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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 1 month ago

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Okay. This post has been a while in the making. Here is a screenshot of the spreadsheet where I have tracked all 65 shows from the Edinburgh Festival 2024, that I have gotten to experience in one way or another (seeing it live, NextUp streams, etc.). They're sorted by a ranking that I gave them out of 10, though it's actually out of 40 because I couldn't keep myself to just 10 numbers, so I started giving half points, and then quarter points and three-quarter points. But I drew the line there. No further decimals.

The rankings are very subjective, based on how much I enjoyed each show at the time, and may in some cases not line up with what a reasonably objective observer would think. Obviously, because of this, reducing comedy shows to numbered rankings and stars and things is fucking pointless. But on the other hand, I do like putting numbers in spreadsheets, so I've done it anyway.

And here are further thoughts about all 65 of those shows. It is... it's nearly 21,000 words. There or thereabouts, is the word count of this post. It's long, even by my standards. I'm pretty sure it's the longest post I've ever made on Tumblr. It's so long. It's too long. And it's not edited, because fuck that. I spent long enough writing it. So it might be unreadable. I know that lots of my posts are ridden with errors, but usually with the ones I spend more time on I do at least a quick glance to try to catch some, I'm not even bothering here. Sorry about that.

Also, Tumblr formatting appears to have made the whole numbers very large, for reasons I do not understand and cannot be bothered to try to change.

- Nish Kumar – Nish Don’t Kill My Vibe

It’s one of the best stand-up shows I’ve ever seen. I’ve been lucky enough to get to follow this show as it’s progressed over the past year, and it was still officially labelled a WIP in Edinburgh (but a WIP that he’d been developing since the previous fall and for a tour that was about to start, so very well put together for something with that label), I was blown away by how great the initial version was and then he just kept adding more stuff that kept being excellent. It’s a very rare show where I can’t think of a single bit that seemed weak or like filler. On the contrary, he was struggling to squeeze all his great material into only an hour. In the version I saw in Edinburgh, he overran slightly, and talked even faster than his usual breakneck pace, and managed to do almost every bit that’s been in the show all year, and every single part made me laugh.

If I hadn’t seen it the week before, I’d have wondered what part of it was a WIP at all anymore. But I can see he’s still playing with it because he ended on a different routine from the closing routine at the WIP I saw him do in London the previous week (I’m not… I mean… it’s fine, in 2022 I drove 8.5 hours just to see him perform in New York City and then a few months later drove 2 hours to Montreal to see him do that show that I’d already seen, in 2024 I got a two-week trip to London and Edinburgh and saw him twice, I like Nish Kumar a normal amount). I find that sort of thing fascinating, being able to see his workings as he tries to decide what tone of closer he wants to go for, and normally I’d have an opinion on it. But in this case I actually don’t know, they both fit the bill very well in different ways (do you want to close on a sensitive moving anecdote or a furious call to arms?), I just think it’s a shame that he can’t do it all. He’ll have to cut some stuff for the tour show, but I wish he could do a 1.5-hour version just once to film it and have this whole show forever.

His 2022 show, the one I saw live twice in a few months because he kept coming to North America, was one of my favourite stand-up shows ever. I think his 2024 show is even better.

9.75

- David O’Doherty – Ready, Steady, David O’Doherty

I came very close to giving this show a 10, knocked it down to 9.75 because I feel like I shouldn’t be able to give more than one show a perfect score (totally arbitrary rule that I’ve made up), and if I’m really honest, I know that my experience of this show was enhanced by the fact that it was the first time I’d ever been in a room with David O’Doherty, after several years of being obsessed with his entire career. In my subjective view it was a mind-blowingly wonderful masterpiece, while a more objective observer would – if they have any taste – call it a fantastic show, but not necessarily, you know, perfect 10.

It was so much fun. That’s my overriding memory of it. He played a big room – an Assembly Rooms theatre with a capacity of nearly 500, sold out the night I went, I checked and saw he sold out a bunch of other nights too despite doing a full month-long run, and good for him – but I turned up really early to get the front of the line and front-row seat, and I’m so glad I did. It was so exciting to be right up there.

This was a rare show in which I was totally unaware of the time. Usually for any kind of show, even if I’m enjoying it a lot, I do have it in my head how long it’s been since we started, and by the time they start wrapping up I’m ready for that. Not with DO’D. DO’D has done this thing for nearly twenty years where the second-last bit of his show will be that year’s ��My Beefs” song, about all the things that piss him off that year, get something silly and fun with lots of energy in the room, and then he’ll do his more poignant closing routine. In this show, he built up to it briefly by saying sometimes things bother him, it took the whole room a moment to catch up and realize what he was introducing, and then there was a massive cheer all across the theatre as he shouted “My beefs 2024!” and started playing his keyboard, and that was the coolest fucking thing. I think I cheered out loud. I never cheer out loud. Not at a show. Maybe at a sporting event, but not at a comedy or music show. I clap politely and I see the people around me outwardly expressing their excitement, and I think “Oh that looks like fun, being a person who does that.” But in this moment, I got so caught up in the “Oh my God new Beefs song and I don’t have to wait until the MICF gala short videos come out to see it, I get it live, right here!”, that I think I might have shouted something like “Yes!” I’m not sure, any noise I made was drowned out by everyone else’s cheering.

It was fucking cool. I’ve joked before about DO’D being a rockstar to me, but he was in that moment, and it was so much fun, but also it made me realize we only had one more short song until the closing routine, and I honestly had it in my head that we were still in the first 15 or so minutes. But nope, and he didn’t underrun or anything, I was just enjoying it so much that an hour felt like half that time. I was nowhere near ready to be done when he finally did wrap it up, I could have stayed there forever.

The show itself was lovely. Classic DO’D, just him and his keyboard up there, standing to talk and sitting to play, this is the first time that I realized how much the variety helps him avoid any lulls in a show (just when talking starts getting old he switches to singing, and vice-versa). It was a sweet show about his parents, which he used to talk about bigger cultural stuff in how he was raised and how people view their own lives and affect each other, it had touching messages and it was so funny. A couple of the songs had better end up getting officially recorded at some point, because they were so funny. Brilliant show from start to finish.

- Jordan Brookes – Fontanelle

This was the first show I saw at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I got there on Sunday evening, saw this show on Sunday night, and then went back to the Air B&B to sleep before I started my full days in Edinburgh. At the Air B&B that night, I wrote a post that said I was genuinely a bit worried I’d made a mistake in putting Jordan Brookes first on my schedule, because that was so fucking fantastic that it’ll set the bar too high for everything else. Jordan Brookes was waiting outside as we emptied the room, to hand out flyers and stuff, and as we walked by, the audience member in front of me told him, “I’ve been coming to the Fringe for twenty years and that was the best show I’ve seen here.” I thought… yeah, I’ve been coming to the Fringe for about 90 minutes, but I feel like I could come for 20 more years and wouldn’t outdo that.

They gave him the award too early, I’ll say that much. It’s a shame that this show wasn’t eligible for the Perrier Award, because he already won it, for a show that’s on NextUp and is very good, but isn’t as good as this one. He has a few shows on NextUp, I like them all quite a bit – that’s why I bought a ticket to see him live – but this was his best one.

There was so much going on in it. Costumes and props and music and lighting cues. Background dancers (including one of the guys from Crizards, whom I was pleased with myself for recognizing because I'm quite bad with faces). The premise was that he’d written a musical about The Titanic, and every time there was even the smallest risk of a lull, he’d launch right into something high-energy about a musical, before going back to intellectual ruminations on societal conceptions of masculinity. It went dark in places, but that never felt like it was for shock value, it was just seamless. It was this whole big production, but at the same time it felt intimate and personal. This had the feeling to it of a masterpiece, a magnum opus.

Fun comedian-spotting side note – Jin Hao Li was in the audience when I saw it, conveniently seated across from me in the seating that went along both sides, so I could very easily glance at his face any time. Which I probably did too often, because I was interested in how an actual comedian was receiving this, and I suppose because I was interested in the validation of knowing whether my favourite comedians share my taste in comedy. I’m pleased to say that every time I looked over, Jin Hao Li was dying laughing, probably enjoying it even more than the rest of the audience, which was a lot.

- Sarah Keyworth – My Eyes Are Up Here

I’d heard a few earlier versions of this show, but the most recent was when they filmed it for Access Festival in January, so it had a lot of time to grow between then and August. It’s been on some international tours, won the Champion of Melbourne Award, developed over eight months. And that showed. I thought it was a very funny show even in its earlier forms, but by August the routines had been polished, the narrative was more coherent, the jokes sharper and even more had been added, and it was a beautiful piece of work.

It is so funny. The joke rate is really high, they’re all good. There’s a big variety of types of jokes, from quick little gags to drawn out, well set up ones. I think that really sets this show apart from similar ones. I hate it when people say things like “Oh, comedy doesn’t have to be funny anymore, you can just be emotionally moving and people like that now.” Because lots of emotionally moving shows are also funny, otherwise they wouldn’t be good comedy.

But I will admit, sometimes, the really emotional shows are probably, overall, less funny than ones that focus only on humour. Which is why I’m so impressed when I see one like this Keyworth show, that had a really moving emotional arc and covered their personal experiences with significant political issues (ADHD and top surgery/non-binary identity, primarily, which I feel weird calling “political issues” because it’s someone’s life, but those are big contentious things right now where voices of lived experience matter), that spoke touchingly about the importance of family and inter-generational connection and had an appropriately emotional conclusion, and when I look back on what that show did to me, I remember it making me properly laugh almost constantly.

Okay, I have one tiny issue. There was one joke in earlier versions of the show (they did this joke when they streamed the show for Access Festival, so I assume it’s okay to refer to it, as they chose to film that joke, it’s not just some WIP that they later scrapped), where the target was Ricky Gervais. In the Edinburgh version, they kept the joke but made it about transphobic Netflix comedians in general, and cut the references to The Office. I would love to know why they did that, because I thought the joke worked much better the first way. But that’s the only thing that I thought changed for the worse. Every other part of the show got even better.

This show deserves all its accolades, Sarah Keyworth deserves all the accolades, it felt like a privilege to sit in a darkened basement and get to see it live. Also, fun comedian spotting: Jordan Brookes was in the audience with me. I didn’t realize he was there until after the show when I saw him in the crowd emptying the room, but I heard him talking to some people about how good it was.

9.5

- Amy Gledhill – Make Me Look Fit on the Poster

I watched the NextUp stream of this show on the day that Amy Gledhill won the Perrier Award for it (or you know, whatever, Champion of Edinburgh), and I could immediately see why. Actually that might not be quite true – I made the mistake of going in thinking “Wow, show me what made this one better than the other, like, thousand eligible comedy shows in Edinburgh this year”, and that’s not the right way to go into a show. The opening routine was funny but not instantly groundbreaking, which led me to wonder why this isn’t the best fucking thing I’ve ever seen. And then I caught myself thinking that, told myself to knock it off and stop buying into fake award hype and just enjoy a comedy show on its own merits. And then it got really, really good. It got better and better as it went along, I got really drawn into the building narrative, it all came together in a strong and emotional ending, and by the time it was over, I found myself saying, “Wow, I see why that won the award.”

I hadn’t seen her perform solo before this, but I’ve seen and really enjoyed all the Delightful Sausage shows on NextUp (okay, if I’m honest, I’d really enjoyed two of them and the third not so much, but I’d enjoyed those other two a lot), and I think those skills really came through in this. It was just an hour of straight stand-up, but it felt more theatrical that most straight stand-up hours. Her facial expressions, her act-outs, and just her stage presence. Her ability to keep a crowd’s attention, to be playful and interesting no matter what she’s talking about. Those felt like the things she does in sketch to make the narrative more compelling, and it was interesting to see it applied to stand-up.

- Dan Rath – Pariah Carey

Holy God, is he ever funny. Some of the material was recycled from last year’s show, I’m Not Doing Well Folks (which is free on YouTube and excellent), but I didn’t even mind because so much of what’s funniest about Dan Rath his stage presence and delivery. He does a lot of one-liner-type jokes, stuff that should get less funny when you know the punchline, but in his case I could watch him say this stuff over and over and it’ll still be funny because of how he says it. And the majority of the show was new, and also funny. Dark, fucked up humour, but the kind of dark humour where he’s the target of every joke (so, not that thing where edgy comedians just say racial slurs and then say “sorry you don’t understand my dark sense of humour”).

At one point he asked me my job, and I said autism therapist (which is true), and he’d just done a bunch of jokes about how very autistic he is, and he did a whole riff about how I’ve come to get him, and then he tried to have a further interaction with me but I was too awkward for it, and he asked “Do you have what your clients have?”, and I said “Yes” before realizing he meant that rhetorically, which sort of made his point.

- Kiri Pritchard-McLean – Peacock

Probably the closest any Edinburgh 2024 comedy show came to making me cry. It came so close. It might have… I might have had, like, one actual tear in my eye, near the end. Blinking it away so people wouldn’t see me cry in a big theatre. And it was a big theatre. Kiri Pritchard-McLean is too famous for this festival, she did three nights in the Pleasance Grand with her name in massive lights behind her and a blindingly sparkly dress, it felt glamorous and exciting.

The show’s topic was one close to my heart, about how to be an adult who raises kids and teenagers while not being their biological parent. It’s not exactly my experience, as I’ve never been a foster parent, and that’s what the show was about. But so many of the themes and messages resonated with me so much, from all my years coaching, about how to be a mentor a safe place for youth who need it and might not get it from their biological parents. How to find fulfillment in a rewarding experience like that even if you don’t want to do the biological parenthood thing. And I don’t want to do the biological parenthood thing, but a couple of weeks ago I went to the wedding of a guy whom I started coaching when he was fourteen years old, and now he’s 27 and on his wedding day he hugged me and told me he’d not have got here without my support and that I was his rock in his teenage/early twenties years, and I told him I wouldn’t be able to be any prouder of him even if he were my actual son, and it was fine that that made us both tear up because it’s a wedding, a normal place to cry, rather than a theatre where a woman in a sparkly dress is talking about the code name she used with her foster kids.

…This one hit me too personally for me to be able to talk very well about the show itself, rather than veering off into my own stuff that it brought up, but it was such a well put together show. The type of comedy hour that just constantly signals experience and professionalism from the person who wrote and delivered it. Polished, coherent, confidence. Took what could have been a really boring topic, the admin involved in navigating the social care system, and made it consistently funny. And took what was always going to be an emotionally affective topic, the reasons to work in the social care system, and hit all the right emotional notes without once feeling over-wrought.

I’m so glad that my 5 days (plus one evening) in Edinburgh overlapped with Kiri’s three, this one was worth taking the opportunity to see live.

- Marjolein Robertson – O

This was a rare chance I took on someone I knew very little about before this. I’d heard a few short sets that she’d done on mixed bills, and I’d liked them well enough, but little 10-minute things aren’t really the way to appreciate a comedian like this one. I’d read a lot about how great her 2023 stand-up hour was, so I figured I’d buy a ticket for her 2024 one and hope it’s true that she’s very good.

It was true. Whatever my expectations were, she exceeded them. I didn’t know the topic going in, so I was immediately surprised by (I assume this isn’t a major spoiler, I’m pretty sure the synopsis is easy to find) realizing she was going to spend the whole hour talking about menstrual complications (that seems like too small a term to describe some of the quite severe health issues she discussed, but she also discussed the issue more broadly). I initially thought, “Wow, you don’t hear much about that in comedy.” And then I thought, “Hang on, it was a stereotype for years that female comedians only talk about periods.” Marjolein even addressed that stereotype in her show, in a moment that got one of the biggest laughs out of me that I got from the whole festival.

But 1) Obviously that’s bullshit, some female comedians made a few jokes about periods and then they got defined entirely as that by misogynists who think even two minutes on the subject is too much, and 2) Yeah I’ve heard a few period jokes before, but not like this. I’ve never heard any comedian address it like this. This took on an incredibly weighty subject (not that menstruation has to be an inherently weighty subject, but it is when discussing a possibly life-threatening medical condition associated with it), and handled in a way that gave it its due seriousness while still being funny at regular intervals. I say “at regular intervals” because yeah, this show had times when it would go a few minutes without being funny. It had to, for the whole thing to work. But those few minutes would always hold your attention in some other way; they’d be interesting (giving me information I didn’t already know about medical situations, or Scottish legends), or scary, or sad, or occasionally heartwarming. And she used that brilliantly to highlight the funny parts. Playing with tension, turning it all the way up for the serious bits, and then getting an even bigger laugh for her next joke because she had so much tension to release.

I was captivated from start to finish in this show. Any time there was any risk of a lull, she’d launch into some mythology, and then bring it back around. I guess the mythology bits could maybe have been integrated slightly better into the main themes of the show – I could see where it was going by the end, but not always in the middle. I don’t know, that’s a tiny nitpicky thing because I felt like I had to find a flaw in it. It’s a very good hour of comedy.

- Natalie Palamides – WEER

Fucking brilliant, obviously. Should probably be rated even higher than this, really. It’s probably the most impressive display of talent that I’ve seen in the entire festival, one of the most impressive displays of talent that I’ve ever seen on a stage. It’s theatre, rather than just comedy (I don’t know where the line is between a play and a narrative comedy show, but this was definitely a play), but it was still frequently funny.

I wasn’t planning to see it until the last moment, because I enjoyed the two shows that Natalie Palamides has filmed before – Laid and Nate – but they also made me feel weird and uncomfortable with the nudity (entirely my issue, not anything she did wrong – I just do not have Theatre Experience to be chill about a naked person on stage), and creeped out by the puppets, and I was sort of glad that I watched those alone where I could curl up in a ball of discomfort, rather than in a theatre full of people. But a friend of mine gave this show a very high recommendation to me, and I figured this is the type of thing that’s better for a live experience, so I may as well take the chance to see her. I bought a ticket a few days before I arrived in Edinburgh.

Natalie Palamides plays both the man and woman in a romcom, half her body dressed/made up as one and half as the other, constantly switching which half of her is facing the audience so she can play one and then the other as they interact with each other, and that sounds like the worst thing in the world if done badly but blindingly impressive if done well, and this was the latter. Very much the latter. I was occasionally distracted from other aspects of the play, by just marveling at how impressive the situation was. I don’t really have enough Theatre Experience to have a proper informed opinion about this play, beyond “fucking hell, that was impressive”. She did get naked at one point but at least I was expecting it this time and I did not curl up in a ball. I’m so glad I saw it live.

9.25

- Ed Night – The Plunge

This show was not in a glamourous theatre. It was in a cramped, small, dark basement that smelled bad. And I don’t know how to make it sound like the high compliment it’s meant to be, when I say that is the perfect venue for Ed Night. It’s almost a shame that he’s so talented he’ll probably get too successful to play a room like that soon. But it’s only almost a shame. It’s not quite a shame, it’s actually a very good thing. Because I have now spent several years rooting for this guy to get famous.

I wrote this story out a few times during the posts that I hastily made from the festival itself, but I’ll write it again for this one. I first discovered Ed Night a few years ago, when I made the very ill-advised decision to watch every episode of Roast Battle UK, one of the worst guilty pleasure shows I’ve ever seen. “Guilty pleasure” probably isn’t an accurate term, because I didn’t even enjoy most of it. But there were a few that I found funny. And my favourite of the whole show was one with Huge Davies, a comedian I knew a bit, and Ed Night, a comedian I did not know at all. I looked up Ed Night afterward, and was disappointed to find he’s done nearly nothing else on TV or radio or recorded stand-up. I found a couple of really short sets he did on YouTube, liked those a lot, but there was no more.

For the next while, I kept trying to follow his stuff, and being annoyed that he wasn’t famous enough for me to see him from Canada. I could go see him in a club if I lived in the UK, but there’s an ocean. He started a podcast with Huge Davies and Sunil Patel, and I tried the first episode, but could not get through it. Maybe it gets good, I don’t know. I couldn’t get into it. And I hear it now involves making Ed Gamble read pornography on a podcast, as though someone else didn't do that 15 years ago, and do it so well that that idea's been burned. No one else could come close to matching that glory and shouldn't even try.

Anyway, Ed Night has that, and has a YouTube series about bad movies, but that is a topic that I care so little about. I just wanted to see his stand-up, to test my hypothesis, based on like 8 minutes of Roast Battle, that I bet I’d really like this guy, if I could see his actual work. That was the hypothesis, that I probably put way too much faith in, based on so little evidence. That he was both objectively good at comedy, and that his comedy would probably be the sort of thing that I subjectively like. I spent a couple of years rooting for his career to succeed as thought it were a sports team, hoping he'd get famous enough to record a special or something, but he didn't, so I had to go to him instead.

So when I got the chance to plan a trip to Edinburgh, one of the first tickets I booked was Ed Night, dedicating a whole primetime timeslot this guy I knew basically fuck all about. I nearly walked into him on the street outside the Pleasance Courtyard, a couple of days before I saw his show, and I had a moment of thinking… "Fuck, I had to cut so many comedians from my list of people to see, what if this guy is a waste of one of my precious few 7-8 PM timeslots? Can I really be sure he'll be worth it, just because I like that he referenced Pokemon in a Roast Battle?"

So after I actually saw his show, I was so fucking pleased to report that it turns out Ed Night is good at stand-up comedy. He could have been shit. Some people are shit. But he was so good. So good that I bet he’ll get famous soon, and then there will be more stuff by him that gets released in ways that I can see it from across the ocean, and that’ll be convenient. But I’m glad that before that happens, I got to see him in a small cramped darkened basement, where his style of comedy clearly belongs.

It was funny, and, as I’d suspected, the specific type of thing that I like in stand-up. Very dark, but not in a racial slur way. On the contrary, sprinkled with angry left-wing sentiments (I wouldn’t call it political comedy, but it was sharply opinionated and on the left side of whatever political issues did come up). Reminded me of Dan Rath, in some ways, with its level of darkness of his stand-up persona being extreme low status, but with Dan Rath it was more obviously a character, while with Ed Night… I mean obviously it was curated, but it felt more real.

It was about mental illness and physical illness and anxiety about the future and dangerous dogs and death and caregiving and the healthcare system and he found some time to talk shit about Tom Binns, a fairly left-field target but one that’s definitely worth shit talking. He got a Pokemon reference into a suicide joke, which is right up my alley. It was also surprisingly gag-heavy, they were constant and sprinkled around all the pessimistic rhetoric and you can tell he’s spent a long time crafting this show to get as much as possible out of every minute.

I think my description of this show has been longer than my description for any of the others so far, and I really have to start cutting these down soon because there are 65 shows on the list and if I continue at this rate, this post will technically qualify as a novella. But I needed a long time to explain this one, because I need one thing to be very, very clear: my decision to watch Roast Battle has now been artistically justified. It’s not an awful guilty pleasure, it’s the way I discovered a guy who turned out to be very good at stand-up comedy, so it was actually a good decision for my overall experience of art.

- Emma Sidi – Is Sue Grey

This is another one where I took a bit of a chance on someone I didn’t know well. I knew she was supposed to be good, she did amusing characters on YouTube, she did good acting on Starstruck, she hung out with Rose Matafeo so she had to be all right, comedians I like rate her. I was trying to expand my comedy horizons a bit, figured it would be a safe bet to go with her as a way to experience character comedy. Plus it was advertised as something political, and while I can’t stand it when people say “PoLiTiCaL cOmEdY iS dEaD nOw” as though Andy Zaltzman and his entire Bugle empire just doesn’t exist, it is true that political comedy’s not as common as I’d like. So I booked a ticket (booked it just before the Taskmaster season 18 lineup spoilers came out, which I’d like noted for the record so I get credit for jumping on the bandwagon before it was cool, if only just).

It was so much fun. From start to finish, it was huge fun to be in that room. I must admit that about five minutes in, I was thinking… “Okay, this is funny so far, but surely she can’t keep it up. Is it really going to be an entire hour of just this one character? She can’t have a whole hour worth of material on this.” But she did. It never felt, to me, like a sketch stretched thin across an hour (though I’ve seen some reviews that say it was, so I guess your mileage may vary, if your mileage is incorrect). It felt like she had more ideas than she knew what to do with. She took us through the history of Sue Grey’s career chronologically, which I liked. It gave the narrative a coherent arch. She threw in all these different things, water cooler audience participation and weirdly hilarious Spanish bits and this surreal thread with a dwarf, that kept it feeling fresh to me, like it wasn’t just the same stuff repeated.

And the ending really got to me. I’ll admit I’m a sucker for a good ending; I’ve probably come away from some stand-up shows thinking they were better than they really were, because the ending was better than the show and that’s what forms the lasting impression, and I will fall for that trick if it’s executed well enough. I don’t think that’s what happened here. It’s now been a couple of months since I saw the show, I have enough distance so if I was just taken in by a manipulatively strong ending, I’d have noticed by now, as I look back on the whole show. It was all good. But that ending did work on me.

I guess I’m not supposed to write the details of what she did at the end due to spoilers for a touring show (I’m not avoiding spoilers altogether here, but I try not to go too heavy on them), but I have to say, she brought it all together, she suddenly and really sharply brought home the way that these fun sketches represent real things and it’s affecting real British people’s lives, and it wasn’t long after the election when I saw this, and I’m not even British but I’ve been invested in their politics for long enough to feel the emotional weight of that too (and I can relate, Canada’s had its own struggles with long-term Tory rule, and alternatives-to-Tory that are weak centrist bullshit), and I thought that was a pretty powerful statement to make on this particular summer. Which is why I don’t understand all the reviews for this show that say it was a fluffy character piece but missed the opportunity to make any actual satirical points. Maybe Steve Bennett and I saw different shows.

- Laura Davis – Albatross

Okay, for real this time, I need to start making these commentary sections shorter. Laura Davis writes brilliant poetic comedy, and I need to apologize to them for using that term because they complain in the show about people who call their stand-up poetry, but they also complain about pretty much every way this show could possibly be described, they’re not leaving us much. I’m pretty sure it is, in fact, a show about loneliness. And it’s poetic as fuck. It’s atmospheric. It’s so atmospheric.

I think it might fall just barely short of being my favourite Laura Davis show, just a notch behind If This Is It, but God, that is a high bar. I think it probably surpasses their other stuff, and their other stuff is really good too, but Albatross feels a bit like the show they’ve been trying to write for years. The atmosphere. The brilliant, engaging atmosphere they create, with stories of walking alone at night and staring at the abyss in the ocean. It probably helps that I, personally, romanticize the ocean a lot. I’ve spent many of my favourite hours of my life staring into the abyss of the ocean, and Laura Davis perfectly captured how it feels to look out and feel like you could be swallowed up by it. By the ocean, and by the information in the world, and all these other themes that came together brilliantly.

The stories about their childhood were poignantly relatable. The stories about feeling an instinctive dislike for people who can have fun in public but then feeling guilt about that dislike and trying to understand it – that was poignantly relatable too. And the stuff about dead birds on the beach. Atmospheric as fuck. I want to live in the world that Laura Davis sculpted for me.

I try to avoid the temptation to just reflexively compare everything good in comedy to Daniel Kitson. Laura Davis is the person with whom I have the second most difficulty in avoiding the comparison. The person with whom I find that comparison most difficult to avoid is Alice Fraser, who unfortunately was not in Edinburgh this year. But the end of this Laura Davis show had me really thinking of some of the old Kitson shows that end on a bit crescendo, like Impotent Fury of the Privileged or even It’s the Fireworks Talking. I’m just big on shows that metaphorically take you to the ocean and throw it all at you.

And it was also funny. Okay? Things can be poignantly relatable and atmospheric and also funny. It made me laugh. Laura Davis is really good at this.

- Sheeps – The Giggle Bunch (That's Our Name For You)

This was another “take the chance to see it live while it’s there, and broaden your horizons beyond straight stand-up” gamble that paid off hugely. I had heard some Sheeps stuff before and found it funny, and I like Liam Williams a lot from his other work (Ladhood TV/radio, Pls Like, that one stand-up special he did for the BBC), but to be honest I didn’t know Sheeps well enough to expect this one to be a standout. Luckily, my expectations were significantly exceeded.

Every sketch was funny, which was a good start. I always think of that Mitchell & Webb sketch when I see sketch shows, and it’s pretty accurate, they’re almost never all hits, even the good ones. But I think this Sheeps show was. Obviously some sketches were better than others, but all of them made me laugh at some point, none felt like they were just filler.

There was a fairly ambitious one near the end where they were doing some sort of anti-humour thing about AI, which got deliberately unfunny at times and then got funnier again as they ran the joke further and further into the ground, and to be honest, I’m still not sure what I think of that one. It was either a genius bit of writing and the best bit of the show, or their only miss. Probably the first thing, I think. It’s hard to tell.

But aside from that one sketch, every other one was straightforwardly good, accessible, funny. There was a bit of political stuff. There was an emotional arc that had the twist being, as far as they presented it to the audience, true (I mean, I assume stylized for stage and stuff, the same way that truth gets stylized in straight stand-up, but it was apparently an accurate representation of their professional relationship, which isn’t something I’d normally expect to see in a sketch show). Whether or not the “true” bits were objectively real, that heightened the impact, I think. The result was a collection of (mostly) unrelated funny sketches, and an emotional throughline with a big conclusion at the end. The way all those things came together was amazing, I felt like I was watching something really polished and great. Overall, it was just great.

- BriTANick – Dummy

It was so fun! It was like high school! In the best way! Not in the way that the comedy quality was as though a high school student made it. In the way that it immediately brought me back to when I was in high school, trading memes and College Humour videos with my friends. Not that this was meme-quality humour either! It wasn’t, it’s the College Humour that it reminded me of. Cracked. That stuff. Their opening song was so much in that vein, it immediately put me in the frame of mind to enjoy that sort of thing and remember how funny that very silly style of comedy can be, and then they kept it up for an hour (well, 45 minutes).

It was another sketch show with an overarching narrative, though this one was entirely fictional, and absurd, to the point where it didn’t really work, but intentionally so. Like, the plot not working was the joke. And it doesn’t sound like that joke should be funny, when I write it like that. But it really was.

The individual sketches were also funny, they way they’d start out as one thing and inevitably spiral into the confusing messing of the overarching plot. This might be really specific to my high school experience of being into the types of comedy these guys did, but hearing this type of thing again made me feel like a teenager, and laugh like a teenager, and it was so well written and just enormous fun.

- Guy Williams – This Glass House Makes It Easy to See All the Cowards I'm Throwing Stones At

I have already established – long established, repeatedly – that as much as I’d like to be someone who says “I’m not into that shouty comedy, I just don’t think you need to be so brash to be funny”, my list of favourite comedians shows the opposite is true. I fucking love having my own political views shouted at me aggressively from someone who will cathartically give me a break from the relentless efforts I make to try to “be fair” to the other side. See the one person on this list whose show I rated a 10. See Tom Ballard, a couple of spots down from this part (same rating, just lower alphabetically, I sorted the spreadsheet by rating and then by comedian first name, I know how to make consuming art fun). And see Guy Williams. So they can be British, Aussie, Kiwi, doesn’t matter. As long as they will shout my own political opinions at me in a cathartic way. (They do not have to be men, either, but unfortunately Josie Long did not arrive at this festival until after I’d left.)

I think the most impressive thing Guy Williams achieves with this show is managing to be genuinely edgy from a left-wing perspective. There are so many comedians out there claiming to be edgy. Most of them are right-wing edgelords, saying “Sorry you don’t have a dark enough sense of humour to appreciate my racial slurs.” Some of them are left-wing people saying “Fuck the queen of England – oh, sorry if that’s too offensive for you,” while speaking to an audience of people who clearly are not fans of colonialism. Guy Williams is a very rare person expressing views that made me say – “Okay, if you start saying ‘Sorry this material might be too edgy for some people’, that would be fair enough, he’s earned that.”

There were some genuinely interesting ideas in this show, like some stuff about reversing the mathematical formula for comedy + time = tragedy – a bit that I wished had gone on longer because I thought he was on to something cool with that. There was also a bit about Cat Stevens’ music that probably went on for slightly too long, but he delivered it with so much enthusiasm that I stayed on board anyway. There was probably the best Ricky Gervais joke I’ve ever heard (as in jokes about Ricky Gervais… not by him), in a festival where I heard quite a few Ricky Gervais jokes (even though Keyworth cut theirs, there were lots of people referencing him).

This show didn’t feel nearly as polished as most of the great shows at this festival. I have tried to work this out, but I cannot tell how much of that was a master of the craft intentionally making his work look effortless, and how much was genuinely shambolic. Doesn’t really matter though, since it was all so funny.

- Mark Watson – Work-In-Progress Is Not a Cop-Out, It Demonstrates Respect For The Paying Audience

This was billed as work in progress, as per the title, and it was certainly more like an actual WIP than the other half of Wumar, who turned up with a show he’d been perfecting all year and stuck a WIP label on it. But this was certainly not an early WIP, as most of the material in it was stuff I heard Mark Watson do at Access Festival in January (though it’s improved since then). So it was material that he’s been working on for a while, but performed in a room with literally 37 seats (I counted them), and for not very much money, due to its WIP status. It was the first time I’d seen Mark Watson live, after being a huge fan of lots of his work for a long time (don’t think about the cheating on his wife thing don’t think about the cheating on his wife thing, we’re just trying to have nice things here), and it was pretty cool to see him in a room that small.

It was really funny. I’ve got to admit I’d kind of forgotten, by the time I saw that show, how very funny Mark Watson can be. I like Mark Watson a lot as one of the more intellectual comedians; he’s so good as an interviewee on podcasts and things, because he’s so thoughtful, speaks so insightfully about aspects of the human experience that I find really resonate. I find him inspiring, the way he talks candidly about even the less savoury sides of anxiety, like bitterness and envy and frustration, the way he talks about alcohol and mental health stuff that makes me feel less shitty about my experiences with that, if someone as smart and talented as him can describe those same experiences with it (don’t think about the cheating on his wife thing just let us have nice things). But in the midst of this, it had been a little while since I’d watched his actual stand-up, and I think I forgot how purely funny he can be.

I was very much reminded of that in this room of 37 people, around the corner from the actual Stand, upstairs in a weird room where you could hear all the traffic outside. I laughed so hard, almost constantly for a whole hour. I’d heard a bunch of it before from Access Festival, but there was new stuff, and the older stuff got polished, and there was more of an arc to it. I could see, during Access Festival, where this might be going – bringing overall themes about the disconnection in technology and AI. By Edinburgh that was even clearer, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it’ll end up once it’s all integrated.

For ages, he has been mentioning on podcasts and things that he’s scared of thunderstorms and thinks that should be considered a normal and reasonable fear, that it’s weird that people are considered an anomaly if they’re scared of explosions and fire in the sky. Which I have been saying for years, but obviously I haven’t been saying it in a way that’s as articulate or funny as the way Mark Watson says it. I even once cut out a clip of Mark Watson discussing this on a podcast and sent it to my mother, to back up my side of the argument that we’ve been having since I was a teenager, where she says “But thunderstorms are fun!” and I say “No they’re terrifying and it’s weird that not everyone thinks so.”

I’d heard Mark Watson say this on podcasts before, hadn’t heard him say it in stand-up, until this stand-up show. Where he asked the audience if anyone’s scared of thunderstorms, and I said “Yes” – I swear I wasn’t trying to draw his attention to me, but I assumed lots of people would say “Yes”, and my voice would be lost in the crowd. Instead, I was the only one who answered, because I’d kind of forgotten that there were only 37 people in the room. So Mark Watson pointed at me, said “Thank you” for being one of those few people to agree with him about thunderstorms, and proceeded to do a whole routine on thunderstorms, in which he kept pointing to me and saying “Me and this woman are the ones in the right, by being scared of them.”

And that was... look, I know we’re not supposed to parasocially put our favourite comedians on pedestals or else we’ll get all disappointed when we inevitably find out that they cheat on their wives and stuff. But that was fucking cool. Mark Watson looked at me and it was fucking cool. Okay? Let me have nice things.

- Tom Ballard – Good Point Well Made

I’d never noticed, before seeing this show live, that Tom Ballard is too big for a room. Too tall, shoulders too broad, he could barely fit onto that stage in the cramped basement. His delivery style didn’t help, waving his arms around, reaching up in the air, leaving forward to yell at people. I even saw him live in Montreal last year, but for some reason, he didn’t seem quite so larger than life at that time. I really noticed it this year, though. He was everywhere. Loud and relentless and in your face and all over the stage.

I have a friend who very much dislikes Tom Ballard’s comedy, and I’d wondered why someone would reaction with such a strong dislike to Tom Ballard, even if you’re not really into the material. But after seeing him live in that cramped basement, I get it. If you like that stuff, it’s great. If you don’t, it would be overwhelming dose of stuff you don’t like, and would be incredibly annoying.

Luckily, I love that stuff. Tom Ballard cathartically shouted my own opinions at me at top volume for an entire hour, but shouted them in a more articulate and funny way that I could manage. Took my opinions that I find exhausting day to day, to walk around carrying the weight of these frustrating fucking opinions that put me at odds with everyone I know, and Tom made them into something that could make me laugh, that made me feel connected rather than alienated.

He was furious, talking about a specific political situation in Australia, but putting it in a way that will be relatable to anyone who’s seen a vote by their fellow citizens make them realize what kinds of people they share their spaces with (not that it needs that broader relatability, really, as that one Australian situation is bad enough to deserve its own focus). But his underlying thesis was a broader one, about wanting the left to stop trying to moderate its opinions in the name of reaching across the aisle, about how fucking cathartic it is to say “Actually I’m right and your opinion does make you a bad person because it’s racist and racists are bad.” I don’t even realize how tiring it is to try to “be fair” and not say that stuff all the time, until I let a comedian take that burden off me for a bit.

This show recycled a little bit of material from his 2022 show, about how right-wing people aren’t listening to us and aren’t making art because they’re too busy running the world, so left-wing people should probably stop considering whether we listen to enough right-wing people when making our art. I did not mind that material getting recycled at all, because 1) it’s stuff I liked a lot and was happy to hear again, every time I lament the fact that I don’t live in this mythical “liberal bubble” that sounds like a great place to live, I think of Tom Ballard shouting about how the liberal bubble is actually great, and 2) it fit really well into the thesis of his 2024 show, he’s developed the idea a lot further than he had a couple of years ago, and I liked seeing that get developed.

The whole show was a great time. I even managed to stop and the end and briefly speak to him, something I almost never do because the thought of speaking to famous comedians terrifies me, but he was waiting outside the venue after the show with a bucket, and I was able to hang back so I’d be at the end of the line and wouldn’t hold up other people, I gave him some extra money even though of course I’d paid for a ticket, and I told him how I saw him live in Canada last year and loved it but I think this was even better, and it was a great time and he’s so cool and very nice to meet him! And he was so nice. It was actually weird, after the hour of high-energy aggressive shouting, how different he was out-of-persona outside, came across as really humble and asked me what my name was and thanked me for coming. It was cool. I was glad I did it.

8.75

- Catherine Bohart – Again, With Feelings

Well, at some point I’d started to succeed in keeping these commentary passages short, and then they got long again. There are 65 of these fucking shows, this isn’t sustainable. However, the ones I rated between 9 and 10 were the ones I felt the most strongly about, so those will mostly be the ones I have the most to say about. They need to get shorter after this. Like. Significantly shorter. I have a life to lead.

This hour was very funny. Catherine Bohart discussed topics that are not at all relatable to me, about long-term relationships and considering parenthood (even her stuff about being gay was not all that relatable to me, as most of it was based around being one of those gay people who actually has relationships on a regular basis), but that made it more impressive to me, because it made me laugh so much, and if someone can make me laugh with material I do not personally relate to,

- Chris Cantrill – Easily Swayed

I’m going to copy some stuff from a Tumblr post that I wrote right after watching this show, to save me a bit of time:

I didn’t know what to expect when I went into this show, given the offbeat Delightful Sausage, but this was straight stand-up. Stories about his life, told as himself, but he did wear a cape for much of the show, which made sense in context. It hit some themes that chimed quite well with me at the moment – depression and the loneliness of old friendships deteriorating as you get older. So it got a little dark at times, but it never felt very dark, and it ended on a note so hopeful that I may have been briefly, genuinely moved.

This was one of those stand-up hours where you can feel how competent and experienced the person who put it together is. It was paced really well, everything felt like it was in the right order and it really built up and came together nicely. I love how easily he could move between whimsey (there was some stuff about Medieval fantasy lands in there), straightforward storytelling, and occasional breaks to add something like a political opinion or a fact about history. All the different types of material flowed so well that none of the seams felt jarring. It felt honest about depression without seeming overwrought or overly emotional, which is pretty impressive.

He dropped little threads early on that I’d assumed were nothing but came back unexpectedly, and I always like that. He had so many little ways of describing things that I’ve found myself going back to in my mind, I feel like this is going to be one of those things where a year from now I wonder why I use a certain turn of phrase when I talk about certain things, and then remember I heard it in a Chris Cantrill show.

And I love how much care he took over all the people in his story, who were mainly his friends. That seemed like his skills as a sketch comedian coming out, he could make all these people come to life in the stories; I ended up sympathizing with everyone and getting really invested in all the different things that were going on. He’s spent all this time in Delightful Sausage making fictional characters seem real, and he continued that in such a lovely way when telling us about people he knew.

This show had, you know – heart, or whatever would be a less cheesy word to describe that.

- Milo Edwards – How Revolting! Sorry To Offend

More political comedy, in an era when supposedly political comedy is dead. I don’t know if this show is quite as good as Voicemail, my favourite Milo Edwards show, but that’s a fucking high bar. This one is certainly a close second for my favourite Milo Edwards show, it’s sharp and clear and goes into uncomfortable territory but deals with it deftly – all the stuff Milo Edwards does best. This is a weird comparison and I don’t know if it makes sense, but I sort of think of Milo Edwards as the edgy intelligent analytical comedian that Alfie Brown wanted to be, and maybe would have been if he weren’t such a dick.

This latest Milo Edwards show is almost entirely about class, a topic that frequently gets referenced in British comedy, occasionally gets lampooned for a few minutes, rarely gets truly examined. It has more explicitly political material than some of his previous stuff, the joke rate is very high, and they’re consistently good. Great show.

8.5

- Eleanor Morton – Haunted House

This show started a little bit slowly, I was slightly disappointed for the first five minutes or so. Because the room promised a lot – there was a funny and atmospheric ghostly recording playing as we walked in, there were candles and an intricate dollhouse on stage, Eleanor came out dressed dramatically in white. And then she started some somewhat conventional material, when according to the setup, she should have started floating through walls and stuff.

However, it started getting better very quickly, and snowballed that way until I was utterly captivated by about 20 minutes in, until the end. She had some really interesting stuff about being from Edinburgh and having her colleagues all descend upon her hometown for one month of every year, during the festival. I found that a really interesting perspective, and one I had been wondering about, how someone from Edinburgh feels about the festival every year (according Eleanor Morton: frustrated that her complex city gets reduced to touristy stuff like Harry Potter and ghost tours; according to an Uber driver I asked: nice to get the extra work; according to the woman who ran my Air B&B: incredibly annoying as there’s nowhere to park and too many people around to run errands in town).

She slowly brought in this other thread, about the sexual predators who are all over comedy, and I thought she came up with some really interesting ways to weave that around her theme of ghosts and haunted buildings. She said something that Guy Williams had also specifically mentioned, which is that everyone at this festival says we have to do something about predators in comedy, but everyone is also aware that there were comedians performing at that festival that month, and no one had done anything about it. She told a few specific stories but named no specific names.

It all came together really nicely by the end, the stuff about Edinburgh and about ghosts and about dangerous people, and I found the very end pretty emotional, as she talked about wanting to protect her city and her friends and her colleagues in her own home. I don’t know how well this show would travel outside Edinburgh, but performed in a darkened basement during the Edinburgh festival with the candles and the dollhouse and sort of surreal, outside-the-real world feeling of the entire festival (a feeling she addressed repeatedly), it was a very good show.

- Jin Hao Li – Swimming in a Submarine

Okay, I’m going back to keeping this short again. So short. Super short. There was really ambitious structure here that hit all the cool notes that he couldn’t have gotten to any other way. It was ethereal, mesmerizing, in a way that just enhanced the jokes because the laughs were bigger when we were all too mesmerized to expect them. Like an edgier Johnny White Really-Really, which is a fascinating thing for a person to be. I could listen to Jin Hao Li talk for hours. I want him to be my nephew, I think.

- Lou Wall – The Bisexual’s Lament

Blinding, lightning-paced show that really needs to be seen in person to have any chance of taking it all in. Dealt with some very heavy topics without ever getting over-emotional, jumped around from idea to idea, was consistently funny enough to distract us from how fucked up the subject matter was, though every once in a while they’d bring that back into focus, quite effectively. There should be no way to do a routine about Facebook Marketplace that’s at all interesting anymore, but Lou Wall managed to find it, I can’t believe I’m staying this but holy hell their Facebook Marketplace material was funny. All their material was funny, except the stuff that was harrowing, and that was successfully harrowing. Fun comedian spotting: Rhys Nicholson sat behind me during this, so you know it’s a cool show.

8.25

- Jonny & the Baptists – The Happiness Index

I saw them in a circus tent-like room, with about 20 people sparsely scattered across benches. I’d never seen them before (I bought the ticket on the strength of: 1) political comedy is not dead and I wanted to see as many people as I could who were out there proving it, and 2) Josie Long likes him so he has to be all right), but then since then I have bought four of their albums off Bandcamp, so that tells you something about how much I enjoyed this hour. It felt like a proper “experience the Fringe” moment to sit in a circus tent sparsely populated by about 20 people, and watch Josie Long’s life partner and his friend’s little brother (I also listened to their ComCom episode after seeing them, apparently that’s how Jonny Donahoe and Paddy Gervers met) perform what was ostensibly a musical version of Shakespeare, but was in fact a detailed, chronological, musical critique of how 14 years of Tory rule had dismantled the NHS and arts funding in Britain.

…The above paragraph is unnecessarily dismissive, reducing the whole thing to a twee novelty, when actually it was a well-written and well-performed hour with funny songs, touching moments of friendship, and a genuinely important political message/call to arms that was delivered well.

- Melanie Bracewell – Attack of the Melanie Bracewell

I’m vaguely paranoid to write her name here because she is one of the very few celebrities who are actually on Tumblr, but I’ve probably buried this enough so that it’s all right. I was sure what I was expecting from this, knowing Melanie Bracewell only from Taskmaster (though since this I’ve gone and watched her YouTube special), but I enjoyed this a lot. It’s almost all one story, which I generally like in a comedy hour, if they have enough material to fill an hour of one thing. In this case, the story of trying to retrieve stolen air pods. Which I expected to just a storytelling device, a story where the message is that sometimes you don’t get closure, so I was surprised and quite entertained when this turned out to be a full narrative with an ending and everything.

I won’t spoil more than that, I guess, but it was fun all the way along. The story had twists and turns and I was genuinely invested, in addition to enjoying the jokes and everything else. There was an underlying message about standing up for yourself and things like that, but it was mostly just an interesting narrative with solid humour and engaging personality. Good stuff.

- Pierre Novellie – Must We?

When I made a spreadsheet like this for the 2023 Edinburgh Festival (which I didn’t even attend in person, but some shows got streamed or otherwise put in forms where I could hear them, and those still had to be tracked, there’s no point to consuming art without spreadsheets), I gave Pierre Novellie’s show Why Are You Laughing? a 9.5, and it is still one of my favourite stand-up shows I’ve ever heard. This one had some of the same type of stuff that was so good in the previous show, it just felt slightly unfinished comparison. Pierre Novellie even addresses that within the show, saying he’s been writing a book and touring his previous show and had so much else on that it was hard to write a whole new hour at the same time. Which is fair enough – his book is great, everyone should buy it, but it was pretty dense in places and must have taken a lot of time and effort and stretched him pretty thin.

There were a lot of funny individual bits, but they didn’t come together as well as they have in some of his previous shows (not just his 2023 one, but the 2022 one on which he based his book). He had an ending routine with some deeper stuff behind it, and I thought that had a lot more potential than he actually got from it, it felt slightly tacked on. On the other hand, it made me laugh repeatedly, and he also said at the beginning, quite correctly, that it’s odd that “It was just a funny hour of comedy” can be an insult (or at best, damning with faint praise). This was a really funny hour of comedy, which is why I’ve still ranked it above most other stuff I’ve saw, I’ve just unfairly spent most of this description explaining why he’s come down from a 9.5.

This was a funny hour of comedy. No need to mitigate that. He had some good jokes about food, and I normally dislike jokes about food, but his were so good that I liked them anyway.

- Shenoah Allen – Bloodlust Summertime

These are getting long again, I need to curb that. This was an hour of trauma. There were frequent jokes within the trauma stories, and they were funny. I found myself thinking he could have gone further in putting some overarching meaning or analysis into the trauma stories, but as Pierre Novellie would say, what’s wrong with just telling a bunch of good jokes? This had jokes and happened to also contain a lot of trauma, rather than being one of those “here’s a deep analysis of how my trauma’s affected me” shows. Which I think sort of surprised me, as I’ve been conditioned to expect trauma-filled comedy shows to go that way, and this didn’t. But it was funny, and fascinating, a complex look into a certain type of life. It was definitely not what I was expecting from a guy I know from an improv clown duo. It was not improv and it was not clowning. And to be honest, as much as I want to expand my horizons and appreciate experimental comedy more, I enjoyed this stand-up show way more than I’d enjoy improv and clowning. It’s very good.

- Stevie Martin – clout

A show about internet comedy vs. live comedy, the arbitrary nature of algorithms, the changing nature of the comedy industry as a whole with the rise of social media. A topic I find very interesting, and I know I’ve got some prejudice against the social media comedians, so Stevie Martin was a great person knock through some of that prejudice by putting a great show about how sometimes you do what you’ve got to do, social media-wise, but live comedy is hardly perfect either, and surely there’s room for both. This was incredibly well put together, with slides and videos and some props, I appreciated the way she used this to what a really dedicated comedian can do with technology. It consistently set up expectations and then subverted them.

- Susie McCabe – Merchant of Menace

Another show that’s mainly about class, this time told by a working class Glaswegian, who had observations on a lot of different areas of life that get divided by class, like schools and hotels and grocery stores and travel. Sharp observations, captivating delivery, especially impressive for a woman who had a heart attack about ten days before the festival. I’ve been a big fan of Susie McCabe ever since I first saw her on Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, I liked her 2023 stand-up special, thought this one was better. It ended on a poem, a really unassuming poem delivered in an even tone so the quality of the writing could speak for itself, and I love stuff like that. A really funny hour of comedy., and I don’t mean that as faint praise.

- Judi Love (MC), Ivo Graham, Sophie Duker, Jin Hao Li – ITVX Presents Live Comedy from the Edinburgh Fringe, 1x01

The only one of the NextUp mixed bills, streamed from this festival, where I enjoyed every act. Judi Love was all right, had some stuff I liked and some that I didn’t, but all three main comedians were really strong. Jin Hao Li’s stuff breaks down into shorter sets surprisingly well, for something with so much structure to the full hour. Ivo Graham, whose shows I did not see in Edinburgh but I heard a preview of his comedy one (he had two shows in Edinburgh this year, comedy and theatre) and it was one of the most boring hours I’ve heard in my entire life, so my expectations weren’t high for him, but on this bill he didn’t do any of the boring story from his comedy hours, he riffed a bit about previous events of the night and it was absolutely hilarious. Sophie Duker was fantastic, she was one of the comedians whom I regretted cutting from my schedule because I just didn’t have enough day to fit her hour in, but sample form it that she gave us here was so much fun and I hope she films the whole thing eventually.

- Lauren Pattison – Big Girl Pants

Copy-pasting from a previous post again. That’ll speed up the process a bit.

It started a little bit slowly, I wasn’t sure about it at first, but she quickly picked up steam and started building on stuff. By the end, so many threads had been tied together, and she’d made me laugh so many times along the way, that I was totally on board for her powerful ending. She did the requisite 40-minute-mark emotional stuff, along with a requisite self-deprecating comment about how she knows it’s cliché to go into an emotional ending at the 40-minute mark, but I thought she also had a very good justification for why she introduced the sad bit at that point in the story (basically, she needed to do all that buildup to give it proper context and meaning), and I thought it worked very well.

Obviously this is also personal, her themes hit some stuff that’s familiar to me, with anxiety and alcohol issues. But I think this show was really well put together no matter who the target audience is. It was smart and funny at the same time (difficult to do), it was structured nicely. It was dark at times but overall hopeful.

- Two Hearts – Til Death Do Us Hearts

Enormous fun right from the first moment, I loved the opening song and then was impressed that they kept up that energy. Most of the songs were good, they did a pretty good job of walking the awkward line that comes from mixing their work with their personal life so closely. It was a show about a wedding and a marriage, which is really not my favourite sort of comedy show, so it’s fucking impressive that they made a show that I liked as much as I did. Objectively this show’s probably about a 9; a show about marriage has to be pretty fucking good to get an 8 in my subjective rating.

- Zoe Coombs Marr – Every Single Thing in My Whole Entire Life

I’ve seen/heard three Zoe Coombs Marr specials before – Dave, Bossy Bottom, and The Opener. They were all ambitious, brilliant, some of my favourites. This one I was not as into as I was with any of those, but still pretty fucking good. If the weakest (in my subjective opinion) show I’ve seen a comedian do still rates an 8/10, they are quite a good comedian. It also had a cool and ambitious premise, putting Zoe’s whole life into a spreadsheet and letting the audience pick stories, but that last part is where it seemed to fall down a bit, as it basically came down to whether the crowd picked funny enough stuff. Which they did sometimes, but didn’t at other times. I really liked the overarching stuff in the show, when Zoe would veer off from audience-selected stuff to discuss, mostly, non-binary identity, their recent mental health breakdown, ADHD, and their love of spreadsheets. I’d have liked to hear more about all those things, but it was still a lot of fun.

7.75

- Amy Annette – Thick Skin

This has something in common with the Two Hearts show, which is that it had to overcome being not my sort of thing, usually, and still became a show I really liked, just by doing it so well. It’s a show about being a teenage girl in the 2000s, but from the perspective of someone who spent those years reading women’s magazines and having crushes on boybands and trying to fit in as a girl. And when I hear comedy material like that, it immediately gives me the anxiety of remembering my time as a teenage girl in the 2000s, where my mother really wanted me to be that, and I wasn’t. And when people do comedy about it there’s often such a strong focus on the relatability of it all, the “the boys have dominated comedy for so long but now we girls get to talk about what our adolescence was like”, and because it wasn’t for me, that feels more alienating to me than hearing a male comedian talk about a male adolescence that I’m not supposed to relate to (though to be honest, male comedians talking about adolescence usually describe years spent being the nerdy kid in school and having crushes on girls who didn’t like them back, which is in fact relatable to me).

I don’t know how to write about this without coming off as a “Not like the other girls” internalized misogyny person. And I don’t mean to be that! I had a little while, when I was a kid, when I was like that. Because I’d see girls with the teen girl magazines, wearing makeup and shaving their legs and being into clothes and shopping, and part of me resented them for being the thing I was supposed to be, or even blamed them, like if they just wouldn’t do these things then my mother would stop expecting me to do them. By my late teens I got into feminist blogs and realized that that’s bullshit, obviously, and they didn’t have it any easier than I did. They were caught up in expectations too, they were navigating really difficult stuff, they definitely weren’t responsible for gender stereotypes. Some of them made fun of me for not wearing the right clothes, but lots of them were happy to get into buying particular clothes as their own hobby, and they didn’t give one fuck if I wanted to exclusively wear boys’ jeans and t-shirts that were several sizes too big for me, and if I resented them for that, then I am the dick in this situation.

I know that now, and in my twenties I made friends with plenty of girls who’d have intimidated me in high school, girls who wore makeup and wore girls’ clothes and shoes and read those magazines. But it did take me a while to get over my issues with them, and I really hate (I hate this about myself, that is, not that I hate the comedy or the comedians for it) the way when I hear a comedian talk about the “teenage girl experience”, especially if they’re around my age, it brings that back and I immediately feel defensive, like I need to justify that not all teen girls were reading Cosmo, even though obviously at no point has Amy Annette said that all teenage girls read Cosmo. She’s just trying to represent some experiences that were very common for many teenage girls and that don’t get talked about all that much (or at least, don’t get talked about in a way that really analyzes them and gives those girls agency and sympathy – they get talked about plenty by people mocking the girls for it), and that is a good thing.

Amy Annette does this thing when she comperes where she asks some woman in the audience what was their favourite teen heartthrob singer they had a crush on in school, and I always want to say “Well Amy, not every woman had a favourite boy band, some people spent their teenage years exclusively listening to Canadian folk music that was mostly made by people who were like 60 years old, and yeah I know that obviously if someone says that from the crowd they’ll sound like an asshole who’s ruining everyone’s by refusing to just play along, but this question puts audience members in a position where they have to either lie about listening to boy bands or ruin everyone’s fun, and it’s not like lying would be a big deal but being in that ‘lie or else you’ll ruin the fun’ position seems a lot like middle school, where I used to Google names of pop bands that I could say if people asked me what music I liked so I wouldn’t embarrass myself by listing folk singers, and I understand that this is cool and relatable for many women but it would be so easy to just ask them for their favourite singer as a teenager rather than making it so specific.”

Okay, those are a lot of reactions to Amy Annette that I have, automatically, due to my own baggage that has nothing to do with her, and isn’t fair to her, and it sucks that this tends to happen to female comedians more than to male ones, that they’ll run up against audience defensiveness because girls get pitted against each other so much that they have automatic defensive reactions to each other, in a way that can also happen with boys but not as often, and then I feel guilty for being part of the problem by having that automatic reaction. But anyway. Once I recognized that that reaction was happening in me again, and I consciously tried to stop it – I realized that Amy Annette’s show is actually a really interesting look at how things weren’t easy on any side, at school. Sure, some girls did not have their mother constantly asking them to start shaving their legs like I did, but they did have some horrifically toxic advice from magazines that they had to figure out at way too young an age, and with growing bodies that could be harmed by dangerous weight-loss culture. Most of them didn’t care what I was wearing because they were too busy trying to keep up with the expectations on themselves.

Amy Annette unpacks this in a way that’s deft, intelligent while coming off as playful and fun, and, once I got past the initial reaction, easy to understand even if it’s not personally relatable. The show is funny, it tackles important issues with a light and irreverent touch, it’s well done. And I’m sorry, Amy Annette, for the years of toxic baggage that meant I couldn’t just say that, instead of writing several paragraphs to navigate through all these other thoughts about some comedy routines on Cosmo magazine’s weight-loss advice.

- Dan Tiernan – Stomp

Okay, that last part was way too long. These need to be shorter. Dan Tiernan’s first hour, in 2023, was good and showed potential. I feel like his second hour develops that potential. Not fully formed, maybe, but more polished in a lot of ways, even while he’s still loud and jerky and way too intense (in a good, if you like that sort of thing, which I do). It matched the intensity of the subject matter, which managed to kick up a few gears from his previous show.

- Mat Ewins – Ewins Some You Lose Some

I should have enjoyed this more than I did. I enjoyed it, obviously, I’ve ranked it above lots of other perfectly good shows. But I know that objectively, as much as comedy can be objective, the thing Mat Ewins does is a extremely cool and exciting and should be rated as one of the best things at the festival. While for me, it was fun, and incredibly technically impressive, but I found that my most frequent reaction was thinking “Wow, that must have been difficult and taken ages to make.” I mean, I did also laugh. And it is my own fault for going to a show that’s known for audience participation, and then getting anxious about all the participation (I didn’t get asked to participate, which is good, but I also didn’t find that much enjoyment in the bits where others participated). It was good. But I didn’t quite get on board with the greatness.

To be fair to Mat, it was the last show I saw live in Edinburgh, and I was very sad about having to leave the next day, so I may not have been fully in the mood for this brand of silliness. I might have enjoyed it more earlier in the week.

- Paul Williams – Mamiya 7

I liked this. It was funny and the songs were fun. It was… I think I made the mistake of getting into this one right after Melanie Bracewell’s, as they were both about solving a mystery by tracking someone remotely, but her story had more to it, so his story seemed weaker by comparison. It doesn’t help that Daniel Kitson once did a show about coming across a camera and tracking down the person who owned it by the pictures in it. Not that the idea’s been stolen or anything – that Kitson show was only ever performed a few times in London and then for one month in the US so it’s very unlikely that Paul Williams has even seen it, and Kitson doesn’t own an idea that broad. The comparison just works out badly for Paul because you don’t want to go up against Kitson on any idea.

I feel like I should be really into Paul Williams’ work. He’s so very good on Taskmaster, and he does the type of nerdy, offbeat comedy that I like. I’ve tried to get into his music before, and that’s just stylistically not for me. While his comedy is… I liked his previous show, In the Moonlight, better than Mamiya 7. And I still liked Mamiya 7. I just don’t like either of them as much as I feel like I should. Mamiya 7 had all the good components, it had whimsical stories that came together nicely and were funny along the way.

I don’t know why I don’t fully connect with Paul Williams’ stuff. Mamiya 7 was good, but it did not turn me into a huge Paul Williams fan the way I’d hoped it might. I love him on Taskmaster, but when it comes to stand-up, to quote the latest NZ season, I prefer the touch of his brother.

- Stuart Goldsmith – Spoilers

Again I’m copy-pasting from a Tumblr post that I wrote just after watching this, to save time.

I like Stuart Goldsmith a lot, as I think he’s one of the best interviewers I’ve ever heard. Probably the best one I’ve ever heard, when it comes to entertainment interviewing. So many things make his podcast (the Comedian’s Comedian) so much better than other comedy interviews. He gets interesting stuff out of his guests because he’s so very informed, so knowledgeable about comedy in general and whomever he’s talking to specifically, so interested in what they have to say, so good at knowing when to add his own thoughts and when to shut up. He’s able to challenge them on stuff, to push back and ask for more detail or to call them out if they’re disingenuous, because he does his research so well. And he talks so insightfully about the processes in writing and delivering stand-up comedy, all the pitfalls and all the best parts. I figured a guy who knows that much about all that must be great at it. I was really interested, the first time I watched one of his stand-up specials.

And I was inevitably disappointed, because obviously that’s too high a bar for anyone to meet. It wasn’t bad. It was a pretty good hour of decent jokes. But I came away disappointed because he hadn’t managed to showcase all the greatest aspects of the entire form in a single set.

Months later I watched another one of his specials, this time with expectations recalibrated to a more reasonable level, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. He did have some good insights, in addition to a bunch of good jokes, he is good at comedy. He’s just not able to live up to what I’d imagined from his interviewing skills.

I knew this show, Spoilers, was supposed to be different from his others – he’d found a niche where he could stand out a bit, in doing a whole show about the climate crisis. I’d been curious for ages to see how he approached that, and now I’ve seen it. And it was… pretty good. Pretty good. It was a good show. It was much better than the many bad shows out there.

Once again, I realized my expectations were too high. Most stand-up hours are themed, but they’ll jump around for topic to topic. I figured a stand-up hour that’s so focused on one topic would have to go deep on that, wouldn’t it? I was looking forward to seeing how much research he’d done, how he’d managed to make all that funny, what new and interesting angles he had.

And that answer to most of that was, not much. I didn’t learn anything about climate change that I didn’t already know. I didn’t see a particularly new perspective. I did wonder if this might be one of those shows that was better in earlier WIP versions than the finished product. I’m thinking of Olga Koch’s current show, which I heard in a couple of early versions and I absolutely loved it, it was complicated and dense and fascinating, but obviously unfinished. I said at the time that once she irons out some of the thornier bits, it’ll be perfect. But then I’ve heard a very recent version, and I think it’s still very very good, but not as good as the earlier one. Because she had ironed out some of the denser stuff, but that meant simplifying things, cutting the more informative and nuanced bits where she couldn’t fit enough jokes. I think her current show, Comes From Money, is one of the best shows I’ve ever heard, in all its forms, and it probably deserves several awards. But turning something into a finished comedy show can dilute the most interesting parts, sometimes.

I have no particular reason to believe that’s what’s happened with this Goldsmith show, except that I feel like a few remnants of some early version might have been left in. Some references he made to how difficult he found it to make dry facts and depressing stats funny, how he’d tried to find quirky ways to make the research more palpable. Maybe this show did once have more of that stuff in it, and he cut it because it wasn’t funny enough. But I think that would make it more interesting.

I’m being unfairly harsh, again, because a guy who knows an incredible amount about comedy took on a very ambitious show theme and that set my expectations too high. It was a good show. It had a little more of what were my favourite things from previous shows I’ve seen him do – the parts where he goes deep into describing the experience of anxiety, and other difficult neurological things. I think that might be what he’s best at, in his own (non-interviewing) work. He’s great at talking about that stuff, finding angles from which to describe it that I’ve not heard before, despite how often it’s discussed in comedy.

7.5

- Caitriona Dowden – Is Holier Than Thou

Of the shows I saw in person, this was pretty much the only one where I took a chance almost completely “blind”. I’d never heard of her before I started looking up comedians who were performing around noon because I had that timeslot to fill on one day (because, to be honest, I heard a preview of Sara Pascoe’s show and decided I definitely do not need to use my noon hour seeing that live, I’ll watch something that at least might be good – nothing against Sara Pascoe in general, I like her stuff and that’s why I’d originally planned to see her in this spot, but my God, is her current show ever not for me). Caitriona’s show blurb seemed mildly interesting, so I looked her up, saw that this was her debut hour and she recently won a student competition. She seemed all right in one short YouTube set, and that was enough for me to put her on my schedule.

It’s probably the only show where I did the Fringe “properly”, using it to discover something totally new to me, rather than just as a chance to see Wumar in person (and I know I should have done more of that stuff rather than the Wumar, but the cross-Atlantic trip was a lot of money, too much money to “punt” on things that might turn out to be shit). I mean, I guess really doing the Fringe properly would be just wandering into something based on who happens to hand me a flyer, but every time I got handed a flyer, I cringed at the thought of being someone who plans a trip so badly that by the time I’m physically on the Royal Mile, there’s still room in my schedule for a flyer to make a difference.

Anyway. Caitriona Dowden was good. Not better than the well-established acts that I’m a big fan of, but better than all the shows that weren’t very good, and better than some shows that actually were pretty good. She had this really deadpan delivery that occasionally crossed the line into just seeming flat, but she was saying interesting enough stuff for that type of delivery to sort of work, a funny contrast to her material and she didn’t risk losing my interest. She had a solid premise, suggesting that she wants to get canonized as a Catholic saint and then going through how she could meet the criteria, which let her both weave in stories from her own life, and do esoteric material about Catholic doctrine. I enjoyed both those sides of the show, and how neatly the fit together. The whole show felt neat. They had a big thing of paper and marker instead of a projection screen, which combined with the small dark room behind a pub to give the whole thing a cool underground feel. I would be interested in seeing more stuff by her.

- Harriet Kemsley – Everything Always Works Out for Me

Again, I shall copy/paste some bits a previous Tumblr post:

I’ll be honest – I was a bit disappointed by this. I’d actually booked tickets to this one live because I had such high expectations for it, though I ended up skipping it when I learned that I could see it on NextUp instead (and by a nice coincidence, Harriet Kemsley happened to cancel the night I was going to see it so I got a refund). I was excited for it because I find Harriet Kemsley incredibly funny on panel shows, one of the funniest people they can ever have on. I watched her 2023 stand-up special Woman Child and thought it was pretty good, but I didn’t enjoy her as much as I do on panel shows. I found some parts of that show very funny, but other parts not so much, and the ones I enjoyed the least were the domestic bits about being married and complaining about her husband.

That’s not necessarily Harriet Kemsley’s fault; I happen to have fairly low tolerance for comedy about romantic relationships, unless they’re saying something really new. I think it’s very difficult to write an interesting or original show about that stuff when there’s so little that’s new to say. But I probably dislike that stuff more than is objectively reasonable, as it’s not relatable to me. I don’t do dating and hardly ever do relationships, and when comedians talk about that stuff, I usually have the same reactions as when people in my real life talk about it, which is – you know you don’t have to, right? Yeah, all those aspects to dating and relationships and weddings sound really annoying and frustrating. Just don’t do it then, if it’s that bad.

I have heard some great stand-up hours about dating and relationships, but they are far outnumbered by the shit ones. I tend to be more partial to their opposite. Breakup shows can be boring for similar reasons – it’s such a common topic that it’s all been said before – but at least those make sense to me. Someone tells me how much something in their life sucked, I think “Well stop doing it then”, and then they tell me they did stop doing it and here’s the story of how that happened. It seems like a reasonable course of action, so I can enjoy the show about what a reasonable thing they did.

So for all those reasons, when I heard some Harriet Kemsley material in early 2024 about her recent divorce, I suddenly became much more interested in seeing her in Edinburgh. It sounded much more fun to hear her complain about her ex-husband, than to hear her complain about her husband. And not just because I have also always found Bobby Mair fairly annoying. I’m always down for a breakup show.

And the breakup show parts of this were fun. A lot of it was fun, it was a good show. Just not quite as good as I was expecting, largely because there were so many dating stories. How do people have time for so much dating? I found those really boring, and there were a whole bunch of them. All the stuff about dating that needs to be said has already been said. People don’t need to say more stuff about it.

But some parts of this show, like the previous show, I liked a lot. The stuff about her own mindset, letting us in a bit on what’s behind the extremely daft panel show persona, was interesting and got very funny at times. There was some gossipy stuff about a book that I assume was the Seann Walsh one, though I don’t care quite enough to actually look it up, and parts of that were quite funny though other parts dragged a bit. I liked some of her stories about trying to awkwardly co-parent post-divorce.

So it was a good show, but it wasn’t quite the show I was hoping for. A lot of the most interesting threads, like what goes on in her mind to make her this way, or how her divorce might connect to those things, were sort of left hanging. And it’s her choice and totally fair if she didn’t want to go that deep into some of those things, but that did leave her show a bit more broad and not as compelling. But honestly, I think I’d have enjoyed the show a lot without the dating stories. As it was, I still enjoyed the show quite a bit, but there were too many parts that dragged.

- Rob Auton – The Eyes Open and Shut Show

I like Rob Auton; I’ve heard him do a few things that I found utterly brilliant, captivating, beyond whimsical and into immersive whisking me away through the worlds he created. There were several times times when this show achieved that, and it was wonderful. There were other, longer times when it was pretty good, not anything really special but nice, relaxing, whimsical humour. And there were a few times when it dragged for a bit and I had trouble maintaining focus on it.

This is a weird thing to be an issue, but – okay, I’m not good enough at parsing audio to be able to tell whether he happens to have the exact same specific accent as Alun Cochrane, or whether he has the same style of delivering material as Alun Cochrane. It’s definitely at least one of those things, and I think it might be both. I think it maybe has to be both, for hearing his voice give me such overwhelmingly strong “This sounds exactly like Alun Cochrane” vibes to actually be a distraction. Particularly because the material is so different from anything Alun Cochrane’s done (both pre-2018 Alun Cochrane, back when he was cool and quite funny, and the more recent Alun Cochrane, now that he sucks on a number of levels), so my brain is trying to enjoy the Rob Auton experience, but in this show he keeps telling us to close our eyes, and if I listen to him talk while I have my eyes closed, all I can think is “It’s fucking weird to hear Alun Cochrane be so whimsical.”

- Rosco McClelland – Sudden Death

This is one I watched just because it streamed on NextUp, as I’d never heard of the guy before, but I quite liked it. He certainly had an original angle for the show, discussing his very rare and likely fatal heart condition, and getting into some stuff that’s tough to even imagine having to think about, like how living with that condition affects his choices about relationships and potentially having kids. That's a fucking intense USP.

He also gets into some pretty hard-hitting political stuff. And yet, the show is funny. Dark humour, obviously, but not the racial slur kind, just the “I could die at any moment” kind. Puts all those racial slur-saying edgelord comedians to shame, with his level of dark humour. It made me laugh, it made me think, it made me uncomfortable, it covered some important issues. Good show.

7.25

- Stuart Laws – Has to Be Joking

I’ve felt for a while like I should like Stuart Laws. All the comedians I like rate him, he’s in the acknowledgements of everyone else’s stand-up show as a producer or whatever he does, and I got the impression that he’s the vaguely nerdy comic type I like, and he’s autistic. Because of this, I’d started watching some of his older NextUp shows a couple of times before, feeling like I should enjoy them. But for whatever reason, I failed to get into it, and never watched past the first five or so minutes. I’ve always assumed that if I gave his stuff more of a chance I’d probably like it, I just need to watch it at a time when I’m in the mood for something that might take more than few minutes to pick up.

So I watched his full show from 2024. And it was… fine. It was fine. Some parts were pretty funny. Some observations were interesting. It was well put together, structure-wise. It just… often felt like he had all the components of a good comedy show, and had put them together in a by-the-numbers way that worked, but never really took off. Which was the same feeling I got from his previous shows. I should really connect with his material, but for some reason I just don’t.

Maybe it doesn’t help that this was a show about his relationship? But most of it wasn’t even about that, it was mostly about going through life while autistic, which is obviously a topic that’s of interest to me. And I even liked what he had to say about it, this running metaphor about playing with all your cards once you know how your own mind works. I thought the metaphor worked, though it did feel slightly tacked on at the end, like he could have done more with it.

I don’t know what it was. Some of his jokes were funny. The thing as a whole just didn’t quite land for me. I still think I should try his older shows at some point, see if I can get into those more easily.

There’s some comedian gossip there too, as in 2023, American comedian Chloe Radcliffe streamed her Edinburgh hour on NextUp. I watched it, it was about how she cheated on all her partners because her dad didn’t love her. It was an interesting hour, I think, though I had to really work on the open mind thing to try to see that from her perspective (fair enough, some of my favourite comedians have cheated on their partners – realistically probably most of my favourite comedians have cheated on their partners and just choose not to tell everyone – though Mark Watson didn’t write a whole show trying to justify it). Though once I did that, it was an interesting show. In 2024, Stuart Laws wrote a show about how he also saw that Chloe Radcliffe show in 2023, and shortly after that, began a relationship with her, and wants to tell us about his new girlfriend and autism diagnosis. It was an odd perspective, the way he tried really hard to fuse those two concepts together. I guess it kind of worked.

- Elsa McTaggart – Caledonia

This was a concert of traditional Scottish music, not comedy; I’ve only included it in the spreadsheet for completism, so I can have all the shows I saw in Edinburgh on there. I mostly stuck to comedy on my Edinburgh schedule, but I was raised on folk music, particularly Celtic and Celtic-inspired stuff, have been a huge fan of Scottish folk music since I was very small, and I could not miss the opportunity to see some live during my first-ever trip to Scotland. This show was lovely, they played a few songs and tunes that I knew and some more than I didn’t, I liked them all. I nearly started crying when they played Dougie McLean’s Caledonia, as that’s a song that I’ve always associated with my grandparents’ house by the ocean in Nova Scotia. It was a nice hour.

- Judi Love (MC), Chris Cantrill, Huge Davies, Kemah Bob – ITVX Presents Live Comedy from the Edinburgh Fringe, 1x03

Chris Cantrill of course was good, Kemah Bob was great and made me wish I’d been able to see her full show (it was on my long list and I just couldn’t fit it into the final schedule). I was a bit disappointed that Huge Davies only did material from his 2023 show, even though I liked that 2023 show a lot, because he was another person who got cut from my schedule of people to see at the last minute (replaced with Natalie Palamides), and I was interested in seeing a bit of what he was doing this year, but he didn’t do that. I mean, what he did was funny – his 2023 show is on YouTube and it’s great. So overall the show was pretty good. I’ve rated it a bit lower than I’d rate any of the individual performances, because a cut-down set for a mixed bill is (almost) never as good as a full hour. But this was a pretty good show.

- Judi Love (MC), Colin Hoult, Josh Jones, Katie Norris – ITVX Presents Live Comedy from the Edinburgh Fringe, 1x04

I didn’t much like Colin Hoult’s set, though I might by biased by how annoying I find the Anna Mann character, so I was just predisposed to find Colin Hoult annoying too. Katie Norris I’d never heard before and I liked her a lot – that’s the sort of thing you want to get out of a mixed bill livestream, finding a new person to be interested in seeing more of in the future. Katie Norris definitely became that. And Josh Jones was pretty good, better than I’d been expecting.

- Elsa McTaggart – Hebridean Fire

This was another music concert, lovely Scottish traditional music that I’m really glad I saw live when I had the chance, included on the spreadsheet for completism.

- Judi Love (MC), Chloe Petts, Jack Skipper, Jason Byrne – ITVX Presents Live Comedy from the Edinburgh Fringe, 1x02

Chloe Petts was also on my list of people I wanted to see when I went into the festival, and I just couldn’t fit her into my schedule. So I was glad I got the chance to see her and I ended up liking her a lot, even more than I’d expected to. She was great. Jason Byrne was also pretty funny, better than I’d expected. Though I was basing my expectations on my previous knowledge of him, which is mainly from around 2006 (not that my previous knowledge of him made me think he was bad, just sort of solidly average), so it was nice to see he’s still fun. Jack Skipper brought the average down a lot, I could not stand that guy.

- Monkey Barrel Big Show – Garrett Millerick (MC), Alexandra Haddow, Micky Overman, Ed Night, Tom Ballard

Obviously I quite enjoyed Ed Night and Tom Ballard, particularly Ed Night, in this. I quite like Micky Overman and she made me laugh several times. Alexandra Haddow I found disappointing, I liked her 2023 show but this one wasn’t really for me. And I found the host incredibly annoying, which brought the average score down.

6.75

- Aaron Simmonds – Harry Potter or My Girlfriend... Who Do I Love More?

Now that I see this in the context of where I rated similar shows, I think I rated this one too low, it should be in the 7s somewhere. Because it was a good show and I had a good time there. It’s just that I went to see it because I’d enjoyed his NextUp special, Disabled Coconut, and then this show ended up being mostly recycled stuff from Disabled Coconut, with a few Harry Potter references tacked on.

He was open about that being a gimmick, and I think it makes sense. He said he was writing a show of new material that he’d do in the second half of the festival, after spending the first half doing a free show with the “Harry Potter” thing to draw in nerds who might not have heard of him but would like the “Harry Potter” in the programme and come check it out. And would hopefully use the exposure he got from that to bring in people for his new show later. It’s fair enough, especially since his first show was free (though of course I gave him some money at the end). I don’t know how that second show worked out for him because it started after I left the festival; I’d have gone to see it if I’d had the chance.

It's not a bad idea, probably, as a way to draw an audience if you’re not already really established. I mean, he’s not un-established, I watched his NextUp special because I liked him on The Russell Howard Hour, but he doesn’t have a lot of credits besides that. The Harry Potter thing was a gimmick but still used pretty well, he’d threaded the references throughout and tied them all together, rather than just tacking on a few mentions of it. And, as someone who was deeply obsessed with Harry Potter for several years of my childhood and knew all the trivia, I was pretty impressed by his knowledge of it; he wasn’t just using the popular IP, he had put in the hours on that. I was also pleased that he immediately clarified that when he says “Harry Potter”, he meant books, not movies. And of course I was pleased that he clarified quite early on, that when he says “Harry Potter”, he means intellectual property that he paid for years ago and the author in recent years can fuck off. That got a big cheer in the room, the crowd were clearly all on the same page as fans of the stories, not the author.

Anyway, it was a fun time to revisit my childhood in the Harry Potter fandom with all his references to it, and Disabled Coconut was a good show and it was fun to see that stuff again. He created a fun atmosphere in the room, and to someone who’s not seen his previous show, it would rank higher than a 6.75/10. I’d just heard the stories before.

- Bronwyn Kuss – Sounds Good

This was fine. There wasn’t a single joke in that made me really, properly laugh. But nearly every joke made me go “Oh, that was all right.” It was fine. I was pleased, however, to have further confirmation for my theory that there are no straight Australian comedians.

- Mark Silcox – Women Only

I wanted to like this one more, as he had an entertaining gimmick with the extreme deadpan delivery. He delivered this show like a lecture, where the joke was that it was presented in an intentional parody of a boring talk, with a slideshow. And there were times during this show when I found what he was doing quite funny. It’s just… maybe I wasn’t in the right mood for it, but he did such a good job of pretending to be boring that it was, at times, boring. When he had my attention, he made me laugh. A few times he got quite good laughs out of me. It’s just that much of the rest of the show dragged. It felt quite long and it was hard to pay attention.

6.5

- Tarot – Shuffle

I found a few of their sketches funny. I found a bunch of their sketches not funny. I wondered if my problem with it was just that I’m not into sketch comedy enough, but then BriTANick made me giggle like a teenage and I thought no, it’s their problem. It wasn’t awful overall, it wasn’t great.

Which is too bad because as I’ve said I like Kiri Pritchard-McLean a lot, and I know she writes on this sketch group. I don’t know any of the people who actually perform in the group, besides Edward Easton, who played James Acaster in James Acaster’s sitcom (and in Rose Matafeo’s sitcom). This particular show did not turn me into a fan of theirs.

- Thom Tuck and friends – ACMS

Thom Tuck was great fun. It was a cool thing in the middle of the night and it felt like experiencing the Fringe. Thom Tuck was great fun. Being there for all their little ACMS in-jokes was cool. Thom Tuck was great fun. Jin Hao Li came on first and he made me laugh so hard even though I’d already heard all his punchlines several hours before at his own show. Then a succession of other people came on, and a couple of them were all right but most I did not enjoy. I think that’s sort of what ACMS is supposed to be like, though, which is all right. I didn’t really mind the ones that I didn’t enjoy. Thom Tuck was great fun.

6.25

- Live from the Big Cave – Mark Watson (MC), Kate Cheka, Kate Hammer, Adam Knox, Oliver Coleman, Plastic Jesus, Aidan Sadler

I quite enjoyed Mark Watson. I’d never heard of any of the other performers. I liked a couple of them but wasn’t into most of them, I can’t remember which ones I did and didn’t like, and given how long I have already spent writing this post, I absolutely cannot be bothered to go back and check.

- Jessie Cave – An Ecstatic Display

Oh God, Jessie Cave. I’ve got to admit that I find both Jessie Cave and Alfie Brown, in some ways, annoyingly interesting, even though I do not want to. I do not watch reality TV, but occasionally being into the comedy of Jessie Cave and/or Alfie Brown is probably the closest I come to that.

…I nearly referenced Roast Battle just now, saying that being into their soap opera comedy is about on the level of Roast Battle in terms of stuff I’ve watched while knowing that this is shit, but then I remembered that they have, in fact, gone on Roast Battle together. And, fun fact, of all the UK Roast Battle couples (Sarah Keyworth/Catherine Bohart, Harriet Kemsley/Bobby Mair), they’re the only one that’s together now, so I guess they won Roast Battle. Good for them. Fucking hell.

I realized a while ago that if Alfie Brown were not a comedian, or some other public figure where we could recognize his identity, I’d probably assume Jessie Cave was a character. A young comedian who got her big acting break in Harry Potter, and then figured the best way to use that in her live comedy career would be to become her Harry Potter character on stage. She played Lavender Brown in Harry Potter – a character who’s been accused of being a misogynistic stereotype because she’s so over-the-top “girly”, and that’s connected to her being silly and airheaded, and the only time she becomes a major character is when she gets into a relationship where she’s a toxic possessive girlfriend. I would assume that Jessie Cave thought it would be interesting to just keep playing that character on stage, and to even give her love interest the last name “Brown”, as a little in-joke, that all she wants to do is marry him so she could have the same last name as her Harry Potter character. I think that sort of character comedy… it would get grating after a while, being a character who’s that annoying, but that could be funny for a bit.

But it’s not a character. I mean I’m sure it’s exaggerated and written for the stage the way any stand-up persona is, but it’s not a character. Because Alfie Brown exists and his stories match up with hers. I mean, I like the idea that Alfie Brown and Jessie Cave have been in a stable, happy relationship for ten years, and they’re just playing out this soap opera of a toxic relationship between two awful people, on stage/social media, because they realized it’ll generate no end of material for both of them. But that’s obviously not the case. It’s real, and that makes it seem like something that people shouldn’t just watch like it’s a soap opera.

So given all of that… I watched her 2024 show because it streamed on NextUp (I didn't actually pay money to see Jessie Cave of Alfie Brown in Edinburgh - when I say I find them weirdly interesting I mean I've occasionally spent a few minutes thinking about it, not that I'd ever actually choose to go see it, and in fact I almost didn't watch the Jessie Cave show when it streamed because I thought it would be bad, but I watched it due to my Edinburgh NextUp stream completism), and it was better than I expected. My expectations were very low, and Jessie Cave exceeded them. It had some interesting observations, some insights into why someone would stay in a situation like that. Some descriptions and observations that I find deeply unrelatable, but that became interesting in its own way, trying to understand such a person, as she opened herself up to show us what it’s like.

It definitely didn’t make me laugh at any point. But Jessie Cave is clearly a talented writer, performer, and storyteller, and that came through, even if the material was fucking bleak. It was interesting to watch. I think I might have enjoyed this a fair bit, if I’d thought it were fiction.

- Stephen Buchanan – Charicature

Scottish guy I’d not heard of before, who streamed his show on NextUp. It was okay. It had a gimmick where he kept switching between himself on stage and videos of stuff he’d filmed beforehand, with a “twist” ending in which it all came together, which was kind of fun. A lot of the material that got slotted into that structure wasn’t stuff I enjoyed much, but the structure was fun. I found him likeable.

5.75

- Seymour Mace – Seymour F*cking Mace You C*nts!

I wasn’t in the right mood for this one. I put it on my list because I wanted to try to expand my horizons and understand the alt-comedy clowning or whatever, but I also put it on the last day of the festival when I was sad about having to leave soon, and that is not the right mood for enjoying this extremely silly show. There was only one part that I properly liked, which was a game near the beginning that people played with the word “cunt”. That was the highlight, it was downhill from there. There were several puppets. I do not like puppets. The overall energy was fun at times, but I wasn’t into it.

- Tony Law – The Law Also Rises

Before he went right-wing, I felt like I should be able to enjoy his stuff, he’s the cool alternative guy that Stewart Lee likes. And I didn’t hate it, I sometimes found him funny, but other times I had to try to see what’s funny about it, because as I’ve said before, I am not a cool person who always “gets” alt-comedy stuff. Then I found out he’s in with the Comedy Unleased crowd and I stopped feeling bad about not always understanding his schtick.

If I’d been more on board with his persona from the beginning, I probably could have enjoyed this show. It only had a couple of references to how the woke cancel culture nanny state are ruining our lives, so I guess that could have been worse. I genuinely did try to watch it with as much of an open mind/lack of prejudice due to his political views that I could manage, and because of that, I did find a few bits of it funny. It’s certainly interesting, what he does. But overall, not for me.

4.75

- Anesti Danelis – Artificially Intelligent

A guy I’d never heard of who streamed on NextUp. It was a show about AI and internet comedy. Some of it he claims was actually written by AI, and even if he was lying, just making that claim (in a way that didn’t seem to be joking) was enough to knock my rating of the show way down. It felt like internet comedy trying to be live comedy – which, to be fair, can be fun. I did not find it fun in this instance.

4.5

- Kavin Jay – Unsolicited Advice

A guy I’d never heard of who streamed on NextUp. Did a lot of material that felt pretty hack to me, very little that seemed original or interesting in any way.

3.75

- Dan Willis – Cobra Kai, the Way of the Comic

It could have been good! I can think of so many ways that this show could have been good! There are so many ways to tie the themes in Cobra Kai into real life, in interesting and insightful ways. The inter-generational trauma, the complexities of interactions across socio-economic class, the role of sport in society, the transcendence of high school stereotypes, the way our past always shapes our future, the changing media and cultural norms that shows in the differences between the original movies and the TV show a few decades later, and that’s just for a start. But he didn’t do any of that, which made me mark this show down even lower than it maybe deserved, because I was so annoyed about the wasted potential. It was just a gimmick to get in fans of Cobra Kai, like what Aaron Simmonds did with Harry Potter, but unlike Aaron Simmonds, this wasn’t a way to advertise another show, and it wasn’t wrapped around a bunch of strong material. It was just the gimmick, wrapped around boring material. And, unlike Aaron Simmonds, he didn’t even impress me with especially in-depth knowledge of the source material.

3.25

- Takashi Wakasugi – Welcome to Japan

A lot of material that I’d expect to hear from a comedian who was doing a parody of the hack, overused observational stand-up comedy tropes from 30 years ago. Except this wasn’t a parody. There were so many observations about food, and I so don’t care about food-based comedy.

- Some Theatre Kids – NewsRevue

I found this as un-funny as some of the other shows to which I’ve given low ratings, but I’ve rated it even lower than them because I also found it frustrating that it tackled such serious issues so badly. It’s one thing to make boring observations about sandwiches or whatever, it’s another thing to do bad parodies of political issues that have ruined and cost innocent lives. I love political comedy, and I don’t know where the line is between “using humour to skewer bad people and policies and ideas in politics”, versus “treating serious situations like a joke”. But this felt like the second thing, and I really disliked it.

…I feel bad for writing that when it was just young people making theatre and I'm really not the target audience for it. I mean it streamed on NextUp so it's got to be fair game to critcize, but still, I'm sure there are people who like this sort of thing. Also, I really can't justify why I think it's all right for people to shout my own political opinions at me in a political stand-up show but it seems crass to display them in a musical, so, you do you, I guess.

2.5

- Michelle Shaugnesy – Too Late, Baby

I hated this, but now I sort of feel like I probably hated it because I’m too judgemental, and I feel bad that I was mean about the theatre kids before, so I won’t be mean again and go into detail about why I hated this. I actually also did go into that detail in a Tumblr post I wrote right after I saw it, no need to get into all that again. It wasn’t my thing.

- Bonus list: shows that are not on the spreadsheet because I haven’t heard versions of them that were performed at the Edinburgh Festival, but I have heard versions that were performed quite near the Edinburgh Festival, so no far off from were like in Edinburgh.

Shows that I thought were good:

- Olga Koch

Incredibly intelligent show about a complex issues that still managed to be packed with good jokes, criminally overlooked for awards this year, I thought.

- Greg Larsen

Some material recycled from his last couple of shows but I didn’t mind because that material was so funny, also lots of new stuff that was also funny, his usual level of dark and consistently hard-hitting humour.

- Fern Brady

Interesting and funny observations that make me laugh in autistic perspective.

- Patti Harrison

Wild, off the wall hour that did not slow down and made me laugh repeatedly.

- Guy Montgomery

Just enormous fun, observational comedy/wordplay, and describing it that way should mean it's conventional and boring but it's so much the opposite of that, so much fun, I really enjoyed it.

Shows that I thought were not good:

There are a few in this category, shows where I heard a preview and thought “I have no desire to see that again”. I’ve already referred to a couple of them, but I figure there’s no need to list any others, as I already feel bad for being a dick about the theatre kids and some of the other shows that I didn’t enjoy. So I’ll leave it at this.

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historicallyaccuratecheese · 3 months ago

Text

Hey! So…I’ve basically been trying to figure out how to go about continuing my tma posts these past few weeks. As I said in an earlier post, I plan to put out shorter posts that basically contain bullet points of my thoughts and theories, provided I have enough to justify such, and maybe make some longer analyses if I have the time, energy and inspiration.

However, with my school year beginning in like…a day from now, I’ve still been pretty busy and haven’t had much time to both listen to tma and sort out how I want to go about these posts going forward. So until then…here’s basically everything I worked on before I made the decision to quit these longer-form posts! I’ve decided that I don’t want all of the time spent writing this to pay off so…here you go!

This will be the final post on tma of this fashion I make, covering my thoughts on Episodes 81-84. …Not a very climactic one to end on, I know, but what are you gonna do? Fight me? Kill me? I DARE you. I FUCKING DARE YOU! YOU HEAR ME?! I AM NOT KIDDING AROUND!!!

…sorry about that. Anyways, as always, please don’t spoil anything beyond this point for me, don’t read this if you haven’t gotten this far in tma, please read the seven posts that precede this one if you’re going to read this one, and all trigger warnings for everything in tma up until MAG 84 apply! Hope you have fun reading! :) (also yes, as always this is very long, so please take breaks. It’s not as long as the last one since it’s unfinished, but…pretty close.)

Link to the post explaining the changes I’m planning to make, which in turn links my masterpost:

- Episode 81, A Guest for Mr. Spider 🥀

Statement of Jonathan Sims, regarding a childhood encounter with a book formerly possessed by Jurgen Leitner. Statement recorded by subject.

I...uh... I...I...wow. That. Um. I just. I...still can't really believe I heard all of that. Um...I mean, I guess I was right when I said that Season 3 would premiere with some pretty big changes, but...damn, they really couldn't give me a break to start off, could they? Like, Anglerfish and Too Deep, while still pretty damn plot relevant, are ultimately used for the purpose of easing you into the status quos of their respective seasons. But this? Yeah, good luck handling THE ARCHIVIST'S TRAGIC BACKSTORY right after Brutal Pipe Murder! Just...oh god I'm in for a lot this season, aren't I? But that is absolutely not a problem, because...holy shit, this episode is...kind of perfect? Like..it is just absolutely everything I could've asked for, and then some. I'm very hesitant to just outright claim this as my favorite episode, both due to recency bias and also the fact that...I still feel like I might need to adjust to the whole vibe of Season 3 first, but like...I would not be surprised if this came out on top for me, because...it's just that phenomenal. It's so beautifully written and narrated, every line feels like it carries so much weight to it. Even though I didn't know what I really wanted out of Jon's backstory, beyond him just...having one in the first place, this episode STILL gave me everything I think I could reasonably desire from it. And like...oh my god, THE CONNECTIONS?! Well, ok, as far as I know the episode doesn't really connect to any previous plot points in any super explicit ways, beyond the obvious exceptions of Leitner and The Spider, but like...still! There's so many odd little anomalies that feel like they're all connecting back to a bunch of different things, and to be completely honest...I feel like this episode had reframed the way I look at so much of tma up until this point. I guess that's to be expected...but WOW. It just...this one went so above and beyond in so many ways, and I absolutely loved it. It terrified me, it left me in awe, and now I am silently anticipating and dreading what the rest of this god-forsaken podcast has in store for me. I...honestly don't think I'll be able to cover everything this episode has in it. Not only because I feel like there's so many little details hidden here that no one could possibly notice at this point in the story, but also because...well, I'm already kind of overloaded with all of the blatantly super important stuff in this episode, and when you add on the fact that i'm still kind of reeling from The Librarian two weeks after listening to it, and how I still feel kind of in the dark as to...what Season 3 will even be like, and...yeah, I can't trust myself to be 100% comprehensive here without writing another novel. God, I HOPE this post isn't another novel. Like, I love this episode more than my non-existent children...but I'm going to need some downtime sooner rather than later. So uh...yeah, just don't expect me to nail down every detail in this work of art, and DO expect me to make references to this episode in a lot of future segments, because...I have no doubt that it's really important, and that I'll probably come to a lot more realizations about it later down the line. Well...I don't want to draw this out much longer, so let's just begin!

Ok...I think I'm in a clearer state of mind now when it comes to The Librarian. Don't get me wrong...a LOT is still playing on my mind. The books, the downfall of the library, Leitner himself, the nature of the institute, the information on Micheal and The Distortion, the lore on Gertrude, everything we learned about Elias, the hints towards The Unknowing, just...all of the insane worldbuilding given by the explanation of ✨the horrors✨, and of course...the sound effects which I can only assume represent Elias trying to get something that's stuck in a vending machine out by violently shaking it. To be honest I'm still absolutely feral about all of this...but the best thing I can do right now is recognize that it's in the past. It happened, it was insane and definitely remains important...but I just need to push forward, focus on the present, think about it when it's relevant, and just try my best to accept the new status quo. Speaking of which, how about that new status quo? Well...as I said, it's still a little bit hard to pin down, hence why I'm still trying to adjust to Season 3, and why I...still can't definitively say whether or not The Librarian works as a season finale, although I'm like...90% sure it does at this point. I should note, however, that I have actually listened to the Season 2 Q&A, and the Season 3 trailer. I'll...discuss the latter when I feel like I'm more able to, but from the former, I know that Season 3 will be bouncing between Jon's place of hiding and the institute. While I don't know at what frequency, nor do I...really know what's going on at the institute beyond the vague hints of the Season 3 trailer, I definitely think it's the best course of action for structuring this season either way. But uh...for now, we're looking at Jon.

So...yeah, as expected, he fled the institute after discovering Leitner's body in his office. Now, we don't actually learn where he even is until the very end of the episode, which....certainly kept me on the edge of my seat all throughout, but for now...I just want to analyze what his absence from the institute even means. On a more meta level...I mean, it's certainly going to shake things up. While THIS episode might be a statement like always...it's a very clear exception in the fact that, well...Jon himself is the one giving it. It's not like he has access to an archive of a bajillion old statements to read in his current location, and with the technical exception of one person, it's unlikely that anyone will be coming up to him, fully aware that he's Head Archivist of The Magnus Institute, London, at least nowadays. So...my question is, if we're still going to have a decent focus on him this season...what are they even going to do with him? While the current situation at the institute is still somewhat unclear, I get the feeling that we'll still be having classic statements in the episodes take place there, since...well, with the exception of whatever eldritch Eye servant shenanigans come with the title, anyone can fill Jon's role as Head Archivist as long as they have the...normal qualifications. (Side note, the idea of getting episodes without Jon in them, while kind of sad since I've grown very attached to him and it'll be weird to not have him around, is also very exciting to me, since it likely means that Martin, Tim, and...hopefully Elias will get more fleshed out this season.) But...what does that mean for Jon? What in the hell does the story plan to do with him going forward? I just.....AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH!!!! If I had to guess...maybe we'll just get to see him explore the world or something? I'll go into why a bit more later, but I have some decent reason to suspect that this season will...probably show us a good amount of the people we've only heard of in statements, but now in person. Even if he still has a...primary place of residence, at least I think, this new format gives Jon an opportunity to explore the world and encounter things we've only heard whispers of before. This is even...kind of hinted at by Elias in his pre-pipe conversation with Leitner. Well...getting back on track, what does being away from the institute mean for Jon in terms of...like, the lore?

Well, to start off...there's some obvious danger that comes with such a thing. As we know, the institute comes with....certain protections from the paranormal for its employees, ones that aren't offered out in the wild. Elias...might have hinted that Jon will be fine in one way or another, but like...he might have been referring to Gertrude instead? I don't know...that whole scene was really vague. Either way, even if he's not at a risk of death...Jon is still in much more danger than he usually is, not only because of all the monsters that might have easy access to him, but also because he's a suspected murderer, and...well, like I said, I'll talk more about it at a more appropriate time, but...from the trailer, we can tell the law is definitely not intent on letting him get away easily. There's also the matter of his...seemingly complicated relationship with his one and only ally at the moment (...it makes me very sad to know that him and his assistants are in direct opposition to each other now), but...we'll get to that when we get to it. Another thing that makes me curious is how this works wit the whole..."you can't quit the institute" thing. Now, granted, Jon is...definitely a bit different from most of the other people in the institute, and we've only really seen this strange quirk of the place affect Tim...but the fact that Jon is also incapable of firing people makes me think that he's also probably subject to this same rule. So...how exactly is he capable of staying away from the institute? Sure, he didn't officially resign, he just up and left...but surely that shouldn't be allowed, right? Well...what if the one keeping people trapped in the archives is making an exception? You see, while I definitely think the...power of The Eye is involved in the inability to quit, I don't think The Eye itself is the one enforcing this rule. I mean, Leitner kind of suggests that ✨the horrors✨ are...mindless, or at the very least do not function under anything similar to a human mind, and despite The Eye kind of having this...god of knowledge vibe going on, I don't have much reason at the moment to think it's an exception to the rule. However...someone who does have a human mind, someone who has a human will, someone who can wield The Eye's power...maybe they could prevent people from quitting. So...yeah, I think Elias is almost certainly the one responsible for preventing his employees from quitting. I mean, not only does the man seem to be in complete control of the institute, but him killing Leitner shows that he is...especially concerned with making sure everything goes according to...whatever the hell he's planning, and he is more than willing to remove obstacles from the equation. And given how instrumental the archives specifically seem to be to his machinations, I think it makes perfect sense for him to want to prevent people from quitting. And if you recall, while his main reason for murdering Leitner was to hide information and prevent the destruction of the archives, he framed Jon not only to save his own hide, but also because for whatever reason...he WANTS Jon to leave the institute and see the world. So...I don't actually think that the rule against quitting will affect Jon (whatever the consequences to breaking the rule even are), as chances are Elias is deliberately letting him free for...some...reason. ....God he is an anomaly. And...that also makes me think that he might secretly sabotage the police's manhunt for him but...that's neither here nor there. There is...one other thing that grabs my attention when it comes to this new status quo...and that's what it has to do with Jon's status as "The Archivist".

So, Jon outright calls himself the "Former Head Archivist" in this episode (which felt REALLY weird by the way, as did the re-recorded voiceover for the intro)...but I don't think he's entirely right to call himself that. Well, ok, he's right in a way. Even if he hasn't officially resigned from his job, he clearly has no intention of doing said job anymore. He's not in his office reading statements into his tape recorder anymore, (well...with the obvious exception of this episode), he's on the run and doing his own thing, and while I still think he'll be using the recorder, because...you know, it's the whole damn framing device for the story, you can't exactly not use it, I think it's more likely to tie into his desire to not have his story lost to future generations, rather than his previous need to record statements. When you look at his job as just...any other ordinary job, I'm sure someone else will fill his position at the institute, whether it be Martin, Tim, Elias, or someone else entirely, which is...honestly kind of cool...but also just makes it even clearer...HOW different things are about to become...oh god. But...that's the thing. Jon's job...isn't entirely normal. Someone else can probably fill the...regular parts of his position, all they need to do is read and occasionally listen to spooky stories, and then send out some assistants to do the field work. But that's about it. We know from The NotThem that the title of "The Archivist" is more than just a fancy thing for Jon to put on his desk. The title...has great meaning, we don't know WHAT it means at all...but it has purpose, it represents Jon's significance in the greater narrative, it tells us that he isn't just some poor sap who got wrapped up in this whole mess by pure circumstance, but rather a key element in the complex machinations of the story. And...the same probably applied to Gertrude as well, at least for a time. I think this title of "The Archivist" has something to do with...him being "claimed" by The Eye. You see, this episode later makes a pretty big distinction between what it means to be "touched" by one of ✨the horrors✨, and what it means to be "claimed". To be "touched", is...seemingly what happens whenever you come into any sort of contact with them, usually by simple bad luck. An example of this includes what we later learn happened during Jon's childhood, and in my opinion, I think that Tim, Martin, most likely Sasha as well, and really anyone who's ever worked in the archives, or even the institute as a whole, has been "touched" by The Eye. They've encountered it simply by...working at its place of power, and while it can exert some level of control over them (...keep that idea in mind for later, along with the idea that it's not something exclusive to The Eye, because...it will be important), as seen through it preventing Tim from quitting...that control is not nearly as great as what happens when you are "claimed" by one of ✨the horrors✨. I think that to be "claimed" is...what's happened to all of the freaky people. Jane, Mike, Jared, Agnes, Raymond, Simon...the list goes on and on, their connection to ✨the horrors✨ is...a lot deeper. They are capable of wielding the dark powers of these eldritch entities, and it often seems like rather than simply coming across their patrons through sheer circumstance like with those who are "touched", they are deliberately sought after. ...I think this is what's going on with Jon, along with Gertrude, and all of the archivists prior. And...also probably Elias, although it probably happened under different circumstances that don't connect to the title of "Archivist."

So yeah...I think Jon might very well be fated to end up like...all of those guys I just listed. I don't think he's quite there yet, he doesn't seem to possess any supernatural abilities at the moment...but The Eye has still claimed him. He might be able to run away and stop reading those statements...but he's still The Archivist at the end of the day. He can't shake that title off as easily as he thinks he can, whatever it means...it's a part of him now...and that makes me very afraid. I....REALLY don't want him to end up as someone like Jane, all of those people are...at best morally complicated, and while Jon's certainly made some very stupid decisions and been a bit of an asshole here and there...he's nowhere near the level of an insane killer, even if Elias would have his coworkers believe otherwise. And oh my god, that's not even scratching the surface of what the title means in Gertrude's case. The fact that Elias was willing to kill her shows that, in one way or another...she was disposable, replaceable even, something that doesn't apply to Jon nearly as much if that conversation in Burning Desire is anything to go on. But like...WHY was she disposable? Was it due to her constant attempts to mess with his machinations and later destroy the archives? Was she actually a super good archivist who just had to be killed because of her actions, and that kind of ties back into the question of whether or not she was intentionally disorganizing the statements? Did she actually undergo some sort of monstrous transformation later in life? I mean, it would make sense since she was The Archivist for much longer than Jon, before Elias was even there in fact, and like....maybe that would explain why Antonio Blake foresaw an excessively gruesome fate for her in his dreams despite her being shot by a man in a suit? Maybe? I just...oh god I don't know. Look, the point is...Jon's departure from the institute has a lot of connotations. For the narrative, for the lore, for himself...there's just a lot here. But...it's best if I don't dwell on it. I think I just need to let the season pan out, and besides, I'd be surprised if a lot of these questions weren't answered sooner rather than later. If I think about all of this too much, I'll end up digging a rabbit hole so deep that I'll eventually reach Lost Johns' Cave and get buried alive. I'm just going to...let the answers come to me, and focus on the present. So...without further ado, let's finally get into the actual goddamn content of the episode. Fun fact, there's a very good chance that my grandmother is reading this part of the episode per her request right now, so uh...hi Grandma! I am...so sorry about this, you probably have no idea what the hell I'm talking about right now, there's 80 episodes worth of posts that precede this one. Also yes, I haven't even talked about the actual epiode yet. This is just how things work around here. Oh, by the way, I have some..choice words about the grandmother of the main character here, so I just need you to know that you two are nothing alike, and that the entire paragraph devoted to my distaste for the grandmother of the main character I heavily relate to is not a personal attack. Uh...MOVING ON!

Ok...I must admit that before I REALLY get into things, I have a couple of things worth noting down. First of all, this episode's case number is "0171802-A". Not only is it...kind of crazy to me that it's only been TWO DAYS since the events of the Season 2 finale, but the presence of the "A" makes it clear that...there'll be another statement recorded on this exact day. I don't get the sense that Jon will have to record another tape that soon, so uh...my prediction is that Episode 82 will be case "0171802-B", and it'll show us what's happening at the institute. There. The other thing I found noteworthy was...what Jon's even recording this statement with. Chances are...he took the exact same tape and recorder that was used to record his destruction of the table, the chase in the tunnels, Leitner's statement and...his later murder, given how he turned off the tape upon discovering the old fart's body and seemingly made a run for it almost immediately afterwards. First of all, that is a fuck-tonne of tape he's working with, like...even if he's using a new tape, still, but second of all...that implies Jon is in possession of the one thing that proves Elias guilty of Leitner's murder. And given how he's still not 100% certain that Elias is the actual culprit...he has no idea. So...that's not great, and that's without even mentioning what this means for the police's investigation. Anyways, uh...time to cover this episode for real. Jon starts off by talking about his current state of mind. He says that over the past couple of days, he's been thinking about....well, a lot of things, but has also been reminiscing on...how it all began for him, and what the death of Jurgen Leitner even means to him in the first place. He believes that his death has also marked the death of the lens of which he once viewed the world through. This episode gives...a lot of insight into Jon's psyche, and the first example of this is found here, which...kind of feels like it's trying to explain why he's been the way he's been throughout the past two seasons. I'll...touch more on Jon's change in attitude a bit later, but for now...we're focusing on his eras of denial and paranormal. Now, we already knew that his denial in Season 1 heavily stemmed from his feeling of being watched, something that we can now most likely attribute to The Eye, but...this gives us an even greater look at the topic. Jon always believed in the paranormal, we've known that for a while, but...he always saw it as small, fleeting and rare. He thought that people heavily exaggerated them, that the sources of horror in the world were far from common. Even in his era of paranoia (oh my god I mean I love Season 2 Jon but I REALLY hope that's come to a close now)...he still apparently held out hope, believed that...even if he and those around him suffered, that suffering was extremely miniscule in the grand scheme of the world. Nowadays...he knows better. He realizes that the supernatural lies everywhere, and that the statements he once wrote off as insane conjecture are more real than he would preferably have to admit. And...he realizes that there are many out there who are less fortunate than him.

...Ok, look, there's not much of a point to doing anymore dramatic buildup, so I'll just cut to the chase. Yes, this episode is indeed focused on Jon's backstory. ...FUCKING. FINALLY. I just...oh my god. That single notion is enough to make me start rapidly crawling across the walls. I don't know...how much I've really brought it up before, but I have been DYING to know what this guy's past is for the longest time. It's not like he wasn't complicated without a backstory, but just...finally knowing what made him the way he is, or at least was at the beginning of Season 1, adds SO incredibly much to his character that it's...kind of insane. And what's even crazier is that it's the FIRST episode of the season. Don't get me wrong, Anglerfish and Too Deep are great premieres, the latter of which also giving great insight into Jon, but their ultimate purpose is just to set the tone of the season. This though? It does all of that, but does it 10 times more incredibly and adds a bunch of other amazing elements on top of it. I'll obviously go over my deeper thoughts on the backstory itself a bit later, but for now...just know that it did NOT disappoint in the slightest. Now...if we can just get Martin, Tim and Elias' backstories soon, we'll be golden. Anyways going back to Jon, he basically reveals that the main reason he thought the paranormal was so rare and limited, and the reason why he was inclined to deny most statements, was because he could only really view the subject through his own experiences, and not other people's. ...I do find it kind of interesting that this...broadening of perspective has come with the revelation that he belongs to "The Eye"....just a thought. He then goes on to say that the one thing he believed, the one name that he saw as a true source of evil that could not be denied, the name that scarred his youth right in front of his very eyes...was Jurgen Leitner. That's...already quite the bombshell, knowing that Jon encountered a Leitner in his childhood... It...certainly explains quite a bit though, his hostility towards Leitner himself, his incessant paranoia whenever the books came up in statements, and looking back at it...the fact that the only statements he didn't deny back in early Season 1...were those involving Leitners. All of that...makes so much more sense now, and we aren't even at his backstory yet.

...Anyways, Jon then goes on to talk about how not just Leitner, but ✨the horrors✨ as a whole have affected him. One thing I find interesting is how he mentions his lack of knowledge on how many of ✨the horrors✨ there are, and how exactly they seperate. That's definitely the biggest question playing on my mind at the moment, I'm still running with my list of 14 for now, but...hopefully the fact that this has been brought up in the podcast means that some light will be shed on the topic sooner rather than later. I think we can name a few of them without a shadow of a doubt though. The Eye, The Spiral and The Stranger are the obvious ones, The End and The Lightless Flame make perfect sense despite not being outright confirmed, I feel...pretty confident in The Flesh Hive and The Vast being among their names as well, and then...well, we'll get to that last one in just a second. I think we have six that are currently unnamed, but they seem to be associated with darkness, compression, isolation, war, meat and technology respectively, although I only think that last one exists because...what in god's name was even going on with Sergey Ushanka that can reasonably correspond to any of the others. ...Ok, getting back on track, Jon decides to drop yet another bombshell on us, coming back to the distinction between being "touched" and "claimed". While he's obviously been claimed by The Eye (which he unfortunately considers "fitting")...it was not the being that touched him during his youth. That title...belongs to "The Spider". Or..."The Web" as he also calls it, but I think I'll stick with the first name because like...spiders weave webs, and that just seems a bit more tonally fitting with all the themes of control going on. Now...the fact that this thing marked him in his childhood has a whole mess of implications to it, but...I'm not quite ready to dive into that just yet. For now, I'm just going to...FINALLY get into his backstory. But before I do, I just have a quick question that I'd like to devote to the good folks at Rusty Quill. ....What the fuck?

No like...seriously. What the fuck is wrong with you people? Like...I wasn't expecting his backstory to be entirely normal sunshine and rainbows or anything, but...did you really have to do him THAT bad? Just....YIKES that is tragic. I, just...wow. Obviously I have...quite a bit to unpack here, NONE of which I've already unpacked and accidentally deleted due to a stupid-ass copy and paste error, what the hell are you talking about ha ha ha ha ha, but...I'm going to try. It's uh...it's a lot. Before I get into the main story though, I do have a couple of things related to the way it's framed that I feel are worth mentioning. Firstly, I REALLY need to give props to Jonny for the vocal delivery here. Like, it's always fantastic, and...sure, this isn't the most creative or out-there tone of voice he's done for a statement before, far from it actually, since..it's just him playing Jon rather than having to sound like anyone else. But...the fact that this is just Jon speaking is what makes the voice here so special to me. It's not him putting on the mask of another person for dramatic effect...it's just him, cold, visceral, and so clearly and deeply traumatized by what he's describing. Too Deep did a great job at this as well, and I regret not mentioning it in my first Season 2 post...but I do think this episode did it better, and I'll go over examples of why later on. But uh...on a related yet completely contradictory note...I do think there is some slight missed potential by not having someone else read the statement. Overall I still think letting Jon do it was the best course of action...but I don't know, I think there would be some definite value in...whoever's filling his position back at the institute reading a statement he gave about the same experience, but before he joined the institute, and then their VA would have to do an impression of Jon. Far from a big deal...I just think that's a cool idea, but the lack of it really isn't a gripe with the episode or anything. Oh shit, the actual episode. So...Jon was touched by The Spider when he was eight years old. ...Off to a pleasant start already. He says here that he was a child of the Nineties, which is...honestly pretty surprising to me. Like, I never thought of him as particularly old, but I guess I always read him as...I don't know, a guy in his mid-30s? He says that the incident occurred one or two years after Leitner's library was destroyed, which should roughly place the events described here in...1997. So if he was eight at the time, that means he's somewhere in his late 20s at the time of giving this statement. I don't know, it's just...younger than I expected for someone of his demeanour, but granted, he says that the past few years have aged him considerably, so I guess such a demeanour is to be expected. Regardless, he...was not a very happy eight-year old. Or...I guess a happy any-year old, but I digress. His parents had died when he was too young to really remember them...the fact that Jonathan Sims has a backstory so tragic that him being an orphan is reduced to a single sentence is just...yikes. His father died from an "accidental fall" when he was two, and his mother from surgical complications when he was four. If you're wondering why I added quotes to his father's death....that's because I feel kind of obligated to suspect foul play there. Look, it's entirely possible that his parents really did pass away from tragic accidents and nothing more. In fact, I think it's more likely that his mother didn't die from paranormal causes. Sure, tma is no stranger to the concept of butchery and dismemberment...but it's rarely been medical or surgical in nature, and the way it's phrased...eh, it doesn't give off the right vibes for me to assume anything weird was happening. His dad on the other hand...I mean, come on. There have been way too many statements that deal with falling for me to write that off entirely. So..I'll put a pin in that.

Also...look, I really do feel bad for Jon. Even if he doesn't remember them, losing your parents at that young of an age is such a life-shattering and heartbreaking thing to go through. But at the same time...THANK GOD they're dead. Because if they weren't...then that mind-polluting idea of Gertrude and Leitner being his parents could still be a possibility. I just...I hate to say it but I did have a sigh of relief. Oh god...the idea of Leitner being his dad is even WORSE now that we know what happened...ugh. Regardless, with his parents tragically departed, and with the majority of his extended family far from close, Jon was sent to live with his grandmother. ...I have some complicated feelings on her. I'll start off by saying that I do actually really like how they portrayed her. It would've been really easy to just make her flat-out abusive if they wanted to, which can definitely work for a lot of characters, but...not only would that have led to a comical amount of tragedy for Jon's backstory in my opinion, especially when you consider he already had a notable abuser, but it also would've left us with less nuance. The funny thing is, she doesn't really need nuance to begin with. She's overall an extremely minor character...but they gave her a surprising amount of depth, and made her feel like a real human person. Not that tma hasn't done that before, far from it, but I can always appreciate when this is done for a side character. She's described by Jon as a kind enough woman who raised him to the best of her ability, but...due to her having already raised her own children, and also having lost her own son...she held some level of resentment and bitterness towards having to raise Jon, and while it...doesn't seem to have resulted in terrible outbursts of any kind, and she overall treated Jon decently...she was never able to hide her feelings entirely. I can...definitely sympathize with her quite a bit. Grief can heavily mess people up, and I do understand that raising a child in old age, especially one like Jon, might not be an easy feat. But...I still can't help but feel like Jon is painting an ever-so-slightly too pleasant picture of her, even if he personally thinks that the picture is bleak. It's due to...a few reasons. One notable reason is that, as seen with another character later on...Jon is just ever so slightly forgiving in places where he really shouldn't be. Not to a serious detriment, or to a degree that makes him look entirely spineless...but just enough for me to question it. I wouldn't be surprised if his...greater traumas have made him view other dark aspects of his childhood as less of a problem. Hell, it's visible in the previously mentioned case of his parent's deaths being brushed over, and like I said, visible again later on with another character. So...I don't know, I worry that his grandmother might've been a bit worse to him than he realizes, and that he's justifying some not-so-great behavior on her part. It's...also not entirely uncommon for victims of serious abuse to sugarcoat stories of that abuse, but...I don't want to deviate too far from the actual text, and as far as the text is concerned...Jon's grandmother was a troubled woman who raised Jon decently well, (although I doubt it was to the "best of her ability", because....with all due respect, look at the man, even without the incident I think he'd turn out a little fucked up) but could never fully hide some of her deep-seeded resentment. And...I think it's up to the reader's interpretation as to how much that resentment seeped out, but I'd still hesitate to assume she was secretly terribly abusing him, at least with the information that's been currently provided.

The main reason I have complicated feelings on her though is because of...how I personally view Jon's character. Like many others, I personally read Jon as autistic, a headcanon which has become even clearer after listening to this episode. I'm not going to go into why, because...a lot of my reasoning ties back to the fact that I see a lot of my own autistic traits in Jon, some of which I'm...not particularly proud of myself. My point is...look, there'll be better examples later on, but a lot of the feeling and actions of Jon's grandmother...they just become a lot more iffy to me when you read his character as an autistic one, especially in the case of this episode, where I read him as an autistic CHILD. So yeah...overall, I can understand and sympathize with Jon's grandmother in a lot of ways...but she is certainly flawed, and in my opinion...I think Jon gives her a little bit too much credit in some places. And speaking of Jon, what about him? ...Him as a child I mean, I talk about him as an adult every damn day.

Well, I have to say I'm...really happy with how they wrote him. For starters, something that really bugs me when it comes to traumatic backstories, or just traumatic experiences for characters in general, is when it completely changes them in places where it really shouldn't. Obviously trauma will almost always have a huge effect on people, and there are definitely a good few occasions where I've been able to believe that trauma would fully erase all aspects of the original person...but there are other cases that don't work so well. It just...annoys me, it often feels like the author wants to write a completely separate character, but can't find out how to fit them into the story, so they just...traumatize a pre-existing one as a way to transform them. It's especially annoying when like...the sole reason for a character being all dark and broody instead of a pure sunshine child like they used to be is just...trauma. Like, come on, just let them be canonically goth and then you're good to go! I'm aware that this is probably stupid and nit-picky...but it happens more times than you'd think. Thankfully though, tma avoids this when it so easily couldn't have. Jon's trauma has...clearly affected him deeply, we'll get to that soon enough, but it doesn't feel like all traces of his pre-trauma self are entirely gone. They manage to make his younger self feel...notably different from his older self, but still like the same person. Young Jon is described as "precocious, impatient, quick to talk back and even quicker to wander off whenever he got bored." That paints a rather different picture from the Jon we know, it makes him come off as a lot more rambunctious and ill-mannered...but I can totally believe that this kid grew up to be the Jonathan Sims we all know and love. Adult Jon, at least when we first meet him, is a lot more...tired, stationary, he doesn't really try to do much to change his dull circumstances, and while not exactly the nicest person...he seems to have a decent understanding of manners, he just...doesn't use them that much because let's be honest, Season 1 Jon was an edgy bitch. In Season 2 though...I don't know, we kind of see that his younger traits come out a bit more, likely due to stress...add that to the list of reasons I think he's autistic, christ. He's a lot more all over the place, driven by gut instinct, he makes more reckless decisions and is overall more antsy and energetic, although...not in a good way. His trauma obviously changed him deeply. It instilled painful memories and a deep fear, gave him a fascination with the paranormal, a hatred for Jurgen Leitner, left him touched by The Spider, and as I'll get to later, has influenced a lot of his more questionable decisions in retrospect. But honestly...I still get the feeling that even without the trauma, he would've probably developed into someone not too dissimilar from his Season 1 self. I mean, he even had the police called on him multiple times when he was young, and is being chased by the police as we speak. If that doesn't prove that they put serious care into making sure young Jon felt like adult Jon despite the trauma...I don't know what does. So uh...yeah, good job guys. Now I just need to know what he was like as a teenager. As long as the answer is at least partially hilarious I'll be satisfied with anything. But that's enough psychoanalysis of an eight year old, sp let's get back to the story.

So yeah, Jon was "hardly an easy child" for his grandmother to digress, which I'm pretty sure is like...90's slang for "neurodivergent" or something, but I digress. But as prone as he was to getting himself into danger...there was one thing that kept him rooted to the spot. And as to be expected from the lame-ass nerdy protagonist of a horror anthology podcast mostly set in a place of academia built during the Victorian era, that thing was books. He was always deeply captivated by them until he finished them, but he also had...specific preferences when it came to his material. Not in terms of genre or author, quite the opposite in fact, he was more concerned with...whether the book felt new or not. If he felt like he had read it before, he wasn't interested. First of all, [INSERT MENTION OF MY AUTISTIC HEADCANONS HERE], and second of all...holy shit, if he maintains any sembelance of this trait in modern day...working at the institute must be hell. ...I would add "for him" at the end of the sentence, but let's be real, working at the institute is actually just...indisputably hell. But in this scenario, what I mean is, like...his job is literally to read a bunch of stories, all of which involve tons of reccuring characters, themes and concepts every single time. ...That...like...no wonder he's such a Negative Nancy most of the time. Also, this is completely irrelevant, but he mentions having read Diana Wynne Jones at one point, so like...if that means he's canonically read Howl's Moving Castle...I don't know, that just makes me happy :). Anyways, his admittedly picky nature led to his grandmother being forced to develop a...unique strategy to keep him entertained. And...this is where my problems with her parenting style start to show themselves. You know, Jon says that while he used to find this strategy strange and bothersome, he now thinks it's a stroke of genius. ...Yeah to be honest I'd have to agree with his kid self, not only because of...what this strategy ended up leading to, but also because...oh what the hell, let's just get into it. So...Jon's grandmother would do this thing, where she would visit all of the local charities and second-hand bookstores, buy every book that was 50 pence or less, and would leave Jon with the pile until he found a book he was ok with. That...doesn't sound inherently terrible, and truth be told it...really isn't all that egregious. But...it is very telling of her parenting style.

Jon notes that the thing that bothered him most about this approach was that...his grandmother never exercised much thought into the books she was buying. She would glance at the price tag, and then just throw them in the pile. This didn't bother him whenever he incidentally gained access to a book somewhat beyond his years, but it did bother him whenever he was left with a cardboard picture book made for pre-schoolers. He was frustrated, as he felt like it was an insult towards his intelligence. Nowadays he realizes that was silly of him, I mean, she wasn't even looking at the books she bought him...but that's the problem. Even if the reasoning is different...I sympathize with Jon's frustration here. Because...this method...it just shows a lack of care all too familiar to me. Thankfully, I've had plenty of positive adult figures in my life growing up, my parents certainly among them, but...sometimes I wasn't so lucky. Sometimes, I'd be left with an adult who was more concerned with me being easily pacified and quiet than being genuinely engaged and happy, even when I was certainly past that point in terms of intelligence and behaviour. It's just...look, I don't want to get too deep into it, it would be weird if I started trauma-dumping in front of internet strangers who want to see me rant about ✨the horrors✨, and...also my grandma. (hi again grandma :D) My point is, given how I relate to Jon quite a bit, both as a child and an adult, and how such relation had led to me reading his character as an autistic one...I can't help but hold a little bit more skepticism and resentment towards his grandmother than I was likely intended to. I understand that she is a complicated person deeply hurt by grief (and also...somehow a minor side character, my capacity to ramble knows no bounds), and I do truly sympathize with that, but...yeah, I don't approve of how she neglected Jon, even if the mental image of Jonathan Sims, aged 8, holding a copy of "Everyone Poops" with a disgruntled expression on his face is comedy gold. But unfortunately...that disapproval of mine does not get much better. Because, you know, I was going to say that..."she couldn't have possibly known what her strategy would lead to." But the more I think about it...no, she absolutely could have. Because if she had just bothered to check the cover of a book...well, ok, she might not have actually survived as long as she did, but...either way, she would've saved Jon from one of, if not the most traumatizing thing he's ever witnessed with his mystical eyes.

...Oh boy, here we go. So, one day, when Jon was digging through his most recent pile of books, his hand fell upon yet another thin, square cardboard book. He was prepared to toss it aside without a second thought...but unfortunately, he made the mistake of glancing at it. And when he did...he was oddly captivated. Instead of the bright flashing colors those kinds of books usually possessed, this one was monochrome, white with black webs drawn in the corners. On the front, partially drawn and partially carved in a crude manner, was the title. "A Guest for Mr. Spider." On the back of the book was an illustration of the titular Mr. Spider. He is large with a swollen abdomen, his eight legs are splayed at odd angles, his head is covered in eight eyes, all of different shapes and sizes, and he wears a bowler hat colored in red ink that contrasts the rest of the cover's monochrome nature. Needless to say...Jon was taken aback. He says it himself, that...while he was no stranger to children's books that attempted to make a scare or were unintentionally off-putting...something was different here, and he did not like it. ...But that didn't stop him from opening it. There is...quite a bit to unpack with this book. Firstly, I have to say that I just...absolutely adore the concept behind it. I've said it before, but I really like it whenever Leitners take an approach outside of dark tomes or rewritten versions of real world books. "A Disappearance", while not being a super major one, is still one of my favorites due to the concept of a cursed pamphlet...just being kind of cool to me. So combine that principle with my love for creepy children's books like The Babadook, or just...things that are kiddy in nature being made slightly unnerving, and you have a recipe for success in my eyes. What also helps is that...this is the most detail a Leitner has ever been given. Usually, we only get small excerpts from the books themselves, and that's totally fine, since it's more important that the statements explain what the Leitners even do, rather than what the text inside details. The only exception to this rule is The Tale of a Field Hospital, but that's only because Joseph Russo was weird. Here though...no. We get the entire thing, and I mean...yeah, it's significantly shorter than most, if not all other Leitners we've come across, but...it's still so viscerally described in a way that no other book before it has, which allows for some Jon's trauma to be shown excellently through how his lines are delivered when reading the book. It also has a surprising amount of potential implications within its pages, and then when we DO get to what it actually does to those who come across it...well, I'll save that for when it's appropriate. So yeah...I have...some things to say about this book.

...It opens up as you'd expect it to. On the front page, there is someone's mark. A mark that Jon shouldn't have to explain to anyone who's qualified to be listening to his statement. ...Man, him saying that really got me thinking about...who the listener is in the grand scheme of all of this. Like...I really have no idea. Maybe some rando who discovers the tapes years down the line, maybe Jon's successor...it's certainly perplexing, and I don't know if I'll ever get an answer. Anyways, the story in the book begins with a picture. We see a room that is almost entirely empty, save for two doors and a table with potted flowers on it, the flowers looking sickly due to the monochrome color pallette. I'm...almost certainly reading too much into this, but...given tma's history with tables and doors, their presence in the book is at least a little unnerving to me. I mean, I doubt the doors mean too much, since they're associated with The Spiral and not The Spider...at least I think...hm. There...there is actually quite a bit of overlap between ✨the horrors✨ in some places, and I do feel like that's somewhat relevant, but...I'll save it for now. But uh...yeah, the table's a bit more suspicious to me, since...you know. Regardless, in the center of the room is Mr. Spider, staring at the door on the left, away from the reader. This continues for four pages, the only difference between them being the position of Mr. Spider's arms. Then, on the fifth page, the words "KNOCK KNOCK" show up next to the door, followed by a "WHO IS IT, MR. SPIDER?" This causes Mr. Spider to stop flailing his limbs around, and he opens the door. Stood there is...a fly, dressed in a suit. The fly is clutching a box, and seems to have a worried expression on his face. The text then reads "IT'S MR. BLUEBOTTLE, AND HE'S BROUGHT YOU A CAKE." ...I have a few things to say about this line...and that kind of makes me question my life choices. First of all, it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that all of the flies in the book are named after actual species of flies. I just...considering the insane shit I brainstorm when writing these, the fact that something so obvious evaded me is just...wow. Secondly, it was at this point where Jonny's vocal performance in this episode REALLY shined for me, and also when I realized why it's ultimately best that Jon got to read his own statement himself. Because you see...at least at this point, the book isn't especially morbid. Somewhat unnerving, but...really not that bad, and I initially thought that the extremely dramatic way in which Jon read that line was kind of humorous. But then I realized...it makes so much sense for him. He is reliving his childhood trauma as we speak, so things that might initially come off as mundane or light-hearted are much more terrifying in his memory, and that's conveyed perfectly through the way he vocalizes his story. Just...that attention to detail goes a super long way in terms of characterization. And...there's one last thing that interests me about this part, although it's a bit more lore-centric. The cake that Mr. Bluebottle gives to Mr. Spider is...off. Jon comments that the color of the cake reminds him of disease...and that got me thinking. Insects and disease are like...the two primary themes of The Flesh Hive, right? Flies especially in the case of Amherst, and we also know that The Spider and The Flesh Hive are seemingly opposed to each other...even if the lady from Children of the Night who was basically a spider version of Jane makes me think otherwise because WHAT THE HELL WAS UP WITH THAT?! ...Regardless, we see their rivalry a good couple of times, as the spiders in the tunnels are noted to have started eating the worms down there, and it seems like the spider that appeared in Jon's office...did so in an attempt to make Jane attack earlier than she should have...I think, I don't know. Look, there's enough evidence to make me think of them as opposing forces, Jane basically says it herself in Hive, even if it's wrapped behind some slam poetry allegory stuff.

So...I'm kind of wondering if maybe A Guest for Mr. Spider is like...a real story wrapped behind the facade of a fictional one, or at the very least, is meant to allude to the rivalry between The Spider and The Flesh Hive. And also...I'll go into more depth later, but I've been thinking about...how being touched by The Spider has affected Jon's life in a more...paranormal way than just giving him terrible childhood trauma. It'll make more sense later, but...let's just say it makes The Flesh Hive being the first of ✨the horrors✨ to play a major role in the story...a bit more suspicious to me. But I've rambled enough, back to the book. So, after Mr. Bluebottle unveils his cake, the book focuses on his face, the worry etched upon it even starker than before. It then says..."MR. SPIDER DOESN'T LIKE IT." ...And the book returns to the room. The book basically starts going in a cycle, with another few pages of Mr. Spider staring at the door on the left while flailing his arms around, until another "KNOCK KNOCK" and "WHO IS IT, MR. SPIDER?" comes around. The only difference is that this time...there are ink stains on the right-hand door. ...Oh no. After the second knock, Mr. Spider opens the door to find another fly, slightly larger, in a pale yellow dress, and with an even more disconcerting expression. The text then reads "IT'S MRS. FRUIT, AND SHE'S BROUGHT YOU SOME FLOWERS." Those flowers...look even more ill than those on Mr. Spider's table, once again making me think of The Flesh Hive. The text moves on to say "MR. SPIDER DOESN'T EAT FLOWERS." The cycle repeats a third time. Now, the right hands door is even more noticeably stained with a crusty brown, the flowers brought by Mrs. Fruit are on the table, now colored a deep, bloody red, and Mr. Spider's abdomen is now noticeably larger and straining. ...Yeah, that fucker ate his guests. It's also noticeable now that Mr. Spider's hands are not empty, but are instead...pulling on threads that weave through the cracks in the doors. A third knock comes, and Mr. Spider is met with a large fly dressed in overalls, who is accompanied by a smaller fly dressed the same. Both of them are in tears. ...This was the part that really freaked me out, and I get the feeling that's a common sentiment. The text reads "IT'S MR. HORSE. AND HE'S BROUGHT YOU HIS SON." ...Oh dear lord. You know, another very common theme of The Flesh Hive happens to be...love, even if the concept is often twisted beyond repair. So...since we have the flies trying to appeal to Mr. Spider through whatever means necessary, I...kind of wonder, if my hypothesis is correct, if this is meant to signify that The Flesh Hive made an attempt to befriend The Spider, but failed miserably. Which if so...man, this eldritch control freak sucks serious ass! And that becomes clear when the text reads..."MR. SPIDER WANTS MORE." The book returns to the house, which is now entirely covered with red and brown stains, the same going for Mr. Spider's stomach, which now eclipses the rest of him. The threads in his hands are more visible than ever...and he has turned to face the reader. On the second-to-last page, there is a close-up of the bloodstained right-hand door. It seems to function as a panel that opens to the last page of the book. The text then reads...oh boy. "MR. SPIDER WANTS ANOTHER GUEST FOR DINNER. IT IS POLITE TO KNOCK." ...Once again, Rusty Quill... You people need serious help.

So...that's A Guest for Mr. Spider. Er, the in-universe book, not the episode of the same name. Honest to god...that's a big yikes. Like, even if it wasn't for what happened afterwards, I still get the sense that this would've traumatized Jon. Obviously not as severely as all of the other stuff in his childhood, such as the death of his parents, his grandmother's neglect, and...the two other things that are revealed to us after the description of the book...but I'd be freaked out by this if I were him. It's just...so unnerving, it starts out fine but just...gradually build and builds into something that ends up really freaky by the end. But I mean...it certainly paid off to describe the thing in full. Oh, also, I NEED a real life version of this. If it hasn't already been made...then fine, I'll make one myself. But...what about what happened after he read it Well...Jon was just about to open the cut out of the right-hand door...moments away from dying, which is just a...really upsetting fact, but was stopped when a hand much larger than his slapped the book out of his hand and shoved him to the floor. He then noticed that he had...oddly wandered into the park nearby his house, not remembering how he got there, and looked up to find himself face to face with...someone who's name he admittedly can't remember. But you know...Jon throws out the possibility of his name being Michael, although he quickly disregards that being the case. ...That won't stop me from calling him Michael though, because I mean...hey, if I didn't, we wouldn't have my mandatory Michael mention for the episode, would we? Although...I don't want to make things more confusing than they already are, so let's just call him Mikael. I know that's one letter off from Mikaele Salesa's name but...shut up. Noteworthy is the fact that Jon bemoans how he can't remember Mikael's name, despite him saving his life, and he then says..."some people deserve to be remembered." ...He was referring to Sasha there, wasn't he? Just...huh. Anyways, Mikael was much older than Jon, eighteen or nineteen, but...he had an unfortunate tendency to torment him in a classic late 20th-century meathead sort of fashion. Jon says that while he used to think Mikael tormented him out of jealousy for his intelligence, he now thinks he did it because he was "a deeply annoying child", and....comments like that are why I'm obligated to believe Jon gives some of these people too much credit. Like, no Jon, you weren't "a deeply annoying child", you were a neurodivergent minor. And Mikael wasn't just a bully, he was over twice your age and an adult, like...that's an abuser! It should go without saying that I'm not trying to judge Jon for this line of thinking, I mean, even he realizes that Mikael's actions aren't excusable, something he says himself. But like...man I don't know, I still feel like he's beating himself up here. I'm sure a lot of it stems from things like...survivor's guilt or internalized self-hatred, but like...that doesn't make it any less unfortunate. I...don't have much to say about my thoughts on Mikael that differs from my thoughts on Jon's grandmother, it's just that his grandmother is a lot more nuanced and neglectful towards Jon, while Mikael is a lot more blatantly terrible and actively abusive. And you know...look, he's not the worst person in all of tma, we have seen plenty of murderous psychopaths, and I get that he died tragically young...but like...I'm not exactly mourning his loss, ok? Oh yeah...I should probably get to his loss.

So, Mikael was well ready to go on with his classic bully shtick, teasing Jon for reading a book that was made for pre-schoolers, in the eyes of a common bystander at least, but little did he know that showing up at that precise moment...was his ultimate undoing. He started flicking through the book he had knocked out of Jon's hands, likely looking for anything he could use for an easy tease...but as he did so, his eyes wandered off, his hands began to shake...and his legs started walking him away, almost as if it were against his will, like...the strings of a puppet. ...Oh me oh my. Jon was understandably confused, but decided to give pursuit in an attempt to get the book back. Come to think of it, that's...a weird quirk of Leitners that I don't think I've ever really mentioned before. That ability to...draw people in, almost preying on their desires. It's definitely present in a lot of other instances of ✨the horrors✨, such as the coffin, or...really any instance of The Spider, but it's very prevalent among Leitners specifically. Like, you have Dominic Swain going down that insane cross-country rabbit hole for no discernable reason, Sebastian Adekoya being oddly desperate to retrieve The Boneturner's Tale, the same goes for Herbert Knox with Ex Altiora...and now you have Jon. I..I don't know, I feel like it's pretty interesting and...oddly kind of fitting given how prevalent academic pursuit is as a theme in tma, while also being an...unnerving motif of The Eye...huh. Well, I'll keep it in mind. Going back a few steps, Mikael continues to walk down the road with the book in hand as the sun sets, Jon struggling to get the book back from the much larger figure. He then walks up to one of the houses in a nearby residential area...and holds the book up in front of the door, the page displaying the cutout of Mr. Spider's bloody right door open. ..."KNOCK KNOCK." The door opened to reveal a pitch dark house. Jon was then forced to watch in horror as gray threads wrapped themselves around Mikael's limbs...and two massive limbs crawled out from the dark, covered in silky black hair. Mikael let out the start of a scream...but he never got to finish it. The door slammed behind him as he disappeared, the book going away forever alongside him...and Jon was left to stand there as he felt his life change forever....and from my point of view, he...he probably felt some thin strands wrap around him too. ...Personally, I have quite the fondness for spiders. I think they're pretty interesting little creatures, I like watching the ones outside my bedroom window make their webs, and despite all sorts of media trying to depict them negatively, I've always held a soft spot for them. Well, except for Daddy Long-Legs, they creep me out. ...Is that the plural for them? Just the exact same as the singular? Really? ...ok. But uh...my point is, if anything were to get me to hate spiders...it would be this. It would definitely be this.

So uh...wow. Just...just wow. That story...it's one of a kind really. I uh...no, I shouldn't gush about it just yet. I'll...I'll sum up my thoughts on the episode as a whole once I...REALLY finish analyzing everything. Just...just know that the main story, all of what I just described...is kind of perfect. It was an extremely surprising story to apply to Jon of all characters, but...it just works so well. It explains so much of why he is the way he is, adds clarity to a lot of his more questionable actions, and...I don't know, it really puts the full scope of his current character into perspective. Like...I feel like I understand him so much more now, more than I ever thought I could. And on top of that, the episode's just fantastic even when you remove Jon from the picture, dare I say it's one of the most unnerving and terrifying statements ever concieved. Despite the massive spider monster, it serves as such a visceral and real-feeling look into childhood trauma. A Guest for Mr. Spider itself is just...brilliantly described, hell, every line of dialogue feels perfectly crafted, and it resonated with me...maybe more than anything in tma so far. But...I'll go into more detail on all of that later. For now...I want to analyse what this episode will mean going forward. Now, as far as I can tell, this episode doesn't connect to any pre-established storyline before it, with the obvious exception of Leitner's library, but...the mysteries of that plot have basically been entirely resolved now, so I won't go over that. ...Oh my god...s-saying that a plot has been resolved in tma...that feels so weird. ...I'm deep into it now, aren't I? Wow. Uh...anyways, I think the main intrigue when it comes to this episode is...how it affects Jon. Both in terms of how it recontextualizes a ton of past actions and behavior, but also in terms of what it might mean for his future development. Part of this comes down to a general, non-paranormal analysis of his psyche, which I do still want to do, although...I think I'll keep it a little brief if possible, because there are others who are more qualified than me to do that, and also...I think that if I'm to do full scope, massive analyses of characters as prevalent as the goddamn protagonist, then...I should maybe save it for like...the end of the series or something, but that doesn't mean I don't have anything to say regarding the topic. Just...don't expect it to be fully comprehensive, since I find it takes a lot more time for me to understand the psychology of a character as opposed to like...lore or themes. But uh...mentioning lore, what I do have more to say about is...what this episode means for Jon through that lense. How being touched by The Spider has affected him beyond his psychological state and trauma, and how it will likely continue to affect him going forward. There's...a decent amount of stuff to go over, but I don't think...too much. There's definitely enough for me to make something interesting, but...most of my love for this episode comes from what is plainly there, rather than what I believe is implied, so...I think I'm nearing the end now. (Er...don't quote me on that, I do not plan these out very well, like...I just sit here and write whatever comes to mind. For all I know, I'll stumble down a massive rabbit hole out of absolutely nowhere, so...keep your guard up just in case.) But before I get into all of this Jon analysis, I do have...one small little theory that I felt was worth mentioning so...how about I just warm up the gears in my brain with that?

Ok, so...this theory is...probably wrong. I don't think the evidence for it is that compelling. However, I'm throwing it in here because it did make me come to an important realization in terms of further understanding how ✨the horrors✨ might work. So...you see, the name "Mr. Spider" kind of reminded me of "Mr. Pitch", the being mentioned by Natalie Ennis which I...assume is a term used to refer to whatever The Divine Host worships, although given the naming conventions of ✨the horrors✨ at large, I...doubt that's its main title. It's probably akin to The Eye sometimes being called "Beholding", or The Spiral being called "Esmentiaras". That led me to realize that the house Mikael entered was...dark, dark enough to the point where Mr. Spider was hardly visible beyond a couple of legs. And then I realized that so far...The Spider and Mr. Pitch are the only members of ✨the horrors✨ that seem to have a specific tendency to target children, at least...more than most others. The Spider in the case of the Hill Top Road children and now Jon, and Mr. Pitch in the cases of Julia Montauk and Callum Brodie. ...Like I said, it's not the most compelling evidence of all time, but it was enough to get me thinking, damnnit! But...even though I don't think this actually means much, like....I don't know, something stupid like The Divine Host secretly worshiping The Spider...it did get me thinking about how ✨the horrors✨ work. On one hand, you could view it as a classic example of the rivalries and alliances that these eldritch forces seem to make with each other, something which I already believe was shown through the story of A Guest for Mr. Spider. But on the other hand...what if this is meant to show how you...can't really figure out how ✨the horrors✨ seperate? It got me thinking back to some of the stuff Leitner said at the end of Season 2, and how it kind of felt like he was suggesting...I don't know, that this idea of a pantheon of eldritch beings might actually just be bullshit. Like, it's not how they actually function, it's just how humanity attempts to understand them, like scholars proclaiming a completely wrong hypothesis to be fact in a prime example of hubris and folly. I think this can be seen even clearer through something like...the doors. This episode has an odd focus on doors, something that is very clearly associated with The Spiral and The Distortion, but...it doesn't have any of those themes of lying or insanity that we use to define manifestations of Esmentiaras. But really, who knows? Maybe the pantheon does work out fine. Maybe everything here really was at the behest of The Spider, or maybe it gained some assistance from The Spiral and Mr. Pitch. I just think that for future reference, it's worth noting that...✨the horrors✨ might not always be black and white. They might mesh together in weird ways that make it hard to determine which one(s) are really responsible for a paranormal incident. Hell, there are still some statements that I can't really find a clear culprit for. Like...what the hell is going on with the vampires? My best guess is that they're tied to The Spiral given how they affect the mind, but...that still feels wrong for some reason. I'll still try my best to classify statements under members of ✨the horrors✨ whenever possible, because it makes things much less complicated, and...also I like categorizing things, but I won't neglect to keep in mind that maybe...these things really are beyond all comprehension. Which honestly, I might even prefer in the long run, since the less I understand these things...the more terrifying they are. I don't know, it's a battle between my desire to be scared and my desire to have a cool eldritch god pantheon I can ramble about non-stop, but honestly...I'll be fine either way. Well, that's enough of those minor realizations...let's talk about Jon. (I say as if I haven't already been doing that for the majority of this post so far.)

Oh my god...I've already written 12,000 words for this. Well...there go all of my hopes of this one being shorter than the last one. Just...god, please tell me things are going to get at least a little more chill for a bit...please. So...Jon. I want to start off by briefly going over some of the more...real ways this incident, and honestly his past, has affected him, and also how it explains some of his actions. Let's start off with the insight it gives into his...general personality. So, I...think it's pretty obvious to see why Jon starts out as kind of a jaded asshole in the beginning. Like, it's not even tied to the specifics of his trauma, just..him having trauma in general. Someone with as...not great of a past as him, someone who's been dealt this shitty of a hand at life, someone who doesn't seem to have received proper affection from many people, at least during his youth...yeah, they'd probably end up quite like Season 1 Jonathan Sims. Granted, I do think some of Jon's poor social skills come down to him likely being autistic, but...even then, it's easy to see how the poor circumstances of his youth would cause him to act irrationally or distance himself from others. Like...there's no way you can convince me that he doesn't have trust issues at this point. It also adds a lot of explanation as to why he was so prone to denial and paranoia. The denial, on top of stemming from his feeling of being watched by what I presume is The Eye, likely also comes from his refusal to confront his past. Deep down I'm sure he's always known what he saw was real, I mean, if he was in complete denial, then he wouldn't have gotten a job at the institute or believed all of the other Leitner statements, but...I doubt he was trying to actively think about his past all that much either. In fact, you know how he denied the statement of Carlos Vittery, despite the fact that it quite literally ended with his body being found in spiderwebs? Yeah, I used to give him a lot of shit for that...but now it makes so much more sense. And...I kind of hate that. How dare they rob me of an opportunity to make fun of Jon, just so that they can do brilliant foreshadowing and make him a more complicated character?! That's downright vile, I'm never listening to this podcast again. ...Anyways, as for his paranoia...well, I don't need to explain that one all too much. The Prentiss Attack was already a pretty notable cause of his paranoia and increase in fear...this just kind of adds fuel to the fire. Oh, and mentioning The Prentiss Attack...I do have to wonder, if my hypothesis surrounding The Flesh Hive's involvement in the story of A Guest for Mr. Spider ends up being proven true...could that explain why Jon was so shaken up by Jane? Like, I can totally believe that he was shaken up...simply because she's just inherently terrifying, but...I do wonder if this episode adds even more cause to it. And...that kind of acts as a nice segue into my last comments on how this has generally affected Jon. So...this episode provides a pretty clear explanation for why Jon doesn't like spiders, I think that's obvious. But in turn, it also likely explains why he smashed the spider that led to The Prentiss Attack in Season 1...and at least part of why he destroyed the table. I...don't think this episode makes that latter one any less of a stupid decision, but I can definitely understand and sympathize with the decision regardless, so...that's good.

Uh...yeah, that's about it honestly. Pretty...pretty surface level. Look, I'm sure there's a ton of deep elements of Jon's psyche that I'm not even seeing here, but...I'm keeping this brief for a few reasons. Firstly, even though I definitely have a much better understanding of Jon's character now...I still need to see it progress, and like I said, I'm not a master of psychological analysis. Secondly...trying to go through the entirety of Season 1 and Season 2 combined in search of everything that may or may not be better explained by this episode takes time that I simply do not have at the moment, but...hopefully anything that happens in the future with Jon will be better contextualized by this episode, and...I think if so, I'll have an easier time unpacking that. And thirdly...this has already gotten really long, and I'm not even a tenth of the way done with this post, so...I'm trying to keep things brief, and also not to exhaust myself any further. Look...the point is, even though I most certainly won't understand Jon's entire character until all is said and done...this episode has absolutely given me some major progress. I appreciate him more than ever now, and I'm more than happy with all of the extra perspective it's given on him...and extremely excited to see how it affects him going forward. And...also terrified, yeah that too. But...mentioning how this'll affect him going forward...there is one other major thing I have to discuss here. Not how this episode affects Jon on a character level...but on a lore level. The more...cosmic implications of this episode. What being touched by The Spider at such a young age means for him. ...So let's get into that.

Ok...I'm going to start by mentioning something that...I feel like is important, but...doesn't really connect to the main point of discussion here. ...Martin. What. The hell. Is up with this man's thing for spiders. Like...I just...huh? Like, it LOOKS like a cute little quirk on the surface, but...as time goes on, it just becomes more and more concerning. I don't think it's meant to tell us that Martin is secretly some evil servant of The Spider or something, after the whole thing with his CV I'm pretty sure he's pure for the moment, but like...it still concerns me! Is it meant to foreshadow that The Spider will eventually claim him? Or that it's out for him? I just...I REALLY do not like that, especially since I'm holding out hope that Jon and Martin end up together in a...somewhat healthy way, even though that kind of feels like more and more of a pipe dream as the situation gets more and more dire. So uh...yeah, I'm more concerned by that than ever. But that's not the main point of interest to me. That title...belongs to Jon's connection to The Spider. I'd like to go back to that whole...distinction between being touched and being claimed I brought up earlier. For a brief refresher, I think that if ✨the horrors✨ touch you, you can be...affected by them, certainly, but not entirely consumed by them. An example of someone who's been "touched" would be Tim. It seems like he's been touched by The Eye, and while he isn't directly serving it like Elias or the majority of The Keay Family seem to, he's definiely being...affected by it, as it's wise to assume that it's the being which prevents him from quitting his job. In order to get "touched" you seemingly just have to...come across ✨the horrors✨ in the wild. In the case of Tim, I don't think The Eye necessarily...asked for him, if that makes sense, but...since he took up a job at The Magnus Institute, he's been touched by pure circumstance, which means that everything which applies to him...probably applies to Martin too, and whoever else might work at the institute, although...the archives seem to be a bit more special than every other division, so it might just affect them. To be "claimed" on the other hand...is a bit different. Let's take Jane as an example. Rather than just coming across a manifestation of The Flesh Hive by pure happenstance, it was almost as if it sought her out directly. Given its themes of toxic codependency and the way it operates like a hivemind, it likely saw how lonely and desperate for affection she was, and intentionally made that "wasp nest" appear in her attic in its attempts to claim her. On top of that, the effects of being "claimed" seem to run...much deeper. Those who are claimed are less like victims at the behest of ✨the horrors✨, but more like...servants, or people who have become one with them. Everyone I believe to have been "claimed", so like...Jane, Mike, Agnes, Raymond, Rayner, Jared, Simon...so on and so forth, all have weird...powers and such, they're able to use ✨the horrors✨ to their advantage, often being the source of paranormal activity rather than a victim. ...So how can we apply this to Jon?

Well, he says himself that he's been claimed by The Eye, so...there's that mystery solved. We haven't really seen him act as a source of the paranormal, or develop any supernatural abilities, but...Jane and Jared kind of prove that those abilities develop over time, as both of them seemingly mutated more and more throughout their lives, so...I fear that things might get worse for Jon in that regard. That...ugh, it's such a nasty thought. Just...just having this feeling that this guy who's been trying to understand and stay safe from all of these monsters could become a monster himself, it's just...no. No no no no no no no. I...I don't like that. Uh...but as scary as that is, I think it's worth mentioning that I don't think you can be "claimed" by more than one of ✨the horrors✨. Given how they all seem to have their respective alliances and rivalries with each other...like, you know, it would be weird if someone was chosen to serve both The Eye and The Stranger, or The Spider and The Lightless Flame. Oh, and as for how exactly Jon was claimed by The Eye...well, I don't have a clue as to the details, but I'm pretty certain it has to do with him being The Archivist. Which like I said, also means that Gertrude was likely claimed by The Eye as well. But...I do think that you can be "touched" by multiple members of ✨the horrors✨, if only for the fact that Jon outright calls The Spider "the first of the dark powers" to touch him, before immediately saying that it did not claim him. In fact, it's also worth noting that at this point, Jon has most likely been touched by three others. The Flesh Hive, due to Jane. The Spiral, due to Michael. And finally The Stranger, due to The NotThem. And honestly...the more I think about it, I think we've already seen how this has affected him. The Flesh Hive has this whole...unhealthy obsession thing going on, while The Spiral and The Stranger both deal in fooling the senses and making you question your sanity, which...I mean, Jon certainly dealt with all of that back in Season 2! Granted, I feel like it would be wrong to say that...all of that paranoia was due to spooky eldritch beings, as that would take away from some of the very real mental trauma that Jon has went through, while also excusing some of his questionable behavior at a point where...I don't think it should be, but...I don't think it's that crazy to say that being touched by them worsened his mental state at least a bit, even if there are other causes. Oh yeah, and Martin and Tim have probably been touched by those three as well, or...at least The Spiral for both of them and The Flesh Hive for Tim, but...I haven't quite unpacked what that might mean for them just yet. But with all of that said...what does being touched by The Spider mean for Jon? Well...one of the common trends that I noticed between those who are claimed and those who are touched is that there's always this kind of...abuser and victim dynamic. So like, those claimed by The Eye watch while those touched by The Eye get watched. Those claimed by The Stranger deceive while those touched by The Stranger get deceived...you get the idea. Now, so far, we have four examples of people who The Spider has seemingly claimed. Raymond Fielding, Annabelle Cane, Adelard Dekker, and the unnamed homeless woman from Children of the Night. The one thing that all of these people share in common, with the exception of spider and web motifs...is an ability to control. Much like what Mikael went through. So by my hypothesis...that should mean that if Jon's marked by The Spider...he's being controlled. ...Uh oh.

Ok, look, I need to make a couple of things clear. First of all, I'm not saying that hypothesis is all the evidence I need to prove Jon is being controlled, guided, and/or manipulated by The Spider. Obviously, I need to show examples of this actually happening, and I do have them. But second of all...I don't think Jon is being fully mind controlled or anything like that. A big part of his character is that...he is deeply flawed, and he has done some pretty questionable things. Saying that he's being mind controlled by an evil spider god thing would remove all responsibility, and therefore dumb down his character to an uncomfortable degree. I think it's more accurate to say that...while Jon definitely holds some degree of responsibility for what he's done, and while a lot of decisions he's made line up with what he'd actually do...The Spider probably isn't helping things. I think a good analogy would be to think that...rather than Jon being puppeted around like a marionette, he's...being lured by bait on a string. The Spider isn't a full blown mind-controller, but...more of a quiet manipulator. Hell, all examples of The Spider using...actual full-blown mind control so far have had a servant or artifact or...general manifestation attached to it, so I don't even know if it can use those abilities on its own without an external catalyst of sorts. So with all of that in mind...what do I think are some examples of The Spider manipulating Jon? Well...I think a clear start to this would be him joining The Magnus Institute. Now yes, Jon does have his own motive for wanting to join the place, that obviously being his fascination with the paranormal, but...I still think The Spider likely pulled him there. This is because...well, look, the main point of this theory is that I'm trying to suggest that...all of tma is being laid out by this thing, or at the very least Jon's journey specifically. Like...The Spider is basically tma's version of the Greek fates, except instead of thread it uses silk and webs. And well...we wouldn't exactly have the story if Jon wasn't working at the institute, would we? But even then, The Spider does kind of seem like it has...some sort of alliance with The Eye. Like, spiders seem to be pretty commonplace in the institute, there are spiders eating the worms that attacked the place, that one spider in Lost and Found seemingly showed up in an attempt to force Jane to attack earlier than expected, they have a common enemy in The Stranger, and the way that The Eye is keeping Tim trapped in the institute...yeah, that feels pretty similar to stuff that The Spider does. Jon, as The Archivist, is...clearly instrumental to the plans of both Elias and The Eye, (GRRRR I JUST STARTED THINKING ABOUT HOW LITTLE WE KNOW ABOUT THAT BASTARD) even if we don't know how at the moment, so...if The Eye and The Spider are allies like I believe, then...it would make sense for it to draw Jon to the institute for...whatever reason. Oh, also...since I'm trying to go in chronological order...here's something that I just find a little interesting. ...Is it not a little bit strange that Martin's encounter with Jane, you know, that thing which basically set the overarching plot into full gear...happened because he was investigating a statement about a spider? ...I don't know, it doesn't really pertain to Jon specifically, but it does add to the idea that The Spider is...REALLY manipulating fate here. Anyways, another example would be how Jon smashed that one spider, and that led to The Prentiss Attack. I...already said I thought he was being controlled when I first reviewed that scene, because it reminded me a lot of what happened with Carlos Vittery, but now...I'm more sure of it than ever.

Then we have the smashing of the table, which...admittedly is probably the weakest example I have, if only for the fact that...it's a little strange that The Spider would want Jon to destroy an artifact of its own design. But even then...I mean, yes, I do very much appreciate that scene for how it displays Jon's breaking point at the end of Season 2, and it's honestly more in character for him than ever now that we know about his past...but in the words of tall blonde and handsome, "that was very stupid", even for Season 2 Jon. And besides, even if it did lead to the table being destroyed, my main point here is that The Spider is manipulating events to its liking, and I mean...if Jon didn't smash that table, then...pretty much all of the Season 2 finale would not have occurred, at least not in the manner that it did. And on that note...I think the final major example of all this manipulation can be seen in The Librarian, where Jon leaves the room for a smoke break, and comes back to find Leitner dead in his office. Look, I must reiterate...that was not entirely out of character for him, and I am not trying to strip Jon of all his agency just so I can make him look like a poor little meow meow who's never done anything wrong in his life. That would be an utter bastardization of his character so far, especially when it comes to his arc in Season 2. Him doing that...was decently in character. He was obviously very stressed in the moment, and his preconceived distaste for Leitner would probably make him inclined to...not listen to him a ton. ...Ok seriously, why the hell did Jonny cast his dad to play Leitner? Like...I doubt that's meant to imply anything but I'll be damned if it doesn't feel like it is. ...Uh, but anyways, yeah, that all makes sense...but things were just off enough back there for me to suspect some cosmic manipulation was going on. Because, like...Jon's not that dumb! If he was able to listen to and believe everything Leitner told him, then I'm pretty sure he'd be smart enough to realize that he should put aside his stress, and focus on dealing with everything important before Elias caught on to things. But...he didn't. And like...why a smoke break specifically? Why do that after being quit for five years? Why does he come back into the room ready to jokingly talk about being quit, as if he just came out of a completely different place and time? Well uh...I might actually have a reason for that. It's...almost definitely a very tinfoil hat thing for me to say, but...stay with me. So...I actually looked back at the first time I proclaimed The Spider manipulated him to smash that spider on the wall, all the way back in Season 1, and...I realized that I attributed that spider's appearance to something rather interesting. So...you know how Breekon and Hope brought the table to the institute? Well...I just remembered that they brought something else, something that's seemingly been innocuous ever since it first appeared. A...lighter with a spiderweb design on it, not too dissimilar to Gerard's eye lighter. ...Huh.

Ok, first of all, I...don't know if I've said this before, but it really bugs me how despite seemingly having The Lightless Flame as its number one enemy, The Spider has...a goddamn fire source as one of its artifacts. Like...what? But uh...that aside, I initially attributed the lighter as the cause of that spider's presence in the archives, and therefore it had...some connection to controlling Jon, even if in a roundabout way. But...the thing is, we never actually learn what he did with the thing, and as far as I'm concerned...it wasn't sent to artifact storage like the table, and he kept it with him. So...one must question. ...Did he use it to light his cigarette? And if so...did its presence allow The Spider to, at least to an extent, pull Jon out of the room for a few minutes, so...that way Elias could do his whole song and dance, therefore forcing Jon to flee the institute...and bringing us to where we are now? ...Ok, yes, I know this is probably very stupid, I know that this is the first time I've mentioned the lighter in like...twenty episodes, but...in all fairness, I have come up with worse before. Like, this is still a far cry from my Michael fusion theory. And like...hey, I was already suspicious of the whole smoke break thing, because it reminded me of Anglerfish. And like...yeah, The Anglerfish seems to be connected to The Stranger and not The Spider...but it also has a tendency to lure people away, it's somehow contributing to what seems to be the next big event in the story...and it was also in the first episode. So like...the start of Jon's story. There's something going on here, I'm sure of it. Oh, and mentioning The Stranger...I have to ask, what the hell is going on with Breekon and Hope? Because like...yeah, they're connected to The Stranger, I get that, they work with The Other Circus and The Trophy Room, they were friends with The NotThem, they're pretty uncanny, they're somehow involved with The Unknowing. But at the same time...they delivered two artifacts of The Spider to the institute, are in possession of a coffin that also has some weird mind-controlling properties, are generally just kind of all over the damn place, and...somehow orchestated one of tma's most insane and mind-bending stories with a creepy yellow stole and nothing more? And that story also featured Hill Top Road? You know, that place which was owned by a servant of The Spider? ...Yeah, despite all of those connections to The Stranger, they have some weird stuff going on with The Spider as well...and I don't know how to feel about it. Look...my point is basically this: Even if I don't have the widest repetoirre of evidence...I just have this feeling, this gut instinct that tells me....that The Spider is controlling much more than I thought. It...feels like it's in charge of everything, like it's manipulating Jon in ways that I can't properly understand, maybe even manipulating all of tma as we know it. It's just...wow. I'm...pretty scared by what this might imply for the future. If Jon's life is on railroad tracks, if that persists...oh god, it's just...it's so yikes. As far as I know, the only thing that might have a shot at dealing with The Spider is The Lightless Flame, but...to what extent is unclear. Overall...I've come out of this episode...really rethinking how I view the story of tma. Like...it is getting noticeably more crazy by the day, and uh...yeah, there's not much more to say on it. The Spider is a scary, scary presence. Uh...yeah. Oh, also, like...I am even more convinced of my simulation theory than ever before. Like...if my hypothesis is correct, then The Spider is basically like a programmer writing code. Do...do you get it? DO YOU GET IT?! PLEASE TELL ME YOU UNDERSTAND!!!!

Ok...I'm almost done. Breathe. So...that's about it for all my analysis of A Guest for Mr. Spider's main story. I'll...give my final thoughts on it at the end, but before that..I'd like to quickly go over the last little bits of the episode, because...there sure is some interesting stuff here. So, with all said and done, with his story finally put into words for the very first time...Jon has started to reflect. He thinks back to his early days of dimissing nearly every single statement of another as insane rambling, and realizes that...if not for how clear and vivid those memories are in his mind, he would have denied this story as well. His grandmother passed away five years ago, and Leitner...well, I don't have to explain him again, so he has no one who could possibly corroborate his tale. But...he knows. He will always remember what happened to him. But aside from that...it's made him realize something else. He thinks back to Mikael, and while he realizes that he was doomed as soon as he smacked the book out of his hands...he still can't get rid of this gnawing feeling that he could've saved him from his fate, despite his young and fragile disposition at the time. But while the thought may seem ridiculous...it's made him come to a grander realization. ...He needs help. Up until now, he has consistently pushed others away, and it's never helped him as much as he'd like to believe. But now that he realizes what he's up against, how Elias has murdered Gertrude and Leitner, Jon being framed for the latter, the looming threat of the mysterious Unknowing, which...ok, quick side tangent. That is...almost certainly going to be the main threat of the season, right? We still don't know what it is, my best bet is still that it's an attack on the institute that's...led by The Stranger but includes others, but uh...whatever it is, it definitely feels like it's going to be the next big thing that's being built up to. The Season 3 trailer also adds to this idea, but...like I said, I kind of want to know what's going on back at the institute before I cover that. Anyways, back to Jon....uh, yeah, that has all made him realize how much danger he's in, and that he's going to need help, even if most of his former allies are now convinced he's an insane murderer. Which honestly...is SO cathartic to hear come out of his mouth. Obviously, I'll need to wait and see what Jon's arc this season will be, but...this feels like a good start. When you ignore all of the relived childhood trauma...he's more chill in this episode than he was in the entirety of Season 2. I'm not saying that I don't like the absolute insanity of Season 2 Jon, but...it's nice to see him thinking straight for once is all. But with all of that said and done...one question remains. ...Where the fuck is he? Like, not mentally, I think that's decently well established, but like...in terms of location. Well...the answer certainly gave me a surprise. Because as it turns out, he's not in the sewers, or the forest, or prison, but instead...he is squatting in the house of the lady who does her own in-universe spooky podcast, has a cat named The Admiral, and is decently likely to be his ex-girlfriend. Firstly, it's lovely to finally meet Georgie. Secondly...WHAT THE FUCK JON?!

So...Georgie Barker. Her name has been...quite the enigmatic one up until now. Basically, all we knew about her was that she's this lady who runs her own in-universe spooky podcast called "What the Ghost", is well acquainted with Melanie, (which by the way...is SHE ok? Did she die in Amritsar? I'm getting kind of worried about her to be honest.) somewhat familiar with Sarah Baldwin, and...knew Jon at a time, with it being pretty strongly implied that she might be his ex. Which like, if so...I shudder to know what Jon was like to date. I don't think he'd be toxic or abusive or anything, just like...really goddamn weird. Probably pretty endearing, but...REALLY weird, and I say that lovingly. But uh...yeah, I was already very endeared to her as a concept, but...it admittedly weirded me out how, despite knowing of her since Skintight, we...never really saw her, not even in a statement beyond Melanie's first one. But...hey, she's finally here! And...yeah, I already love her. Ok, she did give me a brief jumpscare, since she kind of sounded like the original Sasha at first (which is funny since that's the name of her VA), but I forgive her. But uh...yeah, I quite like her! There's...not really all that much to say about her so far, but she seems pretty nice, I like what we've seen of her dynamic with Jon, and...yeah, I just really like her vibe! Super happy to have her on board, and uh...yeah, not much more to say other than that I look forward to seeing what she'll do! But of course, I cannot neglect to mention...what I think is her cat (it would be weird if he wasn't)...The Admiral. I know nothing about him other than that he sleeps on the radiator and has the greatest name for a cat of all time, but you know what? That is more than enough to make him the best character in the entire story so far, and...probably forever. If ANY harm comes to this guy I will send the sun hurtling upon the earth. But uh...Jon, I have to ask. ...WHAT IN THE NINE CIRCLES OF HELL COMPELLED YOU TO HIDE AWAY HERE?!

Like...I'm guessing it's because it's the safest option available, but ...that raises its own questions! I personally get the sense that Jon and Georgie might be exes, something that's strengthened by their interactions here. Like...they're amicable and friendly, but...still a little bit awkward from the looks of things. But ...even if she isn't his ex, we know that she's at the very least someone who...has nice things to say about Jon to Melanie, but apparently didn't part with him on the best of terms, so...it's a bit concerning that she's his best available option for a hiding place. Like...this guy does not have very many friends, does he? And ...I honestly feel kind of bad for her. I don't want to call Jon a leech or anything, he's obviously in a lot of danger and needs what help he can get, but...this poor girl. She already feels so normal and down to earth when compared to every other bozo in this cursed as all hell story, so...the fact that she is not only harboring a wanted murder suspect who is seemingly being hunted down by a very scary police officer if the trailer is anything to go off of, but has also now gotten stuck with a guy who is trapped in the scenario of a lifetime, likely being a paranormal entity in progress himself...yeah, I feel really bad for her! Just...damn Georgie, you are in for a trip. Welcome to The Magnus Archives. What doesn't help is that despite Jon's new philosophy of getting help...he's still being closed off about what happens towards Georgie, making it seem as if he simply lost his job, which like...yeah, good luck getting that to happen buddy. And...I mean, to be fair, I get that it's only been two days, and...explaining the past, what, year and a quarter of bullshit to someone who's been almost entirely out of the loop would...most certainly be difficult, and hell, given how the episode ends with Jon sighing...I get the vibe that he feels pretty bad about it and recognizes the hypocrisy...it's still kind of a shame. Hopefully he can find a way to tell her everything without her getting too wrapped up in things, and hopefully she can help him without hurting herself too much...but knowing tma...I'm not so sure. Man...the only person he can get help from is also one of the people who'd likely suffer the most from doing so...that's just cruel. Well...that's about all I have to say on that, although I do want one of those "What the Ghost?" t-shirts that Georgie gave Jon.

Well...that's all I have to say on A Guest for Mr. Spider. You know...it's kind of funny. Going in, I knew that I loved this episode a ton, but I was really struggling to tell if it was my new favorite or not, and I honestly thought it would take me a good while to decide. But...now that I've actually had a good while to think about it (writing this took WAY too long for a single episode holy shit please calm down soon Jonny), I think...yeah. This...this really is my new favorite episode in all of tma. Truth be told...I think a lot of it comes down to Jon's involvement. The episode would still rank very high for me even if the statement was given by a complete rando, but...the way it sheds so much light on Jon's character, explains so much of what he's done over the past 80 episodes, the way it puts him into perspective, the way that it makes me truly realize...how much I really do adore this character...it's all so special. But even without Jon, it still remains incredible. The concept is absolutely terrifying, even moreso with the execution, every line of dialogue feels written to perfection, and it's just such a real and visceral look into childhood trauma. It's...also probably the most relatable episode of all of tma for me, and dare I say...one of the most relatable works of ficition I've ever bore witness to. Ok, that last part...might still need to be decided on, but...this evoked a feeling in me that I don't get very often. It's like...a sort of twisted nostalgia, it makes me feel so warm and so understood, but...there's this underlying dread, this...light that shines so bright on me that it also shows elements of myself that I don't like on full display. But...that's not something that comes by easily. And because of that...I think this episode is something really special, despite Jonny saying otherwise. Like, I'm sorry, I really respect and admire the guy...but I CANNOT fathom how he thinks this is one of his weakest episodes, like...I'm stunned. And you know what the craziest part of all this is? ...This was the first episode of the season. Look...I don't expect anything else in Season 3 to beat this episode for me, hell, maybe anything in all of tma and tmagp. If so, I will be more than pleasantly surprised, but...I'm going to temper my expectations either way. But...if any episode can mimic even a fraction of this episode's greatness...you'd best believe that episode is going to rock some serious balls in my eyes. Just...yeah. Ladies, gentlemen and my beloved something or others, A Guest for Mr. Spider. But like...Jesus on a tricycle, can we PLEASE slow down sooner rather than later? I've typed out like...18,000 for this episode alone, and I still have nine more to get through for this post. Just like...I know you wanted to start this season off strong, but...you didn't have to go THIS far!

Supplemental: Uh...surprisingly enough I think I covered everything I wanted to. I mean...I'm sure there's like thirty things that didn't even cross my mind, but...everything that did is here and accounted for, wow. Anyways, there was just a…completely unrelated thing I wanted to mention that’s just been floating around in my brain recently. So…you know how I've mentioned how weird it is that Jonah Magnus decided to relocate the institute to Millbank after he became aware of Smirke's architecture? Well...it recently occurred to me that, as far as I know, it's...never actually been stated when the institute relocated, so for all we know, it's possible that Jonah was dead at this point, and the decision was made by a different head or someone similar. So that makes him...a little less of an anomaly, but it doesn't change the fact that he very much intrigues me. Well, that's all, goodnight Magnus Institute.

- Episode 82, The Eyewitnesses 👁‍🗨

Statement of Alice Tonner, regarding the crimes and death of Calvin Benchley. Statement never given by subject.

Oh...dear god. I'm...never getting that moment of peace, am I? So...wow. We've finally gotten to properly see what's happening back at the institute, and...it is gut-wrenchingly terrifying. Just..just no. No. No no no no no no NO. I uh...I have some choice words for you, Mr. Bouchard. At the very least, I'm glad to know that Martin and Tim aren't dead or anything...but that sure as hell does not mean that they're doing well. But uh...yeah, this episode had quite a lot of stuff in it. Granted, it's on the shorter side, so I don't think I'll have quite as much to say about it as I've had with some of the previous episodes, but...still. It gives us a better look at Martin and Tim, explains a lot about a character I...really wasn't expecting a full-fledged explanation for so soon, and finally shows us just...how much psychological horror can be evoked by Elias Bouchard, and what he's like as a villain in general. If I'm being honest...I'm not too sure how well I'll be able to summarize this episode. Even though it technically contains a "statement" the way that statement is delivered to us is kind of its own gruesome beast, and while...yeah, we now have a decent idea of the general situation back at the institute, I don't actually think this episode is meant to show us...what these institute episodes, presumably without Jon (it's kind of insane to have an episode without him for the first time), will be like going forward. Like, in a similar vein to A Guest for Mr. Spider, it's meant to acqaint us with the characters, but..not really the structure. The difference though is that A Guest for Mr. Spider was still given the same stucture as any other statement, while this one...is unlike anything before it. Still though...I'm going to try my best. It's...a pretty freaky scenario, but...I can't exactly not go over it.

So...things are pretty bad. Understandably, after discovering the mutilated body of Leitner in Jon's office, Martin, Tim, and really the entire vibe, are all...a lot shakier, to put it lightly. But fortunately, the police did not neglect to show up at the scene and sort things out. ...Unfortunately, they decided to send Daisy. So yeah...Daisy's back! We already knew that she would be in charge of the investigation due to the Season 3 trailer, but...hey, it's cool to see her! She definitely left a very strong and intriguing impression back in Hard Shoulder, so I'm super happy to see her become a more major player. At least...I think she'll be a more major player? Honestly, it's...kind of hard to tell. Given how this episode ends it's...not impossible for her to just run and never come back, but...I still think there's potential for her to do more. Regardless, she's here to investigate the crime scene, and...ok, that's...admittedly not good. Especially when compared to Basira, Daisy...already showed some not so great tendencies in Hard Shoulder, both as a person in general and as a police officer, and those tendencies become even more apparent going forward. She also doesn't have the same rapport with Jon that Basira had, hell, she seems to hold an odd distaste for him. Although she...kind of seems to hold a distaste for everyone aside from Basira so...I don't know how intrigued I should be by her feelings towards Jon, since it kind of looks like she might act like that towards most people. Regardless, she already has a natural bias against Jon, which is not helped by the rather effective framing done by Elias. So...yikes. Anyways, she's requested brief interviews with Martin, Tim and Elias, mostly to see if she can get information on Jon's whereabouts. Starting off with Martin, we see that...while shaken, he doesn't actually believe that Jon committed the murder, which...I guess is reassuring, since it definitely seemed like he did given his initial reaction to the body at the end of Season 2. And I mean...yeah, I'm sure this belief of his is at least partially motivated by his very much definitely heterosexual and platonic bias towards Jon (holy shit I will get to that later), but it's nice to know that at least one person is on his side in the matter. But when Martin brings up his belief in him, Daisy seems...oddly appalled by the idea of looking for other suspects, which is...the first of quite a few red flags she presents. I'll...dive into this a bit more later, but...yeah, this episode has quite a few things to say about law enforcement that I find pretty interesting, and Daisy is a prime example of those things. Look, I...I ultimately do find her to be a very interesting and compelling character despite her rather limited presence so far, and given what happens in the latter half of this episode...I honestly feel pretty bad for her in places, but...I think it should go without saying that Daisy is...not exactly a good person. I like her, but...she's pretty bad, and to be honest...she's like the closest thing to a perfect combination of everything people complain about with cops that I've ever seen. She's extremely neglectful towards the idea of actually helping people despite what her occupation should entail, instead opts to use her occupation as a way of abusing power and getting a thrill out of being in control, and as we see later, is...not above doing some very terrible things. She's not pure evil or anything, I mean...I'd definitely argue we get an example of a WAY more evil character in this episode, but...out of all of tma's complex and morally gray characters, she...definitely leans on the dark side more than most.

Regardless, Martin tries to bring up the tape that he and Tim recorded when inside the backrooms, but Daisy immediately shoots him down, saying that on top of him being the only person to be backing up the main murder suspect, the amount of distortion on the tape makes him look a lot more suspicious, as if he were an accomplice, which like...what the hell?! She goes even further, doubting the truth behind Martin's claims of Michael and the backrooms, and just...girlie, you have witnessed someone getting devoured by a coffin, an infestation of evil zombie worms, a creepy darkness cult who tried to possess a child with black goo, and as we learn later...whatever the fuck happened in your childhood. I do NOT think that the existence of a man with knife hands and some creepy changing hallways are that far fetched. Just goes to show that...at the end of the day, Daisy is more concerned with getting the easy way out of a case, rather than the actual truth. It's not about what's real to her, it's just about whatever's the most logical and concise. ...sigh. ...cops. Like I said, I do find her to be a pretty endearing character...but man, it's times like these where I wish Basira was still on the force. Like, I'm ultimately happy for her, I think it was the right move to just...try and distance herself from everything as much as she could, and hell, as much as I love her, I actually wouldn't be upset if she just...never showed up again, and lived a normal and peaceful life outside of the story. But like...if she was here, things would be going SO much more smoothly than they are now. Uh...anyways, going back to Daisy doubting the validity of Martin's claims, she actually mentions something...pretty peculiar in a throwaway line. So, back in The Librarian, Martin mentioned coming across a woman in danger, and Daisy's words here definitively confirm that she was trapped in the backrooms. That's...certainly interesting. My mind immediately went to Helen Richardson upon hearing this, but after some reflection...I don't actually think it's her. It's mostly because her statement in The New Door showed us that you can still experience dehydration, starvation and fatigue when inside there, so...if Michael didn't already kill her, chances are she died anyways, since it's been roughly four months since her second disappearance. But...that just means there's some other woman trapped in there that we likely don't know about. And...I have no idea what that might mean. Um...but going back to the conversation between Martin and Daisy, she continues to be questionable by saying that because of Martin's "flimsy" evidence, she's more than willing to pin the blame on him and be done with it, and she makes it very clear that without a partner to keep her in line, and with the operational discretion provided by her shitty superiors...she can very well do so without issue. ...ACAB ACAB ACAB ACAB ACAB ACAB ACAB ACAB ACAB. So uh...yeah, the environment is anything but pleasant...but that all changes in just a moment.

So...oh my god. I just...writing this down makes me so giddy. Ok, so...Daisy questions Martin about Jon's whereabouts, and when he can't provide her with anything, she thinks he's lying. That in itself isn't great...but then she says that everyone said Jon and Martin were close, and...oh my god. I could just...SEE him twirling his hair with a smug little expression on his face after that. Like...the...the transcript said "inordinately pleased" so...oh my god. You know...I try to take a queer reading of fiction whenever I think it makes sense, and that was certainly the case with tma up until this point, but...even I had some minor subconcious feelings of doubt about Martin's crush. Like...I was pretty sure it existed, but not entirely 100%. Now though? I mean...come on, there is NO heterosexual explanation for that young man's tone right there. I just...we fucking won. All I need now is for their future relationship to not be horribly tragic and I'm good! ...Fuck I just jinxed it didn't I? Also, either way, it warms my heart to hear it said out loud that Jon and Martin are considered "close". I mean...I don't think Jon's standards of "close" are particularly high, even if they might change with the new mindset he's trying to adapt, but...considering how not a day went by without him shit-talking Martin back in early Season 1...I don't know, it's nice to hear the story acknowledge that they've grown in that regard, especially since...let's be honest, Jon's arc has been a psychological downward spiral in most ways so far. Well, that's all very sweet, but it's time to get back to depression. With no information to provide about Jon's potential whereabouts or contacts, Martin is sent out and asked to bring Tim in. ...But not before he asks about Sasha. ...Oh dear. So...on top of taking the easy route of assuming that Jon killed both Leitner and Gertrude...Daisy thinks that because Sasha is nowhere to be seen, Jon killed her as well. If not, she's his accomplice. That...really hurts given...everything we know about their bond, everything that happened with The NotThem, and...I don't know, it really puts into perspective how Martin and Tim still have no real clue as to what happened. I mean...they're going to have to figure it out eventually, but...I'm honestly really scared for whenever that moment comes. Because when you consider how Jon took the news...yeah, it's not going to be much prettier when the news reaches them. Just...man, the whole situation really does suck, doesn't it? Jon being suspect number one, Martin being the only one who believes in him despite it all, Sasha...ugh. Well...I...I guess I should move on to Tim.

So...huh. I...have something I need to confess regarding my feelings on Tim. It's...sort of been brewing for a while now, but I think this episode made my thoughts on him...a bit more clear. As of now, I still think he's probably the character I have the most...complicated perspective on. Like, I think I need to see how his character progresses going forward before I can form a definitive opinion on him. But for now, I have to say...man, I really do miss how he was back in Season 1. Now granted, I think that there are a lot of benefits to the direction his character has taken. Ultimately, he was the archival assistant with the least time around in Season 1, and subsequently had the least depth, but the story has made plenty of strides to fix that since. Nowadays, he feels like a much more complicated and nuanced character with a lot of intrigue behind him, and I do not want to undersell the value that his arc brings. Seeing him go from the chipper and flirty diva of the archives to someone so angry and bitter is genuinely really compelling and tragic. But...I'd be lying if I said it didn't frustrate me, and to be completely honest...I just feel really sad whenever Tim is around. Which is such a shame, especially given how he always brightened the mood in his earlier appearances. Now look...I think it makes sense for him to act the way he does, and I can't really be that harsh on him in a way that's fair. Given the knowledge he possesses, his mental state and general perspective...yeah, it totally makes sense for him to be as angry at Jon as he is, for him to feel so beaten down by the hand the world has been dealing him recently. And like I said...it is really tragic, it's good writing, and I do seriously feel bad for him. But...that doesn't mean that I enjoy seeing him like this at all. Like...I think it's amazing that Rusty Quill is able to evoke such feelings of sadness in me, and Mike LeBeau is doing wonders in terms of performance, but...yeah, it still feels bad. It's great from a writing, directing and storytelling perspective, but frustrating from an emotional one. And I mean..given what we recently learned about Jon and how his mind functions, along with how almost all of the odds are stacked against him at the moment...I'm more inclined to side with him than I've ever been before. Back in Season 2, I was more understanding of Tim's frustration, because...yeah, Jon was doing some really questionable things. Hell, I think that from a near objective standpoint, Tim's anger isn't any less justifiable, not only because he still lacks the truth behind what's actually been happening, but also because...Jon has overall done much worse things than him, at least as far as we're aware. But...A Guest for Mr. Spider has kind of flipped the script for me when it comes to Jon and Tim's opposition towards one another. While I do acknowledge that I need to see how their characters progress throughout the season, especially with Jon...at this precise moment, Jon has changed from a character who I really liked but often disagreed with, to one who I fully sympathize with and am in complete support of. So by proxy...Tim is getting harder and harder to side with on a personal level, and right now...I really don't know who or what to believe.

And once again, I don't expect Tim to suddenly be completely cool with Jon just because the audience is, he has every reason to believe that Jon is a violent killer when you look at things from his perspective...but it's still really depressing. I still really like Tim as a character, maybe even more than I did in Season 1...but as a person...he's just kind of a killjoy. Like, I get it, it's good writing, it makes sense, I sympathize...but yeah. I don't think there's any chance of getting good old Joe Spooky back, but...at the very least, I feel like I'm in pretty desperate need of a deeper look at Tim's psyche, because if so...I feel like I'll be able to see him and Jon as a bit more equal. And I mean, hey, we've now established that episodes that don't contain Jon, instead focusing on the assistants, are indeed possible, so...I'm willing to wait for his full character to take shape. But as of now...I don't know, he confounds me. I like him much more than I dislike him, but...yeah, for the time being, Tim is a character that makes me feel very turbulent emotions. Which like, once again, props to Rusty Quill for being able to evoke those emotions in me through a fictional guy. I still do have quite a large fondness for his character, I'm anything but not compelled by what's going on with him and his relationships with others, and I mean....hey, even if he's lost some of his razzly dazzly charm, he's still like...the third sexiest character after Jane and Michael, and as far as canon is concerned he still seduces police officers for the sake of extortion, so...yeah, at the end of the day he's still a radical king who I love very dearly. But like...I do need him to sort his shit out sooner rather than later. Well uh...yeah, that about does it for my rant about my feelings on the hot one, so how's he doing now? Well...yeah, I mean, he's kind of at the lowest point he's ever been. As soon as he enters the room, you can just tell how broken he's become by everything that's been happening lately, and...ok can I just gush about tma's voice acting for a second? Because like...it's been a while since I've done that for anyone who isn't Jon. I already said that Mike LeBeau portrays Tim super well, but like....there's so many others as well! Alexander J. Newall also does a great job portraying Martin's anxieties, Fay Roberts is genuinely really intimidating as Daisy, Sue Sims brings so much unique and calculated charm as Gertrude, Lydia Nicholas really sells Melanie's banter with Jon, Frank Voss makes Basira sound like the chillest person ever, same goes for Perdita Stott as Karolina, Luke Booys is delightfully insane as Michael (his laugh...oh my god), Carrie Cohen and Eve Hewitt are both just...absolutely terrifying as Mary and The NotThem, and Ben Meredith as Elias...oh my god, I will get to him later. Just...yeah, I wanted to show some appreciation for the voice cast, because I honestly can't imagine tma without them. Going back to Tim though, he enters the room and tells Daisy that she can turn the recorder off for the interview. And...that's when something really, REALLY weird happens. It stands out so much more, because truth be told...Tim's interview really doesn't give us all that much to dwell on, at least that I haven't already discussed. It kind of just boils down to him...also not having any knowledge on Jon's whereabouts or allies, agreeing with Daisy's notion of him killing Leitner, Gertrude and Sasha, and being very angry and embittered about his general situation. That's...about all there is to it. But when Daisy turns off the recorder for the interview...it turns back on. Without her doing anything. As if...out of its own will or something. Oh. OH. OH NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO I'M NOT READY FOR THIS!!!!

I um...I don't exactly have a very clear and concise theory on what this might mean yet, but uh...I certainly have some thoughts. For a while now, I've had my fair share of suspicions surrounding...I guess...the general framing device of tma. Like, the in-universe methods it uses to tell both its anthological one-offs and overarching narrative. As time has gone on, and the institute has proven itself to be weirder and weirder, I've started to grow more wary of what initially seem like meaningless details. Things that I initially brushed off as inconsequential contrivances that...didn't really work in the context of the world, lore and narrative, but made sense when you considered the technical aspects and general tone of tma as a real-world work of fiction...started to become a lot more genuinely weird to me. Like, for example, everyone being able to recount their experiences perfectly with...different, yet still uncannily similar cadences for seperate people, or...I don't know, all of the silly accents that Jon (and also Gertrude, even if to a lesser extent) put on for statements, as if they're actually is one of the people who submit these things. I initially wrote these off as just...side effects of tma having really good writing and voice acting. Sure, it might be a bit unrealistic for everyone to remember their stories perfectly, or for The Archivists to do silly little voices despite their mostly deadpan demeanors, but like...it's much better that we have that than have poorly summarized stories, or incessantly dull and repetitive voice acting. And like...yeah, I'm sure that these aspects of the podcast are all a part of the real world production process, but...I don't know, nowadays I get the feeling that they might actually mean something. Examples of why include that one part of The Smell of Blood, where Jon reads a quote from William Hay given to him by Melanie...and he almost immediately switches into his ominous statement reading voice, as if it's some sort of uncontrollable reflex. Or, funnily enough, the last episode Daisy appeared in, where she seemed really uninterested in giving a statement, only there to deliver a tape from Basira...but then proceeded to deliver a statement with perfect prose and detail, made even weirder by the fact that all it took to get her to give a statement in the first place was Jon (a guy who she is far from fond of)....politely asking her once, seemingly with no intention of pushing it. And...then there's the tapes, which have been even more blatantly weird. Small little details like the fact that, for whatever reason, the actually real statements can't be uploaded to modern technology and only work on tape, which...you know, is basically the entire reason we're getting to hear this story. Or how they're the only thing aside from polaroids that we know is immune to The NotThem's reality-bending properties. But...at the end of the day, those are all minor details. Definitely worth taking note of, I'm sure they'll become important, but they're never really acknowledged by the characters all that much. They've always been brushed over in favor of more obvious and important things. But now...we have this. Which...feels like the first example of the show blatantly acknowledging the weirdness of its own format and existence, or at least, the characters within the show are acknowledging it. ...Ok, wow, that was a much more long-winded explanation than I probably needed to give, but with all of that said...what do I think this detail actually means?

Well...firstly, I feel like this might give us a good idea of...what Season 3 is setting out to do, or at least one of its goals. One of Season 2's big plot points was...the inherent weirdness of the institute itself. As time went on, it became more and more apparent that the institute was just as paranormal as everything else in the statements, and it ultimately culminated in the reveal of it, and seemingly all the people within, albeit some more than others, belonging to The Eye. But the thing is...we still don't have the best idea of what that really means. I mean, we certainly do in some places, but...beyond the basic idea of "the institute is actually really freaky", we...don't have many extra details. For example, we know that the title of "Archivist" has a much deeper meaning than we initially assumed...but there's absolutely no clue as to what that meaning even is to begin with. So...I don't know, I feel like this little bit of the tape turning itself back on might signify that...while Season 2 gave us the basic confirmation of the institute being paranormal, Season 3 is going to give us a deep dive into HOW it's paranormal. Which like...it kind of already has, but I'll get to that in due time. But outside of what this means for the storytelling, what does it mean for the in-universe lore? Well...yeah, I feel pretty confident in saying that The Eye, or someone or something that serves or connects to it, maybe even Elias, is the thing responsible for the tapes turning on without a clear reason. I mean...pretty much everyone and everything in the institute is at least kind of subject to The Eye's influence, so...yeah, I think this is a pretty cold take. I did consider The Spider being involved, given both its connections to the institute, and the fact that...you know, I suggested that it was a sort of puppet master being, and...the tapes are the lens through which we hear tma's story, but...eh. I think The Eye works better, not only due to lack of information on The Spider and...the fact that I'm probably high on recency bias after the last episode, but also because I can provide a bit more proof for The Eye. Outside of the very obvious institute connections, The Eye is...well, an observer, a being that seemingly seeks knowledge, hence its presence in a place of academia and its fondness for the scholars within. This is likely why so many other members of ✨the horrors✨ seem to detest the thing, as beings like The Stranger, The Flesh Hive, and most likely The Divine Host's patron all seem to value being hidden, or...hard to really understand. This is also why I think "The Unknowing" is supposed to be a big attack on the institute, similar to what happened with Leitner's library, because...you know, they want to remain "unknown". But that aside...this desire for knowledge gives The Eye a perfect connection to the tapes. In fact, I wouldn't hesitate to call the tapes artifacts at this point. It seeks to record knowledge, seemingly with a preference for knowledge on all of✨the horrors✨ ...and that's exactly what the tapes do. Maybe the reason the tapes preserve the voices of The NotThem's victims is because of the rivalry between The Eye and The Stranger. Maybe the reason real statements don't record on computers is because either The Eye wants them on tape for some reason, and decided to corrupt the institute computers, or...maybe The Eye can't control computers at all, because they belong to whatever the fuck made Binary happen. Like...I don't know, I think it all adds up, and it gives good reason as to why The Eye would want to keep the tapes on in moments as important as Daisy's interviews. There are also...just a couple of miscellaneous things this reveal made me think.

Firstly, it...kind of reminded me of when I listened to Infestation, because...when I wrote about that episode, I said that Jon's monologue about his denial made me think that WE, the listeners, were causing his feeling of being watched. I kind of forgot about that, but now...I'm...unfortunately starting to believe that might be the case. Like, I don't know if I'm supposed to view The Eye as a metaphor for the audience or...literally us, and I know it's not a perfect analogy since we're listening and not watching...but like...you see where I'm going, right? Like, we are...in a way, witnessing everything, we're also constantly chasing after answers and trying to understand ✨the horrors✨ in a way that makes rational sense, and like...the tapes are the only way that we can even get the story to our brains, so...that kind of ties back to The Eye turning on the tapes so it can see what's happening? Maybe? I don't know, I think it could work as a cool analogy but...I'm really just spitballing here. But uh...if I DID want to take a more literal approach to this idea...well...given that tma IS a work of fiction...I don't know, I think the idea of the audience being The Eye could work well with my simulation theory. Oh, and on the note of The Eye using the tapes to gain information...that brings me to my second point. What if...maybe, when the tapes are off, The Eye is a little bit weaker. Like...the tapes amplify its power in some way, and that's also another reason as to why it's keeping them on. Like...we don't get to hear about anything that isn't recorded on tape, so...if you view the audience and The Eye as being somewhat connected, that checks out, right? Now, I don't think that The Eye is entirely powerless without the tapes. If that were the case, then Tim probably could've quit a while ago. But...I do think The Eye is weaker without them. Honestly...the main reason I'm proposing this is because I think it would be a cool explanation as to why Elias is as ok with doing insane shit on tape as he is, despite his previously dull demeanor. Like...I have other ideas as to why he's acting the way he is regardless of whether this theory is true or not, but...this would add to it. Rather than being careless and foolishly leaving a tape on while he does his song and dance with the pipe, he's intentionally leaving it on because he knows that it gives The Eye, and therefore him, more power. And...on that note, I guess I should finally talk about Elias' interview. Uh...anyways, the tapes are really weird, there's probably a bunch of stuff I've neglected to mention, but...yeah, that's all from me! Anyways, Tim leaves the room, I sigh as I think about how he's doing...and then...HE comes in. I just....what the fuck is this rich twink's problem.

I just...I find it so twisted and sick yet so funny that this guy, like...THIS GUY, who has the power to know everything everywhere all at once...decided to murder with a gun and a metal pipe. I just. He- he literally has eldritch god powers and that's how he decided to kill people. I just. Ok man do your thing. So...if I really wanted to, I could just reiterate a lot of the stuff that I said about Elias during The Librarian. Like, I used to think he was this very mysterious yet pretty average and practical guy, and if he did anything bad he would be on the morally gray spectrum, yet it turns out he's actually twisted as all shit. I'm very concerned by what he's capable of, whatever he's planning, how he generally works, what happened to make him this way, what he's already done in the past, and what him being a villain means for the rest of the story. So like...take that basic recap of my thoughts on him after Brutal Pipe Murder, and just...dial them up to eleven for this episode because HOLY FUCK. I'm...absolutely terrified of this man. The Librarian showed us that he was capable of some really fucked up things, but this...I mean, obviously we still know pretty little about him, but...this episode doesn't just show us how terrifying his actions are. Because on top of that...we just get to see how twisted his mind is, how he functions on a psychological level, how he chooses to interact with anyone who isn't of use to him. And in the lightest of terms, it is absolutely ghastly. Like...I'm genuinely stunned by how scared I was during the latter half of this episode. It's so weird as well, because like...in concept, an evil CEO with knowledge god superpowers doesn't sound like the scariest thing the podcast has made so far, and like...yeah, it isn't, stuff like the Daedalus space station still runs circles around him for me, but...damn, his yikes levels are surprisingly high. Now...I feel like I should just briefly note the one concern I have regarding Elias' characterization. I said back in The Librarian that while I'm not inherently opposed to twist villains as a whole, and while Elias ultimately worked in that episode, I do have a problem when twist villains do complete 180º turns in terms of personality, and I really hoped that wouldn't happen with Elias. Two episodes later, and...I'm happy to say that he hasn't taken that turn here. Like, yeah, we are seeing a side of him that he hasn't shown before, but like...given the context and the high position of power he has, (as well as the tape theory if it ends up being true) it doesn't feel out of character for him. I mean...if I'm being honest he didn't have the most well-established sense of character in the first two seasons, so like...yeah, out of everyone in the main cast I'm probably the most chill with him when it comes to drastic changes in portrayal. But that being said...the episode did raise some concerns that he...might go down the shitty twist route later on. I wish I could provide an explanation as to why I think this but...I really can't. It's...I guess it's just a weird gut instinct thing, but I'm ultimately going to try and use my head here. I think it'll all come down to...whenever we next see Elias interact with one of his staff, or at the very least Jon. It's worth noting that the only two scenes that crazy psycho Elias has been in so far were conversations with Leitner and Daisy, both of whom are people he has antagonistic relationships with. But...every other scene with him, all of which happened before Brutal Pipe Murder, were conversations between him and Jon, and then one between him and Jon with the archival assistants also in the room, and finally one between him and Sasha.

And I think it makes sense for him to be more calm, composed and courteous in these scenes, because if The Eye keeping everyone in the institute and like...his entire relationship with Jon so far are anything to go off of, Elias probably heavily values his staff. ...Maybe not in the most preferable, innocent and non-evil way, but he values them nonetheless, the same of which cannot be said for Leitner and Daisy. So basically...I just need to get a scene between him and either Martin or Tim before I make my judgement on whether or not he's working as a twist villain. Obviously, even if he acts the exact same as he did for the majority of the first two seasons, I'll have a different perception of him due to what I now know...but I'll try to take as unbiased of an approach as possible when seeing how he acts around his staff going forward. And if for whatever reason he unmasks his chill facade in front of Martin and Tim for no reason...I can probably stick it out until he and Jon next interact, since...he seems to be even more key to Elias' machinations than the assistants. Ultimately though, I don't think I should be too worried, since Jonny is a fantastic writer, and I have good faith that he can pull Elias' character off nicely. Oh, and one last thing about Elias' general portrayal in this episode. ...Ben Meredith, you goddamn legend. He's always played Elias well, but I think both the character's limited screentime and dry persona in the first two seasons definitely held him back a little bit. But now...he's absolutely killing it. You can just tell how much fun he's having playing this conniving bastard, and it absolutely pays off. Like...he adds SO much to this episode, and I NEED Elias to be a more prominent recurring character this season instead of hiding in the background, because...man, if Rusty Quill can give this guy the time, I think we could end up with something really special in our hands. Hell, as much as the dick pisses me off (er...Elias, not Ben), he did such a good job reading the statement this episode that I honestly wouldn't be upset if he became the..."replacement" for Jon this season. I mean...in the sense that he reads the statements, not in the sense that he becomes The Archivist, because...he said it himself that Jon would be hard to replace. And uh...on that note...let's finally get to his interview with Daisy. ...Man I am killing it with my segues today.

So, Elias comes into the room, and...already, something feels off. Compared to Martin's worry and Tim's exhaustion, he's...calm, collected, and while far from giddy and gleeful, he sounds just chipper enough to make it so that something feels...off. This odd behavior continues when he tells Daisy that he not only doesn't think Jon's the killer, but...expects him to return eventually. I'm...pretty sure I get why he's saying this. Based on his interactions with Leitner in The Librarian, it seems like...while Elias killed him in order to prevent him from gaining his secret files (which I REALLY want to know more about by the way) and destroying the institute, he specifically framed Jon...not so that he wouldn't be caught, but rather so that Jon would be forced to flee the institute for a while, which he wants for....some....reason. So I think this dialogue is meant to reinforce his goals...but it does also show just how unafraid of Daisy he truly is. It's shown in clearer and more interesting ways in a minute, but...I think the main thing that makes Elias so terrifying in this episode is how much power, and how little fear he possesses. He is in complete control of the situation, not afraid of repercussions for his actions whatsoever...and it's fucking haunting. He is not only more than willing to clear Jon's name, seemingly because he needs him alive for something, but is also willing to implicate himself for the crime if it means that Daisy doesn't arrest him, because...he can! He...he can just do whatever he wants, and I absolutely hate it. This also makes pairing him up with Daisy for a scene really genius, because both of them are people in high positions of societal power who abuse their status for personal gain, often hurting others in the process. But uh...I should stop rambling and move on, because once again, this dynamic is showcased in more clever ways in a bit. So, Elias kind of implies that he hopes Jon is a murderer, and...I cannot for the life of me understand what he means when he says this. Like...I feel like maybe I should know and I'm missing some deeper subtext, but it also feels equally possible that it's foreshadowing something that'll be explained later, or...maybe he's just pulling a Michael and fucking with Daisy, which would...admittedly be on brand. Well...I'll put a pin in that for now, but going forward, Elias goes on to ask Daisy if she's been able to identify the body, acting like a sassy little bitch in the process, which...I'm guessing he's secretly doing in an attempt to make sure no one knows it's Leitner? Maybe? I don't know, he....he's polarizing. Regardless, Daisy basically tells him that she hasn't been able to figure out the victim's identity, and that they're still a "John Doe", to which Elias laughs, saying that he's "just remembering an old joke" when Daisy asks why. Now, some people in the YouTube comments recognized John Doe as the name of one of the students from Anatomy Class (which I would NOT have recognized otherwise, so thanks a bunch for that). But...while that's pretty interesting in its own right, and while Anatomy Class is...certainly on the more comedic side of tma episodes, I think it would be more in character for Elias to laugh at this because "John Doe" is basically a placeholder name in The UK that's used for those who are unknown or anonymous, something that was established in Anatomy Class. And since Leitner's entire motivation for everything he did was to be recognized...yeah, it feels pretty fitting for Elias to find his fate as an anonymous corpse somewhat funny. Just...god, if that's the case then that is fucking twisted. But uh...disregarding that, we...we finally get to the real meat. Yeah, we...haven't even got there until now.

After all the back and forth, Daisy asks Elias her main question, that of course being whether or not he knows Jon's whereabouts. And...his answer is most certainly interesting. Because apparently...he does. He knows exactly where Jon is and exactly who he's with...and given what he does later, I'm...I'm inclined to believe he's telling the truth. And...once again, that's absolutely terrifying. Even if he plans to let Jon stay for the time being...he'll most likely want him back at the institute eventually...and I really don't like the fact that he could get him back as easily as it seems, especially given Georgie's involvement. But as Daisy tries to get more information out of him, he makes little jabs at her and her profession, questioning if it's worth operating entirely alone and without support, before he eventually makes it clear to her that he has no intention of telling her Jon's whereabouts despite his knowledge, solidifying that...he has no intention of letting the police find Jon until he does...whatever he wants him to do out there, and that much like with Leitner, he is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that, through murder or not, all obstacles in his machinations are removed and dealt with immediately. Daisy then threatens to take him back to the police station, saying that she's more than willing to suspect him as Jon's accomplice, which is...unsurprising given his lack of subtlety on the matter. She also calls him a "weird little freak" which-....you know what, all of her crimes against humanity are immediately forgiven just for that. Not only is it exactly what I've been thinking, but it made me audibly laugh. Like...she is so real for that. But after she threatens this, Elias responds with, you guessed it, EVEN MORE psychological jabs. He basically comments on...just how much she kind of sucks at being an upstanding and just police officer. He comments on how her superiors ignore her more than questionable behavior for the sake of saving face, how Basira's recent resignation is just enabling Daisy to be even more toxic, how she hasn't done any proper investigations, evidence collection, or official records of all her interviews, how she's neglected to look for any other suspects, how she shows a complete lack of interest in Sasha's fate, and how she's only going after Jon because it acts as an outlet for her violent tendencies, she already doesn't like him for whatever reason, and she can if she wants to. And like...yeah, sure, I recognize that he's only saying this in an attempt to make her insecure about her failings as a symbol of justice, and is also most definitely using all this information as potential blackmail lest her actions and behavior get revealed to her superiors and she loses her job....or worse, goes to prison, but like...none of what he's saying here is exactly wrong. Like, he might be a murderer, a psychopath, and worst of all a capitalist, but at least he can recognize when the cops are bullshit. Anyways, Daisy responds to Elias' epic callout post by threatening to beat the shit out of him, but Elias...he...oh dear. So...you know what, I'm just going to quote him directly. He says: "Very true. However, you aren't going to do that, detective. Because of Calvin Benchley." ...Oh no. So, as it turns out, Elias...knows something about Daisy's past, something that pertains to one of her many...not so great actions, and a particularly touchy one at that. In fact, he knows a lot of things. He knows...basically everything.

So yeah...Elias is unfortunately the most knowledgeable person ever. I mean...if this episode is anything to go off of. He has...all of the information he could ever desire, even if by all laws of common sense, he...really shouldn't have that information. It explains not only why he's able to taunt Daisy about her actions, behavior and past, but also why he knows where Jon is, and just...generally how he's such a conniving mastermind. Now, we already knew from The Librarian that he could basically see everything in the institute, unless there was some other paranormal interference like Leitner's use of "A Dissapearance", but uh...turns out that, no, his powers don't just stop there. He...actually just knows everything everywhere all at once. Now, if I'm being honest, I...really don't have that much to speculate about when it comes to Elias' powers, because...it honestly seems pretty concise. Like, he's a servant of The Eye, and because of that he gets the ability to see and know everything. That's...really about it. I mean, maybe there's some secret complexities I don't know about, and there's obviously the matter of...how he even got claimed by The Eye in the first place, but...those are matters I just don't have the resources to speculate on at the moment. Right now, I'm much more interested by...how these powers will be used in the story, as opposed to how they work in terms of the lore and worldbuilding. Like, what's he going to use them for? How much is he going to use them, and to what extent of power? Is there anything else that can stop him? In fact...what the hell did he do with Leitner's remaining books? Granted, this matter is also hard to speculate, since the plot of Season 3 is still in very early days, but...this episode does give us a pretty good idea of how he chooses to utilize these powers, although I'll get to that in a minute. There is, however...one extra concern I have regarding these powers. Basically...if Elias has these powers because he serves The Eye...what does that mean for Jon? I'm already pretty certain that, willingly or not, he'll become a fully fledged servant of The Eye if he isn't already, so...is he also going to get crazy knowledge powers? In my opinion...not necessarily. We've seen before that servants of the same being can have different abilities. For example, Jane and Amherst both serve The Flesh Hive, but one of them has their evil worm zombie hivemind thing, while the other has the ability to spread disease, resurrect themselves, and have a general resonance with all sorts of insects. Combine that with the fact that the title of Archivist insinuates Jon is...special in some way, and it's not guaranteed that he'll end up exactly like Elias. But then again...you have characters like Mike and Simon, who (outside of the former's connections to electricity)...basically have the exact same abilities from the looks of things. I mean, Mike's powers are...a little vague to be honest, so this might not age as the best example ever, but really, I just think it would be interesting if Jon got the same abilities as Elias...moresoe because I want to see how their responses to it differ. Like, Elias is abusing his power to his whole advantage, and is clearly having the time of his life while doing so. Meanwhile, Jon seems absolutely horrified by the implications of him being claimed by The Eye, so...I don't know, I get the sense that if he got Elias' abilities, his feelings about it would be a lot more...scared and depressed, which could make them act as pretty good parallels AND foils to one another.

Then again...it's worth noting that there have been many instances of people who get claimed by ✨the horrors✨ being terrified at first, before...gradually getting accustomed to it. Looking at Jane once again (she's basically my classic textbook example of these weirdos at this point), we can glean from her statement that she was...pretty mortified when she first heard the song of The Flesh Hive, but ultimately found a twisted yet loving home among the worms. So like...for all we know, Elias might have also been really freaked out when he was first claimed by The Eye, and by that logic...Jon could potentially come around after a while, making him similar to Elias beyond just their patron...and that is a horrific thought. But...it's also a fascinating one, I'm intrigued to see where Jon will go now that we have a better understanding of what being claimed by The Eye can actually do to someone. And mentioning that...let's get back on track, and go back to seeing Elias' abilities in action. So...Daisy is understandably shocked at the mention of someone from her past coming out of nowhere, and Elias continues to taunt her. He mocks her for the scar on her back, how it felt when she buried him, he even has the audacity to call her by her real name. He then makes himself perfectly clear. He's...oh god writing it down actually feels kind of sick. He...he tells her that he's going to make her statement for her, non-consensually, a statement about her past childhood trauma that she never gave to the institute herself, just...reading out her deepest darkest secrets as if she was giving them to him herself, demonstrating just how much dirt he has on her through nothing but his connection to The Eye. He then says that if she's smart, she'll drop the case. She'll leave the institute, give a basic cover-up story to her superiors, leave the murder behind, and stop looking for Jon. Once again, I don't even think he cares about getting caught himself, he just doesn't want his weird game with Jon to end prematurely!!! Like...what the fuck man?! All this for what? I'm genuinely asking! Uh...anyways, he then says that if for whatever reason she doesn't oblige...he'll tell her superiors everything. They'll know about not just her past, but every nasty little thing she's done. They'll be forced to face the music and confront the toxicity of their beloved detective, and then she'll have to face the consequences lest the LPD look even worse than they already do. Ok...putting aside the viscerally horrifying nature of all of this...I REALLY do love this whole idea from a writing perspective. I already said that I really like how this episode pairs up Daisy and Elias. Both of their characters act as critiques of the abuse of power often exhibited by cops and rich businessmen, so putting them together is really interesting...but it gets even more interesting when they're at each other's throats, and one is able to easily overpower the other. I...also find it interesting how we have...someone who I can only imagine as a rich white guy in a suit abusing power over a woman who pretty noticeably does not conform to gender roles. I...don't know if that was intentional on the writer's part, but...if so I think it could act as pretty interesting commentary. But I think my favorite part of this whole thing is...how it humanizes someone like Daisy.

Don't get me wrong, despite my jokey claim earlier I still think she is...not that great of a person. She has done some horrifically fucked up things, including within the backstory that is just about to be described. But like...right now, she is being faced with someone so much worse than her. And I mean...given what we learn about her childhood trauma, how it's shaped her into the person she is today, and also what we have to witness her go through in real time, being expertly performed by Fay Roberts in a genuinely crushing manner...yeah, it's really hard for me to not feel sorry for her. Just...my god, she's only really been around for two episodes, and they've already made such an interesting and nuanced character. Bravo. But uh., yeah...storytelling praises aside...THIS IS ABSOLUTELY HAUNTING. Just like...holy shit, Elias Bouchard is a massive sociopath. Like...how in the hell did he come up with a scheme as twisted as that? Just...using your eldritch all-seeing eye powers to leverage someone's childhood trauma against them as blackmail, all because they want to arrest your soaking wet trainwreck of an archivist? When you could've just said "lmao I don't know where he is", or if you really had to be conniving, just...send her to a decoy loaction or something? I just...ok man. Do your thing, whatever, I guess at least it makes things more interesting. But like...if this is just a fraction of what he's capable of dreaming up, I SHUDDER to think what the extent of his larger machinations even is, because...ugh. Well....anyways, despite both mine and Daisy's protests...Elias begins reading her statement. And...hearing him read out "Statement of Alice Tonner" without the "Daisy" in the middle...and saying "statement never given"...I just...fucking chills. ...You know how I said I wouldn't be upset if Elias started reading statements in Jon's place from here on out? Well...while I'm sure Ben would give a great performance...yeah, I think I'll retract that claim. Because like...given how this one was performed, I feel like every episode at the institute would be even more terrifying were that the case.

Ok, before I get into the actual plot of the statement, I just...need to talk about how it's presented, because like...it's genuinely phenomenal. Jonny, Alex, Ben, Fay, the editing team...all of them brought so much life into this. Starting off, I..completely forgot to mention this when I wrote about A Guest for Mr. Spider, but...we have new spooky background music now! Yeah, that doesn't pertain to this scene specifically, but...whatever, it's always nice to have and I thought I should shout it out. But as for what IS exclusive to this scene...man. The way it's written, and the way that Ben reads it out..it's just perfect. I think that the best way to describe it would be to like...imagine if it was any old statement, one being read by Jon or even Gertrude. If they were reading it, it would probably be...much longer and detailed, giving us a better idea of the scope of Daisy as a person. We'd get extra background information, there would be a more gradual build from the mundane to the horrific, The Archivist would try to emulate Daisy's energy a bit more, and...putting the potential lore implications of the theatre kid energy emulated by Jon aside for a second, they'd only be reading the statement because...it's their job, so they'd probably be much more willing to take their time and have a bit more fun with emulating the person who's statement they're reading. Oh, and of course, the statement would most likely have been given by Daisy out of her own will. But...that's not the reality we live in. Instead, Elias is a man on a mission, he is reading Daisy's own story directly in front of her against her own will, doing so in order to taunt, scare, traumatize and blackmail her for his own personal gain. He only delivers the freaky details of her past for the most part, reading the statement with utter haste and not a semblance of fun acting that doesn't come off as utterly sadistic. The only instances where he says anything that doesn't pertain to the stone-cold facts of what happened, are when he's making a taunt, saying something that Daisy would never say about herself, but...is ultimately true. He voices her own insecurities and trauma, pretending to actually be her all the while. He says things like "I like to be in control", "That's why it was my fault", "I felt a rush of fear, and strange sort of excitement", and even reveals one of her darkest secrets out loud...and it's just sick. It's all true, and Daisy knows it...but she's not ready to confront it. And it's all accompanied by eerie, encroaching background noise...and mortified intteruptions and hyperventilating from Daisy in the background. Just...wow. This is...one of the most viscerally mortifying scenes in all of tma. It's kind of perfect, honestly. This uh...this is going to be a really good season, isn't it? Just...knowing that Elias can do this kind of keeps me up at night. Like...what if he did this again, but with Jon's trauma. A Guest for Mr. Spider is already terrifying, so...oh god I don't even want to think about it. Why did I get cursed with the horror podcast autism and not the good at maths and science autism... Well, I've rambled enough about the amazing presentation, so...let's just dig into Daisy's past. It's...pretty short and concise to be honest given the way it's delivered, but...it's also really interesting, both in terms of the lore implications and how it develops her character. So uh...lets-a-go or something.

Ok. So, as Elias starts reading out "Daisy's statement", we're immediately given an answer to what has...basically been the biggest mystery surrounding her character, at least in my opinion. That is of course...why the hell do people call her "Daisy" instead of Alice. Apparently, it's due to a scar on her back that she got when she was younger, which the doctor said looked like a daisy. Even if it was a somewhat innacurate claim, since it apparently looks more like a starburst...the nickname stuck. So...yeah. It's not the craziest answer to the mystery ever, but...I like it! We'll get into how she got the scar soon enough, but for now, just know that I think it suits her really well, she herself says that despite it sounding kind of gentle on the surface (which to be honest I always thought was a kind of fun irony given her...less than gentle personality), its origins make her view the nickname as a symbol of strength that invokes courage. Well...did she say it herself? Ok look, I...should probably clear something up. Obviously...a lot of the stuff that Elias is saying here is stuff that Daisy would probably never say out loud, but....if he can know all of the details about her past like this, then chances are her mind isn't safe from his prying eyes either. I mean...we know that Daisy is the only person left alive who understands the nickname's origins, so...how else would he get that knowledge? Besides, I think the point here is that Elias is sort of....exposing all of the things Daisy doesn't like about herself, so...I'm just going to go on the assumption that everything said in this "statement" is stuff that she does actually think, and that it does accurately represent her emotions, even if she would never reveal or confront such things herself. Oh, and on the note of there apparently being "no one left" who knows about the scar aside from Daisy herself...that's certainly interesting. Really, the only people we can definitely say knew about it are Daisy's parents, the doctor who saw the scar, and most likely Calvin Benchley. We know how the last one died, but the others...hm. Granted, Daisy was at the very least in her 20s back in 2002, so...that places her at a rough minimum age of 44 or 45 in present day, so....if her parents and that doctor were on the older side when she was eleven, or this was even longer ago than I'm assuming, then maybe they did just die of old age, or there were health complications, or...basically it's far from unlikely that they died of rather natural causes. But I mean...her whole backstory does kind of revolve around violence and murder, so I'm just a teensy bit inclined to raise an eyebrow. Anyways, Elias then goes on to explain how Daisy got her scar. When she was eleven, Daisy was best friends with a boy named Calvin Benchley. They didn't hang out at school, because apparently all of Calvin's other friends were baby misogynists, but they would always play together after school in the nearby park. The park was small with a collapsed fence on either side, but beyond that fence...there was an old abandoned building site, but Calvin and uh..."Alice" at the time, were forbidden from going there due to the dangerous crowds that hung around the place. Honestly...even when you ignore all of the paranormal trauma, Daisy's childhood kind of sounds just...generally shitty. Like, the environment does not sound pleasant whatsoever, she was clearly bullied for misogynistic reasons, and her friendship with Calvin...while far from toxic, definitely gives off the vibe of something...more on the hostile side than others, especially given what happens next. Like...I don't know, the incident definitely affected Daisy heavily, but much like with Jon...I feel like she wouldn't be that far off from what she is today even if her trauma never happened, just....probably a lot more stable than she actually is. (Also, the parallels to A Guest for Mr. Spider are not lost on me, but...I'll talk about them a bit more later.)

Anyways, one afternoon Daisy dared Calvin to head to the building site, and he did. She heard some....crashes and violent noises coming from the site, and after fifteen minutes of silence she decided she should go and check on Calvin, not calling for any adults in fear of getting in trouble. And when she did...oh...yikes. She stumbled across the first two corpses she'd ever seen, seemingly having killed each other with broken glass. When she saw them, she...felt a strange rush of excitement at the sight of the blood, which is...fun. But on a nearby staircase...was Calvin, his eyes vacant as he stared at her. And behind him stood a grotesque figure, large, hunched and naked. Its body was covered head to toe in open red wounds that did not bleed, and Daisy watched as it mouthed out words that only Calvin could hear, flicking its long black tongue into his ear from a pointed mouth. Now, this figure initially kind of reminded me of The NotThem's true form for some reason, but...I strongly doubt that they're actually connected. In fact, I'm just going to cut to the chase, I definitely think that Daisy's backstory has to do with The Piper, which is...quite surprising honestly, but definitely makes sense for her. I mean, the whole thing is about murder and the nature of violent tendencies, if Melanie's second statement is anything to go off of then...blood and wounds are most definitely aspects of the thing, and the way that Calvin's vacant eyes are described is...almost identical to the war ghost that Melanie saw in the Rotherham Train Graveyard. I'll go into a bit more detail regarding what this presumed connection to The Piper might mean in a bit, but for now...uh...yeah, that's it. Anyways, it was as Daisy saw this figure that Calvin turned to her, running headfast before slamming her into the fence that seperated the building site from the park. The jagged metal of the fence pierced her skin in a burst of pain, resulting in the birth of her namesake scar, and the last thing she remembered before waking up in the hospital...was the look of bloodthirsty pride on Calvin's face. No one believed Daisy when she told them what happened, as they were all happy to just take Calvin's simple explanation of...her having tripped and fallen. That's...eerily similar to how the LPD is framed throughout, not just this episode, but other instances like Police Lights and the...mere existence of Section 31 as a faction. Just...ignoring the truth if that truth is too hard to bear. Still though...Calvin changed after that day. Everyone assumed he was just becoming a teenage shithead, but Daisy always knew something was up. But like, on that note, can I just say how much this backs up my point that Daisy's hometown seems kind of mental? Like....this kid quite literally murders or seriously injures six other kids before he leaves for University, and you chock it up to a "boys will be boys" mentality?! What the hell?! Maybe the reason why Daisy doesn't have an explicitly stated hometown is because doing so would be a GRAVE offense to some real life village in The UK. Also...the whole "boys will be boys" thing, combined with the misogyny she faced as a child, as well as that whole power imbalance thing between her and Elias I mentioned earlier...it all really does make me feel like this episode has some...pretty interesting subtext regarding gender. Huh. Anyways, Daisy continued to keep an eye on him even into adulthood, the scar on her back reminding her that he could never be trusted again. He always seemed to...feed on the unease and fear of others, but she could never make anything stick when it came to proving him guilty. He was briefly arrested as an adult, but...all childhood incidents were made into accidents, and all adulthood incidents had his victims proclaiming themselves the aggravators. Once again...if I were Daisy, I would really start to question the fact that she's working for an organization that is doing the exact same thing as everyone who ever doubted her. Like...girlie...get your character development.

Regardless, Daisy eventually realized that...she couldn't pin him down for anything. He would always find some clever or sneaky way to evade getting imprisoned...so she took matters into her own hands. Because...yep, Calvin Benchley ended up being the first human being she ever murdered. Yeah, the FIRST...christ. She knocked him unconscious as he was coming out of a bar, kidnapped him and drove him to....what I'm guessing are the woods where the police send her to burn the vampires, and shot him five times in the chest. ...He didn't even bother to beg for his life. No one asked questions. They just left it as a deserving fate for a rotten person, once again...doing whatever it takes to not cause any trouble. So...yeah. That's Daisy's big backstory. I understand that...when compared to A Guest for Mr. Spider, this is a much more rapid fire look at a character's past, but I do have my reasons. Not only did it only take up a small portion of the episode, being delivered quite hastily to boot, but...with A Guest for Mr. Spider, we were looking at the backstory of the protagonist who we had spent every episode up to that point with, and it also got nearly the entire episode to be explained. Here though...Daisy's only appeared in one other episode, small appearances in Basira's statements withstanding, so...I don't have quite as much to say or analyze as I did with Jon's backstory. But that being said...man, I REALLY did like this backstory. Even if we don't know Daisy as well as a lot of other characters...this did SUCH a good job at developing her further, and much like A Guest for Mr. Spider, it serves as a great explanation as to why she is the way she is. Both of these episodes have actually made me rethink how I approach writing character backstories, hell, tma as a whole has made me rethink a ton of creative writing strategies, so...yeah, it's pretty great. I'm honestly amazed by how good this podcast is at making characters super compelling in such a short time frame, especially with as large of a cast as it has. In fact, if I'm being honest...while I definitely personally resonate with the themes in A Guest for Mr. Spider a lot more, and therefore ultimately prefer them...I think this one might have slightly more rare and interesting themes to me. I mean...maybe, I'm still rather fresh off of listening to this one, but...either way it's really good. To me, Daisy's past and...really a lot of her character as a whole, can be taken as a really interesting interpretation of the idea of perpetuating a negative cycle. Rather than gain an inherent distaste for all of the bullshit she had to deal with in her youth, Daisy seems to have become...accustomed to it more than anything. Because...a lot of the negative things that were forced upon her in the past are now things that she's enforcing upon others. Whether that be because she views it as the norm, or because she's seeking some kind of equality or justice between herself and the people who've wronged her...I can't really say. Honestly, I'd really like to hear these events from her mouth one day, rather than that of an evil eye monster sociopath, because...while I do think Elias' words do reflect parts of Daisy's feelings on the matter...I also think he's only highlighting the negative aspects of her psyche, because...that's the goal. He's using his knowledge of her past as blackmail, so bringing attention to the more sympathetic aspects of her past would...kind of just defeat the purpose.

The point is though, no matter what her motivations might be...Daisy is allowing a negative cycle to continue. She was a victim of violence, murder and bullying, both in her relationship with Calvin and during...general life in her pretty shitty-looking hometown. Because of that, she has very little issue with being cruel, committing acts of violence, and killing others in cold blood. Throughout her entire life....she's dealt with people who ignore the truth for the sake of not having to think about negative things, with both everyone in her hometown and random civilians hurt by Calvin choosing to turn a blind eye to his terrible crimes. And because of that...she's now working for an organization who enforces that exact same mindset. The LPD puts anyone who sees too much into Section 31 in order to keep their mouths shut, they covered up the death of Leo Altmann because...I don't know, I guess this universe has the cops' escapades being broadcasted to six-year olds who couldn't handle the spooky darkness murdering someone, and they are actively enabling Daisy to do terrible things if it means that they can just deal with cases as quickly as possible, no matter how many people they hurt along the way. And even if she isn't the one directly enforcing this corrupt system....she most certainly isn't the one who's trying to stop it, if anything that title should probably go to Basira. But...I like that they show us that, while these traits of Daisy's are toxic and should definitely stop, they aren't just born of pure evil. They most certainly come from a real place of trauma. Honestly, like...I'm not even halfway done, and tma might have the most nuanced and well thought out depiction of law enforcement I've ever seen in anything. It can sometimes feel like most media either leans towards worshiping cops like saints, or....EXTREME ACAB mentalities with very little in between. If I had to choose between the two, I would most certainly go for the latter...but I'm very happy with how tma is handling it. It's calling out the many systematic flaws with law enforcement and is not afraid to paint them in a negative light. Hell, despite everything that happens to her in this episode, I think that provided she returns at all, Daisy will...probably play the role of an antagonist, or at least an anti-hero going forward, given what she represents. But despite all of the criticism...they still have the moral decency to recognize that these officers, while often heavily flawed and questionable...are still people at the end of the day. It thankfully doesn't use this as an excuse to completely forgive them, but it does use it to explain their actions, to make it clear that they aren't evil murder robots bereft of all dimensions. And...that honestly takes a lot more work than some people might think. Anyways, point is, I really really like Daisy's backstory, I think it expands her character in amazing ways and has some really great themes, but...what about the lore implications?

Well...there's a decent amount of interesting tidbits here. Not a ton that I find incredibly significant, but...still noteworthy. So, as I already said, I think Daisy and Calvin's encounter with the paranormal was likely due to The Piper's manifestations. I'm not going to go over why a second time, but I do want to talk about the intriguing aspects of its inclusion. So, it definitely seems like a manifestation of The Piper was haunting the old building site, hence why everyone there seemed to be filled with that ever iconic bloodlust. Now, I don't know how important this old building site or the lanky creature within are going to be, I'll take note of them, but...I think the main intrigue here comes from how this episode made me notice a couple of recurring patterns when it comes to The Piper. Firstly, out of all of ✨the horrors✨, it definitely seems to have the strongest affinity for haunting places, or at least...haunting places that aren't necessarily designed for it. I'm talking CMH, the Rotherham Train Graveyard, arguably that music venue in Soho,....maybe the field hospital Amherst was at, and now this. It also has a...pretty strong affinity for spectre like figures the more I think about it. There's The Piper itself (keep in mind that I'm just using "The Piper" as a placeholder name for whatever this war and bloodlust associated being is actually called, along with the actual three-faced figure), the ghost on the train, the...presumed ghosts in Amritsar, the ghosts that showed up at the Grifter's Bone concert, and then you have Melanie, a character who is implied to have been deeply touched by The Piper, and who used to run a show called "Ghost Hunt UK." So...yeah, The Piper has some pretty notable connections to more traditional examples of ghosts and hauntings. It's not the only being with these themes, for example, The End seems to have a particular affinity for ghosts given Mary's skin book, and like Leitner said, it's less about what ✨the horrors✨ manifest as, but what the more...metaphorical meaning behind their manifestation is. So like...if you want to determine whether a ghost comes from The Piper or The End, I guess you should...think about whether it represents the casualties of war or death and mortality? I don't know...I think that's what they represent? Anyways, they're interesting recurring motifs, and...given my logic for Melanie's connections to ghosts, I really have to wonder if I should be more suspicious of Georgie and her "What The Ghost?" podcast...hm. Anyways, uh...I definitely think that given his behavior, Calvin was most likely claimed by The Piper and became its servant. Like I said, he had that same dead look in his eyes as the train ghost that Melanie saw, and I mean...a servant of the god of bloodshed would probably do a lot of murder, so that checks out. There are some...interesting little quirks when it comes to how exactly he functions though. Like, how he was able to evade repercussions...relatively easily for the most part. Like, I'm sure there's pretty reasonable, non-paranormal explanations for it, the people in Daisy's hometown clearly wanted to turn a blind eye, and it seems likely that his later victims lied out of fear, but...I don't know, a more paranormal explanation would be pretty cool. I also find it interesting how Daisy (technically Elias but you get what I mean) mentions that Calvin...fed off the fear of his classmates. Like...I have to wonder if that actually goes for all servants of ✨the horrors✨. I've already made connections between ✨the horrors✨ and different types of fear before, even if they aren't literally fear incarnate I'm pretty sure they're supposed to represent it, so...maybe this line could imply that servants, or even ✨the horrors✨ as a whole feed on fear, and that's why they cause all this paranormal shit to happen? Like...specifically to scare people?

Because truth be told...none of these bozos have clear motivations beyond scaring people for shits and giggles. And sure, that's mostly a consequence of us not having met the majority of them in person, but like...look at the ones we have. Elias has only just been confirmed to be a servant of The Eye, so his motivations are pretty vague, Michael is...Michael, so he's just inherently vague by nature (and also it's kind of hard to tell whether he's the same as most other servants given all of the stuff Leitner said about "The Distortion"), and then you have Jane and The NotThem. Both of them were motivated by a desire to attack the institute, and that desire seemingly stems from a further desire to stay unknown. But like...why would they want to stay unknown? Well, that's simple. The fear of the unknown is a pretty powerful thing, so maybe The Eye's ability to know things is like...making it harder for ✨the horrors✨ to find fear to feed on? This could also explain why it seems like the only people who seem t survive encounters with✨the horrors✨ are the ones who just...don't give a fuck, like Joshua Gillespie or Karolina Górka. Like...they're not providing any fear, so what's the point in scaring them. I don't know, I'm pretty sure there's much more to it, and I'd honestly be pretty disappointed if every servant was just motivated by a desire to strike fear into others and nothing else, but...I think there's a decent likelihood that the desire for fear could be a common trait among all of ✨the horrors✨, because...Daisy's comments about Calvin just felt a bit to familiar. And finally...I'd like to talk about how this experience affected Daisy...on a more paranormal level, beyond just the trauma. And...I think the best way to do this is to finally look at how her backstory parallels Jon's. Now, let me be clear, I'm not going to say that Jon and Daisy...as whole entire characters are parallels to each other. Provided Daisy comes back after this episode, there's definitely room for that to happen, but right now...their dynamic doesn't really go beyond Jon finding her scary, and Daisy thinking he's a killer simply out of a general disliking for him. We just...haven't seen these two interact enough for me to make a claim that big. That being said...I do not think it is a coincidence that this episode came right after A Guest for Mr. Spider, because like...come on. Both of them have had childhoods that are...pretty shit right out the gate from the looks of things, but also went through deeply traumatic incidents that involved them witnessing something extremely paranormal, someone they knew arguably going through it even worse than they did, and ever since they have lived with tremendous guilt as they think about how they could've stopped those people from dying or becoming corrupted, they've never told anyone about what happened due to the feeling that no one will believe them, and both incidents have heavily influenced the person they are today in many different ways. Like...they're very different backstories overall, but there's way too many similarities for me to think that the stories don't parallel each other. Once again, their backstories parallel each other, but not necessarily the characters as a whole. So with all of that in mind...I think it's pretty safe to say that Daisy was touched by The Piper as a child, much like Jon. And no, I don't think she was claimed, not just because it would make more sense for her to be touched given how...you know, Jon was touched but not claimed by The Spider, not only because she didn't go through the same thing as Calvin with the wounded figure, but also because...her behavior doesn't really line up with someone who's been claimed.

Firstly, as I mentioned earlier, Daisy is at least 44 years old, and this incident took place when she was eleven. I feel like if she was claimed by The Piper...she would've probably figured that out by now, and would be actively serving it, and...I really don't have any reason to believe that she's been claimed by anything at this point. But secondly...her levels of behavior when it comes to...potentially being influenced by one of ✨the horrors✨ match up...pretty nicely with Jon. If we disregard his connection to The Eye for a bit, we can see that...while a lot of Jon's behavior does make sense when you consider his general personality and outlook on life, as well as how his past trauma shaped him in a non-paranormal way, it's...just off enough to make me thing that he's at least a little bit influenced by The Spider in some places. I'm not going to go into why, since I already did so for A Guest for Mr. Spider, but...yeah, I think the same goes for Daisy! Like, her violent tendencies make sense when you look at her outside of a paranormal perspective. Like I said, she grew up in a pretty violent, cruel and uncomfortable environment, she was the only one who bore witness to Calvin's actions with no one around to back her up, so it makes sense for her to become accustomed to pretty bloody behavior. But like....that bloodlust is just off enough for me to think that something's up. She's just...a bit too quick to jump to a violent solution in most scenarios, a bit too antagonistic, and the. you have weird things like the emotions she felt when she came across her first two corpses, and...yeah, something's up with her. Ultimately, I...don't really think I need to argue that she was touched. Like, yeah, she encountered one of ✨the horrors✨, obviously she was. But I do think it could be easy to misconstrue her as being claimed given her personality...which I doubt is the case, so...I'm just clearing that up. Now, what do I think her being touched by The Piper means for the greater story and her character? ...To be honest I have no goddamn clue. You see...with Jon, the reveal that he was touched by The Spider came with a whole mess of implications for me, but with Daisy...it better explains her behavior, but...I can't really tell what it'll ultimately amount to, if at all. It's just due to a...general lack of information, really. Like I've been saying, she's been in two episodes while Jon's been in eighty-one, so...I can't speculate as much. What also doesn't help is that compared to The Spider, which has been in a good number of episodes and has a lot of intriguing little plot threads strewn about (pun very much intended)...The Piper remains one of the most obscure members of ✨the horrors✨, and I don't have much of a clue as to what its relevance in the greater narrative will be. My best guess is that, given what it seems to represent, it'll have a pretty big role to play in the "struggle" mentioned by Michael, and...provided that she hasn't already been brutally murdered by ghosts, I think it'll be pretty relevant to Melanie's character, given how she's...basically the only reccuring thing outside of Daisy herself that has a connection to The Piper, but overall...I don't have much I can say. All I can say is that...if she comes back, I think it'll be important. I...do also wonder if her scar might connect to her being touched...maybe gaining that scar was what forged that connection? That could be kind of cool. Also, I forgot to mention this, but daisies are often seen as the flower of innocence and purity, so...maybe the scar is meant to represent how she lost what innocence she had left during that incident? Or maybe it's like...the last fragment of innocence she has left, given how it seems to comfort her? I'd also really like to see her interact with Melanie if they get the chance, given well...you know...shared marks from the looks of it. I...really don't know, but it's all very intriguing.

Well...that about wraps it up for everything regarding Daisy's past. Overall, I really liked the story, I think it had fantastic themes, some neat implications, and overall did wonders for fleshing out her character. But...getting back to the plot, after reading out all of her trauma straight in front of her, leaving her mortified even further, Elias makes his final proclamation. She says that if she takes any action against him or the institute, she will let her superiors know about her crimes, and will make sure that they can't cover it up. What's interesting is that...he doesn't actually tell her to stop pursuing Jon. He obviously doesn't reveal his location to her, but...he advises that if she chooses to seek him out, she should kill him quickly. Not only does that make me wonder...what the hell Jon might secretly be capable of, provided Elias isn't lying, bluffing or...building up the "killer Jon" shtick, but I think it also shows...just how confident this fucker is. Like, he clearly needs Jon alive for something, but is willing to take the risk of letting him out into the world where god-knows-what is out to kill him, and he isn't protected by the institute's power...because he knows. He knows that he's going to win. He knows...everything. I. HATE. That he KNOWS EVERYTHING!!! It's just...he is the last person who should have that power, which...honestly speaks for a lot of real-world people of his societal status. But with that...Daisy admits defeat. She gives one last threat towards Elias...and leaves. I'm...honestly not sure if we'll ever see her again. I mean, I think we will, this episode definitely shows that the team is willing to do some really interesting stuff with her, and I think it would be a waste to not push her character further. Plus...I feel like if given the chance, she'll still go looking for Jon, not even for her job but just out of...anger at this point. And she'll...probably try to kill him as well, so...yay! I...please don't fight you guys. Even though one of you is objectively more corrupt than the other I love you both so much. Just. Please. No. But uh...even with all that said...I don't know. It's entirely possible that she runs and never looks back, because, I mean...it would certainly be a good display of Elias' power, that's for sure. ...sigh. Well, after she leaves and Elias gives one last snide remark, we're left with a short recording of an argument between Martin and Tim. We learn that they saw Daisy rush out with a mortified expression on her face, but while Martin thinks something is up, Tim, who is...once again, clearly just...so, so tired at this point, brushes it off as her hating the place like most. We also see how while Martin is still holding out hope that Sasha's alive, Tim is almost entirely convinced that Jon killed her, much to the former's frustration. What's interesting to me is that Tim is the one to say that if she's not dead, then she must have been the thing they saw (referring to The NotThem), and Martin actually denies this. This is peculiar because...back in Hide and Seek, they had the exact opposite opinions, so...it's intriguing to see this change. Maybe Tim's tired attitude has gotten just that bad, maybe Martin is doing whatever he can to hold out hope for the best case scenario...but it's most likely both.

Tim goes on to throw out all possibilities of what the thing was, including the idea that "maybe she was always some messed up mutant and we just never noticed", which is...unfortunately not that far off. He also refers to Michael here and says that "it basically told us it was working with Jon", which is...huh? Uh...what exactly does he mean by that? Like...when he says "it" the second time, is he referring to Michael or The NotThem? Because...unless they saw the former in the backrooms off tape, I don't think either of them insinuated they were working with Jon. Sure, Michael doesn't seem to be directly out to kill him like most other servants or aspects of ✨the horrors✨, but...he most certainly isn't against his death in general, and I would much sooner call him Jon's enemy than his ally. So...I really don't get what Tim means by this, maybe it'll be elaborated on further at one point but for now...I'm confused. Or maybe he's also confused and is just throwing shit at the wall until something sticks, I don't know. Regardless, he ultimately decides to leave the room and go lie down, accepting that the institute is just a place where bad shit happens and people die in utter defeat. Martin tries to go after him, saying that they need to talk about things (which I STRONGLY agree with)...but before he can give chase, he's...surprised to see a recorder running. Oh...that bitch turned itself on, didn't it? Oh me oh my. ...Hello Magnus Archives Season 3.

So uh...that's it for The Eyewitnesses. ...Can I just say how much I love that episode title? Tma always has great ones that do a fantastic job of sticking with you, but I find this one particularly cool. Like, it has the obvious inclusion of "The Eye", but also references every major character in the episode. Martin and Tim as the people who discovered Leitner's body, Daisy as the witness to Calvin's crimes, and Elias as the witness to Daisy's crimes, even if not directly. But overall...damn, what a phenomenal episode. Not gonna lie, it was pretty polarizing to me at first, simply because it's just...super different from what I'm used to with this podcast, and that initial shock honestly made it take a really long time to figure out how I was going to write about it (so uh...if you're wondering why this one also took a while, lo and behold), but...after finally getting my thoughts down and into text...yeah, I think this one's pretty damn amazing. While tma has always had fantastic characterization, especially in regards to how memorable characters that only show up once and/or don't show up in person are portrayed...this is the first glaring instance I can think of where an episode excels in the characterization over the story. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that tma usually prioritizes its narrative, it usually pays off and is ultimately of very little consequence to the character development, and I do love the story of Daisy's past in this episode, but...man, those characters just hit different. Ok well, Martin admittedly didn't do much, but like...how can I be mad at him, I'm just happy he's here. But as for everyone else...damn! This episode allowed me to make major strides in sorting out my current opinion on Tim, it made Daisy even more interesting and...honestly created one of the most unique and nuanced characters so far in such a short time frame with her...and then we have Elias. Oh my god, Elias Bouchard. I am...genuinely stunned by what they accomplished with him here. In roughly half an episode, hell, a pretty short one by tma standards, they gave him like...at least 50 times more development and endearing qualities as a villain than the first two seasons combined. Before this I was...intrigued by him, for sure, but didn't really care for him too much, or have the same level of brainrot for him as I did the rest of the major characters, and even a decent amount of the minor ones. But now...I mean...my god. He's just...immediately shot up to my favorites within a matter of minutes. He's even more mystifying than ever, but also has a great presence and performance, such an interesting psyche, and despite being the most outwardly normal...I'd dare to say that he's actually the scariest out of the four major antagonists we've had so far, at least to me. I...DESPERATELY need him to stop spending his time smoking weed off-tape now, because...he is just way too compelling of a character for them to keep in the background. I NEED to hear what he's like high, PLEASE. But outside of all of the brilliant character work, this episode was just generally a terrifying treat of an experience, and I'm happy to say that...it finally feels like Season 3 has been properly established. ...I know it's been like two episodes but given how long these take to write it's been like a few weeks for me lmao. Sure, I definitely think that some...general patterns need to be set up, like, I still have no clue as to how the episodes with Jon are going to function, but...we at least have the status quos of the two main story arcs set up now, which is good. And hopefully that also means that I can finally break out of these last six episodes of info-dump, and just...finally get something more standard. Like...I've loved these past few episodes a lot, but...please just let me rest a bit. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please.

Supplemental: Ok...I have admittedly garnered quite a few thoughts ever since I finished writing for A Guest for Mr. Spider, but...I did say that I would briefly talk about the Season 3 trailer when I felt the time was right, so...I'm going to save all of those miscellaneous thoughts for the MAG 83 supplemental, and talk about that for now. So...oh boy. The trailer takes place shortly before Daisy's interview with Martin, and...truth be told, her interactions with Elias here don't give us anything that isn't elaborated on further in The Eyewitnesses. However...there is one thing that stand out. Daisy hears a strange melody playing from across the institute's halls, which fades after a while. And looking at the transcript...we can tell it's calliope music. Oh no no no no no no no. So...as I'm sure we're all aware, the calliope organ belonged to The Other Circus...who are in service of The Stranger, and therefore...most likely going to participate in whatever "The Unknowing" is. What's interesting though is that this music likely isn't just being done for dramatic effect, because according to Jon....Nikolai Denikin's calliope is actually located in artifact storage. So...that means that someone was actually playing it. And since it would make no sense for it to be an institute employee or...anyone who's normal, at least given the knowledge we have at the moment...then that means it's likely an agent of The Stranger has found their way inside. It could be Breekon & Hope, who we've already seen get inside. It could be some unknown member of The Other Circus, or worst case scenario an escaped NotThem, but..this tells us that The Stranger, or at least someone working with them...has access to the institute. And...given how I suspect The Unknowing to be a direct attack on the place that's primarily orchestrated by The Stranger...yeah, that's uh...that's a good omen. ...You know, I say that with sarcasm, but honestly, like...who's really evil at this point? Everyone? ...Yeah that checks out honestly, the whole situation sucks major balls. Well um...I can't think of a clever way to end this, so....byeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

- Episode 83, Drawing a Blank 🎨

Statement of Chloe Ashburt, regarding a new window display at Fanton’s department store in Hammersmith.

OH THANK GOD FINALLY SOMETHING NORMAL!!! ...Well, er...normal by the standards of this podcast at least. Look, the past...six or so episodes have been an absolute blast from top to bottom, some of the best in the series alongside my absolute favorite...but when you have to spend time writing down as many of your thoughts on them as possible...yeah, something more standard is a godsent. So uh...yeah! We finally have our first, good ol' spooky... kind of anthological statement of Season 3. Now, the status quo feels a lot more properly set, which is nice, I feel like I'm finally starting to get a better sense of...what this season is like. As for the statement itself, it's...good. To be honest, it's far from the most innovative or crazy thing that tma has ever done for me, like...it's a fairly standard horror story, all things considered. But....this is honestly the perfect time to throw in something a bit more down-to-earth, so I am absolutely not complaining. And despite that, it's still a very well written story that was constantly interesting, brilliantly paced, had some pretty unnerving imagery, and some decently interesting little connections that seem...particularly relevant to the overarching narrative of Season 3, which is interesting considering how...standard the episode is at large, but very welcome nonetheless. So uh...yeah, I like this episode! The finale of Season 2 and premiere of Season 3 were brilliant, but...it's nice to have something a bit more familiar. I really don't have much more to add, so...spooky mannequin statement!

So...one of the most surprising and interesting aspects of this episode is...kind of the fact that it exists in the way it does...at all. Like, the general framing device for the episode genuinely surprised me. Let me explain. So, after The Eyewitnesses, we've come back to seeing things from Jon's perspective as he hides away with Georgie. Already, this makes me guess that the season will be going under a format where...every odd episode follows Jon, and every even one follows the institute, which I like the idea of! It's more than enough spotlight on the archival assistants, while not forsaking Jon's presence in the story, so...yeah, if I'm right and that's what they're going for, I think it'll be pretty effective as a way to shake things up a bit...but not TOO much. But the fact that we're getting another episode with Jon isn't the thing that stands out to me, rather it's...what he's doing in the episode. If you recall, I assumed that because he wasn't in the institute anymore, all episodes with Jon that occured after A Guest for Mr. Spider, or at least...until he returns to the institute if Elias is to be believed, which...I think he unfortunately is given his abilities and nature, would be...different. Like, even with her podcast in mind, it's unlikely that Georgie has a bunch of statements lying around, so the question is...what does Jon even do from here on out? Well, this episode seemingly answers that question, at least I assume, and it's quite surprising. Because as it turns out...our guy is still reading and researching statements. Now, I don't have a problem with this at all. While it would've been kind of cool for Season 3 to just have...a completely different format for Jon's episodes, not doing so saves me the trouble of having to adjust to something new, and I mean...hey, the statements are still fantastic, they're what make up the majority of the story, so at the end of the day...the more the merrier, I guess. But it obviously brings up a lot of questions. In terms of storytelling...well, there's still the matter of how episodes back at the institute are going to function. I won't speculate TOO hard about it, since chances are we're going to get answers in the very next episode, or at least not too long from now, but...will they also be statements read by someone "filling in" for Jon like I initially assumed, or...will THOSE episodes be the ones that take on a completely different format? I...guess I'll just have to wait and see. But in terms of the actual plot, the big question is...why does Jon even have this statement lying around in the first place? Well, the information we have is scattered around both pre and post statement, but I'll do my best to summarize it. So...as it turns out, this statement just...showed up in Georgie's post box four days ago, with no clear sender, but clearly delivered by hand due to the lack of a return address and a postmark. So one must wonder, who sent it, and why? Well...figuring out who sent it isn't all that difficult. Because, yeah, I'm like 98% certain that it was Elias. Perhaps it's a red herring, but...I don't know, this feels like one of those situations where the audience knows what the characters don't, like a tamer instance of Not!Sasha. Because, come on. It's been well established that he knows exactly where Jon is hiding, which lines up perfectly with an anonymous sender delivering a statement clearly for him to Georgie's address, and I mean....he's just genuinely creepy like that! He clearly has some sort of big master plan that Jon is supposed to play a part in, he most likely knows the true meaning behind Jon's job title (which is mostly reading statements!!!), like...do I really need to explain any further?

As for why though...well, I already kind of implied that I think this connects to Elias' big plan and the role of The Archivist, but...both of those are WAY too mysterious and vague at the moment for me to make a tangible theory out of. However...this statement specifically pertains to The Stranger, which Jon says himself, and therefore it...probably has something to do with The Unknowing, which is being built up as a MAJOR threat right now. And while Elias seems uncannily confident in the institute's ability to stop this thing...that doesn't mean he doesn't want to stop it at all. So in my opinion, Elias sent this statement to Jon not only because of all of the...weird Eye and Archivist stuff, but also because it's really relevant at the moment. And assuming that he's going to keep on sending these things going forward...then I think this theme of relevance will continue. If I'm right, then all of the statements that Jon reads will likely pertain to The Stranger, The Unknowing, or really...anything that we should just start seriously worrying about soon, and if it turns out that the institute episodes will also be statements, then...I guess they'll be a bit more like what we're used to, they might focus on stuff that isn't imminently important, or just be classic one-offs. If I'm right....then I kind of like that! We won't be entirely sacrificing the charm of characters or concepts returning within statements when you least expect them to, but things could end up feeling a bit more focused if Jon's episodes end up as what I think they will. So uh...I guess we're doing statements for Jon again, there's some interesting stuff surrounding Elias and The Stranger there, and...yeah. Anyways, I should start talking about the actual chronological events of the episode now. It opens up with Jon and Georgie discussing the strange statement that just arrived in the mail a few days ago. Jon exhibits this...strange compulsion to read the statement, saying that it's simply his job, it's...what he does. This understandably confuses Georgie, because as far as she's concerned, he got fired so terribly that it caused him to lose everything, hence why he's staying with her. Heh...get fired from The Magnus Institute. Imagine. But...Jon just brushes it off as "being complicated." Sigh....you'd better keep good on your word and start getting help mister, especially with how generously willing Georgie seems to be to give it. I...want to quickly examine his weird insistence on reading and recording the statement though. On one hand, I think it makes sense. Even when you ignore the connections to The Stranger, Jon has gotten invested in...everything that's been happening, and understandably so. Sure, many a time there's been a lesson that it's better to just...back away and ignore things if you want to survive ✨the horrors✨, but...Jon straight up says that he's in too deep to back out now, and I unfortunately can not argue with that. So like yeah...if I were him, I would also probably want to research this, and the recording bit also ties into his desire to not be forgotten. Which...now that I think about it is one of many very unnerving parallels to Leitner, but...let's save that discussion for another time, shall we? But uh...the point I'm trying to make is that...while it makes sense for Jon to act the way he is here, it's obviously not that simple.

In fact, that feels like kind of a running theme in this season so far. Examples of characters doing things that make sense when you look at them through a regular and human lens, but...definitely seem to be at least somewhat influenced by weirder forces when you think about it. Stuff like Daisy's violence likely being partially influenced by The Piper, the many instances of Jon potentially being manipulated a little bit by The Spider, and now...this. I'm pretty sure that despite his genuine desires, Jon's insistence on reading and recording this statement is being influenced by The Eye. I mean...it just adds up. Jon's job as The Archivist, while still very mysterious, is almost certainly connected to his additional status as a supposed servant of The Eye. Reading and recording statements, when you whittle it down, is just a method of gaining and storing knowledge, and...that definitely seems in line with what The Eye is supposed to represent. Hell, before we even had confirmation of The Eye ruling the institute, I already suspected that by doing their jobs, the archival team was unknowingly (that's a weird word to use in this discussion given its meaning in tma but you get what I mean) doing The Eye's bidding, so...yeah, all in all, I think that Jon's weird desire to read and record the statement in the exact same manner that he did back at the institute is being influenced by The Eye. I...also do have to wonder if The Spider is also involved. After all, what Jon's experiencing here is...a compulsion, a desire, a want to do something even though he doesn't understand why he wants to. And...The Spider is all about control and manipulation, and I've already suspected that Jon has been influenced by it ever since his childhood trauma, and that The Spider and The Eye are relatively close, so...yeah, I could see it being involved as well. All of this might also explain...why Jon never tried to quit his job until push came to shove, because prior to Tim's downward spiral in Season 2...I'd argue that he seemed to hate his job the most, so...maybe this desire for statements explains why he kept on doing his job despite his personal feelings on it. So...yeah, overall, this is a really weird trait he's exhibiting, and I really hope some further light gets shined on it going forward, because...it feels like it could be our first major clue as to what it even means to be The Archivist, and...an even more prevalent example of how you can't really quit your job at the institute, now that I think about it. ...You know, the more I think about it, the more excited I am to learn about how this whole thing affected Gertrude. Like, reason dictates that she was also a servant of The Eye, but like...how did she experience it? Did she ever learn what the true meaning of her job was? Was she a servant by choice? Or...given how she was so close to succcessfully destroying the archives if not for Elias, did she somehow break free? Oh, and mentioning Elias...I still can't shake the feeling that something's off with his murder of her. Like, I don't doubt that he killed her, but...there has to be more to it than him just shooting her because she tried to destroy the archives, right? Especially with how cosmically terrifying her corpse was in Antonio Blake's dreams...there has to be...SOMETHING more to it. I don't know what but...I get the feeling that Leitner didn't give us all the details. Sorry, sorry, I'm getting off track.

Going back to the present, Georgie continues to be suspicious and...pretty worried of Jon's condition, but he keeps on trying to make things seem tamer than they actually are. On one hand it's very unfortunate to see him act that way, but on the other, hearing Jonathan Archivist Sims angrily defend his ability to do drugs like he's the nerd in front of the cool kids in some cliché high school movie did leave me choking. Georgie shows herself to be rather perceptive, realizing that Jon often gets obsessive over things, and highly suspecting that he got dragged into something that went horribly wrong...to which he doesn't even bother to deny. First of all, her calling him out on his obsessiveness...radiates SO much ex energy that it's not even funny. Like, I'll be more surprised if it turns out they DIDN'T date at this point. ...God I hope they don't go down the route of getting them back together. I mean, I like their dynamic, for all I know it could work, but...justice for Martin please? Because let's be honest, his incessantly horrendous gay crush seems to be the only thing keeping him hopeful for the future at the moment. But uh...secondly, I think this....general ability to tell what's up with Jon that Georgie shows here...makes me think that with her around, Jon's not going to be able to keep the "looking for a new job" charade up for much longer. You know...I initially kind of shitted on Jon for potentially dragging Georgie into his mess, and while I still stand by a few claims here and there...the more I think about it, she might be the EXACT person he needs in his life right now. Because like...he's realized that he needs to start getting help from others, but so far...hasn't really exhibited an ability to do so. Of course it's still early days for the season, and therefore his current arc, but my point is...Georgie is the best person to have around in order to get him to rely on others for once. I think he'll have to come clean sooner rather than later given her perceptiveness and skepticism, and if, or...honestly more like when that does happen...it could be a big step for his relationships with others. After that, it's just up to Georgie to be understanding and accepting of his situation, which...I understand is a VERY tall order given how insane the plot is, but...I'll have faith in her until proven otherwise. I mean, she almost certainly has...some level of familiarity with spooky shit, provided "What the Ghost?" isn't a load of bull, so...she might be more readily prepared for this sort of thing than I'm currently giving her credit for. Also, this is completely unrelated, but I love how Jon has come from shitting on Melanie for her "unprofessionalism" to having his only friend at the moment be a woman who runs a ghost story podcast. That is absolute peak character development. ...Every day we don't hear about Melanie I get more and more worried for her. ...Christ I have gone on a tangent, I TOLD MYSELF THIS ONE WASN'T GOING TO BE TOO LONG DAMMIT!!!

...Anyways, Georgie goes on to tell Jon that his insistance on reading the statement...isn't right. Obviously she doesn't realize the greater implications of this desire, but...she's smart enough to pick up on the fact that something's up. As funny as the "I could be on drugs" bit was...I actually think it's kind of telling the more I think about it, because it feels like Georgie is equating this whole thing to a drug addiction of sorts. She tells him that it's not helping, that it's "part of the problem", recognizes that it has to do with...what she assumes to be some sort of cult indoctrination, which is unfortunately not that far off from the truth, and realizes how badly it's affecting Jon. ...Apparently he's spent the last four days obsessing over it with little to no sleep, which is...a bit too familiar to his darkest hours of Season 2 for me. Please, I just...I need him to grow, he might be fictional but...after A Guest for Mr. Spider, I'm care about his wellbeing more than ever. That's...actually something I forgot to mention earlier. In the previous two seasons, while I always liked Jon...it took me a while for me to be genuinely empathetic towards him. He was always a very endearing little scamp, but...outside of certain instances, usually in the later parts of the seasons, I...spent a lot of time internally screaming at him, not to the point of me ever disliking his character, but...still. I definitely grew more concerned for him in Season 2, but a lot of the time it was in less of a "poor baby :(" way and more of a "get your shit together" way. Basically, what I'm saying is that up until A Guest for Mr. Spider, my love of Jon's character was, outside of a few instances here and there...not ironic, but more...born out of a desire to toss him around like pināta than a genuine care and understanding for him as a person. But now...I don't know, I really resonate with him, and my love for him is an honest and earnest one. Like, while I realize that he's fictional and do not value him as much as I do the real people that I actually know...I care about him in a very similar way. Uh...regardless, going back to what Georgie's saying...she's pretty right. Obviously she doesn't have the full picture, and while I can't exactly blame her for thinking this way...it is admittedly unreasonable to expect Jon to just...stop. Once again, it makes perfect sense for her to think this way, she almost certainly doesn't know why he feels he has to read and record this thing, hell, I don't even think Jon knows himself, but...there's likely a lot more to it than him not being able to break away from what he's used to. Oh, and I have to agree with her on how unnerving it is that Elia- I mean ✨the ever mysterious sender✨ knows her address. That is...a very bad sign.

Ok, with all of that out of the way...we can FINALLY get to the actual statement. I'm...pretty sure this'll be the most in detail part of this section. Just...keep in mind that going forward, I'll be talking more and more about the characters alongside all of the plot and lore, because...I'm getting PROPERLY invested in them now. Like, I've always really liked tma's cast, but...it's only recently that I feel like the full scopes of these characters are starting to take shape, and I'm able to appreciate them for more than just the sum of their parts. That's not a bad thing whatsoever, I think the fact that tma prioritizes plot, or at the very least did so at the beginning, has ultimately paid off and will likely continue to do so going forward, and given the fact that I have roughly three entire seasons left, on top of...whatever the fuck The Magnus Protocol is...yeah, I'm sure I'll have more than enough time to appreciate these characters in their more complex forms...at least provided they don't die horribly premature deaths, but...I have the feeling that if any of them do die...I mean, I'll be sobbing my eyes out, but Jonny'll probably make the deaths worthwile given his skill as a writer. But um...my point is, characters who I used to like...mostly for vibes and not much more (which once again, worked for the time), are now becoming characters who I really appreciate as like...properly fleshed out people. It's not like they were bereft of complexeties or anything, but Jon, Martin, Tim, Daisy, especially Elias, and many more have all seen some tremendous growth as well-rounded characters in my eyes, and I feel like Georgie's already standing toe to toe with them given how quickly I've gotten invested in her personality. It's sad that Sasha can't be on that list but...I guess that's kind of the point. Sigh...I miss you every day queen. Ok, but uh...for real this time, let's get into this mysterious statement.

...Ok I lied. There's just one little detail that happens before the actual story starts that I'd like to unpack, but I SWEAR it's just the one thing. So, rather than calling himself "Former Head Archivist of The Magnus Institute, London" like he did in A Guest for Mr. Spider, Jon just...uses his name and nothing else. Now, I definitely think that this is a sign of his...likely futile attempts to distance himself from his position, and hopefully means that he's taking Georgie's advice...at least somewhat into account, but...there might be another meaning to it. Because...someone in the Youtube comments pointed out that using his name and not his title...is exactly how Gertrude opened up the statements she recorded. That's...kind of interesting. At first I thought that this could be a clue to like...Gertrude successfully distancing herself from the title of The Archivist, but...now I have other thoughts. The narrative relationship between Jon and Gertrude is endlessly fascinating to me, while they barely knew each other at all when the latter was still alive, their characters are chock full of parallels and foils to each other, something that is almost said in the show by Leitner. So...taking their parallels into account for a second, what if this new similarity could be suggesting that...Jon is going down the same path as Gertrude? I mean, given how their is very clearly a long-ass line of Eye servants known as The Archivist, with at least two of them (Gertrude and the Alexandrian one) having met really strange fates...this idea that they're destined to all end up like one another kind of works thematically for me. Now, this could definitely tell us some pretty interesting things about Jon. Maybe it could suggest that he'll eventually become a hardened and destructive badass like Gertrude, which would be a pretty cool subversion of all of the comments doubting his stomach for ✨the horrors✨ made by people like Elias and Leitner. ...It could also suggest that he'll die a grizzly fate too but...let's just ignore that for the time being. But uh...I'm actually a bit more interested by what this parallel, and really...all of their parallels means for Gertrude instead. You see, I get the sense that one of the major aspects of Jon's development at the moment is...deepening his connections to ✨the horrors✨. It's possible that's maybe just a subconscious side effect of me now having confirmation that he's been touched and claimed by some of them, but...I don't know, it still feels like his bonds with The Spider, and ESPECIALLY The Eye...are just getting a bit stronger. So, if you pair that with the idea that he's currently heading down the same path as Gertrude...then maybe that can tell us something about her. Maybe she was getting closer and closer to The Eye in her final moments, and her attempt at destroying the archives wasn't just done to stop...whatever the hell Elias and the institute at large are up to, but was also done as a last ditch effort to sever her connection to The Eye, and therefore stop being The Archivist. But...maybe she failed, and um...you know that Alexandrian Archivist who seemingly survived as an apparition of The Eye? Well...what if that's what happened to her? What if that's what happened to every Archivist that failed to sever their connection? She's just like...down there in the tunnels somewhere, floating around as a cyclops ghost thing. And that means...Jon could end up the same. Also, I have to wonder...if my theory about The Spider pulling Jon towards the institute so that he could become The Archivist is true...what does that mean for Gertrude? Did she also encounter it in her youth? Or did she come there out of her own will for some completely different reason? I uh...I could really go all day. Just know that the parallels between these two haunt me all the time, and this single line of dialogue has pushed me down another rabbit hole OH COME THE FUCK ON I WAS JUST ABOUT TO TALK ABOUT THE STUPID MANNEQUIN.

Ok...no excuses now, I...actually have to get into the statement. Here we go, for real this time. Hopefully the train of thought doesn't get derailed and fall off a bridge for the 50th time. So, this episode's statement comes from a woman named Chloe Ashburt. Truth be told, I don't have too many opinions on her, but she works well as a protagonist and tells her story nicely. I will say that the one thing I did really like about her was how she was able to just...naturally be a little person in the story. It's only really implied throughout the statement and properly mentioned by Jon at the end, but..I liked it! It wasn't too shy to bring attention to the fact, and while it does make some comments about Chloe not being tall enough to reach things or facing discrimination in the workplace, it all felt like it was handled in a very natural and tasteful way, not interrupting the narrative while still allowing to exist as a part of her identity. Just...I really appreciate it when disabilities are allowed to be normalized in fiction without it being treated like the hottest take of the century. Anyways, a good while before submitting her statement to the institute, Chloe was working at Fanton's department store in Hammersmith. Overall it was a decent job for her, she didn't have much passion for it and...well, customer service blows about as much as you think it would, but her coworkers were generally friendly, it payed well enough to get her through her true passion of art school, and she was shifted around jobs just enough to the point where she didn't get bored. But overall...it was just a standard part-time job made to get her through university, and not much more. There was...one thing however, that kept the job pretty entertaining, and that was the window displays. As an artist (thankfully not the pretentious kind, looking at you Joseph Russo), Chloe had quite the interest in design, and her super cool line Lana Billings was well aware of this. So, Chloe was often left on the teams who set up displays, and while her perfectionism sometimes made things slow, and...she kind of wishes she had stopped after a while due to what ultimately happened, she had a pretty good time for the most part. But about a month before she submitted her statement, it was time for the store to start setting up some autumn displays, which Chloe was a particular fan of due to the more...out there or dramatic themes they usually held. The theme for the display she was sent to arrange was...."Nights at The Circus". Oh dear. Among them was a mannequin dressed in hoops and acrobat clothing, a paper-mache lion, and another mannequin dressed in the outfit of a ringmistress. That last one was particularly striking, adorned with a red top hat and holding a whip with great conviction. Now...already, it became clear to me that we were dealing with The Stranger, or more specifically The Other Circus, with the paper-mache lion REALLY reminding me of that tiger "taxidermy" that's shown up in a couple of statements. Granted, after listening to the episode, I don't actually think the initial display had anything to do with The Other Circus, rather, I think it was just...ill timing on the department store's part, having inadvertently attracted the attention of the paranormal. But, the point still stands that...The Other Circus is very much still in operation. If the calliope music in the Season 3 trailer wasn't enough, then...yeah, contrary to my prior beliefs they are very much still around, and seemingly playing a big role in The Unknowing, although...I'll go into more detail on that after I overview the statement.

Anyways, going back to Chloe, she notes that the other thing that kept work at the department store interesting was the...privileges granted to her by Lana. Due to both her status as an art student and her tendency to work rather late shifts, Lana would often have Chloe close up the store, but would also let her stay and draw the mannequins past the usual closing time, despite the protests of rather bigoted higher-ups. Chloe would often spend hours drawing the figures, and obviously, she would not leave the "Nights at The Circus" display exempt from her sketches. She spent night after night drawing every possible detail and angle of the figures, particularly the beautiful ringmistress, to perfection. But...that just meant that when all of a sudden, the mannequin had been replaced, she was the first, and...unfortunately only person to notice. Yeah...this was most definitely where our beloved cult of The Stranger started getting involved. At least...I think that's what The Other Circus is supposed to be? I don't know, even with all the new information we've gotten on ✨the horrors✨, especially The Stranger, my stance on that hasn't really changed since Strange Music, they are just...WAY too cult-like. Regardless, one day the mannequin was just...off. It had the same clothes and was in the same pose, but certain elements like the length of the arms and the size of the neck had been altered just slightly, and where there had once been at least...some semblance of the structure of a human face was...a perfectly blank head bereft of all features, plastic in perfect condition outside of a small crack. The changes were so miniscule that no one who hadn't drawn the figure to memory would ever notice it, and even Chloe started to question her own sanity, which is...very reminiscent of The NotThem now that I think about it, and for pretty obvious reasons. The only logical explanation that she could muster up was that someone must have removed the old mannequin and replaced it with a new one in the exact same position, but why and how was even more of a conundrum. Worst of all was that not only had nothing of worth been stolen, but even if she did get someone to believe her, no one would really do anything about it because...what could they even do to begin with? So...she just kept quiet. ...Ok, the overlap between The Stranger and The Spiral really bugs me! Like, I think it probably has to do with that whole...thing Leitner talked about that implied ✨the horrors✨ aren't as easy to understand and differentiate as 1, 2, 3, but like...you can see why I was so adamant that The NotThem and Michael were somehow connected, right? Like, they both have this whole thing of making you question your sanity or...just kind of gaslighting you overall. The main difference seems to be that The Strange does this by making things seem...slightly off or a little bit uncanny, while The Spiral does it by making things that are just...absolutely impossible by all laws of nature and life. But still, they're very similar in a lot of ways, and...that annoys me, because unlike The Eye and The Spider for example...there's like...NO proper examples of these two working with each other. Whatever The Unknowing is, it clearly harms the institute in some sort of way, and therefore harms The Eye. But...Michael, who is basically the poster-child for The Spiral, just...does not seem to be a party involved with the thing, he's much more of a chaotic neutral force who just wants to see what happens next. So like...what's up. Are they allies, enemies, or just entirely unrelated? I uh...I really don't know, but I want answers.

Ok, brief side tangent aside, for the next few weeks, Chloe just went about her business, accepting that she was unable to really do anything. Still, whenever she got the chance, she would inspect that mannequin again and again, and every time it got more and more unnerving. There was just this...feeling of difference and unease that emanated from the thing, she felt like it was watching her, which like...look, I get it, but it's funny to hear someone feel like they're being watched by The Eye's biggest hater. But just as she was about to start getting used to its presence...something even weirder happened. One day, Lana called Chloe into her office, and she seemed...on edge. She questioned her for a bit, asking if she had stayed around the night before, if she had done anything other than drawing, and if she had messed with the displays, the last two of which Chloe firmly denied in confusion. It was then that Lana pulled out a picture taken of one of the previously empty autumn display windows. And...where there was once nothing was a tangled mess of plastic mannequin limbs dressed in garish colors, holding its detached head in the air, with a big smile and a red pompom in the manner of a clown wig plastered upon it. On top of that, none of the CCTV showed this vandalism occuring, which...I assume is due to the concealment abilities of The Stranger, but all Lana saw was further evidence of he act being committed by someone who knew the camera placements well, so...someone who likely worked there. As inherently cool as all of this imagery is...it is also admittedly pretty creepy, and that's coming from someone who otherwise really vibes with mannequins. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that this was the work of the mannequin monster or something related, but...I do have to question why it did it. It could be a part of some elaborate scheme made to lead things to exactly where they ended up, it could be done to make sure that Chloe couldn't find out what's up with it after hours, it could just be done for the sake of The Stranger's off-putting nature, or...maybe this is at the very least symbolic of how the mannequin monster was made? I...don't really have a reason for that beyond just vibes, but...those vibes work for me personally. Anyways, despite initially coming off as suspicious due to her tendency to stay around late and her...artistic endeavors, Chloe was ultimately able to convince Lana that she was not responsible for the disfiguring of the mannequin. Lana agreed to not pursue any further action...but she unfortunately had to stop letting Chloe stay around after hours to draw the figures, which...she technically shouldn't have been doing in the first place. While Chloe was understanding towards her manager's reasons and realized she was getting off lightly...it ultimately made it so that her job was a lot more dull, and the customer service was even more insufferable. But during this time...some odd things happened. Due to Chloe's new restrictions, Lana had assigned the job of closing up the place to a number of people on rotation, but every day, whoever closed up the night before would appear a bit more....on edge, constantly jumping or glancing as if something had really spooked them. And eventually...it happened. The Wednesday before Chloe gave her statement, Lana couldn't find anyone who was willing or available to close up, meaning that she had to do the job herself. Chloe said she would help her do so if it meant she got to stay around and draw the figures for a bit, and she...reluctantly agreed. But that night...things were off.

There was a strange feeling of unease in the air, one that Chloe doubts was born of her own cognition, and when Lana should've been providing her usual talkative commentary...it was dead silent in the store. It was then that Chloe rounded the corner of the "Nights at The Circus" display as she was heading out...and saw that the mannequin, the one that had been unnerving her so heavily...was gone. The other displays had been torn apart, which I take is meant to signify the mannequin dropping the facade and separating itself from the normal displays. Chloe was...understandably left stunned by this, wondering if this was some elaborate prank being played by Lana...until she heard her voice, hoarse, on edge and forced as she called out for her. ...Oh dear. Chloe made the unfortunate mistake of running after her with 999 dialed, afraid of the guilt she would live with if she left her behind, and she rushed to the storeroom where she heard Lana calling from. When she opened the door, the room was dark, the light switch completely broken, and then...a tall and thin figure approached. It was the mannequin, cold, plastic and faceless...but alive. It leaned down towards Chloe...and shushed her with its artificial finger, leaving a single bit of blood on her lip. For unknown reasons, Chloe is unable to recall what exactly happened next, but the police eventually showed up. They...found Lana's body strangled and...partially skinned in the storage room, but the CCTV thankfully proved Chloe innocent. They would go on to work on the assumption that Lana was murdered by some deranged killer who was stalking the store, which...isn't technically wrong...but Chloe remembers. She will always have that feeling of cold plastic upon her lip.

So...yeah, that's the statement of Chloe Ashburt! ...I feel like it's pretty on brand of me to have less to say about the main plot of this episode than I do all of the stuff surrounding it. Overall, it's a very simple and...pretty easy to understand statement when you consider what's going on at the moment, but I think it works! It's a very versatile showcase of the forces of The Stranger, making good use of the uncanny, doubts of sanity, things being ever so slightly off or unnerving, the circus, skin, and of course, mannequins, which I'm...honestly surprised tma's never dealt with before. Like, it's dealt with similar things, but...yeah. I thought it was paced very well, I always have a bit of a soft spot for tma statements that evoke a very...classic horror sort of vibe, and...yeah, it just works overall! Now, I don't think I have...too much to say about it that isn't already pretty obvious, but before I get into some light observations and speculation, I should go over what Jon tells us after the statement. Unsurprisingly, it is...a lot harder for him to collect additional information without a team of assistants and academic funds to spare, so...he doesn't have quite as much to give us as he usually does, but there were still some things of note. There's not much new information on Chloe and Lana, but...there was one thing of note. In an article discussing Lana's murder, a picture of the service entrance to Fanton's department store, which the police speculated the killer used to break in, is shown. But...just off the edge in the distance is an all too familiar off-white van with an unreadable logo plastered upon it. So..yeah, Breekon and Hope were definitely hanging around the place, furthering their connection to The Stranger and whatever grand plan is building up to The Unknowing. I think it's rather reasonable to assume that they delivered the mannequin to the store, and maybe took it back after it killed Lana. That's...really about it for the relevant concrete information Jon gives, so...what about my thoughts? Well, while I think it's not incorrect to assume that Elias sent this statement to Jon so that he could learn more about the general history of The Stranger, given how I speculated that he's handing him statements based on immediately relevant subjects, and how relatively recent the events are in comparison to a lot of other statements...I definitely think this is somehow involved in The Unknowing, likely some piece of preparation for it in a similar vein to The NotThem being sent to steal the institute's secrets. The mannequin is most definitely the main catalyst for this piece of preparation if I am to be believed, and I'm guessing that murdering and skinning Lana has...some sort of relevance? I don't know, I doubt it killed her because she knew something, she overall seemed pretty ignorant to what was going on, especially in comparison to Chloe, who was a lot more aware of things and also survived. So uh...I guess The Unknowing requires skin or something? The skin association for The Stranger we get here is pretty interesting, it's never been entirely absent (i.e. The Trophy Room and The NotThem "wearing" people), but like...Lana's death is the most blatant example of it so far. And yes, it's obviously uncannily similar to what happened to Mary and all the other people in that book, along with that one passage in The Book of The Dead, but...like Leitner said, it's more about what the manifestations of ✨the horrors✨ represent rather than what they literally are. I'm...honestly struggling a bit to really see what skin, or...rather the lack thereof, has to do with both The Stranger and The End.

If I had to guess, skin, or at least....natural skin that isn't stapled onto horrific monsters, is a lot of what makes us appear human, hence the emphasis put on the creepiness of a plastic, skinless, yet living being in this episode. ...Oh my god what if the mannequin was stealing Lana's skin for itself, that just hit me. And then for The End...I guess skeletons are symbols of death and without skin we're just skeletons? Yeah...it's vague, but the connection is definitely there, and I'm guessing skin is also probably involved with the meat thing in some sort of way, because...I mean, it is a part of our bodies just like everything else. Anyways, uh...point blank, The Stranger has a pretty relevant skin association, and that probably connects back to The Unknowing in some weird roundabout way. I will also say that...the act of skinning someone, potentially to give that skin to a being that otherwise doesn't have it, is...very reminiscent of what seems to be going on with The Anglerfish, Sarah Baldwin, and Daniel Rawlings. Which like...yeah, no shit, they are also very clearly involved with The Stranger, but...it does make me wonder if this mannequin, and therefore The Other Circus, have a...deeper connection to The Anglerfish than, let's say...The NotThem for example. Oh yeah, The Other Circus! Obviously the circus theme tells us that they were involved with this, probably more than any other servant of The Stranger, so...yeah, they're definitely still around, which is good to know since there was some room for doubt. Uh...the mannequin might be one of their ranks, and if so that...definitely makes me question the humanity of its members. I mean, Gregor Orsinov would probably have to be a little bit inhuman by nature if his troupe were to survive this long, and...now that I think about it, none of the servants of The Stranger seem to be all that human, which makes sense given how their whole deal seems to be uncanny shit, but...it's interesting when you compare it to other servants, who...just seem like humans with eldritch superpowers. Um...Breekon and Hope's presence here shows that they're still on good terms with The Other Circus, even if they have their own company as well...somehow, I...guess this implies that they've moved from Russia to England for the sake of The Unknowing? I uh...look, I'm really trying to extrapolate as much data as I can here, but truth be told, The Other Circus is...one of the more mysterious recurring groups on our hands, having only shown up a couple of times before this, so...I don't have a ton to say. The point is, they are still alive, kicking, and involved with whatever's going on, seemingly more so than I initially thought. There's...two other tiny details I'd like to point out. Firstly, I just...really, REALLY liked the imagery of the mannequin shushing Chloe. Just...it felt like everything came full circle there. Throughout most of the statement, she was afraid to speak up about her unease out of fear of being seen as crazy, and now, even after she's seen the truth....she still has to be quiet out of fear for her own life. And secondly...I found the mannequin just...lingering there to be pretty interesting. It's probably at least partially because it was waiting for the opportune moment to strike, but...given how everyone who was left to close up shop was left uneasy the next day, and...given how I suggested that ✨the horrors✨ like to gradually feed on people's unease given the behavior of Calvin Benchley and a few others...I have to wonder if that's what was going on with the mannequin, like...it was having its fun gradually unnerving everyone over time, which could also explain why is supposedly disfigured that other display. Fitting for what we know of The Stranger I suppose. And uh...yeah! That's...really it.

Truth be told, I can't really form a coherent and concise theory about all of this at the moment, because not only is this episode...pretty clear and concise with the information it does provide, but also...we still just do not have enough knowledge on The Stranger or The Unknowing to make an educated guess. I think this episode is less about revealing new information, and more about...telling us what we should be paying attention to right now. It's basically saying "hey, here's what we're dealing with". And that's fine! It's still very early in the season, and I'm sure we're going to get more information on it very soon, so...yeah. Despite all of my burning questions, I think that just having an episode that pushes all of this into the limelight is a good idea. I think the main takeaway is that The Stranger, which is being followed by The Other Circus, Breekon and Hope, The NotThem and The Anglerfish, is becoming more and more active with all of those parties involved, whatever The Unknowing even is, we can at least say it's...some sort of plot being piloted by The Stranger, and...it is probably very close to becoming an imminent problem as we speak. And...that's all we need to know for the time being. There are...a couple of little tidbits Jon gives at the end of the episode though. Basically, he talks about all of the elements, people, groups and themes he believes belong to The Stranger, which I've already discussed in great detail, and speculates about who sent him this statement, which...yeah, like I've said, it's most likely Elias. More interestingly though, he speculates on why this statement specifically was sent to him. And...it basically verifies what I've been saying. Jon suspects that this is some sort of warning, that the statement is meant to tell him...he and potentially many others are in danger, that The NotThem was just the beginning, that The Stranger as a whole is becoming more and more of an imminent threat. And...he's not just going to ignore that. He ends the episode by proclaiming that he's going to continue investigating further, that he is...adamant on finding out what's going on. On one hand, I agree that he should probably find out what the whole deal with The Stranger and The Unknowing is before it becomes a big problem, and...hey, at least his desire to gain new information doesn't involve stalking his coworkers anymore. But on the other hand...this is probably exactly what Elias wants him to do, and...it's just a bit too reminiscent of all that stuff with The Eye and The Archivist and...knowledge as a theme in tma for me to write it off as nothing but a good thing. So uh...in the simplest terms...yikes. Well, that about does it for Drawing a Blank! Overall it's a pretty damn solid episode! I'm a bit more intrigued by what it's setting up instead of what's in the standalone episode, and...I do find it a bit of humorous shame that I had much more to say about the opening with Jon and Georgie than I did the actual statement, but...I still really enjoyed the entire episode! My thoughts on it were a lot less extensive than usual, but...once again, I am more than ok with that given what I've just done. Anyways, see you next time, I'm going to get to constructing a cursed mannequin! (no I won't) (i do not have the time or energy)

Supplemental: ...I just realized that it doesn't seem like we have supplementals for Season 3 anymore. I mean...I guess that makes sense given that Jon isn't doing crazy suspicious glances at his coworkers (who he admittedly hasn't seen for at least a week) anymore, but...I'll still kind of miss them, they were a lot of fun. Whatever, nothing's stopping me from using them in my posts. So uh...as promised, here's just a list of some additional things that have been floating around in my head recently! First of all, you know how I said it was sad and unfortunate that Jon called himself a "deeply annoying child" when he probably wasn't, and Mikael was just a dick? Well, while I still stand by the fact that that isn't a great mindset to have, I...would be lying if I said I didn't do the exact same thing a lot of the time. Thank you Jonathan Sims, your existence calls me out every day. Secondly, I was...kind of thinking back to how I suggested that "Mr. Spider" and "Mr. Pitch" were allied or connected in some sort of way, but...then I realized that might not make sense, because The Eye is very clearly allies with The Spider...but enemies with The Divine Host. However, it might make sense if you consider the possibility that..it's actually very easy for✨the horrors✨ to be allies with two beings who are enemies with each other, and not face any repercussions for it. I think this lines up pretty well since due to the existence of Daedalus, we can probably assumed that a group like The Lukas Family is close to both the institute and The Divine Host, depsite their supposed rivalry. And I mean...✨the horrors✨ are kind of implied to be mindless cosmic monsters on unimaginable levels of power, so...I don't really know if they CAN face repercussions. Do eldritch gods have a justice system? Probably not, they're committing crimes on the daily. ...Oh god, what does the existence of ✨the horrors✨ mean for mainstream real-world religions in the tma universe?! Like, I know that they haven't been confirmed as creator deities or anything, hell, Leitner suggested that considering them as equivalent to gods is kind of a fool's errand, but like...imagine being Christian and learning that no, Jesus doesn't exist, but you can go worship the backrooms instead. ...Then again, the meat has a lot of Christian undertones....aaaaaagghhhh I'm going down a rabbit hole again. Anyways, my point is that in regards to that spider darkness thing, I've either been proven wrong or I'm actually on to a lot more than I initially thought. And finally...I found this Tumblr post, and I just wanted to say...this is the best summary of my writing process and my motivations for making these posts that I've ever seen. So here you go, a deep dive into the mind of the "author":

- Episode 84, Possessive 🗞

Martin Blackwood, Archival Assistant at The Magnus Institute, recording statement number 9900112, statement of Adrian Weiss.

You know, tma is a very...diverse podcast, in a lot of ways. I mean, these episodes can take so many forms. Some of them are extremely scary, some are really emotional with complicated themes, some are just a really fun and creative concept. But then, every once in a while...you get one that makes you want to vomit. Ok, that's...admittedly an oversimplification in this episode's case, because it's actually really good with a lot going on! The statement is creative and bone-chilling with a lot of mystery and moving parts behind it, it has some pretty interesting themes at play, and I especially like what other parts of the episode do for the greater narrative. Like...there is quite a bit on that front. But with that being said...EWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!! Like, I know it's supposed to be gross considering which member of ✨the horrors✨ it seems to align with, but...dear god. It might not quite be the grossest statement of tma in concept, but just...the way it's described, every little line...it adds to the atmosphere in the most disgusting way possible, and like...I absolutely love that, I think it's genuinely amazing that an episode can make me feel so unclean, but...stiil, yikes. Now, to be completely honest, I'm...struggling to piece together everything that's going on in this episode, as it's a little bit vague. Not necessarily vague by nature like...Fatigue for example, but...even though a lot of the general themes and ideas are more than familiar, this episode deals with entirely new concepts and characters, and it feels like there are quite a few missing pieces which...I feel like leads to multiple possible interpretations of what exactly happened here. Still though...I'll try my best to make something that works. I often find that ideas come to me a lot more easily if I just...sit down and write rather than mulling it over in my head at 2 AM, so...yeah, let's just get into this disgusting hell rodeo!

So, before the main plot of the episode even starts, there's already a decent amount to unpack at the very beginning. Don't worry, it's not as much to unpack as what I had last episode...probably. So, I think it's safe to say that after this episode, we now have a good idea of Season 3's format fully established. This episode brings us back to the institute, seemingly showing that my hypothesis of every odd numbered episode being focused on Jon and every even numbered episode being focused on the others was correct, and we also have confirmation that both storylines will still primarily focus on statements. Admittedly, I do think it would've been...kind of cool if they tried out a completely new episode format for one of the arcs, but the statements have been just as generally good as ever so far, and it feels like the podcast is more focused on the overarching narrative than any other point in its history beforehand, so...I really can't complain that much, especially since changing the format TOO drastically could come with a potential risk. Anyways, it's nice to finally get a full sense of what this season's whole deal is, but...one question remains. With Jon absent...who's reading the statements? Who is, in the non-paranormal sense, our "Acting Head Archivist"? Well...I'm proud to announce that it is the one, the only....Martin K. Blackwood. Hell. Yes. Ok, well...technically it seems like the responsibility has been thrust upon the archival assistants as a unit, but...as much as I would love to see it, I doubt that Tim's going to be reading statements any time soon given his current emotional state, hell, even Martin kind of backs that up inadvertently. There's also the matter of the new recruit, but...uh, you know what, we'll get to her later on. So as far as I'm concerned, Martin is filling in for Jon...and I could not be happier about that. I mean...I guess I could do without the horrifying implications of what working at The Magnus Institute does to a person and the world at larger, but like...look at him!!! Look at my guy!!!! He started out as the office punching bag and look at him now!!! Oh my god...Season 1 Jon would be QUAKING at this revelation if he saw it. But uh...yeah, I'm really happy that Martin is reading statements for the institute episodes, because it means we get to spend a lot more time with him. And...while I can't exactly speak for how likely it is at the moment, it might also mean that we'll get more time with the other assistants if they read out statements as well. I...also guess I should mention my thoughts on how Martin, and...Alex by proxy read this statement. This is the first time we've ever had someone other than Jon read a statement that isn't there own, with the obvious exception of Not!Sasha and Elias, but...in their cases, they were made off-putting and ominous on purpose, and their deliveries weren't really supposed to emulate the actual person they were acting as. In short...this is the first time anyone other than Jon has read someone else's statement for a simple job with no known sinister motivations. And Alex/Martin...does a pretty good job at it! I don't think his delivery here quite reaches the heights of Jon/Jonny's theatre kid deliveries, but...this is his first time, so I'm obviously not going to judge his overall prowess too early. Either way, he does just as good of a job as Jon and every live statement giver at delivering the story with a sense of conviction and terrifying immersion, so...yeah, he's made a very strong first impression, which is unsurprising given how well he did for his own statement in Colony.

But to be honest, the main reason I'm talking about this is because, as I've said before, I think that Jon's crazy deliveries have actual lore implications. So the big question is...does that same pattern of oddly accurate portrayals of statement givers apply to Martin as well? Does it only apply to The Archivist (or...I guess just Jon for the time being since Gertrude's also a bit up in the air with the accuracy of her deliveries), or is it something found across all archival employees? Well...I think it's hard to say. Like I said, it doesn't quite reach the heights of theatre kid energy seen in episodes like Piecemeal, Hive and Literary Heights, and those episodes are the kinds that make me suspicious of the deliveries in the first place. And...yes, while Martin's delivery is still really immersive, that same principle applies to all of the people who have given their statement live, and...sure, while I do have some suspicions about how they're able to recall their statements directly, (such suspicions being made even greater due to later events in the episode) I think that their visceral deliveries are entirely natural in their case. It's only suspicious to me when someone is reading another person's statement, and seemingly manages to emulate that person's cadence perfectly, and as of now...I really can't tell whether or not that actually applies to Martin. His delivery is visceral, sure, but...I can't tell if he's actually emulating the tone of Adrian Weiss, or if he's just kind of freaked out. At the very least, I think I can say that statements definitely have...some kind of weird effect on the people who read them, not just Jon, but...I'll get into why later. Regardless, the short is that I'm really happy Martin's filling in for him, I think this first statement read by him was really well performed, and...there's certainly some interesting questions regarding this development that have still yet to be answered. But will all of that out of the way...let's finally get to the main event. See? I told you this wouldn't be as long as last time! ...I swear I'll get rehab soon.

So, this statement comes from a man named Adrian Weiss, who came to the institute to detail a notable event during his childhood in the Suffolk village of Cratfield. Now, as I'm sure you're aware at this point, I'm a pretty big fan of the statements that take place during childhood, so we're off to a great start. Although, I have to say that this episode made me think...are minors allowed to give statements to the institute, or can they not do that until they become adults? I mean, given its paranormal nature it's...probably a good thing if they can't give statements? But like...imagine if a 16-year old discovered something that gave answers to every major mystery, but couldn't tell Jon because of their age. Actually...how much does The Magnus Institute connect back to the UK government? It definitely seems pretty independent, but...most if not all officially certified academic institutions need some contact with the government, and I doubt they'd let a lot of what the institute is doing slide so easily. Then again...both the guy who runs it and some close contacts like The Lukas Family do have their connections to terrifying eldritch forces, and...I guess what he did to Daisy gives us a good idea of how Elias would likely handle troublesome government agents, but...I'm still intrigued by the topic either way. Ok...I'm rambling and need to take my meds. Anyways, Adrian moved to Cratfield when he was about ten or eleven. It was a far cry from his previous home in Ipswich, and...much like me after listening to the episode, he always found the place to be absolutely filthy with all of the natural rot and manure around, even as a child. Still though...it was overall fine. It was rural, open and isolating, but Adrian did feel like it was a fresh start after a difficult school life, and while the local children weren't exactly his favorite people in the world, he was content enough to spend time with them, and overall preferred their company over being alone. There was one kid however, who stood out quite a bit, and his name was Gordon Goodman. He was a younger teenager, but he was extremely short with hair that fell over his eyes, and had a rather quiet tone. But when compared to the other more...meat-headed children (uh...the regular kind of meat headed, not the tma kind), he was actually rather calm, kind and polite, always taking everything in stride. I find it...a little bit weird that Adrian says it never really felt like his name fit his character though? I mean, I guess he doesn't sound like the perfect definition of an upstanding guy, and...given what we learn later I would actually hesitate to call him a good person...or maybe even a person at all, but like...on the surface he seems like he was nice enough, so...I don't know what Adrian's going on about here. Anyways, despite his general pleasantness, there was always one thing about Gordon that struck Adrian as...a little bit odd. On the edge of Cratfield was a small field that almost everyone avoided, as it was arguably the filthiest part of an already filthy village. Its only resident was an old woman named Margaret Carnegie, who lived in a small bungalow in the middle of the place, hence why the place was colloquially referred to as "Maggie's Dump". She was a hoarder by nature, no one really knew where she got all of the stuff she owned (...I don't really think I want to if I'm being honest), but her supply of junk seemed never-ending. Eventually she had to start keeping it in the area around her house, and since she never bothered to tie it down or keep it secure, it just kind of...got all over the place. Almost as if she was...intentionally making the place a mess....yeah I see you. But since Cratfield didn't have an actual dump, and because Maggie didn't seem to mind the mess whatsoever...other people just started throwing their own discarded shit in the area, and thus, the dirtiest place in Cratfield was born.

And this is where we get back to Gordon, as for whatever reason he was the one who took up the decision to deliver Maggie her food, which often led to him being teased by the other children. You know...I really have to say, I find Gordon to be quite the fascinating character in all honesty. Like...it's so interesting, because up until the end of the story I genuinely really felt for him. He seemed like a super sweet and altruistic kid who unfortunately got wrapped up in some creepy stuff, and he might actually be a genuinely nice person in terms of his demeanor and personality, but...then that final line comes along and just makes you question everything you've been led to believe, and it's clever as it is unnerving. I'll...obviously get to that later, but just know that I find him decently interesting on both a writing and lore perspective, and given how a lot of things regarding both him and his relationship to Margaret Carnegie remain unsolved, I kind of expect him to return in some kind of way later down the line, so...even if I might not have many concrete theories regarding him at the moment, I definitely feel like it's worth taking note of him. And mentioning his relationship with Maggie, while Adrian was not nearly as judgemental toward Gordon for his seemingly noble actions as others, even he was a bit confused as to why he would do such a thing. He suspects she was likely a relative of some sort, and...I'm honestly inclined to agree with that, both due to later evidence in the statement and because it adds fuel to a little theory I'm crafting. Regardless, as much as Adrian was intrigued by Gordon's actions, he was a lot more intrigued by Maggie herself. Naturally, the presence of a strange and reclusive elderly woman with odd habits and relations in a small town would lead to a number of ghost stories, especially among the children. Most commonly were rumours about her being a witch, which...I guess isn't too far off? I don't really know, I think that kind of depends on how arcane they decide to go with ✨the horrors✨ going forward but...I guess Jane was also a witch, and she seems to serve the same force as Maggie, so...even if ✨the horrors✨ aren't really a witchcraft deal, it's possible that The Flesh Hive specifically might have a...strange fondness for that sort of thing, if you know what I mean. ...Ok that's probably a stretch, but anyways, the other big theory regarding her was that she had murdered her husband, chopped him up, and buried him beneath all the garbage. I'm...not sure how inclined I am to take this as canon, since the idea of killing your loved one and dismembering them seems more akin to someone like John Haan, but...the idea of burying corpses beneath the rubble actually seems not too out of the possibility given what we definitively know about her, so...yeah. Also, I absolutely loved that one mention of the neighborhood kid who was a compulsive liar. We need to bring attention to those little shits more frequently in my opinion. Ok, I'm getting off track and probably over-analyzing. The point is, Adrian was...certainly scared by these stories, but also fascinated by the fear he felt, he got a rush out of it. I actually really appreciate this detail, we've certainly had statement givers who are inherent fans of spooks before, but this is the first time I can recall it applying to a child, and I think it's a pretty realistic depiction of how kids often respond to fear as an emotion, just as fascinated as they are apprehensive. But anyways, this interest in Maggie led to Adrian often accompanying Gordon on his walks through Maggie's Dump, at least until he got a little bit too frightened and ran back to the fencepost that he deemed a safe space. Gordon was always somewhat oblivious to Adrian's fear, but he seemed to enjoy the company.

Adrian...never actually saw what Gordon did though. He would ring the doorbell with food in hand, Maggie would answer, and...Adrian never stayed around to see him come out, even if he tried to. He would always be at school the next day, and if Adrian asked what had happened, Gordon would always brush it off to the best of his ability, although...he could never quite hide how his fingernails were stained with dirt. I...guess now's a pretty good time to just outright say which of ✨the horrors✨ I think applies to this statement. It is...quite obviously The Flesh Hive in most conceivable ways. It'll become more apparent later, but there is a clear presence of filth, rot, decay, diseases, insects, parasitic relationships, and even that classic yellow ooze here, so...yeah, another example of old faithful. However, the presence of dirt, things being kept underground, and a place that seems rather claustrophobic with all of the rubble in mind...I do have to wonder if the unnamed being with relations to compression that's seen in episodes like Lost Johns' Cave and Underground also played a role here. Like...it seems unlikely that Maggie was actively serving it when opposed to The Flesh Hive, but...I have a sense that it was around. But then again...Leitner kind of gave off the sense that ✨the horrors✨ aren't as easy to understand or organize as both the characters and the audience (/The Eye possibly hehehehehe) would hope, so...I don't know, it might actually be a lot more complicated than just assigning one being to every statement, or every artifact, or every servant, or every- you get the idea. I think I'll still stick with the method of organization I'm using for the time being, since it ended up being more relevant and correct than I initially expected, and...hell, Jon himself is doing it to an extent (not Martin though because holy shit it just hit me how LITTLE the assistants know about what's actually happening right now), but...I'll keep an open mind just in case. Point is, using my current methods of classifying ✨the horrors✨, I think this one is primarily tied to The Flesh Hive with some minor influence from the compression power. Anyways, uh....fuck where was I. Oh yeah, so despite the...relative innocence of Gordon's kindness towards Maggie that existed on the surface, Adrian definitely knew something was up with them. And...it all came to a head when one day, Gordon didn't return from Maggie's Dump, and he didn't come to school. Given all the rumours and superstitions surrounding her, Adrian was quick to figure out that Maggie had likely...kept him there, and as soon as school finished he rushed to Gordon's house to confront his parents about the matter. This is where...something pretty interesting to me happens. Adrian was met with Gordon's father, and for whatever reason...he lied about what was going on, saying that Gordon was sick and asleep in his bedroom, refusing to let Adrian in. It's technically possible that he was lying in order to not make Adrian panic or worry, but...given the podcast's track record, I'm inclined to be a little bit suspicious. I...definitely think that Gordon's father, and likely the entire Goodman Family by extension, was aware of what Maggie was doing to him, and....that probably means they were ok with it given their lack of action on the matter. This is why I assume that Gordon and Maggie have some sort of familial relationship, and if that's not the case, then...there's most definitely some sort of relatively close connection to her going on that I hope gets addressed on some level. Regardless, with no answers coming from his father, Adrian decided that he was going to have to save Gordon himself.

It's here that he points out Maggie's desire for the junk surrounding her house to stay with her, verifying the idea that she wants it for some...not so nice reasons, but he also mentions how in the years since, he's tried to deny that what he saw was real despite his better judgement. That's another very interesting aspect of his character to me, as....I mean, my memory might be failing me here, but it doesn't feel like we ever get statement givers who want to deny the reality of what they saw, it always feels like they have something to prove. The only prior exception to this that I can think of is like...Mark Bilham from Growing Dark, but outside of that...yeah, this feels pretty new. Like, (and this genuinely just came into my head because truth be told I hardly plan these posts out in advance at all and this is just my train of thought converted to text and yes I am hoping to get my ADHD diagnosis in the upcoming months how could you tell) this statement honestly has a pretty good and interesting cast all things considered. But getting back to the plot, Adrian traversed the piles and piles of filth, making it further than he ever had before...and that's when things started to get much, much worse. An all too familiar sickly-yellow glow emanated from the windows of Maggie's bungalow, reflecting off of the empty bottles surrounding her house, and Adrian fell to his knees upon the horrendous stench that also suddenly appeared. When he did so, he noticed that all of the food that Gordon had been delivering to Maggie was being kept behind her house, still unopened, showing that the food delivery was just a mask for whatever was really happening. But alongside all of the unopened food...was a pristine, clean can of baked beans, stood upright and completely out of place amongst all of the pestilence and filth. Adrian reached for it, wanting to feel a semblance of anything clean...and then, of course, it began to shake violently, throbbing and pulsing as something tried to break free. This definitely reminded me of...whatever the hell was in Amherst's fridge back in Pest Control, but...also kind of reminded me of the coffin given the lack of knowledge on what's inside? I mean, I sincerely doubt that the coffin is related to The Flesh Hive at the moment, and...we know that it at the very least as stairs inside, the mystery now being where those stairs lead, but...I have pointed out that the coffin could relate to the compression power, even if I still think The Spider is a little more likely, and I did say this statement could also relate to that same being, so....hm. Well, regardless, Adrian stumbled back upon the sight of the can, but...as he tried to get back on his feet, he felt the dirty and vile ground try to pull him down. Just...the description of his entire arm up to his elbow being coated in grime....ugh, that might just be the most disgusting part of the statement for me if I'm being fully honest, which is saying something, although I also think it's the best evidence for the presence of the compression power's presence. But while he didn't scream, Adrian was still mortified as he pulled his arm out of the ground by force and flung away as much mud, soil, and...you guessed it, worms, as he possibly could. And then, as he looked down to where he had torn his arm away from...he saw Gordon. Except it wasn't Gordon, rather, it was an uncannily perfect recreation of him, made entirely out of old newspapers and cardboard that worms had made a nest out of. As...unnerving as this was, and...as much as it gets me to think that maybe this supposed replica of Gordon was what tried to drag Adrian down under in the first place, it did get him to remember who he was even for. Adrian made his way back up to the bungalow, and when he peered through oily and slimy yellow windows...he saw something that would forever scar him. No traditional witchcraft, no dismembering and burying, but instead...oh god.

He saw Gordon Goodman, sat motionless in an armchair, and above him was the hunched and crooked figure of Margaret Carnegie. Tiny and inscrutable organisms were crawling all over Gordon's face, and Maggie was covering him with ancient, yellow paper, and a rancid fluid that emanated from her body. She sang a soft and ominous song, a...bit too similar sounding to what Jane described in her infamous monologue to ignore from my perspective, and as she did, the creatures on Gordon's face began to crawl at an even more rapid speed. It was then that Adrian accidentally broke a glass bottle...and he ran. He didn't care if Maggie hadn't heard him, he didn't care if it meant Gordon meeting a grizzly fate, he was not going to take any chances if it meant facing what he had just seen in person. But the next morning...Gordon was there as if nothing had ever happened. He was at school the next morning, once again acting as if nothing had happened, although...for whatever reason he stopped going to Maggie's Dump. He and Adrian would lose contact when the latter moved to Liverpool with his family about a year later, and...over the coming years, he managed to convince himself that what he saw that day was nothing but a dream. That was...until a business trip of his in Ipswich, one that happened a month prior to his statement. The drive back home had taken him through Cratfield, and he decided to take a quick pit stop there. He engaged in some idle chitchat with the locals for an hour or so...but then, someone mentioned leaving an old mattress behind in the nearby dump. Adrian asked when Cratfield had gotten a dump, and the citizen casually said it was just a field where people would throw away their junk, saying it as if he had no idea of the place's relevance, of its unnerving rot and dark secrets. And then...Adrian asked if the place had a name, and the local said yes, that it was named after the recluse who lived in the area. The place was now called "Gordie's Dump." .....fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

So uh...wow. Ew. Gross. Even icky. Some might say that was wretched and vile. Perhaps disgusting. That's uh...that's great. Just. Just great. I guess you could say this truly was a "Statement of Adrian Weiss." But in all seriousness, I did really like this one! It had a surprisingly intriguing cast of characters, some very creative uses of gross-out horror, and just...this general sense of mystery, of not being able to truly piece together what was actually going on. And uh...on that note, I guess I should talk about my theories and speculations regarding this one. Because, truth be told, this statement is surprisingly vague in a lot of places. There's a lot of things that don't feel clearly explained, or are just really up to interpretation in nature. I certainly have some ideas, but...I can't really speak for how fleshed out they'll be. Like, I'll be able to make some propositions and explain why I think what I think, but...whether or not I can make a fully concise and coherent theory for the events of this statement is something that only time can really tell. And hell, I'm not unaware of the possibility that none of this actually matters. I'm only trying to make theories because...all of this gives off the energy of something that will eventually return, at least to me, and I want to see how right I'll end up being if it does indeed come back around. But...I am not unaware that Jonny and Alex have gone on record to say that not every minor mystery will be resolved, and it's definitely possible that this episode is just a one-off that is meant to remain vague forever. And you know what, I like that, I think the fact that tma will ultimately leave some things as loose ends by the time it finishes is good, it adds to the mystery, intrigue, charm and of course, horror, but...I still can't shake the feeling that something's up, so I'm going to try and piece together whatever I can. Before I do though, I should definitely go over what Martin has to say post-statement, which as expected, is...a lot more in depth than what Jon provided for us in the last episode. I'll...go over his strange reaction to finishing the statement a bit later, but for now, what does he have to tell us? Well...that unpleasant patch of land in Cratfield is indeed owned by Gordon Goodman in modern day, having been bequeathed it by Margaret Carnegie after her death in 1982. By my estimates, this means that Maggie died...probably a few years after the events of Adrian's statement, and I think that Martin mentioning Gordon was her sole beneficiary adds to the idea that they might have been blood relatives. What's most interesting however is Maggie's cause of death, as while official records list it as being through "natural causes"...that's clearly not the case. Autopsy reports show that her lungs were apparently filled with newspaper pulp, and while she's listed as having "cancerous growths", Martin notes that the report makes said growths sound more like...insect legs, and that they were apparently still moving after death. ...Uh oh. Finally, Gordon was apparently the one who found her body, although it went missing the following night. Martin suspects that "he didn't want to let her go either", and while he is unfortunately cut off from saying what he thinks Gordon did by something I'll discuss later...I'm guessing he thinks that he held on to Maggie's corpse, possibly keeping it beneath all of the trash like those rumours used to say. Also, this is completely unrelated, but I really like how Martin reads all of these post-statement details. It's just...I don't know, it feels a bit more opinionated than Jon, a lot less matter-of-fact, and a bit more interested while also a bit less mortified, I think it suits his character quite well. Anyways, with all of those details in mind...what do I think?

Well...like I said, I only have some ideas at the moment as opposed to fully fleshed out theories. I...honestly think we just need to learn a bit more about how ✨the horrors✨ function, specifically in terms of how they affect otherwise human beings, before I can make something concrete. For now...well, let's just start with some explanations of the simple miscellaneous mysteries. So, like I said, this episode most certainly deals with The Flesh Hive, and I'm not going to explain why in full again. Just know that...pretty much all of the inherently gross stuff in this episode connects back to The Flesh Hive in some way, shape or form, and that includes some of the mysterious stuff. Like, I'm not going to get too hung up on what was inside that can, because for now...I can't really say anything more than just "something belonging to The Flesh Hive." Uh...Maggie and Gordon are both most certainly servants of The Flesh Hive like Jane and Amherst, chances are their ownership of the dump and desire to live in an unclean and disgusting environment serves it in some way, and...when it comes to Maggie's death, I think it might be something similar to what happened with Jane. I'm not too concerned about the newspaper pulp in her lungs, since...that just feels like another creepy detail meant to solidify her connection to her patron, but....if you recall, Jane...kind of died from the looks of things, the one that attacked the institute was very different from the woman who gave her statement a couple of years prior, and was basically just a corpse being piloted by a parasitic worm hivemind. And I think something similar happened with Maggie, she was likely fully overcome by The Flesh Hive and became a walking corpse or sorts, hence the moving insect legs. Which...might also mean that she is not entirely dead, but...I guess we'll just have to wait and see if that's something worth worrying about. That does get me wondering though, about like...how people are overcome by ✨the horrors✨, and what the supposed stages of the process are. Because like...Leitner basically said that the conscious beings who serve ✨the horrors✨ are still their own entities, just with connections to higher powers, and in a lot of cases that is true, but...then people like Jane seem to have been entirely consumed by The Flesh Hive, just another cog in the machine. So like...is it possible that the Maggie present throughout most of Adrian's statement was a conscious person serving The Flesh Hive, and after her "death" she became even more intertwined with the being? Could this theoretically happen to servants of other powers? Like, maybe Elias is just a servant of The Eye at the moment, but he'll become a part of The Eye itself later on? Oh my god...is that what happened to Michael? Like, I think it makes more sense that he's just the human persona of The Distortion at the moment, but like...what if he was just a relatively human servant of The Spiral at some point, and gradually became more and more connected to it, until we get to modern day where he basically says that he and his always are just limbs and organs of a much larger thing, that being either The Distortion or The Spiral at large. I just...oh god that's interesting to me. But...even then, I think the most interesting stuff comes out of the main theme of this episode, that being...well, possessiveness. Unhealthy love, the desire to keep what is most dear to you as close as possible no matter the cost. This has always been a...kind of underlying theme of The Flesh Hive to me, seen through examples such as Jane's past, or how the first statement involving the thing is, to this day, the only one that's really about sexual desire.

And I think this component explains a lot of Maggie and Gordon's behaviour, the hoarding and Martin's suspicions of Gordon keeping her body are obvious ones, but I also think this serves as a pretty good explanation for the weird...newspaper model of Gordon we saw. I had...quite a few conflicting thoughts surrounding this, but I think it makes the most sense to assume that Maggie was making these copies of him out of an...unhealthy obsession with him, and that the part where she was smoothing paper over his skin is meant to show us how she makes the models, like...she was getting his proportions. Hell, even though I don't think the newspaper in her lungs is all that worth worrying about...I can concede that it might very well represent Gordon...returning the favor, so to speak. She coveted him by making those copies, so now...he's coveting her, filling the things that keep her alive with her everlasting materials in order to keep her with him forever, literally and/or spiritually, tying back to what Martin said at the end of his wrap-up. All of this seems emblematic of their relationship, an unhealthy one between...what I'm once again guessing are relatives, one where they are both victims and abusers, where they refuse to let go of one another...and it's absolutely haunting. As much as all of the physically gross stuff unnerves me...the more emotionally gross aspects of The Flesh Hive are probably the most terrifying to me. With Jane, I found it kind of beautiful in its own twisted way, but here...it's just really cruel and visceral, and I absolutely love it. But...while all of these themes of possessiveness and unhealthy love are certainly emblematic of their emotional relationship, I also think it's supposed to tell us about their more...paranormal relationship. In my opinion...Maggie and Gordon's relationship is another example of a connection to ✨the horrors✨ being passed down through an organization, connection and/or bloodline. Maggie served The Flesh Hive, and is now passing that responsibility down to him, possibly explaining why he stopped going to the bungalow after Adrian saw him, as he might have finally, truly been claimed that day, or maybe explaining why Maggie died the way she did, as she had passed down her responsibilities. This might also add further explanation as to why Gordon's father seemed aware of and ok with what was happening, as...if Maggie did indeed have a familial relation to the Goodman Family, then it's possible they were somewhat similar to the Keay Family, being a bloodline that served one of ✨the horrors✨ and expected their young to do the same. This also makes it extremely likely that...this inheritance of the dump has been going on for a long-ass time, added to by the fact that Maggie seems to be kind of a faded memory by the time Adrian arrives back in Cratfield, and implying that many came before Maggie, and...Gordon will likely choose a successor of his own if he hasn't done so already. I...did also consider the possibility that maybe their relationship was something similar to what I suspect is going on with Maxwell Rayner, where "Maggie" is just some greater power or spirit possessing its successors generation after generation, but...I really don't have any evidence for this other than that it would make the title of the episode really clever, and...I don't know if we can equate the power of The Flesh Hive to that of The Divine Host's patron all that easily, especially since Rayner's abilities seem...decently reliant on the dark aesthetic. And uh...yeah, that's really it.

I'm...genuinely really sorry I don't have more to say on this, and that it's pretty half-baked and incoherent. I definitely have a lot of thoughts when it comes to this episode, it's certainly getting the juices in my brain flowing...but it's hard to connect it back to other episodes outside of its pretty obvious connections to The Flesh Hive, and...that makes it pretty hard to speculate on, since a lot of my theories rely on making logical connections to previous episodes, and I'm not all that good at making theories with just the content of standalone episodes and nothing more. Plus, I don't even know how relevant this episode is supposed to be, and oh god I'm rambling just-. ...Ok. Look, the point is, I don't have a ton to say on this one that isn't pretty surface level, and I think that's fine. I have some basic thoughts, and...hopefully I'll be able to make some greater theories out of what I've established going forward, but for now...this is it. I think I've made it...clear enough what my thoughts are, but to recap...the main conclusion is that the owner of the dump in Cratfield is inherently hereditary. Margaret Carnegie and Gordon Goodman are likely just two of many prior and likely future beneficiaries, all servants of the power known as The Flesh Hive, there to fill the field with filth and covet as much junk as possible. That's...basically all. Well...except for one thing, kind of. It...isn't really relevant to the plot of this statement specifically, but...Maggie and Gordon got me thinking about, like...others who are similar to them. Basically, people who have been claimed by ✨the horrors✨...not necessarily because they were directly sought out by the beings themselves, or had some crazy paranormal mishap, but because they had connections to other people or groups that were already claimed themselves. I'm talking The Cult of The Lightless Flame, The People's Church of The Divine Host, The Other Circus, The Lukas, Fairchild, Haan and Keay Families, and...likely The Archivists and the heads of The Magnus Institute. Because...while I've done zoom-ins on all of them individually before, I've never really talked about these cults, families and positions at large before, and...given all of the mystery surrounding what it even means to be The Archivist, I feel like this topic is going to become pretty relevant sooner or later, so...I should probably start talking. You see, with people like Jane Prentiss, Jared Hopworth, and Mike Crew...they're all relatively easy to understand, at least as a broad concept. They all started serving ✨the horrors✨ because of some sort of paranormal experience unique to them, and said experiences seem to run a little bit deeper than the average encounter with something spooky. But...when it comes to these larger factions, they're a bit more difficult. I've divided them into three types in order to explain them better. Cults, families, and positions. Let's start with the cults, namely The Divine Host and The Lightless Flame. I'm...going to exclude The Other Circus for the time being, as while it does seem like they're going to be relevant very soon, we...really don't know that much about its members beyond Gregor Orsinov, Breekon and Hope, nor do we know how exactly it's structured, how it recruits, or...really have any idea on the backgrounds of most of its members and associates. Hell, most servants of The Stranger are questionable in their humanity, which I understand is probably intentional, but...it does make it possible that, while almost certainly still a cult of some kind...The Other Circus could be a bit different from the....other two. I...did not intend to make that pun but I guess we just have to live with it.

Uh...anyways, the other two seem very similar in nature, so...I'm going to assume that they have similar methods of getting people to join their ranks, and therefore get claimed by ✨the horrors✨ in the process. We have no idea how these groups were founded, hell, The Cult of The Lightless Flame has no known leader at the moment, and the best we have is that...Agnes was pretty relevant to their machinations, but...we can make some good guesses on their recruitment methods. With The Divine Host, we have a clearcut example of someone joining their ranks in Natalie Ennis. She became a servant of their patron after joining them, showing that they have...some way of getting people claimed. I don't exactly know...why they chose Natalie specifically, I get that she was a vulnerable person with a recently shaken faith, and therefore easy to pray on, but like...did she just happen to be the nearest potential recruit, or was there some greater meaning to it? I'm not really sure, but...hey, we at the very least have a decent idea of how The Divine Host gets people...kind of. Now, as for The Lightless Flame, we don't have a super clear example of how they recruit people, but...I'm guessing that Agnes was likely recruited after the destruction of Hill Top Road. Yes, I know that she was likely there to deal with Raymond, but...that could easily be explained as just...the nature of servants of Asag, not just members of the cult. Remember, Mike Crew serves The Vast, but he doesn't seem to be a Fairchild, so...yeah, I think you can still serve one of ✨the horrors✨ without being in an organized group of other servants, and...maybe a rivalry with The Spider is just a thing that all of the fire people have. Also, I know that The Lightless Flame is evil, children aren't safe in tma, and Agnes was pretty powerful even in youth, but...do you seriously think that this cult which is serving a provably real force would recruit a ten-year-old girl? Sure, Rayner seemingly tried to possess Callum Brodie, but that's different from literally having a child among your ranks. And no, I don't think that Agnes was possessed by The Lightless Flame leader, because not only is that way too much of a reach given what information we have, but it's also implied that she entirely wasn't happy with her position, which...makes me doubt that she was the founder and/or leader to begin with. She seems much more like a high-ranking member who wished for some sort of escape, but likely couldn't because...if The Montauk Family is anything to go off of...escaping a group that serves ✨the horrors✨ is no easy feat. And finally, I know that the way Agnes aged is...questionable, and you wouldn't be entirely wrong if you proposed the idea that she's like...a 600 year-old fire demon who took on the shape of a young girl while at Hill Top Road, but...Anna Kasuma's talk about the house's history is enough to make me believe that she aged naturally up until a point. Plus, her lifespan seemed directly tied to the house, since she basically started dying when Ivo Lensik tore down the tree, so...yeah. Ok, that was...a LOT or rambling, but my point is...Agnes likely served The Lightless Flame before the cult recruited her, and...that means that they're probably ok with recruiting anyone who was claimed before meeting them.

Now...despite the way I've formatted this kind of suggesting otherwise, let it be known that I am not trying to suggest a distinction between these two cults. I have no reason to suspect that The Divine Host hasn't recruited people who met their patron before they met the church, nor do I think that The Cult of The Lightless Flame doesn't have some way of getting people claimed upon recruitment. My goal here is just to show two ways that the cults in tma recruit people, therefore turning them into servants of ✨the horrors✨, while also showing how that's interestingly different from people who get claimed on their own and never become a part of any organized group. It...just so happens that we have very little clear cut examples of how these cults claim people, and the examples we do have come from separate groups. But the main point is...cults in tma either seek out people who were already claimed, or seek out normal people and THEN get them claimed. And....while I still can't say this for certain, I have no reason to assume that The Other Circus doesn't operate in a similar manner. ...Man, talking about this reminded me about how much I love Agnes....it's a crime and shame she's dead. Anyways, the second kind of....uh...fuck, what term do I use? Uh...I guess I'll just call them "horror groups". Yeah, the second kind of horror group I want to discuss are the families. Basically, the bloodlines that seem to serve ✨the horrors✨. Oh, uh...I guess I should just say that...I think Maggie and Gordon fall somewhere in between families and the next type of horror group I'm going to discuss, having a blood relation, but also a succession of position. Just understand that...this classification I'm using isn't something that I actually think exists in tma, rather, it's just a system I'm using so I can better explain my thoughts and differentiate the horror groups. All of these groups, no matter how intertwined they get with each other on a plot level, are...kind of their own things at the end of the day, and specific ones can...borrow attributes from others in a lot of cases. Anyways, if memory serves correctly there have been four horror families so far, although...I think most of the details that are relevant to this examination can be gleaned from the Keay Family, with everything else just being trends that are common among them. With the Haan Family...there's like three confirmed members at the moment, and they don't really have anything glaringly different from the others outside of the power they worship. That's...kind of a common trend among all four of these families in all honesty, at the moment they aren't that different aside from what they worship and their...less paranormal occupations, and I'm only focusing on the Keay Family because we know them...arguably the best. Uh...anyways, as for the Fairchilds and Lukases, well...we can't actually say for certain that they're blood related. I don't know if I've ever actually mentioned this in a post before, but...I've always kind of thought that based on the way they present, they could be something akin to the Mansons, a cult that only uses the "family" moniker for aesthetics and manipulation purposes. Well, er...really only based on how the Lukases present, it...also doesn't help that we don't really know any Fairchilds other than Simon, and we only assume that they all worship The Vast due to their jobs fitting the vibe. But like...I really don't have too much of a reason to not think of them as genuine families, other than superstitions....and also the fact that it's a little silly that servants of isolation incarnate have so many god damn kids, but overall...I think it's fine to lump them in with the Keay and Haan families.

Anyways, how exactly do I think members of these families get claimed? Well...despite all of that buildup, it seems pretty simple. I initially assumed that the existence of families that worship ✨the horrors✨ implied that like...you could pass down those abilities and connections through blood alone. And...that could've easily sent me down a really mind-boggling rabbit hole, but thankfully, I don't think this anymore, and it's mostly because of Mary Keay, and...likely Evan Lukas, even though we don't know as much about him. The Keay Family has seemingly worshipped The Eye for a long time, but Mary was able to break away from its influence. Sure, she's still somewhat involved with it, but she's also involved with many others among ✨the horrors✨, and this time it's out of her own choice. It's...a little bit interesting to me that Gerard seems to maintain that familial servitude towards The Eye though. Like, we know that he doesn't have the best relationship of all time with Mary, but it's actually pretty unclear how much she was a part of his life to begin with, so...maybe he was raised by another, more devoted member of the family? Maybe his dad if he even had one, although...his dad would supposedly be from a different bloodline that likely didn't worship The Eye, so...I can't be too sure in all honesty. But if he wasn't raised by a more pious family member...that kind of implies he brought the connection to The Eye back himself. And like...I get that Mary is terrible in her own right, and I get that familial culture is very important to a lot of people...but when your culture is worship of an eldritch monster...I don't know, it might be worth considering otherwise. Uh...anyways, Evan Lukas also seems to be an example of someone who broke away, as unlike his isolating family, he was a very sociable man. Granted...even though his death was supposedly ordinary liver failure...I am a little suspicious as to if he ever truly got away without repercussion, especially with how cold and emotionless his family seemed at his funeral. Anyways, I've gotten pretty sidetracked, but the point is that connections to ✨the horrors✨...likely cannot be passed down genetically, as members of these families are shown to be able to get away, even if some can do so more easily than others. And obviously, we don't have examples of this phenomenon for the Haans and the Fairchilds, but...they're so similar in nature to the Keays and Lukases that I'm inclined to believe that they can do the same. Hell, the Fairchilds and Lukases literally worked together on Daedalus so...yeah. Anyways, this all makes me think that...the families aren't all that different from the cults in all honesty. The only major difference is that rather than go scouting for anyone they can make use of, their members are supposedly composed of only their own blood, and they likely attempt to indoctrinate them at an...unfortunately young age. This makes me inclined to equate the families to real-world religious families, where the religion is often passed down from generation to generation, and...in the more toxic religious households (which I do believe are what these families are meant to represent), it can be seen as a massive betrayal if you go against the faith.

And uh...on that note, there is one other thing about these families that interests me. Going back to Mary and Evan for a second...I feel like they might imply that it's easier to break away from the families than the cults. Which I understand probably isn't that true to real world cults and real world religious households, I personally wouldn't know, but...from what I've heard I think it's pretty hard to break away from the latter, and...the former is often a matter of how they've sunken their claws into you. But like...in the case of tma, think about it. Mary seems to have betrayed her family with no reprocussions, Evan...is a bit of a mystery, but for all we know his death was just a normal tragedy, but...then you have the Montauk Family, who betrayed The Divine Host and suffered everything because of it. So...yeah, maybe it's easier to break away from the families than it is the cults. Well...that's about it for them, they uh...they basically indoctrinate their young into eldritch religions. That's...kind of all I have to say on them. But finally...we have the positions. This is the other category I think Maggie and Gordon fall into alongside their likely blood relation, basically....titles that are passed down among different people. And as of now, the only other examples we have of this both happen to come from The Magnus Institute itself, and...one of those examples is admittedly purely speculative at the moment. Let's start with the non-speculative one, which is of course...The Archivist. And...truth be told, I don't have too much to say that hasn't been said already, outside of one thing which I'll get to in a second. Basically...it's a job position that has been held by Jon, Gertrude, and many others dating back to at least The Serapeum of Alexandria, and anyone who holds the position seems to get immediately claimed by The Eye, and for some unexplained reason that matters. A LOT. We...kind of know all of that. However...all of that talk about people breaking away from their planned patrons made me realize something. That...might actually be possible with The Archivists, despite how intertwined they seem to be with their position. Now, keep in mind, I am not outright stating that I think Jon will break away from his position. It's certainly not impossible, but...just understand that I think this because of how Gertrude acts as The Archivist. And...Gertrude was clearly quite an exceptional person, and many people, including Leitner who is...basically the closest thing to a sentient lore bible the story has ever given us (I know Elias knows everything but he also tells us nothing most of the time so I don't count him), have stated that Jon is not nearly as powerful as she was. She is...an exception, but even exceptions can prove some interesting possibilities. Because, here's the thing. Gertrude...doesn't act like a servant of The Eye, in fact, she acts much more like its enemy. Which is super weird, because as far as we're concerned, being The Archivist comes packaged with being a servant of The Eye whether you like it or not. Sure, Jon shows that they can get lightly touched by other members of ✨the horrors✨, but...they're always claimed by The Eye. But the thing is...Gertrude doesn't just try to run from her patron, she actively antagonizes it. She blew up the serapeum remains, cut out the eyes from all of her book covers, helped Leitner hide from Elias, has statement deliveries that do not feel quite as grandiose and entrenched in the statement giver's personality as Jon's, and even tried to burn down The Archives in her last hours. Now...I will concede that it is very tempting to say that because of this, along with the fact that unlike Jon, she hasn't shown nearly as many Eye-core traits in her episodes...Gertrude was never The Archivist to begin with. But while that is a very fun idea...I do not have nearly enough evidence to make a proclamation THAT grand at the moment. I'll write it down and make a theory for it if I have the evidence, but for now...I'm not going to run with that.

Rather, I think it's more likely that Gertrude just...found a way to rid herself of her patron through force. It's kind of like what Robert Montauk tried to do by killing members of The Divine Host and driving back the darkness encroaching on his home, but like...on a much grander and likely more successful scale. I...will also admit that, given how she has shown a tendency to destroy things via flames on multiple occasions, and...how pictures of her also showed up in that ritual circle in Scotland, I was...a little bit tempted to say that she was actually serving The Lightless Flame. However, saying that would require me to go with the idea that she wasn't The Archivist and/or a servant of The Eye, which I already said I have no evidence for...or have to go on the assumption that you can get claimed by more than one of ✨the horrors✨, and I just...do not have the time or energy to shake my entire view of this world like that at the moment. I mean, I think the ritual circle implies she was at least connected to The Lightless Flame, but...given how the bottles those pictures were in, you know, set everything on fire, I'm more than happy to interpret that as a sign of an antagonistic relationship between the two, and write Gertrude's arsonist tendencies off as pure coincidence. Then again....The Lightless Flame is against The Spider and The Spider is allied with The Eye...no no, I'm getting ahead of myself. The main point here is that Gertrude found a way to fight back against her supposed patron through force, and maybe even severed herself from it entirely for all we know. And...unless she got this ability from some unknown external apparatus...then that's an innate ability that any Archivist could theoretically gain. Sure, Jon is probably nowhere near Gertrude's power levels at the moment...but nothing's saying that he can't get there eventually, and therefore possibly sever his connection to The Eye. I just...I don't know, it's an interesting possibility. Oh, I...probably should have said this earlier, but I guess I'll just mention it now. I...have absolutely no clue how you attatch one of ✨the horrors✨ to a job title. Like...no clue, and I think I'm just ging to wait for more clues to come rather than make a bunch of baseless speculations right now. Just....wanted to clear that up. Um...anyways, there is one more hereditary position I have to discuss, and...truth be told, I don't have much to say about how it functions, mostly due to a lack of information. Rather...I just want to prove that it's a hereditary position in the first place. Because...yeah, I think that the connection to The Eye is something passed along to each institute head, and it's not just a trait of Elias. I don't really think that's much of a hot take, but...I've never really discussed it before so I might as well do so now. Firstly...I mean, in the same way as The Archivist, being the head of the institute is just...generally an inherited position. If the head dies, retires, or is for whatever reason is unable to continue their jon...someone replaces them, that's common knowledge and true amongst most businesses. But as for the idea that all institute heads have served The Eye...that's a bit more tricky, but I have plenty of reasons to suspect it. Firstly...Jonah Magnus was kind of a weirdo! Like, we know next to nothing about him at the moment, but like...he supposedly built the institute over the remains of Millbank despite his knowledge of Smirke's creepy architecture, got his hands on an Oregon Trail journal with paranormal properties...somehow, and most damning of all is the fact that he and his institute have historical connections to an Eye worshipping family that persisted for centuries. That's...just inherently kind of weird. I mean, the Keay Family worked at the institute in times before Elias took control, so...at the very least, the institute has had some sort of connection to The Eye before him.

There's also the fact that while "The Magnus Institute" has only existed since 1818...The Eye's Archves have existed since The Serapeum of Alexandria, and subsequnetly, so has The Eye's Archivist. That...kind of makes me wonder if rather than it's own, orginal thing, "The Magnus Institute" is...just a rebrand for what could broadly be refferred to as "The Cult of The Eye". Like, you know how The Divine Host supposedly disbanded in the mid-90s, but is still around underneath either a different name or no name at all, and supposedly had an ancient itteration known as "Those Who Sing the Night"? Yeah...I kind of wonder if The Eye has a similar thing going on. Maybe just as the archives in the serapeum are an older itteration of the archives in the institute, The Serapeum of Alexandria as a whole is an older itteration of The Magnus Institute...as a whole! Which...yes, would be greatly twisting real-world history, but like...it's not like tma hasn't done that before, and...we literally have a character who is the living embodiment of unreality, so...get real, you hypothetical contrarian. But maybe Jonah, while still the first head of the institute, wasn't the first head of...uh...[INSERT PLACE OF ACADEMIA THAT SERVES THE EYE HERE]. But...ok, I might've proved that the institute has had a connection to The Eye since it's inception, and that The Eye has been possessing multiple places of academia all throughout history, but...how does that prove that the head being an Eye servant is also hereditary? Well...simply put, Elias is always in complete control of everything, arguably more than real CEOs or real businesses, and the similarities between him and The Eye look like they run so deep that...I feel like the head kind of represents the institute as a whole. The archives seem like the beating heart, the most important thing to Elias and The Eye's machinations, but...Elias himself is the brain. Literally nothing evades his sight, the institute and everyone inside it are both being treated like his pet project, unlike The Archivists he seems to serve it out of his own will, and everything The Eye seems to want is also what he wants. It's just...like, yeah, I don't know that much about Elias. I don't really know what he's planning, what he wants, where he's coming from, really nothing beyond his personality and the sheer terror his presence evokes. But what I do know is that The Eye has always been here...and he is just way too connected to it, way too similar to it for me to not think that something's up with him. And when you combine it with the weirdness of the institute's founder...yeah, I think the head of the place is, much like The Archivist, a position that comes with some dark, dark power. Ok...wow, I just put a lot of mental energy into something that probably isn't that out of pocket, and I probably overcomplicated things in a way that made my arguments come off as really half-baked, but...there you go. A thorough as mentally possible examination of the cults, families and positions of tma, how they lead to people getting claimed by ✨the horrors✨, and their...general nature on a lot of fronts. Does this really tell us anything big about the relationship between Margaret Carnegie and Gordon Goodman, or the entire statement of Adrian Weiss? No, not really. Like I said, I think that Maggie and Gordon's relationship is somewhere in-between a family and position being passed down, but uh...yeah, this whole thing doesn't tell us much more about them. Rather, I think it's more accurate to say that Maggie and Gordon were...a catalyst for a larger discussion. They just got me thinking about all of these organized groups of weirdos and how they function in a time when I otherwise wouldn't have, and I just thought...."you know what? There's no time like the present." And..I uh...I wrote all this. It's just...kind of a collection of information that I hope to make use of going forward, and...even though it is overall barely connected to the actual episode I'm supposed to be talking about...I hope you enjoyed it regardless!

But...I should probably get back to the actual episode now, specifically...the stuff that happens after the statement. And oh boy, it is...quite the doozy. So...here we go. Ok, so I said I was going to mention Martin's...weird reaction to finishing the statement, that of course being his exasperated and...kind of terrified breaths. Now, this is actually pretty in character for him. Despite how well he's been taking all of the general stress recently...I'd still argue that he has a slightly weaker stomach for the paranormal than Jon (except for when it comes to spiders for SOME REASON....god I hate how similar I am to Season 2 Jon a lot of the time), and this statement also just so happens to deal with the member of ✨the horrors✨ that spent half of Season 1 terrorizing him, but...you should know at this point that I'm in an era where every little oddity that relates to reading statements is especially suspicious to me. And...I feel like this is meant to show us that, no matter who you are...reading someone else's statement can put you in a bit of a trance, explaining why Martin was...presunably emulating Adrian's voice, like I said it's a bit hard to tell at the moment how far he'll go when voicing statement givers, and also why he's acting as if he just broke out of some sort of zone. He might not have all of the traits of The Archivists just because he's filling in, like...please keep that in mind for later, but this is further proof that there's something weird about the statements themselves, not just how people read them. Regardless, just as he's about to finish his follow-up, he notices...someone outside. A...very notable someone. That's right, it's the one, the only....MELANIE KING!!! SHE'S NOT DEAD!!! YAAAAAAAAAY!!! I mean...she's not doing great all things considered, and like...some pretty freaky stuff involving her is minutes away from happening...BUT WHO CARES?! I'm super happy that she's come back for Season 3, like...I know that it's only been eight episodes since her last appearance, but that was like two months for me, so I've been getting more and more worried for her life by the day, so...phew. Crisis averted. Anyways, before I get into the following conversation, I wanted to point out how Martin initially mistakes her for Helen Richardson. That shows that they haven't forgotten about her...which does admittedly make me wonder if I was wrong when I said I didn't think she was the woman in the backrooms. I mean, my main argument against the idea was that she was feeling hunger, fatigue and dehydration, implying that you could just die over time in there, but...then again, it's kind of implied that time doesn't work entirely normal inside there, and...Michael does seem to have a penchant for causing feelings such as fatigue, if the episode of the same name is anything to go on, so...who knows, she might very well still be alive. I'll...keep her in mind just in case, but I still feel like it could easily be someone else inside there. Anyways, Martin notices that Melanie doesn't look all that good, and she uh...well, she responds with...uh...you know what, I'll just quote it. She "Got shot. Sort of. In India.". ....WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?! I JUST....WHAT?! WHAT?! "GOT SHOT, SORT OF?!" HOW DO YOU "SORT OF" GET SHOT?! DOES IT HAVE SOMETHING DO DO WITH THE WAR GHOSTS?! THE PIPER?! DID SHE GET EVEN MORE MARKED BY IT?! I just...oh god. Uh...I unfortunately don't have that much to say about this beyond my sheer confusion, as we don't really get much additional context on the matter, but...that HAS to be something that gets addressed later on. Like...we NEED that third Melanie statement eventually, because...there is not a chance in hell they aren't addressing this after all of that buildup. Anyways, Melanie returned from Amritsar to give a statement to Jon about...whatever the hell happened to her, but...since our beloved archivist obviously isn't here at the moment, Martin offers to take her statement instead, much to her understandable confusion.

Regardless, she agrees to come inside...what I'm guessing is Jon's office that's currently being occupied by Martin? Anyways, when she does....something REALLY weird happens. She just....completely fails to give a statement, instead opting to ask about where Jon is after a couple of stammers and stutters. That is...really weird to me. So...I'm sure you're aware that I've talked about how weird I find it that nearly everyone is able to recount their experiences in such detail, as like...the general populace aren't that good at writing. Sure, I was content to write it off as a suspension of disbelief needed to allow the writing to stay good, but as time has gone on and the podcast's format has become more and more apparently strange...I cannot help but feel suspicious of it. And in my opinion...this little detail of Melanie failing to give her statement is meant to show us what happens when Jon isn't around to take statements, showing us that The Archivist is directly tied to the ability to get perfectly recounted statements, especially given how this whole interaction between her and Martin is meant to emphasize how Jon's absence is affecting the place and the people within. Now yes, I will concede that it's not inherently out of character for Melanie to fail giving a statement here, she is very clearly confused by Jon's absence and probably not in the most calm state after getting sort of shot. If it wasn't for my prior suspicions, I wouldn't read into this at all. But...let's remember that we have had statement givers in much worse mental states and much more stressful situations before, and they've been able to recount their stories perfectly fine. Funnily enough, Helen Richardson is a prime example of this, she was having the second worst time of her life behind actually being stuck in the backrooms, yet still told what happened with nearly perfect prose. Hell, even people like Jane and Lydia Halligan, people who were in horrible states of mental decay, probably gave more coherent statements than whatever Melanie tried to do here. Sure, they were a lot more vague and poetic, more reflections of their mind than actual stories, but they still had overall better flow. And yes, I understand that this is just a single line of dialogue, but like...come on! After everything else that's happened regarding this matter of statement recollection...I have to bring attention to this, it's just way too damn suspicious to me. I...really hope that someone else tries to give Martin a statement in person sooner rather than later, because that could really help to confirm my suspicions. But for now...yeah, I'm going to keep a very close eye on this detail (THE JOKE WAS UNINTENTIONAL I SWEAR TO GOD), and I feel pretty safe in saying that, provided these perfect recollections are more than just the way the show is written, then...they are definitely reliant on the presence of The Archivist. Well...disregarding that for now, Melanie goes on to ask about Jon's absence, and a conversation between her and Martin ensues as he gives her the details. It was nice to see that Melanie's actually on Martin's side in not thinking that Jon could murder someone. Granted, it does seem to be for very different reasons, I feel like Martin has genuine faith in Jon being an overall good person due to their relatively decent connection to each other (and also his crush but he would never admit it), while Melanie just seems to think that he doesn't give off that energy, even though she does kind of hate him as a general person and thinks he's insane, even lightly poking fun at the idea of him snapping being inevitable. But still...I'll take anything if it means someone being on Martin's side for once, even if it comes with some conflicting opinions.

I will say though...Melanie mistaking the metal pipe for a smoking pipe was comedy gold, both because the idea of using that as a method of murder is somehow funnier than an eldritch monster using a lethal weapon of human design, and also because Jon going for a smoke...did technically lead to Leitner's death in a roundabout way. I also found it funny how when the topic of Sasha came up she just...completely noped out of talking about her after what happened with Jon last time...although it is once again a tragic reminder about what happened, and how Martin and Tim still don't know about it. Which...I guess might potentially be resolved earlier than expected if the blanks get filled in for Melanie, but I'm getting a bit ahead of myself there. Anyways, Melanie goes on to express frustration at just...her general predicament. All of her friends have left her behind, she apparently has no money, and is at a complete dead end in terms of the investigations that kept her going, implying that her trip to Amritsar was..unfortunately filled with more instances of sort of getting shot than answers. Yes, that is indeed going to become a running gag throughout these posts whenever possible, for some reason I just find it very funny. But not only is this a pretty sympathetic struggle...but I actually find that last part very interesting when you remember that Melanie parallels Jon just as much as she foils him, especially when in regards to their never-ending search for the truth. I felt like her dialogue here kind of implied that...I don't know, her investigations into those war ghosts was the last thing that kept her going? Like, at a point in her life where she felt like she had nowhere to go, those investigations acted as a distraction of sorts, the one thing that kept her from breaking, and...given the nature of her prior career, maybe Ghost Hunt UK also fulfilled a similar role for her, even if to a lesser extent given the presence of friends and money at the time. Which...admittedly makes me want to know more about her past prior to Skintight, but I'm getting ahead of myself there. But the point is, all of this really reminded me of the last episode, where it felt like Georgie was kind of likening Jon's constant search for knowledge to a drug addiction, so...also something keeping him going in a rough time where he's also bereft of friends and a job. ...I am trying so hard not to ramble about the lore implications of the drug addiction allegory a second time you have no idea. But yeah, the basic point I'm trying to make is that this is another great example of how Jon and Melanie parallel each other, and it's just...MAN I LOVE THIS DYNAMIC SO MUCH!!! Having themes like this to begin with is already one thing, but having them strengthen the narrative and change the way I perceive the characters involved and their relationship with one another to THIS degree...it's genuinely fantastic, and I'm super glad that they're allowing the parallels to continue growing and flourishing with Melanie's return, and it also makes me even more curious to see where both her and Jon will end up in the end. Regardless, Martin tries to offer her comfort after hearing this, which is genuinely really sweet of him. Like, despite how fundamentally different these two are in a lot of ways...I don't know, I kind of get the feeling that Melanie's newfound larger role in the narrative could lead to a really fun dynamic between the two of them, just one scene together and they're already bouncing off one another greatly. But uh...mentioning Melanie's larger presence...I guess we should get to the bit that is both really exciting...and horrifically unsettling.

So...unfortunately it could not be avoided for long. As just as Martin's about to offer some comfort, the archives are graced by the one and only Elias Stoner Bouchard, who definitely did not know that Melanie was in the building at all. He comes in to introduce himself to her, and...SOMEHOW recognizes her as the person who ran Ghost Hunt UK, much to Martin's understandable disbelief. You see, this is the thing that pisses me off the most about this sexy-ass murderer man. Take a look at Jon. He goes out of his way to hate-watch Melanie's show, spending however long those episodes are to thoroughly decipher everything he hates about them, and then probably writes long-ass pretentious hate comments under an alias. Elias on the other hand...he just KNOWS. He doesn't have to put in the time and effort to watch her show, he just gets that information handed to him on a silver platter. God...he really is an academic CEO. Maybe take some time to enjoy art for once in your life you undergraudate heathen! *spits on him*. Oh my god...I just realized that him being a shitty student makes perfect sense now. He doesn't need a good degree because he just supernaturally knows everything. If that was intentional...that is amazing foreshadowing. Oh, um....I guess I should probably mention my thoughts on how Elias was portrayed here, since I expressed my worries about how that would go a while ago. And my verdict is....he was done...pretty well. I think I was a bit more pessimistic at first, and felt like he was being portrayed as much more evil than he should be in front of people like Martin and Melanie, but...I kind of realized that a lot of those feelings come from just...the external audience knowledge of him being bad news. Like, if I was Melanie in this situation, I probably wouldn't be all that suspicious of him. I do admittedly think that there are some lines that...just teeter on the edge of being a bit too villainous for the situation, and I did feel like he was a bit too ominous towards Martin for my liking, but...then again, it has been pretty well established through how he treated Leitner and Daisy that Elias is...pretty damn ruthless, even against the most minor inconveniences. Like, this is the kind of guy who would pull out a chainsaw on a fly, so it's not too out of character for him to act like this towards Martin...even if it plays into some pet peeves of mine that persist throughout fiction as a concept. But at the end of the day...can I really complain that much? Like, yeah, he's not the most subtle villain of all time and the shift from boring manager to maniacal supervillain is a bit polarizing, but...he is ultimately a hundred times more interesting, endearing, and entertaining than he ever was in the first two seasons, and even if it's not exactly what i expected out of his character, I would much rather have that over the...more realistic but much less interesting Elias of old. So like...yeah, it doesn't really bother me that much, I'm just pointing it out because...I otherwise have so little negatives with this character. I mean, in terms of writing, as a person he's a stinky bastard man who we should all throw wrenches at. Anyways, getting back to the plot, Elias makes some kind of passive aggressive comments at Melanie, which I genuinely love. Like...not even her supposed relevance to his scheme is enough to stop him from shitting on her show, which on a more unironic note, just goes to show that...he doesn't really need to be all that subtle, because he can easily get what he wants with his powers alone, and that...kind of gives me a new appreciation for the shift in portrayal between seasons. Also, I think it would be funny if it turned out that Melanie's show was just...genuinely shit. Like, I doubt it, since she feels like someone we're supposed to root for a lot more wholeheartedly than the more questionable Jon and downright malicious Elias, but...it would be a funny revelation at the same time.

Anyways, Martin...kind of seems to catch on to what's happening, doing his best to get Melanie to leave as swiftly as possible, but unfortunately...Elias is just a bit too persuasive. Because just as she's about to leave...Elias makes her a quick offer. Supposedly recognizing her talent and mentioning the recent loss of an assistant...he...he offers her a job. Oh. No. Oh no no no no no no no no no no. I mean...also yes, but like...there's a lot of no to go around as well. So..I'll get into what her acceptance of this position might mean in a little bit, but for now...I want to talk about why Elias made this offer to begin with. Now, I don't think the reasons he says are outright lies on his part. I do actually think that Melanie's experience in paranormal investigation and the recently vacant position for an archival assistant are reasons as to why he's recruiting her...but even those have their own weird connotations. Firstly, her prior experience with the paranormal hasn't just given her some regular job qualifications...it's also left her heavily touched by one of ✨the horrors✨ on at least two, and most likely three seperate occasions, which he is almost certainly aware of. Sure, she wasn't touched by The Eye...but then again, neither was Jon, and it's not impossible for The Eye to be aligned with The Piper in some sort of way that benefits Elias' goals. I mean...he did murder with a "pipe"...just saying. A similar thing goes for the argument of the vacancy, because...not only do we not know why he needs archival assistants to begin with, other than doing their regular jobs, but...we also don't know what's up with the number of "three" specifically. Like, it just hit me, but...is it not a little bit strange that Elias is only offering this job to Melanie after Not!Sasha's been dealt with, even though she was a servant of his enemy, and he was aware of that? Is it not weird that Gertrude apparently had the exact same number of assistants? Like...I don't know, I feel like a specific number of three assistants should be seen as kind of relevant. But even outside of all of that, there's the fact that he's taking advantage of someone's vulnerable position, jobless status and naiveté, how he's offering the job to the one person aside from Jon and himself who knows the truth about Not!Sasha, and...also how he wants someone with way too many similarities to his dearly coveted Archivist, which includes that never-ending desire for knowledge that The Eye seems particularly fond of. Like...there are just way too many suspicious things that come with this offer of his, and while the podcast isn't subtle about the nature of his request...finding out what exactly he wants out of her is quite the tricky and unsettling endeavor. But...moving forward, Martin continues to try and find ways to prevent her from accepting the job, bringing up her lack of formal qualifications, to which Elias makes a rather snide comeback that is clearly referring to the lies on his resumé. But...while this initially seems like nothing more than a comedic callback, it made me realize that...Elias knows Martin lied on his CV. Which is on one hand hilarious, but on the other hand it makes me wonder...if Elias knows that Martin doesn't have any actual qualifications for his job, then...why did he hire him? Because like, as currently curious as I am about his motivations for hiring Melanie, I am just as curious as to why he hired Martin, Tim, and even Sasha, although...in her case it's kind of a toss-up as to whether or not we'll ever get any answers on her reasons, so..I'd be willing to write it off as he joining out of her own interest in the paranormal, even if that's a little sad. But like, in the case of Martin and Tim...why? What is it that makes him want to hire them? Sure, we don't know much about their past, and what we do have doesn't point to anything paranormal, but...that just makes things even more confusing! Just...WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM AND WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ALL OF THESE GAY PEOPLE YOU OLD FART?!

Well, anyways...getting back on track, Melanie...fortunately for me and Elias, unfortunately for everyone else including herself, and despite her previous misgivings towards the institute and the archives...takes the job offer in a desperate situation, completely unaware of what's to come. Interestingly, we hear a static noise play when she accepts the faustian barga-I mean job offer, and it just so happens to be the exact same noise that played when Tim became aware of his inability to quit back in my dearly beloved Binary. I think this proves that this noise is the respective static meant to represent The Eye, and it likely plays whenever The Eye is exerting its power over someone. In Binary, we were likely hearing it preventing Tim from quitting and Jon from firing him, but here, we're likely hearing it turning its gaze upon Melanie, which...yep, basically means that she has been touched by yet another one of ✨the horrors✨. ...Great. Damn...someone in the Youtube comments pointed this out, but...it kind of just feels like she's been doomed from the start. Like, ever since her encounter with Sarah Baldwin, or arguably ever since she started investigating the paranormal, this has been...unfortunately kind of inevitable, especially given Elias' sheer power. Just...it really does feel like unless you don't give a shit, you're screwed on arrival. Martin fails on one last desperate attempt to get her to stop what she's doing...and she follows Elias into his office in order to sign some completely normal paperwork. The episode ends with Martin making frustrated sounds as he realizes his inability to save Melanie, and the recorder clicks off. I think this is a good tell of where he is right now and likely where he's headed. Thanks to Tim he knows that you literally cannot quit a job at the institute, and thanks to...well, basically everything that's been happening since early 2016, he knows that joining the place just puts you in innate danger. But...I think this whole exchange is likely his first big look at just how...not-so-nice Elias is, how he's more intertwined with the institute's less desirable aspects than he'd like to believe. Like...I don't know, I don't think Elias can keep up his charade for much longer, but...then again, it's debatable whether he even needs to anymore in the first place. So uh...yeah. Melanie's...an archival assistant now. I...certainly have some mixed feelings on this, as you can probably tell. On a level of personal enjoyment...I mean, this is absolutely perfect for me, it goes beyond what I ever could've asked for and then some. I've always really enjoyed Melanie's character despite her limited appearances, so having her officially become a main cast member, getting a basic guarantee that she'll play a significant role going forward...it's an absolute dream come true! I'm super excited to see how she'll affect the narrative going forward, how she'll interact with other characters, what her arc will be like, what more we might learn about her, and I'm also glad to see the absence of a female main character being filled back in so quickly (I do know that Georgie arguably fills in that role as well, but it's a lot harder to gauge how much she'll be around at the moment than with Melanie). But on a more moral level...holy shit this is terrifying. Like...the poor woman has no idea what she's getting herself into, and I mean...let's be real, being in tma is just an inherently bad thing for someone to go through, no one in this story is both a good person and having a good time. So...yeah, in short, I'm really happy that she's not only alive but a main character now, and I'm super excited to see where this leads, but...may ✨the horrors✨ have mercy on her soul. Just...Christ on a bike Elias, I know you're the bad guy but I need you to explain yourself sooner or later because if you don't...I might actually just explode. Just...man. England really is hell.

So uh...yeah, that's Possessive. Overall, another fantastic episode.. It had a really creepy and wonderfully disgusting statement with some pretty neat intrigue and mysteries, led me to some fascinating places in ways I didn't expect, and most of all...it really pushed things forward in terms of the overarching narrative. Stuff like Martin reading statements, the ever-bewildering behavior of Elias, and of course...the introduction of Melanie into the main cast are all really exciting and interesting to me, and...yeah, I'm just getting really pumped! Although, if I had to nitpick...I do kind of hope that we get some big, showstopping statement in the not-too distant future, or really...just an episode where the statement feels like the highlight. Sure, that was the case with A Guest for Mr. Spider, and...arguably The Eyewitnesses as well, but both of those statements are very different from what we usually get, I'm referring to the more standard statements. Because like...I'm extremely happy that tma's overarching plot is making more progress and becoming more prevalent, and the statements haven't decreased in writing quality or enjoyability to listen to at all...but like...given how they're the bulk of the episode, I hope we don't forsake them too much for the sake of the overarching plot, at least at this point in time. I understand that this is probably a very irrational fear of mine, and maybe even a little bit contradictory to my previous wises, but...I don't know, just having the odd episode where the statement is the thing I have the most to say about would be very appreciated, and could also provide some balance between the episodes that focus on the overarching story. because..neither this nor Drawing a Blank have quite given me that feeling. It's certainly not unfun to write about them, but...when compared to both the fun I used to have writing about statements, and the fun I'm currently having writing about the overarching plot...it's just a little bit lower than preferred for me at the moment. Granted, I think the fact that I'm currently not able to listen to episodes or write on a frequent basis...doesn't exactly help things, and has kind of skewed my perception of time when it comes to these episodes, but...my basic point is that I hope that not too far from now we'll get...a statement that is a mostly standaone thing, but still great and really interesting in its own right. Not neccesarily as good as Binary since that's a very high bar, but like...with the same sort of charm as Binary, if you know what I mean. Once again, this is...overall extremely nitpicky, it's still early days for Season 3, and I'm still having a phenomenal time listening to these episodes and writing about them, but...yeah, I just felt like I should get those feelings out just in case. I do also want to note that...Season 3 kind of feels like a finale season in a way so far? Like, it very clearly isn't, but...I don't know, with all of these minor pieces becoming more important, the overarching plot taking more of a center stage, and long standing mysteries like Jon's past, the nature of ✨the horrors✨, and...whatever The Unknowing is finally getting on their way to being cleared up...it just makes me very curious as to what they plan to do for Seasons 4 and 5, and how they plan to build those up going forward. Like, I don't fear that they'll be boring or tacked on at all, I think there's still so many unresolved plot threads that Season 3 can't possibly hope to address in a 40-episode run, but like...I don't know, maybe the end of Season 3, or...hell, even the mid-season finale given how it's also the mid-show finale could mark some sort of big shift in the story. Maybe...even bigger than what Season 2's finale did, which...kind of scares me. A lot. Well...I'm starting to ramble now, and it's also past midnight, so...I'm probably going to nod off now. This was a great time, I once again give you thanks for reading this far, and I hope to god that Melanie isn't traumatized by morning.

Supplemental: Oh god...not even halfway done and I'm already nearing the length of the last post. I uh...I don't really have that much to say regarding the podcast itself here, but uh...I did want to just say that I was actually in Oxford last weekend, and...I decided to pay a visit to a rather important place. It was just as spooky as I could reasonably hope it would be. Also, GRANDMA LIKED MY PART ON A GUEST FOR MR. SPIDER LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Well…that’s all she wrote. As for any final thoughts…uh…there’s not too much to say that I didn’t already voice in my post explaining what I plan to do with these going forward honestly. Well…there’s also my thoughts on MAG 85 and MAG 86, but I’ll probably share those another time. All I’ll say for now is that…both of them CERTAINLY fit the bill for that “Binary-like” episode I was looking for…almost a little too well in the former’s case. Oh and uh…on that note, maybe disregard some of that stuff I said about wanting a big showstopper after Drawing a Blank and Possessive? Or at least realize that my actual thoughts are a lot tamer than what I said. Like, while they still aren’t top-tier or ridiculously memorable and unique to me…it’s pretty damn hypocritical of me to start begging for something crazy when I was begging for things to slow down a couple of episodes prior, and it was very late at night when I wrote it, so…yeah, take all of that with a heavy grain of salt please.

I do have some additional lore and plot related thoughts though, both of which I initially planned to fit into my supplemental for MAG 85. Firstly, I mentioned how we don’t really know how The Other Circus might recruit other members, if at all, nor do we know how human most servants of The Stranger are. But…then I remembered that Nikolai Denikin exists, and…that kind of changed things. Given how he had a seemingly normal granddaughter in Leanne, and also died through seemingly normal means (which Leitner kind of implies the more…non-human servants might not be capable of doing when he talks about The NotThem), I think that makes it safe to assume that at some servants of The Stranger are pretty human, (although after listening to MAG 85 I…have some fluctuating thoughts on what qualifies as a human and what doesn’t in tma but uh…once again, for another time) and that The Other Circus may very well have recruitment methods similar to what I assume is going on with The Divine Host and The Lightless Flame.

There was one other thing that came to mind as well. I’ve talked a lot about how I find it really weird that people are able to recount their experiences perfectly in their statements, and how I think it has something to do with Elias, The Institute, The Archives, and/or The Eye, but…then I realized there’s a pretty noticeable outlier to this rule. And that is Trail Rations. This statement was never actually given to the institute, instead it seems like Jonah Magnus just…came across it, and we have no idea how. And yet, it is just as well recounted as any other statement, albeit with some more flowery language due to both the time it was written and Mrs. Carlisle basically being hours away from death by starvation. So…that’s a little bit weird. I still think there’s enough out there to support the idea that the perfect recollection is some kind of weird in-universe phenomenon, I mean…after the whole tape recorders being sentient thing I don’t trust anything or anyone, but…I do kind of wonder if maybe I was wrong about the cause. Like…maybe it’s not the institute that’s responsible for this, but instead ✨the horrors✨ at large, and anyone who’s touched by them gains this ability. But then again…there’s some implications that Jon and likely Gertrude have some weird effect on the statement-givers…and that the statements themselves put people into a trance of some kind…so…maybe The Eye was actually present during Mrs. Carlisle’s journey and I just never noticed. I mean….that would be on brand for this thing that basically seems to see all. Eh…food for thought anyways.

Well uh…that’s all from me! Once again, thank you so so much, from the bottom of my heart for reading all of this, it means everything, and I hope that you’ll be cool with whatever I cook up going forward, even if it’s not as crazy detailed. I’ll make sure to post some of those new-form thoughts when I get the chance. Bye! :)

#tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #georgie barker #alice daisy tonner #martin blackwood #tim stoker #elias bouchard #melanie king #mag 81 #mag 82 #mag 83 #mag 84

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