuff, and lucky us, we get to sit through all seven (!!!!!!!) soliloquies.

In short, the tragedy basically forces us, the audience, to embark on a journey overwhelmed with nothing but Hamlet’s incessant bitching and moaning for, like, THREE FUCKING ACTS before anything even remotely action-related happens. (IMO I actually really like this about the play but I’m pretty sure that 99.9% of people won’t agree with me. I can see where y’all come from, tho.)

Anyway, like Hamlet, Dave struggles with compromising between his conflicting values. The source of Dave’s character conflict is, in fact, Dirk. Dave initially considered Dirk’s pre-Scratch counterpart a hero, and attempted to appeal to his totally-heroic Bro through his interests, complacency with engaging in strifes and his Bro’s other sadistic antics.

However, after having contemplated and assessed his life pre-Sburb, Dave was able to deduce that Bro was actually a manipulative, callous dickhead, and duplicitous in the sense that he made himself appear to be a good role model. That he was a hero, and actually got Dave to believe that his (Bro’s) methods of preparing his ‘younger brother’ for the game were perfectly okay. 

But honestly, I personally don’t think Bro really would have cared whether Dave idolised him or not. It would have been favourable, of course, as he could manipulate Dave into doing what he wanted. However, he could almost just as easily puppeteer Dave into doing the same even if the latter despised him.

Likewise, throughout Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the protagonist encounters a similar struggle; one that forces him into dealing with his tragic flaw: his introspectiveness. He endlessly ponders and analyses the consequences of exacting revenge on Claudius for the death of his father, oscillating between taking action and further contemplation.

He hold various beliefs, such as his religious and moral values, which conflict with one another for most of the play. He takes careful consideration of what ramification may ensue if he goes through with killing Claudius, on both a spiritual and personal level. However, despite his thoughtfulness being a redeeming quality, it is this very same quality that leads to his death as well as the deaths of innocents. 

Ironic, yes, but that is essentially what makes the play a tragedy.

Dave, too, attempts strenuously to come to terms with his own preconceived beliefs, which were heavily influenced by Pre-Scratch Dirk. He finds that his previously-held beliefs conflict with his newly-formulated opinions of Bro, heroism, masculinity, sexuality, and even his own time powers.

Dave doesn’t use his time powers because he doesn’t want to be the cause of the death of his alternate selves, and essentially dooming the timeline they originate from. He doesn’t want to be that destructive influence, just because those Daves weren’t fortunate enough to be from the Alpha Timeline.

Okay, I’ve gone a bit off-tangent, but yeah, you can see that these two wonderful characters share quite a bit in common.

In addition, both are infamous for their soliloquies, both despise their father figures, and for you Freud enthusiasts, both characters have been shown to possess characteristics which are borderline Oedipal.

(Though I would disagree because Sigmund Freud was a nutcase and fuck him, but just gonna put that out there anyway.)

So yeah, these characters are eerily similar, which is among the reasons why I love them.

I could go on and on about these characters, and their similarities and shit, but there’s so much stuff to go through, and this is quite long already. Also, I’m evidently not the best at explaining things.

So, TL;DR: Dave and Hamlet both struggle with appealing and upholding their contradicting values, which in turn make them question their own sense of self. Hamlet struggles between upholding his religious beliefs, his morals, and desire for revenge. Dave struggles with upholding the values his Bro had engrained into his mindset, and dealing with the rise of new values and opinions derived from his retrospectivity.

For the next two paragraphs I’ll be talking about the painting above. If you want to read it go ahead.

Painting

So here I wanted to depict Dave’s attempt to come to terms with both himself and Dirk- though Dirk himself had nothing to do with Dave’s struggle with his identity and beliefs. The painting alludes to Hamlet’s soliloquy as he carries Yorick’s skull; with Yorick having made a small, but memorable impact on Hamlet’s past life. Though Yorick is not the source of Hamlet’s dilemma, I wanted to retain the aspect of the Danish court’s former jester having an impact on Hamlet in general.

Likewise, Bro had a tremendous impact on Dave’s core beliefs, and as evident within this conversation, Dave reveals that he can’t help but feel a certain distaste for Dirk because of his Pre-Scratch‘s impact on Dave’s upbringing. Dave is obviously trying to separate Bro and Dirk, to perceive them as two separate entities, but I feel that he cannot truly do that without coming to terms with himself. In doing that, he can bring himself to, in a sense, forgive Dirk, and hence completing the divide between the two alternate selves.

(Holy shit, I wrote a character analysis essay in nearly 1400 words. A fucking essay. I’m on holiday, far from the grasp of my crippling education system, and I write A FUCKING ESSAY. If ever there needed to be proof of my HS trashiness and Shakespeare nerdiness, here it is.)