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tma-traduzioni · 4 years ago

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MAG097 - Caso #0090303 - “Ignoriamo tutti la voragine”

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ARCHIVISTA

Dichiarazione di Jackson Ellis, riguardo alle peculiarità geografiche nella città di Bucoda, a Washington. Dichiarazione originale rilasciata il 3 marzo 2009. Audio registrato da Jonathan Sims, Capo Archivista dell’Istituto Magnus, Londra.

Inizio della dichiarazione.

ARCHIVISTA (DICHIARAZIONE)

L’anno scorso mi sono trasferito nella piccola città di Bucoda, a circa 15 miglia da Olympia nello stato di Washington. Non avevo mai sentito nominare la città prima di allora, e di sicuro non avevo idea di quella che avrei presto iniziato a pensare come a… ‘La Voragine’. La scelta di trasferirmi non era stata proprio mia, in quanto le mie circostanze mi avevano condotto in una situazione molto particolare. Mi ero trasferito a Olympia da Pittsburgh per seguire quella che sembrava essere un'opportunità di lavoro molto promettente come corrispondente per un giornale regionale. Non c’erano molte opportunità nel mio campo, quindi quando mi venne offerta la posizione a Olympia, usai tutti i miei risparmi per il trasloco.

Non ho mai saputo tutta la storia di perché il giornale sia stato chiuso così velocemente. Una persona mi ha detto che erano andati in bancarotta a causa di irregolarità fiscali ad alto livello, un’altra affermava che ci fosse stata un’enorme causa per diffamazione e che l’avevano persa in malo modo, e una terza ha detto che la decisione è stata presa dalla loro società madre senza preavviso. Qualsiasi fosse stato il motivo, mi presentai al mio primo giorno di lavoro per trovare l’ufficio che veniva sgombrato. Tecnicamente non avevo ancora iniziato il lavoro, quindi non c’è stata nessuna liquidazione o buonuscita. Io ero solo… bloccato ad Olympia senza soldi e nessun altro posto dove andare. Non aiutò il fatto che il mio nuovo padrone di casa si mostrò completamente privo di comprensione per la mia situazione. Allora, anche se avessi trovato immediatamente un nuovo lavoro, non sarei riuscito ad arrivare alla prossima rata troppo cara dell’appartamento nel centro della città. Mi disse che avevo violato i termini del contratto, e che sarei stato sfrattato. Mi diede tre giorni.

Quindi, finii in una situazione dove avevo disperatamente bisogno di un posto poco costoso dove vivere, molto velocemente. Un qualche posto dove sarei potuto stare mentre cercavo un altro lavoro. I miei genitori erano anche loro poveri in canna, e non potevano aiutare. Voglio dire, ero sicuro che mi avrebbero riaccolto da loro, ma non avevo i soldi per spostarmi dall’altra parte del paese, men che meno con tutta la mia roba. Non ti rendi mai conto di quante cose possiedi fino a che non te ne ritrovi zavorrato, o quanto poco valore la maggior parte di quelle abbia per tutti tranne te. Vendetti quello che potei, ma ottenni meno di cinquanta dollari, e non mi ero sbarazzato praticamente di niente.

Quindi quando mi misi a chiacchierare con Tommy in un bar, due giorni prima che mi buttassero fuori, e lui mi disse che aveva una stanza libera che stava cercando di affittare a poco, accettai quasi prima che mi avesse fornito tutti i dettagli. Thomas Krycek era giovane, blandamente bello, e non molto brillante. Sembrava un bravo ragazzo però. Aveva acquistato una piccola casa a un piano nella città di Bucoda con la sua compagna qualche anno prima, ma lei lo aveva lasciato uno o due mesi prima, e ora lui stava avendo problemi a pagare le rate della casa. Non era molto, ma rientrava in quello che potevo generosamente definire il mio budget, e Bucoda era a meno di un’ora di macchina da Olympia, quindi fare il pendolare per qualsiasi lavoro fossi riuscito a ottenere non sarebbe stato poi così male. Gli strinsi la mano, e mi trasferii là.

La città era quasi proprio come te l’aspetteresti. Un piccolo reticolato senza cartelli stradali o segnali, macchie di erba e terra con piccole case a punteggiarle in maniera irregolare. Qualsiasi infrastruttura vi fosse era alimentata solo dai volontari, e sarei sorpreso se ci fossero più di cinquecento persone che la definiscano casa. La foresta s’insinuava da ogni direzione, come fa in tutte le zone a nord ovest della costa pacifica, credo, ma era un effetto al quale stavo faticando ad abituarmi. Quando parcheggiai di fronte a casa di Tommy per la prima volta, fu... strano. Sentii prima ancora di spegnere il motore che non vi appartenevo. Come se fossi entrato dietro le quinte di un teatro: non mi aveva fermato nessuno, ma non riuscivo a scuotermi di dosso l’impressione che ero andato in un posto dove non sarei dovuto essere. Anche quando Tommy uscì, e iniziò a scaricare il bagagliaio, mi sembrò che lui si fondesse con la città in un modo che io semplicemente non facevo.

Non c’era nessun segno che questo fosse da altre parti se non nella mia testa. Tommy non sembrò notare niente di strano, e mentre spostavo la mia roba nella piccola stanza da letto lui con un gran sorriso mi passò una birra senza che la chiedessi. La bevvi felicemente, e feci del mio meglio per rilassarmi.

Come venne fuori la mia situazione non era poi così terribile quanto avevo pensato. Scoprii il giorno seguente che il mio lavoro mi aveva pagato una piccola cifra. Non ero sicuro se si trattasse di uno stipendio o di una liquidazione, e non riuscii a contattare nessuno che avrebbe potuto chiarirlo, ma fu abbastanza da smorzare quello stress continuo, anche se per poco. Mi concessi qualche giorno per riposarmi e riprendermi dal caos che era stata l’ultima settimana. Suppongo che tecnicamente avrei potuto traslocare da casa di Tommy, ma lui sembrava… davvero felice di avermi in giro, e pensai che i miei sforzi fossero usati meglio per cercare un nuovo lavoro piuttosto che un posto dove vivere.

Passai i giorni seguenti a dormire, bere e a esplorare con calma la piccola città che adesso mi contava tra i suoi abitanti. Era silenziosa, anche se non deserta; vedevo spesso altre persone camminare per le strade, anche se non c’era un vero e proprio marciapiede. Sarebbe potuta essere la mia immaginazione, ma ogni volta che mi vedevano, sembrava quasi che si fermassero per un momento, fissandomi, prima di continuare per la loro strada. Sembravano abbastanza amichevoli a parte quello, e non sembrava esserci mai alcun messaggio implicito o nascosto dietro ai loro saluti. Ripensandoci adesso però, non sono sicuro di aver mai visto dei bambini, anche se forse sto esagerando un po’ troppo.

Ho trovato la… voragine quasi immediatamente. Non è che fosse proprio qualcosa che potesse essere ignorata facilmente, stava lì all’incrocio tra River Street e la Sesta, spalancata sotto il cielo azzurro intenso. Sembrava una dolina, ma quasi completamente circolare, e invece di avere il precipizio solito degli altri buchi di questo tipo, questo scendeva dolcemente verso una piccola apertura al centro, forse a tre o quattro metri sotto il livello della strada. In alcuni punti sembrava essere più un cratere che una dolina, ma era così liscia e regolare, che pensai non potesse essere il risultato di un impatto o esplosione. Era enorme, più grande della strada che ci sarebbe dovuta essere. E la cosa che mi colpì come strana, era che la strada continuava attorno a questa. Sembrava dividersi proprio prima della voragine, e riunirsi sull’altro lato. Voglio dire, non so se si può giudicare l’età di un buco semplicemente guardandolo, ma non sembrava essere così vecchio. La strada sì, però, o per lo meno non era stata fatta recentemente. Non c’era segno che fosse stata fatta separatamente dal resto della città. La voragine era semplicemente lì.

Mentre ero lì in piedi, a fissare il buco nel terreno, senti una macchina venire su dalla strada dietro di me. Mi spostai di lato quando mi passò accanto e poi attorno al confine della voragine, prima di procedere oltre. Sbirciai velocemente dentro il finestrino sul lato del conducente, ma non c’era sorpresa sul suo volto, nessuna irritazione per l’ostacolo. Sembrava essersene accorta a malapena. Me ne andai poco dopo, stranamente a disagio per la sua… liscia presenza circolare.

Chiesi a Tommy il giorno seguente. Era andato in cucina per prendermi una birra, quando gli avevo detto che l’avevo trovata per caso mentre passeggiavo per la città. Chiesi, se lui ne sapesse qualcosa? Da quanto era lì? Era una dolina, o per un terremoto, o… o cosa? Fu solo dopo che avevo tirato lì una sfilza di domande con noncuranza che mi accorsi che Tommy si era bloccato sul posto, una mano nel frigo e una sulla porta. Non sembrava allarmato o preoccupato, solo completamente immobile. Rimasi in silenzio per qualche secondo, e poi lui tirò fuori una birra e me la passò, chiudendosi il frigo alle spalle. Non diede alcun segno di avermi sentito. Quindi chiesi di nuovo, la voragine tra la Sesta e la River, com’è la storia? Mi guardò per un attimo, come se stesse cercando di assimilare qualcosa che avevo detto in un’altra lingua, poi alzò le spalle, e borbottò qualcosa sulle vecchie strade che non ricevono la giusta manutenzione. “No,” dissi, “la voragine. Il buco enorme nel terreno.” Scosse la testa come se stessi dicendo cose prive di senso, e se ne andò verso camera sua. Provai a bere la mia birra, ma mi lasciava un sapore denso e sgradevole sulla lingua.

Volevo dimenticarmene, ignorare il cratere polveroso che aspettava nel centro di questa piccola città, ma non potevo. A volte mi dava fastidio, come un granello di terra nell’occhio, ma più provavo a prenderlo, più a fondo s’infilava. Controllai le mappe della zona, cercando di vedere se qualcuna di queste riportasse questa strana caratteristica, ma trovai solo alcune che risalivano fino al 2008, e nessuna di quelle aveva niente segnato in quel punto, anche se la divisione nella strada c’era chiaramente da ben più di un anno.

Provai a parlarne, per vedere se qualcuno avesse una minima idea di che cosa fosse la voragine o perché fosse lì, ma quando lo chiesi a Da Joe - l’unico ristorante in città - tutti reagirono come Tommy.

Sentendo male, capendo male o ignorandomi direttamente. Non sembravano direttamente evasivi; tutte le loro reazioni sembravano oneste, ma nessuno era capace di parlare della voragine. Ero sul punto di rinunciare completamente a ottenere qualcosa di ragionevole dalle persone a Da Joe quel pomeriggio, quando un signore anziano venne verso di me. Lo avevo visto qualche volta in giro, anche se non avrei saputo dire chi fosse o che cosa facesse. Era grosso, però, con una faccia che sembrava intagliata nel calcare. Smisi di mangiare, e aspettai.

Il vecchio mi fissò per quelli che devono essere stati venti secondi buoni, e poi parlò. “Niente per te qua sotto,” disse “Vai e goditi il tuo cielo.” Non c’è stato modo di fraintendere la minaccia nel suo tono, come se non avessi avuto molto tempo a disposizione per farlo, e stavo per dire qualcosa quando la sua testa improvvisamente scattò in avanti, e sputò ai miei piedi. Poi si girò e andò via. Guardai giù e vidi un denso grumo di fango. Nessuno alzò lo sguardo, e io non lo seguii.

Provai davvero a seguire il suo consiglio. Avevo altre cose di cui preoccuparmi, e in fin dei conti non c’era alcun motivo per cui dovessi essere così ossessionato da un buco nel terreno. Non dovevo neanche percorre quella strada. Viaggiavo regolarmente solo fino a Olympia per fare domande di lavoro, e da casa di Tommy la voragine era in direzione completamente opposta. Ma iniziai a sognarmela. Sognavo di camminare dentro la voragine, dove il terreno diventava denso fango che mi risucchiava verso il basso. Non riuscivo a respirare.

Ce n’è uno, non so dire sinceramente se sia stato un sogno, ma non posso neanche chiamarlo un ricordo. C’era il sole, a metà della giornata. Potevo sentire il suono delle risate da qualche parte nella città, voci leggere che parlavano tra di loro. Una giornata pacifica. Camminai fino alla voragine, e per la prima volta, ne attraversai il bordo e iniziai a scendere. Era asciutto, polveroso e l’aria sembrava essere diversa che dal resto della città. Lentamente, con cautela, camminai verso il buco al centro. Questo punto assomigliava più a una dolina, svaniva giù in totale oscurità. Era largo meno di trenta centimetri, e sentii una leggera folata di aria fresca e umida. Mi misi a sedere lì, in silenzio, ad ascoltare, convinto di sentire qualcosa, ma c’era solo silenzio. Mi sporsi in avanti, la mia testa direttamente sopra il buco, e lo udii. E feci quello che mi aveva detto.

Prese la mia mano, e mi sporsi giù verso l’oscurità. Giù e giù, fino a che tutto il mio braccio era dentro, fino alla spalla. Era umido e freddo, con i bordi di pietra ruvida che mi graffiavano la pelle, ma la mia mano era allungata più che potevo, e non riuscivo ancora ad afferrare nient’altro se non l’aria vuota. Poi il buco iniziò a chiudersi, e tutto a un tratto l’incantesimo era spezzato. Provai a tirare fuori il mio braccio, a liberarlo, ma mi teneva stretto. Non proprio stritolandomi, ma bloccandomi sul posto. Urlai e chiesi aiuto, cercando qualcuno che potesse riuscire a sentirmi, ma le uniche persone che passavano sembravano completamente ignare di quello che stava succedendo. Poi lo sentii, qualcosa che sfiorava la mia mano dal profondo del buco. Denti. Denti umidi e smussati, seguiti subito da una lingua ruvida e affusolata che si avvolse attorno alla mia mano e risalì lungo il mio braccio, come se mi stesse assaggiando. Poi, senza preavviso la sentii ritirarsi con uno scatto nell’oscurità, portandosi dietro un po’ di pelle, e il mio braccio venne rilasciato all’improvviso.

Quello che mi ricordo dopo è che ero sdraiato a letto. Vorrei dire che mi ero appena svegliato e che era stato tutto un sogno, ma ero completamente vestito, impolverato e con lunghi graffi sottili che serpeggiavano attorno al mio braccio.

Fu allora che iniziai a cercare disperatamente un modo per andarmene da Bucoda. Ero stato lì per poco più di un mese a quel punto, ed ero riuscito a trovarmi un lavoro part-time nella città vicina, Chehalis. Lo stipendio non era granché, ma sarebbe bastato appena per trasferirmi se fossi stato attento. Tommy era triste, certo, ma non sembrava sorpreso - quel mese era stato un po’ teso, e comunque non eravamo particolarmente adatti a vivere insieme. Suppongo che è quello che ottieni quando ti trasferisci da sconosciuti che hai incontrato in un bar.

Successe la notte prima che me ne andassi. Il 17 giugno 2008. Avevo messo tutte le mie cose negli scatoloni ed ero pronto per partire. Avevo le chiavi della mia nuova casa. Tutto quello che dovevo fare era fare un’ultima bella dormita. Invece venni svegliato verso le due di notte dal rumore della porta d’ingresso che si chiudeva. Urlai, ma Tommy non rispose. Controllai la casa per assicurarmi che nessuno fosse entrato, ma il posto era deserto. Ero solo. Gli affari di Tommy erano suoi, decisi, e stavo per tornare a letto quando vidi un’ombra passare davanti alla finestra. Poi un’altra. Mi avvicinai silenziosamente alla porta e la aprii, guardando fuori nella strada per vedere se riuscivo a capire che cosa stesse succedendo.

Non ci sono molte strade a Bucoda, e di notte, quando tutte le case sono buie può essere davvero suggestiva. Ero abbastanza vicino da poter vedere le figure muoversi lungo la strada, però. Camminavano con calma, come se stessero passeggiando, ma erano moltissime. Forse tutta la città. Uscivano dalle loro case e dalle loro roulotte, e camminavano lungo le strade senza luce. Sapevo esattamente dove stavano andando, e non riuscii a trattenermi dal seguirle fino a là.

Non so come l’intera città sia riuscita a entrare nella voragine. Dovevano essere centinaia, in un grosso mucchio, e incrostati di fango. Non si muovevano, anche se i loro occhi brillavano così luminosi sotto la mia torcia che dovevano essere vivi. Nessuno di loro fece un suono, anche se potevo sentire un calore e un tremore sotto i miei piedi, come se la terra stessa stesse urlando.

Senza preavviso una delle loro teste scattò verso di me. Era una giovane donna che viveva nella strada accanto, e il cui nome non avevo mai dovuto imparare. Mi fissò, gli occhi improvvisamente pieni di terrore, e iniziò a urlare. Nel momento in cui lo fece, sparì, trascinata nel terreno, soffocando il suono prima che fosse ancora iniziato. Mi voltai e corsi via, verso la casa. Volevo andarmene, ma non riuscivo a stare all’aperto. Quindi mi nascosi, sotto il mio letto per il resto della notte, e senti il terreno dondolare dolcemente sotto di me.

Non so se Tommy sia tornato il giorno seguente. Non appena ci fu luce fuori, saltai un macchina, e andai via. Ci provai, per lo meno. Non volevo vedere la voragine di nuovo, davvero non volevo. Ma lo feci. Era vuota, come prima, come se la notte precedente non fosse mai successa. Ma era più grande. E la strada si era espansa per contenerla.

C’era qualcun altro a osservarla, però. Una donna anziana, dal volto accigliato e pensieroso, se ne stava sul bordo guardando in basso. Non riconobbi lei, o la macchina accanto alla quale si trovava. Di sicuro non era di Bucoda. Seduto nell’auto accanto a lei, potevo vedere un giovane che aveva chiaramente pianto. Non riuscii a capacitarmi di quanto fossero blu i suoi occhi. L’anziana signora incrociò il mio sguardo, e guardò me, poi il pozzo, e di nuovo me. Stavo pensando se dire qualcosa quando lei mi fece cenno di andarmene, e lo feci. Decisi di non far parte di qualsiasi cosa stesse accadendo, quindi andai via, e non mi guardai alle spalle.

Quella notte, ci fu il terremoto che ha distrutto completamente Bucoda, quindi credo che non saprò mai quello che è successo. E onestamente? Ne sono felice.

ARCHIVISTA

Fine della dichiarazione.

Perché Elias mi ha mandato questa dichiarazione? È avvenuta dall’altra parte del mondo, a persone che non sembrano avere nessun legame con quello che sta succedendo. È da un po’ che sospetto che potrebbe esserci un qualche potere legato alle grotte e agli spazi chiusi, all’essere seppelliti vivi o schiacciati. Quindi suppongo che sia bello ricevere una dichiarazione che in un certo senso amplia quella teoria, ma… non riesco a capire che cosa abbia a che fare con la nostra situazione attuale. È il vecchio senza nome? La vecchia? Chiunque stesse piangendo nella macchina? Sta provando a consigliarmi di non ignorare la mia metaforica voragine, perché se così fosse, quale sarebbe la mia voragine metaforica?

Sai, in un certo senso è peggio, ora che so che posso chiedere perché mi sta mandando queste dichiarazioni, ma che comunque non… me lo dirà. Ho fatto le mie ricerche. Il signor Ellis è ancora vivo e sta bene, al momento vive a Tacoma, e non è disposto a parlare ulteriormente di questi eventi. La città di Bucoda in sé per sé… beh, è… andata. I giornali ne hanno parlato come di un terremoto, e le scosse sono state sentite fino a Castle Rock, ma nonostante tutti gli articoli descrivano Bucoda come se sia stata “distrutta” dal terremoto, non ci sono foto o video della distruzione stessa. Non sembrano esserci stati danni al di fuori del confine della città, e tutte le strade dell’area non sembrano essere state danneggiate, nonostante non ci siano prove di lavori di ricostruzione dopo il fenomeno. Per quello che posso dire, c’è stato un terremoto, e poi Bucoda non c’era più, ma a parte questi due dettagli -

[Lampadina che salta e si spegne]

Oh. [Sospira] Okay, vediamo....

[Si alza, pigia l’interruttore due volte]

Georgie, dov’è il quadro elettr-?

Okay. Okay. Continuo a dire che non può saltare ogni volta che si brucia una lampadina, ma “No, Jon, non voglio infastidire il padrone di casa.”

[Sospira]

Ah.

ORSINOV

[Cantilenando] Non vuoi farlo.

[Rumore di passi]

[L’Archivista inspira rumorosamente]

ORSINOV

Voglio dire, se proprio vuoi puoi, ma non ti piacerà. A volte non riuscire a vedere qualcosa è a dire il vero una cosa abbastanza positiva.

ARCHIVISTA

Chi sei?

ORSINOV

Beh, mio padre mi ha chiamata Nikola, e poi io l’ho ucciso, quindi penso di essermi guadagnata anche il suo cognome. Il che mi rende Nikola Orsinov. Lieta di fare la tua conoscenza finalmente.

ARCHIVISTA

Tu, um… Hai ucciso Gregor Orsinov?

ORSINOV

Sì! Era diventato molto noioso, e io sono un mostro. Voglio dire che altro volevi che facessi - se non dilaniarlo? Ho usato tutti i pezzi.

ARCHIVISTA

Io... T... T-Tu non... hai un accento russo.

ORSINOV

Come faccio ad avere un qualsiasi accento, sciocchino? Sono di plastica.

[Toc toc sulla testa di plastica]

Non ho neanche le corde vocali. Ho dovuto prendere queste in prestito.

ARCHIVISTA

Uh...

ORSINOV

Non accendere le luci.

ARCHIVISTA

Mi... mi ucciderai?

ORSINOV

[Inorridita] No!

[Ci ripensa] Voglio dire, sì. Ma non prima di un bel po’ di tempo. Non voglio sprecare niente di te.

ARCHIVISTA

Allora, er… allora, allora cosa…

Allora perché sei qui?

ORSINOV

Dopo che hai attaccato la povera Sarah, ho pensato che fosse il momento che facessimo una chiacchierata come si deve. Faccia a non faccia! A quattr’occhi… beh.

ARCHIVISTA

A... Allora che vuoi?

ORSINOV

Ti ricordi di quel vecchio pezzo di pelle di cui stavi parlando? Ci piacerebbe riaverlo. Pensavamo che la cattiva vecchia Gertrude l’avesse distrutto. Ma poi tu sei andato a vedere, e ora pensiamo che lei fosse solo molto brava a nascondere.

ARCHIVISTA

Scusa, stai chiedendo a me di trovarlo per te?

ORSINOV

Sarebbe fantastico. E molto meglio per te rispetto alle nostre altre idee.

ARCHIVISTA

Che cos' ha di così importante un vecchio pezzo di tassidermia?

ORSINOV

[Euforica] Voglio indossarlo quando danzo il mondo a nuovo.

ARCHIVISTA

Ma... Ma co- URK!

[L’Archivista viene colpito]

ORSINOV

Il tempo per le domande è finito, piccolo Archivista. Trova la pelle per noi. Hai fino a… beh, fino a che non cambio idea.

[L’Archivista cade, respirando pesantemente]

Shhh... Risparmia le energie per la danza.

[Passi sopra un respiro affaticato]

[CLICK]

[Traduzione di: Victoria]

[Episodio Successivo]

#tma italia #tma #gli archivi magnus #the magnus archives #tma traduzioni #jon sims

10 notes · View notes

throwaninkpot · 5 years ago

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An elderly woman, face pinched and thoughtful, stood at the edge looking down. I didn’t recognise her, or the car she stood next to. She definitely wasn’t from Bucoda. Sat in the car next to her, I could see a young man who had clearly been crying. I couldn’t get over how blue his eyes were.

We're pretty agreed that the crying, blue-eyed young man with Gertrude Robinson in MAG097 was Michael Shelley, right? Doesn't seem like Gerry, and Michael is the only other person who might have been traveling with her around 2008.

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fractal-voidling · 4 months ago

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MAG097 - #0090303 │ We All Ignore the Pit

it's creepy doll time let's gooo

can't wait to hear the audio I did the acting to on TikTok in context

oh my gods I love her voice

face to no-face, lmao

as a dancer I'm can't believe I'm saying this, but I'd rather not dance, thank you

#MAG097 #MAG 097 #0090303 #We All Ignore the Pit #The Magnus Archives #TMA podcast #live notes #TMA spoilers #The Magnus Archives spoilers #fractal-thoughts.md #TMA live notes

0 notes

soveryanon · 6 years ago

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Reviewing time for MAG129 /o/

- Overall, I’m… so, so proud of Jon since the season has begun? He’s trying! Trying so much and so hard! And it’s still the same Jon who is prone to outbursts, who can say mean things… but now, he’s also learned that his actions and his words can be destructive, that they can hurt people, that he can hurt people he cares about simply because he voiced what he felt! It’s not so much that his snappiness disappeared; it’s more that he’s now able to quickly understand that it can have consequences and wound even when he didn’t mean to?

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: No, it’s fine, I know you’ve got… whatever this is, I’m not going to question you. MARTIN: Thank you. ARCHIVIST: [SPITTING] Even if it looks like you’re doing something really stupid. [SILENCE] … Sorry. MARTIN: It’s okay. I get it. ARCHIVIST: I just– I worry. […] [SIGHS] I suppo– … I miss you.

I mean!! Look at him!! He could compulse, has decided not to, and reassures that he won’t; he still snaps, but understand when he went too far and was actually demeaning; he explains his reasoning instead of clamming up! He caught himself when spurting one of his “I suppose”s and openly admitted something meaningful instead! Yes, alright, that should be basic, but that’s still a lot of progress and very impressive for someone who regularly fails to understand people around him, has trust issues, and used to go on the offensive when feeling cornered or criticised. (Would season1!Jon have behaved this way, uh?)

I’m also so fond of the way that Jon is once again… trying to make Martin talk? Restarting the conversation when the silences stretch out, talking about Martin? It’s horribly sad, but… the aesthetic of Jon trying to reach Martin feels so satisfying at the same time…

- I’m, however, a bit tad worried about how Jon sometimes flirts with becoming a The Eye apologist. 1°) He has been casually dropping a bit of an “us vs. them” mentality, lately, and it isn’t clear if it’s pure pragmatism (because they’re chained to the Institute) or Something Deeper:

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

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: You’re working for someone… really bad! MARTIN: Yes, I’m not an idiot, Jon, but it’s no… worse than working for something really bad, so… ARCHIVIST: At least The Eye hasn’t gone after our own. Lukas has vanished two people!

“we”, “our own” can be neutral and coming from an objective fact (the Institute is still their workplace, it’s about their colleagues!), or from a strategic point of view, or… a deeper feeling of belonging. I’m not sure. I hope that Jon is aware of what he’s saying and that it’s not the latter option ;;

2°) Jonathan “The Eye Did Nothing Wrong” Sims, DO WE TALK ABOUT IT. Elias killed Gertrude and Leitner! He allowed Sasha to die! He manipulated and chained them to the Archives! He traumatized Melanie! Jon should know that even without knowing that he also traumatized Martin (which… yeah, is only one of the things Elias has done in a long list, but in this particular case, especially horrible: Jon telling MARTIN, of all people, that The Eye ISN’T HURTING THEIR OWN…). That’s a lot of harm against its own people, even without taking into consideration the few Beholding statements that have popped up, including Albrecht’s death two episodes ago? What the heck, Jon? (Melanie would stab you again for this.)

It actually sounds like, overall, Jon is equating Peter’s actions with the Lonely, while at the same time… totally separating Elias’s from Beholding? I don’t know if it’s Jon being casually hypocritical, personally biased, or if there is something behind that (Elias not being Beholding’s Best Avatar, after all?).

- I don’t know if Martin realizes how much what he says makes it sound like he’s being coerced into avoiding everyone in exchange for Peter not harming the staff any further, and like there is no bigger plan beyond that – like Martin is just a victim with everyone else being used as hostages?

(MAG129) MARTIN: Oh… … Okay? W–well, sorry, but I’ve… I, hum… ARCHIVIST: You have to leave. Suddenly. […] Lukas has vanished two people! MARTIN: Yeah, and if it wasn’t for me, it would’ve been a lot more. [SILENCE] This isn’t helping anything. […] 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…

It’s never “I’m not interested” or “I don’t want to” – it’s always how about Martin can’t by obligation. However, the way Peter presented it in MAG126, Martin’s “isolation” is not the main goal: it’s a means to an end, since Martin agreed to all of this in order to stop the New Threat that Adelard was investigating. We know this. But from an external point of view, with just the glimpses of conversations Jon has had with Martin… Jon would have many reasons to think that there is no plan, no further motive for Martin, and that Peter is simply forcing Martin to do things while threatening everyone else? That… could actually make Jon worry even deeper, if Jon ends up thinking that Martin is not even working on something, but only coerced into not having any contact with the others because Peter is messing with him?

(It’s possible, and even likely, that Peter’s agenda actually involves a lot more than what he’s told Martin: that this is also a way to separate the team that had managed to defeat Elias, and/or to give Jon a taste of the Lonely, and/or to deprive Jon of potential anchors, and/or to keep using Elias’s “learn to fly by falling” approach to force him to develop his powers in a semi-hostile territory, and/or to prevent Martin and the assistants from meddling with The Lonely’s or Beholding’s plans… But I’m still a bit hopeful that Peter didn’t completely bullshit Martin about the New Threat as a cover for other reasons – that it’s still, indeed, an actual thing that will need taking care of? Martin is wary of him, that’s good; I don’t think that he sees Peter as trustworthy, and he’s probably expecting backstabbing or a twist before the end. But there would be something… really pathetic if there was actually no New Threat and that Martin had been roped into a series of lies, without managing to achieve anything. So many things have already been pathetic in Martin’s life (his one-sided crush, the fact that he doesn’t seem to be close to a lot of people even outside of the Institute since nobody had checked on him during the Prentiss siege, the fact that he sacrificed his whole life for a mother who hates him because he physically looks like his father), it would be… very heartbreaking to add more to the list with this;;

- I’m so relieved that Martin is aware of and acknowledging Peter’s sketchiness very naturally ;; 1°) And on the subject of Beholding being no better than a Lukas: Martin is not wrong, technically? Beholding is one of the Fears – it’s not a ~good~ option either, it has never been? The fact that they used to accumulate, read/record and archive statements can’t be good on the long run if it’s serving It? Maybe even preparing The Watcher’s Crown? Martin himself used to be a bit complacent about the work in the Archives (even post-reveal in MAG092), while Tim was the one to constantly remind the others that the Institute was bad, too:

(MAG098) MARTIN: [Elias] did suggest I try to get you involved and– TIM: And I suggest that he not be a scary, magic psychopath. … Whoops! Too late. MARTIN: … Yeah. TIM: [SIGHS] Sorry. MARTIN: No, I– I get it. Heh. They’re not exactly much fun. TIM: Look, it’s not that. I… [SIGHS] This place is evil, Martin. And I think doing what It wants? Probably makes us evil. And It wants those things to be read. I mean, I’m not going to stop you, but, at the same time… MARTIN: I– I get it.

Martin never really fought or tried to escape the archival work, but he’s aware enough to point out that it’s not a Good Option vs. A New Bad Option (which would be Peter); they’re all… bad.

2°) First there was Martin’s stern “Peter.” in MAG126 that just made Peter stop trash-talking Jon, now the mention that Martin is ensuring that no more staff members get wooshed into the Lonely… Martin has an iron grip on Peter, uh.

3°) Martin feared that he could be perceived and described as “Martin Blackwood: he was always scared, then he died. The end.” BUT SERIOUSLY. If he dies (and if there is a body), put “I’m not an idiot, Jon.” on his gravestone.

(- I’m ;; still hoping that those two researchers are aliiiive and that they’ll be able to get out from the Lonely. I mean. They resisted against the shady new management and against orders from a boss who 1°) is apparently incompetent at the job since he delegates all his tasks to an assistant, 2°) was probably chosen for reasons having to do with his privileged background, 3°) didn’t allow them to see him even once since he arrived, and yet had Ideas about how to rule the place. You’re brave, researchers! Fight against the system!! You don’t deserve to die for this!!)

-When listening to MAG129’s statement, I was a bit lost and went back and forth between many guesses as to which power was at work. I was expecting a Buried one from the title, but then, discovering to the statement itself, I kept wondering if it wasn’t something else: Corruption, since there was the sense of decay and the disgust when Kulbir went to the firm’s building? Dark, with the lights slowly fading out? Lonely, since everyone seemed to have disappeared? Vast, with the sky joining in that mess? Still Buried, since the firm used awful puns that sounded very Buried? I think I was just a bit surprised to see the Buried associated with water, of all things, despite the fact that it was nothing new in (what-we-assume-to-be-)Buried statements: MAG015 (cave diving), MAG088 (with the “DIG” book found on the beach)… Which makes sense considering what drowning is about? But because of MAG051 (“High Pressure”; hi Simon), I had come to naturally associate water=ocean=Vast, which I feel a bit stupid about since it’s obviously not how The Fears work; it’s not about elements or symbols but what they do to you. Still: I had that moment of “Oh? … Oh, right!!” during MAG129. It’s… a bit more obvious when relistening, given Kulbir’s main concerns and how the world shifted around him:

(MAG129, Kulbir Shakya) “but by that point, I was already too deep in debt and there was just… no way I was going to be able to stay. […] I felt… disgust rise in my throat, the awful, humid air of the waterlogged place sitting heavy in my lungs. […] The water was warm, and after the heat of the summer’s day, I breathed in, expecting the smell of petrichor. But the scent of the rain was something else – something earthy and cloying I couldn’t quite place. […] I tried to relax, to let the rhythmic tapping of the rain lull me off to sleep, like it always had when I was a boy. But I could find no comfort in it. It sounded too much like it wanted to get in. […] I was tired, I was hungry and, without the motion of the rain, the air had become intolerably humid. Every breath I took filled my lungs with that thick, wet scent, and it felt like I could barely get enough oxygen to think. The walls of my house were slick with moisture now, and there was nowhere I could go to be dry, no way out of this oppressive, cloying damp. […] Inch by inch, foot by foot, everything was descending into the water’s embrace. It would wrap itself around me, reach down my throat and fill me with its choking darkness. There was nothing I could do.

Aaaand obviously, given the many double-entendre opportunities revolving around “crushing debts”, of course The Buried would be targeting poor people feeling ~pressured~, anxious about their situation.

(MAG129, Kulbir Shakya) “The first words did nothing to dissuade me from my assumption it was junk mail: “Drowning in debts? We can help!” in big friendly text that seemed at odds with the pseudo-respectable image the rest of it seemed to be striving for. […] At the bottom, in that same friendly typeface, it assured me: “We can help with the pressure.” I don’t know what I expected. I really don’t.”

(It feels, more and more, like Puns are a way to get More Powerful when you’re serving an evil power. Only One True Fear: Puns.) Interestingly: it was also the case for Jackson Ellis in MAG097… but his dire situation got alleviated a bit after he had moved in in Bucoda:

(MAG097, Jackson Ellis) “My parents were dirt poor themselves, and couldn’t help. […] The forest pressed in on all sides, like it did everywhere in the Pacific Northwest, I suppose, but it was an effect I was struggling to get used to. […] As it turned out my situation wasn’t quite as dreadful as I thought. I discovered the next day that my work had actually paid me a small amount. It wasn’t clear whether it was meant to be salary or severance, and I couldn’t get through to anyone who might have been able to explain it, but it was enough to ease the relentless pressure, if only a little bit.”

Was it thanks to the fact that his situation got better than Jackson wasn’t entranced by The Pit like all the other residents?

- This wasn’t the first time that people escape through a near-death (or death?) experience: Antonia Hayley (MAG051, Vast), Carter Chilcott (MAG057, Lonely) were prime examples:

(MAG051, Antonia Hayley) “I should be dead, really. It’s a weird feeling. You ever had a near-death experience? I’ve had a few – they’re not uncommon in my line of work, but this… it feels different. It’s not like I put myself in danger and managed not to die; I should be dead. Decompression sickness that severe is almost never survivable, and I should have had an embolism. The fact that I didn’t… blind luck. It’s hard to reconcile yourself with avoiding of a death you feel… should have been yours.”

(MAG057, Carter Chilcott) “[…] I began to very seriously consider the idea… that I had died, and this was hell. Given that worry, the way I finally escaped could be considered ironic: I starved myself to death. Well, not to death, I suppose, given I’m alive enough to talk to you, but close enough. […] After everything else, I had no guarantee it was even possible for me to die, but I had to try. When I finally faded from consciousness, for what I hoped was the last time, it was the greatest relief I have ever felt. … I don’t… know exactly when I realized I wasn’t dead. There were various moments I… faded back into consciousness, and I know that I felt the re-entry, very hard, but it’s difficult to pin down clear thoughts before the hospital.”

(MAG129, Kulbir Shakya) “I don’t know if you’ve ever drowned, but it’s the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. I tried to remain calm, to think of my grandfather and his firm, stony face […] My lungs spasmed painfully, desperately trying to wring air out of the warm, rancid water that filled them. And as I felt the water embrace me, fully pressing in on all sides… I gripped the last connection I had to the world I knew. The last thing I was conscious of… was the water getting colder. I don’t… remember them fishing me out of Regent’s Canal. Or most of my treatment, to be honest. At a certain point it all blurs together. I’m alive. And that’s what matters.”

I remember that Jonny more or less said that it’s impossible to truly understand how the Fears operate, given how they’ll always escape our rationalizations – but anyway: I get the impression that when they’re going all out, they kind of trap people in a reflected reality, and when people manage to escape them, they get spat out and back into our world? We had multiple witnesses whose testimonies didn’t match the official findings of later investigations, and it’s hard to tell who is lying and who is telling the truth: is the Police twisting some information in their official records since they’re alluding to Section’d events? Are the witnesses mixing up some details because their memory is at fault? When spook happens, there often seems to be two realities: and sometimes, there is no difference between the two; sometimes… something happened in one and had other consequences in the other (I mostly remember how the guy in MAG072 got his fingers cut yet they were still on his hand when everything stopped, though he saw his fingers cut with his ring on one of them, ring that he didn’t have on “his” finger anymore).

Here, Kulbir both got to “die” (or almost? or died for real?) and to hold on to an anchor (an item symbolizing someone that he loved):

(MAG129, Kulbir Shakya) “I could feel that warm, grasping water cover my feet, my ankles, slowly working its way up my calves, but at that moment, all I could think about… was my grandfather. And how he had looked when they had given him his diagnosis, calm and solid. […] He had always endured his problems, never tried to squirm out of things he felt he had to face. I gripped the sheath in both my hands and waded to the window. Corpses floated by, slowly waving at me gently, their lifeless hands grey and bloated. I ignored them. And stepped out into the water. […] I gripped the last connection I had to the world I knew.”

Which is something we’ve mostly seen in statements dealing with the Lonely, I felt? Naomi Herne heard her dead fiancé’s voice leading her out in MAG013, and Gerry had advised Andrea Nunis to think about her mother in MAG048 (which indeed allowed her to escape the anonymous crowd).

- Regarding Kulbir’s grandfather: I wonder if he had a tie with something that was mentioned in MAG076, amongst the reports of William W. Hay about World War 2 dug up by Melanie?

(MAG076) “what I saw in the infirmary at Amritsar. Two dozen Ghurkhas tearing each other to pieces, consumed by the terrible butchery they had inflicted. Such things are not to be dwelt on, but serve to illustrate my proposition that violence, inflicted, received or even just witnessed, can not only deal injury to the body or the mind, but to the soul itself.”

The grandfather was specifically said to be a Ghurkha and brought back his weapon from it…

(MAG129, Kulbir Shakya) “We actually got into a… blazing row over his old kukri. He had been a Gorkhali, serving in the Fifth Gurkha Rifles during the Second World War. I have… complicated feelings on his military history, of course, but… he had always been fiercely proud of it. And that old knife had been one of his most treasured possessions. I didn’t keep it polished like he had, even at… ninety years old, but it reminded me of him. I could see his calloused hands on its hilt, as he meticulously, almost mechanically, cleaned it. Humming a tune the name of which I never learned.”

(Could have been Slaughter-infused, but I’m really not sure that it was even relevant here? What mattered was apparently the emotional connection.)

- ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; So that’s what happened to Jan Kilbride in the end (take that, myself, for sometimes daring to hope that he could have still been alive). We had heard Gertrude mentioning that she had Plans revolving around him back in MAG099 (recording from September 2nd, 2007):

(MAG099) GERTRUDE: […] For the Buried, however, I do have what I believe might be quite an effective plan forming – assuming, of course, that my suspicions about Jan Kilbride are correct, and that’s something that should be easy enough to determine once he’s back on Earth. Considering what’s probably happened to him up there already, I feel almost… bad, but there’s ten years yet before I can afford a conscience.

And Melanie had read Jan’s statement in MAG106 (left on February 10th, 2008) observing that the statement ended quite abruptly, and that Jan himself had disappeared from public views or records since coming back to Earth:

(MAG106) MELANIE: […] Also I, hum… I can’t find Jan Kilbride. He definitely returned. I’ve got more than one photograph of the trio’s arrival back on Earth, Carter Chilcott being attended by medical personnel, and the other two looking tired… but alive. There are also a couple of short newspapers stories mentioning their safe return. But it seems as though Kilbride made his way over to the Institute, a few weeks after touchdown, made his statement, and then… nothing. I can’t find any sign of him. And neither can Basira or Martin. Not on Earth, at least. I really don’t want to say he vanished into thin air but… he’s vanished into something.

Did Jan live in the tunnels for a while or something? He apparently managed to totally vanish from official records, and we know from MAG097 that the Buried’s “Sunken Sky” took place (or at least attempted to) on June 17th, 2008 – in Bucoda, America:

(MAG097, Jackson Ellis) “[…] [The pit] was bigger. And the road had swelled, to encompass it. There was someone else looking at it, though. An elderly woman, face pinched and thoughtful, stood at the edge looking down. I didn’t recognise her, or the car she stood next to. She definitely wasn’t from Bucoda. Sat in the car next to her, I could see a young man who had clearly been crying. I couldn’t get over how blue his eyes were… The old woman caught my eye, and looked from me, to the pit, and back again. I thought about saying something when she gestured for me to leave. And I did. I decided that I was no part of whatever was happening. So I drove away and didn’t look back. That night, the earthquake struck that destroyed Bucoda entirely, so I guess I’ll never know what was going on.”

Given that Jon mentioned that:

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: […] But I don’t want it. I don’t want to know. … I don’t want to see. … No more than I wanted to see how Gertrude stopped The Buried and their ritual, but that came to me as well. [HUFFS] They called it “Sunken Sky”! And she calculated, correctly, that casting a void-touched body down The Pit at the right time would be enough to disrupt it. Something she found in… Jan Kilbride. … But Gertrude also realized that the body need not be alive. Or in one piece. She thought it was a mercy. It wasn’t.

(Tim’s voice from MAG086: “Regarding a… blanket. Dead friend. Monster. Regarding his unavoidable and gruesome end. How he tried to hide. He couldn’t.”)

… it was apparently a gruesome end, and the tears might indicate that Jan knew what was coming. Gosh, the way Jon mentioned that it wasn’t a mercy… He got too much information about it, uh é_è

- *cough*

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: One thing that always strikes me when I read statements like this is… the bias of survivorship. With one or two notable exceptions, the only statements the Institute receives are those where the witness has… successfully escaped whatever terrible place or being has marked them for a victim. … I wonder how many don’t make it out. How many of those shapes in the water were once just like Mr Shakya. Hm.

1°) Yeah, without even counting the survivors describing how they witnessed someone dying or disappearing, we got a few statement-givers who flirted a bit too heavily with death (Nathaniel Thorp in MAG029), or were on the verge of turning into something else (Jane Prentiss in MAG033), or should be dead (Trevor), indeed. It happens. Also, Jon could add himself on the list, maybe, since he hasn’t managed to escape the Institute.

2°) I’m still so relieved every time Jon uses keywords indicating that he’s not perceiving the events these people go through neutrally – “terrible place or being” and “victim”. We saw a few monsters/avatars torturing people like it’s a game, but it is definitely not Jon’s case, and that’s a relief…

3°) ;; And it’s indeed a sad reminder that the only stories we get are from people who managed to get out (even if some of them met a gruesome end shortly after giving their statements, as we learn through the follow-ups), and that we can’t hear about the ones who were consumed/eaten alive/killed with no surviving witnesses… (Do you sometimes think about the fact that Jon gave that role to the tape recorder, in season 1 already? That he wanted to use it to chronicle what was happening in the Archives, to not become “another goddamn mystery”, because he didn’t want to end up like Gertrude or statement-givers? I wonder if Jon still thinks of a life after him and after the assistants, by now – if he still thinks it’s possible that maybe someone, one day, could find the tapes they left behind and reconstruct what they experienced. It doesn’t seem like the tape recorders are cooperating lately, though; they come and… go, and don’t allow people to hear what was said elsewhere.)

- I’m… intrigued by the fact that, so far, all of the things that Jon has suddenly Known (the leaks through the door) were information that had not been recorded on tapes – or, more precisely, that he hasn’t got any random outburst of Knowledge about things that have been recorded. Jon hasn’t mentioned anything about knowing that Basira had visited Elias (MAG127), nor about Martin’s conversation with Peter (MAG126), and we still haven’t heard any hint about whether or not he has listened to MAG118 and MAG120’s tapes; given how he gave his condolences to Martin about his mother, it’s more likely that he indeed still hasn’t been able to access MAG118’s. Are the tape recorders and the Spooky Magical Knowledge complementary things, or… actually competing against each other? (=> Does conversations getting recorded make them unavailable for Jon’s Spooky Powers?)

- Anyway: The Tape Recorder either liked Martin again, either knew that Jon was coming, since it clicked on in the room Martin was in before Jon entered.

- Where is MAG118’s taaaaape ;___; I’m pretty sure that Jon hasn’t consulted it since:

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: I, er… I heard about your mother. MARTIN: … Yeah. ARCHIVIST: I am… so sorry. [SILENCE] MARTIN: Thank you. [INHALE] It’s… [SHAKY EXHALE] It’s better, this way. ARCHIVIST: If–if you do need to talk, I– MARTIN: I can’t. ARCHIVIST: No. No, o–of course.

I feel like Jon would have said something… more, here, if he had heard that one? Giving his condolences neutrally like this feels like he still only knows Martin’s mother from what he learned in season 2: that Martin sends letters to her, that Martin dropped out of school when he was seventeen because he had to care for her and to sustain them since she got terribly sick. (And Martin’s “It’s better, this way” makes me hate Elias even more, since… it can mean that Martin thinks that it’s better if she’s not suffering anymore? Or… that he thinks that it’s pulling him out of an unhealthy situation, since she hated him anyway and he had built so much of his life around being able to support her – sacrificing his education, having to lie to get hired somewhere, getting hired in Spooky Dangerous Institute to get a salary. If Elias hadn’t said anything, Martin might have been able to keep deluding himself into thinking that she wasn’t good with him because of the sickness, because it can make people meaner to close ones witnessing their decay…? But no, Martin Knew The Truth when she died. Did Elias know, in MAG118, that she wouldn’t be living for much longer…?)

And am I a puddle on the floor at the fact that JON TOLD MARTIN THAT HE WAS THERE IF MARTIN NEEDED TO TALK ABOUT IT? Yes, I am a puddle of whimpering feelings on the floor. It’s… something that I would have never expected Jon to say. He usually offers his presences for spooky stories, not for… emotional support.

Jon

told martin

he would be there

for emotional support

I still have trouble letting that sink in.

- And!!!

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: … What happened, Martin? [SILENCE] MARTIN: You died. ARCHIVIST: I came back. MARTIN: Yeah. [OPENS DOOR] I’m not gonna let it happen again. ARCHIVIST: … wait… Wait! W– [DOOR CLOSES] [SIGHS]

1°) Is this the first time that Jon has acknowledged (implicitly, since he rolled with the mention) that his “coma” wasn’t exactly a coma? Unless he took that “You died” as an exaggeration. So far, it had been euphemisms (“dreaming” in MAG122, “coma” in MAG123, “when I was… away” in MAG126), so! Does he know that it wasn’t a normal coma by now? Or is he still unaware of it?

2°) Martin’s answer… ;__; Not “my mother died”, not “Tim died”, uh. We did hear Martin begging for Jon in the season teaser, and it didn’t sound like it was only because of his crush – they objectively needed help and the fact that Jon wasn’t there forced them to find alternative ways to deal with what they were facing (Melanie&Basira holed themselves up in the tunnels, Melanie defended the Archives against the Flesh attack, Martin reached an agreement with Peter to help him against a new issue). The fact that Jon “died” changed things, logistically. But it also sounds so personal, in Martin’s mouth (a bit bitter?), and once again, I’m remembering how he had lost all his deepest connections at that point: Sasha, Tim, Jon, his mother… and yet, he took the decision to work for Peter, and we know from the trailer that he checked if “they” (Basira and Melanie, and probably the Institute’s staff) would be safe. Martin ;__;

(Okay, I freaked out at first with Martin’s answer, because… “I’m not gonna let it happen again.”: was he referencing Jon COMING BACK FROM THE DEAD? But it was probably about Jon ~dying~ in the first place. Or about Jon finding him a third time. I hope so?!)

- I wonder if… if the situation had been different, if it had been Tim inside of the coffin, if there had been a chance to save him, and not Daisy… Would Martin have reacted differently?

(MAG129) 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.

Martin didn’t like her much, but Tim… Tim was another story. Maybe that would have been enough to shatter the fragile equilibrium and to make him try to help with it, even while still working with Peter.

Even outside of “what if”… It’s ironic, because Jon tried to reach out by talking about people around them – barely mentioning himself (except when it came to his feelings over Martin’s work and busy state, and the quick mention of his powers at the beginning of the exchange): “Basira is off doing… God-knows-what, and I can’t talk to Melanie.”, “I, er… I heard about your mother.”, “If–if you do need to talk, I–”, “–Daisy might be alive, Basira is–” “What happened, Martin?”. And right now… it might actually have been more effective if Jon had behaved a bit more self-centred? Breekon sneaked into the Institute and could have harmed them: meaning that Peter won’t raise a finger if they’re attacked and that they’re probably more vulnerable than Martin thought. Jon’s powers are growing, now with an additional invasive dimension, and there is the risk of his inner door opening (and of him drowning). Even Melanie’s surgery: Jon was hurt! Mentioning that would have been enough for Martin to freak out, usually!

Conveying that Jon is at risk, that Jon could become a risk, could have made Martin reevaluate his priorities? Martin’s deal with Peter is based on the assumption that Jon and the others would be safe at the end; if they’re harmed and snatched by something else beforehand… it changes the configuration a bit.

(- BUT JON CHOSE TO PRIORITISE WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO THE OTHERS!!! HE TRIED TO INFODUMP TO MARTIN WHEN HE HIMSELF IS DEPRIVED OF ANY INFORMATION, BECAUSE MELANIE DOESN’T WANT TO TALK TO HIM, BASIRA IS FORBIDDING HIM TO “KNOW” ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT SHE’S DOING, AND MARTIN REFUSES TO SHARE ABOUT HIS OWN AGENDA WITH PETER!!!

I don’t know why, but this is… one of the aspects that punch my feelings the deepest? That Jon is desperately trying to share what is happening around him, to rebuild bridges, to avoid miscommunication or leaving others in ignorance? Because he has known first-hand, since the beginning of season 4, what it is like when nobody wants to share their plans with you? Because obviously, obviously we’re heading towards a Disaster if they don’t manage to unite what they’re doing and what they’re thinking, when there is so much at stake and when they have multiple potential ends of the world to thwart?)

- MAG126 confirmed that Martin is Concealing and very much feeling; that he’s forcing himself to pretend indifference. And yet, he still slipped from that self-inflicted behaviour at the beginning? (Highlighting that Peter is not his first evil boss?) And sounded like he panicked when Jon began infodumping?

;; I would like to be able to feel GLAD that Martin is showing some determination in the path he chose; he’s clearly not fine but also firmer and… hanging on to what he planned. And it surely feels, already, that he’s barreling head first towards complete disaster. Jon and Martin feel more and more that they will compete for the role of Most Self-Sacrificing Idiot in order to protect everyone, instead of working together…

- Given Peter’s reaction after Martin had barely talked with Jon:

(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. […] I had hoped that all this time apart would have given you the space you needed, but… MARTIN: … You said he’d probably never wake up. PETER: And he beat the odds. Which is good. But it does make things more complicated. It doesn’t… actually change… anything. MARTIN: A–a simple “hello” isn’t going to make any difference to– PETER: We’ve been over this. The sort of power you’re going to need relies on your– MARTIN: [SULKY] Obedience. PETER: Isolation. It needs to be you, Martin. You’re the only one who could possibly balance between the two.

… yeah, I’m not eager to hear what Peter thought about Martin and Jon talking again this time. I hope that Peter won’t ~generously offer~ a way for Martin to be completely out of Jon’ reach ;;

At the same time: really not sure that Peter’s (official) plan is working and that Martin is doing much progress? Yeah, he had it audibly rough, sounded bitterer and drier. But he doesn’t sound hollow or indifferent? He doesn’t sound like he’s in his natural state when forcing himself to be isolated? And after this conversation, I’m not sure that Martin will be able to do any progress Lonely-wise: I mean, if he had a crush on Jon back in season 1 already, when Jon was… like that, HOW could his heart remain still with current!Jon? When Jon is trying hard to share things and moments with him, when it’s Jon who seeks him out and wants to know what is happening in Martin’s life, when Jon apologizes spontaneously, when Jon is showing that Martin not being around him is hurting him? When Jon is showing so hard that he cares about him? I hope that Martin gets to stock up on these feelings to fight off the Lonely’s influence :|

- *crawls on the floor* everything hurts and I hate it and I’m loving it at the same time hhhhh…

(MAG053) MARTIN: [SIGHS] I just worry. You needed five stitches after you “accidentally” stabbed yourself with a breadknife. If you’re still claiming that’s what happened. ARCHIVIST: I am. MARTIN: Then you’ll forgive me for worrying when you use sharp knives.

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: Even if it looks like you’re doing something really stupid. [SILENCE] … Sorry. MARTIN: It’s okay. I get it. ARCHIVIST: I just– I worry. You’re working for someone… really bad!

OOOOOOH

(MAG126) MARTIN: … It’s because he’s back, isn’t it. [SIGHS] He’s back, so now you’re going to be… around, again. Listening in. Mff. You missed him, didn’t you. … Yeah. … [VERY SHARP SQUEAL OF DISTORTION] Yeah, me too.

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: [SIGHS] I suppo– … I miss you. MARTIN: [SNORT] ARCHIVIST: I’m just… MARTIN: Lonely. ARCHIVIST: [SIGHS] Yeah.

DID THE DYNAMIC

(MAG102) MARTIN: […] Look I’m, I’m so sorry, Jon, I– Elias didn’t even tell any of us that you’d been kidnapped– ARCHIVIST: Oh. MARTIN: –I didn’t know– ARCHIVIST: Hey– MARTIN: No-one else was telling me– ARCHIVIST: Hey, hey, hey… MARTIN: And there wasn’t any— ARCHIVIST: It’s alright, it’s alright. Elias didn’t tell anyone, there was, there was no way you could have known. I-I mean, I wasn’t exactly here before. MARTIN: No, you weren’t. … But I am sure that if you could have been, you would have.

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: I, er… I heard about your mother. MARTIN: … Yeah. ARCHIVIST: I am… so sorry. [SILENCE] MARTIN: Thank you.

FLIP AROUND…

Martin used to be the one worrying for Jon!! To think about Jon when he wasn’t there!!! To feel like he had let Jon down!!!! (When he apologized in MAG040 for leaving Jon and Tim behind, too… ;;) There are many reasons for Martin to be one of Jon’s concerns, indeed: concern, because he hasn’t been there for the past months. Guilt, because Martin is the last of the original assistants left alive. Worry, because the Lukases are not known to be harmless people. Defamiliarization, because Martin used to seek his presence rather than avoid him.

But Jon also sounds so sad, trying to connect with Martin again… His voice was still dragging and a bit brooding when he introduced the statement right after – Martin’s behaviour is leaving him miserable, uh…

- Jon agreed to not try to see Melanie, and sticks to it. He also accepted to try to not Know about Basira’s errands, and… unless he’s dissimulating it from the tape recorders, it looks like it has worked so far? (He hasn’t even opened the coffin!) (Yet.)

(MAG127) ARCHIVIST: I, er, I should probably… talk to h– BASIRA: You should probably stay as far away as possible. She doesn’t want to see you. ARCHIVIST: No. No, o–o–of course.

(MAG128) BASIRA: Right. [SILENCE] [INHALES] Right. Keep it safe, I’ll be gone a few days. I have some leads I need to follow up. ARCHIVIST: Sorry…?! BASIRA: You heard me. Don’t ask about them, and don’t know about them either. ARCHIVIST: I can’t exactly control that! BASIRA: Learn. […] I’ll try and be back in a week or two. Don’t think about me. ARCHIVIST: Right. BASIRA: And don’t open the coffin.

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: […] I haven’t heard from Basira, since she left on whatever secret errand, and I feel like I’m no closer to understanding any of this.

… I wonder if Jon will try to do what Martin asked of him:

(MAG129) 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. MARTIN: Please, stop finding me.

… or if, precisely, he’ll keep trying to see him. (Or if he will Know and… pretend he doesn’t.)

- Meanwhile, Jon’s powers are getting a bit out of control, uh… It’s, I think, the first time that Jon has expressed disgust at the idea of seeing/knowing things?

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: […] Or perhaps I shouldn’t wonder. [HUFFS] Even as I say it, I can feel the knowledge, pushing in my mind. Eager to find a way in. But I don’t want it. I don’t want to know. … I don’t want to see. … No more than I wanted to see how Gertrude stopped The Buried and their ritual, but that came to me as well. […] I don’t like this. I don’t like… not being sure what’s going to be in my mind. What thoughts are mine and what are from… elsewhere. Why I just know some statements are what I should be reading.

Jon’s complaint is the complete opposite of how Elias had described the Beholding folks! (MAG092: “We thrive on ceaseless watching, on knowing too much. What we face is the hidden, the uncanny, and the unknown.”) It looks like the knowledge of what happened to Jan Kilbride shook him pretty badly (it sounded… especially gruesome), and… indeed, Jon would fear losing himself with what is happening.

… So I’m really Not Impressed at him for suddenly forgetting his recriminations when he got the Knowledge of what he was supposed to understand from this statement. Is Beholding trying to appeal to Jon? Jon’s anxiousness and irritation totally disappeared right after he got the Additional Knowledge, so if it was the case… it worked. Jon, don’t be so easy!! It’s not because you’re getting the information you’d like to that it’s a good thing… ;;

- Okay, I’m probably granting too much consciousness and purpose to something that is supposedly (re)acting on instinct (“like a muscle spasming on reflex”, Jon had offered in MAG080) but.

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: […] I don’t like this. I don’t like… not being sure what’s going to be in my mind. What thoughts are mine and what are from… elsewhere. Why I just know some statements are what I should be reading. I assume this one is related to the coffin. To Daisy. … I haven’t heard from Basira, since she left on whatever secret errand, and I feel like I’m no closer to understanding any of this. … [SIGHS] I suppose if this one managed to free himself from The Buried or, to find a way out of… whatever part of Choke embraces drowning, I… [STATIC] I need an anchor.

It really sounded like Jon: i don’t know what to doooo, i have no direction, no idea… Beholding: *sends Jon towards a Relevant Statement* (●♡∀♡))ヾ☆*。 Jon: k thanks that’s a buried one, what’s the point of it then ¯\_ಠ_ಠ_/¯ Beholding: (ilu but you’re so slow, do I have to SPELL IT OUT) Σ(￣ロ￣lll) *sends static-y additional knowledge* Jon: oh– OOOOOOH.

To be fair with Jon, there were multiple things that I thought about when assuming that Jon had been directed towards this one (which was then implied to indeed be the case during his post-statement)?

* First: it’s a bit surprising that Jon is learning so much about the rituals that Gertrude managed to counter, considering Beholding’s is coming close? It’s like Jon is being given tips about how to possibly… ensure that Beholding’s won’t happen. We saw in MAG126 how Gertrude learned the location and some elements involved in the Spiral’s Great Twisting; and Jon apparently saw/felt/got first-hand knowledge about Gertrude’s reasoning, and what she did with (/to) Jan Kilbride in order to stop The Buried’s Sunken Sky ritual. I don’t know if there is a sort of intention in Jon’s outbursts of knowledge: if Beholding is simply answering Jon’s curiosity calls, or if it’s able to select what to give and hide from Jon. Giving information about Gertrude’s counter-rituals feels a bit dangerous considering how Jon’s loyalty to his patron isn’t… well, we’re still not 100% sure that Jon would be down for the Watcher’s Crown since he hasn’t specified anything in that regard (I mean, it seems obvious that Jon doesn’t want it to happen! And he’s probably remaining silent about it because it’s not safe to be a bit too openly antagonistic to your own patron in its place of power? But at the same time, Jon Made His Choice to be able to wake up, and we still don’t know what happened exactly.) On the other hand, there is… something to be said about how the two last Archivists weren’t exactly super into their own patron: Gertrude was actively working against it, Jon is maybe a bit more ambiguous (or at least passive) at the moment… is ot a Beholding thing to shoot yourself in the foot just to see what happens?!

* When I wondered about how this statement could tie in with the coffin, I thought about the rain, actually!

(MAG002, Joshua Gillespie) “It was a hard, heavy rain, the sort that falls straight down with no wind to disturb it, until everything is dark and wet. It was barely past midday, but I remember the sky was so overcast and gloomy that I had to get up to turn on the light. And that was when I heard it. […] It was almost… melodious. It sounded almost like singing, if it was muffled by twenty feet of hard-packed soil.

(MAG129, Kulbir Shakya) It started raining on the walk home. … When would you start to worry about the rain? I don’t mean about it ruining your day or wrecking an event you’re planning, but at what point does it stop being normal, and start to alarm you?

I thought it might be because reaching The Buried (or allowing The Buried to reach you) might be easier when it’s raining, or something of the sort?

* Orrr if the point might have been to tell Jon to ~dig~ into the “[Eberhart?] and Strauss” firm. (Not sure about the name, it was never mentioned before? One “Harry Eisenhard” had disappeared in MAG099’s statement, which was a Buried one, but it’s clearly not pronounced the same.)

* Or if it wasn’t something about needing to Face The Fears in order to find a way out.

* Or maybe it was Beholding telling Jon (to open the door and) to allow himself to get drowned, because it’s Inevitable anyway. (The whole anchor thing would be even more relevant given Jon’s situation! Give him reasons to care, give him safeguards able to tell him off if he slips!)

* tl;dr Can’t blame Jon for being too oblivious about what was supposed to be “the clue” in that statement, since I… didn’t bat an eye about “anchors” either – I mostly perceived them as a way to escape the Lonely specifically until now >>

- I’m!!! so happy that

(MAG099) ARCHIVIST: Is it… Why are you so insistent on keeping me around? GEORGIE: Because you’re trying to cut yourself off, and that’s… that’s really bad! Look, when’s the last time you spoke to someone who wasn’t me? ARCHIVIST: That’s… I… I–I talked to Martin a, a… a… a few weeks ago…? GEORGIE: Did you talk to him? Or did he talk to you, while you tried to find a way to escape? ARCHIVIST: I… uh… GEORGIE: Look, you’re worried. I get it. But if you really think you’re turning into something… inhuman, you need people around you. You need anchors. ARCHIVIST: All my “anchors” are just as deep in this as me. GEORGIE: Well, you still need them. ARCHIVIST: [SIGHS] Maybe you’re right. I… I’ll talk to the others. […]

Even if she’s not there, Georgie was right! “Anchor” was the word she used! ;w; (She was also the one to coin “avatar” before we learned that Gertrude also used it! Georgie is good at finding the right word when people are describing concepts!)

… Though it’s not a matter of stopping Jon from turning “inhuman” now ;; Elias had told Jon it was an irrelevant distinction back in MAG092 (“Jon, what does human even mean? I mean, really? You still bleed, you can still die. And your will is still your own, mostly. That’s more than can be said for a lot of the ‘real’ humans out there.”), Jon mentioned that he didn’t feel as heartless as he expected to with that development (MAG126: “I thought… moving away from my humanity would have made that seem more acceptable. That sort of sacrifice… but it just makes me sad…”), and it indeed feel like it’s not at the top of Jon’s fears anymore? (But he would still need anchors for this precise reason, probably ;;)

- Jonathan “I need an anchor!” Sims, why are you so relieved about that fact as if it were a helpful indication; must I remind you that

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: Georgie, I– GEORGIE: Jon. If this really is a second chance… please, try to take it. But I don’t think that it is. ARCHIVIST: Georgie, I don’t und– GEORGIE: Take care of yourself.

nobody

(MAG127) ARCHIVIST: How’s Melanie? BASIRA: How do you think? ARCHIVIST: I, er, I should probably… talk to h– BASIRA: You should probably stay as far away as possible. She doesn’t want to see you. ARCHIVIST: No. No, o–o–of course.

currently

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

wants

(MAG129) 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. MARTIN: Please, stop finding me.

to see or talk to you. I mean. Even friggin’ Elias, of all people, doesn’t want Jon to see him (for nebulous reasons):

(MAG127) BASIRA: [SIGHS] Fine. So you won’t see him, but you’re happy for him to hear our conversations. ELIAS: He can listen all he wants, but he’s at a very delicate stage right now, and I… fear my presence would be a… a distraction. I’ve made it clear my cooperation’s contingent on his not seeing me, and my terms have been accepted thus far.

Well. To be fair, Jon didn’t present it as the Solution – it’s a lead:

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: […] I need an anchor. I… I could go in… myself, I, I could find her. And… then, I just need to get out. I need something out here. Something I can know the way back to. I, I don’t know what. But… [HUFFS] It’s a start.

I don’t know what or whom he would be choose, though? Georgie elected to leave him to his own devices at the beginning of this season; Basira has repeatedly mentioned that she doesn’t trust him; Melanie is currently healing and not fine (and she didn’t like Jon even before getting tied down to the Institute). Even worse, for Basira: Elias made it pretty clear in MAG092 that if anyone is Daisy’s anchor, it’s Basira. And Basira presented Daisy in a similar way, too:

(MAG092) ELIAS: […] Should I, or the Institute, be destroyed, you will all, unfortunately, follow suit. […] And it would not be a pleasant death. DAISY: Bullshit! ELIAS: Then shoot me. Just squeeze the trigger, and watch the only person you care about die screaming. Your last connection to humanity. Do it. BASIRA: Daisy…

(MAG117) BASIRA: […] But at least Daisy’s coming along. I mean… I know she’s… difficult. Everything they say about her, it’s true, it’s fair. But… she’s solid. She’s a fixed point. And if she’s there, I know exactly where I stand, exactly what I’m doing relative to her. She has no doubts. […] Despite everything she’s done, she’s… she’s still the best partner I ever had.

(MMMMM, Elias’s line to Daisy is very close to Kulbir’s “I gripped the last connection I had to the world I knew”, isn’t it?)

Given Daisy and Basira’s relationship, and given how Jon presented the “anchor” as something that would help you to get out, it kind of excludes right away that Basira could potentially go inside to rescue Daisy; she would need her to remain outside of it in order to find her way back to her? Though, with how Basira managed to escape The Unknowing by herself in MAG119, and how she mentioned the events in MAG128, maybe she would be able to find her own way out of this one by herself, too (is she her own anchor, after all?) – but Daisy would probably not be able to leave the coffin if they’re both inside of it.

* Regarding Jon: I wish that Martin could turn out to be his anchor, because this season is breaking my heart, but I feel like their exchange at the beginning of the episode was kind of… making it clear that it couldn’t be him, that he wouldn’t agree to it (or then, Jon would have to push for it, and maybe push too far). On the one hand, Jon has been able to find him twice (MAG124, MAG129) thanks to Spooky Powers, when Martin wasn’t expecting Jon to be able to; on the other hand… they have never been especially close – mostly because Jon isn’t especially close to anyone. They used to look a bit closer from the outside, but I felt it was mostly because Martin hadn’t given up on Jon in season 2 (unlike Tim)? Jon trusted him in season 3, Jon tried to talk to him in MAG102, Jon is currently missing him and worried for him and trying to talk and reach for him (AND I LOVE IT, OKAY), but Jon barely knows Martin and I wouldn’t say there is a deep, stable emotional connection between them at the moment? If it had to be someone, I would be leaning towards Georgie.

* (Or The Admiral, but I doubt that Jon would be willing to involve him. Though: I have trouble picturing him making Georgie come to the Institute, too… He didn’t want to involve her much, making her enter The Eye’s temple would sound very risky in that regard, especially with Peter Lukas currently running it?)

* (I keep thinking about Helen because of the doors and because LISTEN… listen…

(MAG127) BASIRA: And don’t open the coffin. ARCHIVIST: [HUMOROUS EXHALES] It is addressed to me! [SILENCE] … Yes, alright. … Alright. [CLICK.]

=> if you get inside the coffin through another door, you don’t need to open the coffin! No breaking (implicit) promises! >:D)

* There is still the possibility of Jon’s grandmother, but I didn’t get the feeling that they were especially close when Jon recalled his childhood with her in MAG081…?

* If the “anchor” is an item: there are the tape recorders, though it’s mostly them who seem to find their ways to Jon, these days. There is also the Web lighter, the status of which is currently unknown: did Jon still have it on him during the Unknowing, or had Martin borrowed it to burn statements in MAG118? What happened to it during Jon’s coma? Same as the tape recorders, though: is it the lighter that follows Jon, or Jon who is drawn to it?

(MAG111) GERRY: […] Nice lighter. You a spider freak, then? ARCHIVIST: What? Oh! Er, n–no. I–I, I never really, uh… I never really thought of it.

* Other contender: the Archives themselves, or the Institute overall?

(I regret even deeper that Basira hasn’t apparently shared with Jon her discussion with Elias, because it implied that Elias still has plans regarding Jon… so if Jon really can’t make it out alone, I wonder whether someone would bulge to save him this time, if things were to derail horrendously. If past experiences are any indication: no, nobody would help him, especially not Elias since Jon was kidnapped for a whole month outside of The Eye’s reach and he only got saved because “Michael” went to finish him, even when The Unknowing was coming up. But. Still.)

Anyway! The lighter made me think again about how it’s not exactly that, but I feel like there is a bit of “Ariadne’s thread helping you through the maze” imagery in the idea of descending into the coffin? Not exactly since it doesn’t seem to be about marking the way back but having something to go back to, but! As I said, a bit. (Fun fact apparently, web strings used by spiders when they go from one place to another can be called “Ariadne’s threads” in French. The more you know.)

- I Can’t Expect Things To Go Greatly In This Series, so: I wonder if even Jon manages to get in and to find Daisy… either she will be either far too gone already and they’ll have to confine her somewhere instead, either Jon will make a mistake resulting in her death – while Basira was working on her way to get her out of it alive. In the latter case, it would definitely cement the fracture between Basira and Jon in such a way that they would both be at fault: Jon would have tried to help but would have broken the interdiction of not opening the coffin; Basira would have wanted to save Daisy but, by refusing to share what she was doing, only nurtured Jon’s eagerness to try to fix things. So yeah. There are many ways it could go very bad, and I have had too many moments of “actually, things are only getting worse, I miss the time when they were less Worse” to hope for how the situation could improve :|

(But maybe it could not be a disaster. Maybe Jon could wait for Basira to come back before trying anything; maybe they would manage to save Daisy; maybe Basira would come back with Simon Fairchild on Elias’s recommendation because he still has a terrible sense of humour, and Jon could take example on how Gertrude stopped the Sunken Sky by throwing Simon into the coffin, neutralizing two threats at the same time. Would make him (rightfully) lose humanity points in Basira’s eyes, though.)

(- Melanie’s bullet was removed, tho!! Which is definitely an improvement, even if she’s currently a wreck.

First was Melanie, now is Daisy… even if the Mission To Rescue Daisy ends in a disaster, maybe trying to get Martin back will come after. Even though we know that Martin has an agenda.)

- If Jon does end up going down into the coffin: I wonder if we will hear him live? Or if he’ll describe what happened afterwards? …………….. or if the scene would switch to Elias describing the events for us. :|||||

- CHEERS!! The Pit (MAG097) had teeth inside and a tongue, so we know that Buried things can bite. That leaves plenty of opportunities for Jon, who *gasps* is still missing a Buried scar, to get it from there.

The Dark also had the creature that can wreck you. The Flesh has plenty of ways to twist you a bit. As for the Lonely:

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: […] It’s… frustrating, to be honest. I finally feel myself, I feel… focused, and ready – and I find myself basically alone.

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: [SIGHS] I suppo– … I miss you. MARTIN: [SNERK] ARCHIVIST: I’m just… MARTIN: Lonely. ARCHIVIST: [SIGHS] Yeah.

Whether it’s part of Elias&Peter’s plan or a nice bonus snack for Peter: the Lonely is already affecting Jon. Slowly completing the “collection”, uh.

MAG130’s title is already out, and MMMMMMM. Biggest plot-twist would be if The Flesh wasn’t involved, uh. (Can we have Melanie back a bit? ;w; Maybe giving a statement about how The Flesh attacked two months ago? ;w;)

#the magnus archives #mag129 #tma liveblog #long post/#tma spoilers/#tma season 4 #*mag097!jon's voice*#'Is he trying to warn me not to ignore my own metaphorical pit; because if so: what *is* my metaphorical pit?'

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tma-latino · 3 years ago

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MAG098 – Caso 8640514 - “Luces fuera” Martin Blackwood, asistente del Archivo en el Instituto Magnus, grabando el testimonio número 8640514. [Disclaimer/ Aviso] [MAG097] | x | [MAG099]

#MAG098 #tma #the magnus archives #the magnus archives pod #magnus pod #Rusty Quill #tma translation #tma spanish translation #traducción en español

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tma-latino · 3 years ago

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MAG096 – Caso 9961505 – “Devolver al remitente” Testimonio de Alfred Breekon, sobre un nuevo par de trabajadores en su empresa de entrega. [Disclaimer/ Aviso] [MAG095] | x | [MAG097]

#MAG096 #tma #the magnus archives #the magnus archives pod #magnus pod #Rusty Quill #tma translation #tma spanish translation #traducción en español

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soveryanon · 5 years ago

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Reviewing time for MAG143 /o/

- Aaaaaand the winner of the Ny-Ålesund mini-arc is… Elias. Which seems to be the Trend of season 4.

(MAG135) ELIAS: Fine. Consider it a test – things are… coming, things that will need Jon to be far stronger and more willing to use his connection to our patron. His performance during The Unknowing was… disappointing. I needed a way to force him to harness his ability more acutely than he had before. The coffin was a useful tool; Daisy an adequate bait. BASIRA: Then you messed up. Way he tells it, he doesn’t know how he got out of there. ELIAS: But he did. And his powers were no small part of it. Even if he required some assistance, they were what saved him. And he’s still achieved what no one – mortal, monster, or anything in-between – has ever been able to. He climbed out of The Buried. BASIRA: [DRY SIGH] What was the point? You won’t be getting your ritual off from in here so, what do you need him for? What’s so important you need him stronger? ELIAS: I have been observing a recent increase in people and supplies being moved to the small town of Ny-Ålesund, in Svalbard. An increase which I believe may be linked to a rather desperate attempt, by the People’s Church of the Divine Host, to perform a crude ritual of their own. To bring their… “Mr. Pitch”… into the world.

* Here we have a rare case of Elias potentially straight-up lying? Manuela… wasn’t doing anything; what was up with this “increase in people and supplies”? …… or was that because tourist season was right around the corner. I mean. He didn’t EXPLICITLY say that those were related to The Dark, only that it could be related. (And, after all, he encouraged Basira to see the aurora borealis right after…)

* It’s still unclear whether Elias is indeed in control (did he really know that Breekon was on the verge of delivering the coffin the following episode, back when he talked to Basira in MAG127?) or just Really Lucky and shameless enough to pretend that everything falls into place when it serves his interests… but with The Dark, he was absolutely spot-on that capitalizing on Jon’s fears would do wonders. And he’s been keeping a verrry close Eye on the Archives, apparently: MAG135 was the episode Jon tried to Know if Gertrude had managed to neutralise The Dark’s ritual, and failed, and was a bit worried that they could still be up to something; cue Elias, right after, mentioning that there was a cell still active in of Ny-Ålesund. In the same way, he had previously (at least claimed to have) used the fact that Daisy was alive and prisoner of the coffin as a motivation for Jon to go in, experience The Buried and… apparently get a power-up, or at least learn a bit more to use his own powers (although Elias acknowledged implicitly that Martin setting up the tape players helped with that at least a little).

* It’s still not absolutely sure whether Elias was the one who sent Jared after the Institute (the official target was Jon, but it could have been a decoy; the consequences, at least, where in Elias’s favour since… the Archives team absolutely shattered following the attack, with Martin asking for Peter’s protection, Melanie getting more Slaughter-y, and Basira getting colder and more strategical). But since Jon woke up… he’s been completing the set of experimenting the fears / getting live (or extracted) statements from spooks tied with other patrons / getting injuries. Previously to his coma, Jon had collected:

~ The Web: close encounter with A Guest for Mr Spider when he was 8. (No live-statement from Spook, no official scar… but the lighter and spiders around him, and the Mother-of-Puppets sending Oliver in MAG121 to push Jon to make a decision, make it very clear that Jon has never truly escaped The Web since back then.)

~ The Eye: was it when he witnessed the other boy getting taken by Mr Spider, without trying to help him? Was it because he began working at the Institute? When he began working in the Archives? When he read his first statement, took the first live one? When he got his first nightmare?

~ The Corruption: heavily injured and scarred by The Hive/Jane Prentiss in MAG039/MAG040. (No live-statement, but Jane’s written one in MAG032, and Jon felt it Strongly.)

~ The Spiral: slashed/stabbed by Michael in MAG047, got lost in The Spiral’s corridors in MAG078-MAG079, also went through Helen’s door in MAG101 and now MAG143. Michael-The-Distortion gave his live-statement in MAG101.

~ The Desolation: shook hands (and effed it up) with Jude Perry in MAG089, received her live-statement in the same episode.

~ The Vast: got “dropped” by Mike Crew in MAG091, which possibly messed up his lungs a bit; received/prompted his live-statement at the same time.

~ The Hunt: found by Daisy in MAG091, then strangled/knifed? by her, and also Hunted by Julia in MAG107. Forced (unknowingly) Daisy to give her statement in MAG061, received a partial one from her again in MAG132; received Trevor&Julia’s statement in MAG109.

~ The Stranger: got deceived by Not!Sasha all through season 2, got strangled by Nikola in MAG097, got kidnapped by Nikola for a month (MAG099 to MAG101), got moisturised by Nikola, was in the middle of The Unknowing when it happened, and managed to See through Nikola (MAG119, “I see you”). “Extracted” Breekon’s statement in MAG128.

… Elias was pretty glad about Jon’s progress when he was on the run from the Institute (MAG080: “Well, he was always going to need to fly the nest at some point. Go out and see the world for himself.” “He might die.” “It’s always a danger. Almost always.” / MAG092: “You were doing fine before you forced this little scene. I suggest you continue.”), and that’s when he got New Experiences. And now, in season 4:

~ The End: should have died in The Unknowing explosion but was too “inhuman” for this, and got stuck “on an edge” during his coma, apparently chose to not die (is that why his injuries heal so fast? We’re not sure it’s Beholding’s effect – it’s possible that, like The End’s victims, Jon… just can’t die anymore because he didn’t want to die and was touched by Terminus). Received Oliver Banks’s statement in MAG121.

~ The Slaughter: got slashed by Melanie right after he extracted her bullet in MAG125, has a scar from it on his shoulder. No live-statement, unless Melanie’s story from MAG117 counts…?

~ The Flesh: got two ribs taken in MAG131, received Jared Hopworth’s live-statement in the same episode.

~ The Buried: got stuck three days in the coffin in MAG132, got scraped everywhere from the walls closing in and experienced the full extent of Too-Close-I-Cannot-Breathe there. No live-statement from spook so far.

~ The Dark: “Saw” the Dark Sun and killed it in MAG143, right now unclear whether his eyes got impacted (;; he didn’t see that it was Helen before she spoke…). Received Manuela Dominguez’s live-statement in the same episode.

Which leaves…

~ The Lonely: Peter Lukas is still running the Institute, and Jon is missing Martin-who-is-working-for-Peter-and-tempted-by-the-Lonely a LOT. No live-statement from spook yet but, I mean, Peter is still… “right there” (and not there at all).

Elias had hired Melanie, might have known that Breekon was coming with the coffin (as he began to manipulate Basira right before he visited, and then claimed he had made her leave the Institute in order to let Jon descend into the coffin), pushed Basira(&Jon) to go to Norway to stop The Dark, and asked Peter to work as interim head director while he would be in prison (and there is still the matter of Jared’s commissioner). If he needed Jon to complete the set… then yeah, a lot of his actions have gone in that direction?

- Whatever Elias was aiming for, it Smells like he reached it. Was it for Jon to go through a True Dark Experience, which required to find the very few leftovers of the cult? Jon did, getting in contact with the Dark Sun. Was it to take a live-statement from a Dark avatar? Jon did with Manuela. Was it for Jon to push his powers further? Jon did, by staring directly into the Dark Sun. (Was it for Jon to kill his physical eyes? Status unclear at the moment but… it might have happened without characters realising it yet, because the place was dark.) Was it to get Jon to act as an actual avatar, feeding from people’s fears and traumas and terrorising them? Jon did, at least twice, with Floyd in MAG141 and with the unnamed woman in MAG142 who… might have become a Fear battery for him. Other possibilities: he needed Basira&Jon to be away because something was meant to happen at the Institute and/or with Elias’s legal procedure; or the aim was also to make Martin fall deeper into The Lonely/turn his back on Jon, etc. So many possibilities.

And Elias hasn’t moved from prison (… as far as we know) and yet it feels like he’s just. Winning At This Season.

(Though: I’m expecting Elias to be VERY pleased and insufferable about Jon very casually taking live-statements from unwilling people, who specifically Did Not Want to tell him and had… done nothing to deserve the nightmares and the Beholding-torture… but technically, it’s also possible that Elias might be a bit irritated? Because Jon gave the Institute’s name, back in MAG142, and seemed to have acted immoderately for the past three weeks? Elias was all about “moderation” back in MAG092, and he… himself acted with a lot of self-restraint, technically – he has been an utter asshole on all accounts, but he also used his powers sparingly, and never unprompted: Daisy was threatening him in MAG081, Melanie had tried to kill him twice before he traumatised her in MAG106, and he did the same to Martin as a last resort in MAG118, because Martin was doing everything to push Elias to use his powers on him. Comparatively, Jon… has been worse, in MAG141/142, attacking innocents for his own profit, and now aware of the consequences (and honestly, I’m still ill-at-ease at the amount of violation that was at play in MAG142 – even without taking Jon into account… I felt like it was the most intimately violent testimony we have ever heard in the series…). I don’t really believe that Elias is not currently SO VERY PLEASED by Jon’s behaviour, but it could be a twist that he’s, in fact, a bit cross that Jon went wild without any self-control.)

- Once again: MAG135 was a Very Striking case of Elias seemingly reacting to Jon’s concerns – Jon hadn’t been able to tell whether The Dark’s ritual had been neutralised or not, and Elias came up with the Worrying News about The Dark being active right now, in front of Basira, right at the end of the episode. So Elias might be keeping a close eye (ha) on Jon’s doubts, using them to manipulate him and push him in the direction he wants… and you know what Jon hasn’t hidden at all in season 4 and frequently lamented over?

That he’s been worried about Martin.

I have a bit of trouble picturing Elias giving Martin to Peter because he thought it would give Jon his Lonely scar (… because it would have meant, for Elias, to acknowledge that Martin was becoming extremely important to Jon at the end of season 3, and I’m not sure that Elias knew about it or would… acknowledge it at all. He was extremely contemptuous of Martin back then) but… this is definitely something he might be capitalising on now, and hahahaha ;; Martin… Martin, I don’t think you’re likely to die soon-ish (my bet is rather on Daisy orz), but you’re utterly unsafe…

- MMMMMMMMMMMmmMMMmmmm.

There was no mention of Elias’s acquaintances with Rayner in this episode, nothing about his “friendship” with Rayner – Manuela hadn’t named him in her written statement, either, only designing him as “the Head of your Institute”. If it was something about stoner!Elias’s backstory, I think she would have mentioned him here? I mostly have trouble picturing when it could come up, now that it seems that The Dark’s arc has been wrapped up – their ritual failed, Rayner is dead, most avatars are dead, the cult has been mostly eradicated, their Dark Sun was destroyed (there is still the question of what derailed their ritual, but we don’t need to hear much more about the cultists themselves).

I’m still not “feeling” it on a personal level (… or maybe I simply adore the idea that stoner!Elias is his True Backstory, that it’s not a matter of something having taken on his identity) but it does lend even more credit to the theory that Elias is actually Jonah Magnus, since we got confirmation that Jonah and Rayner knew each other in MAG138… and still nothing about Elias&Rayner on their own.

… in any case, WOW did Elias go out of his way to make sure The Dark would be a Done Deal. Manuela pointed out that the Institute (Gertrude? Or more?) had been keeping an eye (ha) on Hither Green (“Hither Green was, I believe, where your Institute was watching, but Natalie’s efforts were a small and meagre part of the greater effort.”), and it was the first place to fall. Elias tipped the police and sent them after the cultists and Rayner in February 2017 (which he confirmed in MAG135), ensuring Rayner’s downfall when it was already akin to kicking a puppy (Manuela: “I can only assume we were too weak to hide from you, and you struck when Maxwell was vulnerable.”). And now, he sent Basira&Jon to take care of one of the last avatars. It sounds very extra and… personal. (But then… it was hinted in MAG053 that proto-Dark and proto-Eye had History, as conflicting sides.)

- tl;dr Basira:

(MAG135) BASIRA: [DRY SIGH] What was the point? You won’t be getting your ritual off from in here so, what do you need him for? What’s so important you need him stronger?

ARE YOU SUPER SURE ELIAS IS NOT ACTUALLY GETTING HIS RITUAL OFF FROM IN THERE.

(YES, I am aware that this is a LOT of Elias Mentions for an episode in which… Elias wasn’t referred to even once aside from the “son of a bitch”. But. But. He pushed in that direction so hard…

And as Melanie had spat in MAG102, “It’s not just being stuck here, Jon. It’s not just me. He’s manipulating you, he’s manipulating all of us. Can you seriously not see that? He’s pulling all the strings, and I don’t think there’s any other way to stop it.”, and once again, what do you know about the Spiders and what is the exact nature of your relationship with them, Elias.)

- Consequences-wise, the Ny-Ålesund trip is potentially dramatic and tragic and filling me with dread (whatever Elias is aiming for, it feels like it might be coming… closer). But in practice, for the arc in itself? It was the most anticlimactic and hilarious thing ever: I was suspecting that Elias might have been highly misleading and that The Dark’s ritual might have been taken care of already, but I was expecting at least actual threats. Jon had mentioned people wearing the symbol of the Church, when he came back to the Institute, and there was still the matter of The Beast, and potentially the Dark Sun, even without Rayner, which could have been enough to Hurt? But no. The Dark Sun wasn’t usable as a power of mass-destruction. The Beast was revealed to have been slain by the cultists themselves. Rayner was confirmed (unless later twist) to have died to Basira and the other Section 31 officers back in season 2, more than a year ago – also confirming that… Natalie might have killed Rayner herself, when she stabbed a possibly possessed Leo Altman as retribution. The ritual had already failed more than three years ago.

Plus, there was the added Hilarity of Manuela spending the episode blaming Gertrude for their plans crashing, and thinking that she was meant to be neutralised by a powerful enemy… only to be told that Gertrude had died three years ago, and probably not even because of her involvement with The Dark, and that everything that happened might have been (partially) unrelated to Gertrude’s actions.

The episode felt like a kind of respite, ironically, after the build-up of MAG141/MAG142: instead of action-packed and threats and danger and dread, we got a few answers, and more questions. Elements tied in, and some things remained mysterious – but also highlighted.

- I’m…………… so mad……………… Jonny…………………………

So, with Manuela’s mention that:

(MAG143) MANUELA: Instead, we began the search for his successor, a new host for his… continuation. He would regain his strength, and we would plan our next move. It was difficult, though. The approaching culmination had meant Maxwell had not prepared another host, and the search for another vessel was… long and involved. Finally, about eighteen months ago, we found one: a child, whose father had, by coincidence, been directly marked by The Dark.

So, “Callum Brodie”, who got kidnapped by the cultists in February 2017; Elias tipped the police to their location, and the police officers interrupted the ceremony which should have allowed Maxwell Rayner to body-hop:

(MAG073) ARCHIVIST: You said it started with a kidnapping case? BASIRA: Yeah. Callum Brodie. Twelve… twelve years old. Disappeared from his home in Dalston three weeks ago. Sitter was asleep when the mother came home, the front door was open, there was no sign of him. There was no forced entry so it started out as a missing persons case, but they got a witness claiming he’d seen three unknown figures entering the Brodies’ home that night, so it was kicked up to Serious Crime.

Twelve years old in early 2017, only his mother mentioned, and a father who had been touched by The Dark.

(MAG052) ARCHIVIST: […] Martin hasn’t had much luck tracking down Mr. Brown himself. According to [Caroline Brodie], his ex-wife, she left him in 2004, after his dismissal from the prison service pushed him further into alcoholism, and he became abusive. She said she got a single letter from him in 2009, asking for reconciliation, but she never replied. Martin says the letter was postmarked from Waterford in Ireland. But he’s been unable to track Mr. Brown any further.

……………… :))))

So Callum’s father was probably Phillip Brown, the statement-giver from MAG052 (the… utterly awful prison guard, who was fascinated by Robert Montauk and described his last months at the prison, including Rayner’s visit), and Caroline left him when she was pregnant or had very recently given birth. I hate.

- A bit curious about what made it so hard to find a new body for Maxwell Rayner…? What were the prerequisites, since Manuela admitted that the fact his father had been touched by The Dark was a “coincidence”…? What are the things making a body Fit for body-hopping into…?

- In the list of things I’m happy (and sad) about: we finally got… a few things about Julia’s mother, and what pushed Robert Montauk to do what he did é_è

(MAG143) MANUELA: I was but newly joined when [Lynette] fled the Church, and Maxwell had her silenced. But I remember her brute of a husband. He fed the beast for us, you know, when first he believed [Lynette] might still be saved. Then, later, we faithful served as his fuel to banish it. But, not for long.

So, Julia’s mother disappeared because she tried to escape (that’s true cultist logic ;;), and Robert initially worked for Rayner, thinking he could save her (hence why he was receiving calls from Rayner for his next missions), before eventually turning against them when he realised there was no hope (hence why his last victim was specifically a cultist). It… even explains why no bodies were found, actually, if he was “feeding” them to the Beast (literally or in a spooky way):

(MAG012, Julia Montauk) “The one question they kept asking me over and over during the investigation into my father was whether I knew where the rest of the bodies were. I told them the truth, that I had no idea. They claimed they wanted to confirm the identities of the victims, which they couldn’t easily do with what was left.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: In addition to the body of one Christopher Lorne, 40 preserved hearts were recovered from Robert Montauk’s shed. […] Of possible significance also is the fact that the rest of the bodies were never found.

I wonder, were the forty hearts all taken from cultists? Or from other victims? Were the pictures he was taking only from innocent victims, or from cultists…?

Also, Jon finally got answers to some of his veerrry old interrogations:

(MAG052) ARCHIVIST: […] So what is this thing that seems to have stalked Robert Montauk through so much of his life? And what’s its connection to Rayner? Were they summoning it, containing it, worshipping it? Whatever the case, it seems as though Montauk earned its anger. I feel it might be worthwhile getting a few more torches for the Archive.

- But mostly, I’m deliriously happy that “Montauk” ascended to a Dark-killing family brand name:

(MAG143) MANUELA: [Vardan Darvish] had an inkling, I thought, but he crossed a Montauk, which has… traditionally gone poorly for us.

Good job Julia, you did AMAZING sweetie (MAG109), and I’m even more glad for her since… The Dark took both of her parents… ;;

- Sssooo…

(MAG143) MANUELA: To begin our seven-day feast, we slew the still and lightless beast, and drank of its stagnant blood, submerging the first of the sacrifices in the brackish water it had blessed with its stillness. Maxwell plunged its claws into his chest, freeing the darkness within him, and we waited; and we sang; and we exalted in divine stillness.

… was the brackish water actually the beast’s blood all along? (Though it seems to be the essence of The Dark overall: Halley had been drowned in it, and “Rayner” in himself is mostly liquid, as he tried to take possession of Callum through it, and was shot and killed when it was out.)

I’m !! that it turns out that… the cultists themselves killed the Beast. I wasn’t expecting that. Though it’s probably meant to come back by itself, as Robert Montauk showed:

(MAG052, Philip Brown) “I was tense, ready to fight off Montauk if he decided to make a move, but instead, a soft voice came from out of the darkness. I didn’t recognise it, but I thought it sounded like it came from the old man, and I don’t think he was talking to me. [STATIC] “You didn’t think you could kill it for long, did you?” That’s what it said. […] I could once again see Montauk and the old man sat there, motionless. It didn’t seem like they’d moved an inch, though as I went to take Montauk back to his cell, I noticed that he was crying. I didn’t mention it. I’ll be honest, I was kind of freaked out by the whole thing.”

(MAG143) MANUELA: He fed the beast for us, you know, when first he believed [Lynette] might still be saved. Then, later, we faithful served as his fuel to banish it. But, not for long. That’s the thing about Darkness, isn’t it? You try your hardest to eradicate, flood your surroundings with light, but it’s always there at the edges – waiting for the glow to weaken, to return and cover you forever. Robert Montauk discovered that the hard way. And someday, so will your Gertrude.

So yep, it will… come back one day, probably.

(- Fun stupid facts! MAG052, describing Robert Montauk’s death… had been interrupted by Basira delivering a tape to Jon. So we had a small meta connection between her and The Dark, AND with The Eye, since the tape she delivered was labelled “Alexandria” and was one of the rare Beholding statements, that Jon listened to in MAG053, about the old Serapeum, which might have been a proto-Archive.)

- Manuela had some Drive too, in her reverence and grandiloquence, but I was mostly Conceal Don’t Feel / “DON’T YOU DARE TELL HER” all through her statement because. She was assuming that Gertrude was still alive and coming for her. And aouch, might have been Harsh to learn that no, these two randos are not here on behalf of Gertrude, but have been scrambling through things for the past two years and a half after she was killed.

- It’s interesting (and also very funny.) how The Dark is simultaneously… very threatening, and not that much. Manuela was incredibly scary in her statement, in MAG135, mostly because of the concept of her “fear battery”? The way they proceeded with Julia’s mom was really… heart-wrenching (you can’t leave and stay alive for long)? They killed so many people for their ritual, just like The Stranger?

(MAG143) MANUELA: We had hundreds of sacrifices prepared and ready, plunged into darkness and terror for days on end. […] I began to drown the sacrifices. Too soon, perhaps. But it worked, to keep it going, and keep it together.

… but at the same time.

(MAG143) MANUELA: Maxwell had always had the visions, the drive. Whatever was inside him pulled him to this end, to this great undertaking, like a magnet, and I was so very honoured to be his right hand…! Natalie and the others followed, but they did not truly understand. […] BASIRA: You said the Dark Sun was still here. MANUELA: [SNORT] Fine. If you’re so keen to take everything, undo the work of centuries… it’s just through that door. [FOOTSTEPS] BASIRA: Jon? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [STATIC:] How dangerous is it? MANUELA: Only myself, Maxwell and Natalie could even look upon it. It will annihilate you both in an instant.

We know that Manuela had joined the cult around the time Julia’s mother tried to escape it (“I was but newly joined when [Lynette] fled the Church, and Maxwell had her silenced.”), and we know that Robert Montauk was active for five years before being arrested in 1995, which means that Manuela met Rayner around or shortly before 1990. So, she has been in the cult for more than 25 years at this point. Meanwhile, she was looking down on Natalie, who was still Amongst The Big Ones, and we know from MAG025 that Natalie:

(MAG025, Mark Bilham) “That changed last October, when Natalie’s mum died. I don’t know how it happened, exactly. Heart failure, I think. It was sudden, I know that much, and it hit her hard. I mean, obviously it did, it was her mum, but I think… I think she lost her faith. […] That month was sad, but it’s not what Kathy wanted us to talk to you about. No, it was what happened afterwards. It was after Natalie found her new Church. It was Kathy who told me about it. This must have been about two months after Natalie’s mum died. I must have asked how she was doing, if she was feeling any better. Kathy said that, yeah she was. Apparently, she’d found a new congregation and seemed to be getting some comfort there.”

… had joined the cult in December 2014. Three months before the ritual. HOW do you take them super-seriously when you learn that one of their highest-ranking people had JUST joined the cult and was just very enthusiastic and also dramatically off-the-mark about what was happening.

(- Yes, I’m saying this, fully aware that shit, Jon has been Head Archivist for less than three years (… and even less if you take his coma into account), is already The Archivist, is deep in spooks… while Gertrude had been active for around fifty years, and at least aware of rituals for forty years, as she mentioned in MAG137 about The Slaughter. It’s not about time, it’s about… willingness and compatibility? And Jon went in very deep, very fast.

But if Natalie was able to look at the Dark Sun in merely three months… we’re a bit lucky that she died during the Section 31 operation, before she could have ascended to more?)

(And also: nicknaming your Fear god “Mr. Pitch” is such an hilarious move, come on:

(MAG025, Mark Bilham) “[Natalie] said that it wasn't long until they were collected by Mr. Pitch. She said that Kathy could come too, if she liked. She could be saved.”

(MAG135) ELIAS: I have been observing a recent increase in people and supplies being moved to the small town of Ny-Ålesund, in Svalbard. An increase which I believe may be linked to a rather desperate attempt, by the People’s Church of the Divine Host, to perform a crude ritual of their own. To bring their… “Mr. Pitch”… into the world.

(MAG143) MANUELA: Natalie and the others followed, but they did not truly understand. Not truly, with their talk of “peace” and “unity” and “Mr. Pitch”. A friendly name, to try and hide from a concept they couldn’t grasp.

Natalie, please.)

- Interesting word choice from Manuela here:

(MAG143) MANUELA: And here I have remained. Perhaps I have told myself that I am preparing, gathering my own strength and making my plans to continue the Church in his name. But I think in my heart, I have been waiting for this moment. For the final axe to fall, and finish the last remnant of our holy crusade. And here, at last, you are.

Because literal crusades may have been used in the past as a pretext to attack the old Serapeum in Alexandria, according to MAG053? And on that note:

(MAG143) MANUELA: Our congregation in Alaska disappeared the next day, and Russia as well. One by one, it seemed our scattered Whisperers Of Night were falling, and holding it together, keeping the lightless world anchored to our star, bringing it closer… was becoming an almost unbearable strain on Maxwell.

(MAG053) GERTRUDE: And there’s even one, unnamed contemporary historian, that describes the mob attacking the Serapeum not as Christians, but using a phrase which roughly translates as: “Those who sing the night”.

I think “Whisperers Of Night” might be a different translation for the same original term as “Those who sing the night”, like “Circus of the Other” and “Another Circus”? =D If so, nice touch!

- One of my Biggest Questions regarding the Magnus verse has been around Gertrude’s time of death – pet-theory of mine being that she might have… not actually died when ~blood was found in her office~ and that she went off the radar for a while before Elias caught up to her.

We got a few more details in the chronology, and characters insisted to put her death around the time of the failed ritual, so in March 2015… while we know it can’t have been The True Story because Gertrude recorded a statement in April. Chronology-wise:

* March 11th 2015: Mark Bilham managed to escape the ceremony happening in the Hither Green Dissenters Chapel, reported Natalie Ennis’s disappearance to the police when they arrived. (MAG025)

* March 14th 2015: “Antonio Blake” (Oliver Banks) gave his statement to Gertrude, explaining that she should die soon – he saw this “the night before last” (so the night from 12th to 13th March) and there is around ten days before it should happen, which would predict her death for around March 22nd / March 23rd 2015. (MAG011)

* March 15th 2015: according to Elias, when he went to the Archives, “Gertrude wasn’t there, but her desk was covered in blood. […] The police tested the blood and confirmed the DNA matched to Gertrude, though I don’t know why they had her on file. They judged there to be almost a gallon of blood spilled, far more than the human body can lose and survive so, I assumed she was dead”. (MAG040)

* March 16th 2015: “four days before the eclipse was due”, Maxwell Rayner felt a “disruption” (given by the collapse of the ritual at Hither Green); the different cells of The Dark began to disappear. (MAG143)

* March 20th 2015: a total solar eclipse happened in Ny-Ålesund and, according to Manuela Dominguez, should have marked the culmination of The Dark’s ritual. Basira hadn’t given the date but had already highlighted that it might be linked to Edmond Halley and John Flamsteed and Halley’s comet. (MAG108, MAG143)

* April 4th 2015: Gertrude records a written statement about The Stranger, mentions that she’s not in a good shape (“I had hoped I’d have a chance to recover. I can still barely stand.”), though, in context, it could be due to her theft of the gorilla skin from the Stranger gang… or because she purposely injured herself and lost too much blood recently. At least, still alive and kicking when she doubly shouldn’t be – both according to Oliver’s prediction and to Elias’s declaration. (MAG087)

* May 15th 2015: a scream is heard at the Hither Green Chapel, but the police find nothing. Jon is absolutely clear on the date (“About a month after this statement [April 19th 2015] was given, on May 15th 2015”) and points out that “according to the official file, May 15th 2015 was the day Gertrude Robinson, my predecessor, passed away.” (MAG025)

… And I realised, thanks to this post, that. Actually, March 22nd 2015, which was the day Evan Lukas died “from heart failure” (MAG013: “Congenital, they said. Some problem with his heart. Always been there, but never diagnosed. No warning. One in a million chance.”)… was the day Gertrude was supposed to die.

I have no clue re: what happened to derail The Dark’s ritual – I don’t think that it simply failed because twist, no ritual can ever successfully be carried to completion, since that would lower the stakes too much at this point in the series. But the way Manuela described it:

(MAG143) MANUELA: I… don’t know exactly when it all started to come undone. I think Maxwell first felt the ripples four days before the eclipse was due. [SIGH] It was strange… Like a pause in the hysterical whimpering and fruitless prayers of the sacrifices. And a ripple that was felt through the waters, and the stagnant blood that bound us. A disruption. We would later learn that this was the collapse of the ritual at Hither Green – but it was only the first. Our congregation in Alaska disappeared the next day, and Russia as well. One by one, it seemed our scattered Whisperers Of Night were falling […]. And then… it stopped. It just… stopped. All at once, that loving embrace was stripped from us, and it began to retreat, to recede back into the place that it had come from. We were so close…! … We were so close… […] We left, half of us dead, and the other half destroyed by coming so close to the true essence, [SIGH] and being denied. In my most wretched hours, I wonder… perhaps it was us…! Perhaps… we simply lacked faith. We weren’t worthy…! The world wasn’t worthy. But… no. We were ready. We had earned our Dark rapture. And we were robbed.

It feels, a bit, like a slow degradation, with cells dying one after the other, isolated from each other. I wonder if Evan Lukas (or the Lukases) were involved somehow, for that one…?

Anyway, this is still very much a Mystery so… we might get a clue another time. Maybe thanks to Adelard Dekker, in person or through an old letter?

- I’mmmmmmm thinking that we might get an answer re: Gertrude’s last activities / what happened specifically that made Elias kill her / what was happening between them… because the subject of Gertrude’s last activities and death had reemerged lately, with… some indecision from characters:

(MAG135) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I’ll keep digging. If there is another ritual upcoming, I’ll need all the information I can get on it. I can’t believe Gertrude didn’t have a plan for it. I hope I’m just being over-cautious, that it’s already long since dealt with, but… we’ll see.

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: Statement ends. [INHALE] … Nice to see Gertrude [EXHALE] also used to get a lot of threats. So far it doesn’t seem that any went… desperately well. Except for Elias, of course. But he didn’t threaten, did he? He just… did it.

(MAG143) MANUELA: [HUFF] Coward. So, how did she do it? It’s been three years, waiting, guarding this place without hope. At least, do me the courtesy of telling me how she collapsed our moment of triumph. ARCHIVIST: You really don’t know, do you? MANUELA: Know what? ARCHIVIST: … Gertrude’s dead. She died right around the time of your ritual. MANUELA: Ha! So: stopping us took everything she had. BASIRA: You wish. She was murdered. Unrelated, as far as we can tell.

(Still hoping that Elias&Gertrude’s last interaction was recorded? We already heard gunshots in a few episodes, this one included, and we even got Leitner’s Extended Sounds Of Brutal Pipe Murder live. Wouldn’t be “too shocking”.)

- I’ll be laughing for months and months about the fact that:

(MAG143) BASIRA: [SIGH] So, what, this was another waste of time? What, no Church, no Dark Sun? … I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch…!

… Basira canonically called Elias a “son of a bitch”. Which. I mean. SUPER FAIR. But.

(A bit rude for Elias’s mother, Basira; I’m sure that, even if she was utterly awful, she wasn’t absolutely responsible for Elias’s… everything.)

- And a big “IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIHHHH” for cop!Basira handling Manuela, leading the interrogation (telling Jon when to step in with his powers), and using Daisy’s weapons.

- Jon demonstrated multiple powers in this episode… but nothing was a True Novelty nor out of line compared to season 3 – except for the way he pressured Manuela into giving her statement.

* Actually, there were a few parallels with MAG096, and the way Daisy&him had caught and interrogated “Sarah”: Jon using compulsion, a few jokes thrown around, Daisy-or-Basira handling the physical aspect of it.

* Jon did casually admit to compelling random people… but he had already Done That in MAG107, when needing information:

(MAG107) ARCHIVIST: [SNIFF] [EXHALE] The… the hospital was… The hospital was interesting. It’s all very well being able to get people to answer your questions, but if they genuinely don’t remember something, it’s not always as useful as it seems.

(MAG143) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I don’t know. Everyone back at the research base seemed… pretty sure this place was empty. BASIRA: And you believe them? ARCHIVIST: They weren’t lying. BASIRA: Wait, you… did your sp–… ARCHIVIST: Oh, yeah, no, I, I don’t think they noticed. BASIRA: So they were serious. It’s been empty for… what, a year?

… Still not Super Great but at least… not new and, presumably, consequences-less apart from (lack of) ethics considerations. (MAG103 was worse in that regard and, hopefully, without much consequence for the person Jon had compelled.)

* Jon was also… not frantic during the interrogation? Basira was the one leading it, and Jon compelled when she prompted him too, like it had happened with Breekon:

(MAG143) BASIRA: Who are you? MANUELA: [GRUNTING] BASIRA: Jon? ARCHIVIST: [STATIC:] Who are you? [STATIC INCREASES, PRESSURING.] MANUELA: [PANTS] … Manuela. Manuela Dominguez. BASIRA: Where is everybody? MANUELA: [PANTS] Go to hell…! ARCHIVIST: [STATIC:] Answer her. MANUELA: They’re dead. Because of you. […] Fine. If you’re so keen to take everything, undo the work of centuries… it’s just through that door. [FOOTSTEPS] BASIRA: Jon? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [STATIC:] How dangerous is it? MANUELA: Only myself, Maxwell and Natalie could even look upon it. It will annihilate you both in an instant. ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE] BASIRA: Ask her how we can destroy it.

(Which. Is indeed a useful ability to use against monsters/dangerous spooks but… still, Basira won’t be the one to hold Jon off on it. It works as long as they’re dealing with killers and dangerous people, if it’s about finding ways to prevent them from causing harm… but I’m a bit afraid that Basira indeed makes use of Jon’s abilities, and seems to be… so encouraging when it can serve her.)

* It’s honestly the pressure he now uses to “get” statements that makes my stomach twist (in a bad way)? It’s been three episodes in a row that the person clearly didn’t want to tell their story, and were forced to, and we got ample descriptions in MAG142 of how… deeply violating and shattering it was for the victim:

(MAG141) ARCHIVIST: Tell me what happened. [STATIC INCREASES] FLOYD: W–what…? What is this? ARCHIVIST: Whenever you’re ready. FLOYD: A–a–alright. [STATIC DECREASES] … Sure… [SILENCE] He… he–he w–was a good boss, you know? […] My last voyage with him was the one that killed him. [Four] years ago; I still have nightmares sometimes. Tried to escape it, but some things follow you no matter where you go. […] And I have tried, ever since then, to leave those memories behind me. […] BASIRA: And what? You thought the best way to find it was by… slurping it out of his brain? ARCHIVIST: He didn’t exactly seem inclined to volunteer the information.

(MAG142) WOMAN: […] and he says he wants my story. He says he needs to hear what happened to me. And I… I wanted to tell him to–to–to to go away, I–I wanted to–to to kick him, and run. But… I… [SHAKY DUMBFOUNDED EXHALE] I sit down. … And I start to tell him… everything. About the job, about the collapse, ab–about the hand… And more than I told you, even, and–and… as I do, it’s… it’s like I’m there again. Like I can feel it grab my ankle, a–a–a cold, dead hand, and I just…! I just can’t stop talking, like I cannot shut up…! MARTIN: A… [RESTRAINED EXHALE] Are you alright? WOMAN: No?! No, I’m not! Of course I’m not! It felt like… like I was throwing up all those feelings again, and I wanted to, to scream, but instead I just… sat, and calmly told him my life story, and he just watched me. His eyes, like… his eyes, like, we–were… drinking in every fragment of my misery. I can’t… It…

(MAG143) ARCHIVIST: I… [SIGH] [STATIC:] What happened? MANUELA: Don’t… don’t make me, please! ARCHIVIST: Tell me. [STATIC INCREASES, PRESSURING.] MANUELA: [PANTS] Fine! … Fine.

(That’s a double-standard: it feels Fictionally Satisfying when he does this to a serial killer, because uh, had it coming, you can bear some unpleasantness in your life, too. But… same as last week: I’m still too upset about MAG142, even if Jon feels bad about it in the future, or is called out on it… I’m still a bit reluctant at the idea of being sad for him over anything, now that I know he harmed MAG142’s woman so badly, and that it will be likely a permanent state of trauma for her…? Still not sure Jon can still work as a protagonist at all after that? Though this episode offered a nice balance for me: I didn’t feel like I was meant to Feel many things, but mostly think and observe; there was something a bit more mechanical, even when Jon mentioned that he thought he was going to die… probably because he was talking with Helen, who was also detached. But I’m curious to see how these things will be handled once Jon is back at the Archives, and now that both Martin&Basira know about it…)

- SURPRISE HELEN IS A SURPRISE AND !!! I’M LOVE HER…

(MAG143) HELEN: Go find your Basira. Then, let’s get you both home. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [CLICK.]

That “your Basira” was so… nice… dang……………

- Same thing as Jon forcing Dangerous Spooks to spill it all out: it feels kind of satisfying to have Helen… swallowing them in her corridors – they had it coming, and it means they won’t be hurting people anymore, and as long as it’s Spooks eating Spooks, they can do whatever between themselves, I’m not As Emotionally Invested And Sad/Upset as when innocent people get hurt :w

(MAG143) ARCHIVIST: … Did you catch her? HELEN: Yes. ARCHIVIST: [YELP] [SIGH] [BREATHING HARDER] HELEN: She needed a door. ARCHIVIST: H… h–how did you… HELEN: Oh, finding this place was easy without the Darkness. ARCHIVIST: Will… she be coming back? HELEN: … No. Uuuh… this one, I think I’ll keep.

(Is it because Helen is wlw and not into males at all, hence why she wasn’t keen on keeping Jared.)

Though: Helen was waaaay more instable in this episode than previously? She sounded carnivorous and playful, a bit like a cruel child, here, while she was… colder and a bit more detached back in MAG131 and MAG115. Is it also because she’s not in the tunnels? Or because she’s settling in as The Distortion and getting more… all over the place…? But still coherent so far – since Helen repeated that “I told you – I’ve decided to help” and is sticking to it? (How long will that last…?)

- Will Manuela and Jon still have the dreams, or will it be “cut” because Manuela is inside of/being digested by the Distortion now? According to MAG120, the door was closed and Jon wasn’t opening it in his dreams, so… (And if there are dreams: will they be pitch-black and absolutely useless.)

- So many doors in this episode…

(MAG143) MANUELA: [SNORT] Fine. If you’re so keen to take everything, undo the work of centuries… it’s just through that door. […] BASIRA: Look, it’s alright, Jon. No one else knows it’s here. And if we just leave it, no one will know. ARCHIVIST: No, I… I’m doing this. [INHALE] Get out. [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: [BREATHING LOUDER AND MORE SHAKINGLY.] [UNSEALING A METALLIC DOOR; HEAVY DOOR SLOWLY SLIDING OPEN.] [CREAKING, SPARKLER-LIKE STATIC SATURATING THE RECORDING.] ARCHIVIST: It’s… beautiful… MANUELA: [DISTANT, PANTING] … No… NO!!! [STATIC SUDDENLY DISAPPEARS.] BASIRA: Jon! [BODY CRUMPLING ON THE GROUND?] ARCHIVIST: [PANTING] No, I–I’m, I’m okay… […] [DISTORTION SOUNDS, BRINGING CONSTANT STATIC] [A DOOR CREAKS OPEN] ARCHIVIST: … Did you catch her? HELEN: Yes. ARCHIVIST: [YELP] [SIGH] [BREATHING HARDER] HELEN: She needed a door. ARCHIVIST: H… h–how did you… […] I… Why are you here? HELEN: I told you – I’ve decided to help. I thought you might like a way home? ARCHIVIST: Another door? HELEN: If you want it. [PAUSE] … How was it? ARCHIVIST: Mm? HELEN: Looking upon The Dark. ARCHIVIST: I thought I was going to die. HELEN: You seem to think that a lot. I remember when you thought you were going to die at my threshold. ARCHIVIST: … Yeah.

And still: Jon’s overall Complicated Relationship with doors, I’ll have to update my liiiiist…

- I’m… honestly (pleasantly!) surprised that turns out that Basira… wasn’t keen, at all, on sacrificing Jon or allowing him to sacrifice himself:

(MAG143) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [STATIC:] How dangerous is it? MANUELA: Only myself, Maxwell and Natalie could even look upon it. It will annihilate you both in an instant. ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE] BASIRA: Ask her how we can destroy it. ARCHIVIST: I know how. … I just need to see it. BASIRA: “See” as in…? ARCHIVIST: As in… actually see it. MANUELA: Go ahead. Just try. BASIRA: Look, it’s alright, Jon. No one else knows it’s here. And if we just leave it, no one will know. ARCHIVIST: No, I… I’m doing this. [INHALE] Get out.

Her spontaneous reaction was to try and discourage him from doing Something Dangerous And Potentially Deadly. So: she cares, she doesn’t… want him to die, even though she witnessed him grabbing Floyd and forcing him to tell his statement and condemning him to the nightmares that she herself used to be plagued with. Which means that… yeah, a lot of her dryness, of her cautiousness and calculation, has been… less sincere than she was pretending? That she tried to behave a certain way, while feeling another – that she still has sympathy for Jon and doesn’t think he would be better off dead, even though she knows that The Eye still has its chance ritual-wise, even though she saw that Jon’s powers have been all over the place since he woke up. She’s forcing herself to not trust him, or still doesn’t want to trust him for real… but she cares about him. And after MAG142, I’m not sure it’s… a good thing ;;

- And a bit ;wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww; for Dasira mood.

(MAG143) BASIRA: They just left it here? ARCHIVIST: I… maybe. [PAUSE] [SCOFFING] Kinda wish Daisy was here…! [FOOTSTEPS STOP.] … Basira? BASIRA: Yeah? [FOOSTEPS RESUME.] ARCHIVIST: … Sorry. [INHALE] I know this isn’t– BEHIND YOU!

Aouch, Jon. Accidentally very rude.

And I’m… surprised and stupidly hopeful that he did realise right away that he had crossed a line / wronged Basira / hurt her feelings? What the HELL happened with the live-statements from MAG141/MAG142, for Jon to… Listen, I can’t call Floyd and that woman “statement-givers” when the stories were forcefully grabbed and torn out from them, and Jon didn’t even seem to realise that he was hurting them so deeply – although he DID acknowledge that Floyd would get nightmares (but his “And I am sorry about that.” didn’t sound like he was sorry AT ALL).

There is still the mystery of what happened shortly before the trip because, really, season 4 had not been going in the direction of Jon getting desensitised to random people’s sufferings (and, for example, only caring about his assistants)? Like, at all? He was very detached about Gertrude’s methods and horrified about what had happened to Jan Kilbride (MAG130: “Even so, and… leaving aside the matter of Gertrude’s actions for a moment…” / MAG133: “So use me. Because if you go it alone, you are going to die. Even Gertrude worked with people. We make bad decisions when we don’t communicate…”), he was uncomfortable about the fact that he was aware that other people were still trapped in the coffin, although he hadn’t been the one to put them there (MAG135: “… Is locking it up the right thing to do? There are other people in there. And Daisy and I got out, but– … No, I, uh… I can’t think about that. Even if I could somehow be sure of recreating our escape, I–I can’t save everyone that’s been taken. I–It’s not my job to try, I– And I can’t spend another three days in there, I just… I need to let it go.”), he had mentioned to Daisy that he was ready to suffer as long as it meant not losing anyone (MAG136), doubting so much (MAG139)… and then he just. Switched? What happened, for him to suddenly sound much more mechanical…? As mentioned with previous episodes, was it due to his attempt at peeking through The Lonely…? Was it because the Institute/Archives have a sort of stabilising effect on him, and he was outside in all three cases…? Was it because Jon chose, very deliberately, to power up through live-statements in order to be ready for The Dark, and is… drunk with power right now?

- At the very least: Jon has sounded significantly… more detached? In MAG141/142. Still able to have various inflections, but there is something more… matter-of-fact than in previous episodes? A bit closer to how he sounded in season 1 – though more fast-paced? And sounding tired, but not in the same way as previously in season 4. Not exactly snappy but…

(MAG143) BASIRA: [SIGH] Eyes peeled. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … Was that a joke? BASIRA: Yeah. [SILENCE] Any clue where everyone is? […] Don’t move. [GRUNTS, PANTS. A SPIT.] ARCHIVIST: Oh! … Charming.

… dryer, instead of the previous softness? He was complaining about having so many doubts, in MAG139, and in the last few episodes, he’s been… going along with the flow without much hesitation. Not pleased but not startled nor hesitating. So what happened…

(- Still casually self-destructive/going for the potentially Lethal options, though, and Daisy had been spot-on when highlighting to Martin that he was “self-destructive” – something Jon had himself acknowledged without using the word, at the end of MAG136.

There might have been multiple feelings at play when he marched on to watch the Dark Sun: their goal was to neutralise The Dark/make sure they couldn’t succeed with their ritual, and taking it out seemed like the wisest option; curiosity/desire to see it; and… grabbing an occasion to die, if it were to happen. He did acknowledge that last one:

(MAG143) HELEN: … How was it? ARCHIVIST: Mm? HELEN: Looking upon The Dark. ARCHIVIST: I thought I was going to die. HELEN: You seem to think that a lot. I remember when you thought you were going to die at my threshold. ARCHIVIST: … Yeah.

And he accepted, right after, to go through Helen’s door again, which really doesn’t scream like the action of someone with Self-Preservation. And he was still afraid, if his breathing is any indication, although… quieter and less melancholic/shaking than when he had gone into the coffin.)

- Jon’s way of just. Going straight for the statement, in MAG141/MAG142, makes me think of a certain Beholding creature and:

(MAG053) GERTRUDE: My biggest concern right now is whatever creature Mr. Heller encountered down there. It was… 56 years ago. But if it’s still alive, I should be careful. What was it? A guardian of some sort or perhaps… perhaps it too was… once an Archivist.

(MAG092) ARCHIVIST: So it’s… it’s back to breadcrumbs, and statements, and risking my life talking to things that barely remember how to be human anymore? […] Am I… Elias, am I still human? ELIAS: Jon, what does human even mean? I mean, really? You still bleed, you can still die. And your will is still your own, mostly. That’s more than can be said for a lot of the “real” humans out there. … You’re worried about ending up like that thing, lurking in the dirt under the streets of Alexandria? Don’t be. Just do what you need to, and you’ll be fine. Understood?

I mean, YEAH, some things have changed a bit since then (… can Jon still die nowadays?), but. Still. He’s coming a bit closer to Creature Kept In Tunnels And Thirsty For People With Spooky Stories…

- Cough.

(MAG143) MANUELA: We had been worshipping in the deepest dark, and yet, when it crossed the sun, I felt it roll over us, like a cooling balm on a summer’s day, plunging us into a deep, black void, far more complete than I can ever convey with mere words. It was more than beautiful: it was divine…! And as we unveiled our new and absent sun, the sacrifices who remained screamed, and fell in holy agonies, and the world of endless night we had been promised began to pour in, shining out and all around us. […] ARCHIVIST: [BREATHING LOUDER AND MORE SHAKINGLY.] [UNSEALING A METALLIC DOOR; HEAVY DOOR SLOWLY SLIDING OPEN.] [CREAKING, SPARKLER-LIKE STATIC SATURATING THE RECORDING.] ARCHIVIST: It’s… beautiful… MANUELA: [DISTANT, PANTING] … No… NO!!! [STATIC SUDDENLY DISAPPEARS.]

So, for Jon, it was just “beautiful” – and not “divine”.

And he literally killed it with his eyes.

And there were a few mentions of the fact that the word “see” now has different meanings for Jon, in this episode:

(MAG143) ARCHIVIST: I never said we were. Just said I couldn’t see anybody. BASIRA: Oh, I thought you meant like… “See”–see. ARCHIVIST: Uh… no. BASIRA: We need to figure out proper terms for this st– [SLIDING NOISE] … What are you doing? […] Ask her how we can destroy it. ARCHIVIST: I know how. … I just need to see it. BASIRA: “See” as in…? ARCHIVIST: As in… actually see it.

So.

Squint.

Jon wasn’t able to tell that Helen had arrived, at first, which meant… he hadn’t seen her. And the shattering sounds when Manuela fled may have meant that they couldn’t see anything anymore (torches? Basira said there were no lightbulbs). And Jon was, or sounded hurt. And it didn’t feel like they knew where the others were.

(MAG143) ARCHIVIST: [PANTING] No, I–I’m, I’m okay… [SOUND OF GLASS SHATTERING.] ARCHIVIST: [SCREAM] BASIRA: Get down! [FOOTSTEPS RUNNING AWAY.] [TWO GUNSHOTS.] ARCHIVIST: [PANTING] Basira…?! BASIRA: I’m alright, just… just one second…! ARCHIVIST: Hum… BASIRA: Stay here. ARCHIVIST: Look, I’m okay, I can help…! [FOOTSTEPS LEAVING] [SILENCE ONLY COVERED BY THE MACHINERY SOUNDS, AND HIS PAINED GRUNTS AND LABOURED BREATHING.]

So. Did Jon just get a Dark scar and… killed his eyes while killing the sun…?

(I missed that but, apparently, Jonny recently mentioned he was working on disability representation, and it had been highlighted by a few persons that Jon-going-blind could easily feel like cheating because he has other powers to… compensate/replace his actual sight (the classic trop of the disabled superhero that isn’t actually disabled), but. The end of the episode was a bit confusing and leaving room for Jon or Basira (she came back really soon…) to… have actually messed up their eyes, and not having realised it yet because the whole place was still in the dark.

And what would happen, re: written statements, if Jon were to lose his eyesight? Would he still “feel” the statement anyway or… would he be unable to read them anymore, and thus forced to seek live-statements to feed the Eye and/or to rely on the assistants reading them – when he was on the run back in season 3, he barely read anything during two months, but Martin&Melanie did and Elias had pushed in that direction, so it might have been having an effect on him too…?)

- … What is next? What will happen, now that Jon&Basira are apparently meant to come back to the Archives right away?

* The fact that Elias had been Basira’s secret intel might come out of the bag pretty soon:

(MAG143) BASIRA: [SIGH] So, what, this was another waste of time? What, no Church, no Dark Sun? … I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch…! ARCHIVIST: No, I… [INHALE] I think it’s here. I, I can feel it, like a… a hole in my mind. […] MANUELA: That’s… I– … Then why are you here? Maxwell is dead. The ritual failed. What’s left? ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] A good question! [EXHALE] Basira? BASIRA: You said the Dark Sun was still here.

Either Basira is going to be Beautifully Enraged at Elias, either… yeah, it’s coming. And Basira got totally manipulated and used the whole way…………… (Another question being: has Jon been suspecting that Basira’s intel was Elias for a while, and had been hiding his suspicions to try to see what Elias was aiming at…?)

* Will Jon be allowed to visit Elias, now…? I mean. We had no mention at all that Jon had even asked to visit Elias – but Elias had made sure that Jon couldn’t visit him, because ~ he’s at a very delicate stage right now~ (MAG127), though since then… a few things have changed. (It’s still unlikely given her legal status, but I’m very curious about the possibility of Daisy having a one-on-one with him at some point…)

* There will be the matter of… Jon’s actions re: live-statements. Were the woman and Floyd the only cases, or are they other victims? How many? When did it begin? Why – was it pure instinct, or partially deliberate from Jon? And are the assistants supposed to manage him, and how…? If not Basira, who, in the Archives, will be able to tell Jon off, if he’s now casually hurting people? Martin was prompt to find excuses for him (even after he listened to this woman’s story! He had trouble putting the blame on Jon, and was still considering Jon’s feelings more than his victim’s!) and sounded ready to fly to Norway when he learned that Jon was on a dangerous mission. Daisy has a clear head about responsibility and regrets/remorse and hating the harm she did, but she also… heavily presented Jon as a victim in MAG142. Basira saw Jon forcing Floyd to tell his story, knowing the consequences, and still had the reflex to protect him a few days after. I’m a bit worried that none of them would be ready to truly… shackle Jon or confront him about MAG141/MAG142…? Although there is still Melanie who… will probably take none of his shit, if she hears about this.

(I’m legitimately curious about how she would react, were she to listen to MAG142’s tape. She doesn’t have the bullet anymore, so probably not going into a Slaughter rage, but… of all of the assistants, I think Melanie is likely to have the most Intense reaction if she learns about Jon’s current actions.)

* More live-statements means more dreams, and there is still the matter of MAG120’s tape: Elias was addressing Jon directly in that one, it was supposed to be a message, at least towards the end. Did Jon listen to it already? Will he find it soon? … Will we get another statement from Elias about Jon’s dreams, now that there are… more…? (Did Jon’s overall behaviour change in them? Is he still horrified or… not anymore/just plainly curious faced with people’s suffering…?)

* Re:Melanie, there is still the matter of her spending a lot of time away and being “quiet” since she began therapy. It could mean something awful (Web/Annabelle being the prime suspect)… but it also could be. Actual good therapy, working wonders for her.

* Rituals-wise: the status of Corruption is unclear, and we still don’t have anything about Vast (unless MAG141 was touching to it)… and as long as Martin hasn’t pooled his resources with the others, Jon can’t know that The End and The Web are presumably not in the run for a ritual, nor that The Lonely has already failed. So there are still researches to be done, for him, in those directions. (… Though maybe Martin could have told Daisy right after the end of MAG142’s recording…)

* I wonder if Daisy will tell Jon that she spoke with Martin, that Martin was worried about him…? That it’s still possible to talk to Martin…?

Title for MAG144 is out and is…………………… interesting……. If we hadn’t had the Coffin mini-arc so recently, I’d have said Buried, but it’s unlikely, so… The End, maybe? Something related to MAG065 and/or about technology and/or about tape recorders? Something about The Web’s intentions? Vast thing, and they’re digging Mike Crew out of his grave?? Lonely one and it’s actually about the graveyard/their failed ritual? I’m mostly considering Beholding stuff – Gertrude’s notes, Elias’s plans, the tunnels under the Institute and/or the thing in Alexandria and/or Schwarzwald, the specific book that Albrecht had first sent to Jonah, or a Jon first-person statement (à la MAG040 and MAG080) about the last three weeks? I don’t know but… it’s an interesting title.

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #tma liveblog #tma season 4 #mag143 #the magnus archives #long post/#tma spoilers/

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soveryanon · 6 years ago

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Some thoughts about MAG121! (... it ended up getting long, rambling and screaming ahead.)

- “Antonio” had been one of my hypotheses for the first episode (same as season2!Jon: try to consider all the possible options, increase statistical chance to be right about one of them), since he had popped up a few times through allusions when crystal shops were involved:

(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) These dreams have been a regular part of my sleeping for about eight years now. Even as life improved and I found a new job and place to live – believe it or not I now work selling crystals and tarot cards in a “magic” shop – they continued to crop up a few times each month.

(MAG032, Jane Prentiss) I had a job. I sold crystals. […] I remember, before I found the nest, someone new came. His name was Oliver, and he would look at me so strangely. Not with lust or affection or contempt, but with sadness. Such a deep sadness. And once with fear.

(MAG042, Jennifer Ling) […] I saw someone staring at me from the doorway of a small shop. The sign above didn’t have an obvious name, simply reading “Crystals. Books. Tarot”. He was tall, black and careworn, deep lines of worry etched into an otherwise handsome face.

… but I had pictured a visit paid to the Archives, not… apparently-already-turned-Avatar!Oliver visiting Jon at the hospital and basically encouraging him in this path, SHHHHHHHIT. (Handsome black queer Death Prophet introducing himself officially, and Tim isn’t around anymore for this, I feel cheated (like Death). I… had been wondering if Tim hadn’t met the guy off-screen towards the end of season 3, since he sounded unsettlingly convinced that he wouldn’t come back… And now, I kinda hope that it really didn’t happen – it would probably have make him lose faith in (in)humanity even further. Oliver would have told him to “rest in pieces”, uh.)

- … I’m also so, so mad, because, yes, I had spotted him in MAG032 and MAG042; but I had totally overlooked the fact that he had lied/concealed some information back when he’d given his statement (March 14th 2015) and it’s so, so obvious in retrospect, gdi!!! He totally got me with the seemingly pure good boy utterly honest façade, and nop, he’s just super good at casually lying/dissimulating while pretending to be charmingly deadpan honest, which he did again with Georgie by introducing himself as “Antonio” without missing a beat (lol) (don’t misunderstand, I’m love him, his voice was effing amazing, and also WOW WHAT A LITTLE SHIT).

(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) I tell you this because I feel you have a right to know the sort of timescales that we’re dealing with here. I haven’t had much of a chance to experiment or see anything more specific, I’m afraid. There are so many people who die in London, and I know so few of them.

^he only gave the two examples of his ex-colleague’s (a “John” =D) and of his father’s deaths, but he worked in Jane Prentiss’s shop before she gave her statement in February 2014; he had already seen her, seen her condition (and it looked… really fucked up) and yet didn’t mention it at all in his statement, and… it should have ticked me off, damnit!! Same with MAG042 (statement given November 3rd 2013):

(MAG042, Jennifer Ling) When he saw me looking at him, he began to walk up to me, still with that intense look. I took a couple of steps back, and asked if I could help him. He shook his head as if unsure what to say, then asked me what I was listening to. A chill ran over me as I realised he was staring at my ears. I said I wasn’t listening to anything, as I wasn’t wearing headphones, and asked him what he wanted. He shook his head again, and mumbled something about protecting my hearing. He turned away then, and started walking back into the shop.

He thought that Jennifer was wearing earphones!! Because there were roots in her ears!! He couldn't see her ears!! Because he was seeing it live, not remembering it from his dreams!! Gdi!!! I’m still so mad I hadn’t realized, it was just right there!!

(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) Or maybe they just couldn’t be seen, fighting off death for so long that when it came at last its icy tendrils covered every inch of them.

That “icy”: he knew that they were cold because he had already touched them!!! Damnit!!

- … there is some ambiguity about the number of statements he gave (I definitely heard the plural in the second sentence?):

(MAG121) OLIVER: I gave the old woman a statement, so, maybe I owe you one as well. […] So. My name is Oliver Banks. In my other statements, I used the name “Antonio Blake”, but I don’t really think either name has much meaning for me anymore.

So, mmmm, is there another one laying around, or did Gertrude take a live statement from him after his written one?

- efhrefdjknefd about the fact that the One Person Sent To Talk To Jon would be calling him “Jon” (“Hum… Hello, Jon. Do you… mind, if I call you Jon? I, I mean. You don’t actually know me, it’s just… well. “Archivist”, it’s so… formal, isn’t it?”), while, until now, other avatars had called him “Archivist” without batting an eye:

(MAG039) PRENTISS: Archivist. (MAG047) MICHAEL: There has never been a door there, Archivist, your mind plays tricks on you. (MAG089) JUDE: No more questions, Archivist! (MAG091) MIKE: Archivist. Take my mercy and leave. (MAG097) NIKOLA: Question time is over, little Archivist. (MAG100) HELEN: Time is hard, Archivist. It’s difficult to follow without a proper mind, especially here.

(Nikola also used “Jon” sometimes, but it had mostly been “Archivist”, and hey, ~the Stranger is not known for its consistency~) -> Dat sweet-talking and trying to get in Jon’s good graces by calling him by his name, while he usually goes into squint&snarl mode as soon as he’s called “Archivist”. Oliver’s obsession with finally being able to have a good night (he wanted a “dreamless sleep”, recalled his “desperation to finally have a good night’s sleep”, “to have one good night’s sleep”) must also have hit a bit close to home, uh.

- Martin begging for Jon to wake up and help them, finally accepting a deal that sounded shady to protect the others since Jon is still unresponsive => Jon: *stays undead* Handsome black mlm passing by to tell his story, right after Valentine’s day => Jon: *HEAVY BREATHING.*

- In all seriousness, I wonder how Oliver’s statement expressed itself in Jon’s mind: were they suddenly on the boat, breaking the cycle of Jon’s dreams? Did Jon indeed feel a “fear”, since Oliver is already an avatar? (Julia&Trevor hadn’t really sounded afraid when he quickly saw them in their dream, in MAG120.) Interestingly, it looks like Oliver could see Jon’s dreams, or at least knew their content, inside of his own dreams?

(MAG121) OLIVER: […] And I do kind of know you? Haven’t had much choice, really. Dreams are like that, y’know: no matter how lucid you think they are, there is always that part that just drags you along. Guess I don’t need to tell you that, at least… not right now. […] I s’pose there’s only so long you can dream about someone and not at least try to find them. […] I don't talk to many people these days. Putting my thoughts outside myself, it's gets a bit… hm… clumsy. […] ‘wish there was a better way, but… Touching someone’s mind, it’s not… as simple as that, is it? Doesn’t always make things clearer, y’know? Still. I gave the old woman a statement, so, maybe I owe you one as well. That’s how it works, right? Give you a terror. Give you a dream. ‘t’s not like I don’t have ‘em to spare. Mm. Let me tell you about how I tried to escape.

It’s… curious, given that he used to dream of people themselves (how do the tendrils interact with Jon’s… state?); but it looks like in Jon’s case, he could access Jon’s dreams, since he knew what Jon has been experiencing. Is he currently able to communicate with people through dreams? (Either something he developed since his 2015 statement, either yet something else he didn't bother to mention at the time?) (I do wonder how Jon’s choice manifested in his dream, too! Was it to face the Eye, since Elias had narrated that Jon… was basically trying to escape its gaze/pretending that it wasn’t there by focusing on other people, though he couldn’t not watch them anyway? I had been wondering if his clue for leaving would have to do with the “DIG” ad, since it came from Martin’s statement, static included; or from Helen’s door, since… “He does not know what is behind it anymore, and he is deathly afraid of finding out. The Archivist turns away.” (MAG120) sounded like Jon fleeing, and also the least Beholding-like thing he did in the cycle of dreams.)

- I’m laughing SO HARD about how Oliver had quite clearly been sent by The Web:

(MAG121) OLIVER: [SIGH] I wish I could tell you why I came here. I wish I knew why I came here. I s’pose there’s only so long you can dream about someone and not at least try to find them. […] Then again, maybe I’ve just wasted my breath. But I don’t think so. Honestly, hum, I'm still not exactly sure why I��m here. But… you know better than anyone how the spiders can get into your head. Easier to just do what she asked!

(The fact that he tried to rationalize actions that he had not chosen is quite reminiscent of the effects Trevor had described in MAG056: “The weirdest sensation began to flow through me; I wanted to leave. […] 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 rationalizing the way I felt my will being tugged out of the room, but it was still very powerful.”) … and that’s the thing that made Jon tip over. He had been holding on for six months, prisoner in his dreams and under the big eyeball’s stare, and the thing that apparently made him ~choose~… was the message that The Web sent him. That’s so rude towards Beholding, Jon =D

- Also it’s the *screams* confirmation that… Jon probably never really escaped Mr. Spider back when he was a kid. At the very least, the spiders have plans for him, and it’s apparently in their interest to have Jon functioning, whether it stems from a Web-Beholding alliance or from the Web having its own plan and trying to hijack the chessboard. As far as the tense relationship between The Web and free will is concerned, I remembered something Elias had said a while back:

(MAG092) ELIAS: […] And your will is still your own, mostly.

………… that “mostly”………..…………… Elias, what do you know about this…….. (I’m still unable to pinpoint, for a lot of things regarding Elias, if the answer is “he knows a lot” or “he barely knows anything and only manages to stay in control because he’s a very pretty/lucky complete buffoon”.) (In the same exchange, there was that moment of “Feels like all I’ve managed to do is… not die.” “And believe me, that is a remarkably rare skill.” and that also does take another dimension now fedhbjnefd.)

- Relatedly: if Jon indeed gave himself up to Beholding… well… Gods. Gooooooods. I am not ready for elated!Elias since uwu!! Jon chose this path himself!! uwu. We already had a glimpse of it in MAG102 (“No, Jon, this is good! It’s a promising development!”) but I think nobody is ready for Elias being elated over something Jon-related again. (… Except for Ben, probably.) Will Elias make arrangements to send a Congratulations postcard and/or flowers to Jon from his cell. Will Jon still be Jon enough to dump them in the trash.

- Important logistic question: did Jon receive his salary during his coma, and what happened to his shiny new flat? According to Georgie, he hadn’t been paid during his, erm, escapade from the police&the Institute at the beginning of season 3 (for a bit more than two months) (though it could have been Jon avoiding to use his bank account altogether in order to not get tracked down):

(MAG099) ARCHIVIST: Look, G– Georgie, I need to move out. GEORGIE: Umm… yeah. I thought you were looking for a place. Y’know, now, now you’ve got a salary again.

(Elias, you could have at least compensated him for the weeks he spent on the run since he worked even more than usual if his sleep schedule is any indication, you’re a terrible boss in more than one aspect.) So, yeah. Does Jon still have his new flat, or will he have to find a new one again (or go back to Georgie’s, or… keep definitive residence in the Archives).

- Same question as I’d asked myself during the trailer: is the clock in Jon’s hospital room specifically the clock from Elias’s office, and did Elias arrange for this? Since we first heard it, I’ve been wondering if it had… something behind it (aside from informing the listeners that scenes were taking place in Elias’s office). Bones, or something else entirely. It’s super ominous on its own, the regular sound being half a constant reminder that things are advancing their natural course, and half a feeling of mechanicalness and of things being trapped in an cyclical system! But I do wonder if that clock had a function in-universe, too, since… it’s very noticeable. At the very least, Oliver’s words resonated strongly with it

(MAG121) OLIVER: Time is like that, isn’t it? Just keeps going. No matter what happens, it just carries on. And it strips everything away from you in the end; the good, and the bad alike, until there is nothing left of either. “This too shall pass”, “All good things come to an end”. “Memento mori”.

and it was a beautiful (and terrible) atmosphere.

- It’s possible that Georgie and Martin have met off-screen!!

(MAG121) OLIVER: Uh… uh, I’m a friend. Of Jon’s. GEORGIE: Are you now. OLIVER: Y– y– yes. GEORGIE: Right. Just… haven’t you seen visiting before.

Well, that depends if Martin has been visiting often but… Georgie sure is keeping a close watch on Jon. I wonder if Jon will still be in a state to feel guilty about it, since… ~before~ the coma, he didn’t want for her to get involved further and in the end, she did.

- I love that she’s also picky about the friends Jon should be surrounding himself with, but she quite clearly understood that Oliver was bad news (“Sorry about that. But you really don’t need friends like th–”). What was the reason she chased Oliver at the end? Because the tape recorder was running and it usually didn’t react when she was there? Because there was something weird already with Jon’s body? Or did Oliver leave something in the room for Jon, a gift from The Web? (… or could it be specifically the zippo again, returning to Jon? We don’t know if Martin had used it in MAG118, but it could have been, since it could burn statements…)

- I’ll forever be laughing at the fact that Jonathan fucking Sims dated someone who would later be a supernatural podcaster who says “spooktacular”, but at the same time, I Would Die For Georgie Barker:

(MAG121) OLIVER: I’m Antonio. GEORGIE: Sure. OLIVER: Do you mind, uh… giving us a minute? GEORGIE: No, I think you’re done here. OLIVER: Oh. Uh, right. H… have I upset you, miss? GEORGIE: No, you just remind me of someone. OLIVER: Ah, I’m sorry. Were they– GEORGIE: Evil. Yes. OLIVER: … Oookay then. I, I just, guess I should just go. GEORGIE: I guess you should.

This was the first time we've heard Georgie interact with someone else than Jon, and… Georgie!!! GEORGIE!!!!!!! I’m guessing that “someone” was referring to the events in the dissection class, since that was an agent of The End too… and now I’m worried for her, since woops, they’re related to the same shade of fear, and the idea that Georgie is getting involved in that, or at least with people deeper in it than she is… is worrisome.)

- Well. I’m assuming that Oliver chose to serve The End, it sounds pretty clear to me? He wouldn’t be punning that much about it if it wasn’t the case (do you get more powerful when you pun about your patron all the time. *eyes Elias*). I’m not sure about the rest of his situation, though, since… I saw a few other people mention it, and same, Point Nemo sounded like a Lonely and Vast territory – different powers fighting to get the upper hand influence-wise, like at Hill Top Road? The shades bleeding into each other in the spectrum of colours-that-hate-me? I had wondered, with MAG011 alone, whether “Antonio” was actually under The End’s or Beholding’s influence – the latter because… there were, and there still is in MAG121, a lot of references about him witnessing without being able to help and slowly coming to terms with that fact, his being mostly a passive observer overall, unable to do anything about it, and the idea that, when given a choice, he wanted to see, even when it wouldn’t do him any good:

(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) Eventually my wandered drifting led me back to the Barclays building. Something inside me wanted to go inside, to see what it was like in this rhythmic, fleshy dreamscape. […] I was aware that I had two choices: to follow the light to wherever it might lead or to turn and retreat into the waking world. I decided to follow the path of that scarlet glow […].

(MAG121) OLIVER: I don’t know why I did it. I knew it was a stupid thing to do, walking past my own home in a dream, but I just… Maybe I wanted it this way.

By contrast, his ascension made him take an active part, with him purposely leading people to their deaths… So I don’t know if this was The End all along, or Oliver switching from another power to The End, à la Mike Crew? Also, we don’t know if he’s gay or bi/pan (he’s a mlm at the very least, since he mentioned his ex-boyfriend Graham) but: it would add another dimension to the fact that he referred to The End as a He while The Web (or its avatar) gets a She =D (My Patron Is More Appealing To Me.)

- ……………….. okay, so this statement seems to confirm that Avatars tend to have a death experience or something close to it in order to… become. It’s unclear if Jane Prentiss had clinically died when she was treated, but as for others:

(MAG089) JUDE PERRY: […] It became clear that, where once I had destroyed to fuel my life, I now lived for the pain that I caused. […] I doused myself in kerosene and set it alight. […] As the heat warped my bones and bubbled my flesh, all I heard was the loving exaltation of my god.

(MAG089) MIKE CREW: […] In the end I threw myself into the arms of that vast emptiness, and I bound my tormentor to the book.

(MAG109) ARCHIVIST: Last I heard, you were dying of lung cancer. TREVOR: I was. ARCHIVIST: And now? TREVOR: I’m not. [CHUCKLES]

(MAG121) OLIVER: […] I could feel all their eyes lock to me, panicked, hoping for some sort of explanation. I almost tried to give them one, but I barely got the first word out before the falling satellite debris hit the ship at two hundred miles an hour, killing us instantly.

Mike jumped from a tower pursued by a Lichtenberg figure; Jude immolated herself; Trevor was dying from lung cancer (and Martin thought that people had mentioned he had died after the first part of his statement); Oliver explicitly states that he died (and yet is still present in some way, and corporeal enough to need to open and close the door). That. Sounds. Really. Really. Bad. For. Jon. Given that, for all of them, it was presented as a turning point – the thing that made them tip over into another sort of existence. Interestingly, Jon got… many of his powers before this stage (compulsion, the ability to Know things he had never learned as highlighted by Elias in MAG102 and later Tim in MAG114, the languages-thing, the ability to… See?, unravelling one’s story, as he did in MAG119, and the nightmares-sharing as we learned in MAG120), but Trevor had the ability to feel the vampires his entire life, and Jude set someone on fire before completing her transformation.

I’M DEVASTATED BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT JON WAS AFRAID OF, ESPECIALLY AFTER TALKING WITH OTHER AVATARS, GDI!!! The prospect of becoming a monster and of losing himself like the others… shook him quite badly at the time.

(MAG092) ARCHIVIST: So it’s… it’s back to breadcrumbs, and statements, and risking my life talking to things that barely remember how to be human anymore? [...] Am I… Elias, am I still human? ELIAS: Jon, what does human even mean? I mean, really? You still bleed, you can still die. And your will is still your own, mostly. That’s more than can be said for a lot of the “real’ humans out there. … You’re worried about ending up like that thing, lurking in the dirt under the streets of Alexandria? Don’t be. Just do what you need to, and you’ll be fine. Understood?

(MAG093) ARCHIVIST: You’ve seen monsters? GEORGIE: Not the time, Jon. ARCHIVIST: Right, it’s… it’s just I think I’m turning into one. GEORGIE: Really? That’s… not great. […] ARCHIVIST: But [Avatars] end up getting these abilities, and they lose a lot of their self. Sometimes all of it. GEORGIE: And you think… that’s what’s happening to you? ARCHIVIST: Yes. Yes. The Institute serves one of these beings. A–At least, Elias, who runs the place, does. Since accepting the Archivist job, I–I’ve been… different.

(MAG114) TIM: So, why don’t you “Archivist” me, then? Just pull it straight out. ARCHIVIST: Because I don’t want to! I am not your enemy, Tim. TIM: [DISMISSIVELY] Like that matters! These things aren’t human. It’s… instinct. You can’t not. ARCHIVIST: [SOFTLY] I’m still me, Tim. [TIM HUFFS] I’m still… me.

(MAG115) HELEN: We’re both changing, Archivist. I had hoped, that together– ARCHIVIST: [FURIOUS] Get out. HELEN: Archivist… ARCHIVIST: Get. Out.

… And at the same time, Oliver’s statement just highlighted how… far Jon was from the state the other Avatars were in just before they turned into their current beings? Jude Perry was depressed, isolated, straying away from her girlfriend (projecting Agnes on her instead) and decided to start killing pretty easily. Mike Crew had lost his parents and was apparently quite solitary, and discovered along the way that he didn’t mind killing (MAG089: “My experiments weren’t entirely pointless, though, they did have a truth to me. I learned that I was more than capable of killing, if it brought me closer to what I needed.”) Oliver didn’t sound like he had anyone who could have mattered to him (we knew he’d lost his father in MAG011, but he didn’t mention any other family member or friend in MAG121) and… decided, at the end, to kill everyone on board. Their transformations were all preceded by them losing touch with their previous surroundings, to replace it by their dedication to their god? (Iirc, one of the Q&A had even explicitly referred to the relationship between the Hive and Jane Prentiss as a clear case of toxic/abusive love.)

But Jon… Jon had precisely being going in the opposite direction in season 3: where it wouldn’t only be about him, but about the others, and about trusting them, even artificially. That was the decision he had made.

(MAG0117) ARCHIVIST: […] Still, it does sometimes make it hard to… fully trust them, I– … [SIGHS] You– you know what, no. I’m… I’m done with that. No more paranoia. It’s almost got me killed more than once, and… Georgie was right. If I am… slipping, then I need people I can trust. And I… I don’t think that can happen naturally for me an–anymore, so… I’m making a decision. I trust them. All of them. E– except Elias, obviously, that’s not– I mean… I’ve listened to the tapes. I’ve listened to the tape, I– I know what they talk about behind my back, how much they’ve… suffered… because of… this place… because of me. God. Poor Melanie. […] I do worry about Martin and Melanie, leaving them behind, but… I– I suppose that’s- part of trusting someone, isn’t it? Letting them help how they can.

(MAG0118) TIM: You thought you brought me in as a distraction, right? ARCHIVIST: What?! TIM: Let me do it! Go in, maybe you can get some of them– ARCHIVIST: Tim, contrary to what you think, I did not bring you here to indulge your death wish! […] I knew none of us might be coming back, and I’m not gonna let anyone get killed for nothing! […] I am not losing you as well!!

I’m a big sap when it comes to the Power Of Friendship (feed it to meee!!), and I’m also aware that it might nnnnot go down super-well in a horror podcast where Bad Things Happen, but part of me still… hopes, very deeply, that it mattered in Jon’s apparent decision to not die-die (which meant, if we judge by others’ stories, to give himself up, be it to Beholding or to another one). … Two counter-arguments, though: Jon spent six months in his loop of nightmares, which… could have been enough to break him quite a bit, and to reduce him to a state in which his decisions at the end of season 3 don’t matter much to him (or what’s left of him) anymore. There is also the feeling that Avatars tend to… look down? on their past selves and feelings, as if they now knew some deeper truth that invalidates their past thinking, and a bit like they're… rewriting their own story in order to conclude that what they became was the logical achievement of who they were?

(MAG032, Jane Prentiss) Perhaps I’ve always heard it. Perhaps the itch has always been the real me, and it was the happy, smiling Jane who called herself a witch and drank wine in the park when it was sunny. Maybe it was her who was the maddened illusion that hides the sick squirming reality of what I am. Of what we all are, when you strip away the pretense that there is more to a person than a warm, wet habitat for the billion crawling things that need a home. That love us in their way.

(MAG089) JUDE PERRY: I know now they were simply guiding me upon the path to my true epiphany. All this time I was serving my god, but only for my own glory. But with each new gift, each renewal of the fire, I saw how lifeless and hollow it was, how grey and ashen my existence had become. It became clear that, where once I had destroyed to fuel my life, I now lived for the pain that I caused. And for Agnes. My sweet, hopeless Agnes. And so I ended it.

(MAG091) MIKE CREW: I know it was the first storm, the first real storm, I had seen for almost ten years, but nothing else remains in my mind. There are echoes of resignation, I think, almost desperation. That can’t be right, though. What reason would I have had not to jump? Not to become as I am now. Perhaps I just didn’t know the true joy of vertigo. It doesn’t matter.

(MAG121) OLIVER: […] That was it with the old woman too. That was different, though. Way I figure it? She stuck her nose in just about everywhere it wasn’t wanted and stirred up hornets. ‘Till all the precautions in the world couldn’t stop Death from finally catching her. If I’d’ve known more back then, I’m… not sure I would’ve bothered trying to warn her. Still… you live and learn, don’t you? […] And the worst part is that somewhere, in me, I… I liked it. Underneath all that awful fear, it felt like… home.

(Oliver had also mentioned that the tendrils had felt “almost affectionate” at first. We… really got to witness his degradation: he had initially tried to stop what was supposed to happen (with his father), he switched to warning (Jennifer from MAG042, Gertrude in MAG011), and then, was just witnessing (the “Thomas” whose identity he stole in MAG121) until… he brought around ten people to the spot where they were supposed to die, actively ensuring that they would all meet their planned ends. On the one hand, he became his current self in just two years since his first statement; on the other end, he had already concealed a lot of things in that statement from two years ago and was already deeper in that he had claimed, but overall, that… doesn’t bode well for Jon’s evolution, yeah.)

Of course, it’s only natural to come up with different conclusions at the time you’re experiencing something and in hindsight (knowing where they led to in the end, the mistakes you were making, the consequences your actions would bear), but it. still. sounds A LOT like a kind of brainwashing…? And we don’t know yet what Jon’s state of mind was when he “chose” in MAG121, though we do know that he was, personality-wise, The Best/Worst Possible Person to get into Beholding stuff, yeah, because he… had had the craving for novelty since he was a kid and the tendency to pursue knowledge at all costs (MAG093, Georgie: “That does at least explain why he picked you. […] If your job is asking questions, I mean. You were always the one who pushed too far, and asked smart-arse, awkward questions. I always was surprised you never got punched.”) Except for Mike, who switched, the Fears tend to choose people who will fit in with them and… that’s… bad…

- So overall: no idea if we’ll perceive drastic changes in Jon right away, or if it will be a slow slippery slope. I’m… worried for the hospital staff, though; Jon seems to have understood the correlations between live-statements and his dreams by the end of season 3 (MAG113: “I’m not too concerned, to be honest, my dreams are, uh… well, let’s just say I don’t think they’re going be letting anyone else in any time soon.”); we know from Basira and Daisy that it’s not only Jon, that it also affects the statement-givers unless they’re Archival Assistants and/or directly working for the Institute (MAG112: “Are you sleeping?” “Yeah. … Do you still have the dreams?” “Um, no, not really. Not since we joined up here, I don’t think. You?” “Yeah.”) and… there is a clear line between being harmful without knowing, and being harmful despite knowing (but not caring and/or prioritizing one’s own gain). So I’m afraid that Jon might extort a statement or two as soon as he wakes up, if he’s hungering for them and/or wants to get better, after having been deprived of them for so long.

I mean, I’m totally expecting Jon to go bad – and I’m not quite ready for it right now, but then, it’s not like I can’t expect my feelings to get repeatedly crushed by a lead pipe in this series, I know what I signed for, I’m in for the ride, I’ll Take It Anyway >:3 But I’m a bit more concerned about the idea of following Jon as he knowingly hurts people and doesn't care… without anyone there to remind us that hey! This is bad, actually?, and without… anything about the people Jon is making suffer. It’s not only about Jon: it’s about them, becoming victims through their live-statements, apparently being haunted by them in their dreams through Jon? (The series has been great, though, at making us feel like all these Characters Of The Day are people, with their own lives and stories, so I trust that there will be… something about the fact that this is happening to them! Also, I don’t know if Georgie has been suspecting something regarding the dreams, but if characters managed to piece things together, then, I doubt that Georgie would allow Jon to run wild? Mmmartin might, maybe a bit, but not Georgie. She might not outright kill him if she sees he’s gone bad, but she would scream at him until he puts effort into fighting it as best he can.)

- Also overall: a… lot of things will depend on Jon’s state of mind, and what he's understood from Oliver’s story. I have trouble finding a “lesson” in it, honestly? What are we supposed to take away from his experience?

(MAG121) OLIVER: At that moment, a sudden calm came over me. I understood it all. I could follow the lines of the huge veins that encased the ship down into the water, leading off to a point almost a mile from the South-East. There. That was it. That was our fate. Where we would always be. Because I was going to take us there. Running was pointless. To try and to escape from my task would only serve to fulfil another. I finally understood what I needed to do. […] I don’t know where I got the gun, but once Captain Macabee was dead, the others were very keen to sail wherever I wanted.

That you can’t escape these things? That the longer you try to run, the more innocent people will get harmed because of you? That the only way for Jon to leave the dreams would be to give in (and give himself over), confirming that there is no other solution? (Oliver told Jon that he had ~to make a choice~ but… technically, Jon can’t die in this state. How could have he chosen that option? Was he waiting for someone to mercy-kill him…?) What were Jon’s options exactly, and what did he choose? We didn’t hear about the notebook that he had found in Gertrude’s hangar in MAG113 (“Names, locations, dates. I’ll, I’ll check properly later. Doesn’t look like it’s to do with the Unknowing, I don’t think.”) and it sounded valuable enough for Jon to plan to take a deeper look at it … so as usual, Jon Is Probably Ahead Of Us, and what he does and chooses to do with it will get explained later. Notes on preventing The Watcher’s Crown? On the “new emergence” mentioned by Adelard? (But if Jon indeed gave himself to The Beholding… is it possible to do it if he’s still planning on wrecking its ceremony? That’s not really giving yourself up if you don’t want it or are planning to work against it?) (So as usual: what happened, aaaaarrrrrg)

- So far, we had been hearing all the statements recorded by the Archival staff, so… has that changed, and we didn’t hear the ones being recorded by Melanie-Basira-Martin while Jon was in his coma? Or did they stop recording them? Or did the tape recorders refuse to work because Jon was away? … Or will Jon listen to them to catch up on the time he missed, and we will discover them with him – and how things apparently got progressively worse for the assistants?

- … I had been wondering about Jon’s use of the tape recorder. He used it for statements starting season 1 and, starting with the climax and all through season 2, as a way to convey his discoveries to a hypothetical successor in case something bad happened to him. In season 3, the tape recorder started to apparently turn itself on, pretty often to record quite mundane conversations, whether Jon was there or not, and in a few cases there is some ambiguity over whether or not he had actually been turning it on when he had it on him (with or without realizing it), but… there were also moments in which it was explicit that Jon wanted conversations and talks to be on tape. It culminated with the testaments in MAG117:

(MAG098) MARTIN: […] Have you seen [Jon] since…? TIM: [GRUNTS] Kind of. We tried to talk, but he, he reached for that– Ah, he, he wanted to turn on his recorder. I freaked out a bit, and I said some stuff: if he wanted to talk, no tapes, I just, I just hate that thing.

(MAG102) [CLICK] ARCHIVIST: You’re sure you don’t mind? MARTIN: No, no, no, it’s fine, I’ve… I’ve kind of stopped noticing if I’m honest. They just sort of… turn themselves on these days.

(MAG115) ARCHIVIST: […] There is nothing you want to say to me. TIM: Nothing with that thing here, no. ARCHIVIST: [SOFTLY] Interesting. […] TIM: Why are you so set on having it running? ARCHIVIST: I… Look, if you want my honest opinion– TIM: I don’t.

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: I, I wanted to get some thoughts down before, er…everything. We all should, actually, I… I’ll maybe mention it to them.

……………. I’m wondering if… this wasn’t actually... all about Jon fearing that yes, he would (have to) turn into an avatar for real at some point, and it would probably fuck with his mind a bit (highlighting parts of him that were already there, but also rewiring him to serve his god’s objectives rather than what felt right to him) – and so, using the recordings in an attempt to… keep traces of who Jonathan Sims used to be, what his actual trains of thoughts were, the actual choices he made. Jon was very conscious that something else would come afterwards: Gerry had told him about The Watcher’s Crown, and Jon… sounded like he had picked up that stopping The Unknowing wasn’t an end in itself but also a way for Elias to get him closer to something:

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: […] Elias seems pretty insistent I go along. Part of me thinks it’s just so that we can see if whatever this… preparation he’s been trying to do on me works. And you know what? That same… petty little part of me… rather hopes it doesn’t; that all this time, all his… cryptic nudges and “learn to fly by falling” attitude ends up being a complete waste of time. Just to show him.

I do hope that his “I’m making a decision. I trust them. All of them.” will matter in the long run, but I’m also crying in advance that it won’t and that will be the tragedy ;___; (I’m also not ready to say goodbye to Jonathan “I’d rather doom the world rather than prove something I despise right” Sims, please keep some of that stuff in you, Jon.)

- worriedaboutmartin.jpg since… we still have no idea what happened/what’s happening… and he’s the only one left of the original assistants. Sasha got killed. Tim sacrificed himself to get his revenge, and his words from the season 2 finale are resonating more strongly than ever right now:

(MAG080) MARTIN: Sorry? Sorry, what? How can you not care!? TIM: Because this is us now. Worms. Monsters. Corridors. They’ll keep happening until one of them kills us and we’ve just got to deal with it.

I’m… really hoping that we will get some mourning around Tim – maybe not right now, but at some point, like it happened with Sasha. Sasha had been an open wound since Jon learned about her death, despite the fact that they didn’t remember her; Martin and Tim had expressed their feelings in covered-up, indirect or delayed ways, but there were still… bits that hinted that it was gnawing at them a lot more than they were saying:

(MAG082) MARTIN: Maybe they said something about Sasha, y’know? TIM: She’s dead, Martin. Come on! Even you’re not that blind. He got her too. MARTIN: Don’t you say that. Don’t you dare say that!

(MAG086) TIM: The first Sasha. What… What was she like? […] … Who am I even sad for…? MELANIE: I… I’m, I’m sorry… I don’t, er… TIM: Um… I’m, I’m going to lie down…

(MAG114) TIM: You know how long that thing pretended to be Sasha? ARCHIVIST: Oh god… TIM: And I had no idea? I knew Sasha for years, we… I don’t know Martin as well as I knew her.

(MAG117) MARTIN: Hey, hey, I mean what’s normal, right? Is living in an old document storage normal? Is losing a friend and not even noticing normal?

(MAG118) MARTIN: [DRY LAUGHTER] Dignity? Alright, yeah; like the dignity of being trapped in your flat by worms, or sleeping in the Archives, clutching a corkscrew! Or– or fetching drinks for the thing that murdered your friend without you even noticing…! Laughing at all their little jokes, then being left to wander impossible corridors for weeks!

… and just the mention of Sasha was enough to make Jon snap in two different season finales:

(MAG079) NOT!SASHA: […] And it will hurt. Oh, yes, it will hurt. It hurt Sasha. ARCHIVIST: Shut up! NOT!SASHA: [CLOSE AND DISTORTED] There you are.

(MAG0119) ARCHIVIST: Who are you?! NIKOLA: Who am I? Tim, of course! Who else would I be! ARCHIVIST: You’re not– you’re not… Tim. NIKOLA: Oh, you caught me~ I’m… Sasha! ARCHIVIST: Shut up! NIKOLA: No~! Really, it’s me! Sasha– whatever her name was! Back from the dead, just like you wanted~! ARCHIVIST: Get away from me, or, or I swear I’ll… I’ll…

It’s been a series where characters tend to take even more shape after their death, or at least… where the characters who died (or their secrets) tend to still have an influence, or to be present in other characters’ minds. Tim probably got the best ending he could have wished for in the circumstances and in the overall universe, but it was also a stupid death, intertwined with his desire to not come back and his conviction that the others had only taken him along as a distraction for the Stranger’s minions (which… didn’t sound like it was the case at all, at least in Jon’s mind: he had to accept Tim’s desire to come along in order to regain some of Tim’s trust). It was a sad death. It has the potential to hurt A Lot – and who will mourn for him, or at least highlight that what happened was plain unfair? Basira was wary of him and will have the Daisy issue in mind; Melanie didn’t hold Tim super-dearly in her heart, since he'd been an ass to her for the few times they spoke. Tim made a point of staying away from them, since he couldn’t trust them. There are only Martin and Jon to really remember Tim; it would feel… very cold and gritty? to just pass over his death as something that happened and to barely mention it, so I’m assuming that we’ll get something at some point.

The only glimmer of pain about Tim’s death that we have got was when Elias sweet-stabbed Martin about it in MAG120 (“Hello, inspector. Martin. I’m… sorry to hear about Tim.” “Don’t.”), and Martin might not currently be around if he was heading off to somewhere dangerous in the trailer, and it’s been six months already for him, so… I don’t know! I hope that we’ll get some mourning. Jon waking up and realizing only then that Tim died when the others have already had the time to process the information in the last six months, could have the potential to be Absolutely Awful, but the whole series is a competition between Potentially Awful Things to happen (ie: will Jon still be able to care or to feel the Hurt, in his new state). At the very least, Sasha was an open wound until the end of season 3, so I don’t really see Tim’s death getting brushed off like that – it’s a series that make you care about things, a series in which wrong things are constantly highlighted and denounced. It doesn’t mean that the horror doesn’t happen, but it always has effects on people. (Also, hi! Jon’s feeble and fragile “Tim…?” was the last word he said before the explosion happened! Before Tim’s “I don't forgive you. But thank you for this.” which Jon most probably heard! I’m fine, it’s just rain falling indoors right on my cheeks!)

… This might also be why Martin accepted to do something dangerous, after checking that “they [would] be safe”. Because Basira had put her finger where it hurt, when she told him that he couldn’t just wait and hope (MAG110: “Look, Martin. I know you care. I know you do. But caring isn’t enough. You can’t just stand next to someone with a cup of tea and hope everything’s gonna be alright.”), and Martin had decided to act on it at the end of season 3 (MAG117: “Anyway. I guess I’m just sick of sitting on my hands, drinking tea and hoping everyone’s okay. This way I finally get to do something. It’s gonna hurt, but… I’m ready. And I want to.”), though… even his plan, in the end, had most of its victories sucked out of it (yes, Elias was sent to jail, but he still has blackmail material for the officers and had already made arrangements to get Peter to manage in the interim while he was gone; and Melanie resents Martin for robbing her of Elias’s murder, if Elias’s comment is any indication; and Tim died; and Daisy went into the coffin and is probably mostly gone; and Jon is unresponsive… and will only be able to come back by sinking deeper into his inhumanity). It could make sense, for Martin, to start trying to take more risks, since he… is the only one of the original assistants to have survived this far, and hasn’t even ever been physically hurt until now (though what Elias did will probably have long-lasting effects).

At the same time!! I’m!! Glad!! That the trailer was Martin apparently asking and begging for Jon’s help, but… not for Jon to wake up in itself. It sounded like the threat looming around was unrelated to Jon’s current state? And Martin did ask about the others’ safety before agreeing, which means… that he’s not doing everything for Jon and Jon only, or to protect Jon. The others factored in.

(It’s not something I believe to have happened, but the date worries me a bit further since hey! Peter Lukas had shown Interest in Martin (MAG120: “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.”) and Jon has been in that state from August to February, with Martin’s visit taking place at some point before he started breathing again. That time frame… would fit with the Tundra being in the UK area, if its route is annual:

(MAG033) ARCHIVIST: […] Sean Kelly disappeared from the port of Felixstowe in October 2010, and his body washed up on the coast of Morocco in April 2011, six months later. According to the coroner, it had only been in the water for five days.

Or maybe Martin still has six months to live from now on? I mean, Sasha and Tim both died around the end-of-July/beginning-of-August. Summer’s gonna get fun in the Archives.)

(ALSO WORRIED ABOUT MELANIE AND BASIRA, OF COURSE, since Martin’s “Basira’s keeping things taking over, and Melanie is… well, Melanie is Melanie…!” from the trailer isn’t announcing good news and it’s been six months, Melanie had been doing worse and worse in just a few weeks when we left her in season 3; and Basira… just lost… her own anchor… and Daisy seemed to have snapped for real – not dead, but We've Lost Her, since Jon can’t reach her dreams anymore. I think we might be switching to them in MAG122? Will ~see~ in a few hours /o/)

- … the only glimmer of hope for a Good Thing is that if (if.) Elias is still in prison, it will mean that he has spent six months in jail. I don’t know if it’s worth everything else but. Still. Possibly One (1) Good Thing.

#tl:dr *strangled noise and waits for mag122 tonight*#i'd take the comfort blanket but then. 'the blanket never did anything.' :|#the magnus archives #tma spoilers #mag121 #*eXCITED*#tma season 4 #long post; pondering&rambling&screaming&scratching at the table etc. etc.#the magnus archives spoilers/#long post/#tma liveblog

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soveryanon · 6 years ago

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Reviewing time for MAG125 /o/

- I’m still going to nickname that power ~Insight~ until further notice because of MAG123 (“I have no theories on it, no… no sudden insights.”), though Basira’s “spooky brain” is A Very Tempting Phrase to cover it. Interestingly, there were similarities in the ways it has manifested so far:

(MAG124) ARCHIVIST: Still no sign of Peter Lukas of course, or Mar– [STATIC] Wait– Wait.

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: Peter Lukas is just… sitting up there, doing whatever the hell it is he [STATIC-] and Elias have planned, and Melanie still has that bullet pumping violence into her, waiting to turn this place into another Lanncraig. [/STATIC] I just wish there w– … w… … Wait, I, I, I didn’t… Did I read that somewhere, or…? R–right, yes [CLEARS THROAT]. The bullet, er, didn’t show up on… electronic or… mechanical scans, but it’s still lodged in her leg, just above the tibia. … And it’s been getting slowly infected ever sin– I have to find Basira.

1°) After Jon read a statement. (It had also been the case in MAG099 when he had dropped Gerard’s name amongst the list of Gertrude’s acquaintances when he’d been given absolutely no reason to do so.) 2°) Both times, regarding the assistants – who are Jon’s primarily concern as of now (at least explicitly). (3°) Right after Jon mentioned Peter Lukas, but that one is most likely to be a coincidence. Probably.)

-> … is this the equivalent of Beholding throwing him a treat and going “thank you for the meal”.

- If his screams are any indication: Jon got hurt. Again. Beating his own record from season 2, in which it had taken 7 episodes for him to Get A New Injury (the reopening of his worms-induced wounds in MAG041 notwithstanding). I wonder how long it will take for us to know where he got hurt and what happened exactly? It had taken from MAG047 to MAG053 to learn that Michael had cut him deeply enough to require five stitches – and even know, we don’t know where he got stabbed exactly. (I’m love it, I love that we know that Jon gets hurt but that it’s rare to know which part of his body was damaged every time around; we’re not even sure what hurt him here? Could have been the scissors, could have been the scalpel, could have been a surprise! hidden knife. So many sharps things laying around.) (*Tim’s voice from MAG082* “When you[’ve been hurt] and there are more than three different ways you might [have gotten sta]–”.)

On the one hand, insert jokes here about how Jonathan “Disaster” Sims is collecting the set.

…………….. on the other hand, he is. Indeed. Slowly completing the set of getting physical injuries from other entities, things that might be considered a form of marking?, and/or getting live-statements from other avatars, and it has never been highlighted as a problem by Elias – all the contrary, it’s technically a good thing according to what he said about Jon’s job description (MAG092: “It is your job to chronicle these things, to experience them, whether first-hand or through the eyes of others.”):

* The Web: encountered “A Guest For Mr Spider” as a child (recounted in MAG081: “The first of the dark powers to touch me, perhaps, but it did not claim me.”). * Beholding: claimed him hard (when becoming the Archivist? when he signed on as Head Archivist? when he began working for the Institute? when he watched the other boy get taken as a child?). * The Corruption: worms digging into him during the Jane Prentiss invasion (MAG039), Jon still has the scars on various parts of his body. * The Spiral: slashed/stabbed by “Michael”, probably on his arm/hand since he was trying to stop it? The injury required five stitches (MAG047). “Michael” gave its statement in MAG101. * The Desolation: one hand burned by Jude Perry following a Handshake Event (MAG089). Received her live-statement. * The Vast: thrown into it by Mike Crew, sayonara to your already tar-filled lungs motherfucker (MAG091). Received his live-statement. * The Hunt: Alice “Daisy” Tonner did something to his neck, half-strangling him or cutting it with his own knife, we don’t know, but it wasn’t pretty since Elias commented on it the following episode (MAG091). Received her live-statement in MAG061, and Trevor&Julia’s in MAG109. * The Stranger: terrorised by the Not!Them (MAG079), punched or strangled a bit by Nikola (MAG097), held captive by Nikola for a month (MAG101), the whole Unknowing mess (MAG118-MAG119). (And Nikola left her mark on his skin uwu) * The End: approached it following the bombing of the Unknowing, and received a live-statement from Oliver Banks (MAG121: “You’re… balanced on an edge where The End can’t touch you – but you can’t escape him”) + dead-but-not-dead-dead!Gerry’s in MAG111. * The Slaughter: given his screams, probably hurt by Melanie (MAG125).

Now, for the missing ones:

- The Buried: no direct injury on that front, but a few weird occurrences around that one – Jon received that live-statement from Karolina Górka in MAG071, who might have been claimed after her experience (“Aside from that, all that’s left to do is sweep up after Ms. Górka. She left the place rather dusty.”); the “DIG” ad that crept into Jon’s nightmares (MAG120) was not from a statement he had read, but from one read by Martin (MAG088), and Elias’s narration had the same static as Martin’s when he described it (what happened with that one?!); the statement-giver, Enrique MacMillan, had felt something in what is now Jon’s office and tried to dig it up in November 2003 (“cold, empty and calling. There’s something here, you see. Something to be dug up, rooted out, buried within. A hollow space that all eyes point towards. And I intend to reach it, if my fingers don’t give out first. I know where to dig.”) – the tunnels? Daisy had mentioned they felt “empty”… - The Flesh: attacked the Institute when Jon was in a coma (as mentioned in MAG123). Curiously, we haven’t met/heard any avatar of that one yet, not… in the flesh (badadadumdum), so it might be coming? - The Dark: has people lurking around (MAG125: “In the last week, I’ve seen two different people wearing symbols for the People’s Church of the Divine Host”) and, in the same way, we haven’t met/heard any avatar of that one yet (though Basira has). - The Lonely: has Peter as interim director of the Institute, and Jon has already highlighted that he’s feeling isolated on multiple occasions:

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: I wish I could talk it through with Martin. … Or Tim. Or Sasha. But we never really did that, did we…? … Everything’s changed.

(MAG124) ARCHIVIST: It’s been a week and… Melanie’s attitude towards me hasn’t softened. And Basira, though she is very willing to talk, still doesn’t seem to trust me enough […]. Still no sign of Peter Lukas of course, or Mar–

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: I find myself basically alone.

So… it might be at least affecting him already, although it’s not a physical injury (yet).

Once again: is Jon supposed to catch them all as a part of The Watcher’s Crown ritual…? ;;

- There were a few hours of panic for Patreons when the episode came out in early release, because Martin was listed in the voicecast for the episode. So, WHERE WAS HE. WAS HE THERE DURING THE SHOUTING AT THE END OF THE EPISODE?? HAD HE COME BACK JUST BECAUSE JON SCREAMED AND HAD BEEN HURT AGAIN?? HAD HE BEEN TRYING TO STOP THE OTHER TWO WHEN THEY BEGAN OPERATING ON MELANIE?? IS HIS VOICE SOMEWHERE IN THE CHAOS??

In the end, nop, genuine mistake, he wasn’t meant to be in the episode.

Schrödinger’s Martin.

- I stand with this statement-giver on the idea that Sheep Are Weird And Evil. You’re valid, statement-giver.

- I really like the way Slaughter statements are tackled, because there is an overall quietness in them: the violence erupts, or has left its victims behind and is only reconstructed through them, but it’s mostly… stillness and silence. The Slaughter has its own logic and, from an exterior point of view, you never understand why things are happening; they just happen, breaking all the links and coherences that had been reigning until then. It might actually one of the fears that gets me the most, now that I think about it, because of the suddenness of its outbursts, the fact that you don’t see the violence coming? (This plot in particular made me think of the last arc of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, too!)

- … this statement felt especially gruesome, and one of the things that freaked me out even more, at first, was that Jon… was apparently unfazed by it?

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: Statement ends. Hm. An Englishman returning from Scotland with a fear of bagpipes and sheep. I’m sure we can all relate! In many ways, The Slaughter fascinates me.

Immediately throwing a joke and then going on philosophising about the Slaughter’s implications, without giving a thought to the villagers…? Really, Jon, really…? Nnnnnot the time, maybe? On first hearing, I was very unsettled/worried (comparatively to MAG123 and MAG124, it sounded… very harsh); after stepping back, I realised that it’s… actually a Typical Jon Thing, though. He wasn’t only doing that in season 1 (when it’s official that he was faking it to conceal the fact that he was actually afraid), and he wasn’t discovering the story for the first time (like us listeners), so that could be why he felt too detached to me there. Still. Not great, Jon ;;

(I’ll keep being a bit paranoid about Jon having lost something since he woke up, until we learn about what it’s supposed to mean for him…)

- Also, I’m *squints* about this bit:

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: Regardless, I’ve hit another research dead end with this. It’s… frustrating, to be honest. I finally feel myself, I feel… focused, and ready – and I find myself basically alone.

“READY” FOR WHAT, JON???

Sidenote, but I wonder whether Jon is absolutely sincere and genuine here, or trying to… wave a hand at Elias or whoever can be listening in, basically trying to bait them into acting by showing that he’s impatient/waiting for them to do something? I’m glad that, at least, Jon has no illusion that Peter’s behaviour might be going all according to Elias’s plan, slumping them in the same bag:

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: But honestly, it’s the internal threats I’m worried about. Peter Lukas is just… sitting up there, doing whatever the hell it is he and Elias have planned […].

(I love that although they’re (almost) entirely absent, Jon delivers a Quota of mentions about Martin and Elias(+Peter).) Peter could actually be something outside of Elias’s control/plans/interests but… I’m glad that Jon is assuming that they’re on the same side, and that it means Bad News, for now. (/ meanwhile, other side of my brain: “oh my gods, it sounds like Elias&Peter are a power couple when you say it like that, Jon.”)

- This is the third statement picked up by Jon since he woke up (since he didn’t have any say on MAG122’s), and the second one that delved a bit into an aspect of “control”, together with MAG123’s.

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: There seems to be, in all cases, a question at its heart about… control. Is it a mindless dance, dragging participants along by the beat of a drum or… is there a kernel of will in there, a lucidity and deliberateness to the random fury and violence? I suppose that’s the question with so much of “violence”, “war”: how much are you really in command of yourself or of others? I’m not sure what scares me more: the idea that deep down, everyone is in complete control of their actions, that everything is, on some level, intentional; or that ultimately, we don’t have any control of ourselves at all, and the rest is just… rationalisation.

It sounded a bit too Relatable to his own situation and concerns, uh? Since the end of season 3 had a few moments of Jon’s worry about becoming a monster and how to deal with it – Georgie’s advice in MAG093, Tim’s “These things aren’t human. It’s… instinct. You can’t not!” (MAG114), Jon’s decision to trust the assistants in MAG117, etc. Jon’s lines, here, specifically reminded me of Tessa Winters’s pondering about the human consciousness, what control you exert on it?

(MAG065) TESSA: […] Assuming I’m not losing my mind, of course. ARCHIVIST: Yes, I hear that a lot too. TESSA: Well, that’s what’s terrifying, isn’t it? Your mind is all you are. There’s no backup, no reset, if it goes… I’m not just talking about madness as it appears, but what it is from inside… The way people talk about it, it’s like you have to think you’re saying that our mind is everything we perceive, everything we are. Well that means… you can never know when your grasp might be slipping. I’m not convinced that’s it, though. Or maybe deep down, somewhere inside, you understand what’s happening to you and… No, I am… I don’t know which scares me more.

That’s still a relevant thematic, now more than ever, since Jon apparently ~became The Archivist for real~ and we still don’t know what that means, and what he truly knows about it (officially, he’s missing some of his memory, but to what extent?). Jon’s “and the rest is just… rationalisation” also put me to mind of how the Web tends to operate according to Trevor:

(MAG056, Trevor Herbert) 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.

Aaaand of course, what Elias had said to Melanie about her own intentions (which is a bit more relevant here in a Slaughter context):

(MAG106) ELIAS: Whatever I’m planning needs to be stopped! Even if it costs a few lives. Including your own. MELANIE: Well, that’s not even– ELIAS: A rationalisation, of course. A lie, about your own selfishness, that you would rather be dead than trapped without the self-determination you prize so highly.

I was assuming that Slaughter and Web would probably be on opposite sides on the spectrum of Colours-That-Hate-Me, since respectively unleashed chaos and absolute control, but I’m not so sure anymore?

- There was a tiny allusion to “What The Ghost?” in Jon’s pondering, though! Patreons got one episode of it (so far? I hope that they are more to come, the first one was… plainly amazing) and this bit sounded like a reference to its content:

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: […] In many ways, The Slaughter fascinates me. There seems to be, in all cases, a question at its heart about… control. Is it a mindless dance, dragging participants along by the beat of a drum or…

We already knew that Jon listens to WTG but still… nice!! … and also sad because that’s a way to think about Georgie without even naming her. *cRIES*

- Jon, please.

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: Another Leitner, obviously. Not one I can readily identify, though it sounds like it would now be… inert, anyway. Given the blank pages, I do wonder whether its destruction was a last-ditch effort to stop its effects, or the exact thing that released its power in such an… extreme way.

Technically Not A Leitner since the statement was from 1993 (implying that it never made its way into the library before it was destroyed in 1994), how dare you slander Leitner by associating his name to this book :ww

- Okay, so Melanie and Basira are now living in the Institute, that was made explicit.

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: You’ve been staying here too. BASIRA: Got a camp bed at the other end, near the tunnels. I like to keep an eye on them. Besides, I wanted to give her some space, y’know. But yeah. Living outside the Institute, ’s just not safe anymore. ARCHIVIST: What about Martin…? BASIRA: I think he’s still got a place? He’s not down here anyway.

1°) Not exactly sure where exactly they’re sleeping? It definitely sounded like they were in the tunnels, but Basira very clearly said that she’s sleeping “near the tunnels” (not inside of them)? Unless they’re in one of the rooms and Basira is staying close to its entrance to keep a broader look on the corridors? 2°) (Melanie and Basira… are… roommates… (OH MY GODS THEY ARE ROOMMATES.)) 3°) ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; Where is Martin sleeping, that is a good question. Does he really still have his flat or did he… leave everything behind when he began working with someone-that-we’re-assuming-must-be-Peter? Or is he living in the Archives, too, though in ~another space~? DO HE AND JON SOMETIMES ACCIDENTALLY SHARE A BED IN THAT-ROOM-IN-THE-ARCHIVES, WITHOUT EVEN REALISING IT? (… Or does he sleep at Peter’s place.)

- Except for season 1 (in which he was a stuck-up ass) and season 2 (in which he was a paranoid ass), Jon has never mentioned Martin so much, has never been so concerned about Martin… and it’s understandable that he would, if Martin is acting in a worrisome way!! But. But. Still. He immediately wondered about Martin’s own accommodations and, after their encounter in MAG124:

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: I am now sure Martin is actually avoiding me.

aOUCH… I’m glad that Jon is preoccupied about Martin, thinking about Martin and not taking him for granted anymore (kind of)… but AT WHAT COST………………

- uUUUuuuh… Meanwhile, Jon kind of implied that he is still going outside?

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: Basira was right about the Institute being watched, though. In the last week, I’ve seen two different people wearing symbols for the People’s Church of the Divine Host, and it’s rare I go anywhere without cobwebs anymore. … I, er, find myself keeping my guard up around mannequins as well, though I’ll admit that one is more likely to be my own projection.

I would have assumed that Jon would have been the most likely to migrate long-term in the Archives, there is something funny in the idea that he… isn’t, somehow. (Also, Jon: what. are. you. doing. with all this free time.)

I’m not sure if cobwebs are a new thing around Jon, or if it’s only that he is able to pay attention to their gravitating around him nowadays: spiders had been… very prevalent in the Institute before. Or is it just growing even worse? (;; Sad for Jon, regarding the mannequins mention… Jude Perry is a prime example of avatar being still around and holding grudges after Gertrude messed with them, so… Jon being cautious of potential Stranger agents is not unwarranted. Maybe some survived, and maybe some would want to go after him…)

I’m laughing at the fact that is sounds like you can NEVER GET RID OF THE PEOPLE’S CHURCH OF THE DIVINE HOST. From “a small cult that grew around the defrocked Pentecostal minister Maxwell Rayner in London during the late eighties and early nineties. […] Mr Rayner himself disappeared from public view sometime in 1994 and the group fragmented shortly afterwards.” (MAG009) to them being around in March 2015 (MAG025), to Maxwell Rayner being stopped by the police in February 2017 (MAG073). It’s almost a running gag at this point, that they’re still there and lurking in whichever circumstances efurefdvhjnref. (Julia!! Julia, come back!! They’re still around, surely you would like to take care of them? Please? Pretty please?)

- ONE GOOD THING ABOUT WHAT THEY DID TO MELANIE if it was indeed in the tunnels (it sure sounded like it): assuming that they’re right and that Elias can’t see shit inside of them… then Elias didn’t see it, didn’t watch as Jon was able to ~see~ the bullet inside of Melanie. I’m taking all the Positivity I can, okay. :[

- But also: Jon escapes your Eyes for 35min, and he comes back bloody and with a new stab wound. Typical Jon. (Do you think that Peter and Elias had a bet going on about how much time Jon would need before getting a new injury once he would be back? Or about the nature of the next injury? Who betted what? We know that Peter was implied to go with the gruesome option when betting with Salesa (MAG066); but on the other hand, Elias is supposed to know Jon a bit more. Who would have gone the most realistically pessimistic about Jon?)

- I’m worried that Jon is using his powers so much since he woke up, because it feels like there should be a compensation or a catch – it’s… very beneficial to Jon right now, and I can’t really believe that it could be solely positive and something he’s using without being used by it. Jon is more than ready to use it to his own advantage, quite obviously; the contrast with how he had been startled and thrown-off when Elias had highlighted the phenomenon in MAG102 is just… telling:

(MAG102) ARCHIVIST: […] Is there anyone else who might know what it is, or– or where? Aside from Leitner, or Gerard. ELIAS: … Sorry? Gerard Keay? ARCHIVIST: Uh… yes…? ELIAS: How did you… Who, who told you he was working with Gertrude? ARCHIVIST: No-one, I–I–I just, I… I read it in one of the statements. ELIAS: I don’t think you did. ARCHIVIST: I… but… aaah… ELIAS: You just… knew it! ARCHIVIST: What, no, I, I… Th– that’s not a– ELIAS: No, no, no. No, Jon, this is good. It’s a promising development! ARCHIVIST: [GETTING FLUSTERED] No, No I… It’s just, it’s just… just d–deduction or– ELIAS: Is this the first time it’s happened? ARCHIVIST: Look, I don’t– Look… Haaa… Gerard’s not really a lead. He… he’s dead, isn’t he?

^His stuttering was terrible back then. In MAG125, he was startled, a bit shaken at first, but quickly got back on his feet, accepted what had happened, and ran with the new information in order to do something for Melanie. More used to it? More comfortable with it? Ready to use everything he can in order to fight? There was something overall… more firm, more goal-orientated within Jon afterwards, and it also made me think of… Gertrude.

(MAG101) “MICHAEL”: Gertrude Robinson did not waver. She did not… hesitate. She gave no indication that she saw anything more or less than was expected. Hers was not a mind that left room for doubt. She stared into us carefully, her eyes scanning for something that was my heart. Looking for my door. And she found it.

(MAG125) BASIRA: The guy said you’d need to hit the right nerve for it to work. Do you know much ab– ARCHIVIST: [STATIC-] Here. [/STATIC] BASIRA: You sure? ARCHIVIST: [SHARPLY] Yes. [��] … God. Look at that. [STATIC] BASIRA: I don’t… It’s a leg. ARCHIVIST: No. Inside… BASIRA: I don’t know what you’re seeing, Jon. ARCHIVIST: It’s… Christ, it’s all rotten… BASIRA: Can you see the bullet? ARCHIVIST: Yes… […] BASIRA: You better be right about this. ARCHIVIST: I am.

Jon was sure when it came to what was happening and… that part was a novelty. It wasn’t the fake-it-until-it-becomes-real from season 1, nor the blatant bullshitting from season 2; he was certain of his information. (And!! Using it for good!! Gertrude had one priority, stopping the rituals, and… so far, it seems that Jon’s is more about protecting the assistants. … which means there will probably come a point where he’ll have to choose between the two, and it will hurt, uh.)

- But at the same time, it was still… Jon. Jon being awkward, Jon asking the wrong kind of questions to the person in front of him,

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: … yes, right. Sorry. You, er… you managed to get some anaesthetic? BASIRA: Here. The guy said it was a nerve block. Should numb pretty much the whole leg. ARCHIVIST: Right. Right. … Was it hard to come by? BASIRA: No, I just popped down Superdrug. Yes it was hard to come by. ARCHIVIST: You–you couldn’t get any general anaesthetic, knock her out fully? BASIRA: Oh, sure! Did your spooky brain tell you the right dosage to not kill her? ARCHIVIST: … N–no. N–no, it didn’t. BASIRA: Then it’s got to be the local. Here, get on with it. ARCHIVIST: What, me? BASIRA: Yeah, she comes around, she’s gonna kill us or someone, and… You know. Not it. […] Okay, go for it. ARCHIVIST: [SHAKY VOICE] R–right. BASIRA: And pray the injection doesn’t wake her. ARCHIVIST: Yes, thank you Basira. […] BASIRA: You ready? ARCHIVIST: [DRY HOLLOW LAUGHTER] No…? [SHAKY VOICE] You’re sure you don’t have… restraints, or…

1°) I’m love Basira. I’m love how casually dry and savage she can be, how she’s just throwing Jon into the lion’s den without any hesitation nor remorse. What a legend. 2°) That [“You ready?” “No…? *laughs hollowly and does it anyway*”] refdhbjrefdhj Jon, you absolute millennial icon.

The mix of Jon being certain and awkward and obviously thinking about how it could easily end badly for him was so… satisfying and fun and hilarious to me. Still an awkward dork, I’m glad!! =D

- BUT I’M STILL WORRIED ABOUT THE WHOLE “JON USING POWERS” DEAL… if Elias had portrayed it as a good thing and as Jon sinking deeper into Beholding territory, then it’s *gulps*:

(MAG0116) ELIAS: I have been doing my best to prepare you, Jon, to See. You should hopefully have it a bit easier than the others. ARCHIVIST: Another of my… powers? ELIAS: More… an aspect of your becoming. DAISY: You don’t say. ARCHIVIST: Er… right. ELIAS: Regardless, it should, I hope, give you an edge. Otherwise I would never suggest you go yourself.

It wasn’t only a punctual ~insight~, it was a series of them (helping Jon to know where to inject the product and block the nerve) and x-ray vision allowing him to see the Spooky State of Melanie’s leg, when it was officially fine in our realm (the scans hadn’t revealed anything). I’m glad that Jon is using his powers for Good, but I don’t believe that it can last and remains as positive as it is, even though there would be something very beautiful and satisfying in the idea that no, the Fears do not actually corrupt you – it’s just that most avatars were already rotten humans to begin with? ;; (There is something fishy, to start with, with the fact that Jon is missing memories…)

(… okay, and there would also be something utterly satisfying if Elias was proven totally wrong. And bittersweet, if Tim was also proven wrong about the idea that you can’t fight these things or things happening to you.)

- The way I understood Jon’s “The bullet, er, didn’t show up on… electronic or… mechanical scans, but it’s still lodged in her leg, just above the tibia. … And it’s been getting slowly infected ever sin–” is that: Jon had listened to MAG117’s tape(s), potentially even before the Unknowing, and knew about Melanie’s recollection of how she got shot – I think that part wasn’t coming from the Insight? But the new knowledge that was planted within him, or emerged from him, was something irrefutable: that the bullet was still there and the root of the problem (“Melanie still has that bullet pumping violence into her, waiting to turn this place into another Lanncraig.”) It could/should have been a hypothesis from him, it sounds like a logical explanation; but the way it was presented, it wasn’t some wild guess or pondering. It was a certainty.

Insert here obligatory sobbing about how compulsion and this power provide Jon, who is prone to paranoia fits, who is prone to be wary of people, with absolute truth… yeah, the powers cater a bit too much to him, as a way of keeping his own personal human relationships-oriented fears at bay, uh.

- On the relationship side: gOSH, Melanie… probably won’t be fine, and would have every right to not be ;; But Melanie specifically… won’t react positively with something deliberately done to her while she had not consented (MAG102, Elias: “Even more than the others she has a visceral hatred of being trapped. Regardless of how much freedom I afford her.”), even if it could ultimately save her from The Slaughter. She probably won’t forgive.

She was already in an antagonistic spiral regarding Jon, (MAG102: “We’ll try it your way. But whatever your way actually is, you’d better figure it out fast. Because it is your fault that I’m here. Fix it, or get out of the way!” / MAG124: “Wipe that look off your face. Like you’re not the reason all of this is happening. Like you’re any better than– […] He’s still alive. You are still alive. So THIS PLACE is still–!”), and even though part of it was probably Slaughter-induced (MAG117: “Elias thinks he’s got this ingenious way to hurt people, but it’s just the same old bullshit in a creepy new package. … asshole… God! I just want to rip his…! [BREATHES] When did I… start to lose the parts of me that weren’t just anger…? … Hum.”), Jon highlighted in his conclusions about MAG125’s statement that perhaps The Slaughter is not making people lose their mind so much as making them follow something they already had inside of them.

At the same time, we already got Tim resenting and antagonising Jon at every turn, so I don’t know if Melanie will ultimately follow the same path? Technically, it’s… probably Basira who should deserve her ire about the non-consensual surgery on her asleep body, since:

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: And it’s been getting slowly infected ever sin– I have to find Basira. [STANDS UP] [CLICK.] […] You’re sure we shouldn’t just… tell her…? BASIRA: … I really don’t know how she’d take it. Not well. If we want to get it out of her, this is it. ARCHIVIST: [SIGHS] Okay.

JON WANTED TO TALK TO MELANIE ABOUT IT!!! Holy shit, Jon!! Such progress ;__; First for going to talk to Basira about it right away, and then for offering to talk to Melanie, and for ultimately trusting Basira’s judgement about it!!

Basira’s cold pragmatism is not… exactly surprising, to be honest: she’s always been prone to assessing the situation and making drastic decisions right away when it comes to saving lives or to doing what she deems right (Daisy in MAG092, the expedition to stop Rayner, the fact that she took the tapes from the police to give them to Jon when they tried to cover up the reason her colleague died…). In this particular case, there was no right thing to do? Melanie would have probably exploded and ruined any chance for them to remove the bullet if they had even tried to mention its existence to her, true? But they took the decision for her and it was definitely wrong on many levels, and Melanie will have many reasons to feel shaken, violated and betrayed by what they did ;; She already had it bad in season 2 (the fact that her old team fell apart, her first injury, her downfall) and season 3 (the second injury, the lack of options, the fact that she actually got trapped in the Institute, Elias torturing her with the memories of her father’s death), I hope she won’t get too messed up by this new thing?? ;; But the concept of non-consensual surgery applied to her, with her personality, with everything that has already happened to her… is especially horrifying ;; (And she has no support network either… Maybe Georgie still applies, though, but the situation is likely to get complicated in that area since Georgie is also tied to Jon.)

… at the same time, there could be something comforting for Melanie in getting a hold back on her own anger, instead of the foreign surge of violence that was injected into her? I really don’t see how the situation could get better for her and ;; I’m sad sad sad.

… on the other hand, Basira will probably open up a bit more to Jon after this, since… he kinda proved himself to her, here? Proved that, even though he has powers, even though he’s ready to use them, even though he has sunk deeper in, he’s also there to help the assistants, even if it means getting hurt or ruining his relationships with them – as long as it helps them to survive. So. We’ll see.

;;

(I have trouble picturing that nobody will visit Elias in prison at some point, so, hey. Basira is the one who has contacts in the police. She might be a bit more willing to share them with Jon.)

- I can Never Believe how this show manages to always make moments… creepy, and tense, and horrifying, and convey that well a sense of dread while, at the same time, making them so hilarious. The dialogues are always lovely; but Basira and Jon were just… amazing, here.

(- Patreons already got the title for MAG126 with the new schedule planning, and it feels so weird to speculate with the title alone! Not spoiling it, then, but I’m worried about its second meaning (outside of the statement itself). Could be many very wrong things, and the worst I’m coming to on my own, as of now, is “what if it’s about Peter and Martin”.)

#(as aza pointed out: the most horrifying thing with jon's new pet-power is that #if you want jon to be in a situation in which he could drop new valuable information... then you have to make him #talk and ramble. a. lot.)#the magnus archives #mag125 #tma season 4 #tma liveblog #tma spoilers

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