#and now i'm free to go listen to mag155 X_X

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG154!

- So, what Mary had left to Gertrude almost 100 episodes ago was indeed Eric’s page:

(MAG062) MARY: I’ve always found a singular devotion far too restrictive. Just ask Eric… or what’s left of him. […] GERTRUDE: And do you have any proof of this? Your… “magic book”. MARY: Yeah. [PAPER RUSTLING] You can keep this page. I made sure it was in English. GERTRUDE: Go– Who… who is it? MARY: A surprise, dear. Just make sure you’re alone when you read it. […] ARCHIVIST: […] Hmm. No… strange skin page. But there is a laptop. And a key. I wonder what it opens. End supplement. [CLICK.]

The Delano-Keays have been present since the beginning of the series (Gerry and Mary were introduced as soon as MAG004) yet were… all already dead when we began to hear Jon record his statements, presumably ending the von Closen line (unless somethingsomething about Albrecht’s two Shiny New Sons mentioned in MAG127). It’s strange, in a way, that it feels like we’re saying goodbye to them through that closure and the reveals of their stories… while we never met them alive? Only through a recording (Mary in MAG062), the recording of a “memory” (Eric’s page in MAG154) and a “memory” (Gerry’s page in MAG111). The three of them bound to the book but never at the same time – Mary binding and ripping Eric’s page before she would bind herself to the book, Gertrude burning Mary’s page before binding Gerry, and Gerry’s page ripped and then burned by Jon at the end of season 3.

- Eric’s VA did a fantastic job, and hhhhhhhhhhh, the way he… sometimes snarled a bit? Drawled? Just the same way Gerry spoke? It just dug the knife a bit further in – Eric and Gerry had the same kind of dry self-deprecating sarcasm about their condition, and you could feel that they sounded alike, that Gerry had taken after his father so much, and that they probably would have adored each other………………… Also noteworthy:

(MAG154) ERIC: … And Gerry? Have you seen my son? […] I chose the option I thought might keep Gerry safe.

Eric never called him “Gerard”, but called him “Gerry” twice. Given that:

(MAG111) ARCHIVIST: Thank you, Gerard. GERARD: Gerry. ARCHIVIST: What? GERRY: Gerard was what my mum called me. [EMBARRASSED CHUCKLE] I always wanted my friends to call me Gerry. ARCHIVIST: Thank you, Gerry. Uh… I dismiss you.

… Did the nickname stick in Gerry’s mind when he was an infant, and this is why he was fond of it…?

(And once again: Jon adopted “Gerry”, and was even mocked for it by Julia last episode… while Gertrude was using “Gerard” in MAG137. Until now, I was working under the assumption that Gertrude just wasn’t a “friend” enough to know about Gerry’s nickname but, no, turns out that she did know about it from Eric. Cold, Gertrude, cold.)

- Oopsies about the fact that Gerard had assumed that his father had been killed in his sleep:

(MAG111) GERARD: I never knew my dad. Not really. He worked in the Archives like you, but quit once I was born. I think he wanted to help raise me. But mum didn’t need the help, and after me she wasn’t able to have kids again, so she killed him in his sleep to practice her bookbinding. I guess she failed. I always thought he was in here, but when I eventually got hold of it, there wasn’t a page in there.

(MAG154) GERTRUDE: “When he opened his eyes, he of course saw nothing; but he heard her breathing, slow, and steady, and focused. [CREEPING STATIC SLOWLY RISING] And he immediately knew that she was finally going to kill him. When the garden shears plunged into his chest, he was surprised by how little actual pain there was – just the sudden feel of moisture on his chest, and the realisation that his body was growing weak, fading away. He wished she would say she was sorry she was doing this, that she loved him, that she would miss him – but he knew better, and his final thought was a gentle sadness at how little he was surprised. [OMINOUS RUMBLE WITH A SIDE OF CRACKLING RISES TO CRESCENDO] And so Eric Delano Ended.”

… he hadn’t been so lucky to stay asleep, uh.

- SO THIS IS WHY GERTRUDE HAD SEARCHED GERRY OUT…

(MAG111) GERRY: In the end it was Gertrude who saved me. She came to me when I was desperate, nowhere to go, and she offered to help. I just had to make sure I took the book while my mum was fading, and brought it to her, and then she would free me. I didn’t really believe her, I don’t think, but I did it anyway. When she returned the book to me a week later, her pages burned and mangled, I think I actually cried with relief. I never even considered that my mum might have taught Gertrude how to make pages for it before she was destroyed.

(MAG154) ERIC: Fine! I… I want two things. GERTRUDE: I’m listening. ERIC: I want you to find my son. If Mary is… if she’s gone, or worse… I want you to make sure he’s alright. GERTRUDE: [HUFF] I’m not exactly a mother figure. ERIC: You could hardly do worse than her. GERTRUDE: Fine. But I don’t know what growing up with Mary has done to him. If he’s… gone rotten, I can’t promise anything. ERIC: I understand. GERTRUDE: I suppose he might be useful. ERIC: Oh, sentimental as ever.

… Except that HUM, Eric made his request on July 2008 and Gerry was still haunted by Mary in autumn 2012 (MAG004) so, hey, Gertrude waited at least four years before making her move.

(Things that happened in-between: Gertrude stopped The Flesh’s ritual (October 2009), The Spiral’s (between October 2009 and 2011) and possibly The Lonely’s in that timeframe. She was already making active preparations to counter The Unknowing in October 2013, so did she end up approaching Gerry mostly because she thought he would be useful…? She mentioned in MAG137 (October 2014) that his connection to The Eye was a key to prevent it… “Sentimental as ever” like Eric said.)

- Aaand that’s what Gertrude meant by Eric’s “footsteps”:

(MAG137) GERTRUDE: Gerard may have a connection to The Eye, but I’m not convinced it will be enough. And I will admit I’ve grown… fond of the boy. I wonder, if I told him about Eric – whether he’d follow in his father’s footsteps. Still, that’s not like it kept Eric safe in The End.

… I had wondered if it was about, uh, falling Very Deep into Beholding. But no. It was about fleeing the heck out of it.

;; Gerry already had his eyes-tattoos before he began working with Gertrude (they had apparently protected him from Diego Molina’s fire in MAG012, there was the painting on the wall in MAG004…) so… If Gerry had known about Eric’s sacrifices and disgust of the Institute, maybe he wouldn’t have given so much of himself to The Eye. And Eric would probably have been so sad to know that, while he had fled from the Institute to care for his son, his son… ultimately had gotten so strongly Beholding-aligned and even more or less worked with the Institute (at least by collaborating with Gertrude)…

Given how Gerry didn’t mention his father’s blindness to Jon: no, Gertrude didn’t “tell him about Eric”. Not a surprise. (Gertruuuuude…)

- Some other bits relevant to the timeline:

* Given that (according to one of the given timelines) Elias joined the Institute in 1991 and became Head in 1996 (MAG049) and that Eric didn’t know about his ~promotion~:

(MAG154) ERIC: […] Wright would have preferred you not to know…! How is he, by the way? GERTRUDE: James? He died about… twelve years ago. Elias is Head of the Institute, now. ERIC: “Elias”? Elias Bouchard, seriously? GERTRUDE: Hm, he has changed a lot. ERIC: Must have!

It means that Eric left between 1991 and 1996. Given that Gerry was very little when Eric died, and a kid/teenager in 2002 (MAG035), it’s possible that Gerry was actually a biiit younger than Jon – who was born around 1987-1988…? ;__;

* So, Eric had left the Institute before 1996… but clearly identified Adelard as Gertrude’s “friend”:

(MAG154) ERIC: She never played dumb when I was stalked by bloated, blood-sucking things, or told me I was “imagining it” when I saw your friend Adelard drop a screaming box into the Thames.

The earliest acknowledgement of Gertrude being in contact with Dekker was during MAG077, recorded in November 1996. She had also mentioned an older statement (either “by” Adelard or where Adelard appeared) from July 1991:

(MAG077) GERTRUDE: Based on the interactions and effects, I suspect this to be the creature that Adelard Dekker refers to as the “NotThem” in statement 9910607. […] Based on Dekker’s statement, it would seem Polaroids are also relatively stable.

(Or February 1991; the “7” had become a “2” in the next episode.) We’re still missing this one, since Jon had found another statement in the file in MAG078. I didn’t have the impression that Gertrude and Adelard were in close contact yet in MAG077 (“Adelard Dekker”, name + last name, implied… some distance) but it looks like, no, they were already close enough for Eric to identify him and link him to Gertrude before 1996.

* Mary had given Eric’s page to Gertrude on the 3rd of July 2008 (MAG062); the recording of Gertrude and Eric is from 21st July 2008 (MAG154). Despite Gertrude’s words, I would have almost expected Gertrude to wait… years, before invoking Eric. On the one hand, she “just” waited 18 days before listening to it; on the other hand… it was indeed a long time already, although she had good suspicions of what and who it was.

The Buried’s ritual attempt, “The Sunken Sky” had taken place on 17th June 2008; so, cheer! When Eric told Gertrude all of this and she didn’t flinch:

(MAG154) ERIC: You know, you were never actually that nice to me when I worked for you, Gertrude. Not like Michael, or Emma. […] She never promised anything. Not even in her vows. She never betrayed me. Not like you. She never played dumb when I was stalked by bloated, blood-sucking things, or told me I was “imagining it” when I saw your friend Adelard drop a screaming box into the Thames. She didn’t try to keep me in the dark just so I wouldn’t stop being useful. She never made me complicit in a thousand nightmares, and lives ruined for the sick joy of some otherworldly voyeur. Compared to that… I suppose a few murders were easier to stomach…! […] But I couldn’t be a part of it. Not when I saw what happened to everyone else you involved. I had to get out, to escape this place. I had a son to look after, he needed me! … Or so I thought. And that’s when you turn nasty, isn’t it? When all your… “resources”, they no longer want to serve their purpose. I suppose you didn’t know there was a way out, a way to… escape. But if you had, would you have told me…? […] She laid out her own plans as well; her dreams of power. In many ways, I guess they were no better than yours. But at least, she didn’t bother to hide behind noble aims.

It was just a month after she had sacrificed and dismembered Jan Kilbride to stop The Buried!

* ��� Gertrude……………

(MAG154) ERIC: You know, you were never actually that nice to me when I worked for you, Gertrude. Not like Michael, or Emma. […] And that’s when you turn nasty, isn’t it? When all your… “resources”, they no longer want to serve their purpose. I suppose you didn’t know there was a way out, a way to… escape. But if you had, would you have told me…?

The exchange took place in July 2008 and we know that The Great Twisting didn’t happen before October 2009 (since Deborah Madaki received an invitation to Sannikov Land from Gabriel one week before she gave her statement in MAG126). Which means… that when MAG154 happened, Michael Shelley was still working in the Archives. Would still be for a bit over a year before Gertrude sacrificed him to stop The Spiral’s ritual. It’s not really surprising that Gertrude “there’s ten years yet before I can afford a conscience” Robinson 1°) didn’t share with Michael that she had received a trace of Eric (Michael-The-Distortion did tell Jon that Michael Shelley had been kept ignorant of the spookiness), although they were on good terms, 2°) still ruthlessly sacrificed Michael to stop The Great Twisting despite Eric’s harsh words about her behaviour and motivations, about how they hurt people around her, about how there was absolutely nothing “noble” to them, 3°) didn’t share with Michael that there was a way out of the Archives and acted just like Eric predicted. Indeed, Gertrude learned about it… and didn’t share that knowledge with those who could have benefited from it. Didn’t give them a choice, whether to stay or to leave.

(And, from the depiction of Michael Shelley in MAG101? I am not even sure that he would have chosen to leave.)

- INCREDIBLY, Eric Actually Had The Qualifications for the job:

(MAG154) ERIC: So when I finished my Master’s in Library Science and saw a vacancy at the Magnus Institute, of all places, I jumped at the chance. The chance to pursue my passion and my career at the same time seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up! It was only an “assistant archivist” position, of course, but that was fine. A good entry position, I’d, “I’d soon move on,” I told myself. [HUFF] Yeah… And for the first few years, it was pretty much exactly the job I expected. Longer hours than I hoped, and the Archivist seemed less interested in doing her job than I was; but all told, there were worse places to work.

James Wright’s time… another era. Present-time, Elias hired Jon who doesn’t have any library-science-related diploma (MAG093), and Martin who lied on his CV (MAG056); Sasha, who was more on the computer side of things; Tim, who… actually had a background in a publishing company, so was probably more in his element than the others. Of course Tim and Eric had to die: they were actually competent.

- I like how you could clearly identify Mary as Beholding/End through Eric’s eyes:

(MAG154) ERIC: Then I met Mary. She was like no one I’d ever met before in my life. She was beautiful. Like a… u–uh, like a shark is beautiful. Every movement she made was deliberate, sharp, and her eyes were always focused on something, always watching. And when she looked at me, I always felt afraid. But there was something else. Something under the fear. Something that made me feel very aware of all – my – blood. […] And Mary pushed so hard. Harder, even, than you. But I let her, because… she gave me something I had never before experienced: danger! The things she taught me, had me do… I’d never known anything like it. Whenever I kissed her, it tasted like blood.

That charisma, and also DD: Eric no…

(It’s weird because, first depiction of Mary we got (MAG004), she was already dead and a ghost. First time we heard her: she was already an old woman (MAG062), and quite horrible. Eric’s statement was… hilarious/tragic/sad in the fact that it was partially about how and why he had tried to escape the Archives, and a lot about how he was absolutely taken in (and over) by Mary… but also explained how she was getting her ways. What is it with old women in TMA being dangerous and murderous and domineering and kinda hot? Mary was born around 1946 (MAG062: “I was 9 years old at the time, so it would have been… 1955?”), Gertrude presumably during the late 40s/early 50s (MAG137: “The Risen War failed [in 1942] a few years before I was even born.” + MAG145: “Can’t have been older than… twenty-five.” when she retrieved some of Agnes’s hair in the ashes at Hill Top Road, and the house had burned in 1974 according to MAG008), Agnes was born in the early 60s if she was truly eleven in Ronald’s statement… those were fine years, uh.)

- I have a bit of trouble understanding the status of Eric’s sight, as a ghost/~memory~:

(MAG154) ERIC: I suppose…! Mary used to get me out to bounce ideas off of; talk through her thoughts and theories. Never listened to me, obviously, but… nothing new there. GERTRUDE: Well, it’s… good to see you, I suppose. ERIC: You too. … You got old. GERTRUDE: Better than being dead. ERIC: [HUFF] Fair enough. To be honest, I’m impressed, more than anything. Hard to get old in this business; you either die or you, er… “stay young”. [PAUSE] … How did Mary look? GERTRUDE: [CHUCKLE] She got old, too.

Gertrude didn’t notice that he couldn’t see, and Eric specifically mentioned that Mary had made him “watch” his own dismemberment. The way she initially checked if it was indeed Eric was similar to Jon’s reaction when invoking Gerry in MAG111, so it might be that the people invoked do not have… well-defined or identifiable shape outside of their voices; but then, Mary had been able to recognise ghosts on sight when she was a child observing the doctor (MAG062). And here: on the one hand, Eric noticed Gertrude being old; on the other hand, he asked about Mary (although… it was implied that she hadn’t spoken to him in a while – “used to get me out”). Or is it because Eric doesn’t have any senses left, only… overall perceptions of the world around him, so he was able to see Gertrude because he wasn’t a body anymore…? Or just guessed from her voice that she “sounded” older, therefore had grown old…?

- Crying a bit though, because Eric… was aware of Mary’s doings. Was disillusioned about the fact that no, she had never cared about him. But still had the instinct to:

(MAG154) ERIC: So. Was there anything else? GERTRUDE: No. No, I, I don’t think so. ERIC: Then, if you don’t mind? I think I’d like to go away, now. […] If you see Mary again, tell her– … No. [HUFF] I guess there’s not really anything else to say. [CLICK.]

Eric… (Also YIPS that he was… very fond of Gerry, described Gerry as his main motivation (ANCHOR?) to leave the Archives – not Mary (though that could be a small retconning on his part) – and still… had thought that it was an acceptable idea to have a child with Mary despite knowing full well that she was a serial killer and dangerous. “I chose the option I thought might keep Gerry safe. At least, if I was home with him, I could perhaps… soften the edges of his mother.” Eric, my librarian-with-a-degree, my dude: Gerry didn’t come out of nowhere or only from Mary, the fact that you were aware of who she was and still accepted to bring a child into this mess… ;;) (But then: he was absolutely taken with Mary, uh…)

- ;; What Eric said about Gertrude, mentioning what Mary wasn’t doing to him…

(MAG154) ERIC: She never betrayed me. Not like you. She never played dumb when I was stalked by bloated, blood-sucking things, or told me I was “imagining it” when I saw your friend Adelard drop a screaming box into the Thames. She didn’t try to keep me in the dark just so I wouldn’t stop being useful. She never made me complicit in a thousand nightmares, and lives ruined for the sick joy of some otherworldly voyeur. […] Mary, at least, played straight with me. She knew all about the Institute. And when we were married, when she was sure I could handle it, she laid it all out for me: the Powers, the rituals, all the messy little cogs of the games you play with the universe. She laid out her own plans as well; her dreams of power. In many ways, I guess they were no better than yours. But at least, she didn’t bother to hide behind noble aims. … Maybe that’s why I chose her, in The End. At least she was honest.

… was absolutely a reflection of what Gerry said Mary had done to him:

(MAG111) GERRY: Eventually, I grew old enough and wise enough to see her obsession for what it really was: hubris. She lived her life just carefully enough not to be destroyed by things she studied, but that was it. The things out there weren’t like taming fire, they couldn’t be contained or used for light or warmth. The best you could hope for from them, would be that they don’t spot you, and instead my mum chased after them, obsessed with others who had tried to stare at them without being blinded: y’know, Flamsteed, Smirke, Leitner. Idiots who destroyed themselves chasing a secret that wasn’t worth knowing. And the worst thing was, she marked me as a part of that, without my understanding. Or consent.

So ;; Biased much, Eric, and he still wasn’t able to realise how toxic this relationship was, uh…

(Gerry’s “secret that wasn’t worth knowing” was AOUCH, too, given how… Eric explained how “I always loved ghosts. They fascinated me. Not the rattling chains and horror part of it, of course, but the mystery. The promise of secret knowledge – of seeing something that no one else was privy to. A secret world. It… gripped my imagination.”)

- We’ve known for a while that Gertrude used to have three assistants:

(MAG080) LEITNER: I think she was lonely. I didn’t meet her until about six years ago, after she’d lost the last of her own assistants. She would mention them sometimes. I believe she missed having someone to talk to on occasion. ARCHIVIST: I… I didn’t know Gertrude had assistants. LEITNER: Of course. Three of them, each meeting an unpleasant end.

And we finally have the name of the last one: Emma.

(MAG154) ERIC: You know, you were never actually that nice to me when I worked for you, Gertrude. Not like Michael, or Emma.

And there was a time during which they had all worked together… Eric highlighted that it was rare to get old in this business but, surprisingly, Michael Shelley lasted around fifteen years (or more) as Gertrude’s assistant? And still had no clue what was happening? Given how people who came close to Gertrude… didn’t have a lot of positive things to say about it:

(MAG099) ARCHIVIST: Everyone who came close to her… seems like it… it went badly. Her assistants, Gerard, Leitner, Elias, though I don’t think Gertrude had anything to do with his going rotten.

(MAG101) MICHAEL: Even being what I am, I have rarely seen anyone so adept at distorting the truth as Gertrude Robinson. Michael was protective of the frail old woman he believed her to be. So… so delicate, so forgetful, yet gently wise. He cared for her. He trusted her. And she fed him to me. She made him me to destroy our transcendence. And she did not hesitate. […] Gertrude had made sure that all her assistants were ready. That none of them would be suspicious if they were told they were going abroad for work.

(MAG154) ERIC: But I couldn’t be a part of it. Not when I saw what happened to everyone else you involved. I had to get out, to escape this place.

So what happened to Emma…? I feel like likely there has been a trend of Jon reacting to current events&preoccupations as lead-up for his hunting down a statement about it (MAG152, he discussed Jane Prentiss with Helen / MAG153, he read a Corruption statement), so he could try to learn more about “Emma”… I’m pretty sure we had never heard her name before; who is she?

On the one hand, I felt like Eric isolated “Emma” a bit when mentioning her, as if… she was already gone when he left (before 1996). On the other hand, he would have accused Gertrude of her death if Emma had been killed or fed to Spooks when he was still around. So, what happened to her…?

(Three assistants: one sacrificed to stop a ritual (Michael), one escaping for love (Eric, for his son), and one… forgotten? It’s not a clear-cut reproduction with Jon’s era, though we get the 2 men and 1 women dying one after the other: Tim indeed died stopping a ritual too, but you could also say that he died for love (in Danny’s name)… and Martin, like Michael, is heading towards another power. But still. Sasha didn’t have the time to get bitter about Jon; Tim got accusatory, Martin sounds harsher too… just like Michael and Eric, absolutely disillusioned about Gertrude.)

- Alrighty, so, this is only the second time ever we’re hearing about Elias’s predecessor and it came with a few details putting some things into perspective / confirming some theories, and reinforcing some others. The only mention of “James Wright” so far had been in MAG049:

(MAG049) ARCHIVIST: Supplemental. Elias Bouchard is a difficult man to pin down, certainly since he became head of the Institute in 1996, taking over from James Wright, who ran the place from ‘73 until he passed away. It was a remarkably fast climb to the top, as from what I can find, it looks like he only joined the Institute five years before, in 1991, working in the Artefact Storage. Perhaps he was simply that impressive. Certainly, the Elias I know now is almost unmatched in terms of paranormal knowledge. Well. Theoretical knowledge, at least. And yet, everything I found out about his life before the Institute seems… an ill fit with the austere man I know. He apparently graduated with a Third from Christ Church’s College in PPE, and I found an old gossip column in the student newspaper that – sure well – that mentioned him. If I’m not reading too much into it, the implication seems to be that he was… something of a… pothead. [CHUCKLE] Was he… like that when he first came to work here…?

(MAG154) ERIC: Wright would have preferred you not to know…! How is he, by the way? GERTRUDE: James? He died about… twelve years ago. Elias is Head of the Institute, now. ERIC: “Elias”? Elias Bouchard, seriously? GERTRUDE: Hm, he has changed a lot. ERIC: Must have! […] GERTRUDE: So. How did you do it? How did you quit the Archives? ERIC: It was actually really simple. Not easy, but simple. [SCOFF] You’ll kick yourself when I tell you. GERTRUDE: Okay… ERIC: You were almost there, you know, with your theory that James could watch us through any eye, even an illustration. So what did you do? How did you sever that link? GERTRUDE: … My… God! ERIC: I left to avoid dragging my family, my son into this life; to try and look after him. But Mary decided that a newly blinded husband was… simply too much of a burden.

So, confirmations:

* James Wright was Spooky, too, and identified as such by Gertrude – Eric was in the confidence, too.

* This is indeed why Gertrude had been scratching eyes out of her possessions:

(MAG054) [CLICK–] ARCHIVIST: Supplemental. I broke into Gertrude’s flat. […] Oh. And… I looked through a handful of books on her shelf. They were very well taken care of – with the exception that… any time a person’s face was featured on the cover, their eyes had been cut out, and very carefully removed. End supplement.

(MAG113) ARCHIVIST: Found anything yet? MARTIN: Er… er… Bunch of… eyeless paintings? MELANIE: [JOVIALLY] Snap! Eyeless dolls. Oh, and. Just a lot of shredded newspapers.

Though, it’s not absolutely confirmed that James Wright operated this way (it was Gertrude’s hypothesis), and it doesn’t necessary mean that Elias is also spying on people this way… but it could be how. Elias did admit, twice, that Gertrude had successfully managed to escape his surveillance:

(MAG080) 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.

(MAG102) ARCHIVIST: And you can’t just… See where she put it. ELIAS: She was… She got very good at hiding things from me. ARCHIVIST: How embarrassing for you.

If Elias can see through eyes, whether they’re illustrations/more or less eye-shaped things/actual eyes: AHAHAHA good luck with that, Team Archives. We know from Patreon content that the Institute’s official files and statement bear the Institute’s crest, the owl. Meaning there are eyes everywhere in the Archives.

(You bet that Elias might have ordered mass-produced stationery just to put the logo everywhere. Pens. Papers. Notes. Paperweights. Handkerchiefs. The mug you’re (not) drinking your tea from.)

* Archival Assistants being bound to the Archives is something that predates Elias’s position as Head of the Institute – this is our first confirmation of that fact. And both Gertrude and Michael (since Eric knew him from his Archives days, pre-Elias) survived James Wright’s death. Even though Elias had said that killing the Head of the Institute would mean insta-death for the entire Archival staff. So. It’s possible that there are actually two separate things at work (being bound to the Eye and not being able to quit / being bound to Elias “like fingers on a hand” and dying if he dies), but in any case: either Elias lied on the kill-me-and-it-kills-you bit… either something happened during the transition from James Wright to Elias Bouchard, that allowed a “continuity” that did not kill the Team Archives of the time. Consensual ritual? Body-hopping? Elias backstabbing James and taking his mantle?

* Eric’s tone (disbelief and cracking up) when he learned that “Elias Bouchard” had taken James Wright’s succession Said It All – yeah, Elias was a Known Pothead in his early days at the Institute too, uh. And as Gertrude put it, he “has changed a lot”. Was it a ~natural~ change because people just… tend to change fast at the Institute when they get involved with its spooky parts (people were assuming that Tim was having a breakdown in season 3 and, indeed, if you had known him from his pre-Archives day… he seemed nothing alike. Martin’s and Daisy’s changes compared to their first appearances are also quite jarring) or… something else.

I’m still not on board with the Elias=Jonah theory, because I still feel like… Elias is too dumb… (and restricted: he did lament on his current abilities in MAG102). (And also: because I lovelove the idea that Our Current Elias indeed has that past of being a spoiled rich kid who got his family to buy him a place in uni, and then did nothing except smoke weed, and ended up drifting to the Institute without realising what he was signing up for.)  But I do admit that mm, a LOT of things are piling up giving the idea that something, most likely Jonah, has been body-hopping from one Head of the Institute to another:

(MAG096) DAISY: El–Elias didn’t say. ARCHIVIST: No, he doesn’t, uh… He’s not big on micromanagement. SARAH: It’s Elias now, then? ARCHIVIST: [WHISPERING] What?

(MAG101) NIKOLA: Is it… your Elias who listens? Helloooooo! […] So, Elias, can I call you Elias?, let me set the scene, as I know you can’t actually see this. […] You know Elias, can I call you Elias?, you have not raised this one very well! […] Oh, no, I’m afraid he can’t See, can you Elias?, can I call you Elias? – what’s the point of having a secret place of power if you can’t hide it from a big stupid eye?

(MAG135, Manuela Dominguez) “When you read this, I would consider it a great favour if you could share my words with the Head of your Institute. Tell him that Maxwell Rayner sends his regards and offers… sanctuary. A time of holy Darkness is at hand, when The Eye will close forever, and in the spirit of the friendship they once shared, he offers an opportunity – to surrender.”

(MAG148) BASIRA: What? ARCHIVIST: … I–I don’t know, I mean… We still don’t really know… what Elias actually is…? I thought… Maybe if he was more like me than we realised… BASIRA: He might have some advice? ARCHIVIST: Stupid, I know.

… But as long as it’s not confirmed, I can continue to think about how pretty damn funny it would be for every spook around to be assuming that Elias is actually “Jonah”… when he isn’t. (And maybe it had been the case until Wright, but then, Elias put an end to that.) Elias=Jonah is not the only option anyway – it could be a matter of memory-sharing rather than body-hopping, etc.

(I’m still HYSTERICAl over the fact that back in season 2, Jon’s main theory re: Why Elias Might Be Gertrude’s Murderer was:

(MAG049) ARCHIVIST: The difficulty comes from the fact that the only person in the Institute who worked here before he took over… was Gertrude. Did he… kill her because she knew something about his past? And if so… how can I prove it…?

… because she might have known about his past as a pothead. JON.) (It’s a bit surprising, though, that… past staff didn’t report to the new ones about how ahaha, the current Head used to be Like That when he had begun to work here? It’s indeed like Gertrude was the only link between the old era and another one, when Jon (and Martin? He had worked at the Institute since at least 2009) joined…)

- It had been mentioned in the… season 3 Q&A, I think?, that the tapes were “not neutral”, and we’re still exploring various aspects of this: the tape recorders choosing which scenes we (as listeners) are allowed to hear since they’ve begun to be (officially) autonomous in season 3; the fact that they didn’t bother recording the stories Jon violently tore out from people in season 4, except for Floyd (as Jon put it in MAG147: “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.”). We had already had cases of Jon listened to some tapes without other options to choose from: he was given whichever Basira was able to sneak out for him back in season 2 (and even back then: was the “pick” absolutely random, or orientated?); Elias had sent him MAG087’s (with the clear purpose of sending him in Jude’s direction or, as Jon inferred in MAG102, because Elias had no idea what the heck he was doing?); The Web sent him MAG130’s cobwebs-wrapped… But now, it’s also official that Jon was actually influenced in his choice when he did have multiple options to pick from, including when it came to the tapes he would ~naturally~ avoid.

(MAG154) ARCHIVIST: I’ve found a– [SIGH] I went back to Eli– er, Peter’s office. To that box of tapes; started rifling through. And I started to try and pay attention to the ones I… wasn’t drawn to. The tapes I instinctively wanted to discard. [SIGH] There was one, this one, that my hand… pulled back from. I–I dropped it, twice, when I went to pick it up. Even now, I’m… [AUDIBLE FORCED SMILE] struggling to press play…! I am the avatar of Awful Knowledge And Revealed Secrets… so what does it not want me to know…?

………………… Given how The Web sent him one a few months before, how Annabelle has admitted that she is “watching” and sometimes nudging him, how Jon can’t concentrate on his own lighter, I’m not sure that this is Beholding (or only Beholding) trying to lower his interests over certain files or tapes, though.

A few considerations about the tapes for themselves:

* I’m still not sure which tapes Jon has listened to, amongst the ones recorded when he was absent or comatose, notably MAG108, MAG118, MAG120 and MAG121. Does Jon know that Elias knows about the dreams and was… satisfied by them? It still doesn’t feel like he has heard MAG118’s – or, at least, he probably hasn’t heard about Martin’s mother (I’m not sure he would have acted the way he did in MAG129 if he had known what their relationship was like); there was also this bit in MAG126 which sounded like Jon indeed hadn’t heard anything post-MAG117:

(MAG126) ARCHIVIST: [DRY EXALE] There was a tape recorder waiting for me when I sat down. They’re not even hiding it anymore. There weren’t any tapes from when I was… away – I checked. Whatever they are, they are here for me.

… But even at the start of season 4, I’m not sure that he had heard MAG108’s since:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: … Oh. Wow. O… kay, er… Great, s–so… what’s the problem? BASIRA: He appointed an “interim” director. Guy named Peter Lukas. ARCHIVIST: … Oh. BASIRA: Yeah. ARCHIVIST: Read about him. [LIGHT CHUCKLE] BASIRA: Yeah, I’ve… hunted down some of his old statements and… yeah.

“Read about him”, not “heard him”. Does Peter even record on the tapes…? Or did the tapes featuring him just not make their way to Jon? Jon has since accessed Martin’s secret stash (MAG152) but did it include MAG134’s and MAG144’s (the tapes where Peter and Martin discussed The Extinction together)?

* Eternal question of who is listening to the tapes / through the tape recorders: I Still Have That Tape Recorders Post To Go Back To/Finish One Day (… I began season 4 with it, gdi, it’s just. getting longer and longer.), but one aspect that I still find strange is the… framing of Gertrude’s tapes.

We have had cases of clear cross-recordings, with Jon’s tape recorder still on while he’s listening to the glimpses of another ones: the bit of Daisy’s statement from MAG061 when he was readying himself to open the coffin (MAG132), MAG001!Jon’s introducing his first statement while Jon and the others were exploring the house at Hill Top Road and discovered what Annabelle had left for them (MAG147). But when it comes to Gertrude’s tape, it’s not the same framing, and we got another demonstration:

(MAG154) [CLICK–] ARCHIVIST: […] Even now, I’m… [AUDIBLE FORCED SMILE] struggling to press play…! I am the avatar of Awful Knowledge And Revealed Secrets… so what does it not want me to know…? [LONG SIGH] [CLICK.]

[CLICK–] GERTRUDE: [LONG SIGH] Right. No use putting it off further. […] ERIC: If you see Mary again, tell her– … No. [HUFF] I guess there’s not really anything else to say. [CLICK.]

[CLICK–] [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [SOFTLY BUT WITH FEELING] … Fuck. [CLICK.]

There are these double clicks: we’re not listening to Jon listening to Gertrude’s tape, we’re switching to Gertrude’s tapes. It’s possible that Jon is loading her tapes in his own tape recorder, but then, that was clearly not what Jon was implying there (it would have been an action a bit more complex than simply “struggling to press play”) and it also wasn’t how he had listened to Gertrude’s tape with Georgie:

(MAG087) GEORGIE: Look, I’m really not sure about this. ARCHIVIST: I just need to borrow it for a half hour or so. I, I’ll look after it. GEORGIE: Wha– No, I don’t– You can blow it up for all I care. It’s been in the loft for, like, twenty years. If I need tape hiss, I’ll add it in post. ARCHIVIST: So, what’s the problem? GEORGIE: With playing an unmarked tape from your stalker? […] Look I’ve, I’ve got work to do. You listen, or don’t listen, or cross-record, or whatever you want, just… just think about it first, okay? You can choose to leave it alone. [DEPARTING FOOTSTEPS] [DOOR CLOSES] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [TAPE PLAYER IS LOADED] [CLICK.]

[CLICK–]

It’s not a cross-recording of “Jon listening to Gertrude’s time”. Every time, there is silence between the two [CLICK] – no “spooling” sound, no hissing anymore. I do understand why it would work like this as a meta-choice from the editors (it’s clearer this way and we’re put in Jon’s situation while he discovered the information, rather than… risking to have the information butchered by Jon’s reactions if he wouldn’t be able to stay quiet) but I really don’t think that it’s a choice without meaning in the story itself: every time there is a so-called “cross-recording”, we’re actually switching from Jon’s tape recorder, recording him, to… something else (just listening to Gertrude’s tape? Being back in Gertrude’s time?).

At the end of season 3, Max Mustermann mentioned that something was “listening in” (and that he “[did]n’t like it”), which could be something different than our point of view as listener: there could be something listening in in their present and something/someone else listening to the tapes days/months/years after the recording happened. If it’s the latter: we have to consider that this “someone” not only accessed Jon’s tapes, but also Gertrude’s, and was able to reorganise them chronologically following Jon’s footsteps. If it’s the former: that “something” is able to switch from one tape recorder to the other (as it did, too, in MAG039, MAG079 and MAG118), whether it’s to listen to pre-existing tapes or to witness the recordings of current events. Whether it’s a conscious will or acting more on instinct (being able to feel when spooks or spooky events or just Episodes Of That Little Soap Opera You Call An Archives are coming up), it’s not passive either: it makes discrete choices when it comes to turning on and off during every episode, it doesn’t let other characters decide what should be cut off (Tim&Daisy turning it off in MAG082 before it clicked back on; Elias inviting Martin to cut the recording before it clicked back on, “Mm! Sorry. Looks like it wants to know what’s going on.” in MAG118). So what is it…?

(Jon said in MAG114 that he didn’t think it was Beholding; MAG118 hinted that it wasn’t Elias either since he wasn’t controlling it… I’m still taken with the idea that it’s The Web, but I agree that The Web using the recorders and the tapes as mundane items (delivering them) doesn’t mean that She’s spookily controlling them. Who/what else, then? One aspect of Extinction? Someone stuck within them à la Sergey Ushanka – Gertrude, Sasha, Jonah Magnus, “Emma”…?)

* Interestingly, Eric wasn’t surprised at all that Gertrude was using a tape recorder:

(MAG154) GERTRUDE: Hm! And, the second thing? ERIC: I want to make my statement. GERTRUDE: Is that really necessary? ERIC: I don’t want to disappear on her terms. Or yours! I want to speak my piece, have it recorded. GERTRUDE: Mm, fine. Tape’s running…! Subject is Eric Delano, recorded 21st of July, 2008, regarding… ERIC: Mm, what else! “Me, Mary, and the Archives.”

Eric had left the Institute before 1996 (since Elias became the Head that year, and Eric hadn’t witnessed it), which is also the year of, as of now, the oldest of Gertrude’s recordings that we have: MAG077, recorded on November 4th, 1996, labelled “Changeling / Imposter” (Lucy Cooper’s statement about the Not!Them taking her mother’s place). Since that statement explicitly mentioned that tapes weren’t rewritten by the Not!Them bending reality, I was thinking that Gertrude had potentially begun to record some statements with information that she deemed more valuable because she knew the Not!Them was roaming wild, but that was one amongst… many hypotheses. We still don’t know why Gertrude began to record statements and what motivated her recordings on a case-to-case basis; Jon himself wondered about it as soon as in season 2, and still hadn’t put out a guess into words in season 3 (although it was still on his mind, as revealed by his questioning Gerry about Gertrude’s tape habits).

On the one hand, of course Eric wouldn’t be surprised by a tape recorder: he died in the 90s, they were still widespread. On the other hand, Gertrude might have been using them back when he was still around, and that’s strengthening the hope that there is a recording of stoner/pre-Head Elias with Gertrude somewhere /o/

- It’s… extremely interesting how Eric’s portrayal of Gertrude gave the impression that she was much, muuuuuch more Beholding-aligned than we were previously made to think:

(MAG154) ERIC: She didn’t try to keep me in the dark just so I wouldn’t stop being useful. She never made me complicit in a thousand nightmares, and lives ruined for the sick joy of some otherworldly voyeur. […] I know what you say, what you think you’re doing – saving the world one poor doomed soul at a time. I mean, I understand; I do! … But I couldn’t be a part of it. Not when I saw what happened to everyone else you involved. I had to get out, to escape this place. […] Mary, at least, played straight with me. She knew all about the Institute. And when we were married, when she was sure I could handle it, she laid it all out for me: the Powers, the rituals, all the messy little cogs of the games you play with the universe. She laid out her own plans as well; her dreams of power. In many ways, I guess they were no better than yours. But at least, she didn’t bother to hide behind noble aims. … Maybe that’s why I chose her, in The End. At least she was honest. […] GERTRUDE: Did you need to do anything special? Any… ritual, or… [SIGH] ERIC: Just as long as they’re useless. I went the extra mile, destroyed them completely, but… I’m sure you’ll find something… “neater”. A strong acid, precisely applied? That sounds more your style. If you decide to do it, that is. GERTRUDE: Nn, I, I–I don’t know… ERIC: No… It’s not an easy sacrifice to make, is it? GERTRUDE: I still have work to do. ERIC: Don’t you always. GERTRUDE: Yeah… Anyway. I think I’ll probably do some research of my own before the rather extreme step of… blinding myself.

She sounded so… vehemently opposed? at the idea of blinding herself – immediately exposing it as something she wouldn’t do, perceiving it as a non-option and vaguely trying to justify herself. And there is Eric’s mention of “a thousand nightmares” which seems to imply that Gertrude… was taking live-statements pretty often, or used to?! (It was… a bit weird, indeed, how she had behaved with Lucia, presenting the “dreams” as a fatality when she could have chosen to have Lucia write her story down, and I am still wondering why she needed a recording of that one in the first place).

Jon had pointed out his surprise that Gertrude hadn’t recorded MAG102’s – was it because she was with Gerry and he had prevented her from taking it live, or because she didn’t want to show him her ugly side…? Was it because… she was like Jon, and trying to justify to herself that she “needed” the stories live when in truth the whole point was for her to feed on people’s trauma, to feel good…?

And GUUUUH, the contrast between Gertrude’s instinctive reluctance at the idea of gouging her eyes out, vs. Jon who… seemed to jump on the idea:

(MAG154) ARCHIVIST: … Because… uh, because I–I trust you, I– I’m trying to think about what to do, and I… Well… if I did try this, I… I don’t want to do it alone. MARTIN: [EXHALE] ARCHIVIST: But we could leave here. You and me; escape. […] MARTIN: No, I mean… [DRY CHUCKLING] Could–could you even survive at this stage? Is there anything else keeping you alive? ARCHIVIST: Uh, I–I don’t know. I don’t… “Know”. But… [EXHALE] Maybe it’s worth it? The risk, y–you and me, together, getting out of here… MARTIN: [SNIFF] ARCHIVIST: … one way or another… […] MARTIN: I just… Look, I need to see this thing through with Peter to the end. If–if what he’s saying is even half true, I need to be there. ARCHIVIST: But what if you don’t? I mean…! We could just leave. I mean, whatever… their plan is for me, I am damn sure that doing that isn’t it. I could derail everything– MARTIN: [NERVOUS CHUCKLING] ARCHIVIST: –We could derail everything, and then just… leave…!

Martin might have had a few points re:the fact Jon might not actually want to do it… but still. Gertrude immediately gave reasons not to do it. Jon presented it as a way out.

- … Jon surprised me (positively) and holy heck, it had been a while. From:

(MAG137) [CLICK–] ARCHIVIST: [HEAVY SIGH] So. Funny story. Turns out when Daisy broke the lock to get into Elias’s old office, well, she did a good enough job that it’s not… obviously broken. So it hasn’t been replaced yet. So I had a look around. [SIGH] M–mostly as I remember, but… There’s a box of tapes and statements in the corner. Obviously those Elias either didn’t feel he could trust me with yet, or maybe just the ones he was checking himself. Ideally, I’d like to avoid… tipping Peter off for as long as possible that I have access. And it turns out I don’t… Know… Elias’s safe combination. Not yet, anyway. So I just took the first one that called to me, and it’s… [DRY NASAL EXHALE] It’s good. I suppose. Glad to know I don’t need to worry about a Slaughter ritual; nice to get… confirmation that whoever… Eric was, he was Gerry’s father and… well, one assumes Mary Keay’s partner.

To:

(MAG154) [CLICK–] ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Hm. [SIGH] I’ve, uh… I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, after what happened with Daisy last week. About… what I can do. What I am. What feels… right. I’ve found a– [SIGH] I went back to Eli– er, Peter’s office. To that box of tapes; started rifling through. And I started to try and pay attention to the ones I… wasn’t drawn to. The tapes I instinctively wanted to discard. [SIGH] There was one, this one, that my hand… pulled back from. I–I dropped it, twice, when I went to pick it up. Even now, I’m… [AUDIBLE FORCED SMILE] struggling to press play…! I am the avatar of Awful Knowledge And Revealed Secrets… so what does it not want me to know…?

And both times, it was about one of Gertrude’s tapes, mentioning Eric and Gerry (and even Adelard in passing!), from the same stash. But what contrast, from Jon relying on his spooky powers to guide him in a direction, to Jon purposefully aiming for his own kind of silence (MAG153, “Don’t listen to the blood.” “Listen to the quiet”)…!

At this point, I was losing hope of seeing him get proactive in order to try and counter The Eye’s influence. It sounds like listening to Melanie (MAG150) and to Daisy (MAG153) inspired him a bit? And Helen-the-Distortion too, in a way, as a counterexample: she was encouraging him to “embrac[e] it” (MAG146), explained how Helen “chose to stop feeling guilty” (MAG154) and made fun of Jon for his “brooding”… The others made sure that he wouldn’t attack any more people since they learned about it in MAG146 and, now, Jon is taking little steps to go against his influences (or at least try to pinpoint when they could be at work and motivating some of his actions that are still guilt and regrets-inducing for him).

That’s good! Aaaand I have no idea if he’s at a risk of crumbling in a what’s-the-point way after what Martin told him! (It could lead to Jon… thinking about Martin’s words, and whether they hold a bit of truth re:his self-sacrificing tendencies, the fact that he indeed told Daisy that it could be Right if he were to die and indeed agreed to do dangerous things and things which could kill him… but probably doesn’t want to die indeed. Or Jon will go back to “moping around” and Daisy will try to get him drunk again.)

(Six episodes left, last of the season is usually the “debriefing” after the action, 158 and 159 will probably be the action itself… What can Jon actually do in the three episodes before that? Martin is Going To Do Something, but Jon…? It feels like if he gets involved, it would be either because he goes after Martin out of worry, either because something is inflicted on him (4th kidnapping? Julia&Trevor are back, Peter could still have a dirty trick up his sleeve, etc.) It’s strange, because Jon has never felt more disconnected from a season finale despite still being the voice we hear the most…?)

- I am also RELIEVED that Jon still has in mind that… Elias and Peter probably aren’t neutral and just hoping that The Extinction gets stopped uwu:

(MAG125) ARCHIVIST: But honestly, it’s the internal threats I’m worried about. Peter Lukas is just… sitting up there, doing whatever the hell it is he [STATIC BEGINS AND RISES] and Elias have planned, and Melanie still has that bullet pumping violence into her, waiting to turn this place into another Lanncraig.

(MAG154) MARTIN: I just… Look, I need to see this thing through with Peter to the end. If–if what he’s saying is even half true, I need to be there. ARCHIVIST: But what if you don’t? I mean…! We could just leave. I mean, whatever… their plan is for me, I am damn sure that doing that isn’t it. I could derail everything– MARTIN: [NERVOUS CHUCKLING] ARCHIVIST: –We could derail everything, and then just… leave…!

And that managed to make Jon’s plea even more heartbreaking?! Because he’s aware that Elias and Peter are still threats, are still probably expecting him to fit somewhere in their personal plans – there might not be any big conspiracies, but Elias has demonstrated that he could deceive, lie, manipulate, push in specific directions. But meanwhile, Martin has been told about the “big picture”, has been led to think about broader concerns, has already sacrificed around 9 months of his life after selling himself to protect the others, so… of course he wouldn’t want to give up now. (But as Gertrude showed: there will always be other threats, other concerns that need to be taken care of.)

(Though, I’m. Extremely worried that Jon was able to access Eric’s tape, although he was naturally prone to ignore it. Melanie reported that Elias didn’t have a safe in MAG118; he had acquired one, according to Jon in MAG137. Why wasn’t Eric’s tape inside that safe? Why leave it accessible? Is it because Elias hadn’t even bothered to check them all himself, or had also been made to avoid that one specifically, or… is it because in one way or another, he was waiting for Jon to listen to that one, because it was part of a plan…?)

- I CAN’T BELIEVE that we got 1°) two “Fuck”s in an episode, 2°) JON saying “fuck”, 3°) MARTIN SAYING “FUCK”. Jon was already a big WOW moment, and then Martin… just had the same reaction. Beautiful. Especially given how we know how Hard To Get those are (=> they raise the rating on iTunes, hence theoretically less listeners, so no swearing is gratuitous)… it was a Very Precious Episode.

So many “fuck”s given this season, tho?!

(MAG131) ARCHIVIST: Oh, I… Melanie, I–I’m so sorry, I– MELANIE: Oooh, fuck off?!

(MAG148) BASIRA: You sent us to the North fucking Pole for no goddamn reason. ELIAS: A, a–hem… miscalculation.

(MAG154) [CLICK–] [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [SOFTLY BUT WITH FEELING] … Fuck. [CLICK.] […] ARCHIVIST: I know; I know what you said, but I just… I think I’ve found a way for us to leave the Institute. [SILENCE] MARTIN: … Okay…? ARCHIVIST: Yeah. But i–it’s… [INHALE] it’s pretty… drastic. MARTIN: What, [CHUCKLING] you gotta gouge your eyes out or something? [SILENCE] … Fuck off?! [SILENCE] … Right…! Uh–uh…

Tim would be so proud of his ducklings… Team Archives unites… And incredibly, DAISY still hasn’t said “fuck”. SOMEHOW.

+ Honorary mentions:

(MAG127) BASIRA: Can we cut the bullshit? ELIAS: What “bullshit” might that be?

(MAG131) ARCHIVIST: I’m… [SHAKY CHUCKLE] W–would you believe I’m… trying to save Daisy? MELANIE: With more bullshit surgery? […] It didn’t stay in my leg because of some Ghostly Masterplan; it stayed… because I wanted it. ARCHIVIST: … Shit. MELANIE: Yes.

(MAG135) BASIRA: [SLAMS HANDS ON THE TABLE] Cut the shit! What are you playing at? ELIAS: I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.

(MAG143) BASIRA: [SIGH] So, what, this was another waste of time? What, no Church, no Dark Sun? … I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch…!

(MAG145) ARTHUR: [CHUCKLE] Always respected you for that. Takes a strong stomach to not give a shit.

(MAG147) BASIRA: Something’s here. MELANIE: No shit! [DOOR OPENS] Look at this place…!

(MAG148) ELIAS: [SNIFF] Good evening, Detecti– [PUNCH] OW! [EXTENDED SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PUNCHING] BASIRA: Useless, scheming piece of shit! ELIAS: Detective, this is quite unnece–

(MAG154) ERIC: Sorry, I just… [SNORTING CHUCKLE] I don’t mean to be a dick, but…

This season is so vulgar <3 It was already suspicious that Jon had said his seasonal “shit” so early on (it had happened in MAG039 and MAG078 and (aborted) in MAG099), but I wasn’t seriously expecting him to join the “fuck” team.

- Okay, tl;dr I loved every bit of dialogue in this episode, it was glorious all over, I was “!!” all through it, so much good heartbreak and sadness and PINING, GODS, JON???, so I’ll only give Selected Commentaries:

(MAG154) ARCHIVIST: Sorry, I–I just– MARTIN: No, ’t’s fine, I ju– You just surprised me, that’s… Jesus, you alright? You… you look like hell. ARCHIVIST: Oh! Uh, right, I, em… ki–kind of weak. Hungry, I–I guess, sort of. I–I’ve been trying to a–avoid, being, hum… Sticking to old statements? Thank you, for your little “intervention”, by the way. MARTIN: Look, I wouldn’t have had to if you hadn’t– ARCHIVIST: Yes, no, I know, I’m sorry, uh– that didn’t… come out right. Honestly: thank you. [EXHALE] It’s been hell, but… I–I did need to hear it. MARTIN: Oh, hum… Uh, g–good. Heh. Are the others… helping? ARCHIVIST: Oh! [DRY CHUCKLE] They’ve been keeping a… very close eye on me…! But that’s not important – no, well, it is important, but it’s– it’s not why I’m here, I– MARTIN: Jon. Calm down. What do you want?

* I’m so, so glad that Jon… validated what Martin did, regarding Jess’s complaint? Especially given how Martin was afraid of his reaction back at the time (MAG142: “I should probably try to get him this tape, let him know what happened, that someone came in to… But then, ahah, would that just come across as an accusation? Like, because I don’t wanna… And then, then I guess he’d… hear this bit as well, so… I… I… [LONG EXHALE] What do I do…?”). Jon did awful things, was awful in the way he hid and didn’t handle it, and, at least at the moment, there is no further harm being done… although there have already been too many victims. At least, Martin prevented more harm.

(Also: confirmation that Martin indeed send the tape himself, and that it wasn’t Annabelle or Peter giving it to the assistants behind his back? I was still fearing this possibility, since Basira had mentioned that it had been left for them but that she hadn’t seen Martin himself. But given how Martin didn’t object and proudly owned up to his decision when Jon gave the impression of blaming him for it, it was indeed him all along ;w; It took him a few weeks but he had finally decided to send the tape on his own, aah…)

* The emphasis Jon put in that “keeping a… very close eye on me…!” with dry humour… JON… JON, YOU WERE SO SNAPPY ABOUT BASIRA AND DAISY MAKING EYE-THEMED JOKE, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO INDULGE IN THEM:

(MAG143) BASIRA: [SIGH] Eyes peeled. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … Was that a joke? BASIRA: Yeah.

(MAG147) DAISY: Perhaps they… bugged out. [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: [WHISPER] … Was that a joke? BASIRA: Jon, focus.

Jon is going to judge you (and will do the things he’s reproaching you). He had been making Eye-related puns here and there for a while but with his tone here? It was absolutely deliberate and PFTT.

* I love that Martin’s perception of Jon is still that he… looks a mess.

(MAG142) MARTIN: O–okay, okay, hum… What… Would you mind telling me what happened? Uh, what they did? WOMAN: He. MARTIN: … Ah, uh, alright. Hum… Did he… [SIGH] … Did he look like he hadn’t slept in like– WOMAN: Mm–mm. MARTIN: –a week? WOMAN: Yep, uh… MARTIN: … Right…

(Though, Martin pointed out that Jon looked… not good, but I feel that the worst we heard of Jon was from 148 to 152? On the contrary, for the last two episodes, I felt that Jon was… softer again? Less sounding like someone who would be eaten out from the inside by their own hunger? Or he’s behaving like someone would when sleep-deprived: dry and cutting at first, and then all over the place and absolutely messy and jumpy. To me, he sounds better. So I’m amused that apparently, no, he Looks Terrible. Jonny is still trying to tell us that the Archivist is not hot, uh?)

- It’s… a strange feeling given how Peter has precisely been grooming him to become a Lonely avatar (well, dual one?) during season 4, but I had never realised how Beholding Martin was/sounded, before?

(MAG154) MARTIN: Em… like, like permanently? Or… ARCHIVIST: I–I–I don’t know, I–I mean, I suppose? I–i–if your vision comes back, the Beholding probably does as well…! P–probably. But it’s not like it’s easy to only… blind yourself temporarily anyway, uh, I… MARTIN: Y–y–yeah… yeah, uh… […] Could–could you even survive at this stage? Is there anything else keeping you alive? ARCHIVIST: Uh, I–I don’t know. I don’t… “Know”. But… [EXHALE] Maybe it’s worth it? The risk, y–you and me, together, getting out of here… MARTIN: [SNIFF] ARCHIVIST: … one way or another…

The way he immediately wondered about the specifics, the details, how things worked and asks out aloud, half-thinking half wanting to know more more more…? The funny thing is that Martin has always displayed that sort of broad thinking, taking myriads of parameters into account:

(MAG039) SASHA: I’m still not sure why you have this. Drinking in the archives? MARTIN: What? No, no, it’s for worms. ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: For pulling the worms out of people. Like now. SASHA: You, er… what? MARTIN: I used to carry around a knife, but I started thinking that, well, cutting into someone laterally wasn’t really the most efficient way to get them out, and besides which, they seem to be quite slow burrowing in a straight line so, given their size, th-the corkscrew just seemed to be the better option. [HEAVY SILENCE] Look, you guys got to go home every day, okay. I didn’t! I’ve been thinking for a long time about what to do when… well, y’know, this happens.

(MAG110) MARTIN: –but that doesn’t make sense, can he even do that? BASIRA: I don’t know, I guess so. MARTIN: It’s so– What, he can just reach into your head, and put something in there? BASIRA: [SIGH] I don’t know. I guess so. MARTIN: I mean… does it even have to be a truth, do we, do we know for sure he’s not lying, like, like magically lying? BASIRA: I don’t. know. MARTIN: R–right, right. Sorry. I just… It’s a lot to take in, you know.

And the fact that Jon was the one who had to admit that ~he didn’t know~ in return…

- The fact that the assistants were trapped in the Archives had popped up as soon as season 1 (although… back then, we (and they) hadn’t realised how literal it was):

(MAG026) SASHA: I should really quit, you know. We, we all should. I don’t think this a normal job. I, I don’t think this is a safe job. ARCHIVIST: You’re probably right. Do you want to quit? SASHA: No. I’m just… I’m just too damned curious, I suppose. You? ARCHIVIST: No. Whatever’s going on, I need to know. Get some rest. [CLICK]

(MAG065) ARCHIVIST: Then quit! If you hate it so much, leave your post in the Archives. Permanently. TIM: You’re firing me? ARCHIVIST: … I’m offering you a chance to quit. No notice period, I’ll even make sure you get the rest of the month’s paycheck. [PAUSE] Just say the words. [STATIC RISES] TIM: I want to. ARCHIVIST: So do it. TIM: I… … can’t. ARCHIVIST: [SOFTLY] Why not…? TIM: I… I… I–I can’t! I don’t know… Why can’t I quit?! ARCHIVIST: I–I don’t know. But I don’t think I can fire you either. TIM: What? ARCHIVIST: It’s this place.

(MAG079) TIM: There is something in this place, and it’s messing up our heads. It watches us all the time. It stops me quitting. I’m pretty sure it would stop Elias firing Jon even if he decided to actually try running this place for once. MARTIN: You’re sure you don’t just want to stay? TIM: I’m. sure. MARTIN: But, like, deep down– TIM: No. MARTIN: … Oh.

(MAG092) ELIAS: Ah, of course. Er, sometimes I forget how new you all are to this. Basira is now tied to the Institute. All of you are. Like fingers on a hand. And I am the beating heart of it. Should I, or the Institute, be destroyed, you will all, unfortunately, follow suit. MELANIE: Wait, what? TIM: Yup, that sounds about right. ELIAS: And it would not be a pleasant death.

(MAG095) MARTIN: Kinda thought your job was to be a hostage. […] Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, trying to escape? BASIRA: Sure. How’s that gone for you? MARTIN: What? BASIRA: The way Tim tells it, we’re all in the same boat here. So, how’s your escape plan coming? [NOISES OF CONFUSED EXASPERATION] MARTIN: How… Doesn’t it bother you?!

(MAG102) ELIAS: Even more than the others [Melanie] has a visceral hatred of being trapped. Regardless of how much freedom I afford her. […] MELANIE: [Frustrated anger] It’s not just being stuck here, Jon. It’s not just me. He’s manipulating you, he’s manipulating all of us. Can you seriously not see that?

(MAG106) ELIAS: Whatever I’m planning needs to be stopped! Even if it costs a few lives. Including your own. MELANIE: Well, that’s not even– ELIAS: A rationalisation, of course. A lie, about your own selfishness, that you would rather be dead than trapped without the self-determination you prize so highly. I wish I knew the words to convince you it’s for the best.

(MAG131) MELANIE: I don’t know! I can’t… look at her without my leg hurting, but what else am I going to do. I don’t want to be on my own, and I’m stuck here. So… ARCHIVIST: Basira said you were doing better. MELANIE: Would you just– stop?! ARCHIVIST: No– Right, no– MELANIE: This isn’t better! ARCHIVIST: M–Melanie, I, I– MELANIE: I’m not dying and I don’t… want to kill you, it’s, it’s…! [SHARP EXHALE] It’s just different. Yes, it’s… sort of better, m–maybe, but I–I can’t…

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: It, uh… Hm. Is, uh… Weird question, but… I… [EXHALE] I haven’t seen you in my dreams? The last couple of weeks? DAISY: … Oh, uh, no. I… I work here, now. I figured it seems to protect the others, so… ARCHIVIST: Oh. Right, so… Wait, did you talk to Lukas, or…? DAISY: [CHUCKLE] Broke into Elias’s old office. Found an employment contract; filled it in, and signed it. ARCHIVIST: And that worked. DAISY: Seems so. ARCHIVIST: And you’re not… worried about… DAISY: Basira’s trapped here. So are you. Not like I can be going anywhere anyway. ARCHIVIST: … I suppose not. So… no more dreams. DAISY: Not of you and your weird eyes. Just the coffin. ARCHIVIST: Is that better…? DAISY: ’T’s mine. ARCHIVIST: … right.

(MAG150) MELANIE: Look. [INHALE] I’m not going to do my job anymore. ARCHIVIST: … I am not sure I follow, you–you know we… we can’t… quit, we’ve all tried. MELANIE: I didn’t say I was going to quit. I said: I’m not going to do my job. No researching; no filing; no… field trips. Nothing that is going to help the Institute in any way. I’ll still be around, I just… ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] MELANIE: I can’t be a part of this anymore. If, if I get sick, I get sick. And, and if I die…

Learning that Eric had found a way out, that there is a way out is… especially interesting in the light of the running thematic of “choices” that season 4 is exploring. Because, until now, being trapped at the Institute was just something that had been inflicted on the Archival staff, without them being able to do much about it apart from going for Melanie’s option (slowly dying). But now, if there is a way out, it means that staying at the Institute becomes a choice, too. The staff can decide that the cost to pay in order to leave is not worth it, but still: there is now another option, and staying is not an inescapable curse anymore. It’s up to them to decide and to define what their priorities are.

- I’ve purposefully left out Martin out of the Assistants Being Trapped wall of quotes because actually… There has only been one occurrence of Martin describing it:

(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: … Why are you here Martin? MARTIN: Well, well, Prentiss is out there and you can’t run so– ARCHIVIST: I mean at the Archive in general. Why haven’t you quit? MARTIN: Are you giving me my review now? ARCHIVIST: No… We’re clearly doing a whole heart-to-heart thing and, truth be told, the question’s been bothering me. You’ve been living in the Archives for four months, constant threat of… this. Sleeping with a fire extinguisher and a corkscrew. Even you must be aware that that’s not normal for an archiving job? Why are you still here? MARTIN: [CONSIDERING] Don’t really know. I just am. It didn’t feel right to just leave. I’ve typed up a few resignation letters, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hand them in. I’m trapped here. It’s like I can’t… move on and the more I struggle, the more I’m stuck. […] No, no… it’s just that whatever web these statements have caught you in, well, I’m there too. We all are, I think. [SIGH]

… And even back then, that was it. More than being trapped in a place, Martin was seeing it as sticking to Jon.

And it absolutely stopped being a concern afterwards. When Martin had his litany of recriminations about everything that had happened in the Institute and about what Elias had done to them… being tied to the Institute hadn’t been one of them:

(MAG117) MARTIN: Me and Melanie, well… Well, I don’t think “death” is really the worry, it’s just… [SIGH] It feels like an ending? Or… something. Like nothing can go back to normal after this. Hey, hey, I mean what’s normal, right? Is living in an old document storage normal? Is losing a friend and not even noticing normal? Corridors? Evil all-seeing managers? I suppose you can get used to anything, but… [PAUSE] It feels different. […] These last couple of years, I’ve always been... running, always hiding, caught in someone else’s trap, but… but now it’s my trap. And, well. I think it will work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but… it felt good, weaving my own little web.

(MAG118) MARTIN: What? You don’t want him… hearing your big evil speech? ELIAS: Just wanted to spare you the small amount of dignity you have left. MARTIN: [DRY LAUGHTER] Dignity? Alright, yeah; like the dignity of being trapped in your flat by worms, or sleeping in the Archives, clutching a corkscrew! Or– or fetching drinks for the thing that murdered your friend without you even noticing…! Laughing at all their little jokes, then being left to wander impossible corridors for weeks! ELIAS: [SIGH] Are you done. MARTIN: Not even close. Because... [HEAVY BREATHING] I… I’ve been thinking. It’s not like you’ve got this all-seeing thing recently. You’ve had it the whole time. I remember the way you looked at Sasha after the attack. You knew it wasn’t her. And I reckon you knew Prentiss was lurking under the Institute, too, and you did nothing. Why? [SILENCE] WHY?! [SLAMS TABLE]

I’m not sure that Martin ever truly perceived it as a burden, quite frankly. He didn’t have a lot in his life – his mother, the Institute, his poetry, as far as we knew. Maybe for Martin, there used to be some comfort in the idea of being trapped and stuck; because that meant people around him… wouldn’t ever be able to leave, either?

(The only recent case of Martin pointing out the trapping as negative was when he screamed at Daisy:

(MAG144) DAISY: Fine. … Fine. Just thought you– MARTIN: No! No, you didn’t! [DOOR OPENS.] We’re not… we’re not friends, Daisy! None of us are! We’re all just trapped together, here, and–and kidding ourselves that we don’t hate it! Christ, there are more important things than, than “feelings”– DAISY: [INCREDULOUS EXHALE] MARTIN: –right now, alright, so just… leave me alone! For good!

And there might have been some sincerity in these words (although Martin confirmed right afterwards that he was mostly just aiming to make her leave). But if he were asked quietly whether or not he wants to leave, I’m not sure Martin would: what does he have, outside of the Institute? What kind of life could he lead? He’s been there for most (if not all) of his adult life at this point, nine years at the very least; and while I firmly believe that Melanie would be able to go forwards and to recreate her own life, or that Daisy&Basira might be able to as a duo, when it comes to Martin… I’m not sure he would even want to try. I’m not sure that he laughed at Jon’s face because it was “too late” for him to leave although, yes, he did confirm to Basira that he wasn’t expecting to make it out alive or as himself; I think it might just have sounded incongruous and so… surreal? So impossible to imagine? And I don’t think that The Lonely is the only thing to blame for this.)

- Given how Eric suspected that Gertrude wouldn’t have shared the eye-gouging trick with him if she had known before he did (and, indeed, as far as we know, she… didn’t inform Michael Shelley about a possibility of quitting – but I’m not sure he was even aware of being trapped in the first place…), and that Jon already jumped on Martin to tell him:

(MAG154) ARCHIVIST: I know; I know what you said, but I just… I think I’ve found a way for us to leave the Institute. [SILENCE] MARTIN: … Okay…? ARCHIVIST: Yeah. But i–it’s… [INHALE] it’s pretty… drastic. MARTIN: What, [CHUCKLING] you gotta gouge your eyes out or something? [SILENCE] … Fuck off?! [SILENCE] … Right…! Uh–uh… ARCHIVST: [EXHALE] MARTIN: Uh, r–right, uh… Wow…! [NERVOUS CHUCKLE] Uh, okay… […] Y–y–yeah… yeah, uh… Ha–have you told the others, or…? ARCHIVIST: No, you–you’re the first. […] MARTIN: Who are you kidding, Jon? You’re not gonna do any of that. ARCHIVIST: I, I could…! MARTIN: But you won’t…! That why you came to me, isn’t it? ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE] MARTIN: You know I can’t do it, not now; you don’t want to blind yourself; you don’t want to die; what you want… is a reason to not do those things. So… you come to me. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] MARTIN: Well… you’re welcome! B–because I can’t follow you on this one.

I think Jon is very likely to share it with the others, despite (/because of) Martin’s last words? So, are we heading towards (at least) one member of current Team Archives choosing to lose their eyesight in order to leave the Institute…?

If so, who? Martin sounded like Gertrude in that aspect: he has a goal and is sticking to it, and is not ready to consider it an option.

He also had a point re:Jon on the idea that… maybe Beholding is the only thing currently powering Jon to live right now, because he should have died during The Unknowing and ultimately made a choice when faced with dying or “becom[ing] something else”. We’ve also seen Jon display instant-healing abilities (MAG131, when he tried to cut his finger), and he also mentioned that the wound from Melanie’s scalpel had healed quickly so… it doesn’t seem like he could permanently harm himself, nor that someone else’s injury would last. However, Dekker had mentioned that Hunters were able to take down avatars (MAG113), and Daisy had managed to quickly kill off Mike Crew, so it’s possible that Hunters would be able to inflict permanent damage and, oh, good timing, Trevor&Julia managed to crawl back to England, sneaked into the Institute once, and might still be looming around.

When it comes to the conscious choice of blinding oneself to escape The Eye… I doubt that Daisy would go there, since she signed up for the Institute on her own (without being coerced or misled into it, knowing full-well that it meant she would be trapped), both to reclaim a bit of control (getting rid of Jon in her dreams) and because Basira and Jon were already trapped. Daisy wouldn’t want to leave without the others, she displayed some protective tendencies around Jon although she is already deeply weakened in her current state, she didn’t sound morally upset at the thought of being tied to The Eye when she discussed with Martin in MAG144, so… I really don’t see her going for Eric’s solution. She might see it as making herself vulnerable without getting much in exchange?

Basira… I’m not sure. I think that even more than Daisy, she would see it as making herself vulnerable – Elias took a dig about that one time she “let her guard down” (Jared’s attack?) in MAG127 and it feels to me like this is really her problem right now – desperate and scrambling for control, craving it so much that she both tends to sideline her feelings and attachments because she perceives them as a weakness, and to make herself susceptible to manipulation. She was quietly resigned to being trapped, too, signed up to protect Daisy without showing much anger towards the action, so I’m not sure she would think that blinding herself would be worth it? And there is the additional fact that she might or might not be on a Very Beholding Path herself (although recently, it sounds more Hunt-y to me?).

And finally… Melanie feels to me like the person who would probably be the most interested in Eric’s option. She already emotionally cut ties with Beholding by deciding that dying was better than surviving at the cost of feeding it. She has already worked on trying to get better. We heard about her going outside of the Institute, we know that Georgie is helping her. She has a support system outside (although small), and strong distaste of The Eye. So…

;; There is the additional fact that, hum. Eric didn’t survive long after quitting because he was murdered. But what if The Beholding’s grasp was supposed to come back after some time…? We also had Beholding places containing, uh, eyeless people, and we’re still unsure of who they were and what had happened to their eyes (older Archivists in older Archives?):

(MAG023, Albrecht von Closen) “I approached the man, but he didn’t move to flee. As I got closer, I saw him in more detail. He was short and squat, wearing an old-fashioned, black frock coat and knee breeches, though his head was shadowed by a wide-brimmed black hat. By his costume, I assumed him to be an old man, perhaps a groundskeeper for this place, or simply a recluse that lived nearby. When I greeted him, though, the voice that answered held no quiver of age within it. […] I felt the presence behind me, and I turned around. It was the man from the cemetery. His wide brimmed hat was removed and he stared at me. His head was completely bald, and his eyes were missing. They were just empty sockets but they stared at me. The saw me. Believe or dismiss anything else in my letter as you wish Jonah, but I swear to you that I stood face to face with a man with no eyes and he saw me.”

(MAG053) WALTER: It was a body. […] His eyes were gone. But rather than simply decaying into nothingness, there were ragged scratches around the edge of the socket, leaving messy, hollow pits. I was feeling very afraid now and had just turned around to leave when my torch abruptly turned off. It was the strangest thing. It should have been pitch-dark. There was no light at all filtering through into those underground caverns, but instead, I could so everything! Every detail of the shrivelled corpse before me was as clear as day, though there was no light to see it.  I can’t explain it, even really describe how it felt, but it was absolute darkness, and I could still see. At the same time, I suddenly got the most intense feeling of being watched – like a thousand eyes turned to me at once. […] The sense of being watched was getting stronger, an almost physical wave that seemed to drag me down. I reached the mouth of the tunnel just as a figure came into view. It wore what looked like the remains of an ancient robe, and in the darkness, I could see long, spindly fingers stretching, probing toward me. From beneath its huge, flowing hood, I could see nothing except for a single, lidless eye.

… But especially in the Schwartzwald man’s case: having no eyes didn’t stop him clearly belonging to Beholding, so… There is no proof that it would indeed work.

- Of course, gooooooooods… The echo between Gertrude’s era and Jon… three assistants “meeting an unpleasant end”; Tim and Sasha are already gone, there is only Martin left of the original team. Of course Martin would have, even unconsciously, been a prime concern after a recording of Gertrude and one of her (dead) assistants… EXCEPT NO, AHAHAHA, Jon’s worry/concern/feelings truly felt like something else than guilt and responsibility.

I’ve seen how RQ operates, I know that they know their tropes, I know that they wouldn’t Tease to get listeners and shame them for hoping for some more queerness afterwards, I know that they’re careful about this; I knoooow rationally that there probably wouldn’t be this much focus on Jon’s anxiety towards Martin’s current situation if the bottom line was Oh, Jon Is Mostly Feeling Guilty About Tim&Sasha And Worried That Martin Might Die Because Of Him Too (especially when it’s been acknowledged multiple times that Martin has romantic feelings for him).

But. Still. Up until now, it could perfectly be read that way in Jon’s worry and longing.

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: Just you and me. … And, Melanie and M–Martin, I, I guess. Honestly, I’m surprised Martin isn’t… BASIRA: [SHARP INHALE] ARCHIVIST: What? Oh god, the, their plan, it’s, Martin is– Is he okay, or– … What did Elias do?

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I wish I could talk it through with Martin. … Or Tim. [SHORT SAD CHUCKLE] Or Sasha. But we never really did that, did we…? … Everything’s changed. … [SIGH] Two days out of a coma, and I’m already tired.

(MAG124) ARCHIVIST: H–how are you, Martin? I–is everything… MARTIN: Yeah, yeah, no, I’m, I’m alright, er… Everything’s… fine. ARCHIVIST: … Right. Hum. … H–how’s… h–how’s the poetry? MARTIN: Oh, er, well, I haven’t exactly had a lot of time recently, so… ARCHIVIST: Yes, of course… MARTIN: Mm. ARCHIVIST: You’ve been busy. MARTIN: Yeah. ARCHIVIST: … MARTIN: … Look, Jon, I, I’ve really got to go, so… ARCHIVIST: Oh, er, okay… MARTIN: I’m, I’m sorry that you– ARCHIVIST: Wowowow, it was… good t–, it was good to see you. MARTIN: … Yeah. [STEPS LEAVING] ARCHIVIST: … Yeah… 

(MAG136) DAISY: You need to stop moping. ARCHIVIST: I what? DAISY: You need to stop swanning around, being all sad. ARCHIVIST: I’m, I’m not “swanning around”– DAISY: “Boo-hoo, I’m so alone and a monster!” ARCHIVIST: I am alone, Martin is– DAISY: Busy. doing. paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Beside, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me; Melanie; Basira– ARCHIVIST: Traumatised; traumatised; and paranoid, because of me.

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: And that just leaves Martin, which… […] … [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. … I know he said he had everything under control. I need… to trust him; whatever he’s doing with Peter, he’s… he knows what he’s doing. Probably. I just– … [VERY FAST] I need him to be okay. I just do.

(MAG148) ARCHIVIST: I’ve been meaning to ask. The… tape. The one of the, uh… my victim. You said Martin gave it to you. BASIRA: [EXHALE] Yeah. ARCHIVIST: How was he? H–how did he look, was he, uh… BASIRA: I don’t know. I didn’t… see him. He just left it on my desk with a note. ARCHIVIST: Oh… Right.

(MAG150) ARCHIVIST: We are trying. Daisy, Basira and I, we don’t leave the Institute much anymore – so we do spend a lot of time together. It’s not that easy, though. When everyone has so many walls, so many defences… [SIGH] sometimes you can feel lonely even when you’re in the same room. … But it’s better than the alternative. And at least none of us is suffering alone. … Martin’s got it the worst, of course. But it still seems to be his choice. And I have to trust that he knows what he’s doing.

In this episode? Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnot so much, and Oh No, Jon Is Indeed Having A Crush, Uh.

I think what felt the most “… Jon…” about it is that… Jon didn’t present the eye-gouging as a way for Martin to be free and get out. There was Jon’s insistence that they could do it “together” – it wasn’t so much about saving Martin as ensuring that Martin wouldn’t die and that they could be reunited.

(And it came right after a statement of… Eric and his one-sided crush on Mary, who was mostly using him to achieve her own goals (getting a Beholding kid from the Archives?), so. Aouch. The echo of the statement wasn’t kind to your situation, Jon.)

It’s possible that indeed, Jon was partially motivated to go to Martin because he (unconsciously) wanted to be told to not do it, but… I think that, more straightforwardly, it was because Jon had just found a way to get Martin back. Jon has never been that good at weaponizing his own emotions to manipulate other people, except when faking his accent and hiding his feelings. So either Martin has understood that Jon was indeed jumping on him because he was genuine about wanting to elope with him (and it’s too late; it’s not the time, and Martin himself seems to have given up on the idea of surviving his “ritual”), either Martin has closed up with The Lonely, and the idea of someone caring for him? Is just unfathomable at this point, and there must be hiding an uglier truth or selfish motivations.

(And oh, how selfish Jon’s plan was!! Gosh?? I still can’t believe he literally begged Martin to just give up on the spooks, on saving the world, just to elope together for a while?? Jon???)

(Not even a thought about his victims, about the fact that hey, maybe if he was cut from The Eye, they would be released from his nightmares?)

(MAG154) MARTIN: [DRY AND HOLLOW LAUGHTER] ARCHIVIST: [BREATHY] … What…? MARTIN: [CHUCKLING] N–nothing, it’s just… That’s just ironic, that’s all. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Martin, I… MARTIN: Who are you kidding, Jon? You’re not gonna do any of that. ARCHIVIST: I, I could…! MARTIN: But you won’t…! That why you came to me, isn’t it? ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE] MARTIN: You know I can’t do it, not now; you don’t want to blind yourself; you don’t want to die; what you want… is a reason to not do those things. So… you come to me. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] MARTIN: Well… you’re welcome! B–because I can’t follow you on this one. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … The Lonely’s really got you, hasn’t it? MARTIN: You know, I think it always did. ARCHIVIST: [SOFT HUFF] [QUIET] Maybe. [SILENCE] Well… I–I’ll be here. If you ever do need me. MARTIN: … I hope so. ARCHIVIST: Just don’t wait too long, okay? [RUFFLING OF CLOTHES] [FAINTER, IN THE DISTANCE] If you haven’t already. [DOOR OPENS, CLOSES] MARTIN: Yeah. [LONG EXHALE] … Yeah… [CLICK.]

A few things:

* AOUCH at that “I’ll be here” / “I hope so.” Not going out terrorising people, uh.

* I’m a bit lost re:Martin’s criticism, because he had been fairly upset about Jon’s self-sacrificing tendencies, or the fact he was throwing himself into danger, when discussing with Daisy in MAG144… while here, he called Jon out (in a very cruel, falsely indulgent tone) on not wanting to end his life. Given Jon’s pedigree, it almost sounded like a taunt to get Jon to try to gouge out his eyes, but, mostly: I’m surprised that Martin would perceive Jon’s actions this way, when he had listened to Daisy’s input and had called her “observant” (so, validating her reading of Jon)… ? It’s very likely that these words were absolutely valid when it came to Jon, I’m simply surprised that Martin would suddenly read him like this. Martin is in a bad place, he doesn’t need to make sense but… still…? Unless it was mostly his bitterness about being perceived as an enabler coming out…?

Unless he told Jon what he needed Jon to think – that he didn’t want to sacrifice his life…? (Because if so? That would be extremely web-y, Martin.)

* … Martin, Jon is currently demonstrating that not wanting to do something doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it anyway (=> “I don’t want to stop”, and he’s stopping anyway).

* Jon’s coma is still a sore spot, uh.

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: … What happened, Martin? [SILENCE] MARTIN: You died. ARCHIVIST: I came back. MARTIN: Yeah. [OPENS DOOR] I’m not gonna let it happen again. ARCHIVIST: … wait… Wait! W– [DOOR CLOSES] [SIGH] [CLICK.]

(MAG154) MARTIN: Jon… [SIGH] Don’t do this. ARCHIVIST: Do what? MARTIN: Make it my decision. ARCHIVIST: I’m not– MARTIN: No, I mean… [DRY CHUCKLING] Could–could you even survive at this stage? Is there anything else keeping you alive? ARCHIVIST: Uh, I–I don’t know. I don’t… “Know”. But… [EXHALE] Maybe it’s worth it? The risk, y–you and me, together, getting out of here…

Indeeeeeeeeeeeeed, if Jon were to die due to his eye-gouging because Martin had agreed and encouraged him to follow through that plan… Martin would feel responsible about it forever, uh.

* I feel like Martin tends to react badly to… Jon’s choice of words/feelings.

(MAG127) ARCHIVIST: I just… I’m sorry. Basira is off doing… God-knows-what, and I can’t talk to Melanie. MARTIN: Mm-mm. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I suppo– … I miss you. MARTIN: [SNERK] ARCHIVIST: I’m just… MARTIN: Lonely. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Yeah. MARTIN: [HUFF]

(MAG154) MARTIN: Why? ARCHIVIST: … Because… uh, because I–I trust you, I– I’m trying to think about what to do, and I… Well… if I did try this, I… I don’t want to do it alone. MARTIN: [EXHALE] ARCHIVIST: But we could leave here. You and me; escape. MARTIN: Jon… [SIGH] Don’t do this.

“Miss you” and the feeling of loneliness, “alone”… is Martin thinking that it’s just The Lonely causing Jon’s longing…?

* Season 4 has been a long fall into The Lonely for Martin, and it just. Doesn’t feel good. Like Jon, he’s not… enjoying himself in the avatardom? He’s stopped living – doesn’t have much contact with anyone, hasn’t been mentioned around tea, isn’t writing poetry anymore… And there is no glee nor joviality in what he’s doing? It just feels sad all over.

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: So: we’re under siege; Melanie is aggressively unstable; Martin is working very closely with The Lonely, who is, predictably enough, isolating him; and, oh, yes, Tim and Daisy are still dead. Which is at least easy to keep track of!

(MAG134) MARTIN: And you thought that since I’m so lonely already, I’d be ideal. PETER: Yes!

(MAG138) MARTIN: I think he wants me to join The Lonely. ELIAS: Then it sounds like you have a decision to make. […] Don’t forget to keep in touch, Martin. There are so many people in here, but without one’s friends… [DOOR LOCKING] it does get rather lonely.

(MAG142) MARTIN: [SIGH] Th–the worst part is I don’t even want to talk to him about it. I’m just… [SIGH] I suppose I’m just getting comfortable with the distance. [SIGH] Cut off. [DRY CHUCKLE] “Lonely”. [INHALE] Mind you, Peter’s not wrong. It really is easier than actually just trying to communicate with people.

(MAG150) ARCHIVIST: Statement ends. The Lonely is… possibly the most insidious of the powers, I believe. Certainly it is the one that… most delights in having you do its work for it. Even the Spiders seem to have a hard time matching it for sheer seductiveness. [HUFF] “Time to yourself”, “self-care”, “putting yourself forward”… “not being a burden on those you care about”… [PAUSE] It doesn’t even need to tell you any lies; just waits for the lies you tell yourself.

(MAG151) MARTIN: [POINTEDLY] I think our experience of the universe has value. Even if it disappears forever. SIMON: … What a Lonely way to look at things. Which makes sense, I suppose.

(Except when it comes to tape recorders – Martin still likes those:

(MAG126) [CLICK–] [CLOCK IN THE BACKGROUND] [TYPING SOUNDS] MARTIN: [SIGH] [COMPUTER MOUSE CLICKING] Oh. Hello. [ONE CLICK] Haven’t seen you in a while. [TYPING RESUMES] … Really? I mean, it’s just admin. It’s not exactly thrilling listening. … Alright, fine. Whatever. You do you. [TWO CLICKS] Spool away, I guess. [ONE CLICK] Just, you know, let me know if you need some more batteries or something. [TYPING] … It’s because he’s back, isn’t it. [ONE CLICK] [SIGH] He’s back, so now you’re going to be… around, again. Listening in. [ONE CLICK] Mff. [TWO CLICKS] You missed him, didn’t you. [HUFF] … Yeah. … [VERY SHARP SQUEAL OF DISTORTION] Yeah, me too.

(MAG154) [CLICK–] [CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] [TYPING SOUNDS] [COMPUTER MOUSE CLICKING] MARTIN: Oh. Right. [CHUCKLE] Hello, again. [TWO CLICKS, TYPING RESUMES] Look, sorry pal, [SHORT LAUGH] false alarm this time…! [ONE CLICK] Oh, unless… [SIGH] [TWO AGGRESSIVE CLICKS] [TO THE ROOM] Peter! [SILENCE] [INHALE] Look, Peter, I– [DOOR OPENS] ARCHIVIST: Martin! MARTIN: Oh, Jon! [DOOR CLOSES] God, don’t do that!

Does Martin still like… spiders…?)

And gods, again and again, there is still what Peter had told Martin coming back to Haunt Us:

(MAG126) MARTIN: … When all this is over, I’m telling him everything, with or without your permission. PETER: Martin… when it’s over, you won’t want to. MARTIN: … Mm. PETER: But he will be safe. They all will. MARTIN: … Yeah.

Peter sounds Right, right now, on the first part; on the second… define “safe”, Peter. (Define “safe”, Martin: is it to be secluded and trapped inside of the Institute forever?)

- Hashtag worried too because with Eric&Gertrude’s conversation… We have the pattern of an archivist discussing with someone who had been bound to the book by someone else and agreeing to burn the page (… if Gertrude indeed burned the page. We didn’t hear her burning that page.), before binding someone else to the book some time later (Gertrude, Eric bound by Mary, Gerry). Jon: discussed with someone who had been bound to the book by someone else (Gerry by Gertrude), before destroying Gerry’s page. Julia&Trevor are back in town, must have come with the book, so it’s there……… I’m. A bit worried. That Jon would end up binding someone (Martin?!) because he doesn’t want to lose them forever…?

Title for MAG155 is… uh. Could be about the Current Economy again (I thought about Ivy Meadows and Melanie too) but I’m a bit at a loss Fears-wise. Spontaneously, I thought about The End but it’s technically… the other way round with that one (if we’re following the gist of MAG029: “‘You said that if I won, then I’d live!’ The monk shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t.’”), and we’re just getting out of a Beholding+End statement with Eric. Extinction, then, with either Martin reading another one or Jon trying to get his hands on new statements because he wants to help from the sidelines? I have a bit of trouble thinking that we could hear Martin two episodes in a row before the finale, it’s been… so long… ;; Other options: something about Jonah Magnus (since Smirke revealed in MAG138 that he feared his own death the most) or, overall, about avatars…? Or a Lonely one again? (I tend to associate Lukases with the mythological figure of Pluto because “rich”.)

Second meaning is “WELP”, I guess Jon is/has been spilling the beans to the others about their new eye-gouging option…?