#Albrecht got her

[alteredsilicone]

original:

[thealexandriaarchives]

The Arrakis Royal Ballet in Arrakeen has just had a crisis of leadership under the management of the CHOAM Foundation which oversees its board, and Vladimir Harkonnen has been ousted as chairman, which means two things: Oh thank god we don't have to watch the same 5 Tchaikovsky shows over and over again this season, Swan Lake and The Firebird are FINE but GOD- and the Company's default leading man for every performance, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, will suddenly have to compete for his slot.

That's totally fine, but the next person to fill the board's slot is Leto Atredies, a man who's actively investigating the Harkonnens for using the Ballet for money laundering as well as reputation laundering, and his son, Paul Atredies, is about to make his international debut after being quietly... discouraged, from applying. Still, whether as a PR move or an olive branch, Leto suggests a Ballet to fit the bill: Giselle.

It's French, so it will give people something different from the aggressively Russian fare Vlad had selected for the last several seasons. ...A bit unfair, perhaps, Chani had been hoping for Balanchine outside of Christmas, but Feyd never expected he'd even get so much as Italian. Paul Atredies was taught by masters in the classical French schools and he's got the light, precise, delicate footwork and speed to show for it. Hell with that slight frame, and some of the moves Feyd has seen him do on TikTok, which is about the only place he's been able to perform up until now, there have even been whispers he could perform the female roles just as easily.

But Giselle is good. It will give Chani some space to show off her acting chops as she falls in love and goes insane, casts Irulan well as a cold and vicious wraith queen, ordering men to their deaths, and it's underperformed- often because it requires two strong male leads in the same company.

As soon as he hears the name Feyd-Rautha doesn't kid himself about which role he'll be playing. Even if he didn't personally prefer Hilarion to the lying noble prick Albrecht is revealed to be, there's no way the new chairman's son and anointed star is going to be the one drowned like a rat in a bucket by the end of act two.

Besides, Feyd knows what the last act requires physically, and he's seen Atredies throwing his whole body into full spins again and again through the air in his million dollar barre studio online. Feyd's just not going to let a spoiled green debutante get away with blowing this for everyone else.

So on the first day of rehearsals, while Chani and Stilgar are off with the set designer, discussing the frankly insane decision to replace the woods and lake with a desert terrain out of Lawrence of Arabia, Feyd-Rautha sidles up to their untested new danseur noble as he laces his shoes.

"I hear you're our new Duke of Arrakis."

[valaglarios]

thinking about how euleria by all counts was incredibly loyal, idealistic, clever and compassionate when she was younger until her grief over the completely unexplained losses of both her father and her basically-step-father whom she clearly looked up to and even TOOK AFTER in many respects started to manifest as a compulsion to control and punish the people around her . and crying.

[grimmjowjaegerjaquez]

thinking about changing uriel's resurreccion from the. pavo real/fenix idea i had and just makin him paloma instead.

[aragaki]

Hero Queen Lionheart

Weapons Master Cleaver / Master Flintlock Pistol

Alignment Good

As a Hero, she does good deeds for selfish reasons. The cruelty she faced as a child has made her both temperamental and praise-seeking. By doing good deeds the people of Albion love her but she doesn't feel any genuine attachment to them. At the Spire, her wish was for her family to be revived and was heartbroken that Rose didn't come back to her side when the other heroes left her.

Lionheart's legacy is that of a good and just queen, with her more brutal actions buried under the legend she left behind. She united under her reign by purchasing nearly all the land - with sponsorship from Reaver in exchange for a place in her court and the territories that didn't yield willingly were conquered. Her goal was to have a united Albion so that her children would never have to starve like she did. Being orphaned and left behind by everyone has left a hole that she tries to fill with things but no matter what she owns nothing feels like it belongs to her.

Before formally establishing the monarchy she married a Bowerstone noble, Albrecht, to help give her claim legitimacy. It was a business agreement between her and her husband and in exchange for becoming her King Consort, he would act as her ambassador and mouthpiece. Even into adulthood, Lionheart rarely speaks unless she's in casual company that doesn't know her or around those she trusts completely. Her voice is unrefined and she speaks less like a queen and more like a mercenary, so her husband must have more tact in polite company.

Albrecht, however, is not the father of her children. In another business deal, Lionheart conceived Logan and her daughter Marcela with Reaver to strengthen her Heroic bloodline and the chances her children would have abilities. Logan is Lionheart's favorite child. It wasn't something she intended but Logan was the first thing in her life that was well and truly hers, that could never be taken from her or leave her. By her second child, she finally felt more secure in her place in the world and was able to have a less desperate attachment.

Lionheart is a creature of revenge, having spent more than half her life wanting to avenge the death of Rose by Lucien it's almost all she knows. And even into her reign that hasn't changed. The cold realization that Theresa had used her, facilitated the death of her sister, and had her enslaved for a decade all to get her hands on the Spire has lit a dark fire in her chest. The latter parts of her life that weren't spent with her children were given to trying to find a way to hunt down and kill Theresa. It was on this path that the Lionhearted Queen was finally killed, having gotten too close to finally finding a way to put the seer down. Her body appeared on the steps of Bowerstone Castle, cold and dead with no signs of what was done to her.

The only one in Albion who knows would only give the future King a mysterious smile.

Perhaps it was for the best that Lionheart died when she did because if she'd lived to see the revolution led by her daughter, it might have been anarchy. In her eyes, Logan could never do anything wrong and would have supported all of his choices even if she was unaware of the Crawler and the darkness. Her legacy as the Hero Queen would shattered in the eyes of Albion's people if they realized that she never truly cared about them, her family would always be before the world.

If she had lived, it would be almost certain that she would have executed everyone who tried to rise against her son, even her precious friends. Walter, Swift, and Jasper would all come face to face with the fact that being a Hero doesn't mean one has to be good or heroic. Her second child would have never been able to sit on the throne unless Logan chose to abdicate, if she took it by force the hero queen would have forced her to give up her claim. Permanently.

And if Marcela chose to execute her brother? A five-star shock spell and a lifetime in the dungeon is a mercy compared to filicide.

I wrote this entire thing for that last section I was wondering how my Sparrow would respond to the revolution and the HoBW overthrowing Logan and the answer is. Not Good.

A lot of heads would roll, she would lightning the people who kicked her dog but using her as a standard to put down Logan? She would probably have cut Waler's tongue out at minimum. She just wouldn't allow the rebellion to happen and if it did it would still end with Logan on the throne after the Crawler was dealt with.

And of course her wanting to kill Theresa even more for manipulating her children and pitting them against each other. Lionheart is a good queen and can do good things but she not a good person y'know?

[weepingactorsoverpopmusic]

[racingmiku2018]

i really think people would dig nat and albrecht but i dont wanna draw either of them so i sit here in my brainroom and the two of them are sitting on the couch 5 feet away being happily married and oblivious to my plight (i need to evict them from my brainhouse)

[lostwords-found]

Oh no. Oh fuck. I am relistening to some of the earlier Protocol episodes, and I have a horrible, terrible, no good very bad suspicion about Gerry.

I could, I want to emphasize, be completely wrong! I could be wildly, hilariously, off the mark. But--hear me out. This is going to take some explaining about what I think is going on in the bigger picture worldbuilding stuff; hopefully it'll be coherent, but fair warning, it may get a bit long.

First: there have been a lot of cases that have boiled down to trying to keep only the "good"/desirable/etc aspects of things or events or people, and discard the "bad"/unwanted, right? We saw this happening very explicitly in episode 23 with Alesis Newman, and way back in episode 2 with Daria the painter, but a number of episodes have presented variations on a similar theme.

Two variations in particular that I've been thinking a lot about are the violinist in episode 4 and the gambler in episode 9. The violinist can play his violin beautifully, but he wants to be rid of the price in flesh and blood that it demands. Similarly, the gambler wants the rewards of rolling high on his magic dice, but wants to be rid of the misfortunes that come with rolling low. Crucially, both episodes make clear that in this type of balance--something unwanted for something wanted--you can't just make the unwanted piece vanish. It has to go somewhere, it has to happen. But you can make it happen to someone else, somewhere else. And when that's how the game works, one of the major questions for players who want to get ahead then becomes: "how do I make the bad stuff stay happening somewhere else, and keep reaping the benefits of the good stuff that balances it out?"

Here's where this gets wildly speculative and from here on I freely acknowledge that I may be talking out my ass:

I think the Magnus Institute was investigating that question. I suspect a great many alchemists before the Institute, probably going back to the times of Albertus Magnus, were investigating it as well. I think the Great Work they were attempting -- the "universal transmutation" alluded to in episode 21 as the Magnus Institute's aim -- was the exact opposite of Jonah Magnus's own "Great Work" in TMA. In other words, I think they were probably trying to make the world an eternal paradise, rather than an eternal hell.

But if you're getting rid of all the "bad" stuff, all the suffering and misfortune, it's got to go somewhere.

I think they were sending it through to other worlds.

I'm not going to get into all the reasons I think that right now, because that's a whole essay in itself, but basically--the Leitners in TMA? The artifacts? All the little bits and pieces of evil given physical form, that never had a clear origin point in the world where they caused so much suffering for so long? We've all been worried about them winding up here, post-Archives... but I think this is where they came from in the first place. I think they were sent away in the hopes that an increase in "bad" in other worlds would lead to an increase in "good" in this one. Remember all those books Albrecht von Closen found in the tomb in the Black Forest in TMA, that Jonah Magnus later stole and let loose on the world? Remember that Albrecht found a mysterious coin along with them dated 1279? Albertus Magnus died in 1280; I strongly suspect he sent those books from the world of Protocol to that of Archives shortly before his death, much as the world of Archives sent the tapes away centuries later. But I think Protocol's world kept sending things away, kept trying to export "bad" and import "good". Remember all those happy, laughing volunteers bringing strange and sinister items to the charity shop on Hill Top Road in episode 7? "All for a good cause."

Okay so. Now. With that bit of hypothetical framework for Protocol's worldbuilding in place, let's next go back to Alesis Newman of episode 23. Her expressed wish is to create a new her. "Someone better. Someone the pain can't touch." Someone who can be everything Alesis wishes she could have been. Someone "free of all (her) mistakes."

But increasingly it sounds like what she actually wants isn't to create someone new. It is to create someone who is only a part of her current self. Someone who, she says in one of her last few posts, will "just be the good parts of me."

And if that's the case, if what she's really trying to do is make someone who holds only the "good" parts of her, someone who can be happy and strong and perfect and loved by everyone forever... what happens to the bad parts of Alesis Newman, as she currently exists? What about the parts of her that feel pain and fear, the parts of her that make mistakes, the parts of her that she rejects?

One might assume, from the experience she narrates, that those pieces of her are simply being destroyed. But that doesn't line up with the suggestion we've seen from earlier episodes that there has to be some kind of balance maintained in these bargains. What she actually says is happening to her--and what the forum members have apparently told her will happen, through this process--is that she and this "new her" are "becoming one... and then two."

I don't think the "bad" parts of Alesis Newman are dying. I think they're also going to become a "new her"--they're just going to go somewhere else, somewhere the new, happy, strong, perfect version of Alesis Newman never has to see them.

Still with me?

Okay.

Now let's talk about Gerry. Let's talk about the smiling, laughing, irrepressibly happy Gerry Keay we meet early in Protocol. Gerry who seems to have everything that the Gerry Keay of Archives was denied.

Gerry who underwent tests at the Magnus Institute as a child, and who, per the static over his and "Gee Gee's" words, holds a few more secrets about what went on there than he let on to Sam and Celia.

Back when I first heard Gerry's appearance in episode 8, it sure felt like a narrative gut punch: This is who he could have been in Archives, if not for the presence of the Fears. This is what Jon and Martin's final decision threatens to destroy--for this safe, happy version of Gerry, and for everyone else in his world.

I'm now suspecting it might be significantly worse than that. I think the Magnus Institute might have done to Gerry Keay something similar to what Alesis Newman later did to herself: made him New. Kept only the good parts--ensured a happy, comfortable, good life for him. In which case, all the bad stuff--all the parts of Gerry Keay that would ever have to suffer from bad luck, to feel pain and fear and misery...

...well. They'd have had to go... somewhere else, wouldn't they.

Which would suggest I had the causality the wrong way around the first time I heard Gerry's appearance in Protocol: maybe it's not "Gerry has a happy life in this world because he didn't have to suffer everything that the Gerry Keay of Archives did."

Maybe it's "Gerry in Archives had to suffer everything he did because Gerry in Protocol was made to always be happy."

[annabelle--cane]

so I don’t have the knowledge of details that you have (complimentary) but is there anything in the computer code Colin looking into being written in German and Jonah Magnus’ buddy living in the Black Forest and finding that crypt that one time? Or is that Too far a reach?

vibrating at the speed of sound. so there are a couple of floating details around from the podcasts, the arg, and some promotional materials that may point back to germany having particular relevance. some of this is absolutely me going full pepe silvia, but there are enough threads here that I feel like it has to amount to Something.

so. germany.

archives 'verse:

-> point 1: johann von württemberg. while staying with his nephew in the schwartzwald in 1816, albrecht von closen finds an old mausoleum with the inscription "johann von württemberg" over the door, and it is guarded by a man with no eyes who nonetheless seems to be able to see. in a deep chamber well beneath the ground is johann's coffin, and the room is completely lined with books so old that they'd all rotted through and fused together, the marble shelves they're placed on having little carvings of open eyes all along them. the only two objects in a good state are an illuminated manuscript in arabic that had been kept apart from the rest of the books, and a gold coin with an engraving of a young man with flowing hair, the initials "JW," the year 1279, and the words "für die stille" (google translate tells me that’s “for the silence”). albrecht asks around for any information about johann because the name is unfamiliar despite his quite good knowledge about local history and nobles, and someone says they remember him being called "ulrich's bastard," likely referring to ulrich the i or ii, two counts of württemberg from the 1200s. with that information, in the present day jon is able to find some historical records that point to ulrich i having a son out of wedlock in 1255 who was rumored to keep the company of witches.

-> point 2: the von closens. it seems that a servant nicked the coin albrecht found before he could go home with it, and that was probably for the best for albrecht, because that servant Died Badly from what was ruled to be an animal attack. albrecht did take the book with him, however, and presumably went on to show it to jonah magnus. he then must have gone back for the rest of the rotten books at some point, though, because when doctor jonathan fanshawe visits his estate in 1831, albrecht has a full library of recently re-bound books that he tells fanshawe he got from the tomb, and owning them has done terrible beholding-esque things to him. fanshawe, in his capacity as a doctor, says they should return the books for albrecht's health, and they do so, but just as the last book is returned, albrecht dies, and fanshawe realizes that all the books were blank and finds out that jonah arranged to have them all swapped out by the book binder. when fanshawe performs an autopsy on albrecht's body, all of his insides are covered in eyes.

in his statement from 1816, albrecht says he and his wife carla have been unable to conceive, though in 1831 fanshawe mentions that all of albrecht's sons were away at school when he came to visit. not something that's impossible, they could have managed to have children shortly after 1816, but it does make me raise an eyebrow. magically blessed fertility? dimension shenanigans? fanshawe does mention a tree being burned on the von closen estate that feels remarkably similar to the tree on hilltop road.

anyway, wilhelm, albrecht's nephew, has some children, and the family stays in germany for about another century, but one branch eventually moves to england, and their descendants include mary and gerard keay. according to gerry, mary was big into mythologizing about the von closens and really tried to get him to continue her idea of a legacy for the family, but he thought most of what she said was made up.

protocol 'verse:

-> point 3: colin's comment about source code being written in german. nothing much to explain here, just that it's Weird that source code for some Weird bespoke program for the british civil service is written in german, right? Bit Odd.

-> point 4: the usenet forum. okay so I'm an avatar of the idiot and only read up about the arg after it was already over and don't know anything about code and whatnot, but as best as I can understand: on the OIAR's official website, if you try to submit a form, you get an error message, and if you look into the source code for the error then you find Some piece of code with an IP address shaped hole in it, and there's an IP address hidden in an OIAR advertising video, so you put that IP address into the code, do something else (???), and then find yourself at an old defunct usenet forum from the 90s/00s for people who left east germany.

(it is from here that I got too verbose for my own good, so the rest is under a cut)

notable things about the forum: most of it is pretty normal, and, naturally, it was pretty much all in german, massive shoutout to everyone who helped to translate all 21k words of it. there are threads about finding work in various countries, weird cultural idiosyncrasies, resources, reminiscing about berlin, yknow, normal stuff. the mod “SandmannS” (translates to exactly what it looks like) ran the forum with a bit of an iron fist, which I guess makes sense, it’s the kind of forum that attracted people who wanted to say some heinous stuff and he was really serious about not letting anyone solicit personal information, but he was also kind of overzealous about keeping threads on topic and locking any discussions that he thought were “pointless.” he was eventually strongarmed into opening a thread for cat pictures, and that’s as good an opening as any to talk about some of the Weird things about the forum.

one of the cat photos was posted in february 1994 and shows a cat standing in front of the thames, with what looks like the completed o2 arena in full view (great choice of a red flag landmark to include @ whoever chose it. nice big landmark that was called “the millennium dome” when it first opened, a handy reminder that it was made to celebrate the turn of the millennium and construction wouldn't even have started in 1994). several comments across the threads are dated as earlier than the comments they’re replying to, one person references the content of the phantom menace a few months before its release, and several comments were somehow made after the mod locked the forum in dec 2001/jan 2002.

and okay. the forum locking. I’m going to condense this to all hell because this is already [redacted] words long but basically, “einsamernarr” (translation: lonely fool) was an active user of the forum with a big conspiratorial streak, real paranoid about “the government” spying on him, always getting warnings and just dodging getting banned just before going too far, yknow, a Type of Guy. in december 2001, he mentions in a book rec thread that he was trolling through some databases and found a bunch of old records and he can’t tell if they’re fictional or not, but he’d like to share them if he can. about five days later, he starts posting in several threads that he did something really dumb, people are after him, the meetup they were planning is not safe and this forum is being watched, people should look for him if he doesn’t come back within a week, and he’ll try to leave some info behind for them just in case. a few days later, a couple of people post worried messages asking if anyone’s heard from einsamernarr and that they’ve been getting weird cryptic emails about an “institute” from him, and sandmanns says that he did everything he could, but he can’t keep doing this, and he closes the forum.

marina “avatar of the idiot” annabelle--cane showing my face here again, I don’t know how this next part happened, but it’s possible to retrieve the email einsamernarr sent, open it with a password found in colin’s code repository (that’s a whole ‘nother thing), and find inside: 1. some pictures of bonzobucks, 2. a weird pdf of an old german book on alchemy with a lot of symbols and codes in it, and 3. a spreadsheet of the names, ages, and test results of the hundreds of children the protocol 'verse magnus institute was performing psych studies on. which finally brings us to our next, much shorter section.

-> point 5: “gerard kaey” (sic). gerry’s name is on that spreadsheet, which I think is relevant to this conversation given mary’s obsession with the von closen legacy. archives ‘verse mary keay resented the magnus institute for what she felt it stood for comparison to what she felt she stood for; she saw jonah magnus as a thief who stole away her family’s honor, so what might be different about the protocol ‘verse situation? why would mary keay in this universe send her only heir to go get scrutinized by a bunch of self-important academics?

-> point 6: the berlin dead drop. more arg stuff, we’re getting into things that I’m sure probably have more to be said about them than I’m capable of saying, but from some clues in a picture of cookbooks that einsamermarr posted in the cat pictures thread of the usenet forum to annoy the mod, and a voicemail on the OIAR’s telephone line, people found out the date and location of the first irl arg event, and it was for somewhere in berlin. a newspaper covered in alchemical symbols was found in a bookshop, and from that people somehow derived coordinates, and those coordinates lead to the last irl event where a battered old video tape with a video of a creepy ritual was found (note: the tape was too badly damaged, so another copy of the video came from an arg affiliated tumblr account).

-> point 7: klaus.xls. from a floppy disk found in the second irl arg event, klaus.xls is a spreadsheet originally written in german with about 100 dates and times of potentially paranormal sightings. a lot of it is corrupted and unreadable, but there are columns for category, rank, “TSHU,” and notes. translated into english, notes sections that aren’t corrupted say things like “mr. b,” “war people,” “avoid, “unhappy child,” “ink,” “lady m,” “cats lol,” and “I hate witches.”

-> point 8: albertus magnus and the philosopher’s stone. right, this is where I go a bit off the rails, and credit to this post by @misfitmagpie for discovering some of this. first, nearly every official visual we’ve had for tmagp has been covered in alchemy symbols. they’re all over the logo, they’re all over the in-universe OIAR and magnus institute websites, they highlighted hints in the arg, they’re everywhere, and the end goal of alchemy was the pursuit of the mythical philosopher’s stone, a substance that could turn base metals into gold and produce an elixir for eternal life. the tmagp logo/the coat of arms for the OIAR is centered around an upside down alchemical symbol for the philosopher’s stone, a circle in a square in a triangle in a larger circle. 

albertus magnus (aka saint albert the great) was a bavarian philosopher and scientist who did some writing on alchemy and has been widely rumored to secretly have been a master alchemist, mainly as a result of a lot of people attaching his name to writings about alchemy that he never touched. some have credited him as discovering the actual philosopher’s stone, and while he never made that claim in any way that survives, he did record that he’d witnessed seeing base metals be turned into gold. something of which to take note is that he didn’t go by the name “magnus” during his life, that was appended to him posthumously, it’s just another way of calling him “the great” with a fancy latin word, but it does kind of remind me of that edmond “reimer” halley -> maxwell rayner thing from mag 140. if you discovered the elixir of life and became immortal, you would probably need to nab a new identity at some point, and if people have already been nicknaming you “albert the great,” well…

anyway, the thing that’s really cemented his potential relevance in my mind is his birth and death dates: c. 1200-1280, lining up perfectly with the time period of johann von württemberg (thought we’d moved on from him, didn’t you?). I know magnus timelines are notoriously a bit unruly, especially the further back into the past we get, but it’s scratching at my brain. besides that, I think it would be a really cool move if the magnus this podcast is named for was a completely different person than the magnus the last podcast was named for.

if albertus magnus isn’t directly relevant then I’ve got another theory about the title that I’ll be posting in a hot minute, but it’s not germany related and this ask is already long enough. 

just, to sum up, a lot of protocol content so far has been germany-adjacent, and even if nothing more comes of it I think there are a lot of interesting threads here to speculate about.

[warframe1999]

1999 loreposting i have rattling around like glass shards in in my skull…

oops, everyone’s infested!

so given the short bios we got from albrecht’s classified dossiers for the protoframes, it seems that according to eleanor’s saying that she has the most pronounced presence of the technocyte, we can infer that this means they all have the techrot in them as it is. this is backed up by eleanor’s voice line:

“I don’t think Doctor Entrati expected me to survive. I had a lot more than just a cough. But… survive I did. And Lettie has not forgiven me for it.”

i believe that the line about lettie is actually explained by lettie herself, in one of her own voicelines!:

“The boss says care for his sister I care for his sister. As long as you still are his sister… and as long as I feel like listening to him.”

the “boss” undoubtedly refers to arthur, as the leader of the group, and then she interestingly says “you,” speaking directly to eleanor who she assumes already is in her head, listening. (there are many lines from all of the characters making reference to eleanor being in their heads.) this quote though, further insinuates that eleanor’s contact with the technocyte is much more concerning than the others’.

lettie’s concern isn’t a one-off, either: there are posters all around the mall implying that this sort of distrust was commonplace throughout society at the time of the outbreak:

to be exact, THIS ONE! the full text of this poster (which i had translated in this post) reads

“IS YOUR NEIGHBOR STILL YOUR NEIGHBOR, or is he contaminated? Make the call. Keep us all safe.”

which echoes the same sentiment that lettie is expressing in the aforementioned voiceline.

but why can eleanor be in their heads anyways?

i believe that because of the infestation that is wracking her brain and body, and with the small amount (comparatively) of infestation that the others are also subjected to, this creates a subtle link between them, as we already know that the infestation works as essentially a hivemind (implied heavily through the lore surrounding deimos) only eleanor is able to effectively take advantage of this due to the increased exposure, making her exertion of the outgoing connection stronger on her end than on the rest’s.

excited to see if/when this resolves!! let me know your thoughts too :)

[alteredsilicone]

[Modern AU]

Loid is an inner city guy who lives walking distance from his job, has a nice apartment perfect for the Bachelor Lifestyle. Two bedrooms, a studio type kitchen/living room situation and a nice bathroom.

Albrecht lives out of the city in an old, inherited home. He has a greenhouse he hasn't touched in ages (nobody gardens since Euleria moved out), an old apricot tree he occasionally prunes and the grass is kept tidy and short. Kalymos is basically a barn cat who is allowed to go wherever she pleases (and later Loid will try to convince Albrecht it's not a good idea but he thinks it's literal torture to keep a cat inside).

Once Loid moves in with Albrecht he starts planting flowers in the garden and grows cucumbers and tomatoes in the greenhouse. Loid always wanted a house he just couldn't quite afford it. Albrecht realizes he feels more at home once the property feels more lived in, maybe it's the flowers in the garden, maybe it's his Loid by his side.

[agoddamn]

Tales of Duviri is a storybook written by Euleria Entrati for the purpose of teaching children how to handle the manic flood of emotion that comes with Void exposure.

I pose a question: why does Euleria feel so strongly about this?

Her interactions with her own children are... let's call them wanting, and dialog implies that the negative aspects of their relationship--her denigrating, controlling nature, the distrust, etc--did not begin only after the Infestation brainrot set in.

We also know that she holds her father in extremely high esteem, but Albrecht did not think much of Tales of Duviri (see: him talking about his previous disdain for it in his own Duviri notes). Euleria put resources into writing Tales of Duviri instead of more traditional science, and Albrecht did not think much of it.

So why did Euleria write Tales of Duviri?

Let's rewind a step. Void exposure-induced mania, the whole thing Tales of Duviri is written to help manage.

How was that discovered and studied? It clearly was studied, enough to be a recognized condition and for the Orokin to build the iso vaults and for Euleria to write Tales of Duviri. But who would they have observed this mania in if Void research was an abandoned dead-end line of study?

Perhaps...the man obsessed with the Void who'd survived an unshielded Void dive?

Euleria had patient zero of Void mania sitting at her dinner table. Albrecht is the character who's undoubtedly had the most Void exposure.

Albrecht himself must have exhibited the Void mania and mood swings that Tales of Duviri exists to teach caution of.

And that's why Euleria wrote it; she had this gyroscope of a mood swing at home. She admired Albrecht too much to consciously deride his lack of control as irresponsible and so she channeled her energy into writing Tales of Duviri instead.

The emotion spirals of Duviri are loosely based off of what Euleria witnessed in the Entrati household and particularly Albrecht himself.

I don't believe that any courtier is a 1:1 translation of a member of the Entrati household, but more that their toxic interactions and dramatic heights reflected things that Euleria herself saw--or lived.

This reading of the Duviri characters and story--that they mean things to Euleria specifically--gives us a fun new lens to look at all of the chapters with.

For example, Mathila.

"Two children, and no memory of her husband. Poor Mathila."

Two children like Euleria herself, eh?

Mathila loved her husband. He also textually does not exist. He's not on the screen or in the text. He is a memory, and one that Mathila herself cannot even remember. There is no portrayal of their love.

Pivot to a writer's perspective. You need to write a loving relationship. You look to real life for inspiration, right? If you're a married woman needing to write a married woman in love, you naturally look to your own relationship.

And if you can't find anything to base that love off of? Well...move that character offscreen. Just tell about the loving relationship, don't show. Actually, do you even have anything to tell about? Well. Move the entire loving relationship offscreen, then. She's got amnesia. Nobody needs to talk about the love to sell it or make it feel real now. The narrator can simply mention it as a fact and it need not be challenged. Euleria doesn't have to imagine a loving family life between a husband and wife and their two children and question why that's hard for her. There. Problem fucking solved.

Another parallel that fairly started screaming at me once I started considering that the Duviri courtiers had meaning to Euleria specifically: Luscinia.

"I was created to be Sorrow, written into being, to serve as a lesson... can that change?"

Luscinia knows that she is a tool. As much as she dreams of being more, she knows very well that she is a tool--both a literal narrative element to teach a lesson and within the story itself Thrax's servant (his personal songbird).

Is there anyone in Euleria's life who might have some angst over their position as a tool? A servant who wants to escape the limited definitions of their role?

And so... here I am, back to my old role. The diligent servant. Albrecht would have smiled at that, I think.

Loid. It's Loid.

Luscinia: "This structure and I share much. Both of us once useful, both of us discarded, both of us now derelict. Both forgotten." Loid: "How might this relic make himself useful today?"

Both Luscinia and Loid are also capable of surprising amounts of ruthless violence. Luscinia has no hesitation telling you to kill the Dax or otherwise wreak vengeance on her jailers. Loid's Necramech lines feature him ranging from being excited for ensuing violence to coldly promising the Murmur regret.

The Duviri Tales were a subconscious form of therapy for Euleria herself as well, allowing her to write a story where emotional explosions were a problem that must be addressed rather than a social struggle to be suffered through at the whims of the more powerful.

[onefleshonepod]

On Barbie

I'd like to share my thoughts on John’s choice to house Alecto in a body that looks like Hollywood Hair Barbie.

To the best of my recollection over the past year, I've seen several people claim that Barbie being a famously unattainable beauty standard for women and arguably a sex symbol was irrelevant to John's decision to make Alecto a Barbie lookalike, and that rather the main impetus for this decision of John’s was his trauma, gender non-conformity, internalized homophobia, and desire to return to the comfort of childhood. This argument posits that John's decision had little or nothing to do with patriarchy, misogyny, objectification of women, or impossible beauty standards placed on women by men.

I empathize with the above position to a certain extent — it's absolutely crucial to remember and consider in our analyses that John is a queer working-class Indigenous man.

But………....................

John is not a real person. He is a character written to advance plot, themes, and political commentary within a carefully crafted story.

If I'm Tamsyn Muir writing John 1:20 in Nona the Ninth, and the point I want to make about my character is specifically and only that he is struggling with self-doubt, trauma, gender non-conformity, internalized homophobia, and yearning for the comfort of home and childhood — and I want to say nothing about patriarchy and misogyny?

I'm not having him make the soul of the earth into a Barbie!

I'd be having him model Alecto after a completely different popular 1990s toy for girls, like a Polly Pocket, or Betty Spaghetti, or a Raggedy Ann doll, or another doll that doesn't carry the same connotations as Barbie. Or, hell, I’d be having John make Alecto look exactly like his mum, or his nan, or female Māori mythological figures from stories he must have heard from his nan in childhood, like Papatūānuku, or the first woman, Hineahuone, who was made from earth.

I'm not smarter or more creative than Tamsyn, and the above ideas are just the alternatives I thought of in five minutes that would have specifically symbolized John's personal trauma and nothing else.

But Tamsyn didn't do that. Tamsyn picked Barbie specifically. I think that's worth taking into consideration.

Let’s examine exactly what John says in John 1:20.

Hollywood Hair Barbie's physical appearance comes first in the list of reasons why she was his favourite, and her other characteristics come last. He lists two physical traits and one non-physical trait of hers. “My favourite was her old Hollywood Hair Barbie,” he murmured. “I loved her little gold outfit and her long yellow hair. She was the best. She got to have all the adventures.”

He discards as an option a model of a woman who doesn't conform to patriarchal, Eurocentric beauty standards specifically because of her appearance: “There was also a Bride’s Dream Midge, but Mum had cut Midge’s hair into this weird mullet.”

He chooses a blonde Barbie body that he can mould into and mentally map onto glamourized versions of women created by men through the ages. “I made you look like a Christmas-tree fairy … I made you look like a Renaissance angel … I made you Adam and Eve … Galatea. Barbie. Frankenstein’s monster with long yellow hair.”

Our famous cultural images of Renaissance angels are all idealized depictions of women made by men — Raphael, Titian, Albrecht Dürer, etc. Frankenstein's monster, a man loathed and discarded by his creator, is a more nuanced comparison... but the only thing John notes is that his version has long yellow hair.

I'm not even getting into the whiteness (or the plastic-ness) of it all, but three of John's comparisons here are specifically coded as white women considered beautiful by Eurocentric standards in the Western cultural imagination (Christmas tree toppers, Renaissance angels, and Barbie), and the others are often depicted as white.

Galatea specifically is such a telling comparison. This myth is the story of a man caging and controlling his idealized, beautiful female creation, which exactly parallels John’s goals with Alecto: “From my blood and bone and vomit I conjured up a beautiful labyrinth to house you in. I was terrified you’d find some way to escape before I was done.”

Given all of this, I genuinely think that John's choice of Barbie as a model for Alecto was intended to position John as a symbol of patriarchy, misogyny, and objectification of women, through both a political and religious lens. Tamsyn is way, way too smart to have not made a careful, considered, intentional choice here.

John didn’t make Alecto into a Māori goddess from his nan’s stories. He didn't make her into a cheerful Raggedy Ann. He made her into a beautiful, blonde Hollywood hair Barbie.

[b-ella-donn-a]

Working on a couple TNMN ocs, heres what I got so farrr

First one is Bella Donna, a singer who lives on F04-02 !! (Yes I'm adding a floor)

Second one is Maddox Albrecht, a DDD exterminator who lives on F04-02 with his younger sister

theyre siblings !! Bella Donna is a stage name but her real name is Elise Albrecht

Posting speedpaint and doppel versions soon^_^

[silence-of-autumn42]

Kinda frustrating to me that Loid has taken over from Euleria as the primary "victim" of Albrecht's machinations. Euleria has suffered far more because of Albrecht's actions than Loid has, imo. The apparent majority of her adult life was spent chasing the ghost of her father, who she believed was missing or vanished. It deeply affected her relationships with others, and it heavily influenced her academic career as well. And she was lied to and manipulated by her father, by Loid, and by Father/Vilcor throughout.

Its pretty clear to me that Albrecht didn't have a great opinion of his daughter. When he discusses her in his Requiem Vitruvian, he talks about raising her with "inconsistent vigour", indicating that he was a rather absent father (to go alongside her never mentioned again mother [let albrecht be bisexual dammit]), but despite this, she clearly still held a high opinion of him, one that Albrecht believed to be a lie. The next time he discusses her is in his Laboratory Notes fragments, specifically when he arrives in Duviri. There's no mention of her in the aftermath of the Void excursion, only of Loid, despite the fact it was Euleria who activated the machine that allowed Albrecht's journey. This discussion of Euleria is not particularly flattering. He describes her writing Tales of Duviri based on his old stories as "trivial", and her motives he initially believed to be "pastoral attentiveness", as though she was motivated by enforcing some religious doctrine. All of this, to me, indicates that Albrecht believes his daughter to be, at the very least, naive and motivated by less than virtuous intentions. And while he does recognise that this opinion is incorrect, he still never involves her in his plans, lets her know he's alive, or even leaves her a message.

Yes, what Albrecht did to Loid sucked. Making a replica of your boyfriend's brain to keep him company while you fuck off back in time is a really dick move. But Loid was, frankly, complicit in Albrecht's deception of Euleria, especially once Father/Vilcor got involved. Yes, there's clearly a power dynamic in their relationship, and it's unlikely that Loid could outright disobey Albrecht based on their social castes, but he nonetheless still kept things a secret, and let Euleria believe her father was dead or gone.

Someone should give Albrecht a "System's Worst Dad" mug. He can fight for it with Hunhow and Ballas.

[generalb]

MAG 23 “Schwartzwald” review:

no little German man don’t go into the tomb

Albrecht: mein gott zees is ein tomb full of bööksrotten!

Jokes aside, we have a letter addressed to the big man himself! Mr John Magnus. Or whatever his first name was. I’d say this episode is a solid 7/10. Great Classic fucked up things happen if you go too deep in European forests type deal. Granted, I think that message applies to every forest.

Also, this episode reminds me once more that Sims is reading these statements. You can’t write tone or pauses in statements, yet there is such emotion. This man is just out here roleplaying these actual awful events and it’s really funny to think about.

Anyways, today’s name drop is one Mary Keay. It was said as a name we’ve supposedly already heard so I tempted to see what episode we’ve heard of her first and promptly got spoiled that she dies a second time??? I looked no further so I hope a fellow Magnus enjoyer could enlighten me as to which story first has mention of her.

Statement ends.

Edit: I almost forgot! Martin interrupted the interview with no pants on! It’s been 10 days since last episode in lore.