#Ghost Orchestrate Discrepancy

[touhoutunes]

Title: Maybe if

Arrangement: Party.

Vocals: 月乃紫音

Album: Ghost Orchestrate Discrepancy

Circle: Digitalic Party

Original: Ghost Lead

[bullet-prooflove]

Postcards: Manny x Reader

Tagging: @darqchilddaydreamz @theesirenteller @crazy4chickennuggets @kmc1989 @withakindheartx @wnbweasley @bonni-98 @skyesthebomb @delightfulbelieverwerewolf @redpool @trublu2u @fleureeee @yezzyyae @jeybae @thiashazzywriting @lauraaan182 @hatersaremymotivators @fanfic-n-tabulous @ravennaortiz

Ties in with Times Are Changing

Manny thinks of you often. His days are full of club business and adhering to elementary school schedules, but his nights are full of you. The feel of your skin pressing against his as he makes you say his name in that sinful way of yours, how tight you grip him when you come on his cock. He jerks off in the shower fantasising about it.  

More than anything, he thinks of that breathless laugh of yours when he drew you to him that night in the Casino, the way the glow of the fireplace illuminated your skin as you dozed on his chest after the whiskey tasting.

When he receives that postcard from Thailand, he smiles to himself because he knows that you’re thinking about him too. You’ve written your phone number on the bottom and signed it with a kiss. He snaps a picture of it on his fridge before Whatsapping it to you with the words ‘Where to next?’

He receives a text later on in the evening with a picture of Tokyo Tower followed by several Japanses flag emojis. He checks the time difference on his phone, it’s your morning over in Thailand, you’ve just gotten up. He finally puts his phone down at midnight because he needs to be up early to take his daughter Melina to school.

Sweet dreams, you text him and that night he dreams of you in his bed, his fingertips ghosting over the tattoos that decorate your body.

It becomes the highlight of his day after spending time with Melina. Things with the club are complicated. Canche’s death has highlighted some discrepancies with their accounting, Downer’s still chasing down the missing money whilst Bishop is putting pressure on them to buy into the pipeline because Santo Padre are going completely legit.

On top of that there’s been a change of leadership in Stockton after Ramos orchestrated an attack on Nestor Oceteva and his girl. The ramifications of it have sent shockwaves through all the charters due to a change of bylaws by El Padrino. Manny’s lucky, his club are more tolerant and open minded compared to some of the others, his members have always treated their women with respect, it’s the other part some of them are having trouble with. Manny believes in tolerance; he welcomes the change.

Your communications are a reprieve from all of this. He thinks you must be able to sense he’s having a bad day because you video call him that night. It’s the first time the two of you have spoken face to face since you parted in Lake Tahoe. You’re in a hotel room in Japan, the sun shining in through the window when you appear on the screen. He finds the weight in his chest loosen just a little when he sees you.

“Hey.” He says softly.

You’re still as pretty as the day you left; he can tell you’ve just woken up. You have a mug of coffee cradled to your chest and your hair pulled back into a messy bun.

“You wanna talk about it?” You ask him. His lips purse together grimly because he can’t and that was always the point of contention between him and his ex. He could never discuss what happened with the club but she would see the fall out from it. He’d withdrawn from her, so he didn’t have to see the hurt in her eyes everytime he refused her.

“Club business.” He says, his voice rough.

Already he can see how this ends. His silence will be the thing that kills it, the same way it did his marriage. He wonders if it’s better to cut off contact completely because already he knows he’s falling in love with you. That it started in Lake Tahoe and now it’s playing out in the months that follow.

“Ok.” You say, leaning back against the headboard. “Tell me what you and Melina got up to instead.”

He’s surprised by the change of topic, but he welcomes it. He explains how excited she is about the science fair, that he has no idea where she got that enthusiasm from. The two of you discuss STEM programs, how the world needs more female pioneers. You make him promise to send you the video of her ‘Elephant’s Toothpaste’ experiment before you hang up. He goes to bed with a smile on his face and a lighter heart.

When the postcard from Japan arrives a few days later, his fingers trace over the writing as he studies the message you’ve written.

Twenty Third of February – Los Angeles x

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Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

[warningsine]

Exquisitely twisted and perversely romantic, Interview with the Vampire returns with another feast of juicy melodrama.

Once again the story unfolds over multiple timeframes, structured around the titular interview with 145-year-old vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson). Speaking to journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), he narrates a gothic memoir of love, betrayal, self-loathing, and inhuman morality. Part interrogation, part therapy, these interview scenes see Daniel attempt to dissect Louis' curated recollections of the past.

It's not surprising to learn that several of IWTV's writers are playwrights. Anchored by Jacob Anderson's multifaceted performance, the show switches back and forth between maximalist emotion and tense psychodrama, backed by a sumptuous orchestral score by Daniel Hart. The characters often seem to be performing for an audience, whether it's literally on stage, or in a persona crafted for someone else's benefit. These self-absorbed monsters simply love to create drama.

Season 1 ended with a one-two punch of plot twists, as Louis recounted the bloody end of his relationship with Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) and revealed that his human assistant "Rashid" is actually his 514-year-old vampire lover, Armand (Assad Zaman). No wonder Daniel snidely compares Louis' life to a telenovela.

Keeping Armand on the backburner for an entire season was a thrillingly bold move, upending the power dynamics of the interview and giving Daniel a second source as we delve into Louis and Armand's first meeting in 1940s Paris.

After disposing of Lestat, Louis and Claudia (Delainey Hayles) travel through war-torn Europe in search of other vampires. Previously acting as father and daughter, they're now more like siblings, with Claudia dragging Louis along in her search for a vampiric family. Her quest leads them to the Théâtre des Vampires, a theater troupe who use gory cabaret to attract their human prey. Armand is their director, a subdued figure compared to showboating performers like the Théâtre's lead actor Santiago, a sexy egomaniac played to the hilt by the marvelous Ben Daniels. 

Replacing Claudia's original actor, Bailey Bass, Delainey Hayles reintroduces Claudia in a more mature role. Fearless but still yearning for recognition, she forges a new life while grappling with old, unsolvable problems. Immortality has trapped her in perpetual adolescence, a taboo in vampire culture. Intriguingly, her most interesting new relationship this season is with a human woman (Roxane Duran).

Louis, meanwhile, still struggles with his identity as a vampire. Wandering on the outskirts of human society, he becomes a compulsive photographer, trying to figure out his place in a world without Lestat. 

This season's biggest challenge is retaining the show's momentum without Sam Reid at center stage. His Lestat is the role of a lifetime: a magnetic tyrant whose powerhouse emotions balance out Jacob Anderson's more naturalistic performance. Their chemistry cemented IWTV as must-watch television, and you can't just throw that away. With Lestat unavoidably absent for this chunk of Louis' memories, the solution is to bring him back as a hallucinatory ghost, haunting Louis' blossoming romance with Armand. 

In yet another miraculous piece of casting, Assad Zaman is equally convincing as a steely vampiric leader and as a doe-eyed Renaissance muse. Surveying the world with a mournful, heavy-lidded gaze, his resting expression is haughty and serene. It's a serenity born of meticulous control, which Daniel Molloy threatens to disrupt.

Scorning Louis and Armand's cutesy displays as a happy couple, Daniel is now doubly motivated to find discrepancies in their story. His vampire hosts may hold all the physical power, but perhaps they made a mistake by inviting an investigative journalist over the threshold. 

Interview with the Vampire revels in the idea of subjective, unreliable narrators: redacted journals, emotional bias, supernatural hypnosis. Louis wants to take charge of his own story, narrating the historical flashbacks in a poetic, practiced monologue. He's probably been rehearsing this conversation for decades, keen to revise his first interview with Daniel in 1973 — a meeting that Daniel recalls with a suspicious lack of clarity. Behind this floats the specter of Armand-as-Rashid, sitting quietly in the corner of Louis' "solo" interview scenes last season. Armand wants to shape the narrative too.

In Season 1, Armand's ever-present iPad felt like an affectation of his secretarial persona. Now we recognize it as a facet of his controlling personality, constantly taking notes and managing his business at a distance. Back in the 1940s, this trait made itself known in his role as a theater director, watching from the rafters and scribbling in the margins of the company's scripts. Armand even takes his iPad to bed, a location that noticeably lacks the carnality of Louis' relationship with Lestat. 

Contrasting with Lestat's volatile passions, Armand presents himself as a civilized and caring partner. He's diligent and soft-spoken. He and Louis finish each other's sentences, mirroring their body language in coordinated outfits. Yet the absent Lestat still has immense gravitational pull in Louis' psyche. Driven by feverish desires and snarling fits of rage, his love was possessive, all-encompassing, and addictive. 

In a gothic romance, there's no escape and no happily-ever-after. Louis can't let go of Lestat, and Armand can't ignore Lestat's lingering presence in his lover's memories. Every permutation of this love triangle is toxic in its own way. Louis claims that Armand is the love of his life, but really he just exchanged one unhealthy relationship for another. You get the impression that Armand has spent decades troubleshooting the best way to keep Louis by his side, resulting in a soft, solicitous attitude with an undertone of Munchausen's by proxy. 

Armand's controlling influence extends to the architecture of their minimalist Dubai penthouse, a sort of luxury terrarium built to keep Louis contained. Once upon a time he visited jazz bars and rubbed shoulders with humanity. Now he's completely isolated from the outside world, cloistered away in a tax haven for business tycoons.

A set of decorative bars frame their bedroom like a cage, and the apartment's floor-to-ceiling windows represent a potential death trap for Louis. Unlike Armand, he's still young enough to be vulnerable to sunlight. Their household library is similarly tailored to Armand's superhuman powers, shelved in midair where Armand can fly up and peruse their collection but Louis — still stuck on the ground with the humans — faces a physical barrier to entry. 

Amid all this, you may find yourself hoping that this purse-mouthed little control freak gets what's coming to him. And that's the magic of Interview with the Vampire, because really, who are we kidding? Is Armand really the bad guy here? No! Everyone's the bad guy!

By any reasonable metric, all of the vampire characters are serial killers. At one point Armand and Louis have a flirty little chat while their pals massacre an entire mansion of partygoers in the background. It's absurd to analyze their story from a moralizing perspective. Claudia is probably the most sympathetic character of all, and she'd happily tear out throats from dusk till dawn. As for Lestat, we want him to return because he makes for good television, not because he's good for Louis.

This embrace of emotion over logic and ethics is what makes IWTV so compelling. Current pop culture isn't comfortable with melodrama, keeping it at arm's length with uncomfortable laughter and derogatory comparisons to soap opera. But Interview with the Vampire has no interest in irony or restraint. Its humor lies in the overlap between comedy and horror, and its central performances hinge on total commitment. Rarely do we see such a clever, creative work of adaptation, mining classic vampire tropes for a deliciously energizing take on the genre.

[itsthenovelteafactor]

Vanya and the Phantom

I asked and y’all answered (special thanks to @schizoidwire and @the-aro-ace-arrow-ace  and all the people who responded to my earlier post for encouraging me!), so it is time for how The Phantom of the Opera song introduction can be read as a look into Vanya’s self-narrative and also foreshadows future events in a really subtle and interesting way. 

I’m channeling my inner Elliot and going into full conspiracy mode. This is gonna be a long one, y’all. 

Part One: In Which I Expose Myself as a Former Theater Kid

So, for those who aren’t familiar with The Phantom of the Opera, it was originally a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux back in 1909. In 1986, Andrew Lloyd Webber rewrote it as a musical. For purposes of my analysis here, I am just going to be discussing the musical because 1) the score used in the opening scene is from it and 2) I’ve never read the book. (If anyone out there has read the book and wants to weigh in, please do!) 

It’s a very aesthetic show, and draws on a lot of gothic themes and imagery. The plot follows an opera house, and specifically a young chorus girl named Christine Daaé. I’m not going to explain the whole show plot in detail because wikipedia exists, but I will do a quick overview here and point out some things as they relate to things I’ll be discussing later. Also there will be a test after and it will NOT be multiple choice.

The show begins when the opera house is sold to new owners who 1) just want to make money and 2) do not respect the opera house’s resident ghost (who isn’t really a ghost, but we’ll get to that later.) When the Phantom makes his presence known, and freaks out the resident prima donna singer (who will be relevant later) Carlotta, who says she won’t sing under these conditions. It is then that Christine appears. She’s quiet and humble and has always lived in the background, but is incredibly talented. The woman who runs the chorus (also owner of the opera house’s resident braincell) suggests Christine sing the part. She does, and is amazing. Everyone is blown away, and she’s catapulted into instant fame and success. 

We later learn that Christine has been studying under the Phantom, who appears to her in mirrors. She calls him the Angel of Music, and thinks that he was sent to teach her by her recently deceased father. He isn’t. He’s actually pretty malicious, and is obsessed with Christine, wants to control her voice, and doesn’t like her dating anyone. Which is a bit awkward when her childhood friend shows up and promptly falls in love with her. 

Anyways, Carlotta is jealous of the attention Christine has been getting and threatens to leave prompting the new owners to cut Christine from the program. The Phantom doesn’t like it at all, sends a bunch of letters, things escalate, people are murdered, and the whole first act ends with the chandelier falling from the ceiling and crashing onto the stage (which is done with really cool effects, oftentimes beginning the show hanging over the audience. It’s a BIG MOMENT and one of the most iconic ones from the show. This will also be relevant later.)

Act two takes place a few months later, wherein no one has seen the Phantom. Shock of all shocks, though, he’s not dead. He’s been writing an opera and he wants Christine to star in it. More stuff happens, you learn the backstory of the Phantom (which is pretty sad, ngl, but in no way makes him less of a creep) and the story ends with the Phantom kidnapping Christine and giving her an ultimatum: stay with him forever, or he kills Raoul (aka childhood friend/romantic interest guy). She agrees to stay with him and he’s so moved by her compassion that he lets them both go and disappears forever. 

Part Two: Casting the Characters

That’s interesting, Rosie (note sarcasm) but you said this was about The Umbrella Academy? I did, in fact. So, we meet Vanya when she’s playing a medley of songs from The Phantom of the Opera. Since it’s primarily the melodies and not one of the orchestral pieces from her performance later (I don’t think), we can assume she’s just playing it for herself (which is nice! good on you, Vanya). 

Maybe she’s never seen the play and just likes the score, but for purposes here, let’s assume she’s familiar with it. 

You can tell a lot about a person by the stories they connect with (for example, I like TUA because I like fun sibling dynamics, found family, music, and being sad). And I think that it makes sense that The Phantom of the Opera would be a story that resonates with Vanya. The overlooked chorus girl finds power in music, and, after years in the background, is finally given a chance to show how special she is. 

So, yeah. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that Vanya sees herself as Christine. There are some discrepancies, sure, but this is Vanya’s self-narrative, which we learn pretty much immediately is unreliable. (Love her, but it’s true.) And if Vanya is Christine, then we can try and tap into her perspective to look at some other characters. 

Anyways remember Carlotta (the prima donna opera singer who always got the spotlight and tried to destroy everything good that happened to Christine because she felt threatened that someone might be as good/better than her whose entire personality and role in the story I just summarized, rendering my plot recap useless)? Carlotta is how Vanya views Allison. (Kind of all her siblings, but her relationship with Allison is the most important here.)

Think about the scene in the cabin? 

“You couldn’t risk me threatening your place in the house! You couldn’t handle the fact that Dad might find me special!” - Vanya, having a mental breakdown.

This always struck me as an interesting accusation to throw, since prior to this moment, I don’t think there was any indication that Allison had ever felt threatened by Vanya. She excluded her, sure, and wasn’t super friendly at times, but the idea that Allison has been pulling strings to keep Vanya out of her spotlight is new. But that is exactly the role Carlotta plays in Phantom. 

Fun fact! At one point in the musical, the Phantom enchants Carlotta so that she loses her voice right before coming on stage. 

Part Three: The Phantom of the Opera is there

So based on everything I’ve said so far, the most straightforward reading is then, that Leonard Peabody/Harold Jenkins (who for purposes here I’ll call Leonard) is the stand in for the Phantom, which works... really well. Both in helping to understand Vanya and also because it foreshadows the twist of season one in a really cool way.

So, the Phantom appears to Christine first not as an enemy, but as a friend and teacher, who encourages her to be more confident in her abilities. He trains her to develop her singing ability. While the teacher-student dynamic is actually inverted initially with Vanya and Leonard, from the get go, he is showering her with compliments, encouraging her to be confident in her abilities, and, at least on the surface, supporting her in a way she hasn’t been supported before (he’s a trash human but an expert manipulator). 

But, in the play, the Phantom is also very possessive over Christine and her power (er, I mean voice). He also is perfectly willing to kill and/or hurt people who he views as standing in the way of Christine and her success (see the aforementioned Carlotta incident). Which is exactly what Leonard does to Vanya. He kills the first chair violinist to help her get it, and orchestrates a whole master plan to get her to reveal her powers on his terms. 

Even the part where he starts “training” her to use her powers kind of resembles the second act of the play. The Phantom wrote a play for Christine and she’s going to star in it, whether she wants to or not. 

(One could even make the argument of the parallels between Christine believing the Phantom was sent by her father to teach her and Leonard showing up because of his revenge scheme against Vanya’s father, but I honestly don’t have much support for that.) 

Part Three: Two Conflicting Narratives

So, as you might’ve noticed, I sort of have two different threads of analysis going on right now. 1) The Phantom of the Opera parallel is part of Vanya’s self-narrative and in it she mischaracterizes Allison, making her more suspicious of her motivations and 2) Leonard Peabody is clearly the Phantom and doesn’t bother being subtle about it. I hope that I’ve been convincing (or at least intriguing) for you to get to this point, because here is where they come together.

Vanya has this parallel going, but she doesn’t see Leonard as the Phantom. In the beginning at least, he’s her Raoul. If I had to guess, I’d say Reginald Hargreeves is the Phantom in Vanya’s self-narrative (says he’ll train her but wants to manipulate her and keep her locked away for himself, strict teacher who doesn’t really care about her well being, wearing a mask to appear more normal/human... she wouldn’t exactly be wrong). Leonard, on the other hand, is Vanya’s supporter. He validates her, and believes in her, and taker her side when Carlotta and the opera house owners (er, the rest of the Hargreeves children) gang up on her and conspire to keep her out. 

This is all building to, of course, the final confrontation. The Phantom says Christine has to pick one or the other. When Allison comes to talk to Vanya, Vanya feels as if she’s been given an ultimatum and lashes out.

And that’s where everything (including this parallel) starts to crumble. 

(I honestly don’t know a lot about the other characters and how they fit in. I suppose we could have Five = Raoul if we ignore romance plot and focus on the childhood friend that hasn’t been seen in a while angle? And maybe also Pogo = Madame Giry. Vanya doesn’t really have any friends to be Meg.) 

Part Four: It’s All About the Moon

So that is kind of the gist of The Phantom of the Opera as a window into Vanya’s self-narrative theory, but there are a couple of other loosely related ideas I thought I might as well bring up since this thing is already ridiculously long. 

Remember how I mentioned the chandelier is like, THE scene from The Phantom of the Opera back in part one, and said it’d be relevant later? Bringing that back now, because I’m going to pull a Luther and connect everything to the moon. 

So, to get the obvious out of the way, the moon exploding and the chandelier coming crashing to the stage are similar because something falls, breaks into a bunch of pieces, destroys a bunch of stuff, and creates a powerful and memorable image to close off before an act/season break (the next installment of which begins with a time jump). 

Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that The Phantom of the Opera is told out of order. The opening scene shows a grown up Raoul at an auction for the items left behind after the opera house closes, and it switches to the past as the remains of the chandelier rise upwards to the ceiling, Phantom’s theme swelling (it’s a really cool moment, tbh). Following the prologue of The Umbrella Academy, we switch to the present with two images: Vanya alone on the stage, and then Luther alone on the moon. Which has a kind of symmetry that might mean nothing, but is still kind of cool. 

(Also the item that Raoul buys from the auction is a music box with a monkey crashing symbols on top of it. Which might mean nothing.) 

Part Five: How is she STILL talking about this? (AKA Conclusion)

To be honest, this is more a very tangled “things I noticed and thought were interesting” discussion than a formal essay with any clear thesis. While there is a chance that this was all coincidental and I’ve gone full Pepe Sylvia, the music selection in The Umbrella Academy is one of the things that they seem to be really deliberate about. 

I would love to chat with anyone about this theory, so feel free to reach out in the notes or message me! My inbox is always open. Much love, and thank you for reading, if you got this far! ❤️

[eyemarked]

theory: the tapes are agnes montague

i think the ghost of agnes montague is bound to the tapes. it’s a theory that i’ve had for a few weeks now, and the fact that 196 directly addressed the tapes without actually jossing this theory has only fueled me. vincent @girlbossgertrude made a post about this exact theory earlier today which is much more concise than this, i just wanted to post my own version for documentation purposes!

theory reasoning, speculation, and other thoughts under the cut:

gertrude knew that agnes was immortal. logically, since gertrude was not, binding agnes directly to gertrude to prevent the desolation’s ritual would inevitably lead to agnes being unleashed upon gertrude’s death.

so instead, she used the binding web ritual to bind agnes not to gertrude herself, but to the tapes, the archives, and/or the position of archivist, which would continue to exist long after her.

in ep 161 dwelling, in a recording from 2015, gertrude notes that she’s been using the tapes for 40 years, aka since 1975. 1975 is also approximately the year that she carried out the web binding on agnes. the timeline fits!

upon agnes’ death, she began haunting the archives, and inhabited (and/or could manifest herself through) the tape recorders.

not too sure about the above point - either she is the tapes, in the same way that gerry was the book, or she’s just a ghost who can speak through the recorders EVP-style.

side note: we already canonically know that gertrude is absolutely the kind of person who would bind someone’s ghost into a supernatural object after their death against their will! someone who was born into a terrible destiny, raised in an evil environment and taught terrible things, who felt like they could never fit into normal human society due to their upbringing... the parallels and foreshadowing are already there, is all i’m saying.

gertrude knew about agnes being in the tapes, but as established in ep 167 curiosity, had no interest in connecting with agnes or furthering the web bond between them. she continued to use the tapes for her work, but never spoke directly to agnes, up until her emma betrayed her and she needed to speak with someone to talk it over.

the “one person she could trust” - why would agnes be this for her if they had never spoken to each other before? maybe because she’s been carrying her around and using her for her work for years already?

additionally, how did agnes know the details of sarah carpenter’s death? if she was still with the lightless flame, then it’s certainly possible that she was told all the gory details by a cultist - but the timeline sets this meeting after agnes’ death. is it not also possible that she knew because she was there? because emma was taking notes and recording the encounters she orchestrated in order to analyze them, and had used a tape recorder during the event?

this would explain how the tapes are clearly web-aligned. agnes grew up with the web, was bound by the web all her life, and was bound to the tapes by the web in death.

this would explain why the tapes are the only medium through which supernatural phenomena can be recorded without corruption, even though, as established in ep 65 binary, they are a digital medium just like computers.

the above is a point in favor of agnes literally being the tapes - binary was about a person whose consciousness inhabited a digital medium! what if it was foreshadowing all along?

this would, of course, also explain the timeline discrepancies, how agnes and gertrude spoke after agnes’ death. agnes was dead, she just wasn’t gone. it would also explain how their meeting happened at all - as the episode establishes, the lightless flame would not have been keen to allow their messiah to meet with the archivist. how did gertrude contact her, meet with her, and keep this whole thing a secret from the cult, when agnes seemed to have been under pretty heavy surveillance for most of her life? maybe gertrude didn’t need to contact her at all; maybe she was already in the archives.

various other assorted evidence/interesting implications:

the earliest known instance of the tapes turning on by themselves is in order to record gertrude’s death.

all of the tapes that mysteriously made it to the cabin with the pack of statements had to do with fire. people assumed this was blatant foreshadowing for the archives burning down, but even back in april i thought that seemed too obvious, and indeed as of ep 196 it’s seeming more and more unlikely. what if it was, in fact, a hint that the tapes are also desolation-aligned?

agnes and gertrude were implied to be anchors - much like the tapes have been an anchor for jon, such as when they helped him escape the coffin.

in 161, gertrude say that she’s going to tell leitner about agnes’ pyromania sometime, and then the very next line is leitner noting that the tape is still running. it could be a coincidence, but what if his attention was drawn by the reminder of agnes because he knew she was in the tapes?

additionally, there’s that odd moment in ep 80 the librarian where he addresses the tapes directly, saying that he’s “not sure you would have liked [Jon]”. sure, this could have been vaguely addressing gertrude’s spirit - but it could just as easily be saying ‘i’m not sure you would have liked him compared to how i think you felt about gertrude.’

gertrude says in ep 162 a cozy cabin that she generally only uses the tapes for things that she thinks her successor needs to know. implying that she thinks all the tapes are ensured to reach the next archivist? obviously this didn’t turn out to be true in canon, but there must have been some reasoning behind this that made her think it would happen.

that goddamn web lighter - an intersection between the web and fire/desolation - has been with jon all along. as have the tapes.

in ep 196 this old house, annabelle reveals that agnes was the thing that finally ripped open the crack and turned it into an actual hole. shortly thereafter, annabelle reveals the hole, which is held together/being maintained by a web made of tape.

annabelle doesn’t actually say that the tapes have been her all along! they’re obviously web-aligned, but she says that she’s been using them as material/tools to spin her web - much like the web used agnes as a tool to open the gap!

[whittlebaggett8]

Tajikistan’s Prison Riot: More Than Meets the Eye

For the next time in six months, violence broke out at a prison in Tajikistan.

Looking at the story from abroad, it was yet another scarce circumstance of Tajik news breaking into worldwide media: The New York Instances and The Guardian ran a Reuters tale, the AFP produced a piece, and Al Jazeera lined the difficulty, way too. For lots of media shops, the hook was the Islamic State thread allegedly operating by means of the incident. In accordance to the Tajik government, the riot at the Kirpichniy prison in Vahdat district eventually resulted in the deaths of 29 prisoners and a few guards. In the government’s telling, it was a flash of violence orchestrated by Islamic Condition members.

But area dynamics are vital to knowing the incident.

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“I guess it is simpler for readers just to be offered with a story that ISIS carried out one more attack, instead than confronting the risk that the condition by itself was dependable for the violence in an hard work to purge political enemies,” Dr. Edward Lemon, the DMGS-Kennan Institute Fellow at the Daniel Morgan Graduate Faculty in Washington, D.C. and an pro on Tajikistan informed The Diplomat.

Regionally focused media, like RFE/RL and Eurasianet, included the tale with far more element but identical caveats: Verification is up coming to difficult and an impartial investigation particularly unlikely.

“Ultimately, as in the earlier prison riot in November, the deficiency of transparency from the government can make it incredibly tough to convey to precisely what took place,” Lemon said.

Approximately versions of what occurred at the jail, situated about 6 miles east of Dushanbe, have emerged. The first variation, inspiring considerably of the wire studies in tow, is centered on official accounts furnished principally via the Tajik Ministry of Justice.

Whilst the aspects have shifted some, it goes a thing like this: Islamic Point out militants — with the son of Gulmurod Khalimov, Bekhruz Gulmurod, as an instigator — killed three guards and 5 other prisoners with knives. In a assertion cited by Eurasianet, a struggle has broken out involving the Islamic State customers and associates of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRPT). The militants then established the prison’s clinic on fire, took various other prisoners hostage and tried to escape. Tajik stability forces then killed 24 prisoners while restoring buy to the prison, which properties somewhere around 1,500 inmates. In the ultimate official rely, 3 guards, 17 Islamic State users and 12 other prisoners have been killed. Amid the other prisoners killed were being significant-profile customers of IRPT, a banned opposition occasion now working in exile. Versions on the government’s tale suggest it was an escape try, a battle among ISIS sympathizers and IRPT associates, an assault on guards, or a mixture thereof.

“The govt story that blames Khalimov’s son Bekhruz, arrested for links to ISIS, for starting up the riot in an endeavor to escape and in the course of action ended up killing IRPT members and other prisoners, is plausible. But I imagine a number of pertinent inquiries remain,” Lemon stated.

Like the November incident, despite the fact that just a couple prisoners reportedly began the violence, Lemon asks, “why have been so several ‘neutralized or perished’ in particular if they ended up unarmed? The use of pressure by the governing administration would seem indiscriminate and disproportionate.”

The second variation (lined in English in extra detail listed here by Eurasianet) arrives from the IRPT and is a lot less an alternate telling, per se, than an accusation of a achievable address up. The IRPT alleges that the loss of life overall is higher than the formal count, pointing to rushed burials as suspicious and apparent discrepancies involving the state’s version and the accidents sustained by the IRPT customers who have been killed.

“Back in the Soviet Union, the authorities had a inclination to use prisoners to do away with political opponents. Provided that the targets appear to have been former market minister Saidov and IRPT associates, it could be that the condition structured, or at least allowed the riot to occur, as a signifies of removing the government’s opponents,” Lemon proposed. “This would seem plausible. But we do not know for absolutely sure.”

The personalities and companies cited as concerned — the IRPT, the Islamic State, Khalimov — are between the most delicate subjects for the Tajik federal government.

“Everything to do with Khalimov is just so charged. The exact same goes for the the IRPT,” Steve Swerdlow, a Central Asia researcher at Human Legal rights Enjoy, instructed The Diplomat.

Dushanbe has tied by itself in knots more than the previous 4 decades to portray the IRPT as very little less than a terrorist business. The get together was outlawed by the end of 2015, just after dropping its two seats in the Tajik legislature previously in the year. Shortly thereafter, the party’s leaders were charged with many crimes, together with terrorism and extremism, and handed long sentences the attorneys representing them were also jailed on charges human rights advocates say are obviously politically determined.

The Islamic Point out, far too, is a sensitive issue for the Tajik authorities. Former distinctive law enforcement commander Gulmurod Khalimov defected to be part of the Islamic Condition in 2015. Khalimov has been rumored several instances to be useless (and most probable is, though who truly is familiar with?). In the meantime, the Islamic Point out has shed its territory in the Center East. If Khalimov is deceased, his ghost certainly haunts the Tajik governing administration. In April 2018, Khalimov’s son, Bekhruz, was arrested and in July of that yr, two of his brothers and two nephews were killed by Tajik protection forces raiding the home they were being in. The Tajik federal government alleged the team was preparing to cross into Afghanistan.

For the Tajik govt, the IRPT and the Islamic Point out are section and parcel of the same factor — a conclusion regional analysts eye with deep skepticism. As Artemy M. Kalinovsky, an assistant professor at the College of Amsterdam mentioned in an post very last 12 months, “Even in exile [the IRPT] has continued to simply call for opposition to the routine making use of democratic means it has not expressed any desire in fomenting an armed rebellion in Tajikistan.” When the Islamic Point out claimed an assault that killed four international cyclists past July in Tajikistan and manufactured a video of the attackers pledging allegiance to the black flag, Dushanbe doubled down on its narrative that the IRPT experienced arranged the assault.

Coming back to the latest prison violence, although clarity on the aspects is missing, both of those Lemon and Swerdlow proposed in their comments to The Diplomat that one detail is absolutely crystal clear: Jailed IRPT and opposition activists are at imminent threat in Tajikistan’s prisons.

“If opposition activists are staying qualified in just prisons, it is critical that the governing administration move them to a safer area, preferably location them totally free or inserting them below household arrest,” Lemon mentioned.

Regardless of the particulars of the most latest jail riot, Swerdlow advised The Diplomat, “the most important new component is that there are now pragmatic motives for the global neighborhood to act and press for the release, or at least for the movement to home arrest, of political prisoners” who may possibly be qualified.

The post Tajikistan’s Prison Riot: More Than Meets the Eye appeared first on Defence Online.

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