#yes this is a reference to what they said in episode 160

[pyr0t3chn1xx]

🍓🐮Strawberry Cow Martin! Now fully rendered!🍓🐮

[rigelmejo]

Articles on Learning Languages by Reading

Learn Language Through Reading: https://linguapath.com/learn-language-through-reading/

Love this article. It includes info from Paul Nation’s research.

I refer to Paul Nation’s 2014 corpus-based study, in which he calculated the amount of input necessary to learn the most frequent 9000 words.1 Here are his findings:

Let’s imagine that you already know the first 2000 most frequent words. In this case, you would have to read just about 300 000 words (or 3 books) to pick up another thousand words at the 3000-level.2

For a rough estimate: 120,000 words is roughly 240 pages in english. this will equal one “token” from the table above.

For comparison (see this article https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/1685/for-magazines-or-books-how-much-does-text-volume-differ-when-comparing-chines) “An average result will be that 1,000 Chinese characters can be translated into about 600-700 English words, or 1,000 English words can be translated into about 1,500-1,700 Chinese characters, varying depending on the natures of the source contents and target writing styles. “ (this is what they referenced https://www.actranslation.com/chinese/chinese-wordcount.htm).

So 120,000(.7)=84,000 chinese words per ‘token.’ 

Or “or each 1000 English words will be translated into about 1500-1700 Chinese characters“ (https://www.actranslation.com/chinese/chinese-wordcount.htm).  So 120,000 english words, will mean 120,000*1.6= 192,000 chinese characters per ‘token.’

So, if I know the word count or character count of a novel, I can estimate how many novels/characters it will take to get to X level. 

---

(I’ve read 69, 315 characters of guardian so far, that’s the length of first arc)

163,913 characters as of sundial arc.

53 chapters of guardian is ~191,000 characters.

54 chapters of guardian is ~195,000 characters. One chapter on average about ~3600 characters.

So since guardian is about twice that amount of chapters (106 plus extras), the whole novel would be ‘2 tokens’ and count as that much.

So I would estimate, at least in priest’s novel length, every 53-54 or so would count as 1 token on the table above.

For future reference, that’s about 20-21 pages per chapter in Pleco for on average ~3600 characters.

I’d guess a 10 page chapter in pleco to be half that number of characters, 1800 characters. So for those ‘shorter’ chaptered novels, I would need 106 chapters to reach ‘1 token.’ (192,000/1800).

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Out of curiosity, I’ve read 66 chapters of hanshe at 10 pleco pages each, 66*1800= 118,800 characters. 

Plus how much I’ve read of Guardian, 69,315+118,800= 188,115

Plus Xiao Wangzi, and the chapters of Tamendegushi I’ve read,  14,718 （小王子）19*1800=34,200（他们的故事)

188115+14718+34200= 237,033 is at least how many chinese characters I’ve read so far (I’ve also read a few chapters of various things but didn’t count them well).

237,033/192,000= ~1.23 ‘tokens.’ 

And, if I want to go easy on myself? I literally re-read the sundial arc a second and third time ToT (because I really love Guardian).

So I may well be at: Read sundial arc twice: 188115+14718+34200+69315= 306,348 or 1.59 tokens. Read sundial arc three times: 188115+14718+34200+(69315*2)=375,663 or 1.96 tokens.

***So I might be in the ‘learning the 3000 most common words’ section that is going to take 576,000 more characters to get through. which is 160 more priest-novel 20-pleco-page chapters, or 320 more 10-pleco-page chapters. 

Qi Ye ~79 chapters (~284,400 characters, 1.48 tokens) , Tian Ya Ke ~81 chapters (~291,600 characters, 1.51 tokens), Mo Du ~185 chapters (~ 666,000 characters, 3.46 tokens).

So: Qi Ye + Tian Ya Ke = finishing 3000-level (or just Reading Mo Du on its own).

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From the article, it summarizes that to learn all 9000 common words in a language from reading: This equals to something like 92 books. With the reading speed of 200 words per minutes (which is comfortable enough: I tend to read English at 295 wpm, and English is far from being my native language), it would take you 150 minutes a day (2.5 hours) to process all this beauty in a year.

So I am guessing, if I read 150-200 (unfortunately - but I read a lot of much shorter books when I push into extensive reading), at 30 min to 1.5 hours a day on average, I may get to that point in idk 3 years? 

Also from the article:

Any activity you do in your target language will contribute to that cherished number of 11 million tokens you need to upload to your brain. You may listen to podcasts, watch movies and YouTube, talk to strangers, read magazines, play games… When it comes to vocabulary acquisition, anything goes, seriously.

Diversify your input, and you won’t ever feel bored. But keep in mind that spoken input is often way slower than written. Read a book for two hours and you will process approximately 24 000 words. Spend the same two hours watching a movie and you will get just about 10 000 words3With a typical speech rate for movies of 83 words per minute.4.

So an hour of reading (at speaking speed) is ~12,000 words, 30 minutes is 6,000 words, 15 minutes is 3,000 words (that tracks as Guardian chapters take me 15-20 minutes to read being 3000-4000 characters and I read at around speaking speed).

A movie per hour is 5,000 words. A drama is 40 min, 1/3 of a 120 minute movie, so idk probably on average ~3,333 words per drama episode (watched in target language obviously). 

I’m not counting how much time I spend on those, because who knows, and I obviously spent lots of time listening to the Guardian audiobook (though Idk if this person’s article thinks ‘repeated reading/listening of a single material’ counts as multiple things or not). 

---

The article suggests:  Instead, aim to cover, say, 1000-5000 levels in the first year, 6000-7000 in the next, and gradually work your way through 8000-9000 levels during the following 18 months. This way, you’ll consistently read 20-30 foreign language books a year, which is more than manageable. 

(that’s 15 chinese books in first year, or 2,880,000 characters... I feel like I’ve heard of a book easily that long in chinese... anyway, that would be 15 ‘chunks’ of 54 chapters 20-pleco-pages, or 15 ‘chunks’ of 106 chapters 10-pleco-pages... which for chinese novels typical lengths of ~100 chapters that would mean more like ~7.5 actual novels read total and possibly less if the novels are significantly longer).

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Another interesting article: https://puroh.it/reading-for-a-fine-vocabulary/

Did a lot of these calculations for me (too bad I didn’t read it first).

They said at about 11.6 million words you will have learned a 35,000 english vocabulary. So 11,600,000*1.6 (the english words to chinese characters scale) = 18,560,000 chinese characters. 18.5 million characters. 

That is ~96 ‘chunks’ of 54 chapters of 20-pleco pages, (or 5155 chapters to reach all 18.5 million words). Because chinese web novels are often 100+ chapters, it would be around ~48 novels at 100-ish chapters each. 

So to get back on track: this article estimates 11.6 million english words to be 137 novels. For chinese, the equivalent would be 18.5 million characters is either ~96 chunks (54 long-chapters) or ~48 novels (100-ish chapter novels). 

48/137= 0.35 so you need to read only .35 the amount of ‘novels’ you’d need to read in english to reach the same level.

In this article, it says 100 books in english would get you to 25,000 words learned. So that would be 100*.35 = 35 (100 chapter) novels read in chinese to get to the same level maybe? And 80 books in english to get to 20,000 words learned, which is 28 (100 chapter) novels read in chinese.

---

I would guess, based on the two articles combined, yeah 28-35 novels read would probably get you to a comfortable reading level, possibly les novels than that.

Things I want to read: hanshe, guardian, modu, sha po lang, can ci pin, poyun, liuli, qi ye, tian ya ke, xin xiao shi yi lang, dao mu bi ji 1-9, dmbj ten years, peach blossom debt, san ye.... that’s 22 novels by name (likely more if i were to count in 100-chapter segments), plus some other novels and fanfic... i think if i just keep following my plan of reading books i want to read i will eventually hit those benchmarks. 

---

Anyway, those articles above are interesting if you’re curious just how many books it may take you to read (or words) to hit certain levels of reading skill in a language.

[theuniversitychallengereview]

UC 50.29 - Magdalene, Cam vs Warwick

I tweeted last week, at the height of the mania surrounding the Handforth Parish Council Meeting of Thursday December 10th 2020 (HPCMOT10D2020), that I was going to try and do this week’s review in the style of said meeting (if you haven’t seen the video, you’d be better off watching it than reading this, because it is possibly the purest nuggest of funny this side of the pandemic). 

Now, that may sound impossible - how does one write a review of a television quiz show in the style of a cantankerous parish council meeting - but you are talking to someone who has previously reviewed University Challenge in the style of the movie Tenet, and the book Ducks, Newburyport. Notwithstanding the relative success (or failure) of those endeavors, there is nothing to say that I cannot at least try to do this.

However, given that I failed to get my review out on Monday (a mere three days after the initial virality), and am instead writing it on the following Saturday (eight days after the event), it is quite possible that I have missed my moment. The meme-geist (and I have carefully considered my choice of invented word here. Given that zeit means time and geist means spirit, perhaps the more linguistically correct option would have been zeit-meme, but that doesn’t quite capture the geist of what I was going for, and is a less satisfactory portmanteau, which is where the real meaning is gleamed in English) moves quickly. 

And though I harbour hope that this meeting lives long in the cultural memory, so that years from now I can reference quotes from it in pleasant company, it will probably be lost within weeks, along with other such heroes of the Lockdown Internet as Lawyer Cat and Tiger King. 

Already we have seen the rise and fall of Jackie Weaver, the erstwhile main character of the video, who was interviewed on TV news channels all over the world, but who was later revealed to be a Tory Councillor, much to the chagrin of many of her most vociferous fans, who had proclaimed her a modern feminist icon for her no-nonsense approach to Aled’s iPad and the imposterous PC Handforth Clerk.

This volte-face from Mrs Weaver’s staunchest early supporters comes about as a direct result of the need people have for everything to mean something, and for all people to always be total good or total bad. Yes, there is a conversation to be had about men in a position of power and privilege treating women poorly and speaking over them as if they are not there. But when that conversation feels the need to place one party as angelic and the other demonic (no matter how clearly that appears to be the case) it leaves no space to examine the nuances involved in the way people live their lives (this may seem like a grand way of discussing what seems like a cut and dry case of a male superiority complex, but when, for Mrs Weaver’s actions to be commendable, she also needs to be ‘of sound character’ in every other sense, it leaves us all open to inconsistencies and illogical systems of thought), which is not something that we need to do for silly videos anyway.

In reality, it wasn’t that surprising that she turned out to be a Tory - she is a councillor after all, and a large proprotion of councillors are Conservative Party Councillors. That doesn’t mean she was wrong to kick those men out, but it is further evidence that there is nothing to be gained from painting people as heroes or villains - or at least there is nothing to be gained from acting like those paintings carry real world currency. You either die the hero or live long enough to see yourself somewhat unsurprisingly outed as a member of the Conservative party...

Anyway, by now you’re probably thinking ‘when do we plan to start?’, and (~fUcK oFf~) I think we could start any moment. Though I will mention that if anyone if being disruptive, I will have to throw them out of the review, and if anyone has a point of order to raise they will have to wait until the episode starts.

This quarter-final was a qualification bout, between two sides who had already won one match at this stage, with Magdalene having beaten Birkbeck and Warwick taken down Imperial only last week. The winners would claim the first semi-final spot, while the losers would have to play again to make it through.

The first question of the evening was ‘what is the difference between a Clerk and a Proper Officer?’, which Magdalene’s Davies correctly identified as a trick question - there is no difference between a Clerk and a Proper Officer. At this point the recording had to be stopped to settle a dispute, as someone pretending to be the Warwick captain believed this not to be the case, and claimed that Paxman was breaking the law by accepting the answer. 

This imposter suggested angrily that Paxman should read the standing orders, and another of his sidekicks yelled out that he should not only read the standing orders but understand them also. These gentlemen went onto claim that the quarter-final was being staged illegally, but this was not the case, and Paxman was forced to remove the false captain from the recording, though they claimed that he did not have the authority to do this (you have no authority Jeremy Paxman! No authority at all). But he did have the authority, and the false captain was removed from the meeting.

This did not initially aid the smooth continuation of proceedings however, as there remained some troublemakers in the audience, who started speaking in tongues and who loudly proclaimed to someone off screen that they were ‘trying to record an episode of University Challenge, you fool’ on not one but two occasions, before trying to assert that in the absence of the false captain it was they who should take charge.

Members of the Magdalene team then raised the question of how it was that the false Warwick captain had come to be known by that moniker. Paxman informed everyone that he had simply declared himself to be the new captain, and that he, Paxman, could also, in a similar fashion, declare himself to be Britney Spears, which solicited giggles from all those in attendance. 

With these issues dealt with, the match could be continued, and Warwick, this time under the rightful and competent leadership of Andrew Rout, raced off into a hundred point lead. Magdalene looked a little stunned by all of the earlier excitement and stuggled to get into the game in the first half. 

They had a brief resurgence when Paxman asked if anyone would object to the banished troublemakers being readmitted. Naturally Magdalene felt strongly about this and buzzed in with the correct answer - no. Two more starter questions followed, and they closed the gap to forty five. 

Rout stopped the Warwick rot with the picture starter (on dressmakers) - an inspired guess of Mary Quant. In his previous episode he had guessed Mary Quant incorrectly, so he was delighted, and amused, that this time he had been right. Another brilliant guess of Versace gave them a bonus as well, but their luck ran out with Coco Chanel, who was dead by the time the next dress had been designed.

Another starter, this time from Braid, put Warwick out of reach going into the final few minutes. A quick run of back-to-back starters, with near perfect bonusing, wasn’t enough for Magdalene, who ended the match forty points adrift.

Final Score: Magdalene 160 - 200 Warwick

Jackie Weaver 1 - 0 Handforth PC Clerk

Phew! What an episode/meeting that was. Congratulations to Warwick on their win and to Jackie Weaver for keeping order. I don’t have much else to say other than to reiterate the advice from earlier than all standing orders should be both read and understood.

[haberdashing]

No Puppet Strings Can Hold Me Down (10/?)

The Magnus Archives fanfic. An AU that diverges from canon between episodes 159 and 160, in which Peter Lukas’ statement that “he got you” takes on a different meaning.

on AO3

Time dragged on. There were a few mundane tasks to be done around the safehouse--repairs to be done, supplies to be sorted through, essentials to be unpacked--but for the most part, the time was spent just... waiting, though what exactly they were waiting for Jon couldn’t say.

Martin seemed convinced that Jon hadn’t gotten a head injury by collapsing to the floor, which he supposed was better than the alternative, and his headache and weakness went away as minutes turned to hours turned to days, though the flood of mostly-useless information he had acquired remained his to access.

Part of Jon wanted to dive into it, desperate to find something, anything, that could give him answers, give him an upper hand, let him know what to expect from the days and weeks to come.

Part of Jon suspected that if he dived in, he might never surface again.

Jon resisted the urge for the time being, though he kept the option under consideration in case things managed to get even more dire; perhaps that was what they were waiting for.

They slept, they ate, they tinkered, they made awkward attempts at small talk. Jonah didn’t have Jon pretend to read a statement again, but if Martin thought that was unusual, he didn’t say anything about it. Once their sleep schedules were at least slightly closer to that of most people, Martin went into town to use the payphone there and check how things were going at the Institute, as the safehouse itself didn’t have a signal.

The hours went slowly enough when Martin was there and Jon couldn’t reach out to him, literally or metaphorically, but somehow, time seemed to go even slower when Martin wasn’t there with him, when he was alone with the man keeping him prisoner in his own body.

Jon didn’t talk (well, “talk”) to Jonah in the meantime, instead silently waiting for Martin to return, and Jonah at least did him the courtesy of returning the favor and not disrupting Jon’s looping thoughts, thoughts that kept running through the same few points over and over with no end in sight...

Then eventually, finally, Martin returned, the door knocking gently against the wall after Martin pushed it open.

“Jon?”

Jon’s heart was racing as he made his way to the front room, both metaphorically and literally this time; evidently Jonah was as eager to hear what Martin had to say as Jon was, though presumably for a very different reason.

“You’re back?”

“No, I’m actually a very elaborate hologram.” Martin paused for a beat before saying, “Yes, Jon, I’m back. Observant as ever, I see.”

“I do try.”

“I’m sure you do.” Martin hung up his jacket on a nearby coat hook before settling down on the nearby couch. “Talked to Basira while I was out.”

Jon eased into the open space on the couch next to Martin. They weren’t quite touching, their bodies separated by about an inch of beat-up fabric; given his current situation, Jon wasn’t sure exactly how to feel about that fact,  but it remained at the forefront of his mind just the same. “What did she have to say?”

“A few things, but the most important one is...” Martin turned towards Jon, his gaze fixed solely on Jon’s eyes--or on Jonah’s eyes, really. “She says police think you’re the one who shot Elias.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Guess you really are on the run for murder again now, huh.”

It wasn’t quite a question, despite the phrasing, and Jonah seemed to recognize this, as while Martin took a moment to take a deep breath and stare at the floor before turning his gaze back upwards, Jon didn’t say a word in that time.

“Did you kill him?”

Jon found himself blinking several times rapidly, which was rather annoying because he’d much rather have his vision unimpeded and get to stare at Martin without any disruptions. “Elias? No, of course not, don’t be ridiculous!”

“You can tell me the truth, you know, Jon.”

“I am.”

“I wouldn’t judge you for it, either. Hell, I came pretty close to doing it myself.”

It was hard to focus on the implications there when he could instead focus on Martin’s soft, shaky laugh, but Jon tried just the same. Was that what he’d missed on his way to the Panopticon, something Martin had been considering before being flung into the Lonely? Or was there some other instance in which Martin had come close to murdering their mutual boss?

“Really? Well, that... that doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t kill Elias.”

“If you say so.” Martin sounded less than convinced. “What about Peter Lukas, then?”

“What about him?” Jon kept waffling on how good he thought Jonah’s impersonation of him was, but he had to admit, Jon would sound every bit as exasperated as his voice did now if it were truly him having to field questions about that man. Perhaps Jonah Magnus loathed Peter Lukas every bit as much as Jon himself did, though Jon doubted that their reasoning would be the same.

“Three of us went into the Lonely. Only two of us made it out. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that there’s a story there.”

“...if you’re trying to imply something, I’d much rather you just spit it out already.”

“Fine then. Jon, what did you do to Peter?”

There was a long pause before Jon spoke, a pause in which Jon considered what he’d actually done, what Martin would think of it, and whether Jonah would tell the truth or lie about what had happened in the Lonely. What Jon had done to Peter... it wasn’t a moment Jon was proud of, that was for sure, even though it was probably the best possible outcome for the situation given that Peter Lukas seemed to have no intention of letting Martin escape the Lonely otherwise.

Peter Lukas was a murderer, that much was clear. He’d killed sailors on the Tundra, even killed Institute staff, and there was no reason to believe he’d stop without being forced to stop. But now Jon himself was a murderer. Was that really any better, killing one murderer just to take his place?

And come to think of it, Peter’s last words about his deal with Elias, how “he got you”... he’d been referring to exactly what had happened to him afterwards, hadn’t he? But how was Jon’s possession connected to Lukas’ deal with Jonah Magnus? Why was now the time Jonah chose for him to become possessed?

“...exactly what he deserved.”

The words were spat out without warning, suddenly derailing Jon’s train of thought. He hadn’t expected them, hadn’t expected the venom apparent in his own voice, hadn’t expected Jonah Magnus to sound like he hated the man every bit as much as Jon did for what he’d done to Martin and the Institute.

Martin looked like he hadn’t been expecting such a response either, his eyes going wide and his face pale, standing up from his place on the couch in the blink of an eye. “I... I’m going for a walk.”

“Martin, you just got back from the village.”

“Yes, and I’m going out again. Alone.” Martin paced over to the door once again, grabbing his coat off the coat hook with what looked like rather more force than was necessary.

“Look, if this is about what I said, we can talk about it-”

“Yeah, we’ll talk about it. Later. When I get back.”

“Martin, I-”

Martin opened the door, a brief bit of cool autumn air flowing into the room before he slammed it behind him.

Jon felt like slumping down, like sinking into the couch until he and it were one, but instead, as the sound of Martin slamming the door faded away, he stood up instead, a strange smile forcing its way onto his face.

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG180!

- I really like how the statement really felt like a story advancing logically and through space, with its own codes; it felt a bit closer to my own nightmares, progressing, moving forwards, shifting a bit as the protagonist was forced to adapt and conform to exterior rules (which were never questioned), aware of the potential transgressions, that anything and anyone could punish them if they overstepped (the graves were listening, the angels were eager to punish, the reverend controlled the respectful pace and the words, the crowd was ready to judge, the alleys were full of danger, the dead mother was ready to attack). I really felt the dream-logic in that one, the immersion into an odd universe ruled by another logic than the real world?

… And that rule was the “NIHIL NISI BONUM” (from “De mortuis nihil nisi bonum”, “of the dead: nothing but good”) even when it was destroying the victim from the inside. Obviously, the fact that they were in a necropolis, that there were corpses haunting the living, that it was about a funeral ceremony, would point towards End; but it really felt Web and Beholding to me, too, with the idea of getting trapped in a situation and having to perform, and the sheer weight of the stares and the permanent judging?

(MAG180) ARCHIVIST: “The names are carved with steady-handed reverence, and the dates do not make sense, but… [WOOD CREAKING] bite your tongue. [CHAINS CLINKING] Read the epitaphs quietly to yourself, in a respectful, solemn whisper – “loving son”, “noted philanthropist”, “honoured hero” – and do not question them out loud, for these graves… they are not silent. They are listening. Stop a moment and see the stone angels perched above you, staring down from the harsh corners of each mausoleum roof, looking out over the avenues of darkened […]. They keep their eager vigil, desperate for a comment, a word, a breath out of place against which they might strike. […] Walk faster now. Pick up the pace. For not all the tombs are silent, not all the graves are at peace. […] Don’t mention it. No point making a scene. The angels wouldn’t like it. Besides, those are the tombs with the longest epitaphs; so they must have been good people. […] The faceless gaze of each sepulchre angel fixes itself upon you, and you feel yourself turning back towards the house, though every muscle in your body screams at you to run. Instead you nod, and apologise for your lateness. [ANXIOUS, DEEP BREATHING IN THE BACKGROUND] The angels look away, and you step across the threshold. […] He leads you through the winding house towards the memorial room, the thick carpet crunching under your feet so loudly that it makes you wince, certain that it calls all attention to you. The Director’s steps are silent and dignified, the heavy fabric of his dark suit still and crisp as cold iron.[…] One hundred and sixty pairs of misty eyes follow your slow procession down the room, bile rising higher and higher with each row you pass. Fifteen left, you can make out her hair, still the cold grey you remember so vividly. Ten rows left, and you can see her mouth, those lips that hide the grin that now flashes thorough your memory. Five more, and you can see her eyes. Why are her eyes open? They are lustreless, and clouded, but still contain the cruelty you saw when she held the knife. […] He places you behind the podium, as the mourners stare at you, and you realise with a stab of agonised dread that they are waiting for your eulogy, their faces alight with hungry grief. […] Behind you, a dark shadow moves, [WOOD CREAKING] a shape that seems to slither from the coffin. [GROANING GURGLES IN THE BACKGROUND] You watch it coming closer from the corner of your eye but you cannot stop your kind words.”

(Hell Is Other People.) What hit me most in this one was the feeling of never managing to escape, the slow anguish and despair (while it wasn’t a quick pursuit nor a hunt!); the idea of having to conform to rules, of being imprisoned by other people’s eyes (“though you know that nothing escapes his eyes.”); the implacable neatness and order all around; the sudden mention of the abuse they had suffered from their mother (which… helped so much to recontextualise their dread) and the fact that even (especially) after death, nobody was ready to acknowledge it or to let them denounce it (the angels were ready to strike); the protagonist having to Perform like the others and pretend to negate what had been done to them; the fact that they saw their dead mother rise and come towards them… and couldn’t do anything about it. That crunch was AWFUL. Little apocalypse reference with the crowd (“The mourners are all lined up so very, very neatly, four chairs either side, twenty rows deep. […] One hundred and sixty pairs of misty eyes follow your slow procession down the room”), since it happened on the 160th tape… and sneaky sneaky spiders with the maths: it means 80 people on each side, and 8 eyes on each row on each side! =D

Another little thing which Got Me, too:

(MAG180) ARCHIVIST: “‘If you would like to say a few words…,’ the Director commands.”

“if you would like” but “COMMANDS” (it wasn’t a choice.); the shortness of breath conveying the anxiety, starting mid-statement, which was… unsettling and indeed anxiety-inducing.

When it comes to sound: once again, Jon’s statement “created” the soundscape! It was gradual: the cries of birds were different from the ones we could hear around Jon&Martin before; then we heard the footsteps; then we began to hear the occasional wood creaking, the chains clinking, the stone scraping, the gurgles, and the crowd whispering. Big YIKES moment there:

(MAG180) ARCHIVIST: “Just knock and ask to enter. Or try your best not to hear, to think nothing but good and admirable thoughts of those who wait in monuments to their own virtue. [GRAVEYARD SOUNDS AS THE WIND GUSTS, CHAINS CLINK, WOOD CREAKS] There now, a face, pale and stained with age and death and sin – no, not “sin”, never sin. [GURGLES IN THE BACKGROUND] Misjudgement. Indiscretion. Misunderstanding. Never sin. Never evil. It grins and smiles and nods its head with broken yellow teeth. It is a smile that wants you closer, wants you near. A bloated, purple tongue that tries to whisper reassurance, but can only gurgle promises that smell like sour fruit.”

… because with the chains clinking, we could see the denegation through the sounds and/or the creature potentially getting annoyed.

(- AHAHAHHA SOB that the statement’s climax was about a forced eulogy about someone who had been awful and continued to hurt the protagonist even after death… in the episode right after Daisy’s death. Daisy who had hurt Jon. Complicated relationships, complicated mix of feelings – although the mother from the statement was an “a monster, brutal and unrepentant”… while Daisy, the real Daisy cut from The Hunt, was repentant. Even Peter had made a jab about it (MAG134: “And he even brings a Penitent Thief along, in the form of your pet murderer!”).)

- Regarding sounds! I really like how we could hear Martin run or accelerate his pace thanks to the sound of his bag, early in the episode!

(MAG180) [CLICK–] [FOOTSTEPS CRUNCHING ON GRAVEL, AS THE WIND WHISTLES] [BAG JOSTLING] MARTIN: Hey, hang on! ARCHIVIST: Oh! Right you are. MARTIN: Sorry, I just… don’t want to lose sight of you, you keep… disappearing behind tombs and that. ARCHIVIST: I’ll try to slow down. [FOOTSTEPS STOP] […] [FOOTSTEPS RESUME] MARTIN: … Yeah, all right. [INHALE] Come– Hey! Hey! I said slow down! ARCHIVIST: S–sorry. MARTIN: H–how exactly does a leg wound make you faster? ARCHIVIST: I just want to get through here quickly.

Small thing I appreciate, too: the fact that Martin used to be more angsty about Jon leading and him following…

(MAG170) MARTIN: Why am I here? I… I, I fell behind. I was, I was too slow, and, and, and the fog caught up, I was… I was following, al–always following, never leading; never leading. Why did he leave me behind? Di–did he? Who we, who, who are you? Who am–?

… but also/now doesn’t hesitate to voice when Jon is going too fast for him <3

- It’s terrible and amazing how the episode managed to be both gloomy and funny, since:

(MAG180) MARTIN: Sorry, I just… don’t want to lose sight of you, you keep… disappearing behind tombs and that. ARCHIVIST: I’ll try to slow down. [FOOTSTEPS STOP] MARTIN: … Thank you. [INHALE] I really rather not end up lost in a… what did you call it? ARCHIVIST: A necropolis. It’s like a cemetery but all the tombs are above ground. [INHALE] New Orleans has a very impressive one. Or… had.

They were almost (unwillingly) playing hide-and-seek in a necropolis.

- Martin’s list of vocabulary when it comes to Jon’s activities during the apocalypse:

(MAG164) MARTIN: I don’t, I don’t feel fine, okay, and you were there a long time doing your… y–you–your guidebook, which, you know, I get it, but that place is…

(MAG168) MARTIN: Right, yes, yes, of course. You… [INHALE] You vomit your horrors. [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: [REVULSED SOUND] Uh! I’m… not sure I like that metaphor…! MARTIN: “Puke your terrors”? ARCHIVIST: … Just go.

(MAG177) MARTIN: [SIGH] It’s… It… He needs to make a statement. BASIRA: Is that like a euphemism, or…? MARTIN: Ew, no! It’s, hum… He sort of describes the place he’s in to the recorder and… Look, it’s–it’s, it’s magic Eye stuff, he can’t help it. He needs to do it, and if he doesn’t… ARCHIVIST: [FAINT GRUNT] BASIRA: He gets constipated? ARCHIVIST: Hardly! MARTIN: Actually, yeah, basically. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] BASIRA: Right.

(MAG180) ARCHIVIST: No, obviously. This place is a manifestation of– MARTIN: No. Nope. ARCHIVIST: … I understand. Of course. MARTIN: Sorry, I’ve just… [INHALE] I’ve been hearing altogether too many of your statements lately, and– ARCHIVIST: Yeah, no, no, I– MARTIN: –yeah. ARCHIVIST: I, I get it. MARTIN: Just… a little break. ARCHIVIST: That’s fair enough. MARTIN: In fact, this time, when you start to… intone… ARCHIVIST: [AMUSED HUFF] MARTIN: I’m going to find a nice soundproof mausoleum, and just… just chill, with whatever horrors they’ve got lurking in there!

No respect for statements, uh. (I feel like Martin was talking even more casually than usual, early in this episode? He contracted words a loooot!)

Still glad that Martin doesn’t hesitate to say no, and that he doesn’t want to hear about this stuff! Although I’m a bit worried, still, of him… being back to removing himself when Jon gives his statement – it still really feels like at some point, Jon will come back from the statement only to discover that Martin is gone or has been attacked… ;; (We know from MAG179, and Basira sneaking on him, that Jon is unaware of what is happening around him when he is engrossed in one.)

- JON AND MARTIN WERE SO ADORABLE, GOSH?!

(MAG180) MARTIN: Maybe play a bit of “I Spy” or something. ARCHIVIST: [CHUCKLES] MARTIN: … I–I’ll start. I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with… T– ARCHIVIST: Tombs. MARTIN: … Cheater. ARCHIVIST: [INDIGNANT] I did not!

Playing lil’games!! I love how “I Spy” felt like a reference to something-Martin we had on Patreon, to Beholding watching everything, and potentially to The Web (“I spy, with my little eye(s)…”). I love that Martin was super-predictable, since going with “T(ea)”? Jon knowing him too well? Their banter, Martin’s inconsequential accusation, Jon sounding SO OFFENDED (hand-on-heart, perfect picture of Victorian offense, in my mind!). And Jon’s sense of humour?!

(MAG180) MARTIN: … Your turn. [BAG JOSTLING] ARCHIVIST: Fine. I spy, with my little eye… Literally everything. [MARTIN LAUGHS] [THE ARCHIVIST LAUGHS] [A NEARBY TOMB LAUGHS] [LAUGHTER STOPS WITH TENSE SIGHS] MARTIN: Right. [SIGH] Sorry. Forgot. [SIGH] Levity is just… off the cards. ARCHIVIST: Mm-mm! [SIGH]

Martin used to not get it (MAG088: “I don’t think I’ve ever heard him tell a joke.”), but now he sure does!! I love that Jon deadpanned and used his Serious Archivist From Season 1 voice for it, it was adorable and so silly! Their laughs were so adorable!

(… And then the seriousness struck, reminding them of where they were. Apocalypse not giving Martin a break, uh.) (But eh! Jon even makes eldritch horrors laugh at his jokes!)

- I’m a bit surprised that Martin was having trouble with what had happened:

(MAG180) MARTIN: [LONG SIGH] ARCHIVIST: How are you doing? About… MARTIN: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I’m… I don’t know. I’m–I’m not sure how to feel; just… pressing on, you know? ARCHIVIST: I do. [SILENCE] MARTIN: Do you think she’ll be okay without us?

Was it just about leaving Basira behind? Or was it about Daisy’s death? I was suspecting that Daisy having to die might be a bit of a shock for him (… since he had expressed multiple times wanting to make things “better”, and Daisy was a case of… it not being possible, with the added fact that it was also putting to mind of Jon’s own situation), with a potentially delayed response, but nothing explicit in that regard so far. He was a bit closer to Basira, and clearly upset and worried over her going solo again for a while, so it’s understandable ;; Jon had mentioned he had trouble expressing his own feelings:

(MAG167) MARTIN: Okay, so how exactly would you describe your current emotional state regarding all of this? ARCHIVIST: I… MARTIN: Go on. I’m all ears. ARCHIVIST: I feel… MARTIN: Mm–mm? [FOOTSTEPS STOP] [BAG JOSTLING] ARCHIVIST: [FRUSTRATED EXHALE] I feel… sad. [SILENCE] MARTIN: Sad. ARCHIVIST: Very sad. [BAG JOSTLING] MARTIN: Very sad. ARCHIVIST: Yes, all right, point taken.

(MAG179) ARCHIVIST: Is it… Is it awful that I wish she’d recognised me? MARTIN: Daisy? ARCHIVIST: Yeah. I mean, she was… We were friends there, sort of, near the end. We went through so much and it just… I wish I could have actually said goodbye. MARTIN: Would it have made you feel any better about any of it? ARCHIVIST: I don’t know. Maybe? It’s hard to know how I feel about… anything these days. [SILENCE] MARTIN: We said our goodbyes to Daisy after the institute. This was just… This was just dealing with all the stuff she left behind. ARCHIVIST: … I suppose.

So they’re the same in that regard. Still glad that they notice when the other isn’t talking much about what they’re feeling, and convey that it’s okay to talk about it if they want, still?

(There is not much more to say about Daisy, now, but I still hope that they’ll talk about it again… I want to feel the consequences of this death, how it hurt? It might come back when Basira returns, though…)

- Just An Archival Team Worrying:

(MAG095) MARTIN: And–and I’m glad we can help, of course I am. It’s just what he’s doing seems really dangerous. And I get that he’s worried about us. I mean, we worry about him as well. I worry. And we should just–

(MAG112) BASIRA: I’m sorry, I just… I worry. DAISY: Worry about yourself. I’m fine.

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: I do worry about Martin and Melanie, leaving them behind, but… I– I suppose that’s– part of trusting someone, isn’t it? Letting them help how they can.

(MAG117) MARTIN: Anyway. I guess I’m just… sick of sitting on my hands, drinking tea and hoping everyone’s okay. This way I finally get to do something. It’s gonna hurt, but… I’m ready. And I want to. Also, I get to burn some stuff, so that’s cool! I just… really hope everyone makes it back.

(MAG128) ARCHIVIST: I just– I worry. You’re working for someone… really bad! MARTIN: Yes, I’m not an idiot, Jon, but it’s no… worse than working for something really bad, so…

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: … [SIGH] I’m just worried about Martin. … Christ… Every other Avatar gets to have their feelings… burned right out of them, but me? I’ve… just got to sit in mine.

(MAG142) DAISY: Melanie’s out, and… [EXHALE] Jon and Basira’re still off. Bit worried. But they can take care of themselves, you know?

(MAG180) MARTIN: Do you think she’ll be okay without us? ARCHIVIST: Oh, she’s made it this far. MARTIN: … Yeah. I just worry.

- I’m glad that Jon got Basira’s consent about it:

(MAG179) BASIRA: All going well, I’ll meet you both in London. He’ll know where to find me. ARCHIVIST: So, you won’t mind if I check up on you sometimes? BASIRA: If you must! But don’t overdo it. I don’t like being watched. ARCHIVIST: Understood.

(MAG180) ARCHIVIST: Yeah, me too. But I’m… uh, “keeping an eye on her”, so…

Because dang, using double meaning like this, and using his power like this… he really sounds like Elias, lately. (On the surface – the fact that he got Basira’s consent, and that it’s genuinely for Basira’s well-being, does make a gigantic difference.)

- Jon’s leg injury was mentioned again this episode, with the fact that he was walking very fast:

(MAG180) MARTIN: H–how exactly does a leg wound make you faster? ARCHIVIST: I just want to get through here quickly.

And it made sense if reflecting Jon’s enthusiasm? But I can’t help but wonder if there is a Trick about it (like Jon’s body metamorphosing a bit after healing from injuries; or a reminder that he had recently been injured because the wound will reopen soon, or something).

- Levity, and at the same time a few reminders of what is at stake:

(MAG180) ARCHIVIST: I just want to get through here quickly. MARTIN: Really? I mean, it seems pretty calm apart from… Wait. Wait, wait, no, no, no, no, no, no! It’s not more children, is it? ARCHIVIST: No, no, no, the necropolis is fine. Uh, I mean, well; obviously it’s, it’s… bad, i–i–it’s horrible, but– MARTIN: S–so why the hurry? Where are we going? ARCHIVIST: Er… Well… MARTIN: Oh, come on, don’t play coy. ARCHIVIST: I’m not being coy, i–it’s just, well, I, I… MARTIN: … Wait. Wait, are you excited? ARCHIVIST: A–a bit? Maybe?

Understandable from Martin to be cautious about Jon’s behaviour, since last time Jon was trying to hurry in a domain… was because the domain was absolutely awful. (I’m super fond of the way he’s nagging Jon, when suspicious? I picture him narrowing his eyes, every time.) I love and am sad at the same time about how Jon scrambled a bit to remember his moral stance (he still knows that these places are awful and wants to label them as such, wants to reject them, although he’s now made to enjoy them on some level), a bit performatively, because his attention wasn’t even focused on the domain this time around? He was entirely focused on what was coming up next:

(MAG180) MARTIN: … [SUSPICIOUS] Why? What’s next? ARCHIVIST: [EXCITED] I don’t know! MARTIN: Wh–, y– … In what way? ARCHIVIST: All the ways. I don’t know what’s next. MARTIN: What…? But, like, you, you can see “literally everything”, so– ARCHIVIST: I–I can, but i–it’s a blind spot! No idea why; I–I didn’t realise until we got closer, and I was looking at our route, but… I can’t see the area after the necropolis. None of it; it’s, it’s like the inside of the Panopticon, or, or wherever Georgie and Melanie are hiding. MARTIN: Or Annabelle. ARCHIVIST: … Or Annabelle. MARTIN: You think the others might be there? ARCHIVIST: [DELIGHTED] I have no idea! It’s a mystery! […] Right, then…! I’m done. Let’s see what we’ve got…! […] It’s beautiful… MARTIN: … It’s a trap…! ARCHIVIST: [STILL DELIGHTED] No; it might be a trap. We, we just don’t know!

And it’s so understandable? It was something so unexpected and surprising for him? I love how it felt so different and unexpected to have him enthusiastic about something, and yet absolutely understandable, because, for once… he didn’t know something. And there was no way to tell (well, no static at least) whether it was because Jon was under an influence pushing him to discover about that ~mystery~, or if it was genuine excitement because it was breaking his routine, it was so different from everything else that he couldn’t help but hope and be curious about it? Since for once, there was potentially something “better” ahead of them? … Which left poor Martin having to remind him, multiple times, that it didn’t necessarily mean good news, but could be “a trap”, something worse. It is indeed a bit suspect that Jon didn’t consider that it could be Annabelle, or hiding Annabelle, although he had mentioned that he couldn’t see her. Precautions out of the window, there was NOVELTY, there was a MYSTERY!

- Jon’s character development!! ;w;

(MAG164) MARTIN: Maybe she’s right…! ARCHIVIST: I am not, nor have I ever been “adorable”. MARTIN: [CHUCKLE] Okay, not true.

(MAG180) MARTIN: Just so you know, this… this is an adorable look on you, by the way. ARCHIVIST: [IMPATIENT] Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes… MARTIN: [EXHALE] [HUMOURING] All right, then!

He didn’t reject the word, this time! … And I can only concur with Martin, Jon sounded adorable (we have to take Martin’s words for it, that he also looked it!). I think this is the most excited and delighted we’ve ever heard him? His outburst was genuine and spontaneous, not even driven by relief, this time around!

(On another hand, CRIES, because we do know since MAG080 that Jon, as a child already, was mostly drawn towards novelty (“I hated to read anything I felt like I had read before”), and Elias (fuck him) has commented about Jon’s tendency to push on and run into things (MAG092: “In a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, you pressed on. You sought knowledge relentlessly, and you always chose to see.”). It’s just ;; A reminder about how much Jon’s personality made him vulnerable to Beholding taking over, twisting what was already there. Wanting to see and to uncover mysteries is part of Jon. It’s Jon.) (Also cries cries, if the apocalypse hadn’t happened, Jon&Martin could just have gone travelling around the world together, and Jon would have been the most excited tourist, uh.)

- Martin and pop culture this season…

(MAG166) MARTIN: If you want to stop them and have the power to, then… then, then yeah, let’s do it, let’s go full Kill Bill! ARCHIVIST: [LOW] I, I, I haven’t seen it…

(MAG168) MARTIN: What, what happened to Kill Bill? … Jon? Jon, you said– ARCHIVIST: I know what I said, and I don’t… [SIGH] I don’t know, Martin.

(MAG180) MARTIN: [EXHALE] [HUMOURING] All right, then! Lead on Scooby, let’s go solve a mystery, woo-oo-ooh…! […] It’s fine, fine. Just… stay in this… avenue while you do it, I don’t want to lose sight of you. ARCHIVIST: Of course. MARTIN: Not when there’s a mystery on the loose, woo-oo-ooh…!

Taking on Tim’s mantle TT___TT

(I’m keyboardsmashing that he’s comparing Jon to Scooby, though. But eh! It’s also kinda cute: Martin is a dog-lover, so if he had to pick one for Jon…)

- Jon’s excitement was so contagious! And I like how we could get a feel of something being different when they came closer to the house – just the wind whirling, peacocks screaming and birds twittering, but without the usual sense of dread?

(MAG180) MARTIN: Is that… ARCHIVIST: [PLEASED] Looks like it…! [FOOTSTEPS STOP] MARTIN: … No, no– ARCHIVIST: Or yes! [PEACOCK SCREAM IN THE DISTANCE] MARTIN: It… can’t be real. ARCHIVIST: And yet! MARTIN: But, eh! But it’s… it’s… ARCHIVIST: Yeah! […] MARTIN: But it’s… It’s, it’s fine. It’s better than fine, th–there are trees! Look! Like… real trees! [BIRDS TWITTER] ARCHIVIST: It’s beautiful… MARTIN: … It’s a trap…!

* A bit “YIKES” that Martin is taking the presence of Actual Trees as a sign of a place being Fine And Well… when we’ve been haunted by Trees in Magnus. Albrecht’s tree, that he wanted “dead” (… complete with a mausoleum nearby); the tree at Hill Top Road, sealing (?) the Web box…

* “It’s fine” as opposed to:

(MAG160) ARCHIVIST: What happened? MARTIN: I–I, I don’t, I don’t know, everything… [FOOTSTEPS] It’s all gone wrong! ARCHIVIST: Help me up! [GRUNT] MARTIN: No, no, no! Don’t–don’t, don’t go outside. It’s… It’s real bad…

Truly an anti-apocalypse pocket, uh…

- So we have one domain that is not Jon’s specialty!

(MAG180) MARTIN: It–it’s like something out of a National Trust brochure…! ARCHIVIST: I–I mean, I’m pretty sure it is National Trust. It was, anyway. MARTIN: But… you don’t know for sure? ARCHIVIST: No! I can’t see anything about it. If I had to guess… Upton House, maybe? I–I mean, country houses and stately homes… are not exactly my specialist subjects…!

He infodumped about necropolises, however, and I can believe that that was just out of personal knowledge. But it’s interesting that he already couldn’t know with certainty what the house was or had been, even with Beholding powers?

If it is indeed Upton House: 1°) it’s not a Smirke building (so, interesting that the ~oasis~ in the chaos wouldn’t be from the guy who might have contributed to structuring the chaos a bit too much), 2°) they’re getting quite close to London! … And there is Hill Top Road more or less on their current way to London, it wouldn’t be a big detour. (Martin had packed maps when they left the cabin, I wonder if he’ll get an opportunity to use them?)

- I AM MELTING, DROWNING AND DISSOLVING IN JONMARTIN

(MAG180) ARCHIVIST: It’s beautiful… MARTIN: … It’s a trap…! ARCHIVIST: [STILL DELIGHTED] No; it might be a trap. We, we just don’t know! MARTIN: … Jon… [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [RESIGNED] … Yeah. [INHALE] We’ll go around. [PEACOCK SCREAM IN THE DISTANCE] [BAG JOSTLING] MARTIN: No… [SIGH] No, no, no. [SIGH] Let’s, let’s check it out. I mean… obviously it can’t be how it seems but… Well. ARCHIVIST: What if it is! MARTIN: [CHUCKLE] Exactly. ARCHIVIST: A beautiful oasis, untouched by the end of the world. MARTIN: It’s got to be worth a shot, right? [BIRDS TWITTER] ARCHIVIST: … Thank you. MARTIN: [SOFT HUFF] Don’t fret it. It’s just nice to see you like this…!

(“It’s beautiful” / “You know what else is beautiful? :-)” etc.)

The fact that Martin had to be The Voice Of Reason, and tried to be cautious, but relented because Jon was too excited/curious/adorable about it ;_; It made sense for both? Jon already knew that this place was different because he couldn’t See it before getting closer to it, unlike the rest of the world; and Martin didn’t do a good job about it when it comes to the smiting, but he knows from experience that Jon can be influenced by Beholding impulses – so that he would have to stop him if necessary. It was a nice role-reversal from most of season 5 since, usually, Jon had to remind Martin of how the apocalypse worked, and to not “trust comfort”? But right now, it was Martin pointing out and reminding Jon that when they look good, things can’t be as they seem.

… I’ll be laughing for a while that Martin only relented because Jon was cute. Like, understandable! Fair! But also, Martin, please <3

(There was no static, but if they were influenced by Annabelle to come here, I’m not sure she did anything to Jon. Martin, however… making him focus on Jon’s excitement, on wanting to see him even happier? Jon has sworn that he wouldn’t look in Martin’s head and they have discussed the possibility that he could be influenced, I wonder if we’ll hear about whether it’s the case or not soon.)

- Did they think that the front of the building was kind of a façade, a décor? Like a theatre setting? Or was it about the fact that for old big houses, you generally don’t come through the giant doors (although they work!), they’re closed to public use while the functional doors are elsewhere? Awww that Martin has not enough experience with big houses to know about the latter:

(MAG180) MARTIN: So… what now? I don’t see a doorbell. ARCHIVIST: I’m not even sure this door actually opens. MARTIN: But it should, it’s the front door! [DISTANT, MUFFLED PIANO NOTES] Besides, it’s the biggest one so if it’s not, then– ARCHIVIST: I mean, maybe they expect you to come in through the café or…

(We could already hear, very faintly, Salesa playing! There were a few interruptions when they were waiting outside, I wonder if they were for the Aesthetic or if he was actually practicing?)

- Jon sounded SO HAPPY to not know things!

(MAG180) MARTIN: … [SUSPICIOUS] Why? What’s next? ARCHIVIST: [EXCITED] I don’t know! MARTIN: Wh–, y– … In what way? ARCHIVIST: All the ways. I don’t know what’s next. […] MARTIN: You think the others might be there? ARCHIVIST: [DELIGHTED] I have no idea! It’s a mystery! […] ARCHIVIST: I–I mean, I’m pretty sure it is National Trust. It was, anyway. MARTIN: But… you don’t know for sure? ARCHIVIST: No! I can’t see anything about it. If I had to guess… Upton House, maybe? I–I mean, country houses and stately homes… are not exactly my specialist subjects…! […] MARTIN: … It’s a trap…! ARCHIVIST: [STILL DELIGHTED] No; it might be a trap. We, we just don’t know! […] ARCHIVIST: I mean, they usually have a little… gift shop or something. MARTIN: Okay, so where would they be? ARCHIVIST: … No idea! [SMALL LAUGH] MARTIN: I thought you said you’d been here before. ARCHIVIST: I said I might have been, and even if I have, I was twelve. MARTIN: I’ll tell you what, it’s more convenient when you know everything. [SOUNDS OF A DOOR UNLOCKING] ARCHIVIST: [PLEASED] Oh! Guess I was wrong!

You bet that if it’s still the same when he wakes up, he’ll just be obnoxiously “I DON’T KNOW =D” about so many things <3 And he deserves to be happy about it <3

- So, at least, Jon identified the building as potentially Upton House, which he visited when he was twelve:

(MAG180) MARTIN: I thought you said you’d been here before. ARCHIVIST: I said I might have been, and even if I have, I was twelve.

So the house shouldn’t be Mr. Spider’s building (and Jon was eight), nor Hill Top Road (that Jon visited in MAG147) (… well. The new one, at least. He wouldn’t know what the pre-1974 looked like. But likely not a country house comparable to Upton House.) Still, given that Annabelle opened the door, there were a few elements reminding me of Jon’s childhood misadventure? Visiting a house as a child, and a spider behind the door… (BUT JON DIDN’T KNOCK ON THIS ONE, AT LEAST……… Annabelle opened the door without being prompted. They were taking too much time, uh.)

- Martin still wants to rely on the smiting, uh.

(MAG180) MARTIN: Get ready. ARCHIVIST: To do… what? MARTIN: What do you mean “what”? To smite them, if we need to. Wait, hang on, can you even smite people here? ARCHIVIST: I, I don’t think so.

Jon had already seemed less fond of that one ability (while for Martin… it was a potential defence, power against monsters and avatars susceptible to hurt them), I’m not surprised that he wasn’t even thinking about it… but he sure was a bit oddly relaxed, still.

It was the first indication that the area of the house itself was operating differently from the apocalypse – is Jon cut off from The Eye? Can he use any power at all? Or has he just “lost” the ability to use the new powers he got in the apocalypse – the sea of knowledge and turning someone who is feared into someone who is afraid? (MAG166, Helen: “there are now exactly two roles available in this new world of ours: the watcher, and the watched. Subject, and object. Those who are feared, and those who are afraid. And Jon, well… he is part of The Eye; a very important part. And he’s able to, shall we say… shift its focus. Turn the one into the other.”)

- I love that Jon&Martin took so long deliberating/talking that Annabelle had to open the door even before they knocked or called for someone.

(MAG180) [DOOR OPENS] [MUSIC CAN BE HEARD PLAYING MORE CLEARLY] MARTIN: Oh. Oh no, uh… [FOOTSTEPS] ANNABELLE: Good morning. ARCHIVIST: [FAINT GRUNT] MARTIN: Uh… Yes… ANNABELLE: Come on in. He’s waiting for you. ARCHIVIST: Oh. And who exactly– MARTIN: J–J–Jon. Jon. ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: I think… Hum… Annabelle? Annabelle Cane? ANNABELLE: Come on. He’s very excited, you know.

Hurry, guys.

Note about Annabelle: she’s POLITE when talking directly with someone!

(MAG166) MARTIN: Hello? ANNABELLE: Hello? Is that Martin?

… There had been no “Hello” to Jon in the statement she had left for him, but to be fair, Jon&co had burst into her home and talked about burning it down, so they had been a bit rude first, maybe. (… though she had written it and left it for them before they did.)

- Quite surprised that Jon apparently didn’t recognise Annabelle on sight?

(MAG123, Angie Santos) “As he told it, she was young, rail-thin underneath an oversized brown hoodie, which she kept pulled up, trying to cover up a network of pale stitches that stretched over one side of her head.”

(MAG150) MELANIE: [CHUCKLING] What? You think I wouldn’t notice if she had cobwebs down her face? ARCHIVIST: … No? MELANIE: [DEEP INHALE] That’s it, isn’t it? [EXHALE] You… you really think I’m so stupid I wouldn’t have noticed if my therapist was some kind of monster!

Annabelle’s appearance is pretty distinctive, we had descriptions of her and it involved “stitches”/cobwebs on/in her head, following her injuries from MAG069. Martin probably recognised her voice from their call in MAG166, but Jon didn’t have any reaction until Martin pointed it out despite Annabelle having such a characteristic look. Was part of her head hidden? Has she healed, or did her appearance revert to before her head injury once she got into the house? Or was Jon under influence, unable to connect the dots or notice the cobwebs? (What if Jon has actually met Annabelle before, off-tape, and wasn’t able to recognise her back then either?)

- … I love that Jon immediately went for Questions as soon as Annabelle was identified, though.

(MAG180) ARCHIVIST: So… Annabelle, what are you playing at, what are you doing here? ANNABELLE: I really wouldn’t worry about that. I’m just helping out around the place a little bit. Making myself at home. You know how it is.

* Jon… It’s so typical of him, it’s very Beholding, and very Jon, and very… earnest? from him to just go for questions right away – his questions weren’t exactly tender, but he could have gone for recriminations or complains or acidic remarks about her MAG147 statements or the nagging phone calls, especially given that he has no affection for The Web in particular… but no. He went for questions.

* “Making myself at home” just like how spiders just decide your home is their home, uh. (I’m picturing a dozen boxes and bags made out of cobwebs lying around near the entrance. “Just making myself at home!” said the spider person.)

*“helping out around the place”: same as with “I want to help you, of course” (MAG166), define “help”, Annabelle, please.

- Jon was not the rudest he’s ever been, but Martin sounded way more careful and less antagonistic? He avoided directly interacting with her once he got confirmation of who she was, just answered her when she directly addressed him:

(MAG180) ANNABELLE: Good morning. ARCHIVIST: [FAINT GRUNT] MARTIN: Uh… Yes… […] MARTIN: … Jon, I don’t like this. ANNABELLE: You can relax, Mr. Blackwood. You’re safe here. MARTIN: I don’t feel it. ANNABELLE: Not something I can help, I’m afraid.

* Was the “Mr. Blackwood” a reference to their first exchange:

(MAG166) MARTIN: Hello? ANNABELLE: Hello? Is that Martin? MARTIN: Don’t do that. […] [SIGH] Look, look, look, I’m talking to Annabelle Cane, right? ANNABELLE: You never gave me your name – so why should I offer mine?

While she had allowed herself to call Jon “Jon” in her statement (with the added cruelty that Jon would read her “‘Free will’ is a funny old thing – isn’t it, Jon? Can I call you Jon? I’m going to call you Jon.” without being able to stop). Is it her sense of humour showing towards Martin’s name, reminding that he had never introduced himself properly? Would she switch to “Mr. Sims” for Jon just for funsies too? Is it a reference to Martin’s poetry pen names, or a reference to Martin lying about having a middle name (as Jon discovered in MAG164)?

(Damnit, sad that Jon didn’t chirp in with “Actually, it’s Blackwood-Sims now :|” or something like that, though! =D)

* MMMM, is her “Not something I can help” a reference to The Web not working like this (not able to force you to feel an emotion, mostly nudging you towards certain actions and letting you rationalise Why You Wanted To Do That Anyway), or does it imply that Annabelle also has less power in this house and might be cut off from The Web, at least a little…?

- Obligatory YIKES though, because… Spiders-affiliated people inviting you to ~come in~… rarely leads to anything good…

(MAG059, Ronald Sinclair) “On Sunday evenings however, we’d all gather for the evening meal and before we sat down to eat, he would remove the bright white tablecloth that covered it and we gather around the dark wood. I remember it was carved in all sorts of strange swirling designs and patterns; it felt like you picked a line, any line, you could follow it through to the centre to some deep truth if only your eye could keep track of the strands that had caught it. The centre of the table looked at first like it was simply part of the wooden top, but if you looked closely, as I did so often, you could see an outline marking the very middle, as a small square box carved with patterns just like the ones that laced their way over the rest of the table. I don’t remember how long we sat around the table those evenings nor do I have any memory of what we might have eaten. […] Then, without warning, I wasn’t waiting anymore. I had turned around, put down my suitcase, and started walking back towards Raymond Fielding’s house. I didn’t want to go back. I had no reason to go back, but I had apparently decided to anyway, because I knew that’s where I was going. After two and a half years, I was rather used to this feeling, but there was something else there, this time, something in the back of my mind – a frantic scuttling terror. It didn’t do any good, though. I was returning to Hill Top Road, no matter what I might feel about it. Choices didn’t even come into it. The door was unlocked when I returned, and the house was quiet. My eyes darted around looking for anyone who might be able to tell me what was going on, why the fine threads that pulled me through my life had dragged me back here, but I was alone.”

(MAG081) ARCHIVIST: The second-to-last page shows the right-hand door up close, the stains and the ink seeping from the edges. It is looks like it has a cut-away panel that can be opened onto the final page. “MR. SPIDER WANTS ANOTHER GUEST FOR DINNER” it reads, “IT IS POLITE TO KNOCK”. I feel my hand closing into a fist and reaching for the door, preparing to rap my knuckles on the grimy old wood.

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “Finally, Dexter announced that it was time for the unveiling, for the Spider, for… Kumo to make its appearance. We were all excited, as we assembled outside the workshop, but… there was a nervous energy in the air that day. It was about as cold as it ever gets in L.A., but the shiver that passed through us when he told us it was time was… something else entirely. Dexter told us the actors would see it first. He gave no reasoning for this, and silenced the outcry from a couple of the crew with a vicious glare. He then gathered up the cast and, with Brandon leading them, took them through a small door in the side of the workshop. And they disappeared inside.”

(MAG123, Angie Santos) “It was bare bones, since he’d been given no copy or indication of how it was to be organised, except for the name of the site: [STATIC] Chelicerae, which he made sure stood prominently at the top in a tasteful Sans Serif. The client had requested only a single area where threads could be posted, labelled ‘Come in’. Of course, there was never anything in there.”

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “Sometimes, I remember, he would invite people over to his studio that I was sure he hated, for screenings of his “original cuts”. I was quite… jealous of this at the time, as I’d never got such an invitation. But it was probably for the best. I didn’t… realise it back then, but… [SIGH] those guests… they never quite looked the same afterwards.”

(MAG147, Annabelle Cane) “And sitting on the side of the road above it, casting a thick, angular shadow, was the squat brick structure of the old chip shop. I’d never seen it open. No one had, as far as I could tell. It was painted a dark blue, that never quite matched any colour of sky that was behind it, and had a hand-lettered sign that could still be seen covering much of the bare left hand wall, in curling, faded typeface. “CHIPS”, it said. […] I don’t really know why I decided to hide there. But assuming you’ve been paying attention, I’m sure by now you understand how little that means. Perhaps deep down… I simply knew it would be unlocked. […] A light rain began to patter down, and I, not having had the foresight to pack an umbrella, ran to it, and opened the door as quickly and quietly as I could.”

Bad, bad sign? Although it seems to be Salesa’s residence more than Annabelle’s ;;

- Uhoh, interesting that there was static and even a glitch when they crossed the threshold:

(MAG180) MARTIN: [FAINT GROAN] So, do we… follow or…? [PIANO CEASES] ARCHIVIST: I… I suppose. [FOOTSTEPS] [DOOR CREAKS] [STATIC RISES ABRUPTLY, WITH A GLITCH, AND FADES] ARCHIVIST: Oh… MARTIN: Oh, hum… ARCHIVIST: Oh. [PIANO RESUMES] [DOOR CLOSES] [FOOTSTEPS ECHOING AS THEY GO] MARTIN: [INHALE] [SIGH]

The glitch reminds me of Jon smiting avatars; there was also a slight ripping sound when the door opened in MAG160. Jon and Martin’s very light reactions indicated that they did feel something, and that entering the house… indeed meant entering somewhere different, a place that might operate following its own rules. And as they noticed right away, hunger&tiredness caught up with them:

(MAG180) MARTIN: Though… Jon, do you feel… Huh! Do you feel hungry? ARCHIVIST: I, hum… Actually, I was going to say I’m feeling… really tired…! [BAG JOSTLING] ANNABELLE: Not surprising. When’s the last time you slept? MARTIN: [YAWN] ARCHIVIST: I–I don’t know, I–I mean… weeks ago. Months, maybe.

Jon had pointed out that in the world of Fears, they didn’t need those:

(MAG161) MARTIN: You should get some sleep. [CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: I… [SIGH] can’t. I–I–I can’t, I–I don’t think I do anymore… “Sleep”. [EXHALE] How long’s it been, now? MARTIN: I don’t know. It’s not like there are days to count anymore. All the clocks have stopped, and… [DISTANT HOWL] ARCHIVIST: Well, I haven’t yet. I get… tired, but it doesn’t feel the same. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] Probably for the best. Sleep doesn’t look… pleasant. MARTIN: Nnno, it’s… it’s not. […] MARTIN: [MIRTHLESS HUFF] What about food? ARCHIVIST: What about it? When’s the last time you thought to eat, o–or even felt hungry? MARTIN: [FAINT] What…? Wha… Uh… I don’t know. ARCHIVIST: No. Whatever is sustaining us now doesn’t need us to eat. MARTIN: That… that can’t be possible– ARCHIVIST: It’s a new world, Martin, the natural laws are whatever they want them to be. And I suspect they don’t much care to keep humanity fed and watered. MARTIN: Well, that as may be, we can’t just stay here forever.

So, their bodies do feel those needs again in the house, and it seems to work… like things should normally work. No more dream-logic, physical laws working again. Salesa mentioned that they would need to eat, so it probably means Actual Food – is he cultivating some in the house’s domain?

… Given what happened soon after (Martin and Jon crashing, sleeping, and the mention from Salesa that they would rest and eat), it’s… extremely reassuring for regular victims in the apocalypse? I was fearing that, even if the world was turned back, hunger and thirst would catch up with them in one go, killing them instantly. But if Martin and Jon are able to survive this, if it’s really that they just need to rest and eat a bit to be fine, then it should be manageable for everyone else if the apocalypse were to be somehow stopped? (Which might not happen. But at least, it’s reassuring that it wouldn’t lead to “well, everyone dies anyway because, now that the world is back and working normally again, they haven’t drunk or eaten anything for months”!)

- Given how Annabelle wasn’t surprised, and was even expecting that Jon and Martin would collapse from tiredness and hunger (since she had even warned Salesa about it)… did she herself experience that when she crossed the threshold? Is it doing that to Jon&Martin specifically because they’re connected to The Eye? Did Annabelle suspect that it would happen from experience or from sheer deduction? If it’s the latter, it means that she probably has a better grasp on the apocalypse’s rules than Jon, despite him being almost all-knowledgeable…

- I. Love. Salesa. Already.

(MAG180) ANNABELLE: Well. There you go, then! Just in here. [OPENS THE DOOR] Your guests are here, Mikaele. [PIANO CEASES] SALESA: Hoo-hoo-hoo! Excellent! Come in, come in! Ah, a pleasure to meet both of you. Thank you, Annabelle! ANNABELLE: You’re quite welcome. [PIANO RESUMES] Have fun. ARCHIVIST: [EXTREMELY TIRED] S–sorry… Uh, Mikaele… Salesa? SALESA: The one and only! I must say I have been, uh… [THE ARCHIVIST AND MARTIN COLLAPSE WITH A SMALL SNORE, FAST ASLEEP] [PIANO CEASES] SALESA: [SAD SIGH] [SILENCE BUT FOR CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] ANNABELLE: I did say this might happen. SALESA: You did, you diiid. Well… so much for my big reveal… Shame. Ah, well. We can talk after they’ve slept, I suppose. Urgh! And had a bath. And some food. No rush. [SOUNDS OF CROCKERY MOVING] We have all the time in the world. [CLICK.]

* He was working SO HARD on that dramatic effect. Stopping the piano to quickly greet them and immediately going back to playing it. He WANTED that dramatic background during their discussion, uh. (Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 31 in A major, Op. 110: I. Moderato cantabile, molto espressivo => it was only the first part. He probably would have kept going until the end of the third if they had managed to start talking, just for the sheer drama of the musical background. He knew that him turning out to actually be alive was a big deal, he banked on the surprise and was ready for the drama and flourish.)

* “So much for my big reveal”, HIS SAD SIGH, the fact that he was really hoping for his dramatic introduction while playing the piano, and he was robbed. ROBBED.

… I wonder if he was acquainted with Simon? At the very least, I’m LAUGHING SO HARD at Peter: look at the people he was on good terms with! First Simon, now Salesa? Peter definitely had a type, and it was Obnoxiously Cheerful Dudes Who Like To Show Off And Make Bets.

* Salesa was not at all how I was imagining him, and yet I’m fully onboard, I love him, he sounds insufferable like Simon while being casually savage. He had laughed about the antiques business joke in MAG038! Excited child sulking slightly, but immediately having mundane Priorities.

* To be fair, Jon and Martin’s level of filth might include: mud from the Trenches and the worms, potential spores from the Corruption village, Extinction juice from the couch, some ashes from the burning block of flats, Trevor and Daisy gore… so yep. They’re dirty, and they’ve probably never changed since they left the cabin.

* Laughing about Salesa’s Luxury taste. The house is big (it’s Upton House, or Upton House-like, and we could hear that through to the echo and the length of the corridor), he was playing the piano, he mentioned a bath (not a shower!), he used crockery at the end… Is it tea. Is there tea. Is Martin getting actual tea. (Martin had mentioned that he had found actual teabags in the cabin, before leaving; could he put them to good use here?)

* Another place, another clock ticking in the background, and me thinking about Elias’s office. (Or was that a metronome, for the piano?)

* How long has it been since Salesa took residence in this house? Since the apocalypse began? Or has he been travelling too, only staying there for a bit while waiting for Jon&Martin?

* Conversation incoming with Jon, I wonder if they will mention Floyd – as one of Salesa’s old crewmates, and someone Jon plagued with nightmares.

* I’m??? Surprised and delighted??? about Salesa and Annabelle being very polite with each other and kinda chill? There seems to be a mutual respect here, I want to learn more about it! They’re on first name-basis! Annabelle was calling him “Mikaele”! From what we knew until now, only Peter had called him “Mikaele”!

* I really love Annabelle’s voice so far, too? Very fluid, air-like, slight smile tugging at the corner of her lips, and I have absolutely no idea what she’s thinking at any moment, only guessing that she might have been having fun anyway.

* Since she dropped Jon&Martin in Salesa’s care with a “Have fun”, and then chirped in again, I was picturing her making Jon&Martin enter the room, then departing… and then coming back, popping her head through the door-case for that almost verbatim “I told you so <3”.

* “We have all the time in the world.” NO, YOU DON’T… NOT WHEN PEOPLE ARE LIVING HELL OUT THERE D:

- Jon And Collapsing is otp:

(MAG128) ARCHIVIST: [WEAKLY] Statement… ends. [COLLAPSES] [CLICK.]

(MAG131) ARCHIVIST: Y–yes. Just, uh… Uh, i–if you start… walking, that way, I–I–I’m sure there’ll be a door, for you. JARED: There’d better be. [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: Y–y–yes, I, uh… I… [COLLAPSES] [CLICK.]

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: … If I… Knew… what his plan was; if I knew what Peter was doing; if I just– [WHISPERING] … Can I…? [LOW RUMBLING SOUND, STATIC RISES] [CRIES OF PAIN] [VERY SHARP SQUEAL OF DISTORTION STEADILY RISING] [NOISE OF SOMETHING-OR-JON FALLING] [SQUEAL OF DISTORTION DECREASES] ARCHIVIST: [MUMBLING] End… E–end recording…! [CLICK.]

(MAG160) ARCHIVIST: I – OPEN – THE DOOR! [STATIC REACHING A PEAK] [GLASS BREAKING] [DISTORTED SOUND] [CLICK.] [CLICK–] [CONSTANT FUZZY STATIC] MARTIN: Wake up, wake up…! Wake, Jon–Jon–JON, wake up! [SLAP] ARCHIVIST: [YELP] Uh, wha– … Martin…?

(MAG180) SALESA: The one and only! I must say I have been, uh… [THE ARCHIVIST AND MARTIN COLLAPSE WITH A SMALL SNORE, FAST ASLEEP] [PIANO CEASES] SALESA: [SAD SIGH]

And yet: extremely interesting that this time… Jon lost consciousness, but

the tape recorder kept going for a while

. It didn’t turn off the second Jon conked out. (And we could hear the passage through the domain, with the glitch, but the tape recorder didn’t click off either when they entered the house, although Jon&Martin noticed that natural laws were affecting them again; the tape recorder kept going just fine…)

- Still screaming that SALESA IS STILL ALIVE, HOLY SHEET.

Back when MAG141 had aired, I was deeply in camp “we haven’t heard the whole story, and the news of his death was only a third-hand account, no one’s seen the body, so it’s definitely suspicious and things were probably not as they seemed”. But since MAG160… happened… and the whole configuration changed, I was mostly expecting a tape or a second-hand account of what had truly happened? I wasn’t really expecting Salesa to be still around AND fine despite the apocalypse? So EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE =D

Floyd’s statement regarding Salesa’s disappearance had been riddled with oddities, starting with the content of his story: as mentioned, Floyd himself hadn’t witnessed Salesa’s death, and had only reported to Jon what Captain Gaultier had told the crew about how Salesa had ~met his end~:

(MAG141) FLOYD: Some tried to ask the captain about Salesa, but he just shook his head. He wasn’t making much sense. We managed to gather the two of them had left early to deliver the artefact, but something had gone wrong. There had been an argument. They had been betrayed. Salesa was dead. … The captain died soon after; the shrapnel trapped in his skull finally getting the better of him.

… which had felt, on a narrative level, like a way to circumvent Beholding’s compelling power (it’s not a lie from Floyd to say that he was told by someone else that Salesa had died, that’s his truth: Jon had already commented about this aspect in MAG107, about Gerry’s death: “It’s all very well, being able to get people to answer your questions, but if they genuinely don’t remember something, it’s not always as useful as it seems.”). But it was also a gigantic oddity when it came to Jon’s tape recorder:

(MAG141) BASIRA: Yeah, I heard. ‘anks. … What? ARCHIVIST: The tape recorder… BASIRA: [INHALE] Get ready. Any idea what’s coming? [QUICK FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: N–no, I’m… No, I–I don’t think that’s it. BASIRA: It’s not recording for nothing. ARCHIVIST: No, I… [STATIC RISING] … I think… [CALLING OUT] Excuse me? FLOYD: Yeah? [FOOTSTEPS APPROACH] ARCHIVIST: [INTERESTEDLY] You… FLOYD: Uh…? BASIRA: Jon? ARCHIVIST: You used to work for Salesa… […] He didn’t exactly seem inclined to volunteer the information. Besides, you said I needed to be ready for Ny-Ålesund. BASIRA: [SNARLS] ARCHIVIST: “Full power”, I believe were your words. The statement helped. BASIRA: And now he’s going to see you in his dreams as he relives that for the rest of his life! ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE] BASIRA: Because… because a tape recorder told you to do it?!

(MAG146) BASIRA: How many? ARCHIVIST: Basira, I– BASIRA: How. Many. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … Four. MELANIE: Jesus… ! BASIRA: Including the one on the boat? DAISY: What one on the boat? ARCHIVIST: Including Floyd? … Five. […] MELANIE: [EXHALE] Why didn’t you record them? BASIRA: Why do you think? Because he was ashamed. ARCHIVIST: No! I don’t– … I–I mean, I don’t record anything anymore, not… not really, I just… sort of assume they’ll… turn on, if it’s important. BASIRA: Well, they didn’t. ARCHIVIST: … No, I suppose not.

… since no recorder showed up to turn itself on for Jess and the three other victims, but did for Floyd, and for Floyd only, and we didn’t have any explanation about why – the only big distinction being that, unlike the others, Floyd was connected to a recurring character from statements Jon had read about, while Jon’s other victims didn’t feel connected to stories we had already explored a bit. It had also been an oddity when it came to… Jon’s behaviour by itself:

(MAG141) BASIRA: What the hell was that?! ARCHIVIST: He had information about Salesa; I thought it would help. BASIRA: Is that why you were so keen on this ship? ARCHIVIST: I wasn’t sure. Just had a hunch there was something here.

Since, at this point in time, he had already fed from Jess two weeks earlier (she would come in to file her complaint the day after Floyd’s statement) and, the way Jon later summarised it, he had mostly fed from people after using his powers (first one after waking up, second one after Melanie’s surgery, third one after the Coffin, and Jess after trying to take a peek into Peter’s plan at the end of MAG139). But Floyd hadn’t sounded like it was hunger; it had sounded like absolute curiosity.

… Was it because Salesa had found a way to go undercover from The Eye, and Jon was supernaturally drawn to knowledge hidden from it? What about the tape recorder: was it to convey to Jon that Salesa was important and that he should pay attention to him and his disappearance, or is it that whatever-is-behind-the-tapes was craving to know about Salesa specifically because he was one of these recurring figures? (For example, if Jon had been reading statements about an endless warehouse trapping people, would the tape recorder have turned on for the story of the supermarket janitor he attacked after waking up?) Or was it specifically because Salesa had done something to go under the radar, and whatever-is-behind-the-tapes knew that it hadn’t been by normal means? Or was it specifically to “narratively” prepare this encounter in Upton House?

(Damnit, now I’m going to cross fingers until the end of the series for an Agnes statement from Agnes herself, lying around on tape somewhere, or for Agnes to still be around somehow, somewhere ;_;)

- Extremely giddy about Salesa since he had been present since season 1, and we had mostly heard about him in the first two seasons!

*Pre-1994: was one of Leitner’s assistants/guinea-pigs, ran the fuck out of there with Leitner’s list of clients and slowly began to deal in spooky artefacts for money. (MAG115)

*Autumn 1999: lost his cook to a Flesh meat-grinder, which prompted him to establish his rule: “only I take stock of the merchandise.” (MAG115)

*January 2000: Vincent Yang accidentally touched an old wooden crate in Salesa’s shipping container, and got trapped inside until Peter Lukas&Salesa opened it. Salesa might have betted on his survival (? at the very least, Peter had lost a twenty pounds bet with him). (MAG066)

*January 7th 2007: Salesa gave a statement to the Institute after a Slaughter weapon he had sold to them apparently caused some damage. (MAG115)

*Spring 2010: bought an old Victorian syringe from Dr. Neil Thompson, which was said to have belonged to 19th-century physician John Snow. The team’s malarial research took a Corruption turn right after the sale. (MAG045)

*2011: Floyd Matharu began working on the Dorian; captain was Gaultier and reported to Salesa, who was travelling with them, although it felt like Salesa had the last word anyway (“Always felt a bit uncomfortable when the captain was giving orders and he was there. I could sometimes feel Captain Gaultier looking to him for support or confirmation, and that always slightly undermined our confidence in him.”) (MAG141)

*Shortly before May 29th 2011 (since Lee Rentoul was losing limbs fast): was seen “flanked by four men in dark suits, who carried a square wooden crate between them”, meeting with Paul Noriega for a transaction that didn’t pan out – Salesa departed still with the crate. Described as “paranoid”. [“four men in dark suits” would… fit… the Dark guys from D.K.N. Systems… but they were butchered by Julia&Trevor in summer 2010, so dates don’t seem to match up for that.] (MAG014)

*March 2012: “sold”/gave/passed over the Spiral Chinese pot from the Jiajing period to Andre Ramao. (MAG038)

*2014: Salesa was tired, especially after losing a crew to a (Spiral?) rug. He announced his retirement, took a few crewmembers with him to retrieve an item (“an old camera with a broken lens”) from a tiny island about a hundred kilometres south of Malé, which disappeared right after (swallowed by The Dark or The Vast?). The night of their return to Southampton, there was a big explosion when he was delivering the item with Captain Gaultier, who came back saying they had been “betrayed” and that Salesa was “dead”, before dying from his injuries shortly after. (MAG141)

Last mentions of him were from Peter… and about his relationship to Gertrude:

(MAG159) PETER: Thinking about it now, perhaps one of the reasons I lasted as long as I did was that I was, at the end of the day, predictable. A “known quantity”. I had my little patch, sending my poor lost sailors to their Forsaken end, but I rarely stepped outside of it. When I think of all those I met who travelled in this secret world we found ourselves in – Gertrude, Simon, Mikaele, even Rayner… there are plenty whose lives might well have been easier with my death, but it was rare that I strayed outside my habits.

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “And with that, Gertrude Robinson was without assistants. She never hired another. She worked with those that seemed useful until they were no longer so: Leitner; Dekker; Keay; even Salesa on occasion. But she never again allowed herself to trust.”

It’s true that we hadn’t actually seen any example of “collaboration” between Salesa and Gertrude; we only knew that a few items from Artefact Storage came from Salesa, and that he was aware of the consequences of giving a statement as per MAG115. We might learn more about the explosion he “died” in and the so-called betrayal from 2014! Was it Gertrude? Explosions would usually be her trademark, and she was still alive back then (she would die in 2015); depending on when it happened exactly in 2014, it could even have been after Gerry’s death. Still no idea about his connection to Annabelle, aaaaah!! … And I’m so happy that amongst the hypotheses enumerated by Jon:

(MAG045) ARCHIVIST: I don’t think there can be much doubt that the antiques dealer is the curious Mr. Salesa. He’s now turned up enough that I can no longer write it off as a coincidence, and have been having a word with Rosie about whether we can make contact with him. Apparently, he hasn’t been seen for almost two years now, with rumours in the trade running through everything from “he had a quiet retirement” to “he’s trying to dodge a jail sentence”, or even “he was shot dead in Columbia for stealing a priceless artefact from a drug lord”. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t look like he’ll be answering questions any time soon, though I have urged Rosie to keep trying.

… Mikaele Salesa DID apparently get his “quiet retirement”, if that house is any indication! =D

- There was this ~funny~ thematic of the dead haunting the living, in Jon’s statement, which is resonating in an amusing way with the fact that Salesa was presumed dead… and turned out to still be around. (Is he still absolutely human and just managed to escape the Fears? Did he turn into an avatar? End avatar? Something else?)

- … Since the house might be insulated from The Eye in some way (Jon wasn’t able to Know anything about it, didn’t think he could smite in there), that means Salesa shares something with Leitner:

(MAG080) ARCHIVIST: And the other book? LEITNER: Hardly a book. Barely twelve pages. It is entitled A Disappearance. If read cover to cover it removes one from the world. I cannot say precisely what that means, only that the assistant I assigned to it, Jacob Feng, was never seen again. I have found, however, that reading only one or two words is sufficient to hide me from the prying eyes of your master. It allowed me to talk with Gertrude in relative safety, and occasionally come above ground for my own ends. […] ELIAS: I’ve wondered for so long who it could be down there. Who was helping her. I honestly never would have guessed. LEITNER: How did you know I was here? ELIAS: I didn’t. You’re very well hidden. But Jon is not, and he failed to take the same precautions I’m sure you took for granted with Gertrude. I knew he was talking to someone. And it turns out to be Jurgen Leitner himself. [SOFT CHUCKLING] What an honour.

I’m not sure Salesa would be glad to know. (Leitner had the gall to be invisible to The Eye/Elias in The Eye’s own temple, but Salesa appears to be chilling quietly in the middle of The Eye’s apocalypse, so.)

- Obviously, there is the big question of how/why this house seems to be insulated from Jon’s powers and the Fears. Is it thanks to the camera he had retrieved on his last journey?

(MAG141) FLOYD: Then, he says he wants to send us off with a proper payday, that there’s one last job he wants us to do. Very dangerous; very… illegal. […] He was really cagey on the details, clearly being careful about exactly who he was telling exactly what. All I knew is that we were on our way to the Maldives, to a tiny island about a hundred kilometres south of Malé. No-one would tell me the name of the island, but in that area of the world, any islands that small are usually private, though I had no idea who the owner might have been. Once there, Salesa and the four crewmembers he trusted most were going to take the small boat over the island. We were to wait, and prepare to depart as quickly as possible as soon as they returned. […] I’ve gone over that memory so many times, trying to think what I might have missed. But even now, whenever I think of it, it just looked like an old camera with a broken lens. And then Salesa closed and locked the metal box, and carried it down into the hold as we started to sail away. […] A huge shape, a shadow surrounding it on all sides; getting darker, getting closer, coming up from deep, deep below the surface. It must have been huge, so large that the edge of it almost touched the ship. And had we been a few minutes slower? I have no doubt whatever awful thing emerged that night, it would have taken us as well. Something began to break the surface, as I realised the deep rumble was no longer the thunder, and I closed my eyes, and fell to the deck, gripping the rail with all my might, as a wave hit us from behind, propelling us away from it. When it had finally subsided, and I could bring myself to look back, the island was gone, and ocean was still.

We still don’t know what it was exactly: a pinhole camera, a Dark artefact, an anti-Fear artefact cancelling the Powers’ influence? Interesting thing is that he had bought the old Victorian syringe a few years prior (in 2010), which had apparently been protecting the team specialising in malarial research up until they parted with the item – all hell broke loose right after (MAG045). Had Salesa begun to get an idea about items able to protect you from a power’s influence thanks to that syringe? Does he have other items like this in his possession?

- I wonder when Annabelle and Salesa met! Did they begin to collaborate before Salesa went off to retrieve the camera? When the explosion happened, did she save him? Or only just now during the apocalypse?

I’M SO MAD THAT THERE IS TECHNICALLY A CONNECTION BETWEEN SALESA AND SPIDERS…

(MAG038) ARCHIVIST: This is not the first time Mikaele Salesa’s name has come to the attention of the Institute. Even discounting the incidental role he played in case #0112905, he appears to have something of a knack for locating objects displaying more… disconcerting phenomena. I believe some of the more bizarre things in the Artefact Storage area were purchased from him. It has been something of a– Urgh. Urgh. [CHAIR SCRAPES ON THE FLOOR] ARCHIVIST: I see you… [THUMP... THEN SOUND OF COLLAPSING SHELVES] [NOISES OF EXCLAMATION] [DOOR OPENS] SASHA: All right? ARCHIVIST: Ah… Yeah, a… a spider.

… The spider which warned the Archive team of the incoming worms invasion Happened when Jon was talking about Salesa.

I’M SO MAD.

I’m extremely surprised about Annabelle and Salesa collaborating, and at the same time, it seems thematically fitting? They’re both people of colour with a rough start in life, who were used as guinea pigs by academics attempting to learn more about the Fears through using others. Have they been collaborating for long? Are their goals aligning, or is it an alliance of circumstances? The way it was presented this episode, she mostly did Salesa a favour by bringing him Jon&Martin, but she was neutral about it…

What does Salesa want? Does he want to undo the apocalypse, has a high goal? Or did he want to invite Jon and Martin just as a distraction? He had seemed like a fair boss, looking after his crew as long as they were obeying him, and looked genuinely affected by the loss of some of them in Floyd’s statement (someone heartless and uncaring wouldn’t keep a picture of his past ship and now dead crewmembers to look at it sadly), so I’m not sure what to expect. Is he fine living in peace while knowing everyone else is suffering outside, including old crew like Floyd? (His “We have all the time in the world.” didn’t give me the impression he was in a hurry to do something to save people fast ;; They! Don’t! Have! All the time in the world! If others are suffering in the meantime… ;;)

Is this house cut off from all the Fears? What about Annabelle’s connection to The Web? What is Annabelle trying to achieve, will we learn about it right now? We tend to conflate her to her patron, but it’s true that… she could be in the same situation as Jon in that regard: influenced by The Mother, using her power when necessary but not actually going along with what it seeks?

- Interesting that Salesa has Heard about Jon and Martin:

(MAG180) ANNABELLE: Come on in. He’s waiting for you. […] Come on. He’s very excited, you know. […] Your guests are here, Mikaele. SALESA: Hoo-hoo-hoo! Excellent! Come in, come in! Ah, a pleasure to meet both of you. Thank you, Annabelle! ANNABELLE: You’re quite welcome. [PIANO RESUMES] Have fun.

… when he officially disappeared in 2014, so before Jon’s time as Head Archivist, and while Gertrude was still in tenure. Has Annabelle been updating him about them?

Really curious about next episode and what Salesa will discuss with the boys. Will he talk of Peter with Martin?

- I think there is a chance that Annabelle will have already left when Jon&Martin wake up, since they were Salesa’s guests and Annabelle was just leading and leaving them to him. Would be… extremely typical of her to remain full of secrets a bit longer (and Jon&Martin would be frustrated as heck). Or not! It could be the time to reveal her intention, it could be a joint statement, or she could stay as an observer, or she could talk with Martin.

- Anyway, cheers for Jon&Martin getting their second honeymoon (on their anniversary, for us, since the episode aired the week of September 25, the day MAG159 happened)! And Jon is sleeping! Coma and instances where he mentioned that he would nap or get some rest notwithstanding, I think this is only the second time in the show that he’s canonically taking a rest?

(MAG055) ARCHIVIST: Supplemental. I… Uh, I don’t have much to report, actually. It’s been Halloween week, which means the research department is always inundated with statements. Most of them are patently false, but the volume means that they’ve called in the Archive to assist with the overflow. It’s… been nice, actually. Disproving piles of nonsense felt good. Like… real work, not just driving myself to distraction with [CHUCKLES] conspiracy theories and paranoia. I even got a good night’s sleep.

(Although yeah, he technically passed out this time again, and he’s done a lot of that in the past already. Still, congrats, Jon /o/)

I really wonder about the logistics of it: Salesa was described as almost 6’6”/200cm-tall according to MAG045, and looking “like he could handle himself”, so he might be carrying Jon&Martin to bed? (Or I guess that many many small spiders could do the job if needed.) Will they wake up in the same room or in separate ones? Same bed? I wonder if the episode will begin with them waking up, or already having been in the house for a bit, and the tape recorder clicking on only for a big discussion… Though another possibility is that there would have been some hidden conversations having happened off-tape already.

- Mmm, since Melanie&Georgie have also been impossible to find:

(MAG164) MARTIN: Uh, oh, okay. Hum… How are the others? ARCHIVIST: I, uh… [STATIC INCREASES] Hm! I’m… I’m not… sure, I–I can’t really see Melanie o–or–or Georgie. MARTIN: They’re dead…? ARCHIVIST: No… No, I–I don’t think so; if they were dead, I– I think I would know that, I just… I–I don’t know… where they are, w–what they’re doing. [STATIC DECREASES] MARTIN: Hm! ARCHIVIST: L–London, maybe? […] At least with Georgie and Melanie, I have a vague sense they’re still alive, i–in London, and, or– Well, what was London.

(MAG177) BASIRA: Convenient. What about Melanie? MARTIN: He’s… not sure about her either? He can’t see her or Georgie. BASIRA: Dead, then. [STATIC INCREASES, THEN FADES] ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] No. Uh, not dead. Just… hidden, somehow.

(MAG180) MARTIN: … [SUSPICIOUS] Why? What’s next? ARCHIVIST: [EXCITED] I don’t know! MARTIN: Wh–, y– … In what way? ARCHIVIST: All the ways. I don’t know what’s next. MARTIN: What…? But, like, you, you can see “literally everything”, so– ARCHIVIST: I–I can, but i–it’s a blind spot! No idea why; I–I didn’t realise until we got closer, and I was looking at our route, but… I can’t see the area after the necropolis. None of it; it’s, it’s like the inside of the Panopticon, or, or wherever Georgie and Melanie are hiding.

Jon had given an explanation regarding his inability to see what was inside the Panopticon (MAG164: “The, the way this works, this… “new sight”, the knowledge is, is… [SIGH] It’s somehow wrapped up in the Panopticon? An eye can’t… see inside itself.”), we know that his inability to see Annabelle was different from Georgie&Melanie (MAG164: “That’s… weird, I, I know The Web was wrapped around that phone, but, but I can’t… see her. A–at all.”), that his inability to “know” and “see” The Web’s plans had to do with the fact that its plans were too intricate (MAG172: “Every time I try to know what The Web’s plan is, if it can even be called a plan, I see… a hundred thousand events and causes and links, an impossibly intricate pattern of consequences and subtle nudges, but I–I can’t…! … I can’t hold them all in my head at the same time. There’s no way to see the “whole”, the, the point of it all. I can see all the details, but it doesn’t… provide… context or… intention. I suppose The Web doesn’t work in knowledge, not in the same way.”). Unless they’ve been travelling too, Georgie and Melanie should be in London, so they shouldn’t be in the house if it is indeed Upton House, nor in Hill Top Road (Oxford), but we might get material to speculate why Jon can’t see them at the moment (and why he couldn’t see Annabelle) through the explanation regarding this house?

- Given that at least two of Jon’s powers are getting cancelled by the house (“Wait, hang on, can you even smite people here?” “I, I don’t think so.” + his inability to Know anything about this place)… do his other powers, such as compulsion, work in there? Will Salesa give a live statement? … Can Jon even compel in this house (since he can’t “smite”), or would it lead to a mess like MAG100 but with Jon struggling this time.

Given how he had been sustaining on fear already before MAG160, can he get sustenance from normal food while inside the house, or will he quickly begin to feel withdrawal symptoms again? Given how he had healed from injuries thanks to his powers (already in season 4, and having been hurt by Daisy last episode), and how Martin reminded us twice that Jon’s leg had been injured, would the house affect that, too – will Jon begin to crumble, without The Eye’s influence?  (Will Jon even wake up as long as they’re in the house? He had woken up from his coma in MAG121 by choosing Beholding over death…) If Jon happens to be cut from The Eye inside… ooft, it’s heart-breaking to remember how curious Jon is by himself, without any supernatural influence; he was extremely curious about the house because of not knowing anything about it, and he immediately asked Annabelle questions about her presence and plans when she was leading them to Salesa…

(I doubt the answer would be positive anyway but: they’ll… probably wonder whether the house could have saved Daisy from The Hunt, cutting her from it like the Coffin had done? ;;)

- Once again, interesting to note that, at the very least, Jon’s powers aren’t working as they did in the apocalypse, preventing him from being all-powerful inside the house… but the tape recorder remained on, when they entered, and continued to run after they had collapsed, only clicking off a bit later. If this place happens to be neutralising The Eye, it might be another confirmation that it is not Beholding behind the recordings? (But if this place happens to be neutralising/cancelling all the Fears, what would that say about the tape recorders then…?)

- Jon and Martin began season 5 in the safehouse, which trapped Jon with a false sense of security (“But we can’t stay in this cabin forever…!” “Why not? It, it’s quiet here, an–and I have you…!”); Jon’s enthusiasm about potentially-Upton-House reminds me a bit of the fact that he could get reeled in by domains… So is it another domain, which would manipulate him into wanting to stay, stopping their journey? Is it a place powered by the nearby necropolis and the suffering of others? Or is it, indeed, a place protected from The Eye and/or all the fears, without any caveat or “trick”, where Martin and Jon could indeed choose to stay… if they’d agree to abandon their quest, to let the apocalypse go on to torture everyone who doesn’t happen to be them? It could fit very well with the exploration of exploitative and oppressive systems from the series; what about the temptation of letting everything go to hell as long as Jon and the person he loves are protected in that “oasis”, in a little bubble of privilege and safety? Could they even be happy there, while knowing people are still suffering outside, and that the only people able to find a solution to undo the apocalypse might be them? Martin alluded to the children of The Dark domain in this episode (“Wait. Wait, wait, no, no, no, no, no, no! It’s not more children, is it?”) and learning about their situation had only strengthened his resolve to reach the Panopticon in order to do something (MAG173: “The sooner we get back to the Archives, the sooner we can put a stop to this. All of this. They just… They’ll just need to hang on a little longer.”); there is not a lot of suspense about whether they would choose to stay there or not. Contrary to what Salesa said, they don’t really have “all the time in the world” when it means that others are suffering longer in the meantime. But the temptation to stay might still be there, and it might still hurt them to have to abandon it – forming another “what if they had stayed?” scenario to twist the knife when things… inevitably go down for them before the end of the show.

(We’ll see how the house affects Jon when it comes to his Beholding-affiliation; but the Jon we saw in MAG180 was at his most excited and enthusiastic. Would Martin get tempted to protect Jon’s happiness? For Jon, the temptation to have Martin stay there might be even stronger: he had already offered Martin to stay in the Lonely house… but it was still a place of misery. What about here, if it’s a place where Martin could genuinely be safe and fine?)

Aaaaand we’ve reached season 5’s midpoint with such a big surprise! (I’m a bit sad that this one wasn’t followed by a hiatus, since we could have had a gigantic wave of fanworks&headcanons about Jon&Martin living The Luxury Life in Upton House, The SafeHouse Returns.)

MAG181’s title sure puts to my mind a few banger lines from different seasons… 83 It could be about something Tim had bitterly said; it could be about what Annabelle wanted and something she needed from Jon&Martin (and what for); it could be about Annabelle&Jon’s own forced involvement with the Fears; it could be about Salesa’s; it could be about the temptation of staying in the country house, safe and protected while the world is still forked outside. Lore-episode? If there are dominant Fears, I would say Beholding and/or The Dark?

[ao3feed-themagnusarchives]

lighthousekeeping

by autoclaves

“It was so cold there,” Martin says. “I was so cold.” It’s not what he means to say at all, but Jon understands anyway.

“I’ll find you,” he promises. “If you ever need me to.”

“I know.” Martin drifts a hand across his cheekbone, thumbing the soft skin at the corner of Jon’s eye. Another promise, of sorts.

(Or: To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once. Ocean Vuong said that. Martin doesn’t think himself a monster, not quite, but he feels like a lighthouse more often than not. Shelter, warning, victim, witness, beacon.)  

Words: 2558, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist

Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist

Additional Tags: Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), Food as a Metaphor for Love, Tenderness, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Missing Scene, References to Depression, Character Study, yes i'm writing another food as a love language jonmartin fic, ft. a pretentious amount of ocean vuong. dumplings. martin depression lore. massive projection, this goes from depression to tenderness to banter and back again so fast i have no idea how to tag

source https://archiveofourown.org/works/24958549

[raccoonpatriotism]

260 [Random, Useless Headcanons 📂] from @homeofthevan | Part 2 Explosive Boogaloo

1-100: Here

101: He’s always had an, uh, ‘excellent’ temperament with old women - starting from being forced to help out at Old Folks Homes to get him out of the Orphanage. 

102: He yells to show he cares. 

103: He also yells for the sake of it.

104: You have to constantly say his name if you want him to continue to be part of the conversation.

105: that’s why he so often repeatedly uses names, nicknames, a simple ‘son’ when speaking to people.

106: He assumes everyone’s just like him until proven otherwise.

107: Along with what I said earlier about him not being empathetic; he really isn’t able to visualize himself in someone elses shoes unless he’s been walked through, like, a specific a few times. 

108: He respects Miss Pauling the most out of everyone he knows. 

109: Smissmas and Thanksgiving are tied for his favorite holiday.

110: Jane really likes Halloween though, and isn’t a grump on Valentines day. 

111: <- Jane’s password for anything he owns that requires a password. More 1s if necessary.

112: When he’s thirsty he’ll go to the nearest form of water for hydration - catch him just drinking out of the bathroom sink - leaning up as he wipes his mouth, chirping, “Hello, private.”

113: He guzzles coffee like it’s fuel, but he has a very strict, No Caffeine after lunch protocol.

114: Decaff is for WIMPS.

115: Jane plays the trombone.

116: Subsequently, in most music, he appreciates and hums along with the bass parts.

117: Modern AU-Jane may be a Call of Duty fanboy, but he respects Halo for being another accurate depiction of life on the battlefront. 

118: Speaking of modern Jane, the Military didn’t accept him in the 80s either.

119: His love for the military lead him to believe for sure he’d be accepted he was the Perfect Patriot and his enlistment would be a surefire way to help fund his transition--

120: But of course, as strong as he had become he’d spent his youth very sick and with the possibility of the illness to return along with a terrible psyche eval and 80s typical transphobia that lane was firmly closed.

121: At least he had DOOM to fall back on. And he was physically strong enough to hold down jobs to at least pay for testosterone.

122: And then Call of Duty came out and he became an early era streamer. (Went viral as one of those guys who basically RPs being an actual soldier in the voice chat.)

123: BACK TO CANON JANE because those headcanons just.. plain, aren’t useless. canon jane doesn’t have to deal with transphobia. tch.

124: He’s not the best to have on your football team as menacing as he is. He’ll start tackling everybody. Running the wrong way. Trying to steal the ball from his teammates.

125: If you tell Jane something’s American after he criticizes it, watching him backtrack is really fun.

126: Jane doesn’t get sick often, which is good because he is insufferable. Either goes full isolation straight up outside somewhere. Or is whining to everyone and everyone how it’s not allowed that he can’t be burrowing somewhere outside.

127: His hands are always warm - if they’re cold he’s probably having an Episode of some sort. 

128: Rock and Roll helps his tinnitus, though he’ll still refer to it as Hippy Garbage. Like most music.

129: Jane could probably tapdance if given proper shoes. Mmm no, he’d stomp through the floor. Horse level clomping.

130: He’ll be the hype-man for anyone on his team.

131: Despite not being a fan of mint flavoring, he loves himself a candy-cane.

132: His thumb isn’t double jointed - seeing someone showing off their double jointed-ness would have Jane proclaiming magic was necessary.

133: LT. BITES lightning round!! Lt. Bites sees jane as its “General” 

134: It got the bite taken out of its ear fighting over sour cream - it won.

135: Jane doesn’t give any raccoons a higher rank than Bites.

136: Lt. Bites doesn’t crave human flesh or anything, but it likes the sensation of biting people!

137: Jane has tried to get his raccoon a job at RED.

138: You can tell when Jane is having a really good day on the battlefield because you’ll round the corner and there’s Naked Soldier.

139: He’s waxing poetry about the beauty of the Male Form, take it in you soft quivering maggots. 

140: I can’t get the image of Jane crowd surfing out of my head? That’s, like, his ideal dream for being recognized for his heroics. Medals and a mosh in his Honor.

141: Anytime he sees a Bald Eagle he entirely stops what he’s doing to place his left hand over his heart.

142: Jane loves The Art of War and is still awaiting Sun Tzu’s next book.

143: [ Alcohol ] Jane only sees ghosts when he’s starving, drunk, or suffering from a concussion. And it’s merely a way for such a boar minded guy to internalize what’s going on around him.

144: He can touch his toes keeping his knees straight.

145: Jane has minor ice-skating knowledge, as most growing up in the midwestern united states do. He’s not, good, though, he’s really intent on Taking Steps instead of gliding.

146: Put him in front of a piano and he’s holding out on finger and pressing down on one key at a time like an old man at a desktop keyboard.

147: Jane is ready to beat up your father. 

148: Especially if your dad is shitty, unleash good ol’ Solly on him.

149: While he favors picking his nose with his pinkies, neither of his pinkie pads have any feeling.That makes them a little less dexterous when the time comes.

150: He’s always aching to be active, his brain will take things literally if it means he’ll be doing something.

151: Rum pineapple juice and malibu caribou -- Er. He doesn’t like pineapple flavoring. Isn’t a fan of mixed drinks in general? 

152: He’s capable of staying out of the picture and not picking his nose, often times if things aren’t focused on him he’ll just sorta.. Stand out of the way playing with his hands - rifling through his pouches. Some times he’ll even, *gasp* pay attention. 

153: He really likes to but in with his opinion is the thing.

154: He’s an American and his ideals must be heard.

155: Merasmus out here having doing the most for Soldier, in helping him reintegrate back into society. You think he’s bonkers now?? Psh. You should’a seen him fresh home from Poland.

156: He’s shown up to Civil War reanactments with a real gun.

157: Jane is incapable of yawning silently.

158: Stairs are overrated.

159: Catch Jane with a lukewarm mug of water pouring coffee grinds directly into it and saying “Damn, that’s a fine cup of Joe.”

160: Only. 100 left? Sweet Joseph Wetnurse of Jesus He’s got dirty blond hair leaning toward brunette.

161: Any righteous death deserves a warrior’s burial - That’s why you’ll find Jane, helmet over heart, giving a stirring eulogy about the Toilet from the Men’s Restroom that Got Unearthed and Shattered By... Nobody In Particular. 

162: He will just join in large groups of people  - like protests? He’ll just fall in line and preach his own stuff which sometimes doesn’t exactly align with the group at large.

163: i asked myself, would jane pick someone else’s nose? Yes.

164: His hugs are always really warm.

165: He would notice his wallet being pickpocketed - unless it was replaced by something the same weight. He’s like a temple from Indiana Jones.

166: Mentally? Jane’s fine with being alone, but. That leads to him living in a box or a room straight out of that “Damn, bitch, you live like this?” comic.

167:  Despite deep cold being triggering to him (SEE HC, 67.), he loves snow-forts and hot chocolate because those are great American past-times.

168: next one is this post’s 69 brace yourselves! Jane’s never truly in silence, the constant whistling in his ears will see to that. That’s why sometimes, when it is quiet, you’ll catch Jane looking into space like he’s trying to see where the sound is coming from.

169: Important to note, he ain’t popping a boner any time he’s fighting nude. Or, really, fighting any time. Intent is really important for him. (If he gets all rubbed up on, though, Well,)

170: Jane is under the assumption that everything he comes up with is ingenious and people like Red Spy are holding society back by ignoring such wide plans.

171: He’s secretly soothed by everyone on his team’s voices.

172: First off, himself. He loves to hear himself talk. Mostly fueled by self-important intent, the tenor of his own voice also soothes his eardrums.

173: Pyro’s is muffled yet energetic - and never fails to get Jane pumped up.

174: Scout’s got that accent that is pure and simple, American. Soldier may not listen to half of what he says, but for background buzz and funny colloquialisms 

175: And, Engie's accent garners a whole other sort of American respect out of the Soldier. As far as soothing goes? Engie’s is like butter.

176: Soldier hate’s Heavy’s accent on principle, but below his American Stubbornness is a love for the deep, thoughtful symbols Heavy provides. Plus, y’know, he appreciates a fellow loud guy.

177: Demo’s voice makes Solly a happy man. It used to make him furious, an all Scottish accents did, but more recently it makes him feel nostalgic. 

178: Jane would swear up every mountain he can that there’s nothing positive to be found in Spy’s accent, but zoning out to such poised speech patterns and rounded vowels is a common occurrence. 

179: When Sniper gets that gravelly tone going on, when he takes things really seriously? Jane like that.

180: Jane can’t find it in him to be really put off by anything Medic says during surgery, so his voice only causes a feeling of safety throughout the Soldier. He can’t get enough of hearing Enthusiasm in the Medic’s voice.

181: He doesn’t believe the Police can arrest him because they aren’t the official Government.

182: He looks at a baby and is like “What animal is this?”

183: Big hands.. talented at giving massages.

184: BEWARE HIM BREAKING YOUR SPINE - just specify ‘and don’t kill me’!

185: Jane doesn’t gossip so much as, be around people who are gossiping which makes him want to make up some Hot Goss. Also, he’ll act like every rumor someone else shares is spoken truth.

186: Jane picked up finger guns from Scout. He either uses it constantly or doesn’t use it for weeks at a time.

187: He lifts, broskis.

188: Jane will talk about trucks because the Average American Male is expected to. He knows nothing about cars.

189: He’s an impulsive liar, so caught up in in his web of ‘things he says to impress people’ that he believes everything he says. So are the woes of being an adult with ADHD.

190: He goes between being smell-blind and having the scent skills of a bloodhound. It’s probably a mental thing, because there’s no in between, but Jane doesn’t know anything.

191: i’ve been working on these for 5 days at this point... i hope they’re appreciated JANE prefers..soft food. jane Does Not lov the cronch.

192: Which is what makes cashews his favorite nut. they’re soft-ish. and they have just enough crunch to not gross him out.

193: He loves immediate gratification. 

194: Beyond joining the Military? Jane’s never had a solid plan for his future. Lives too in the moment. 

195: As long as he’s having fun, Jane’s a pretty content guy.

196: Any artistic skills he may have once had go into making Maps for war planning sessions.

197: He’ll fall victim to Sleep Paralysis occasionally and, once able to move, will spend the rest of the day curing ghosts and Merasmus’ magic.

198: He was SUPER into Howdie Doodie Time in his youth, and being put in front of any reruns will have him basically hypnotized into silence.

199: He’s proud of his ass.

200: Jane can keep marching pace for hours at a time. And if he’s not lugging around his rocket launcher he can keep marching for an entire day no pausing. 

201: Jane isn’t shy about telling jokes, because he believes everyone has the same sense of humor as him.

202: He knows karate but refuses to use his knowledge because it is not an American Form. He will stick to brute strength and loud yelling thank you very much.

203: He’s the type to state every time he’s going to use the bathroom. Like, people can be having a serious conversation and hes like, “I am going to take a shit now!”

204: Jane’ll go a week without washing his hair, but he always brushes his teeth two times a day.

205: He gives a damn good kiss.

206: All Human Nudity is safe for work. As it was God’s Intention to make people strongest when not held back by fabric.

207: All he wants is recognition.... for his good deeds...

208: He’ll have staring contests with the Sun. He’s yet to win, but that damn star shouldn’t get too comfortable.

209: Much like his pinkies, his feet have been crushed, blown up, and bruised so many times that he doesn’t have much feeling in them either.

210: He’s never washed his bellybutton.

211: He prefers savory to sweet, but he prefers sweet to sour.

212: Half assing is not in Jane’s vocabulary.

213: His brain will get stuck on simple Math - like, he tries his best to figure it out, it’s just.... Numbers..... they are a construct. And so he’ll end up pondering what 5+7 is for, like, 5 minutes.

214: Jane is constantly torn between wanting to be a Figure of Authority and also being a man born in the trenches following orders.

215: Have I mentioned lately Jane fucks? 

216: Jane’s room is sparsely decorated, but it’s only because he’s not materialistic and doesn’t generally receive gifts.

217: He’s more than willing to strip Right This Moment and fight something.

218: Jane’s not afraid to call other people losers.

219: He crops his own hair once a week. Same day he’ll do his wash.

220: Jane’s stubble grows in really fast, but he can’t deny the feeling of having a freshly shaved jaw is amazing.

221: If a teammate is struggling emotionally..... Jane walks away.

222: If they’re struggling again, /then/ Jane will give them some uncalled for American Advice. Like, meaningfully yelling “GET OVER IT, YOU SLOBBERING FOOL.”

223: He has a very, very high pain threshold. 

224: He accidentally walks into walls all the time.

225: He can’t magically see through his helmet - he just knows everyone’s feet super well.

226: It’s good that Lt. Bites is a wild, self sufficient animal because Jane is terrible at pet care. And child care. And any sort of care.

227: On the very rare occasions Jane gets overwhelmed with depression he’s a shadow of his former self questioning the sanctity of American Ideals and wondering aloud if War really is the answer to his problems.

228: Next day he’ll be fine and forget he was ever upset.

229: He’s never gotten a real back massage before, if he were to get one he’d probably literally melt? Some women he’s slept with liked to say sensually ‘oh what a big tense man you are’ and, like, weakly rub his back. they didn’t get paid to fix this man’s back muscles LMAO

230: Any backwards period-typical beliefs about women went out the window upon meeting Miss Pauling.

231: His love for America is truly as pure as it gets.

232: Jane’s pretty xenophobic, but he can learn better, I’m sure. he’s gotten his ass kicked for being ignorantly racist and he grew to be a better person.

233: He takes really well to learning things through violence, the only issue is.. dealing with Soldier Being Violent.

234: There’s nothing a fist to the face won’t fix.

235: He’s not much of a napper, his brain being far too active to let him rest during daylight hours.

236: He’s constantly moving, even in sleep.

237: Hell, give him a few hours after being knocked unconscious and he’ll start wiggling something around.

238: He doesn’t stop to smell the flowers, because if they wanted to be smelled they’d approach him.

239: He believes in the good of all humans, it’s just buried down past his Fight Everyone radar.

240: He only likes musicals about fighting Hitler.

241: His biggest regret is not punching Hitler.

242: He does not fear death, he does not fear punishment. He lives for his ideals and if he’s taken down believing in himself? Then that’s okay.

243: Jane needs deodorant reminders.

244: He takes personally being betrayed as people betraying the country of America.

245: (oh shit i slacked off it’s been like two days since i wrote something, Who Is Soldier?) CEREAL THEN MILK, MAGGOTS

246: Jane doesn’t know the word migraine so he really can’t describe how he feels.

247: Look, he loves his friends, he loves his guns, but he’s stingy with the word.. Love because that’s what he feels for America and the country will always be number one.....

248: Jane’s not too partial to sarcasm outside of combat, but it’ll find it’s way into his speech. His tone is usually hammed up to signify he’s joking around or being cruel.

249: He’s like a cartoon character, he can only understand sarcasm if it’s Funny to at the moment.

250: Jane likes his hair being pet.

251: He likes his hands being played with as much as he likes playing with other people’s hands. (A lot.)

252: He loves dogs, but is more of a cat person. Dogs and him just echo energy and HYPE feelings back and forth at each other until they pass out and then Jane feels more emotionally exhausted than hanging out with people.

253: The weirdest parts of rom-coms make him cry. 

254: He appreciates a good non-american explosion, but he has his preferences. 

255: You show Jane genuine kindness and interest and he’s like, Yours. Jane vc: Are you the vice-president?

256: If he were to have a reptile for a sidekick instead of a raccoon, he would have a turtle.

257: He can be delicate when he needs to be, but cracking eggs is a different story.

258: While not too partial to sugary beverages - he has a figure to maintain, root beer and ginger ale are his go-tos.

259: He can appreciate a salad! Jane Doe will eat his greens!!!!

260: Soldier has no tattoos, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be open to getting any. Just never crossed his mind.

SWEET SPIRIT OF JOE BIDEN AM I FINISHED?

thank you,... for reading my garbled thoughts.. for respecting The Soldier... and for being a creative individual. But mostly the respecting Soldier thing.

[sparda3g]

5 Good Things About Tokyo Ghoul:re Anime Can Offer

Ah...Spring already. The time of season with a lot of already established series coming back with a new season. Overhyped or not, it’s something for the fans to enjoy. And then there’s Tokyo Ghoul:re Anime.

It’s no secret that I am not a fan of the anime, including the first season. Okay, it has moments that were good in its own rights, but it doesn’t leave the best offering that anime could offer like how other are treated. Now that :re anime is almost here, there is a couple of upside to look at.

This is the 5 Good Things About Tokyo Ghoul:re Anime Can Offer.

5. Exposure

Over 2 million views.

You know the old saying goes: Anime exist to evaluate the original source’s popularity, let alone to be recognized. While everyone knows Tokyo Ghoul already, the anime can not only rejuvenate the significant of its name to broader audience, but it would bring in more fans to discuss. Yes, there is a downside to it but we will get to that elsewhere.

There are fans that solely don’t read the original source and wait for the anime to resurface again. It happened with Attack on Titan fans, it is likely to happen here as well. It gets the mainstream attention and the buzz around it begins to increase its volume.

Say what you want about the adaptation, but there are fans that really look forward to the anime and if there are plenty, then it’s a win situation for the industry. I have gone through comment sections and while it’s possible that those who are excited are casual audience, it still attracted their interest. Besides, if it leads to exposure, then that will lead to...

4. Merchandises!

As corporate it is as well as money hungry business strategy, people can’t help but want to own something that shows their love to the series. Take me for example. Whenever the series grasp my attention and dare I say, heart, I would buy something that shows my respect. Not to mention, it’s neat to have something physical outside of home video or literature copy.

$300!

It also helps out on the low stock inventory situation. I wanted to get Kaneki figurine because it looks pretty damn cool. Sadly, it was rare at one point and many sellers were selling for over $300! Fortunately for the anime coming back to the surface, the repainted edition is planned to release for barely $100. Thank you, Anime.

It doesn’t only help to re-release old products. With the advent of its broadcast, it’s only fitting to release a new set of products solely based on the series. We will see new keychains, new T-shirts, new posters, and many more. After all, it would be a good chance to finally release Touka figurine! Seriously, how is that a missed opportunity?! She was ranked one in popularity poll. Sure, it’s been a long time, but it doesn’t excuse the lack of interest.

I want a mug...

Oh well, the point is fans could expect many new product that can make them proud to be a fan. Collecting may not be for everyone, especially if the art doesn’t capture the manga well, but at least it gives exposure.

3. New Soundtrack

When it comes to discussing about the presentation of the first two seasons, it is highly mentioned for its soundtrack more so than the animation. Well, at least to me, because honestly, it’s pretty good. If the director and the staff choose to put tons of effort in the sound department, we can expect many really good original score by various artists.

The full opening is already up in YouTube and elsewhere to listen and while the video can benefit its vision, it does sound pretty good. Arguably like Attack on Titan, it won’t top a rare magnificent choice of Unravel. Regardless, it maintains the dreary and thrilling mood of the series.

The worst case scenario is the repeated soundtrack from the previous seasons. Not to say that would be awful, but it would undermine the effort they have put in. It would be like in Blue Exorcist Season 2, where it decided to spam arguable best soundtrack of the series. I regret to not know the name, but just search it in YouTube “Blue Exorcist OST. It has over 4 million views and for a very good reason. Here’s hoping for a new tune.

2. Relive the Moments

Granted the manga fans can just look back and re-read the chapter again to not only recollect the data, but remember the good and bad times. The anime can fill in that void and bonus, it’s animated. Not only the fans can look back through animation, but they can capture the mood and tone precisely (well depends if the director decides to alter).

From manga to anime.

Social media is filled with references and moments that come from the anime more so than the manga, because movement is justice! Thanks to social media, a large collection of a moment can be presented in one post like an album. You can see your favorite part in animated form; not to mention, in stereo. The series has been going over 160 chapters and many fans often forget the small tidbits. This could help them with a new insight.

Of course, this is a speculation if the anime decides to be completely faithful to the manga, but moments like Kaneki returning or any significant action scene have a high chance to be animated. Fans of manga are usually excited to see the moment coming to life, which same can be said to a novel to the big screen. It’s all because it is…

1. Animated (When They are Done Right)

Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me to know Studio Pierrot rushed Season 1 to the battle with Jason versus Kaneki because it was awesome. The studio is a strange one because they do have good animators behind their staff lineup; it’s just the timing always left to be desired. That said the last episode was pretty damn good when it was only not presented well, but animated really well. It can be said the same thing with Amon versus Kaneki in Root A, which is practically manga original material with few adjustments.

I commented that in Season 1, despite the art differ from the manga the still shots do look pretty good. You’ll be surprised that there are anime that can’t make good still shots. Root A was…we’ll get to that next time. Bottom line, even if it is different in art style, you can appreciate the time and effort to make the scenery lively with its dark atmosphere. If all done well, the hype to see moments from the manga will sky rocket. I can imagine the moment with Kaneki completely return with great presentation. That will be glorious.

Will it be good?

Do I expect good animation in :re? Do I expect a better job done than Root A, let alone Season 1? The staff is different, outside of voice actors, so I don’t really know, but my gut tells me to be really afraid. In fact, I happen to know one from another series in which I will talk briefly next time. The first episode may start strong, but it’s all about the consistency to the very end.

There you have it. Next time, I will talk about the opposite of this list. You know what I mean. I’ll see you next time!

[weekendwarriorblog]

Some Thoughts on Long-Lasting Music Fandom

I've been wanting to write something freeform for this blog that isn't necessarily about movies -- because that was whole reason I started the Weekend Warrior blog in the first place. I got a little more time to do that last year when there weren't too many movie releases. As luck would have it, next week is one of the quietest weeks in many, many months even with what is likely to be one of the biggest movie releases... but again, this is my chance to write about something not movies but something that's very dear to my heart, maybe more than anything else: ROCK MUSIC.

The idea to write this piece came out of a couple hours I spent Friday night on something called "The Alarm Central." I have a feeling that if you were to ask even my closest friends who some of my favorite bands are, some might be able to name one or two, maybe from a T-shirt I might wear, but I'm not sure how many friends would guess that my top band for many years has been The Alarm.

If you don't know who The Alarm are, you're probably very young. Lucky you. The Alarm had their highest acclaim and fame back in the mid-80s with songs like "68 Guns" and "The Stand" and eventually "Rain in the Summertime." When I was a teenager driving around CT from one job to another, my favorite radio station, WLIR, would play The Alarm a *LOT*. They were a mainstay along with U2, Depeche Mode and other bands that I was also inevitably a fan of.

It was a far cry from the Top 40/Beatles stuff I listened to in the mid '70s and the metal/prog rock that I got into in 1979 when I was playing in bands, but The Alarm just had this great spirit to them that really came out when you saw them live. Oddly, I only saw them live twice in the '80s... but that's a story for another time that I'm kind of saving...

The Alarm Central is a relatively new website/app/platform that Alarm frontman Mike Peters and his wife Jules (who also plays keys in The Alarm, but please no Linda McCartney comparisons... Jules actually has a lovely singing voice -- rimshot) put together as an alternative to the YouTube/Facebook platforms that so many bands have flocked to. Actually, The Alarm did and still does have a Facebook presence and last year, when COVID hit, and everything shut down, Mike and Jules started doing a weekly livestream show called "The Big Night In." They started doing it on March 20, 2020 and continued to do it for a few months, resumed in July for a second season.. but anyway, it was a great way to get together with other Alarm fans (or rather, "fams," as the Peters' lovingly call us) to listen to Mike play some songs, tell some stories, enjoy watching Jules poking fun at her famous husband (they've been married for almost as long as the band has been together).

Anyway, I'm getting a little sidetracked, but the point I'm trying to make is that this band and its singer, Mike, have managed to keep their fanbase alive now for 40 years. In fact, this year is the official 40th anniversary. No, they're not the first or only band to make it 40 years... another long-time favorite of mine, Rush, celebrated it a few years back before Neil Peart died -- The Damned also has hit 40 years but it's also gone through so many line-up changes that only the singer has remained that entire time. Another thing that influenced my decision to write this was seeing Edgar Wright's The Sparks Brothers documentary for about the third time, and those guys, brothers Ron and Russell Mael, have been making music together for over *50* years... although as you see in the movie, their popularity and success has fluctuated. Sure, there are some people who heard their first hit "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Two of Us" and are STILL fans.... some fans dropped in and out, maybe went off to do other things for a while, then came back. I'm not sure if the Go-Go fans who discovered the band when they did a duet with Jane Wiedlin stuck around as they started experimenting with opera and other music genres. But then you see the band playing shows in the past five years for HUGE audiences. About ten years ago, they decided to play all (then) 22 of their albums from beginning to end in a series of shows in London... and yeah, people did go to all 22 of those shows.

The other thing that influenced my decision to write this was seeing another documentary, this one at the Tribeca Festival, about the '80s Norwegian group A-Ha, who to many, are probably considered the epitome of one-hit wonders since every single person on the planet knows "Take On Me" but can you name one other song by them? Can you name any of the many albums they made after that first one? It's interesting because in that movie, you also see the band going through some highs and lows but when they play gigs in Europe, like in Germany or their native Norway, they still play to HUGE audiences, and they still have many devout fans. And yes, many of them have stuck with them since the "Take on Me" days but would you happen to know one of these fans personally?

That brings me back to the Alarm. I will fully admit that I wasn't there as a fan/fam through thick and thin... I was already deviating before Mike Peters left the band almost exactly 30 years ago in a very famous concert in Brixton where he let the rest of the band know he was quitting while ON STAGE PERFORMING. I mean, how punk is that? Sounds like something I might do. ;)

I definitely lost track of the band until an episode of VH-1's "Bands Reunited" in the early '00s, maybe 2002 where the band was... I'm sure you you can figure it out. At that time, I had absolutely zero idea that Mike and various members of the band had been doing annual "Gatherings" in their Wales hometown for the fans they built in the '80s who stuck around for all of Mike's solo albums, side projects like Coloursound with Billy Duffy from the Alarm (album #2 comes out in a couple weeks!), and basically through thick and thin.

A few years later, maybe 2004, I saw that The Alarm were playing at the Knitting Factory down near me and I decided to see what they had been up to and surprise, surprise, what I loved about the band in the '80s was still very much intact, even if it was now Mike and a completely different band. But I was happy to see them again, even more thrilled to learn that the Knitting Factory gig was part of a residency and then also learned that Mike/The Alarm had not only made a new album... but they made an entire 5-album box set called In the Poppyfields and holy shit... it didn't seem like there was a bad song in the bunch! (They played some of the songs at that gig, but they also played ALL of my favorites from the '80s, too!) That moment was kind of a revelation for me and even though I've seen The Alarm maybe twice in the '80s, I've probably seen them live maybe 16 or 17 times since that Knitting Factory gig.

If you've spent even a second at one of these shows with the band's fams, then you know why the Alarm is such a popular band with so many infectious and anthemic sing-along-songs, and you know what? I found that from the very first time I saw the band in the mid-80s as well. But a lot of these fams stuck with the band through thick and thin, once Mike left the band and did his own solo thing (I personally have only been getting into his solo stuff VERY recently)... and then when he was back with a new incarnation. Sometimes, Mike would just go out and perform acoustically and the fams love that, too.

So I was thinking how does Mike do it, and how does he keep those "fams" coming back for more? How does he and Jules convince a good number of them (including myself) to shell out something like $160 a year to subscribe to Alarm Central? That certainly seems like a lot of money and believe me, a lot of long-time fans were not happy with that.

But Mike and Jules also created a lot of good will with the amount of time and energy they put into the Big Night In and into Alarm Central... and frankly, into every single thing they do EVER. I've never been to a Gathering in Wales, but I've been to a bunch of them in New York, and they never disappoint. They're always a full day with all sorts of events -- trivia, a QnA, a meet and greet, maybe a solo set, a full band set... there have even been multiple night shows.

That said, I still haven't really gotten into what makes Mike and Jules and The Alarm so popular that they have fans who go all the way back to Mike's *previous* band Seventeen. (I've met a couple of them last night in Alarm Central, which also convinced me to write this.)

I know what I like about the band and Mike and the music, almost all of it, in fact, but I also have a personal connection since both Mike and Jules are cancer survivors. Not only that but they've also created Love Hope Strength, a foundation whose entire existence is to find stem cell and bone marrow donors. Even if you did not know what a big Alarm fan I was before reading this, there's a good chance you realize that I'm a leukemia survivor myself, that I had a stem cell transplant, and I take everything about that seriously, whether it's to raise awareness or to be there for others when they are going through their own transplants, whatever. It's something that's probably as important to me as the very air I breathe*.

*Yes, that actually is an Alarm reference, actually one of Mike Peters' solo songs co-written with Jules that he still plays with the band.

INTERMISSION (Gotta run out to a movie but will be back later to finish this.)

Let me see if I can get back into my train of thought. Oh, yeah, I was getting into the reason why The Alarm and Mike in particular seems to be able to keep his fambase going for 40 years with some truly diehard sticking through thick and thin. I think part of it is that Mike and Jules are just truly nice and good people. I mean, think about it. They didn't need to spend hours each week during a pandemic putting together the Big Night In show to keep everyone entertained and sane. "Music Will Keep Us Together" was the motto of those weekly music and talk shows with a lot of really special guests and announcements. I'm sure that they have a lot of other things to do, like making music (and Mike's done a lot of that during the pandemic) but they are constantly doing things to keep in contact with the fams, including the Alarm Central and very casual weekly pub updates where fams communicate with each other and can share their thoughts with the Peters. They even invited their fambase to come to their hometown for weekly "Staycations" (that just started this week) where the fams can rent out one of a number of special rooms and be able to watch special performances right in Wales. The first night of it was so fun even watching on the Alarm Central and they'll be doing this for the next five months in lieu of touring. And then early next year, the Alarm is touring all over the UK and making up for shows that were delayed and cancelled.

I just want to tell one more thing about Mike's dedication. A week before the first Staycation, he had a bad accident, falling off his bike and breaking his elbow, and yet, that night, he was on Alarm Central in full cast with Jules, and he even pulled out his acoustic guitar and played a song, much to the shock of everyone watching.

But that's enough about The Alarm. You get the idea, but they're not the only ones. I was a pretty big fan of Nirvana and when David Grohl came along with Foo Fighters, I was a hard pass, but 20 years later, I became a pretty diehard fan, and I realized that there's a reason why the Foo Fighters can fill Citifield two nights in a row (50,000 people a night) and that's because you can tell that David is just as dedicated to his fans... and you can also tell from his docs and appearances that he's also a really nice guy.

And I'm sure I've mentioned Tim's Twitter Listening Parties here, and Tim Burgess of the Charlatans is another guy who could be super-busy and doing lots of things but almost every night, he's on Twitter interacting with musical guests and his fans... and he's been doing that diligently since last March, as well. I'm not sure he makes any money doing that, and I don't think he cares. He enjoys it. He knows that those who tune in every night enjoy it, and like Alarm Central, he's created a community around these listening parties.

I feel like I can even bring this analogy over to the world of movies and some of my favorite directors and people who have just done really well over the years by just being nice to their fans. Edgar Wright is one. Guillermo del Toro is another. Both of those guys could just lock themselves in an ivory tower ala Nolan, but they always get out there to talk about their movies and interact with fans whenever possible, and that's something that really means a lot to people.

We're definitely living in different times than the '70s and '80s, and maybe we're living in times when people just want to be nicer to each other. People have been through a lot even pre-COVID, and I'd like to think that all of us are coming out the other side being nicer or more consideration. I'm not 100% sure that's true, but I do think that musicians/bands/artists who can maintain their fanbase for decades through thick and thin really are something special. I think that any band or artist starting out now or who has been around for a few years can learn a lot from the Mikes and Tims and Dave Grohls because you know what? It takes more than talent alone to keep the fans around through every experiment you might decide to do over time.

(As I did with my 30-minute experiments, I'm gonna post this witohut going back and reading over it and doing any error correction. Like I said, this is the kind of free-form writing I like to do when I have something on my mind but don't want to take too much time away from my paid writing.)