#at first gertrude had a lighter but then i was like 'u know what? i bet she had a flamethrower' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

soveryanon · 4 years

Text

Reviewing time for MAG161 /o/

- I… really wasn’t expecting to begin the season with the quiet heartbreak of “what was lost, and what could have been” with tapes explicitly used as time capsules. I really appreciate how this episode was… cruelly poetic? in the way it was shaped through oppositions: Jon and Martin, inside and outside, an observation of past moments and plans for the future.

I was wondering a bit, too, if concretely, we would still remain connected to the Institute somehow (given that circumstances have changed and that Jon&Martin are currently far from it), and yes: most of the episode was recorded moments which happened there, in the Archives, and were deeply grounded in the place (Jon’s unprofessional professional setting, Gertrude trying to make a move against the very essence of the building) so… there is still a deep connection. Everything happened there, had its roots there.

- Big big sense of “Aouch” with the awful irony in their casual exchanges and banter:

(MAG161) ELIAS: And make a wish. ARCHIVIST: If I wish for you all to go away, do you think it’ll work? TIM: He’s so grumpy today, isn’t he Martin? MARTIN: Uh– Oh, well, uh– TIM: [CONSPIRATORY] Do you think it’s his looming sense of mortality? […] So, what did you wish for? [STATIC] ARCHIVIST: I can’t tell you. ELIAS: He wished for a little bit of peace and quiet. […] TIM: Now, alright, alright; fine! Look: I’m turning it off. Any last words for your future selves? ARCHIVIST: Yes. “Fire Tim!” TIM: [LAUGHS] [CLICK.]

… Given that a) Jon lost them and was very conscious of it:

(MAG159) PETER: … Where are your friends, Archivist? [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: Tim and Sasha are dead. [FOOTSTEPS] PETER: [DISTORTED] Yes. [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: Daisy and Basira are… probably dead. [FOOTSTEPS] PETER: [DISTORTED] Because – of – you. [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: Georgie and Melanie have left me. [FOOTSTEPS] PETER: [DISTORTED] And? [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: Martin’s gone. [FOOTSTEPS] PETER: [DISTORTED] You’re alone, Archivist. The last one standing. I did warn you, I did want you to leave but… perhaps it would be better if you stayed a while. After all, you can’t hurt anyone in here.

And b) Tim and Jon used to be getting along so well that “Fire Tim!” was understood as a joke, while… the prospect (and impossibility) of quitting due to supernatural binding would become very real and contribute in their official falling-out:

(MAG065) TIM: I– I– I can’t do this anymore! 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 paycheque. [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.

(Yeah, no wonder Martin pointed out that Jon didn’t look super fine listening to the tapes again and again and again, when they’re concentrated Guilt juice.)

- It was… the first time ever… that we heard the original team all together in the same room…

(Plus Elias, technically: so, all the original main characters from season 1.)

It was a gigantic surprise because I had mused about the possibility of hearing a tape from the past, but without Sasha – I would have never expected her VA to come back? And it was so powerful to hear the four of them together, bantering and joking and being… at their natural, since apart from Tim, they didn’t know they were being recorded? And it’s not really putting a new light on Jon’s relationship with his assistants: we’d had glimpses implying that he was in good terms with them, aside from Martin (he trusted Tim to not have pranked him with MAG011’s statement, Sasha had double-checked some of Martin’s research, Sasha could waltz in and discuss with Jon about the pronunciation of “calliope” during a statement, Tim could point out mistakes to Jon and convey a need for him to calm down when Jon was getting too tense and aggressive, and Jon would listen and relent), but to be shown this way was such a precious gift?

(- It’s not the first time Jon was hearing “again” the voice of real!Sasha, since he had listened to her tapes at the end of MAG078 when he found them back… but still, this was even more precious here, because they were at their natural. It was a memory of Sasha! The real Sasha!)

- When did this scene happen? Some bits of the dialogue seemed to imply it was at the beginning of Jon’s tenure, some others make me think it could be towards the end of season 1:

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Mm! I’m sure. I notice you didn’t jump out at Martin when he had a birthday. TIM: No, he’s way too jumpy as it is! MARTIN: Wha–?! TIM: We were worried he might damage himself! […] ARCHIVIST: Well, thank you anyway. This is all… very touching. TIM: We just wanted to do something to lighten the mood, you know? ARCHIVIST: Yes, I’m… [INHALE] aware it’s been a rough start. [EXHALE] SASHA: That’s not what this was about; we just thought you could use a chance to unwind. […] ELIAS: He wished for a little bit of peace and quiet. ARCHIVIST: Was it that obvious? ELIAS: Oh, I wouldn’t worry, Jon. It’s an Archive: quiet is very much the course du jour.

“Rough start” and Elias promising quiet sounds like early Archives days… except what Elias says is a blatant lie anyway (he was very aware that the Archives were regularly attacked in Gertrude’s days, as he pointed out in MAG160), and Martin being jumpy could precisely match with Prentiss looming over the Archives:

(MAG033) TIM: It’s getting bad. I mean, Martin keeps showing me his tongue and asking if it “looks infested”.

Biggest thing that makes me lean towards this being set near the end of season 1 is Tim’s teasing about fire in the Archives, which is almost verbatim how Jon had defensively snapped to him about it:

(MAG036) TIM: Er, what is it? ARCHIVIST: A lighter. An old Zippo. TIM: You smoke? ARCHIVIST: No. And I don’t allow ignition sources in my archive!

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: I… Right– TIM: Yay! ARCHIVIST: –yes, thank you, I do hope you’re not planning to light those candles…! TIM: … Oh, goodness! [SHAKES A BOX OF MATCHES] A source of ignition? In the Archives? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] SASHA: [CHUCKLES] TIM: Uh oh! ARCHIVIST: Tim.

It wouldn’t make much sense for Jon to snap about the concept of “ignition sources in my Archive” if it had already happened anyway during his birthday? So I’m leaning towards Tim’s quip being a direct reference to MAG036, ergo putting the scene between that episode and MAG038 (the worms attacking), so in mid/end of July 2016? (It would also fit with the idea that they had gone for ice cream for Martin recently.) But yeah, many interpretations could work very well depending on the details you favour, or how you choose to interpret them.

(After MAG036 would also mean… that this scene would be taking place shortly after Jon got The Web’s lighter.)

- I’m EMBARRASSED at Martin being an anxious mess, teased here and there and not really managing to assert himself…………

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Mm! I’m sure. I notice you didn’t jump out at Martin when he had a birthday. TIM: No, he’s way too jumpy as it is! MARTIN: Wha–?! TIM: We were worried he might damage himself! MARTIN: Hey! Well… I preferred going out for ice cream anyway. […] TIM: How… did you– … Martin, that was a secret! MARTIN: I didn’t say anything! […] TIM: He’s so grumpy today, isn’t he Martin? MARTIN: Uh– Oh, well, uh– TIM: [CONSPIRATORY] Do you think it’s his looming sense of mortality? MARTIN: Uh– [STUTTERING] I, I don’t th– […] SASHA: Martin? [GLASS POURED] MARTIN: Oh, uh! [NERVOUS CHUCKLE] I mean, I don’t… normally… drink wine, you know, ta–tannins are a proven headache trigger, and so… SASHA: Martin. [GLASS POURED] MARTIN: Oh, u–uh, yeah, sure, maybe, just a… a drop, eh… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] ARCHIVIST: You know that there’s a lot of tannin in… tea as well? MARTIN: What? […] TIM: [CHUCKLING] What, are you afraid we’re going to get sued over the “Happy Birthday” song? MARTIN: Oh! Oh, well I am now!

He barely talked during the scene, and it was mostly “Oh, Martin…” bits of sentences… Not super good re:Sasha&Tim insisting for him to drink when he was trying to dodge it, though ;; (What was Martin aiming for, and what did they know about it? Was Martin genuinely worried about headaches, was he trying to avoid alcohol and hiding himself behind the tannin excuse (if so, really not good guys!), or was Martin trying to hide that he wasn’t used to wine, most likely because of his poor upbringing…?)

It really highlighted the difference with present!Martin who… just flat-out refuses, or points out when Jon is going too far. He’s less anxious about speaking his mind, now, not trying to go with the flow even when he’s uneasy with it (and it’s SAD that TIM&SASHA COULDN’T SEE HIM AS HE IS NOW!!).

- … The fact that Tim brought wine in the Archives made the end of season 1 even funnier:

(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.

Sasha suggesting that Martin could have been Drinking In The Archives, leading to Jon getting offended… while they had a friggin’ birthday party there, complete with Sasha insisting that Martin should drink with them.

- DO YOU THINK THAT MARTIN’S PRECIOUS CORKSCREW… WAS ACTUALLY TIM’S… FROM THAT TIME…

(MAG161) TIM: Well, after the party at least. Wine, anyone? ARCHIVIST: Tim, it’s [CORK POPPING] eleven in the morning. TIM: Pfft! Yeah, at your birthday party! [GLASS POURED] ARCHIVIST: I really don’t think it’s appropriate– ELIAS: I’ll allow it. In fact… I’ll join you.

Heavy sob at the fact that back then, Tim had instigated the drinking inside, and Elias had allowed it… while it became a “Eff You Elias/Beholding/Institute/All the things happening to us” tradition to go out for drinks in the middle of the day, in season 3 and 4, without Tim because he was too depressed (and then researching on the Circus):

(MAG098) MELANIE: Right. Fair. Listen, you really look like you could use a drink. Hum, me and Basira were just about to pop out. So… do you want to join us? MARTIN: It’s like one in the afternoon. MELANIE: Are you afraid of getting fired? MARTIN: … Huh. I’ll get my coat.

(MAG106) BASIRA: Hey, are you ready for that drink? […] You know, speaking of “not cool”, didn’t Martin say he was coming today? […] Well, I should probably go check in with Martin. Y’know, see if he’s in for drinks. MELANIE: So you can double-check your gossip? BASIRA: I don’t gossip! I have the mind of an investigator.

(MAG108) MARTIN: No… no, it’s just [Melanie’s] work’s been… look, she’s always been quite, you know, conscientious, but then recently, everything’s… BASIRA: Okay, look. I don’t know what the situation is, she won’t tell me, but she’s not doing well. We were meant to go for a drink last week, but… I think it has something to do Elias.

(MAG136) DAISY: Now I’m making the choice… to get some drinks in. Coming? ARCHIVIST: I d–… I… [SIGH] … yeah? Okay. DAISY: Melanie’s out, but I’ll go get Basira. ARCHIVIST: Is she… W–will she want to join us? DAISY: If she doesn’t, I’ll rip her throat out. ARCHIVIST: Uh… DAISY: It’s a joke, Jon. ARCHIVIST: … oh. Hahah…! Yes… Uh, I–I’ll get my coat.

(MAG150) MELANIE: If you need me, I’ll be trying to get Daisy drunk. ARCHIVIST: [STATIC] Good luck. It only ever happened once in 2006, she drank a– … Sorry. Didn’t mean to.

Your legacy, Tim…

- I’m so glad about Sasha’s talents as a hacker being put at the front again!! It was implied in season 1 (since she was handling police records, and Jon had noted that her ~computer problems~ prevented them from accessing those in season 2, unless Tim was stepping out with a more, uh, flirty approach), but confirmation AND demonstration that she was using her talents against Jon too!

(MAG161) ELIAS: So. How old is the birthday boy? ARCHIVIST: Uh… thirty-eight. SASHA: [TUTTING] Liar. TIM: [CHUCKLES] ARCHIVIST: How would you know? TIM: What, does someone need to change their password again! ARCHIVIST: I… what? TIM: [LAUGHS] ARCHIVIST: Sasha, have you been going through my computer– SASHA: Definitely not! No idea what he’s talking about. TIM: ‘Course not! SASHA & TIM: [LAUGHS] […] ARCHIVIST: Hang on – have you been recording this? [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] TIM: Oh, yeah! I… just thought it might be nice, you know, something to look back on when we’re all old and sick of each other…! SASHA: You probably should have told us, Tim. TIM: [CHUCKLING] What, are you afraid we’re going to get sued over the “Happy Birthday” song? MARTIN: Oh! Oh, well I am now! SASHA: It’s… just a bit of a privacy thing. ARCHIVIST: Oh! Hypocrite.

She used to crack Jon’s computer! And he knows it! (That “again”!!! :D) The bantering between “Liar” and “Hypocrite”!! Jon&Sasha were friends!! I love how she liked him and how we can see that… Jon wasn’t exactly their boss – he was mostly a friend that they loved to tease!

(And gods, Sasha pointing out to Tim that his use of the tape recorder wasn’t great privacy-wise… while he would throw the same argument at Jon in season 3:

(MAG114) ARCHIVIST: I listened to all the tapes. I, I had no idea how much of a… a mess I left this place in, I–I–I’m sorry. TIM: Bit of an invasion of privacy. ARCHIVIST: I assume that’s a joke? TIM: [BITTER LAUGH] Isn’t it just?

Sasha… ;_;)

I love how she was Tim’s partner in crimes, too!! He had mentioned that he used to get along with Sasha the most:

(MAG114) TIM: You know how long that thing pretended to be Sasha? ARCHIVIST: Oh god… TIM: And I had no idea? I knew Sasha for years, we… I don’t know Martin as well as I knew her; I barely know what Melanie and Basira look like, or that weird murder-cop.

And yessss, they had the unruly children vibes to them here!

- Re: Tim, I can’t handle how strongly it was shown that he used to treasure Jon? He handled every aspect of the party! He even recorded them all as a memory for their older years:

(MAG161) MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: SURPRISE! [PARTY WHISTLE BLOWING] ARCHIVIST: JESUS! TIM: Happy birthday, boss! […] ELIAS: Anyway. Uh, did somebody mention cake? TIM: Uh, yeah. You did. ELIAS: Yes, I did, didn’t I? [SILENCE] TIM: [SIGH] Alright, alright, well. I guess the cat’s out of the bag now anyway – look… just give me a second. [SHUFFLING] [CUTTLERY CLICKING] TIM: Happy birth– ELIAS & MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: –day to–… […] TIM: … Oh, goodness! [SHAKES A BOX OF MATCHES] A source of ignition? In the Archives? […] Oh? Woops! [A MATCH IS LIT] Sorry; my hand slipped. And again. [CRACKLE OF A BIRTHDAY CANDLE WICK] And again. And… a couple more times, here – I’m so clumsy today; that is a lot of fire! […] Wine, anyone? ARCHIVIST: Tim, it’s [CORK POPPING] eleven in the morning. TIM: Pfft! Yeah, at your birthday party! […] ARCHIVIST: Hang on – have you been recording this? [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] TIM: Oh, yeah! I… just thought it might be nice, you know, something to look back on when we’re all old and sick of each other…!

He was planning for their friendship to last on the long run!

We had had hints and glimpses that Tim&Jon used to get along very well since they had a good awareness of each other’s limits, and we know that Tim had come to work at the Archives at Jon’s request:

(MAG033) ARCHIVIST: No. I don’t have time. I still have a mountain of haphazard statements to get through, not to mention that I need to keep this wretched tape recorder on hand – just in case I encounter one of the files too stubborn to work on anything else, and when I do, I have to actually– TIM (BACKGROUND): Oh, woah– ARCHIVIST: –read the damn thing, which is… TIM (BACKGROUND): –woah… woah! ARCHIVIST: … Fine. It’s… fine. I just… haven’t been sleeping much these last few months, what with all this… worm… business.

(MAG065) TIM: No. No, you listen for once. I was fine in research, happy. Then you asked me to be transferred here, and suddenly it’s all monsters and killers and secret passages, oh my! And the worst thing? The actual worst thing is that no one here has my back. With any of it! Elias doesn’t care; Martin just wants a tea party; and Sasha… god, and you! You’re treating me like I’m somehow to blame for it all, like I didn’t suffer the worst right alongside you! ARCHIVIST: Well, excuse me if my experiences of th– TIM: Your experiences? Fuck you! I got eaten by worms because of you! ARCHIVIST: Well, what do you want? You want sympathy? TIM: You know what, yeah! A little bit of basic sympathy would have been nice! ARCHIVIST: Jane Prentiss was not my fault, I did not bring her to the Archives! TIM: Oh, but you went off the deep end afterwards, didn’t you? Everything went to hell, and when you actually needed to be in charge, you just hid down here and played with your tape recorder. ARCHIVIST: Well, what would you have me do?! TIM: Anything! Anything that wasn’t turning into a paranoid lunatic would have been fine. Anything that showed you could actually do your job!

… Which makes Jon’s behaviour towards him in season 2 even more heart-breaking and Tim’s bitterness so understandable. Tim had tried to keep up a light atmosphere after Prentiss’s attack (asking Jon if he had trouble with the police, being supportive in his own way when he assumed that Jon was beginning a relationship with Basira). From Tim’s point of view, it wasn’t just that his “boss” was suspecting him of being responsible of Gertrude’s murder and of trying to murder him too: it was a friend thinking Tim was wishing him harm, and turning his back on him on every front. That… might be a harsh reminder for Jon to listen to, in present time.

(- Down to the little detail of Tim playfully calling him “boss”, when… it would turn sour and bitter by the end of season 3:

(MAG161) TIM: Happy birthday, Boss!

(MAG050) TIM: Okay, so, seriously, I don’t get why she keeps coming back round here outside of the investigation. ARCHIVIST: She’s, uh… I’m… I’m helping her with some of the investigation. Off the record. TIM: Oh. OooOOH. Say no more. ARCHIVIST: Tim, wh– what are you… TIM: Don’t worry! I’m cool! Good work, Boss~

(MAG114) ARCHIVIST: Hello Tim. TIM: Oh god… ARCHIVIST: Come in, please. TIM: [SIGH, THEN FAUX POLITE] Good to see you, Boss. How’ve you been? ARCHIVIST: I’m not going to lie to you, Tim. It’s been a difficult few months. TIM: [DEADPAN] Good. […] [SNIDELY] So, what’s the plan, Boss?

(MAG116) ARCHIVIST: Do I need to be worried about you? TIM: You reading my mind again, boss? ARCHIVIST: Watching your face!

(MAG119) ARCHIVIST: Tim!! [STATIC] What do you see? TIM: I see my asshole boss! W– wait… wait…

… At the end of everything, under compulsion, Tim’s honest perception of Jon was “my asshole boss”… and not a friend, anymore.)

- Additional AOUCH of Tim using a tape recorder to capture a fond, funny scene with people he treasured…

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Hang on – have you been recording this? [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] TIM: Oh, yeah! I… just thought it might be nice, you know, something to look back on when we’re all old and sick of each other…!

… while Tim was the one who would grow to hate the tape recorders the most:

(MAG098) MARTIN: Have you seen [Jon] since…? TIM: [GRUNT] Kind of. We tried to talk, but he, he reached for that– Ah, he, he wanted to turn on his recorder. I freaked out a bit, and I said some stuff: if he wanted to talk, no tapes, I just, I just hate that thing.

- GODS about Jon accepting to unwind just to tense up again at Elias’s arrival, trying to be Professional and impressive by aging himself up:

(MAG161) SASHA: That’s not what this was about; we just thought you could use a chance to unwind. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I suppose it… couldn’t hurt. [KNOCK–KNOCK] ELIAS: Knock-knock? […] Nothing escapes my notice, and I like to keep an eye out for this sort of thing. TIM: Well, it’s… good to see you. ARCHIVIST: Yes. Ye–yes! [CHAIR SCRAPES] Uh… Come in. ELIAS: So. How old is the birthday boy? ARCHIVIST: Uh… thirty-eight. SASHA: [TUTTING] Liar. […] SASHA & TIM: [LAUGHS] ARCHIVIST: That’s really not appropriate. [SIGH] […] TIM: Wine, anyone? ARCHIVIST: Tim, it’s [CORK POPPING] eleven in the morning. TIM: Pfft! Yeah, at your birthday party! [GLASS POURED] ARCHIVIST: I really don’t think it’s appropriate– ELIAS: I’ll allow it. In fact… I’ll join you. [GLASS POURED] ARCHIVIST: Oh! O… kay, hum… A–al–alright then.

(So Jon, who “was 8 in 1995 or 1996”, aged himself up by around ten years, and was actually turning 28 or 29, uh. Jon Being A Retro Thing confirmed, down to liking rum-raisin, rip Martin “likes things with low-fi charm” Blackwood.)

(Additional thing about Jon infodumping about emulsifiers to Martin: emulsifiers are used to mix together two elements of different nature… like… them…)

- A bit intrigued by Jon not remembering going out for ice cream for Martin’s birthday:

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Mm! I’m sure. I notice you didn’t jump out at Martin when he had a birthday. TIM: No, he’s way too jumpy as it is! MARTIN: Wha–?! TIM: We were worried he might damage himself! MARTIN: Hey! Well… I preferred going out for ice cream anyway. ARCHIVIST: You went for ice cream…? SASHA: Yes, you were there…! MARTIN: You had rum-and-raisin and taught us all about emulsifiers. ARCHIVIST: … Oh. … Right, yes, I–I remember. TIM: Liar.

(Martin remembers it all, and that’s incredibly gay of him.)

Is it that Jon hadn’t picked up on the fact that they were actually celebrating Martin’s birthday back then? Or is it that Jon has a tendency to forget unpleasant memories – he… didn’t do much social and liked his quiet, that part wasn’t a front, and he had, for example, forgotten his childhood bully’s name, too… Or is it a genuinely strange memory loss and is there something more sinister behind it?

- They credited Ben as “Jonah Magnus”, and yet we had never heard him at this level of… comedic villain? Almost like a parody? He was punning SO HARD and sounded like an impulsive idiot, it was a delight:

(MAG161) ELIAS: Knock-knock? TIM: Double-Boss! SASHA: Elias? ELIAS: I’m not too late for cake, am I? ARCHIVIST: There’s a cake…? TIM: How… did you– … Martin, that was a secret! MARTIN: I didn’t say anything! ELIAS: He didn’t have to. Nothing escapes my notice, and I like to keep an eye out for this sort of thing. […] Anyway. Uh, did somebody mention cake? TIM: Uh, yeah. You did. ELIAS: Yes, I did, didn’t I? [SILENCE] TIM: [SIGH] Alright, alright, well. I guess the cat’s out of the bag now anyway – look… just give me a second. […] So, what did you wish for? [STATIC] ARCHIVIST: I can’t tell you. ELIAS: He wished for a little bit of peace and quiet. […] TIM: Happy birth– ELIAS & MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: –day to–… ARCHIVIST: Oh, okay… ELIAS & MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: –you… ARCHIVIST: Mm–mm. ELIAS & MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: Happy birthday to you… ARCHIVIST: Right! ELIAS & MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: Happy birth– ARCHIVIST: Yes…! ELIAS & MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: –day, dear– MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: –Jo~on… ELIAS: –A~rchivist… ELIAS & MARTIN & SASHA & TIM: Happy birthday to you! […] TIM: Wine, anyone? ARCHIVIST: Tim, it’s [CORK POPPING] eleven in the morning. TIM: Pfft! Yeah, at your birthday party! [GLASS POURED] ARCHIVIST: I really don’t think it’s appropriate– ELIAS: I’ll allow it. In fact… I’ll join you.

1°) Elias invited himself for cake and wine, but mostly cake. That INSISTANCE about the cake was pure gold, Melanie should have poisoned one of those instead of his coffee and the idiot would probably have fallen for it.

2°) The gratuitous use of his powers just to Be Smug about ~understanding~ what Jon was wishing for, ELIAS WHY.

3°) The Eye puns, you’re cancelled and forbidden sir (“I like to keep an eye out”).

4°) I just can’t fucking believe the not even sneaky “Archivist” during the birthday song, the question is mostly HOW they didn’t pick up on Elias being a supernatural agent before the end of season 2 if he was at his shittiest like that all the time.

(Tim’s “Double-Boss!” gets a free pass because yeah, two bosses in the same room, and he had mentioned the “getting two spooky bosses” thing in season 3… But dang right about Elias being “double” by himself because Jonah-Elias.)

- I’m not 100% sure of that moment but:

(MAG161) TIM: … Oh, goodness! [SHAKES A BOX OF MATCHES] A source of ignition? In the Archives? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] SASHA: [CHUCKLES] TIM: Uh oh! ARCHIVIST: Tim. ELIAS?: [SIGH] TIM: Oh? Woops! [A MATCH IS LIT] Sorry; my hand slipped. ELIAS?: [HISS] TIM: And again. [CRACKLE OF A BIRTHDAY CANDLE WICK] And again. And… a couple more times, here – I’m so clumsy today; that is a lot of fire!

I think it was Elias hissing, and not Jon groaning.

Which, you know.

Tim, using fire in the Archives and teasing about it.

Someone was having bad flashbacks of Gertrude pouring petrol all over.

- Second tape, “what could have been”: both because it opened a shift in perspective (what if Sasha had been chosen as Head Archivist instead?), and the prospect of a smoother transition from Gertrude to the next Archivist, a version of events in which they would have been warned plenty:

(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “Of course, I had to bide my time, get a measure of you before I began to push; learn how you worked. So I decided I would wait until something came for you, and see how you reacted. Attacks upon the Archives were not uncommon during Gertrude’s tenure, and while she was always prepared… I made sure you would not be.”

And at the same time, would Jon have believed any of it? If Gertrude had mentioned The Web, probably; but… given that Gertrude was shown collaborating with Leitner afterwards (although the recording of their exchange was an accident), it could also have backfired spectacularly instead. Would Jon have believed an old woman in cahoots with Jurgen Leitner to be trustworthy, when a book from his library had wrecked Jon in his childhood?

- The concept of Sasha as a potential next Archivist was a gigantic surprise, and yet! And yet! It fits! It makes sense!

* One of her passions was literally watching people, heyo little Beholding:

(MAG026) SASHA: It was the day before yesterday when I first saw it. When I’m heading down the stairs in the morning, I sometime like to spend a few seconds looking out of the window at the people on the street below. I’ll move my head so that I see them through the warped glass, and they’ll distort like a funhouse mirror. It’s a bit daft, but I have a pretty dreary commute down to Victoria, so I take my fun where I can get it. Well, on that morning I paused before the window, and noticed one of the warped figures below was… off, slightly.

* SOB over the fact that… Sasha was the first to point out that they should quit, and that she didn’t really want to:

(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.

Martin confessed that he had thought about it in MAG039, Tim tried in MAG065… but she had been the first, and Gertrude was precisely inviting her successor to try! ;_;

* BIG BIG SOB because… she was the first one to point out that Elias was quite the dodgy sort:

(MAG039) SASHA: … Did I ever tell you I first joined the Institute as a practical researcher? I had to analyse and investigate all the stuff in here. Take notes after sleeping in the rusted chair, write in the memory book, all that sort of thing. I transferred after three months. Would’ve quit, but couldn’t afford to back then. Never understood why they keep this stuff secret. I mean, we’ve, we’ve enough here to send any sceptic packing, but it’s just locked away. I… I asked Elias about it once, but he just muttered something about funding and mission statements. He’s good at changing the subject, isn’t he?

* Martin was mostly a victim of Prentiss; Sasha took risks by accepting Michael’s offer (to protect the others), actively and knowingly pursued danger, leading her to discover their most reliable weapon against Prentiss’s worms: the fire extinguishers. Technically, she got in contact with two entities (Spiral+Corruption) in one go? She could have gotten marked so fast? In fact, she concentrated most aspects you could expect from a typical protagonist: she was curious, bold, followed Michael, annihilated Timothy Hodge’s swarm of worms, was the first one of the team to get physically hurt (a worm had gone through her shoulder); she took care of removing Jon’s worms in MAG039, barged out to save Tim, went to Elias for help…

(MAG039) MARTIN: And… there we go. Recording again. Did you get it? [PAINED CRY FROM ARCHIVIST AS SASHA EXTRACTS WORM WITH A SQUELCH] SASHA: There. And I just want to point out that I didn’t make this much of a fuss. ARCHIVIST: [BREATHING HEAVILY, AGGRIEVED TONE] I think your removal was substantially cleaner. […] ARCHIVIST: [MUTTERING] There’s nothing we can do. SASHA: Ah, screw this. ARCHIVIST: What, Sasha, NO! [DOOR OPENS] SASHA: Tim, look out! […] MARTIN: Ah, yeah. Sure. So, um, Sasha tackled Tim and there was kind of a struggle, but she made it out of the Archives. That, that was about two minutes ago and she’s gone to get help. P–probably. I mean, she, she couldn’t… she wouldn’t just run so…

While you could remove Jon from the season 1 climax and barely anything would have changed, since he simply watched and recorded and followed others. Which, at the same time, made Jon good as an Archivist/record(er) of Fears, but…

* (Aouch that Sasha, who was meant to be Gertrude’s replacement, was the first one to meet Michael…)

- At the same time: how come Gertrude was expecting Sasha to become her replacement?

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: … Right. If you’re listening to this, then it is likely that… [INHALE] No; let’s not beat around the bush. If you’re listening to this, it means I’m dead. And you have been chosen to be my replacement, as Head Archivist. Hopefully, this means you, Sasha – but if someone else is hearing this and Elias has made a different choice, for some reason, then these words are still very much intended for you. […] If it is you I’m talking to, Sasha, hopefully your background in Artefact Storage will lend a certain degree of… credence to my words. But others may have to take it on trust. All I can do is assure you I am deadly serious.

* SNORT that Gertrude stole a page from Gerry’s book (badum) with the “dead(ly) serious”.

* … With the reminder that Sasha had worked in Artefact Storage: is that a Requirement for Jonah in a way, a place where he usually picks up people from? Elias Bouchard had begun working in Artefact Storage in 1991, and he ended up as his next host…

* I can see multiple possibilities: Gertrude saw a bit of her younger self in Sasha (MAG145: “I was very new to it all, of course. I mean, I was, what? Can’t have been older than… twenty-five. Would you believe that you were the first proper ritual attempt I’d encountered? Eh! I really thought you were unique, special, an infernal cult raising their demon Messiah to bring about hell on Earth…! Eh, you can imagine all the heroic fantasies that that played into. So: I began researching what I thought was a counter-ritual of sorts. Like I said, mm, I was young. Naïve.”), and assumed that Elias would go with continuity and pick someone like her; Gertrude was perceiving Sasha as the most competent of the staff, and assumed she would be the best candidate (totally missing that Elias was searching for someone who wouldn’t be ready); Elias purposefully gave misleading signals to let Gertrude assume that he was taking an interest in Sasha as Archivist potential; or… Elias was genuinely planning to pick Sasha, and had a change of heart.

* If it was that last point: it’s ~very strange~ that in the end, Elias wouldn’t pick Sasha, who was supposed to become the next Head Archivist, and picked, instead, Jon, who was Web-touched. ~Very strange~. Was the new Head Archivist truly Elias’s choice, or The Web’s, huh…

- Damnit, no name for James Wright’s predecessor even though it could have been the occasion:

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: … Oh, yes. On the subject of Elias: trust nothing he says. He was originally known as Jonah Magnus, the founder of this Institute, and I have known him also as James Wright, the previous Head of the Institute.

“James Wright” became head in 1973 according to MAG049, and Gertrude had been working at the Institute for around fifty years, so she must have known Jonah’s previous iteration as well. Unless Jonah genuinely lived as a filing clerk for a few years while in control of James Wright? (MAG029: “Elias was working as a filing clerk at the time [1972]”) I… have trouble picturing him agreeing to let go of his seat and allowing someone else to run the place, even for a few years.

- New Cool Name for The Eye!

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: You – unfortunately – have unwittingly made the decision to become one of those incarnations, for the Institute serves a being known variously as “The Eye”, “It-Knows-You”, “The Beholding”, “The Ceaseless Watcher”.

(No wonder they didn’t get along well with The Stranger, since its cool name was “I-Do-Not-Know-You” according to MAG087 and MAG101.)

- … Amongst the things Gertrude didn’t share, it’s interesting to compare what she told “Sasha” and what she told Elias a few minutes later (?), in their exchange from MAG158’s tape:

* Nothing about the Panopticon hidden in the tunnels and Jonah’s body being down there, even though she had understood all about it:

(MAG158) ELIAS: What exactly were you hoping to achieve here? Why not come at me directly instead of burning everything first? GERTRUDE: I was rather hoping the fire would occupy you while I did just that. ELIAS: I see…! How long have you known? GERTRUDE: About your body? Not long after you took your new host and we had that little… chat. Wasn’t exactly a huge leap to the Panopticon after that. The hard part was figuring out how to actually reach it. Took me the better part of a decade. ELIAS: So you burn the place down, use it as cover to reach my body, and then we die together.

It would have taken her successor so long to understand that the Panopticon was still standing, and hidden down there, even if the MAG161 tape had reached them…

* Gertrude didn’t share that there is one way to escape the Institute/Elias’s clutch: gouging your eyes out. At this point, she had known for years:

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: You will also be unable to relinquish the position, or quit the Institute, finding you are supernaturally compelled to remain. In fact… it occurs to me that attempting to do so is probably the quickest and easiest way to establish the truth of what I am telling you – so I suggest you do so at the earliest possible opportunity.

(MAG158) GERTRUDE: I wasn’t actually planning on dying. ELIAS: And how exactly were you planning on achieving that while you’re still bound to the… ha. Oh, I see. Very clever. [CHUCKLE] I thought Eric was the only one to figure that little morsel out. GERTRUDE: Knowledge has a way of surviving. You, of all people, should know that.

… and yet didn’t tell Sasha/her successor in her official testament tape. Gertrude…

* No breakdown of the entities à la Gerry, which could have been a useful tool at first: Gertrude didn’t mention leaving notes to explain them, or even… Gerry’s page in America, which could have done the trick.

* Gertrude… wasn’t straightforward about her suspicion that the rituals were doomed to fail:

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: These… beings, these… gods of fear, their followers believe that they have… rituals. Grand projects, which, if successful, would allow them to enter our world, reshaping it in… [EXHALE] unthinkable ways; moulding it into a dimension where terror is as natural as… gravity. You… are now one such ritual. I do not know the exact details of it, but be wary of whatever Elias asks you to do. […] You are entering a new world, a place I’ve lived for most of my life. A place… [SIGH] A place that will often demand a high price from you. Pay it without hesitation, because one way or another, the world is now on your shoulders. [SIGH] I wish I had more time to explain it to you; but time is short, and hopefully my actions tonight will ensure this tape never needs to see the light of day. But if you are hearing it, then… good luck. Do what you have to do.

“their followers believe” does imply that it’s not a clear-cut objective truth… but she was still warning Sasha of the danger she would pose as a potential ritual, and setting her up to stop rituals, instead of telling her to not fret too much about them. Bit of pride on Gertrude’s part, since she had dedicated most of her life to stop them and didn’t want to admit that the prices “she” had paid were senseless sacrifices in the end…? (It was sad re: her regrets, but also… “Very Gertrude”: Jan and Michael Shelley, for example, had paid most of the “high price” she mentioned.) It kind of feels like Gertrude was really trying to preserve her legacy a bit, even though she knew, at this point, that she had been wrong…

- Not sure if it will be relevant, but Gertrude was convinced that Jonah used eyes to spy on people:

(MAG054) ARCHIVIST: 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.

(MAG113) ARCHIVIST: Found anything yet? MARTIN: Er… er… Bunch of… eyeless paintings? MELANIE: [JOVIALLY] Snap! Eyeless dolls.

(MAG154) 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!

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: He was originally known as Jonah Magnus, the founder of this Institute, and I have known him also as James Wright, the previous Head of the Institute. He has certain… abilities of clairvoyance, which allow him to perceive out of any eye – real, or symbolic – so be wary.

And that’s not exactly how Jonah himself described his powers?

(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “But it left me a gift: for sat in that watchtower, I could see… everything I turned my mind to.”

So I don’t know if it was a bit of pride from Jonah (not pointing out that there is One Weakness in his power: if no eye around, his powers are shit), or Gertrude operating off an assumption that wasn’t exactly the truth.

- Really curious as to how Gertrude came to the conclusion that an Archivist was a potential “ritual” by itself:

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: There are now things that will actively be trying to kill you, due to your new role as Archivist; and… Elias has plans for you that are little better. […] You – unfortunately – have unwittingly made the decision to become one of those incarnations […]. But, there… is another part of being the Archivist. These… beings, these… gods of fear, their followers believe that they have… rituals. Grand projects, which, if successful, would allow them to enter our world, reshaping it in… [EXHALE] unthinkable ways; moulding it into a dimension where terror is as natural as… gravity. You… are now one such ritual. I do not know the exact details of it, but be wary of whatever Elias asks you to do.

Was it because of her experience with Agnes, since Agnes was precisely conceived as an “incarnation” and the central piece of The Desolation’s ritual? Was it a deduction coming from Elias’s behaviour towards her (if he wasn’t trying to get rid of Gertrude so far, then it meant that her function was necessary outside of her consent or the path she had chosen)? Or did she manage to do historical research in old Archives like Jonah had done…?

- Still unclear whether or not Gertrude had a back-up plan for The Dark (as Elias suspected in MAG160) or a guess as to how to undo a ritual if she had been wrong and it were to succeed:

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: If my guess is right, the Church’s ritual should be collapsing at any time now, so… immediately. LEITNER: And if you’re wrong? GERTRUDE: Then a bit of gas will be the least of our worries.

We’ll see if there is something on that front, I guess.

- AHAHA that we got a confirmation that THIS is what Gertrude had been doing!

(MAG001) ARCHIVIST: Combine that with the fact that most of the Institute prefers the ivory tower of pure academia to the complicated work of dealing with statements or recent experiences and you have the recipe for an impeccably organised library and an absolute mess of an archive. This isn’t necessarily a problem – modern filing and indexing systems are a real wonder, and all it would need is a half-decent archivist to keep it in order. Gertrude Robinson was apparently not that archivist. From where I am sitting, I can see thousands of files. Many spread loosely around the place, others crushed into unmarked boxes. A few have dates on them or helpful labels such as 86-91 G/H. Not only that, but most of these appear to be handwritten or produced on a typewriter with no accompanying digital or audio versions of any sort. […] It is going to take me a long, long time to organise this mess.

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: I’ve managed to keep the Archives in a state of chaos for decades, as I believe his plan would benefit from their organisation. But I leave that to your judgement. Certainly, the longer he is ignorant of how much you know… the better.

So the disorganisation was absolutely on purpose, as suspected, which makes Jon’s hissing about Gertrude in season 1 all the funnier… and at the same time: it doesn’t feel like the mess put a dent in Elias’s plans at all in the end – since he didn’t really need an organised Archives for his plans, but a marked and powerful Archivist/Archive? (And Beholding, in itself, has nothing to do with understanding: “You who watch and know and understand none”.)

What it might have done, though, is (let’s hope!) make Elias twitchy on a very human and personal level, since we knew that he had habits and regularity:

(MAG098) MELANIE: Uh, Martin, have you seen Elias? MARTIN: Oh, uh… No, but Tuesday lunch he normally meets with the Library staff, I think.

(MAG103) ARCHIVIST: […] and it’s Wednesday afternoon, when he does his scheduling. So I’m… hoping he’s distracted. … He, uh… He loves scheduling. DAISY: … Rrrright.

So I hope the state of the Archives still made him deeply uncomfortable.

- It was the first time that Gertrude and Leitner were heard interacting together on the same tape! (… Unknowing aside; though that time, it was their corpses, not… really them.)

- Unclear if Leitner knew about “Elias” being Jonah Magnus, in the end! He knew why Gertrude had been recording, but did he hear the content? If he knew about Jonah, he really really should have told Jon when he explained that Elias was a Beholding agent in MAG080… (But since when does Jurgen Leitner make sensible decisions.)

- The first time was full of dark irony, but oooooh, Leitner…

(MAG161) LEITNER: Then you recording all that was meaningless anyway. Besides, I’m not afraid of him. GERTRUDE: Bravado? [CHUCKLES] Really? LEITNER: Hm–mm… It’s not bravado… GERTRUDE: [SHARPLY] We’re wasting time. Do you still have the Ruskin book? LEITNER: I do. Though I don’t relish the thought of using it. Makes it rather hard to breathe, like your chest– GERTRUDE: You know– LEITNER: –is being… GERTRUDE: –the gas main, little way out in the tunnel? LEITNER: I do. GERTRUDE: I need you to move it. LEITNER: I, hum… That’s… I mean, that’s not just earth, there’s pipework and all sorts of–

As Melanie would say: “Famous last words” (it’s ~not bravado~ when he said he wasn’t afraid of Elias, and Leitner complaining about pipework of all things…).

I love that he was complaining about the use of The Seven Lamps of Architecture, when Gertrude was currently trying to neutralise Elias and prevent his plans – he was using it quite easily in season 2, so… wasn’t that bad? And yet, he found ways to complain about it. Leitner, please.

- Amongst the new information casually thrown at us:

(MAG161) LEITNER: Right. … Did you mean to leave the tape running? GERTRUDE: Oh, good grief! Forty years I’ve been using them, and I swear, I’ll ne– [CLICK.]

Gertrude had been using them for 40 years at this point. The oldest recording we heard from her was from 1996 (MAG077), about the Not!Them, and she had noted that cassettes seemed to be spared by its effects – so I had assumed that she may have begun to record because of this, for 20 years? But apparently, no, she had started much earlier than that.

* Back to Jon’s first questions about her tapes: why are there so few, then, if she had been recording for so long? Why did she record certain statements and not others? (Was it mostly the statements about rituals or related?)

* So, “forty years” means that she began recording around 1975 => she didn’t begin to record as soon as she became Archivist, since on the same day she said that in front of Leitner, she had been in the position for roughly fifty years (Elias in MAG158: “I suppose we both got a little complacent. Fifty years is a long time! ‘End of an era’.”). It matches with the history of actual tape recorders, though they had begun to be more popular towards the end of the 60s… but curiously, “forty years ago” in 2015 also means… that Gertrude began to use a tape recorder around the time Hill Top Road burned (1974) and The Web tricked her into binding herself to Agnes. Mm-mmmmmmmmmm…

- Anyway, GERTRUDE X AGNES RIGHTS.

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: Paper burns well. [GURGLING LIQUID] Petrol burns… better. LEITNER: Aha! I always forget about your pyromaniac streak. GERTRUDE: Mm. Remind me to tell you about Agnes, sometime…!

Gertrude sounded almost fond (or at least playful) when mentioning her? It really seems to confirm that Gertrude&Agnes getting tied by the The Web’s ritual affected both: Agnes loved observing people, fire became Gertrude’s main weapon; The Lightless Flame avoided hurting Gertrude afterwards, and Gertrude extended her protection to Jack Barnabas. I wonder if we’ll get more about Agnes&Gertrude and/or if they had been in contact…

(Also, “remind me to tell you about x sometime” is some death flag, Gertrude…)

- OKAY, TAPE RECORDERS TIME (and insert here the usual “one day, I’ll finish&post that draft from 2018 about them”).

* I’m a bit surprised that there was no double-click at the beginning nor at the end of the first tape: it’s usually either a succession of tapes (the usual when Jon listens to Gertrude’s: it clicks off, then his own recording clicks on for him to give commentaries, so double-click after the first tape for the click-off / click-on), either a recording inside of a current recording (rarer: for example, Jon listening to the real Sasha’s tapes near the end of season 2, or to Daisy’s statement before going inside the Coffin). No double-click for the assistants tape, although the delimitations were clearer with Gertrude&Leitner’s as framed inside of Jon&Martin’s scene in the cabin:

(MAG161) [CLICK–] [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] MARTIN: Careful! […] TIM: Now, alright, alright; fine! Look: I’m turning it off. Any last words for your future selves? ARCHIVIST: Yes. “Fire Tim!” TIM: [LAUGHS] [CLICK.] [APOCALYPSE SOUNDSCAPING] ARCHIVIST: [SLOW BREATHING] […] MARTIN: You, uh… listening to the tapes again? [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] How many times is that, now? [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: They were sent to me, Martin. […] Just… [A TAPE IS LOADED] Listen. [CLICK–] [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] GERTRUDE: … Right. […] Oh, good grief! Forty years I’ve been using them, and I swear, I’ll ne– [CLICK.] [APOCALYPSE SOUNDSCAPING] ARCHIVIST: Can you imagine…? If we’d had this… […] No it’s not. [CLICK.]

Which means that it was prrrobably the same thing as with the beginning of MAG157 (which begins with Jon listening to Martin&Peter’s exchange from the previous episode): the tape recorder “observing” Jon listening clicked on for itself after the one playing the assistants’ tape, when it had already been running for a bit. Which means that there was actually more assistants content on that tape than what we heard! We’ve been robbed! Screw you, MAG161’s Visiting Tape Recorder, you could have clicked on sooner!!

* Big usual questions of “who is listening through the tape recorders and/or what is the thing pushing them to click on and off”! Interestingly, both of the tapes Jon was listening to made it clear that a person had chosen to start recording…

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Hang on – have you been recording this? TIM: Oh, yeah! I… just thought it might be nice, you know, something to look back on when we’re all old and sick of each other…! SASHA: You probably should have told us, Tim. TIM: [CHUCKLING] What, are you afraid we’re going to get sued over the “Happy Birthday” song? MARTIN: Oh! Oh, well I am now! SASHA: It’s… just a bit of a privacy thing. ARCHIVIST: Oh! Hypocrite. TIM: Now, alright, alright; fine! Look: I’m turning it off. Any last words for your future selves?

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: … Right. If you’re listening to this, then it is likely that… [INHALE] No; let’s not beat around the bush. If you’re listening to this, it means I’m dead. […] LEITNER: Right. … Did you mean to leave the tape running? GERTRUDE: Oh, good grief! Forty years I’ve been using them, and I swear, I’ll ne– [CLICK.]

… Only to highlight, both in the trailer and in the first episode of the season, that the tape recorders manifesting or “choosing” to record Jon were doing that on their own, without him being actively responsible for it:

(Season 5 trailer) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … What? What do you want? … The world is…! It’s over. You’ve won. What can you possibly still need to hear?

(MAG161) MARTIN: Hey – when, when did you start recording? [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: I… didn’t. MARTIN: [TENSE EXHALE] ARCHIVIST: I only brought one, and I’ve been using it to play the tapes. MARTIN: Oh. [INHALE] That’s not a great sign. ARCHIVIST: No… No it’s not. [CLICK.]

So: they’re still a Mystery, but we’re probably getting an answer about them soon-ish (at least by the end of the season) if there is such an insistence on it.

* My Big suspect is still The Web, though I’m less sure after season 4 (too many things seem to point in The Web’s direction, so is that a red herring…?).

… Towards the beginning of season 4, I had joked a bit that, what if it was Gertrude or Sasha?, and I’m considering it a bit more nowadays, especially with the insistence on Sasha to start the season with: Sasha as Jon’s assistant (complete with the reminder that her forte was with computers; “Binary” explained quite clearly that tape recorders are digital, too, and had a whole story about someone stuck in an artefact not made to contain and process a human psyche), and Sasha as a potential Archivist in a what-could-have-been scenario (so, Sasha as a Beholding candidate). Leitner had also pointed out that he didn’t know what happens to the Not!Them’s victims, and that one should assume them to be dead:

(MAG080) ARCHIVIST: And Sasha… The real one? LEITNER: Was that her name? I’m afraid she’s gone. Whatever it does to those it takes, they don’t come back. She’s dead. Do you need a moment?

… which wasn’t a definite and absolute “the Not!Them kills its victims and that’s it”. So… Sasha as a floating conscience recovering more and more autonomy when the Not!Them got temporarily sealed in the tunnels? Tape recorders began to manifest autonomy in season 3, though MAG080 was a weird case already (two were running until Elias’s entrance), and the first highlighted case of a tape recorder refusing to stay off… was to listen to Tim in MAG082 as he was interviewed by Daisy (so in potential danger), then to Tim&Martin at the end of the episode… and once again to Tim at the beginning of MAG090 (when he had come back from Malaysia and was paid a visit by Elias). Martin was mostly recording on his own accord, Jon sounded in control of his recordings at this point too… MAG161 made it casually clear that Tim&Sasha were getting along extremely well, which Tim had already acknowledged (MAG114: “I knew Sasha for years, we… I don’t know Martin as well as I knew her”), and we saw Sasha getting very protective of him when she hurried out to save him in MAG039… It would make sense that the Supernatural Tape Recorders would favour him of all people, at first, if she was behind them… (But then, it would break my heart into little pieces, given Tim’s distaste of the tape recorders, him spitting that he did “hate that thing” and hiding himself in the second half of season 3 partially in order to avoid them T___T)

Potential counterpoint, though, for both Gertrude and Sasha: the recording of Gertrude’s death(? MAG087 still doesn’t make sense if she was killed-killed back then!!) in MAG158 began while Gertrude was already pouring petrol all over the Archives, implying that she hadn’t been the one clicking it on – so it might have been started… another way, and could be our first chronological example of an “autonomous” tape recorder.

* “Who is listening in through the tape recorders?” is not fundamentally the same as “Who is using them to provide information to characters in-universe?”; so “who sent MAG161’s tapes back in MAG160?” is another question, a bit more concrete, especially since Jon and Martin mused about it:

(MAG160) ARCHIVIST: There’s… tapes in here, as well. D… did she say anything about tapes? MARTIN: She… didn’t mention it? But… I–I didn’t check it until after the call. ARCHIVIST: Mm.

(MAG161) MARTIN: You, uh… listening to the tapes again? [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] How many times is that, now? [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: They were sent to me, Martin. [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] There’s got to be some reason… MARTIN: [SIGH] Gloating, Jon. [CREAKING SOUND] Elias won, and there were some tapes he’d kept for himself, and he wanted to gloat. So, he sent them!

Gertrude’s tape is interesting, because Elias can’t have heard the content of it in any way before the end of season 2, since we hear Leitner on it and, more compromisingly, the mention that he’s been navigating the tunnels. Elias kept insisting that Leitner had been a surprise to him:

(MAG080) ELIAS: Well. This is a surprise. […] I’ve wondered for so long who it could be down there. Who was helping her. I honestly never would have guessed. LEITNER: How did you know I was here? ELIAS: I didn’t. You’re very well hidden. But Jon is not, and he failed to take the same precautions I’m sure you took for granted with Gertrude. I knew he was talking to someone. And it turns out to be Jurgen Leitner himself. [SOFT CHUCKLING] What an honour.

(MAG092) ELIAS: So. For the avoidance of any doubt. I killed Gertrude Robinson because she intended to destroy the Archives. And I killed Jurgen Leitner because he was… an unnecessary complication. Likely to tell Jon too much, too early.

(MAG102) ELIAS: I have been trying to give you the information you need. ARCHIVIST: Sure, when you’re not bashing its head in with a pipe. ELIAS: Leitner was… I will admit I possibly… overreacted to his sudden re-emergence.

(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “Jurgen Leitner was a surprise, of course, and I was forced to… improvise. I had no idea how much Gertrude would have told him, and he could very easily have derailed everything if you learned too much too fast. I… justified it to myself, saying I was going to have to send you out into the world anyway if you were to encounter more of the Powers, but I can’t honestly pretend it wasn’t a… rather rash move.”

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: Jurgen! [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] I told you to stay in the tunnels. [CHAIR SCRAPES] LEITNER: Your message also told me it was urgent. GERTRUDE: If Elias is watching right now…! LEITNER: Then you recording all that was meaningless anyway. […] GERTRUDE: You know the gas main, little way out in the tunnel? LEITNER: I do. GERTRUDE: I need you to move it.

Which means that Elias hadn’t listened to this tape in particular before the end of season 2. Where did Gertrude store/hide it and what happened to it afterwards? There is a possibility that it was just dumped in with Gertrude’s other tapes (I… don’t think that Elias had listened to them all anyway?) and it was passed from hand to hand since the end of season 1… to finally get back into Elias’s after Leitner’s murder:

(MAG040) MARTIN: When I finally found a door, I thought it might actually get out, but instead… It was a small room. Square. There was dust on everything. Cardboard boxes were piled around. They were full of old cassette tapes.

(MAG043) BASIRA: I’ve got a shot corpse, three boxes of cassettes, and Daisy, who’s the CID now, which… I suppose means it’s technically her problem, but… she’s now the only detective who’s already sectioned, so she’s always way too busy. As far as I know, neither of us have even had a chance to actually start listening to the tapes. […] ARCHIVIST: I have convinced Basira to give me access to the tapes. It won’t be many, or often, as they are currently police evidence and thus hard to subtly remove, and she can’t necessarily guarantee the ones I get will be the most pertinent to the case, but it is still a significant victory.

(MAG075) BASIRA: Here. [BOX HITTING A TABLE] ARCHIVIST: Are those the tapes? BASIRA: As many of them as I could get. […] Well they’re sure as hell not going to solve Gertrude’s murder, so you might as well have them. Before… I don’t know, maybe I still had enough police in me not to just steal from Evidence, but now…

(MAG116) ELIAS: During the… “difficulties”… ARCHIVIST: [AGGRAVATED SIGH] ELIAS: … with your initial absence, Jon, I took Gertrude’s tapes into my safekeeping. ARCHIVIST: Yes, I thought as much.

(MAG137) ARCHIVIST: [LONG 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.

(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.

So Gertrude&Leitner’s tape could technically have been amongst those – Elias probably wouldn’t have left Eric’s so easily accessible if he’d known about the content (“How to cut ties with Beholding and escape the Institute for dummies”), so he probably hadn’t listened to all of them by the time of his arrest in MAG120… so he could technically be the sender here, there is nothing in the canon invalidating that he couldn’t have had access to this tape given what we know of the journey of Gertrude’s boxes of tapes.

Regarding the assistants tape, Tim was explicitly the one recording the scene. So either Tim had forgotten about it… either someone/thing stole it by the time of season 2, since it contains a recording of the original Sasha, and existed when the Not!Them wasn’t yet identified as such. It was a private tape, it doesn’t contain sensitive information about the Institute unlike Gertrude’s – what happened to it, for it to be now sent to Jon? Same thing, Elias technically could have grabbed a hold of it… but it’s a silly scene, it doesn’t contain super sensitive information, and I feel like he would have gloated about it in his previous statement in a “I left you a little souvenir of the past!” way?

* So. The sender could be Elias, but I don’t think that it’s him, mostly because of what they have in common and what they seem to be saying: Sasha and mostly… fire. Fire in the Archives, the concept of setting the Archives on fire.

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: –Yes, thank you, I do hope you’re not planning to light those candles…! TIM: … Oh, goodness! [SHAKES A BOX OF MATCHES] A source of ignition? In the Archives? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] SASHA: [CHUCKLES] TIM: Uh oh! […] Oh? Woops! [A MATCH IS LIT] Sorry; my hand slipped. ELIAS?: [HISS] TIM: And again. [CRACKLE OF A BIRTHDAY CANDLE WICK] And again. And… a couple more times, here – I’m so clumsy today; that is a lot of fire! ARCHIVIST: I’m really not comfortable with– SASHA: So blow them out, then. ARCHIVIST: Oh. [FIRE CRACKLING] … Right, yeah–

(MAG161) LEITNER: Right… What are you going to do? GERTRUDE: Paper burns well. [GURGLING LIQUID] Petrol burns… better. LEITNER: Aha! I always forget about your pyromaniac streak. GERTRUDE: Mm. Remind me to tell you about Agnes, sometime…!

… And also something very new with Gertrude: it seems that… she wasn’t only planning to set the Archives on fire as a distraction while she was going after Jonah’s real body in the Panopticon, as she had told Elias when he caught her pouring petrol:

(MAG158) GERTRUDE: Shame, really; I used to be able to torch a building in half the time. [SIGH] Age catches us all. … Well. Almost all of us, Elias. ELIAS: You were the one so… insistent on staying human. […] What exactly were you hoping to achieve here? Why not come at me directly instead of burning everything first? GERTRUDE: I was rather hoping the fire would occupy you while I did just that. ELIAS: I see…! How long have you known? GERTRUDE: About your body? Not long after you took your new host and we had that little… chat. Wasn’t exactly a huge leap to the Panopticon after that. The hard part was figuring out how to actually reach it. Took me the better part of a decade. ELIAS: So you burn the place down, use it as cover to reach my body, and then we die together. [CHUCKLE] How… poetic. Doesn’t seem like your style at all.

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: [SHARPLY] We’re wasting time. Do you still have the Ruskin book? LEITNER: I do. Though I don’t relish the thought of using it. Makes it rather hard to breathe, like your chest– GERTRUDE: You know– LEITNER: –is being… GERTRUDE: –the gas main, little way out in the tunnel? LEITNER: I do. GERTRUDE: I need you to move it. LEITNER: I, hum… That’s… I mean, that’s not just earth, there’s pipework and all sorts of– GERTRUDE: Find a way. I need it to be directly under the Institute, or… at least, closer. LEITNER: I’m more likely to rupture it and fill the place with gas. GERTRUDE: Hm! That would also be acceptable.

SHE WAS PLANNING TO EXPLODE THE BUILDING AND THE TUNNELS?! That’s what the gas would have done when in contact with the fire! So did she bullshit to Elias about knowing where the Panopticon was, to hide her actual plot? She had already blown up a suspected Archive with a gas main:

(MAG053) GERTRUDE: It’s taken a long time to track down someone still living who found the Serapeum of Alexandria. It’s not a full confirmation of my theory about ancient iterations of the Archive, but I’m certainly feeling validated for pursuing it. […] Regardless, I have further follow-up of my own to do. My biggest concern right now is whatever creature Mr Heller encountered down there. It was… 56 years ago. But if it’s still alive, I should be careful. What was it? A guardian of some sort or perhaps… perhaps it too was… once an Archivist. […] ARCHIVIST: I’ve found a news article from March 1998, six months after this statement was taken. It reports an explosion in Alexandria, which destroyed several buildings in the vicinity of Pompey’s Pillar, and killed 17 people. Official investigation determined it to be a gas mains explosion, but… I wonder. Gertrude Robinson is not who I thought she was.

And… we know that Leitner moved the gas main, and that it’s still waiting under the Institute…

(MAG068) ARCHIVIST: Supplemental. I’m in the tunnels. I was exploring and I got lost. I haven’t gone down any of the stairs and I– I think I’m still under the Institute. There were a couple of spiders, so I changed routes and found, I think it’s a gas main. Must be for the whole building. But there’s someone coming and I– I don’t know who else would be down here, except… I mean, whatever’s down here.

… because Jon was redirected towards it by friggin’ spiders, in the episode preceding the one about Annabelle Cane’s emergence as an avatar.

Complete with Elias’s Knock-knock (MAG081: “Then, on page five, the words ‘KNOCK KNOCK’ appear next to the door in the same style as the words of the title. Mr. Spider’s arms are suddenly straight and still by his side. The text comes again: ‘WHO IS IT, MR. SPIDER?’”), Elias insisting so much about the cake (MAG081: “‘IT’S MR. BLUEBOTTLE’, the text reads, ‘AND HE’S BROUGHT YOU A CAKE’.”), Tim joking about “a source of ignition? In the Archives?” which was Jon’s exact recrimination when he unpacked and discovered the Web lighter (MAG036: “And I don’t allow ignition sources in my archive!”), it really feels to me like it’s The Web that sent the tapes? There are so many little connections and narrative irony, it sounds like something a “Story-Spinner” would send…?

If it’s indeed The Web: I… am not banking on the tapes being a guideline to explain how to get rid of Jonah. It could still be gloating: look, we made you aware of the gas main under the Archives; look, we had sent you the Web lighter; you had all the cards in your hands and yet you didn’t grab your chance when you had it, and it’s your own fault that Jonah was still around when he tricked you into reading his incantation. It could still be that kind of message.

(+ Big problem in the Archives about using the gas main… is the New Fire Suppression System (MAG039, Elias: “On Jon’s insistence I recently changed the Archive’s fire suppression system to use carbon dioxide. Should have done it years ago, really–”). IIRC, CO2 is precisely good to counter leaking gas fire?)

- We’re getting a few indications about the current state of the world:

(Season 5 trailer) MARTIN: Uh, o–okay, eh. [PAUSE] How are you feeling today? ARCHIVIST: [LONG INHALE] Define… “today”. [CREAKING SOUND] MARTIN: “How are you feeling in general”, then? ARCHIVIST: … Unchanged. [PAUSE] I don’t know if it’ll ever change again…! […] MARTIN: OH! Woah…! Oh… Wha… [HIGH-PITCHED] What, but I–, I–I made that, if– I… Wh… I thought it was– ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry, Martin. MARTIN: [PANTS] ARCHIVIST: [WITH AN EDGE] Things don’t work like that anymore…! MARTIN: Like what?! ARCHIVIST: Like normal. This is no longer a world where you can trust…! MARTIN: What, t–tea?! ARCHIVIST: … Comfort.

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

* So time and necessities have been affected – I was wondering if the “eternity of torment” promised by Elias meant that everyone would be kept in a state of not-being-able-to-die, it might be the case…? (Which adds another concern if (if.) they managed to undo that apocalypse: would time catch up to everyone, suddenly, thus annihilating everyone in one-go…?)

* The most characteristic element of Elias’s office, sound-wise, was the clock/metronome in the background. If we were to go back in that office at some point, would it have stopped like all the others? Or not?

* This episode showed Jon listening to the recordings of fixed points (his own birthday, a representation of time passing as a personal experience; Gertrude&Leitner the day they tried to neutralise Elias, resulting in Gertrude’s death and, ultimately, in Jon rising as the next Head Archivist) at a moment during which “time” is not experienced anymore as a stable and sure thing (they can’t track days anymore, the clocks have stopped)… and yet, time is indeed still going, still there as a continuum? There is a past, there is future, there is a “right now”, down to the case number (“Case ########–1”): no date, yes, but if you’re counting 1, 2, 3, etc., then there is still a logic, still a progression. The main difference, right now, seems to be that time is less tangible, less grounded? More subjective, but without the regularity of the world going around them? I wonder if time will get further twisted, or will remain… a constant “undetermined”.

- I’m squinting a bit at the fact that Jon insists that this apocalypse seems to resist any change (and mentioning the day before the invocation as “the day before the Change”), and pushing to preserve their current status quo:

(Season 5 trailer) MARTIN: “How are you feeling in general”, then? ARCHIVIST: … Unchanged. [PAUSE] I don’t know if it’ll ever change again…! [MIRTHLESS CHUCKLE]

(MAG161) MARTIN: I know. But we can’t stay in this cabin forever…! [DISTANT HOWL] ARCHIVIST: Why not? It, it’s quiet here, an–and I have you…! […] MARTIN: Well, that as may be, we can’t just stay here forever. ARCHIVIST: What could possibly be out there that you want to see?

… when the one thing that had been characterised by “change”, last season, was Adelard’s definition of The Extinction:

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “This is a fear of extinction. Of change. It used to be part of The End, perhaps, when The End of humanity was to be the end of all things; but now, the fear is not of a rapture or a revelation; it is of catastrophic change. A change in our world that will wipe out what it means to be “us”, and leave something else in its place. […] The Extinction. The Terrible Change. The-Future-Without-Us.”

So, hum… Given that Martin still thought in MAG158 that The Extinction as an aspect of Fear might legitimately be on the rise, I wonder if he’ll try to dig further in that area, and cause something worse in the process (although that doesn’t bode great at all for humanity: Simon had warned that, anyway, the world would just keep going, that “ends of the world” and cataclysms had happened and would happen again).

- I wonder if the dreams, and specifically Martin’s, will become a Big Slap In The Face by the end of the season (making us go back to the mention from this ep and going “OH NO, THE FORESHADOWING/HINT D:”)…

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Well, I haven’t yet. I get… tired, but it doesn’t feel the same. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] Probably for the best. Sleep doesn’t look… pleasant. MARTIN: Nnno, it’s… it’s not. ARCHIVIST: I couldn’t wake you. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] MARTIN: I’m sorry. […] Well, just as well I don’t remember my dreams. ARCHIVIST: I do. MARTIN: Uh– What? ARCHIVIST: They… I see most of the suffering around here. When it’s quiet, it just… it’s like… I can see it, like I’m watching all of it. MARTIN: You haven’t been opening the curtains? ARCHIVIST: No, I don’t need to. “It” can see us here, and… [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] And I can see out as well. MARTIN: O–kay, we’ll just file that under… ominous, for now.

Is it the same for everyone (no comfort found in sleep, sleep being as unpleasant as awareness)? In Martin’s case, does it mean that he has lost Beholding’s protection as a member of the Institute (since he was going to The Lonely), or does it mean that, anyway, the rules have changed and Jon will see people’s dreams indiscriminately, including Basira’s? What about Melanie’s, since she cut ties with Beholding? … Do Jon and Martin have the same definition of an unpleasant dream…? (=> is it the “Martin dreams about Jane Prentiss” kind of unpleasant, or the “Martin dreams about being back into The Lonely and feeling fine there, and it’s the waking up part which is unpleasant” kind?).

- It seems like Elias was kiiiiind of (absolutely) right about the concept that Jon would be perfectly tailored for this world… as Archivist:

(Season 5 trailer) MARTIN: Are you still… [SIGH] “feeling it”? Seeing everything? ARCHIVIST: Yes, I, I’m trying not to, but… all of the fear, th–the anguish, i–it just… [INHALE] It keeps coming at me in waves, rolling over me, filling my head with such… awful sights. MARTIN: … I’m sorry. That sounds… [SMALL EXHALE] That sounds horrible. ARCHIVIST: … I wish it was, Martin. I really wish it was. … But it feels… right. [MIRTHLESS HUFF]

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: They… I see most of the suffering around here. When it’s quiet, it just… it’s like… I can see it, like I’m watching all of it. MARTIN: You haven’t been opening the curtains? ARCHIVIST: No, I don’t need to. “It” can see us here, and… [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] And I can see out as well. […] … Besides… G… [SHAKY EXHALE] Grief… is healthy. I–if nothing else, it pushes away the other feelings that that… thing wants me to experience. […] It’s so… It’s so loud, out there? The agony, the–the terror, I can see it all so much more clearly…!

;; For “the other feelings that that thing wants me to experience”: Jon got a bit more aware of the influences that were pushed on him during season 4 (leading him to discover Eric’s tape), I’m really impressed that he managed to establish what he didn’t want to embrace and what he considered as himself and his own feelings, his own ethics? Despite his jab at Martin for not falling into despair “like me [Jon]”, it doesn’t feel like Jon has utterly given up, since he’s still refusing to embrace the Beholding part of himself – if he had absolutely given up, whether or not he were enjoying the apocalypse wouldn’t really matter, right? Yet, he’s still fighting on that front, still hasn’t decided to stop feeling guilty like Helen did.

Regarding his relationship to The Eye, it sounds like an extension of what used to be his dreamscape, where he couldn’t escape The Eye anywhere, hated it, and yet was completed by it:

(MAG120) ELIAS: It opens, and he walks slowly down the steps into the earth; but even as it closes above him, the great shadow still Sees him. There is nowhere in this universe that it would not blot out the sky. […] But the Archivist is not afraid. His only fear is that even here, at the centre of the world, barrelling towards a flightless, infinite tomb, still, he will be watched. Still, he will watch. […] So he watches her, trying in his single-minded focus to ignore the attention of that impossible thing that covers the sky and fixes its gaze on him with such force it would choke him – were he breathing. […] And at last, the Archivist looks up. At last, he looks into The Eye that sees all, and knows all, and clutches at the secret terrors of your heart. The Ceaseless Watcher of all that is, and all that was; the voracious, infinite hunger that tears at his soul, invoking him to discover, to observe, to experience all and everything and forever. It stares into him, and it stares out of him, and he is falling into the devouring eternity of its pupil. He wants to cry out in horror, but he cannot. He. is. whole.

(Down to the “it stares into him, and it stares out of him” symbiotic relationship since Jon explained that his awareness of the suffering is linked to what “it” can see.)

It’s heart-breaking that Jon’s resistance towards embracing his monsterhood… came with a form of self-harm (rummaging in the past), yet grounding him away from his instinct to enjoy the chaos. Glad and sad that Jon&Martin had that tiny argument about what counts as “healthy” in the current circumstances – it’s not the time, not the circumstances anymore indeed… and yet, it has always and never been the time before, anyway. I’m curious about how Jon directly qualified his listening to the tapes as a form of processing his “grief”, since there has been that theory of TMA organised as the five stages of grief floating around, it worked very well for the first four seasons… and the last phase would then end with “acceptance”. He’s not there right now, but that could be the inner journey in season 5…

- We’ve yet to see if Elias was right and will be spared, but at least, Jon is indeed in a position of power in the new setting:

(MAG161) MARTIN: Uh, yes. Still: better than outside. [CREAKING SOUND] [EVIL MOO / BÂÂ IN THE DISTANCE] MARTIN: It sounds bad. ARCHIVIST: [MIRTHLESS LAUGHTER] It is…! [SILENCE] MARTIN: … Are we still safe? ARCHIVIST: Y–yes, it… it doesn’t want to harm me. MARTIN: And me? ARCHIVIST: I won’t let it. […] … I just wish it didn’t feel like whatever’s out there was waiting, too. MARTIN: Yeah… [SILENCE]

(I can’t decide if it’s a moo or a bââ, and I can’t decide which I would love more: evil cow because there is no comfort anymore, or evil bââ because of Jonathan “Bâââ” Sims from MAG125. The cry is really faint but heard multiple times through their exchanges!)

So: at least on Jon’s front, he’s not targeted by things out there, and sounds confident that he would be able/powerful enough to keep them away from Martin.

… I wonder how aware Jon currently is of the risk of losing Martin, and how much it weighs in his protests against the idea of leaving the safehouse. On the one hand, he might not be able to protect Martin efficiently if they were to travel outside (and… as Peter had pointed out to him in MAG159, Martin is “the last”); on the other hand, heading towards more populated areas means receiving more suffering from many more people, so the prospect of leaving indeed sounds like a lose-lose for Jon on both fronts. Still: as soon as they leave the cabin, what will begin in retrospect is probably… the story of how they will lose each other in some way or another. (Unless they die together.)

- Regarding Jon&Martin, I love the togetherness, the fact that Jon agrees to show his vulnerable sides and to explain himself! Martin is not enduring things anymore, snaps and protests, and the contrast between his s1!self (unable to assert himself and getting walked over by everyone, not in a mean way but still… very casually) is so blatant!

(MAG161) MARTIN: It just… It hurts me to see you wallowing, like this. ARCHIVIST: [SHARPLY] Well, some of us weren’t able to cut ourselves off from the world before it ended. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] MARTIN: That’s not fair. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [SOFTER] No, it’s not, I’m, I’m sorry, I just… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] [INHALE, EXHALE] It hurts. MARTIN: I know. […] ARCHIVIST: No, it’s– [SIGH] I love you, I just… I need more time. [SILENCE] MARTIN: It’s alright. [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] [CREAKING SOUND]

* … I wonder if Martin’s absence of reaction following Jon’s “I love you” means that he was already used to it, or if he didn’t react because… he doesn’t have many emotions left, himself, after his Lonely-fication.

* Jon’s accusation seemed very targeted, and ;; Martin had explained that Jon was the only person left for him, in MAG158, I… think it might still be genuinely the case? And that Martin is able to think about a solution or a path precisely because other people’s suffering doesn’t matter much for him and he doesn’t empathetically feel for them? Martin still has a moral compass (like in MAG158, when he pointed out that he did care if people were to die following Elias’s death), but… I’m not sure he’s doing it “for people”.

* There was a brusque turnaround from Martin pointing out that the safehouse was “better than outside” before Gertrude’s tape, to Martin pushing Jon to leave in search for a solution with him: did Martin suggest they could go on that journey because Jon looked sad, and that Martin is mostly… trying to fix this problem? (Jon looks sad because of the end of the world, therefore they must find a way to revert the world to its original state, and Jon won’t be sad anymore.)

* I’m a bit worried over the push-pull relationship between Jon&Martin right now, especially with Martin’s past involvement with The Lonely… Jon shuts him down quite a lot, and although Martin snaps and Jon relents and apologises, Martin is still put in the position of being his caretaker at the moment (going to check on Jon, reminding him that his guilt is misplaced, etc.): it… is a bit uncomfortable given Martin’s pedigree (trying to take care of his mother and being constantly rejected). Jon was quick to apologise and tried to ease it, but I’m a bit worried on that front.

* It doesn’t seem like Martin had realised that his biological rules have changed when it comes to sleeping or eating; is it a Martin-thing (due to his having a supernatural connection with The Lonely and/or with Jon), or is it the same for all of humanity now?

* Big scare that Martin could be (unknowingly?) feeding from Jon – what could be Lonelier than someone obsessively listening to tapes from a past that has been lost and can’t be reached anymore? When Martin said “It hurts me to see you wallowing”, was it genuine, or an attempt at self-convincing that he’s not thriving on it (and feeding from it)…?

- In the series of contrast between Jon and Martin: “waiting”.

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: No, it’s– [SIGH] I love you, I just… I need more time. [SILENCE] MARTIN: It’s alright. [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] [CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: [SOFT EXHALE] MARTIN: It’s alright, I’m good at waiting.

And it’s a skill that Martin indeed learned to perfect, forced by circumstances: from being besieged by Prentiss to convincing Tim to wait for the Jon-intervention, to waiting for the opportunity to trap Elias, to the months spent playing Peter like a Cheap Whistle:

(MAG022) MARTIN: This went on for thirteen days. Every time I thought it might be safe to try and leave I’d hear that knocking at my door come back. Luckily there was no problem with my water supply, so I had plenty to drink. I’m just glad none of them thought to come up through the pipes. I eat a lot of… ready meals, cans, that kind of thing, so… I had food, although after the first few days I had to start rationing. If I ever see another can of peaches… [SHUDDERS] But… I–I think the worst part was the boredom.

(MAG117) MARTIN: 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.

(MAG158) MARTIN: And then… [SHAKILY] Jon came back, and… and suddenly, I had a reason: I had to keep your attention on me. Make you feel in control, so you didn’t take it out on him. […] So I… played along, waited to see what your endgame was. And here we are.

(ThisIsHowWebMartinCanStillWinTM, since Breekon had described The Web as “knows too much to truly be a Stranger, but hides its knowing well enough to endure”.)

… Meanwhile, Jon used to hate waiting and staying inactive:

(MAG031) ARCHIVIST: Hunted. … Yes… I think I’m starting to know the feeling. […] It’s… been two months now… since Martin returned… and we. Became. the ones. being… hunted. Are we being hunted? … Martin’s still living here, and I’m leaving less and less. The worms keep turning up, we kill them, but there are more each week. … What is she waiting for…?

(MAG115) ARCHIVIST: Maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s just this… stillness, the anticipation. I– We know what’s happening, we know what we have to do about it, we even have something approaching a plan for once. And while it’s a welcome change not to be desperately praying for a deus ex machina, I don’t really know how to handle the waiting. […] So I suppose I’m safe. But everything just feels like… killing time, running down the clock. I don’t think I like it. God, do I– do I miss being chased? That’s depressing. No, it’s… I just miss feeling like I’m moving, like I–

(MAG130) ARCHIVIST: … It’s been two weeks since I heard from Basira. I’m not waiting any longer. I’m getting Daisy back.

(MAG137) ARCHIVIST: What the hell is The Watcher’s Crown? So far the only mention of it I’ve had is from Gerry, and he didn’t seem to know much about what it actually meant. [PAUSE] And he’s gone now. But if it is the grand ritual of Beholding, then I– … I mean… I need to know about it. Right…? I feel like I’m on a deadline, like I’m running out of time somehow – and I don’t even know where to go! What to look for, o–or… [EXHALE] Just casting around blindly for more clues to just… drop into my lap. Everyone else is… running towards something, or running away, and I… [SIGH] I don’t know what I’m doing. [PAUSE] [SIGH] I’m just tired. Think I might go lie down for a while. Get a cup of tea [HUFF]

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: … [SIGH] I’m just worried about Martin. … Christ… Every other Avatar gets to have their feelings… burned right out of them, but me? I’ve… just got to sit in mine. … 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– … [DEEP INHALE] [VERY FAST] I need him to be okay. I just do. … If I… Knew… what his plan was; if I knew what Peter was doing; if I just– [WHISPERING] … Can I…?

And used to jump into action in order to find a solution at every turn. So seeing him asking for more time, and suggesting that they could stay in the safehouse “forever”… Ooft. Someone has been burned one too many time after MAG160.

- We don’t know the exact amount of tapes that Jon received, but he implied there were more than what we’ve heard:

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Have you heard the Gertrude one? MARTIN: What? ARCHIVIST: The Gertrude tape. [A TAPE IS LOADED] There’re a–a few of them, but this is my favourite.

* So, multiple ones, possibly multiple ones with Gertrude specifically? Given that we heard Gertrude&Leitner together for the first time, I wonder if we’ll hear a Gertrude&Gerry one at some point, or a Gertrude&Adelard, or a Gertrude&Agnes (depending if she was sincere when she told Arthur that she had never met her… though, epistolary conversation through letters and/or tapes could work!), or Gertrude&Emma-the-third-assistant, or Gertrude&Elias just after Jonah had body-hopped, or even before…

* Anyway, BOLD CHOICE to begin with Jon’s “favourite” because it means that if we listen to the other tapes in the next few episodes… we’ll know they’re not Jon’s favourite.

- Really, I really, really appreciate how the episode brought up sharp contrasts in multiple aspects, but mostly expressed by the opposition between Jon&Martin: staying indoors and listening to the past and to what-could-have-been, going out and searching for a solution that might not even exist to fix the future. It’s an interesting case where the episode title, “Dwelling”, refers to two different things… that are after all one and the same: the house Jon doesn’t want to leave, and the memories of the past that he keeps listening to as a way to push back what the new world is trying to force on him. The same bubble, both physical and metaphorical.

We’re kicking off with a status quo, so what will be able to break it? Jon getting enough “time” to accept to leave and begin searching on his own, without any push? One of the monsters trying to attack Martin? Basira and/or Melanie&Georgie finding them? The Not!Them, Julia&Trevor or monster!Daisy? New tapes or statements left for them to invite them somewhere? (Elias barging in with Regrets because he’s not as immune as he hoped would make me laugh a lot, but I think he would rather choke on his own eyes than admit that he was wrong in any way. ^^)

Title for next episode seems very… down to earth… and absolutely not ominous… absolutely not… Aside from the obvious, what could be the second meaning…? Something about what happened to the village? … Title could work in a way for Salesa (or Peter?!) content, though not banking on it.

#tma liveblog #mag161 #tma season 5 #tma spoilers/#the magnus archives #long post/#loooong.

26 notes · View notes

daturanerium · 5 years

Text

i just finished season one of the magnus archives (here’s my livetweet thread) so here’s my discordant thoughts on the characters

jon

annoyingly stubborn

dramatic!!!!

was definitely That One Emo Theatre Kid in whatever britain's version of high school is

wants to know. everything.

fatal flaw: pursuit of knowledge. he can’t let a mystery go unsolved

please get some sleep baby you can solve the mystery in the morning

he’s so serious and awkward i adore him and i hope he remembers to take care of himself

martin

baby boy.....baby

consistently underestimated and underappreciated. give him a raise please elias he’s gone through hell

so full of love, even for people who don’t seem to love him back

i want to hug him

so intelligent, so thoughtful! always coming up with answers that no one else can think of

fatal flaw: self/preservation or fear. altho in his line of work i’m giving him a break

he’s got some big things ahead of him, i can tell. i hope that he gets some bomb ass magical powers or something because he really deserves it

sasha

ive known sasha for a week and a half but if anything happened to her i would kill everyone in this room and then myself

speaking of........what the hell happened during the finale i’m Worried

she’s so caring and protective. i feel like she’s the “hold my flower” member of the archive (jon or tim is the “kick his ass baby i got your flower”)

fatal flaw: curiosity. at least she’s aware of it?

i literally love her

looks like a cinnamon roll, is a cinnamon roll (but will also kill you)

so strong. so smart.

im love her and i hope she’s okay

elias

okay shifty capitalist motherfucker i see you

i don’t actually think he’s gulity of anything tbh, just a victim of circumstance trying to do his job and keep it

fatal flaw: submissive towards authority. spill the secrets buddy we gotta know

“but the funding”

i think his heart’s in the right place. i just hope he realizes there are bigger things than rich people and even the archive.

tim

pure of heart, dumb of ass

frat bro!!!!!

super friendly

EDIT: i made a joke about tim having cishet energy but i’ve since been informed that he’s canon bi which is awesome!

just doing his job, man

hey jon the boys and i are gonna go crack open a cold one later, wanna join? you’ve been stuck recording in that office for hours mate you need to get out and do something

he really genuinely cares about his friends and he’s so sweet

fatal flaw: inability to read the room. bro i love u no romo but u gotta learn to Read The Signs

such a dork

definitely going to get possessed at some point

jane prentiss

it is every sapphic’s duty to fall in love with an eldrich horror and jane is mine

her monologue/statement was so good that i’m doing it for speech this year. thank you irl jonathan sims for being a fantastic writer

so spooky......so curious........so dark.........so endearing

please tell me about the song and the nest and the itch. i’m so genuinely interested in her story and i hope we hear more from/about her because i still have Questions

every time i picture her it’s in the style of the scary stories to tell in the dark illustrations

ugh god such a good antagonist.....this is so good

mary and gerard key

during the first description of mary i was so impressed with her lifestyle and general presentation.....she was really living her best life. until it was revealed that she was not actually alive. but still

gerard you little shit, planting all these things for the archivists to find. who are you

side note but i thought his name was “jared”. i’m trying to not picture another famous gerard but i’m seventeen. what can you do.

they’re definitely working for some outside force, or maybe they Are the outside force? either way i’m intrigued

(predictions for season two and beyond under the cut)

general predictions for season two and beyond:

i’ve managed to avoid spoilers a lot better than i usually do, but i think there may be something to do with avatars for gods or something? anyway jon’s god is knowledge-based and sasha’s is strength-based. elias may be conman/trickery-based? martin is his own seperate being entity thing, i can’t see him fitting into any typical categories yet.

oh actually it would be really cool if martin was tied in with the god of death? it kind of fits him, idk how tho. he’s just so sweet and kind and that matches the casual comforting neutrality of death.

actually maybe not because we’ve already met death and it’s just a bunch of reapers that were dumbasses in life, oh well (i’m still gonna keep it in on the off chance something happens with it)

jon takes a nap (unlikely, but i can dream)

that shipping company that keeps popping up definitely delivered that lighter to jon. don’t know what the lighter means but i’m excited to figure it out

jonmartin endgame

sasha is either possessed or has been completely erased by a copy. my guess is that she’s stuck in a time loop that was created when she touched the hypnotizing table, although how that happened is just about anyone’s guess.

gertrude was killed by gerard key, who, in his Infinite Knowledge of Plot and How The World Works, knew that jon needed to be the head archivist for things to work out the way he and his mother want it to. the keys are beyond time.

martin lives in the archive because he actually kind of likes it there??? even tho he had a traumatic event with worms and jane and finding the dead body of his old boss in the basement

i’m really interested to know what jon was up to before he worked as the head archivist. i feel like that’s kind of important and relevant? if it’s not now it will be in the future

elias has to pick a side: jon and the truth or the “funds” and the government. i hope he makes the right one, but plot and conflict is also important and i can totally see him becoming the Imposing But Apologetic Lawful Antagonist

idk what the gods thing is (if it even is something?) but i’m pretty sure one of them has to do with eyes/watching, and my guess is that it’s the one having to do with knowledge. and while i’m here i’m also going to go out on a crazy limb and say that gerard and mary work for it, whatever the watching thing is. that’s how they know where to be at the right time.

there’s another group of people that work on things like the archive does--they’re just a little more....casual. idk if you all are/were supernatural fans but i’m thinking that the magus archive is the men of letters to this other faction being hunters. they split off after elias’s rules became too stifling, and they sometimes get there before the archive knows about the situation (like in ep 36, taken ill, or episode 8, burned out. altho ep 8 was with gerard, so maybe he works with them sometimes? idk)

sasha gets better but a sacrifice has to be made to save her. martin, to everyone’s surprise, offers.

i’m so excited to listen to season two oh my god this show is fantastic

#the magnus archives #tma #tma season 1 #jonathan sims #i've managed to keep myself from the tumblr tag but god.....it's tempting #feel free to reblog with cryptic laughter but please don't actually spoil anything!

15 notes · View notes

bestreasonstowriterecordreviews · 5 years

Photo

✰ BEST REASONS TO WRITE FUCKIN’ RECORD REVIEWS IN 2018 ✰

✰✰✰✰✰ 6th ANNIVERSARY ✰✰✰✰✰

Neil Morris, speaking to Alan Lomax in 1959:

“Well, when I was just a small boy, Old Uncle Milt Oldfield…Billy Oldfield, the Congressman from Arkansas for so long, it is his father. He and my father are awfully close friends. And they were discussing music. They were music teachers both of them.

“And uh, and they said, dad did and Uncle Milt sanctioned what he said, that MUSIC HAD NO END. That you could learn all the other guy [or girl] learned, and after you got that done they would then, something else would crop up. That uh, that you, that was the reason why that uh, music advanced. That’s why that you would get a better music in one generation maybe that is, uh, IT WOULD FIT THE TIMES IN WHICH THEY LIVED.”

[Lomax: “What about music on the grapevine?”]

“Welllll, they said that MUSIC GREW LIKE THE GRAPEVINE THAT IS NEVER PRUNED. That each year it’d…it’d put on a little bit more. That was what they said, now, about it. Any further questions?”’

It’s time to feast from 2018′s Grapevine That Is Never Pruned with 123 (+ 162 more) of the BEST REASONS TO WRITE FUCKIN’ RECORD REVIEWS IN 2018!

A prefatory note: The Best Reasons campaigns of our first five years endured critiques from far and wide about too many damn records listed. Well...we can no longer countenance such reproach. Every single one of these nuggets is an essential thread in the tapestry of 2018′s combustible sonic arts! We here at FRR stand for ecumenicism and as such, consider the breadth of our listening parameters: Feeding Tube Records issued 74 items in 2018 (!), Clean Feed released about 80, and Astral Spirits about 30...that’s a lot potential gold in those three labels alone. Sure, it’s too much for any one person to absorb, but still...

We all know that some combination of easy access to home studio tools, world wide web streaming, social media delirium, legacy record industry collapse, and artistic resistance to creeping authoritarianism has (somewhat paradoxically) unleashed a tidal wave of idiosyncratically great music during the past decade, so it should come as no surprise that such a list as this would contain nearly 300 essential items. Yea, it seems nearly everything gets recorded and released these days (especially the zonked improv/collagist /noise/outer limits realm), but whether or not we listen to such items as frequently as we consumed Exile On Main Street or Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy back in the day is irrelevant...the time is now, and as far as wild sounds from the outer dimensions goes, now has unprecedented bounty...listen heartily, for tomorrow, who knows?

(...all long playing records unless otherwise noted...also, the list was made complete with links, but grrr they don’t show up, so point your browser as they used to say and happy hunting!)

✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩

✰ ROSALI Trouble Anyway (Scissor Tail) ✰

✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩

✰ BRIDGET HAYDEN Pure Touch Only From Now On, They Said So (Early Music, Sweden) ✰

✰ YUZO IWATA Daylight Moon (Siltbreeze) ✰

✰ L$D FUNDRAISER Witness Disco (CocoMuse, New Zealand) ✰

✰ MAXINE FUNKE Silk (Feeding Tube) + Eternity 7” (I Dischi Del Barone, Sweden) ✰

✰ LONG HOTS Monday Night Raw cassette (self-released) ✰

✰ BASIC HUMAN Cassette (Meatspin, Australia) ✰

✰ LOOSE-Y CRUNCHÉ Unruly Top cassette (Altered States, Australia) ✰

✰ ETHERS Ethers (Trouble In Mind) ✰

✰ UNHOLY TWO The Pleasure To End All Pleasures (12XU)

✰ ZAÏMPH Rhizomatic Gaze 2LP (Drawing Room) ✰

✰ ALLISON COTTON All Is Quiet At The Ancient Theatre (Feeding Tube) ✰

✰ CONSTANT MONGREL Living In Excellence (Anti Fade, Australia / LVEUM, U.K.) ✰

✰ OTHERWORLD (aka Kay Logan) Mad Wee Light cassette (Kit, UK) ✰

✰ DUSK Dusk (Don Giovanni) & “The Pain Of Loneliness (Goes On And On)” 7″ (Dirtnap) ✰

✰ WENDY EISENBERG Its Shape Is Your Touch (VDSQ) ✰

✰ THALIA ZEDEK BAND Fighting Season (Thrill Jockey) ✰

✰ EN ATTENDANT ANA Lost And Found (Trouble In Mind) ✰

✰ MARK MORGAN Department of Heraldry (Open Mouth) ✰

✰ MORE KLEMENTINES More Klementines (Twin Lakes/Feeding Tube)✰

✰ PATOIS COUNSELORS Proper Release (ever/never) ✰

✰ ANNE GUTHRIE Brass Orchids (Students Of Decay)

✰ STEFAN CHRISTENSEN City Code (Knotwilg, Belgium) & Two Live cassette (The Loki Label)

✰ BB & The BLIPS Shame Job (Thrilling Living)

✰ SAMARA LUBELSKI / BILL NACE Samara Lubelski/Bill Nice (Relative Pitch)

✰ The SEDIMENT CLUB Stucco Thieves (Wharf Cat)

✰ BEAT DETECTIVES Rhythms & Edits Volume 1 cassette (Altered States, Australia)

✰ The COWBOYS Live At Tony’s Garage 7″ ep (Feel It) & The Cowboys [3rd Album] (HoZac - 2017)

✰ SUSANA SANTOS SILVA All the Rivers – Live at Panteão Nacional cd (Clean Feed, Portugal)

✰ DIRE WOLVES Paradisiacal Mind (Feeding Tube/Cardinal Fuzz, U.K.)

✰ SPECIAL INTEREST/S Spiraling (Raw Sugar)

✰ JANUSZEWSKI & SZLAZAK Split cassette (Czaszka, U.K.)

✰ NYLEX Nylex cassette (Tenth Court, Australia)

✰ CHARALAMBIDES Tom And Christina Carter 2 LP (Drawing Room)

✰ CHRISTINA KUBISCH/ANNEA LOCKWOOD The Secret Life Of The Inaudible 2 cd (Gruenrekorder, Germany)

✰ HEAVY METAL Heavy Metal ep 7″ (Total Punk)

✰ LUJIACHI Invisible Hands cassette (Altered States, Australia)

✰ OBNOX Templo del Sonido (Astral Spirits/Monofonus Press)

✰ PINEAPPLE RNR Pineapple Rik N Roll 7″ (Lumpy)

✰ WILLIAM PARKER Voices Fall From The Sky 3 cd (AUM Fidelity)

✰ RON JONS SURF SHOP Ron Jons Surf Shop Sampler cassette (Ron Jons Surf Shop)

✰ LUCY MILLER Lion's Heart : Demos & Early Recordings cd-r (Soleils Bleus, France)

✰ BLUE CHEMISE Daughters Of Time (Students Of Decay)

✰ EKIN FIL Maps (Helen Scarsdale) & “Windblow” download (Longform Editions, Australia)

✰ COUNTER INTUITS Vietnamese Lighter 7″ (Total Punk)

✰ CHRONOPHAGE (Minneapolis) Prolog For Tomorrow (Cleta Petra)

✰ HOBBS-WHITE DUO Hobbs-White Duo at Whitechapel Gallery, 10 June 1973H download (EMC, UK)

✰ CHRONOPHAGE (Austin) Give Chance A Peace download (self-released)

✰ CIA DEBUTANTE Waves (Czaszka, U.K.)

✰ WEEPING BONG BAND Weeping Bong Band (Feeding Tube)

✰ COOLIES/The FUTURIANS Coolies/The Futurians split cassette (Uniform, New Zealand)

✰ QUIETUS Volume Four (ever/never)

✰ New Centre Of The Universe (Anti Fade, Australia)

✰ LISA CAMERON/SANDY EWEN See Creatures cassette (Astral Spirits)

✰ BRUTAL BIRTHDAY “Commotion” + 2 7” (Total Punk)

✰ DE PONTI/MORETTI Before We Were Foam We Were Unbridled Waves cassette (Dinzu Artefacts)

✰ DAVID NANCE GROUP Peaced And Slightly Pulverized (Trouble In Mind)

✰ CRAMMM Crammm cassette (Brainplan) & Live 2018 (Brainplan)

✰ NERVE BEATS Nerve Beats (Fine Concepts)

✰ WILLIE LANE Known Quantity reissue (Feeding Tube)

✰ The WAY AHEAD Bells, Ghosts And Other Saints cd (Clean Feed, Portugal)

✰ BADSKIN Where Was I (Brierfield Flood Press, Australia)

✰ The ANCIENTS Frozen Aisle (Tenth Court, Australia)

✰ METTE RASMUSSIN & CHRIS CORSANO A View Of The Moon (From The Sun) cd (Clean Feed, Portugal)

✰ SYLVIE COURVOISIER TRIO D’Agala cd (Intakt, Switzerland)

✰ MOSQUITOES Drip Water Hollow Out Stone (ever/never)

✰ CHARLOTTE HUG Son-Icon Music: Orchestra And Choral Works cd (Fundacja Słuchaj, Poland)

✰ RUSS WATERHOUSE Amaro cassette (Gertrude Tapes)

✰ RICHARD PAPIERCUTS Twisting The Night 12″ (ever/never)

✰ The COOL GREENHOUSE “London”/“The End Of The World” 7” (Market Square Recordings, Spain)

✰ SANDY EWEN & CHASE GARDNER Transfusion cd (Marginal Frequency)

✰ AMEEL BRECHT Polygraph Heartbeat (Kraak, Belgium)

✰ SUCCHIAMO Mani In Fuoco (Antinote, France)

✰ PORTRON PORTRON LOPEZ De Colère Et D'Envie (PoiL, France)

✰ TOM SMITH & MARK MORGAN Bones Sound Shipwreck cd (KSV, Germany)

✰ CIVIC New Vietnam 12″ (Anti Fade, Australia) & Those Who Know 7″ (Famous Class)

✰ CARLO GIUSTINO Non Uscire cassette (No Rent)

✰ DONALD MCPHERSON & TETUZI AKIYAMA The Kitchen Tapes, Volume 1 cassette (God In The Music, New Zealand)

✰ HORNE & HOLT Wires (Self-Sabotage)

✰ WOLKOROTS Don Treppenwitz cassette (Dinzu Artefacts)

✰SAVAK Beg Your Pardon (Ernest Jenning Record Co.)

✰ The BALKANYS The Balkanys (Toddi Records/Another Records, France)

✰ ANTELOPER Kudu cassette (International Anthem Recording Company)

✰ CLAIRE POTTER & BRIDGET HAYDEN’S I Am Come From A Place) cassette (Fort Evil Fruit, Ireland)

✰ LAURA LUNA CASTILLO Laminaires (Genot, Czech Republic)

✰ RST Spectra (\\NULL|ZØNE//)

✰ TORI KUDO ガラ刑GALAKEI 2 LP (bruit direct disques, France)

✰ SIGNE DAHLGREEN Kunki Snuk cassette (Astral Spirits)

✰ PIOUS FAULTS Old Thread (Feel It)

✰ MELFI Four Concerns cassette (Czaszka, U.K.)

✰ The EX 27 Passports (Ex Records, Netherlands)

✰ J.H. GURAJ Steadfast On Our Sand (Boring Machines, Italy)

✰ KUZU Hiljaisuus (Astral Spirits)

✰ WUSSY What Heaven Is Like (Shake It)

✰ BORZOI A Prayer For War (12XU)

✰ RAYS You Can Get There From Here (Trouble In Mind)

✰ DELPHINE DORA Eudaimon (three:four, Switzerland)

✰ LAKE MARY & M. SAGE Lupine Deluxe cassette (Patient Sounds (Intl))

✰ ART GRAY NOIZZ QUINTET “A Call To You”/”Won’t you Say It To My Face” 7″ (Robelion Music)

✰ VANILLA POPPERS I Like Your Band 7″ ep (Feel It)

✰ SOURDURE L’Espròva (Les Disques du Festival Permanent/Pagans, France)

✰ LOGARDECAY (Leslie García and Paloma López) FRGL cassette (Umor Rex, Mexico)

✰ DE KLUMB Con Pimiento cassette (U-Bac, Germany)

✰ MIDWIFE Prayer Hands cassette (Antiquated Future)

✰ SALAD BOYS This Is Glue (Trouble In Mind)

✰ RAMBLE TAMBLE Outlaw Overtones cassette (Eiderdown)

✰ ABBY LEE TEE Imaginary Friends I cassette (Czaszka, U.K.)

✰ INGRID LAUBROCK Contemporary Chaos Practices / Two Works For Orchestra With Soloists cd (Intakt, Switzerland)

✰ PATRICK SHIROISHI Sparrow's Tongue cassette (Fort Evil Fruit, Ireland)

✰ FIA FIELL All In The Same Room cassette (Nice Music, Australia)

✰ PREENING Nice Dice 7″ ep (Fine Concepts) & Greasetrap Frisbee 7″ (ever/never)

✰ SABASABA SabaSaba (Maple Death, U.K)

✰ HEADROOM/DIRE WOLVES Split (Pome Pome Tones/Centripetal Force)

✰ APOLOGIST Houston cassette (No Rent)

✰ The SITUATIONS The Day After The Night Before cassette (Melted Ice Cream, NZ)

✰ WONDERFULS Voices Like Rain cassette (Round Bale Recordings)

✰ TASHI DORJI & TYLER DAMON Leave No Trace: Live In St. Louis (Family Vineyard) & Soft Berm cassette (Magnetic South)

NAUJAWANAN BAIDAR Volume 1 cassette (Radio KHIYABAN, Netherlands)

LOUIS MINUS II Je Voudrais Juste Dormir Pour Toujours cassette (Econore, Germany)

The OPAWA 45s Silver Screen Guitar cassette (Melted Ice Cream, New Zealand)

MT ACCORD Postcards From A Dream cassette (Czaszka, U.K.)

JONÁŠ GRUSKA Žaburina (LOM, Slovakia)

CHICALOYOH Jaune Colère (213 Records, France)

MAMITRI YULITH EXPRESS YONAGUNISAN Yulith 2 LP (bruit direct disques, France)

AONGHIS MCENVOY & TRISTAN CLUTTERBUCK Duos cassette (Fractal Meat Cuts, UK)

IE Pone cassette (Moon Glyph)

MARILYN CRISPELL/TANYA KALMANOVITC/RICHARD TEITELBAUM Dream Libretto (Leo, U.K.)

E Negative World (Thrill Jockey)

Wound 2 lp (Carbon Records)

DOMINIQUE VACCARO Close Distances cassette (Dinzu Artefacts)

RIÑA Aqui No Eres Nadie 7″ ep (Thrilling Living)

GÜNTER BABY SOMMER & TILL BRÖNNER Baby’s Party cd (Intakt, Switzerland)

TRISTAN MAGNETIC Tristan Magnetique triple cassette box (Otomatik Muziek, Germany)

FAMOUS LOGS IN HISTORY Famous Logs In History cassette (Fuzzy Warbles)

LUKE STEWART’s Works For Upright Bass And Amplifier cassette (Astral Spirits)

RADIANT FUTUR Overdriven Youth download (Get Busy!, Russia)

LÄRMSCHUTZ TAFELMUSIK SEPTET Vierte Tafelmusik cassette (Katuktu Collective)

TERRESTIALS Terrestials 12″ (Heel Turn)

ALEX CRISPIN Open Submission cassette (Constellation Tatsu)

MAAVIN Sunday Drive EP download (Get Busy!, Russia)

CHARLOTTE HUG & LUCAS NIGGLI Fulguratio cd (Fundacja Słuchaj, Poland)

NAMELESS FRAMES Already Inside + 3 10″ (Super Secret Records)

GÜNTER SCHLIENZ Liederbuch cassette (Muzan Editions, Japan)

SCRAP BRAIN Scrap Brain (Thrilling Living)

WURLD SERIES Stately and Befrothed cassette (Melted Ice Cream, NZ)

ENDURANCE Celestial Governors cassette (Tymbal Tapes)

BRABRABRA Lagooona 7″ ep (Kitchen Leg, Germany)

DAN MELCHIOR ‘The Folksinger’ (Swashbuckling Hobo, Australia)

JEN KUTLER Worth cassette (Never Anything)

Field Recordings from the Sahel cassette (Sahel Sounds)

MONNONE ALONE Cut Knuckle 7” (Lost And Lonesome Recording Co., Australia)

ANDREW BARKER & DANIEL CARTER Polyhedron cassette (Astral Spirits)

YVES MALONE Aced (2014) cassette (Baked Tapes)

JOHN HOEGBERG Motion Detecting Songs cassette (Ehse)

CHAOSOPHY Who Are These People And What Do They Believe In cd (Discordian/Liquen Record, Spain)

ARIAN SHAFIEE A Scarlet Fail (VDSQ) & Beauty Tuning (Hausu Mountain)

AKIRA SAKATA & CHIKAMORACHI with MASAHIKO SATOH Proton Pump cd (Family Vineyard)

LEA BERTUCCI Metal Aether (NNA)

BIG SUPERMARKET 1800 (Hobbies Galore, Australia)

GARCIA PEOPLES Cosmic Cash (Beyond Beyond Is Beyond)

R.M.F.C. Hive cassette (Slime Street, Australia)

BIKINI COPS Three 7” (Drunken Sailor, U.K.)

MUYASSAR KURDI & NICHOLAS JOZWIAK Intersections & Variations cassette (Astral Spirts)

P WITS Blonde On Blonde double cassette (chemical imbalance., Australia)

FOLD Aegean Sea 12” (AUS, UK)

TASHI DORJI & DAVID GRUBBA Fixed Entrance Derivatives cassette (Sky Lantern)

WET PISS Wet Piss cassette (Dumpster Tapes)

TIM & THE BOYS Growing (Meatspin, Australia)

DINO SPILUTTINI Forever cassette (No Rent)

NEGATIVE NANCIES You Do You download (CocMuse, New Zealand)

MISSING PAGES “Long Way Down” 7″ (12XU)

SUNWATCHERS II & Illegal Moves 12” (both Trouble In Mind)

EYES NINETY Glaucoma Chameleon (Swashbuckling Hobo, Australia)

PATRICIA KOKETT Diabel 12” (Knekelhuis, Netherlands)

GEE TEE Gee Tee cassette (Slime Street, Australia)

C. WORTH A Farther Sea cassette (Gertrude Tapes)

OREN AMBARCHI/KONRAD SPRENGER/PHILLIP SOLLMANN Panama/Suez 12” (Ostgut Ton, Germany)

REX WONDERFUL & THE SILK SHEETS Ego Death cassette (Tenth Court, Australia)

SARAH DAVACHI Gave In Rest (Ba Da Bing) & Let Night Come On Bells End The Day (Recital)

PELVI$$ Pelvi$$ cassette (Fuzzy Warbles)

JEFF TOBIAS Completely Phantom cassette (Baked Tapes)

BILL ORCUTT & CHRIS CORSANO Brace Up! (Palilalia)

DONKEY BUGS Ancient Chinese Secrets (Lumpy)

MOUNTAIN MOVERS Pink Sky (Trouble In Mind) & New Jam 12″ (C/Site)

MAbH cinjusti cassette (Tymbal Tapes)

Bad Taste Vol. II - Another Collection Of Sounds From The NZ Underground cassette (chemical imbalance., Australia)

TERRY I’m Terry (Upset! The Rhythm, UK)

NYZ RLD GLD ET AL cassette (Fractal Meat Cuts, UK)

THEE OPEN SEX White Horses (Sophomore Lounge)

DRUNK MUMS Denim & Leather, Together Forever cassette (Slime Street, Australia)

JONES JONES [OCHS/DRESSER/TARASOV] A Jones In Time Saves Nine download (self-released)

IVAN THE TOLERABLE & FRIENDS Autodidact 10″ (Ack! Ack! Ack!, U.K.)

DANIEL CARTER / WILLIAM PARKER / MATTHEW SHIPP Seraphic Light cd (AUM Fidelity)

PURPUR SPYTT Nitpick 7″ ep (POUeT! Schallplatten, France)

BLOWDRYER Blowdryer cassette (self-released)

CHARNEL GROUND Charnel Ground (12XU)

KAJA DRAKSER / PETTER ELDH / CHRISTIAN LILLINGER Punkt.Vrt.Plastik cd (Intakt, Switzerland)

DRY CLEANING Sweet Princess cassette (self-released, U.K.)

ELKHORN Lion Fish cassette (Eiderdown)

ROMAIN BAUDOIN Bestiari (Pagans/In Situ, France)

SUNWATCHERS AND EUGENE CHADBOURNE 3 Characters 2 LP (Amish)

FRANCIS PLAGNE Moss Trumpet (Penultimate Press, U.K. )

SHITTY LIFE Switch Off Your Head (self-released, Italy)

SICK LLAMA Stage Poison double cassette (unifactor)

ROCKET 808 “Digital Billboards”/“Mystery Train” 7” (12XU)

JON COLLIN What Is Thunder cassette (Fort Evil Fruit, Ireland)

CONCRETE LAWN Demo cassette (Urge, Australia)

BLANK REALM Last Seen (Hobbies Galore, Australia)

DJ OVERDOSE DJ Overdose 12” (L.I.E.S.)

LUDWIG BERGER & VERONIKA EHRENSPERGER The Capacity Of Things To Act cassette (Dinzu Artefacts)

BRANDY Laugh Track (Monofonus Press)

PETER EVANS/ AGUSTÍ FERNÁNDEZ/BARRY GUY Free Radicals cd (Fundacja Słuchaj, Poland)

LES HALLES Zonda cassette (Not Not Fun)

SAMARA LUBELSKI Flickers At The Station (Drawing Room)

PRANA CRAFTER Bodhi Cheetah's Choice (Beyond Beyond Is Beyond)

YLAYALI Pumpkin Patch cassette (self-released)

DEAF WISH Lithium Zion (Sub Pop)

ROSE THOMAS BANNISTER Ambition cd (self-released)

MIDDEX No Home (Polytechnic Youth, UK)

SEI A Phase EP (Aus Music, U.K.)

KALI MALONE Cast Of Mind (Hollow Ground, Switzerland) & Organ Dirges 2016-2017 cassette (Ascetic House)

GERRIT HATCHER Parables For The Tenor cassette (Astral Spirits)

The 1902 Syntropic Seasonal 5 cd-r comp (Wist Rec, Ireland)

The LENTILS My Pillow Lava (Complete Trilogy) double cassette (unread)

SCY2E*GLOCHIDS*NURSE BETTY Weird Ear's Fantastic Voyage (Autumn East Coast Tour) comp (Weird Ear)

the SHIFTERS Have A Cunning Plan (Trouble In Mind)

CÉCILE CAPOZZO TRIO Sub Rosa cd (Ayler Records, France)

PROJET DE VIE Vol. #1 EP cassette ([Equilibre Fragile], France)

JAX DELUCA Organs In The Wind cassette (ACR, U.K.)

LUCY CLICHÉ Cliché’s Principle (Fleisch, Germany)

JANO DOE( aka KATARÍNA GATIALOVÁ) Duranzie cassette Genot Centre, Czech Republic)

KOMARE Komare cassette (Round Bale Recordings)

COLLATE Liminal Concerns (self-released)

AREK GULBENKOGLU A gift like a hollow vessel (Penultinate Press, UK)

BASIC HOUSE & WANDA GROUP No Sympathy (Opal Tapes, U.K.)

MANUEL TROLLER Vanishing Point (three: four, Switzerland)

STEPH RICHARDS/VINNY GOLIA/BERT TURETZKY Trio Music cd (pfmentum)

HEART OF SNAKE Heart Of Snake cassette (Maple Death, U.K.)

SCHWEBEN Sketches Of Plains cassette (Otomatik Muziek, Germany)

GENEVA SKEEN A Parallel Array Of Horses download (Room40, Australia)

IKUI DOKI Ikui Doki (Ayler, France)

CHARLES BARABÉ De La Fragilité cassette (Astral Spirits)

MIDNIGHT MINES Invisible Insurrection Of A Million Minds (The Loki Label) & Stations 7″ (I Dischi Del Barone, Sweden)

DELACAVE Window Has No Glass (POUeT! Schallplatten, France)

MARY LATTIMORE & MEG BAIRD Ghost Forests cd (Three Lobed Recordings)

M/M I Know You Are Thinking I've Said This All Before cassette (Czaska, U.K.)

The ATTACHMENTS II cassette (self-released)

TYSHAWN SOREY Pillars 3 cd (Firehouse 12)

JOËLLE LÉANDRE Strings Garden 3 cd (Fundacja Słuchaj, Poland)

STONE WITCHES Machine Efficient cassette (Slime Street, Australia)

CARA STACEY & CAMILO ÁNGELES Ceder (Kit, U.K)

DIRE WOLVES (JUST EXACTLY PERFECT SISTERS BAND) One For The Heads cassette (Baked Tapes) & Earthquake Country cassette (Sky Lantern) & Shootout At The Dildo Factory (Eiderdown) 142

(this is a pic of DIRE WOLVES with their eyes closed)

GEN POP II 7″ ep (Feel It)

ANGLES 3 Parede (Clean Feed, Portugal)

FRANK HURRICANE Holy Mountain Coffee tour cassette (self-released)

CARROM Prehistories cassette (self-released, Canada)

PARSNIP Feeling Small 7″ (Anti Fade, Australia)

ÁINE O’DWYER / GRAHAM LAMBKIN Green Ways 2 cd (erstwhile)

Longform Editions digital series, particularly: EKIN FIL “Windblow”, MARJA AHTI “Entering A Cloud” and STEAM VENT “Swells”

CLINTON GREEN Setting For The Iliad CD-R (Frustration Jazz, Australia)

PETER EVANS & BARRY GUY Syllogistic Moments cd (Maya Recordings, Swizterland)

ETRAN DE L’AÏR No. 1 (Sahel Sounds)

ALIEN NOSEJOB Various Fads & Technological Achievements (Anti Fade, Australia)

J.C. SATÀN Centaur Desire (Born Bad, France)

NAGUAL & STEFAN CHRISTENSEN Third 7″ (I Dischi Del Barone, Sweden)

EXEK Ahead Of Two Thoughts (W.25th) & A Casual Assembly 12″ (W.25th)

ARUÁN ORTIZ TRIO’s Live in Zurich (Intakt, Switzerland)

MIA DYBERG TRIO Ticket! (Clean Feed, Portugal)

LA DANTA Alpeis Καράκας cassette (Fort Evil Fruit, Ireland)

WEAK SIGNAL LP1 cassette (Reality Delay)

DISTANT STARS The Way Things Work cassette (Detonic, Australia)Field Recordings from the Sahel

MUDHONEY Digital Garbage (Sub Pop)

ROB NOTES & RYAN LEE CROSBY Modal Improvisations on 34 Strings cassette (Cabin Floor Esoterica)

...all those LOKI LABEL boots...

youtube

#Best Reasons To Write Fuckin' Record Reviews In 2018 #2018 #Rosali

38 notes · View notes

soveryanon · 5 years

Text

Reviewing time for MAG130 /o/

- Fun game!

(MAG106) BASIRA: Hm. I dunno, I mean, you should have seen him when I turned up last year. I think he thought I was trying to steal his precious Archivist. […] Huff. That [INSERT TITLE HERE] needs to relax. MELANIE: Or at least find someone else to fuss over. BASIRA: Yeah, [x]’s got it bad. … Do you know if [x] and Jon ever…? MELANIE: No clue – and not interested.

Is this conversation between Melanie and Basira about: a) The Distortion about Jon? b) Elias about Jon? c) Martin about Jon? d) The Web about Jon? (Jon, you serial heartbreaker.)

In all seriousness (kind of.): the Web has it BAD about Jon, indeed. Which is necessarily not a good sign given that if someone from the Web were to tell you it wants you to carry its babies, you would have to understand that it means hollowing you out and turning you into a spider egg sack.

The Web sent him a lovely lighter in MAG035, that Jon still had on him as of MAG111, because Jon ~chose~ to go back to smoking after five years of quitting! Jon discovered the worms infestation back in MAG038 thanks to a lil’spider on a wall (BECAUSE OF COURSE: JONATHAN “I PERSONALLY READ MAG016’S STATEMENT ABOUT A GUY MINDCONTROLLED TO REPEATEDLY SMASH A SPIDER ON A WALL” SIMS ASSUMED THAT HIS OWN ACTIONS WERE HIS OWN AND TOTALLY NOT CONTROLLED UH.) Lovely helpful spiders eat the worms carcasses in the tunnels! Cobwebs were welcoming him into the wax museum when they were planting bombs in MAG118! “She” sent Handsome Black MLM Oliver to encourage him to wake up in MAG121! And now the spiders are leaving tapes for him in his desk when Jon is having trouble thinking about his next moves! uwu

… Meanwhile, what have you done for Jon, Beholding. You fucked up a perfectly functioning researcher, gave him anxiety, nightmares and the constant feeling of being watched, is what you did. (… Well, the Web also gave Jon trauma, misguided hatred, and a visceral phobia of spiders but HEY, at least, it’s giving Jon useful presents in his Quest!)

Oliver had confirmed that the Web had never really left Jon alone after all these years (MAG121: “But… you know better than anyone how the spiders can get into your head. Easier to just do what She asked!” and the mere fact that Oliver came… because “She” had sent him to talk to Jon), we still don’t know its/Her intentions and neither does Jon:

(MAG131) ARCHIVIST: I found this tape tucked in the corner of my desk drawer. [AGGRAVATED SIGH] Covered in cobwebs. I suppose subtlety is gone out the window a bit. And the question is now simply … how much I trust the Spider to have my… best interests at heart. … Hm. I suspect my assuming it has a heart might be a clue I’m looking at this the wrong way.

(Obviously, the answer is that it wants to win YOUR HEART, Jon!!)

The Web has Plans Involving Jon, nothing new. And I have no serious ideas about why – seriously trying to woo him because Back Off Big Eyeball, We Saw Him First? Needing him to be ready for the Watcher’s Crown in some way either because it’s allied with Beholding, either because it needs the ritual to come close to completion in order to crash or hijack it? What was Jon supposed to make out of MAG130’s statement, and he did he completely miss the point or did he draw his own conclusions All According To Keikaku? … are they Jon’s own conclusions or The Web making him think about the conclusions It wanted.

I’m also wondering if, after all, Jon getting drawn to this and that statement since the beginning of season 4 wasn’t… Web-induced more that Beholding-induced. Actually, Jon has never explicitly said that knowing which statements to read, specifically, was coming from his Insights (the knowledge seeping through the cracks of the door):

(MAG126) ARCHIVIST: … I remembered Gertrude’s notebook […]. I’ve been staring at it for hours, in the hope something from it would just… come to me. And it worked well enough to point me towards this statement […].

(MAG127) BASIRA: And what was that you were doing yesterday? ARCHIVIST: … When…? BASIRA: You were sat on the floor for like four hours. ARCHIVIST: … Oh! Er, n–n–no, I was, er, I was… listening. Y’know, it’s, trying to see if any of the statements… called to me. BASIRA: And? ARCHIVIST: [FLIPS PAPER] BASIRA: Brilliant.

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: I don’t like this. I don’t like… not being sure what’s going to be in my mind. What thoughts are mine and what are from… elsewhere. Why I just know some statements are what I should be reading. I assume this one is related to the coffin. To Daisy.

Is it knowledge seeping into his mind, or is it, let’s say, a web string pulling him in towards specific statements? Jon’s comment that “subtlety is gone out of the window” couuuuld possibly (it’s a possibility!) imply that he knows that the Web had been directing him towards them before (just… without wrapping them in cobwebs). Case in point, though: Jon got to Know about how Gertrude stopped The Buried through his Insights, and that one was pretty clearly Beholding-stamped. So, at the very least, it’s not only the Web teaching Jon about how Gertrude stopped the previous rituals. Somehow, both The Eye and The Web are glad to feed him the knowledge.

In the particular case of MAG130: this means that the Web has quite a strong hold on the Archives themselves – or did it send the tape randomly, à la Elias in season 3? (Your casual reminder that the conclusion of Jon’s thrilling saga of wondering for 20 episodes why Elias was sending him this or that file was: because Elias had no idea what the fuck he was doing.) And: where does this tape come from? We know there are more tapes than the ones Jon had listened to: Basira had been given three boxes of them when they discovered Gertrude’s body, and she gave him a few tapes and at least one of these boxes when she quit the police in MAG075. Leitner had told Jon, and then confirmed with Elias (MAG080), that Elias had gotten his hands of Gertrude’s files regarding The Stranger (and posssssibly about Beholding?) and Elias had indeed begun to send some of those documents in season 3 but explicitly refused to give them to Jon in one-go (MAG092), so drip-dropped them instead. Elias mentioned in MAG116 that he had taken Gertrude’s tapes into his “safekeeping” during Jon’s absence at the beginning of season 3, so he was still in possession of all of them at the end of the season.

Is MAG130 from Elias’s secret stash? Or from somewhere else, another hiding spot? In any case, it means that, in true spiders fashion, the Web can crawl its way into anywhere, unnoticed. It is there and it’s able to operate in the Institute. It knows the place as its own. (Is it also its own already…)

- Jon had wondered, a few times, why Gertrude was recording some statements and not others and… we still don’t have the answer to that?

(MAG044) ARCHIVIST: I will admit to some disappointment it doesn’t address any of my more… pressing questions about Gertrude’s tapes. Why did she begin recording them, and why stop? If she’d been doing so right up until her death, she would have likely gotten through much of the Archive […].

(MAG087) ARCHIVIST: I had assumed Gertrude had recorded to tape for a while and then stopped, but it sees she was recording them right up until the end. But if they did span decades of working at the Institute, why aren’t there more? And what decided which statements she transferred?

It’s a bit hard to guess a logic behind Gertrude’s recordings, but so far, we’ve listened to these ones, listed by order or recording (SINCE UNLIKE A CERTAIN SOMEONE, GERTRUDE ROBINSON HAD ENOUGH WORK ETHICS TO GIVE THE DATE OF HERS :wwww I’m not calling anyone out) (Jon, u suck.):

*04/11/1996: reading Lucy Cooper’s statement about the “Changeling / Imposter”, Not!Them (MAG077) *15/04/1997: reading Yuri Utkin’s statement about the Russian circus (MAG044) *05/09/1997: live statement of Walter Heller about the old Archives in Alexandria (MAG053) *02/09/2007: reading Robert E. Geiger’s statement about The Buried’s ritual coming close in America (MAG099) *03/07/2008: live statement of Mary Keay about getting her hands on the book of The End (MAG062) *19/12/2008: live statement of Lucia Wright about the Flesh’s ritual attempt in Istanbul (MAG130) *04/10/2013: reading Abraham Janssen’s statement about the last Stranger ceremony, in the Court Theatre Buda in October 1787 (MAG116) *04/04/2015: reading Sebastian Skinner’s statement about The Stranger’s people in the Gwydir Forest (MAG087)

Noteworthy: the oldest one that Jon accessed was about the Not!Them, and Gertrude had specifically highlighted (thanks to the statement-giver providing a recording of her true mother) that tapes were able to resist the Not!Them’s rewriting of reality:

(MAG077) GERTRUDE: It is at least reassuring to know that magnetic tape seems to escape being overwritten [by the Not!Them], so if I get changed, you can be sure this is my real voice. Based on Dekker’s statement, it would seem Polaroids are also relatively stable.

I could imagine that Gertrude might have recorded a few tapes with this in mind – in case the Not!Them would attack her, to leave some proofs of her existence and of her ongoing researches, since, following this one, almost all the statements that Jon listened to were tied to some aspects of rituals she was working on stopping. MAG044 dealt with a very active period of the Stranger’s Circus; MAG099 helped her narrow down the location of the Buried’s “Sunken Sky” (in America); MAG116 was a survivor describing the last Stranger’s ritual attempt; MAG087 was about the current activities of Stranger’s minions, now that the ritual was coming closer. The three other statements were lives: Mary Keay is an oddity, but Gertrude had sarcastically commented that it happened because Mary insisted on talking:

(MAG062) MARY: You… don’t really go out and look for yourself, do you~? Just wait here for the researchers’ leftovers. GERTRUDE: Mm! It’s not that bad. Sometimes, someone will insist on giving me a statement directly, though… I rarely see the point.

(YOUR CASUAL REMINDER THAT GERTRUDE WAS SAVAGE LIKE THAT.)

The other two dealt with what Gertrude suspected to be an old Archive (MAG053), and a witness testimony of the explosion that put a stop to The Flesh’s ritual (MAG130), so… still related to Gertrude’s activities: she had been searching for Walter specifically (MAG053: “It’s taken a long time to track down someone still living who found the Serapeum of Alexandria.”; the site was ~curiously~ bombed six months after she discussed its location, in March 1998) and she was in Istanbul ~in the flesh~ during “The Last Feast” (the old woman that Lucia spotted but didn’t recognize). Moreover, there are a few mentions alluding to the fact that she already had talked a bit with the statement-givers (and narrowed down what they experienced) before deciding to record their statement:

(MAG053) WALTER: Yeah, er, right. Er, wh–where do you want me to start? GERTRUDE: Well, you say you were serving in North Africa when it happened.

(MAG130) [CLICK–] GERTRUDE: Do you mind? LUCIA: What? Oh, hum. No. GERTRUDE: Excellent.

Whether live or written, was Gertrude almost only recording statements dealing with the rituals attempts? But then, it seems like there were three big periods of recording: 1996-1997, 2007-2008 and the last years of her carreer. We’re still back to Jon’s initial questions: why the gaps? Is it because tapes exist from the years in-between, but we only got a few samples that aren’t enough to discern anything conclusive…?

- But then, back to the usual question: what was the thing that made her decide to record Walter and Lucia live, when they could have… written it down or dictated it to another member of staff? (We know it was a thing that could be done in the 70s, with Nathaniel Thorp’s statement from MAG029.) (I doubt it’s Relevant but: fun thing! “Lucia Wright” shares her surname with the previous head of the Institute, “James Wright”, who ran the place from 1973 to 1996. Elias took over when he passed away.)

- Well, in Lucia’s case, it sounds like Gertrude’s initial intentions might have been a bit grim?!

(MAG130) LUCIA: Telling my story. To you. Will, will it help with the nightmares? GERTRUDE: […] whatever nightmares your experience has left you with, I’m sure they won’t be bothering you much longer. […] GERTRUDE: Well…! That – is – a relief. When I heard there’d been survivors of “The Last Feast”, I was rather concerned that one of them might be able to positively identify me, [CHUCKLE] which could land me in all sorts of trouble! But she doesn’t seem to remember me at all.

What were you initially planning to do if she had remembered you, Gertrude.

Because, uuuuh… we know from Basira&Daisy’s exchange in MAG112 that they kept having “dreams” long after giving their statements to Jon; telling their stories didn’t allow them to get rid of the nightmares (it’s just that apparently, becoming an archival assistant cuts you off from them, and from Jon seeing them?). So, hum. Could Gertrude have been planning anything else than… straight-out murdering Lucia then and there, and only changed her mind when Lucia mentioned an old woman without linking her to Gertrude?

That aside… we got confirmation from Gertrude herself that she was aware that live statement-givers also give their dreams to the Archivist – the “slim collection of gifted nightmares” described by Elias in MAG120:

(MAG130) GERTRUDE: […] I’m honestly impressed she had the strength to get through it, even if she does seem to have been… deeply affected by it. Shame about the dreams; I would avoid them if I could.

… Why couldn’t she in this case, though? Why did she have to take this one live, when we know that she tended to prioritize written ones (going as far as to ask François Deschamps to write down what he had witnessed alongside her in MAG102)?

There has been quite a huge amount of statement-givers mentioning their recurring nightmares when writing their statements; the specific of the Archivist receiving a live statement seems to be that it synchronizes their dreams a bit? Makes Jon able to see them? Or traps the people in his own nightmares of their experiences? (In Jon’s dreams, at least, the statement-givers blame him and feel like they’re here because of him.) Regarding Gertrude, there had been Adelard’s and Mikaele Salesa’s expectation that just writing their statements could have an effect too:

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) I’ll even make it a statement. Give your patron something to keep it satisfied. It’s not like I sleep enough to worry about dreams.

(MAG115, Mikaele Salesa) So it’s another statement is it? Like I owe you something? […] So I suppose if it’s a statement you’re wanting… it’s no inconvenience to me. I don’t sleep well anyway.

Does this mean they might have given live statements to Gertrude in the past, and assumed that writing it down would have the same effect? Does writing a statement end up having an effect on you, even though the Archivist doesn’t access those dreams? I wonder, now, if the dreams are not actually supposed to happen to… everyone touched or coming close to the Fears, and it's just that some people don’t think to mention their dreams in their statements? Adelard got interested in the case he described in MAG113 and was reminded of his hypothetical new emergence partially because people had been hurt when asleep – could it be that new emerging fears tend to first manifest through dreams…?

- Gertrude, are u lying through your teeth again.

(MAG130) GERTRUDE: Are you quite ready? LUCIA: H… uh. Will it help? GERTRUDE: I’m sorry? LUCIA: Telling my story. To you. Will, will it help with the nightmares? GERTRUDE: If that’s your primary goal, my dear, I would suggest you speak to a qualified counsellor. We can suggest one, if you like; that said, I do believe most people find the process of giving a statement to be rather… mm, cathartic.

I’m squinting at that “cathartic” (if it’s about the actual concept: WOOPSIE, catharsis in Greek drama does rely on you EXPERIENCING the terror and pity. It is not a nice process on the moment.)

Meanwhile, in Jon’s case, giving him a live statement has rarely been described as a nice experience for visitors, mostly because of Jon himself:

(MAG084) MELANIE: […] There’s nowhere left for me to go. I don’t know why, but… I just, I just felt that perhaps coming here might help. And talking things out with Jon. I mean. I mean he’s awful, but at least he listens, you know?

The only “positive” ones about it that I can think of are Helen, Tessa and Mike, and Oliver a bit (he was surprised to have managed it); and Julia, back with Gertrude, had felt that it helped:

(MAG047) ARCHIVIST: Perhaps. … Leave it with us, we’ll… do some digging and… see what we can find. HELEN: You believe me then! ARCHIVIST: I, er… yes. Yes, I think I do. (MAG101) ARCHIVIST: A– are you still going to kill me? HELEN: No. That was Michael’s desire, not mine. ARCHIVIST: So… S-So what do you want? HELEN: I don’t know. Helen liked you so… there’s a lot to consider. But I will help you leave. (MAG115) HELEN: Before, talking to you made Helen feel better. ARCHIVIST: You’re not. that. Helen! HELEN: I just want…! I just want to feel better.

(MAG065) TESSA: […] And it does feel good to talk about it. Y’know? ARCHIVIST: [LIGHT CHUCKLE] Yes, I… very much understand.

(MAG091) MIKE: Hm. You know? That was… that was nice. I’m not… not usually the sort for speeches, that was… pleasant change. So.

(MAG107) ARCHIVIST: Ah, yes. You–you know the Institute? JULIA: Oh yeah. Checked myself in there a while back. Ended up spilling my guts to this old woman about my dad, just letting it all out. ARCHIVIST: O–oh, that, that would be, er, Gertrude. My, my predecessor. JULIA: I didn’t catch her name. Weirdest thing, really. Didn’t mean to spill half of it, but. Really helped me put the pieces together, you know? ARCHIVIST: I’m… starting to.

(MAG121) OLIVER: Right. That’s a… hit, I suppose.

(But Oliver is cheating since Jon was still unresponsive when Oliver gave his statement – Oliver got Jon at His Best, uh.)

Then, I don’t have any doubt that Gertrude was probably better at sweetly coaxing people into telling their stories, rather than showing off in Jon’s apparent blunt manner (he does care!! But he’s also very off-putting, which… didn’t help when he was receiving statements.)

In the meantime: still nothing from Jon about his own dreams :www

- So Adelard also helped Gertrude in destroying the Gnostic temple!

(MAG130) GERTRUDE: Well…! That – is – a relief. When I heard there’d been survivors of “The Last Feast”, I was rather concerned that one of them might be able to positively identify me, [CHUCKLE] which could land me in all sorts of trouble! But she doesn’t seem to remember me at all. […] Dekker really came through with the explosives! It almost felt like cheating. Sad about the loss of history but Miss Wright didn’t seem to think the old Gnostic church got many visitors anyway.

Gertrude sounded so giddy to have blown the place up, efdusijrezkds. Did she provide the explosives and he handled them? He was super interested in the stock she had managed to get for The Unknowing, in his letter from MAG113. They’re adorable. Old people saving the world and bonding over their creative use of explosives.

Interestingly, it seems that Gertrude kept her allies separate? Gerry and Leitner didn’t seem to know that Gertrude was working with the other (which… makes sense considering Gerry’s distaste of Leitner because of the books); but neither did they ever mention Adelard.

Which puts me to mind again: what happened to Adelard? We know that he came in contact with the Institute at least in 1991 (MAG077, Gertrude: “I suspect this to be the creature that Adelard Dekker refers to as the ‘NotThem’ in statement 9910607”), whether he was personally acquainted with Gertrude or not at the time. Since then, they’ve apparently been allies on multiple cases: they collaborated to blow up the Gnostic temple housing the Flesh’s ritual (MAG130), and Adelard moved out the plastic explosives for Gertrude because she felt that she was under surveillance (MAG113). That was chronologically the last time we’ve heard of him at this point – from a statement that, according to Jon, was “undated, likely circa 2012”. Did he die, since then…? Became something worse than dead…? Is he hiding somewhere…? Peter Lukas has been looking for his statements to get information but didn’t mention the possibility of tracking him down: it could be either for manipulation purposes (better to not let the Archives team meet Adelard, who specialises in dealing with spooky creatures, when you’re yourself a spooky creature), either because he knows that Adelard is not around anymore…? (Then, my bets for the culprit are the New Emergence he was investigating, or someone amongst the Lukases, or Peter PERSONALLY.) (Could be Elias, I guess, since Adelard must have been a bit old at this point, but we would need to know what his voice was, since Elias’s criteria for murdering people so far have been 1°) you must be old, 2°) you must be voiced by someone from Jonny’s family.)

- Something that I found quite interesting in the statement itself is that Lucia had, from an overall point of view, no relationship whatsoever with meat – no attraction to it, nothing from her personal history that would imply that she could get drawn or involved with the Flesh. But, at the same time, the evolution from her being fascinated by religion to the Flesh felt only natural because of the Eucharistic dimension, and by the fact that her own appreciation of churches was both spiritual and sensual?

(MAG130) LUCIA: […] I loved churches. These big… quiet… echoing spaces of peace and beauty, designed to quiet the soul and prepare it for communion with the divine. Even if I didn’t actually believe in the God they were supposed to house… I always found them… meditative. And whenever I went on one of my breaks, I’d always try to find a local church – hopefully… not too full of other tourists like me – and spend an hour or two in quiet contemplation. I’d listen to the shuffling footsteps of the other people, and breathe in the lingering smell of incense, before lighting a candle to my grandmother.

With the Demiurge in mind, it’s almost surprising that The Flesh is (officially) the last Fear to have emerged (Gerry had mentioned that it had begun its ascendance around the time Robert Smirke had established his list of fourteen); but at the same time, you would have to fear the specific aspect of it as related to Flesh bending, twisting, getting reduced to a pulp, etc.? In True Flesh Fashion, Lucia ended up getting very conscious of that aspect during the whole ordeal (THANKS FOR MY WEDNESDAY’S DINNER, JONNY):

(MAG030, David Laylow) “There’s not so much difference between people and animals, you know? […] Weirdest thing is, you start to kind of see people as meat too. Not in a food sort of way, you know. I don’t wanna eat my co-workers. It’s just that, when you spend all day taking these living, breathing creatures – animals that move and cry and tremble in fear – and you turn them into lifeless blocks of dead flesh, it’s hard to believe in any special spark that makes us humans any different.”

(MAG072, Craig Goodall) “There’s nothing inherently special about us. We feel as much pain, see the world with the same eyes as a real pig. Meat is meat. That’s what John Haan said when they arrested him. The only thing he said. Meat is meat. […] It looked like this was what the kid had been doing. He’d been spraying the phrase ‘MEAT IS MEAT’ onto the door of the freezer, but the cops must have gotten him before he’s finished, so what was actually written upon the matt silver surface were the words ‘MEAT IS ME’.”

(MAG130) LUCIA: […] Squirming limbs were dragging, rising, extracting themselves from this mound of flesh, and making their way down to join their companions on the ground, one by one. Most of them could still be mistaken for humans at a distance, a few even wore clothes. […] All through this, the mouth got closer and closer to the edge of the pit, the pile of flesh within it larger and larger, sat there in an awful, half-solid slurry, chewed and crushed together. It was impossible to tell what had once been animal, and what might once have been us. It was all just meat.

-Curiously, Lucia didn’t mention any anchor in her statement? Orrr was it, in her case, an anchoring thought?

(MAG130) LUCIA: My back was screaming, my legs were weak, and my mind was numb from terror. But I was spurred on by one thing: the woman with the backwards arms had fallen, some time in the night, and her companions had shown no hesitation. They had gripped her shoulders, hoisted her up, and hurled her straight into the gaping maul. I swore it wouldn’t happen to me.

Could it be the focus that matters, more than thinking about something/someone from outside of the box? Focusing on something, whatever it is, and preventing the Fears from getting to you and swallowing you whole? It’s also how Basira had managed to exit The Unknowing on her own… So in the same way: would going into the coffin with the clear resolution of finding Daisy and getting back out with her be enough…?

- We’re slowly completing the list of failed rituals from the current batch!!

*The Buried: “Sunken Sky”, 17th June, 2008. (<- Vast-touched Jan Kilbride was thrown in pieces into the pit.)

*The Flesh: “The Last Feast”, October 2008 (since it was (until now.) the new Baby, this was probably only its first or second ritual attempt? Awww ;w; (Don’t worry, you’ll get used to seeing your ritual derailed.) (WE HOPE.) <- also with this one that Gertrude apparently confirmed that she could deal with the rituals with non-spooky means (maybe… Jan Kilbride… would have liked to know that a few months earlier…))

*The Spiral: “The Great Twisting”, somewhere during October 2009 or shortly after. (<- No explosives for this one, Michael Shelley gave an Identity to the Distortion instead.)

*The Stranger: “The Unknowing”: 6th August 2017. (<- TIM WAS THE BOMB…)

*The Eye: “The Watcher’s Crown”, incoming and Jon Has Suspicions about the year 2018. (<- Gertrude had a Plan for this, MAG080 seems to hint at “Fire.”)

Unclear: The Dark (15th May 2015? 10th February 2017? It Was Coming Soon according to Nathalie Ennis), The Desolation (before April 2015).

No indication (yet?): The Lonely (I’m very subjectively suspecting that this one might not have a ritual, since “almost” all of the Fears have one according to Gerry, and that that’s why the Lukases are collaborating with various other Entities’ clusters by throwing money at them), The End (I’m also thinking that this one could turn out to not actually have a ritual?), The Vast (are they planning to yeet Earth into Space), The Hunt (Gertrude was not convinced but mentioned that it could happen in America), The Slaughter (… we got a few statements showing that when a Slaughter event happens, it goes HARD anyway, so I fear (ha) what its ritual attempt would look like – maybe during a recent war or civilian repression?), The Corruption (though might have tried something in the tunnels below the Institute during The Hive’s invasion, given the ring of worms? Though it would sound a bit low-scale, since only Jane Prentiss was there…), The Web (Though There Is The Matter Of What The Heck Is The Deal With The House On Hill Top Road).

- Alriiiiiiiiiiiiiight, so:

(MAG130) GERTRUDE: […] Tom Haan might be a bit more of a problem, as it looks like he also survived, but I’m hopeful he has been weakened enough by this failure to not be an issue in the near future. Hopefully, he’ll fade away or burn out, as they tend to when robbed of their purpose. Still… I should keep a watch on him in case of any erratic behaviour that might lead to complications. Also worth watching out for any additional esoteric fall-out from the ritual attempt, like that Carlisle boy down in Wandsworth.

a) If I remember, Craig Goodall (the statement-giver from MAG072) had never explicitly mentioned that the Chinese-looking man that had attacked him was “John Haan” (the original owner of the takeaway restaurant, who had been arrested years before the events) – the fire was reported on 27th September 2009, almost a year after the Flesh’s ritual attempt, and the avatar talked about the relation between meat and religion… so indeed, it was probably Tom Haan there, too (I had been a bit confused, back then, unsure if it was John or Tom)?

b) Alright, and MAG030’s events happened in July 2013, we don't know of Tom Haan having been spotted since then, and what was described really sounded like… he put an end to Things then. So same as Breekon, maybe: he faded/self-destructed?

c) Toby Carlisle from MAG018 (“The Man Upstairs”) confirmed as Flesh! Though apparently, he didn’t participated to the ritual, dying in October 2007, although he was affected by its imminence.

I’m late to the party, only realizing now that the “Mrs. Carlisle” whose husband’s corpse wanted her to cannibalize him in 1845 (MAG058) shared her surname with “Toby Carlisle” – both about (MEAAAT) Flesh. Which means that Mrs. Carlisle probably gave in and ate her husband after her statement in order to survive, after all? And that one of her descendants was also Flesh-related? And we already knew about the fact that two people from the Haan family had a special relationship with meat?

We have the Carlisles, the Haans, the von Closens/Keays, the Lukases… Maybe Gerry had been a bit wrong in saying that the Fears don’t care at all about blood? Or are they, like the Fairchilds, adoptive families and the Lukases are still an exception?

- ;; Insisting on this: according to Gertrude, (avatars? monsters?) tend to “burn out when robbed of their purpose”, which indeed seems to have happened to Tom Haan four years and a half after his failed ritual. That…………………… is a short life expectancy if you fail indeed…………….. So even assuming that Jon is still alive (well, “not dead”) when a Watcher’s Crown attempt will be made, and even if he doesn’t die during it, and even if it is stopped in time… it means that Jon would be done for anyway.

Counter-points though: *Jared Hopworth began experimenting with The Boneturner’s Tale starting in 1996 and we know that he was still active and very chill About His Life in 2012 (MAG090). Though… did he even participate in that “Last Feast”, or did he just ignore it to keep doing his own thing?

*Jude Perry didn’t look especially erratic when we met her in 2017 in MAG089, although Gertrude had mentioned that The Lightless Flame’s plans had been stopped shortly before she recorded MAG087’s statement in April 2015 (“their own plans have so recently, erm, gone up in flames.”) So… we’ll… “see”…

- Once again, I really have no idea what state Daisy will be in, assuming that Jon does even manage to get her out of the coffin and that she’s still breathing (even if, hum, not human-shaped or human-minded)……………. But listen. Listen. We had an example of Jon managing to ground someone through compulsion: he did that to Tim during The Unknowing, and it worked! Forcing people to admit the truth manages to get their awareness back!

(MAG118) ARCHIVIST: Tim!! [STATIC:] What do you see? TIM: I see my asshole boss! W– wait… wait… […] ARCHIVIST: Tim! [STATIC:] What’s in your hand? TIM: It’s… I don’t… the– the– … the detonator…

My shipper heart really really hopes that Jon might compulse Daisy into remembering Basira, asking her ~who is it who matters to her~, since Basira was, almost literally, presented as Daisy’s anchor (MAG092, Elias: “the only person you care about […].Your last connection to humanity.”)

Problems: as of MAG122, Jon didn’t remember anything of the Unknowing past Gertrude’s entrance, which means… not remembering Tim’s last moments. And: Jon still had trouble pinning down the relationship between Basira and Daisy in MAG117 (“I–I– I don't quite get those two, I suppose. What they’ve done, seeing what they’ve seen… It’s a hell of a bond. The sort of thing I’ve mostly done alone.”), so… I’m not sure he would think of this option. Jon often has troubles with people’s relationships ;;

SO IT MAKES IT EVEN MORE VALUABLE THAT HE’S GOING TO TRY, ANYWAY, TO SAVE DAISY FROM THE COFFIN……………… Daisy who tried to kill him, who threatened him a few times afterwards, but whom he seemed to kinda like in his own awkward way? Jon really doesn’t want to lose anyone anymore, uh. (;; They’ve not been mentioned recently, but you can still feel the ghosts of Sasha and Tim lingering around.)

- YEAAAAH so Jon is getting ready to get injured again, and he does it in the most self-deprecating, heartbreaking way:

(MAG130) ARCHIVIST: […] What was it she said, “the siren call of Flesh”… Hm. It’s possible, I suppose. It would… hurt, but… Well. What’s another scar? … It’s been two weeks since I heard from Basira. I’m not waiting any longer. I’m getting Daisy back. End recording.

JON ;;;;;

a) If it is indeed a Flesh-related scar (will he get his hands on something from Artefact storage? or would it be “Flesh”-compatible by the simple fact of purposely injuring oneself?): Jon… is making progress on completing the set of Entity-related wounds. And we know he’s aware that it’s been a lot of injuries (MAG127: “Just another scar for the collection!”), but did he notice that he’s been covering all the Fears? We still don’t know for sure if the diversity is relevant, but it’s been a noticeable pattern (for listeners), and it sounds really suspicious… especially when keeping in mind how Elias had described the Archivist’s role (MAG092: “It is your job to chronicle these things, to experience them, whether first-hand or through the eyes of others. To simply be told, well…”).

Jon was touched by the Web when he was a child (MAG081: “The first of the dark powers to touch me, perhaps, but it did not claim me.”); he’s Beholding’s Archivist. As for the Corruption, he got almost eaten alive by Jane Prentiss’s worms (MAG039); “Michael” from the Spiral stabbed him when he tried to retrieve Helen (MAG047); Jude Perry from the Desolation burned his hand through a handshake (MAG089); Mike Crew made him experience the Vast and probably fucked up his lungs a bit (MAG091); Daisy strangled him and/or cut his neck (MAG091); the Not!Them toyed with his memories of Sasha (starting MAG040), Nikola punched(?) him (MAG097) and held him captive for a month (MAG101), and Jon ultimately experienced the Stranger’s Unknowing himself, getting temporarily lost in the madness (MAG118+MAG119); the End couldn’t totally get his grasp on him while Jon was in his coma but Jon was then “balanced on an edge” (MAG121); Melanie stabbed him in the shoulder with a scalpel while she was infected by the Slaughter (MAG125); since Peter Lukas has been running the Institute, Jon has mentioned multiple times that he was feeling alone/lonely, which… could be a Lonely-induced state of mind (MAG125, MAG129), with everyone drifting away because of its effects.

Jon is still missing the Buried, the Flesh and the Dark. If Jon is getting his scars from the Buried AND the Flesh in one go, he will only be missing the Dark’s (and potentially the unidentified ~New Emergence~), which is already lurking around the Institute.

It’s going FAST.

b) Jon has been holding back, so well and on multiple accounts é_è He stuck with it and didn’t try to come in contact with Melanie! If he didn’t lie by omission, he has been managing to not Know about Basira’s current activities (MAG129: “I haven’t heard from Basira, since she left on whatever secret errand”)!! Well, he went to see Martin when he got the Insight that he was around in MAG129, but Martin hadn’t told him to “stop finding” him yet, so Jon didn’t break any promise. And, well, although he’s resolving to go into the coffin at the end of MAG130… he managed to not try anything since Basira left two weeks ago, and she’s been taking longer than what she had announced (MAG128: “I’ll try and be back in a week or two. Don’t think about me.”); the fact that Basira is still not coming back indeed changes the paradigms a bit. (What is she doing… Where did Elias send her to… Was Elias’s plan precisely to remove her from the Institute, to get Jon more prone to getting involved himself…)

Even statements-wise!

MAG121 (+MAG122?): February 15th 2018 MAG123: February 17th (“Two days out of a coma, and I’m already tired.”) MAG124: February 24th~ (“It’s been a week and… Melanie’s attitude towards me hasn’t softened.”) MAG125: ? MAG126: ? MAG127: ? MAG128: 3rd March (Basira leaving) MAG129: ? MAG130: 17th~ March (“It’s been two weeks since I heard from Basira”)

There was a very intense period from MAG124 to MAG128, but since Basira’s departure, it seems that Jon has gone back to the casual and safe rhythm of one statement a week. Take that, Elias and your “And I know you’ve had problems with moderation.” :www Jon has been doing good on his own!

c) It’s SAD, once again, that Jon reached the conclusion that he had to do something by himself, and that this something involved getting hurt. I don’t see any of the others taking it kindly: Melanie could be indifferent, but Basira will probably point out that Jon didn’t prove himself trustworthy (going into the coffin when she had told him not to) and Martin… would probably scream at Jon a bit for getting injured.

But at the same time, yes, what is Jon supposed to do? He lost Sasha when he was ignorant; he lost Tim when he was knowledgeable, and thought that Daisy had disappeared too. Jon is still the one who has the best chance of not dying; he’s the one with the most powers; he proved that he could neutralise Breekon when he was on the verge of attacking. Of course that, now that he’s discovered that he could possibly “undo” another death, and if the only downside would be him getting injured… he would take that chance. Especially when Gertrude casually mentioned that:

(MAG130) GERTRUDE: Also… I can’t rely on having this much lead time. I’ve had ten years tracking supplicants drawn by the siren call of Flesh, watching them gradually stockpiling meat. Very useful, in terms of preparation time for derailing the final push, but in future… I think I need to get a little bit more… proactive.

Meaning she let a few members of The Flesh run wild for ten years, for the Greater Good of “derailing” their ritual later. Meaning she probably allowed them to hurt, torture and kill innocent people all this time. Typical Gertrude and she had her priorities (saving the world, and at what cost?). Jon’s priorities are… Well. We don’t officially know them, but the assistants seem to be pretty much at the top of his list right now.

And damnit!! Jon tried to reach out to the others, to explain to them what was happening! He tried to infodump to Martin! He confessed to Martin that he missed him and was worried for him! He told Basira about his new powers and told her they were on the same side! And Martin and Basira both chose to remain solo in their own quests. But Jon tried; it has nothing to do with the way he tried to protect Tim and Martin at the end of season 2, or the way he avoided all the assistants before Nikola kidnapped him in season 3 (MAG098, Martin: “Yeah, we talked. Not long, he– Y’know, I think he thinks that the distance keeps us safe, you know? Like, like, if he just makes sure that we’re not involved, we’re somehow fine.”) He tried and just spent two weeks with the coffin for sole company, knowing that there could be a chance of rescuing Daisy and knowing that she is not having a great time inside (MAG128, Breekon: “You can stare at it, knowing how your feral friend suffers, knowing how powerless you are to help. And when you can’t bear it any longer, knowing that you can climb in and join her…”).

Jon is only finding another way now because communicating didn’t work when all he got was doors getting shut in his face. He would even have reasons to snap if someone were to reproach him for trying something alone… ;;

- Regarding MAG131, since we already have the title, I wiiiiish we could have Melanie stopping Jon dead (…) in his tracks and instead giving him a statement of The Flesh attack on the Institute, but alas :| If Jon is planning to amputate (perhaps temporarily, before sewing it back? He said “another scar”, didn’t mention a missing body part) or hurt himself (blood to attract Daisy once inside?), I don’t knoooow what he would aim for. Something grand and over the top like HIS HEART, SINCE HE MENTIONED THE WEB’S “HEART”? Something symbolically appropriate like his eyes (L I S T E N, ~THE RELATION BETWEEN EYES AND KNOWLEDGE~ HAS BEEN AN OLD ONE SINCE ŒDIPUS………………)? His head? … Honestly, I think I would be more disturbed if it turned out to be something small and… closer to a real-life injury (a finger, a bit of an ear, etc.) Another option would have been to use The Boneturner’s Tale or to ask for Jared’s, uh, “help” (stealing bones/organs directly from Jon), since Gregory Pryor had mentioned how he could still feel his own bones “twisting in someone else’s arm” after they had been stolen from him in MAG049, but we don’t know where the book is, The Flesh already tried to destroy the Archives when Jon was in a coma (they’re not allies), and Jon seemed keen on acting as fast as possible. Still, not totally excluding the possibility of Jon taking the time to go after a Flesh avatar in MAG131 (although it sounds like he’s getting ready to jump in the coffin already). Martin had even highlighted that he couldn’t be sure whether “J”’s gym was still running or not since August 2013 (MAG090: “The, um… the supplemental materials that should go with this statement, providing more details on addresses, names, and stuff, seems to be missing, so we don’t have any way of tracking down the gym, or finding out the name the business might be operating under. Not without a 2013 copy of the Aberdeen Yellow Pages. A bit of relief, in some ways.”) Orrrr I guess that Jon could also be cunning and only pretending to totally miss the point, just to make The Web freak out and come out of its hiding spot to stop him, but Jon hasn’t been hiding from his recording since the whole Sceptical Show from season 1… So I don’t know. (Why are you so intent on getting honest on tape now that you know that Fear entities are listening to you, Jon?)

Re: the coffin, by the way. I wonder how we would be “told” of what is happening down there, if Jon goes inside? Would we witness it live, through a tape recorder? Would we get the reactions from people outside (Martin, Melanie and/or Basira) while Jon still hasn’t come back, before Jon would give a quick summary? Would Jon (or Daisy) give a full statement of what happened? … Would Elias give a Statement Never Given of the whole thing? (In that case, I’d really hope that Jon’s anchor would turn out to be MARTIN INDEED IN THE END, because then, Elias would have to narrate the whole ordeal, and I’m ALL for Elias’s pain while he would grit his teeth with utter disgust, come on, you know you want it too.)

And still no idea about Jon’s anchor /o/ I said last time that I felt that MAG129 was precisely introducing the idea that it wouldn’t be Martin, since Martin told Jon to stop “finding” him… but it wouldn’t mean that Jon would stop. And it’s one of the few things that Jon actively seeks out himself – the tape recorders are the ones stalking him, for example, and sadly so was The Distortion (;; I want Helen baaaack…). We don’t know whether he tends to go back to the Web’s lighter or if it’s the lighter which stuck to him.

The call of a cigarette? The Archives themselves? The Eye’s presence? The jar containing Jane Prentiss’s ashes? Jon’s fondness for meat? (MAG115: “I suppose in some ways it’s strange I’m not a vegetarian yet, what with everything I know. But… I rather think someone in my position has to take their small pleasures where they can, and if it occasionally delights some grotesque meat-god, well... c’est la vie.”) Regrets about his life choices?

#tl dr i have no idea and i'm scared :|#the magnus archives #mag130 #tma liveblog #tma season 4 #tma spoilers

44 notes · View notes