#prev is probably an out of nowhere headcanon but still

[badassbutterfly1987]

Since it's ace awareness week, I do want to write at least one fic in one of my fandoms for it

But because I only just realized it's ace awareness week, I haven't throught through what character to write as ace and/or aro and what the fic should even be about!*

*There are ace-focused prompt lists scattered around but the ones I found are either vague single word prompts or limited to a specific fandom.

[a-mag-a-day]

MAG 78 (1/2) - hair dying session

Oh no, starting with Jon's still being super distressed :(

"I was a few years younger than him, and when you’re a kid that makes a lot of difference." - That is something I also was thinking about when I got older. People change so much in that first… 16 to 20 years.

"It’s weird to think about people who knew you as a child. You change so much, and when you talk to them again, they’re not talking to you. They’re talking to someone else, someone you used to be. The person they think they’re seeing has been dead for years, but they didn’t see the change. They’re looking at a complete stranger, and they have no idea." - Another one of those thoughts about social aspects in TMA, which speaks deeply to me because I have thought about that too. (prev. talked about this in my asks for MAG 70 & 72.) This has happened to me and I could see, that people were talking to that old me.

"Not because of all those pictures of a strange child playing in the garden with us, but because of the two – only two – pictures I found of Carl. The Carl I remembered, with light brown hair cut short and an almost piggish nose. The second of those photos looked like it had only been taken moments after a different picture of us playing tag, but that one showed the other child where Carl should have been." - This puzzles me. Because one, nowhere in this statement is it mentioned if those were polaroids. So maybe, some photos, which are not polaroids, also don't get affected, whether this is on purpose or not. Or, if those are indeed polaroids, not all polaroids are immune to the Not!Them's reality-fuckery. Because the way this is described this is a series of photos taken moments from each other, so they have to be from the same camera and the same film. I personally think, those are not polaroids and the Not!Them left them out, simply because I like the headcanon that polaroids and magnetic tape are indeed safe.

"I just kept thinking, what had this man done to Carl, and could he do it to me?" - another aspect of this horror.

"Standing there was another man I’d never seen before. He was black, dressed in a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a thin necktie." / "his short hair was iron grey" - Seriously, I think Dekker looks badass!

"We walked over to an unmarked blue Transit van parked on the other side of the road, and he opened the back doors. Inside was a large wooden box with a hinged lid." - At that point I already suspected, that this was the table.

"And then the air was split by the most unnatural scream I have ever heard. I cannot even begin to describe it, except to say that there was nothing in it but the purest rage." - I have said on multiple occasions that I love the soft magic system, right? We don't know anything Dekker did to the Not!Them, which of course also is the way cosmic horror works.

"In the centre of the room, next to the empty box, stood a table carved from dark wood and wrapped all over with a sprawling, intricate pattern. And in front of that table was the thing that had said it was my cousin. It was long and thin, the tops of it bent against the ceiling and its stick-like limbs flailed from too many joints and elbows. Wrapped around it were thick strands of what I think was spider’s web, stretching back into the table, which I now saw pulsed along its carved channels with a sickly light. The face at the top of that gangly frame was like nothing on earth." - Ok, so I immediately understood this as Dekker somehow trapping it inside the table. I understood this segment of the statement very well as Dekker, calling himself an "exorcist", fighting against those monsters and he probably didn't know how to destroy it (otherwise I think he would have done so) and therefore he went ahead to bind it. To limit it's ability to do harm. I will get into this again just in a few bullet points (and in the next part), when Jon does >the thing< to the table…

EDIT: (request from folks in general! If asks become this long, it is better to make a post with a read more option and tag the blog)

Ask & answer continued below cut:

MAG 78 (2/2)

-"Dekker’s blue van was gone, and in its place was another one, dirty white. There was something printed on the side, but I couldn’t make it out under the grime. I watched two men in overalls carry that same box out of my house, load it up, and drive away." - I don't understand why Dekker let Breekon & Hope take the table though? Was there some kind of agreement, that he could have the table but only on the condition, that he would return it to the Stranger?

-JON "This thing, this “Not Sasha”, it’s tied to the table." - Correct, we're still on the same page there…

-JON "Was there anything I could have done? Could I have…" - Oh no… This is where he seriously starts to blame himself for things out of his control. To dwell on things, like could they have been different if only he had known… (see MAG 161). I do feel him very much there.

-JON "And now I see you." - Hell yeah, bad ass Jon.

-Lol, Jon telling Tim and Martin to go home because HE is ill is so iconic XD Tim's even calling him out on it.

-MARTIN "Are you feverish? We should probably get you to a doctor. Look, there’s a walk-in centre nearby I can –" - Aw, Caregiver Martin kicking in.

-JON "I know, I know, a lot of it’s been because of me. Most of it. I’m sorry. Tim, I know things have been… fraught." - God, Jon starting to apologize… JON "Yes… Yes. And I’m… I’m sorry. About everything." - It's such a "In case I'm not coming back" thing… Tim totally sees that, though he's barking up the wrong tree, blinded by his anger… Martin gets that something isn't quite right as well, I think, though he's more on the "Jon, we can help you"-side of things but gets dragged away by Tim.

-TIM "Great. See you Monday." - Okay, now the days of the week match up again! Because this is all happening on the 16th of February, a Thursday, and Jon told them to take the rest of the day and tomorrow off as well.

-"It is remarkably easy to buy an axe in Central London." - LMAO, okay city boy! Might be the redneck in me speaking but of course it's easy to buy an axe, even in the city, why wouldn't it be? Just walk into a hardware store, there.

-"I don’t know if destroying this is going to kill that thing…" - Oh no…. OH NOO!!!

-"but I am damn sure it’s going to hurt." - JON, YOU FUCKING IDIOT! That was my exact reaction when I first listened to this episode. I remember looking into the mirror while dying my hair, stopping for a hot moment, being like "STOP, YOU MORON!". I know, there's the bit in the Director's Commentary Part 2, where Jonny and Alex talking about old genre classics of ghosts haunting an object and destroying the object vanquished the ghost and they thought they would make Jon genre-savvy. But my reaction was immediately "That's not the case here!!" Didn't Jon pay attention to the statement? The thing was bound to the table after it's already been raging for… I don't know, possibly centuries! It's not that this table is its essence of being. It's trapped in there! Not!Sasha told him it was a creature that wouldn't want to be bound to an object! So the logical consequent of destroying that object is destroying its prison and that action is releasing that damn thing! Otherwise, wouldn't Dekker just have destroyed the table right after he bound it to it? God dammit!

-JON "The… the… the “Not Sasha”? No, but the table…" MICHAEL "Was binding it quite effectively." - THANK YOU! I thought it was quite obvious…

-MICHAEL "Even with all the protections you have on" - Oh? Protections? Meaning Web…?

Yay, cliffhanger for the finale! Shit's going doooown!

I mean, my first listen I genuinely thought that Jon was being smart on the table-breaking thing, but I also don't watch horror movies